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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,
�
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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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Travels in South Kensington
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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.
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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 (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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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Kensington (West London)
Moncure Conway
South Kensington Museum
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33
Art
III.—The Stoics.
Die Philosophic der Griechen. Von Dr. Edward Zeller.
Dritter Theil, Erste Abtheilung. Leipzig : 1880.
HE systems of Plato and Aristotle were splendid digressions
from the main line of ancient speculation rather than stages
in its regular development. The philosophers who came after
them went back to an earlier tradition, and the influence of the
two greatest Hellenic masters, when it was felt at all, acted almost
entirely as a disturbing or deflecting force. The extraordinary
reach of their principles could not, in truth, be appreciated until
the organized experience of mankind had accumulated to an
extent requiring the application of new rules for its comprehen
sion and utilization; and to make such an accumulation possible
nothing less was needed than the combined efforts of the whole
western world. Such religious, educational, social, and political
reforms as those contemplated in Plato’s Republic, though
originally designed for a single city community, could not be
realized, even approximately, within a narrower field than that
offered by the mediaeval church and the feudal state. The ideal
theory first gained practical significance in connection with the
metaphysics of Christian theology. The place given by Plato
to mathematics has only been fully justified by the development
of modern science. So also Aristotle’s criticism became of
practical importance only when the dreams against which it was
directed had embodied themselves in a fabric of oppressive
superstition. Only the vast extension of reasoned knowledge
has enabled us to disentangle the vitally important elements of
Aristotle’s logic from the mass of useless refinements in which
they are embedded; his fourfold division of causes could not be
estimated rightly even by Bacon, Descartes, or Spinoza; while
his arrangement of the sciences, his remarks on classification, and
his contributions to comparative biology bring us up to the very
verge of theories whose first promulgation is still fresh in the
memories of men.
Again, the spiritualism taught by Plato and Aristotle alike—
by the disciple, indeed, with even more distinctness than by the
master—was so entirely inconsistent with the common belief of
antiquity as to remain a dead letter for nearly six centuries—that
is, until the time of Plotinus. The difference between body and
mind was recognized by every school, but only as the difference
between solid and gaseous matter is recognized by us ; while the
antithesis between conscious and unconscious existence, with all
T
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXL]—New Series, Vol. LXI. No. I.
C
�34
The Stoics.
its momentous consequences, was recognized by none. The ola
hypothesis had to be thoroughly thought out before its insuffi
ciency could be completely and irrevocably confessed.
Nor was this the only reason why the spiritualists lost touch
of their age. If in some respects they were far in advance of early
Greek thought, in other respects they were far behind it. Their
systems were pervaded by an unphilosophical dualism which
tended to undo much that had been achieved by their less pre
judiced predecessors. For this we have partly to blame their
environment. The opposition of God and the world, heaven
and earth, mind and matter, necessity and free-will, considered
as co-ordinate forces working within the same sphere, was a con
cession—though of course an unconscious concession—to the
stupid bigotry of Athens. Yet at the same time they had failed
to solve those psychological problems which had most interest
for an Athenian public. Instead of following up the attempt
made by the Sophists and Socrates to place morality on a
scientific foundation, they busied themselves with the construc
tion of a new machinery for diminishing the efficacy of tempta
tion or for strengthening the efficacy of law. To the question
What is the highest good ? Plato gave an answer which nobody
could understand, and Aristotle an answer which was almost
absolutely useless to anybody but himself. The other great
problem, What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge ? was left
in an equally unsatisfactory state. Plato never answered it at all;
Aristotle merely pointed out the negative conditions which must
be fulfilled by its solution.
It is not, then, surprising that the Academic and Peripetatic
schools utterly failed to carry on the great movement inaugurated
by their respective founders. The successors of Plato first lost
themselves in a labyrinth of Pythagorean mysticism, and then
sank into the position of mere moral instructors. It is outside
our present purpose to relate the history of that remarkable
revolution by which the Academy regained a foremost place in
Greek thought; but we may observe that this was done by
taking up and presenting in its original purity a tradition of
older date than Platonism, though presented under a new aspect
and mixed with other elements by Plato. The heirs of Aristotle,
after staggering on a few paces under the immense burden of
his encyclopaedic bequest, came to a dead halt, and contented
themselves with keeping the treasure safe until the time should
arrive for its appropriation and reinvestment by a stronger specu
lative race.
No sooner did the two imperial systems lose their ascendency
than the germs which they had temporarily overshadowed sprang
up into vigorous vitality, and fox' more than five centuries domi
�35
The Stoics.
nated the whole course not only of Greek but of European
thought. Of these by far the most important was the naturalistic
idea, the belief that physical science might be substituted for
religious superstitions and local conventions as an impregnable
basis of conduct. On a former occasion we endeavoured to
*
show that, while there are traces of this idea in the philo
sophy of Heracleitus, and while its roots stretch far back
into the literature and popular faith of Greece, it was formu
lated for the first time by the two great Sophists, Prodicus and
Hippias, who, in the momentous division between Nature and
Law, placed themselves—Hippias more particularly—on the side
of Nature. Two causes led to the temporary discredit of their
teaching. One was the perversion by which natural right became
the watchword of those who, like Plato’s Callicles, held that
nothing should stand between the strong man and the gratifi
cation of his desire for pleasure or for power. The other was the
keen criticism of the Humanists, the friends of social convention,
who held with Protagoras that Nature was unknowable, or with
Gorgias that she did not exist, or with Socrates that her laws
were the secret of the gods. It was in particular the over
whelming personal influence of Socrates which triumphed. He
drew away from the Sophists their strongest disciple, Antisthenes,
and convinced him that philosophy was valuable only in so far
as it became a life-renovating power, and that, viewed in this
light, it had no relation to anything outside ourselves. But just
as Socrates had discarded the physical speculations of former
teachers, so also did Antisthenes discard the dialectic which
Socrates had substituted for them, even to the extent of denying
that definition was possible. Yet he seems to have kept a firm
hold on the two great ideas that were the net result of all previous
philosophy, the idea. of a Cosmos, the common citizenship of
■which made all men potentially equal, and the idea of reason as
the essential prerogative of man.
Antisthenes pushed to its extreme consequences a movement
begun by the naturalistic Sophists. His doctrine was what would
now be called anarchic collectivism. The State, marriage, private
property, and the then accepted forms of religion, were to be
abolished, and all mankind were to herd promiscuously together.
Either he or his followers, alone among the ancients, declared
that slavery was wrong, and like Socrates, he held that the
virtue of men and women was the same. But what he meant
by this broad human virtue, which according to him was identical
with happiness, is not clear. We only know that he dissociated
* Westminster Review for April, 1880: Art. “The Greek Humanists :
Mature and Law.”
C2
�36
The Stoics.
it in the strongest manner from pleasure. “ I had rather be mad
than delighted/’ is one of his characteristic sayings. It would
appear, however, that what he really objected to was self-in
dulgence—the pursuit of sensual gratification for its own sake-—
and that he was ready to welcome the enjoyments naturally
accompanying the healthy discharge of vital function.
Antisthenes and his school, of which Diogenes is the most
popular and characteristic type, were afterwards known as
Cynics; but the name is never mentioned by Plato and Aristotle,
nor do they allude to the scurrility and systematic indecency
afterwards associated with it. The anecdotes relating to this
unsavoury subject should be received with extreme suspicion.
There has always been a tendency to believe that philosophers
carry out in practice what are vulgarly believed to be the logical
consequences of their theories. Thus it is related of Pyrrho the
Sceptic that when out walking he never turned aside to avoid any
obstacle or danger, and was only saved from destruction by the
vigilance of his friends. This is of course a silly fable ; and we
have Aristotle’s word for it that the Sceptics took as good care
of their lives as other people. In like manner we may conjecture
that the Cynics, advocating as they did a return to Nature and
defiance of prejudice, were falsely credited with what was falsely
supposed to be the practical exemplification of their precepts.
It is at any rate remarkable that Epictetus, a man not disposed
to undervalue the obligations of decorum, constantly refers to
Diogenes as a kind of philosophic saint, and that he describes
the ideal Cynic in words which would apply without alteration to
the character of a Christian apostle.
Cynicism, if we understand it rightly, was only the mutilated
form of an oldei' philosophy having for its object to set morality
free from convention, and to found it anew on a scientific know
ledge of natural law. The need of such a system was not felt
so long as Plato and Aristotle were unfolding their wonderful
schemes for a reorganization of action and belief. With the
temporary collapse of these schemes it came once more to the
front. The result was a new school which so thoroughly satisfied
the demands of the age, that for five centuries the noblest spirits
of Greece and Rome, with few exceptions, adhered to its doc
trines ; that in dying it bequeathed some of their most vital
■elements to the metaphysics and the theology by which it was
succeeded ; that with their decay it reappeared as an important
factor in modern thought; and that its name has become imperishably associated in our own language with the proud
endurance of suffering, the self-sufficiency of conscious rectitude,
and the renunciation of all sympathy, except what may be
derived from contemplation of the immortal dead, whose heroism
�The Stoics.
37
is recorded in history, or of the eternal cosmic forces working
out their glorious tasks with unimpassioned energy and imper
turbable repose.
One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short
lean swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped
limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian
bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name
was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in
Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated
with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some
accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual
activity to study, according to others for the sale of Tyrian
purple. At any rate the volume which he held in his hand
decided his vocation. It was the second book of Xenophon’s
Memoirs of Socrates. Zeno eagerly asked where such men as
he whose sayings stood recorded there were to be found. At
that moment the Cynic Crates happened to pass by. “ There
is one of them,” said the bookseller, “ follow him.”
The history of this Crates was distinguished by the one solitary
romance of Greek philosophy. A young lady of noble family,
named Hipparchia, fell desperately in love with him, refuse! 1
several most eligible suitors, and threatened to kill herself unless
she was given to him in marriage. Her parents in despair sent
for Crates. Marriage, for a philosopher, was against the prin
ciples of his sect, and he at first joined them in endeavouring to
dissuade her. Finding his remonstrances unavailing, he at last
flung at her feet the staff and wallet which constituted his whole
worldly possessions, exclaiming, “ Here is the bridegroom, and
that is the dower. Think of this matter well, for you cannot be
my partner unless you follow the same calling with me.” Hip
parchia consented, and thenceforth, heedless of taunts, conformed
her life in every respect to the Cynic pattern.
Zeno had more delicacy or less fortitude than Hipparchia; and
the very meagre intellectual fare provided by Crates must have
left his inquisitive mind unsatisfied. Accordingly we find him
leaving this rather disappointing substitute for Socrates to study
philosophy under Stilpo the Megarian dialectician and Polemo
the head of the Academy ; while we know that he must have
gone back to Heracleitus for the physical basis from which con
temporary speculation had by this time cut itself completely
free. At length, about the beginning of the third century B.C.,
Zeno, after having been a learner for twenty years, opened a
school on his own account. As if to mark the practical bearing
of his doctrine he chose one of the most frequented resorts in
the city for its promulgation. There was at Athens a portico
called the Poecile Stoa, adorned with frescoes by Polygnotus the
�38 •
The Stoics.
greatest painter of the Cimonian period. It was among the
monuments of that wonderful city, at once what the Loggia dei
Lanzi is to Florence, and what Raphael’s Stanze are to Rome;
while, like the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it was darkened
by the terrible associations of a revolutionary epoch. A century
before Zeno’s time fourteen hundred Athenian citizens had been
slaughtered under its colonnades by order of the Thirty. “ I
will purify the Stoa,” said the Cypriote stranger; and the feel
ings still associated with the word Stoicism prove how nobly his
promise was fulfilled.
How much of the complete system known in later times under
this name was due to Zeno himself, we do not know ; for nothing
but a few fragments of his and of his immediate successors’
writings is left. The idea of combining Antisthenes with Heracleitus, and both with Socrates, probably belongs to the founder
of the school. His successor, Cleanthes, a man of character
rather than of intellect, was content to hand on what the
master had taught. Then came another Cypriote, Chrysippus,
of whom we are told that without him the Stoa would not
have existed, so thoroughly did he work out the system in
all its details, and so strongly did he fortify its positions against
hostile criticism by a framework of elaborate dialectic. “ Give
me the propositions, and I will find the proofs 1” he used to say
to Cleanthes. After him, nothing of importance was added to
the doctrines of the school, although the spirit by which they
were animated seems to have undergone profound modifications,
in the lapse of ages.
In reality Stoicism was not, like the older Greek philosophers,
a creation of individual genius. It bears the character of a
compilation both on its first exposition and on its final
completion. Polemo, who had been a fine gentleman^before he
became a philosopher, taunted Zeno with filching his opinions
from every quarter, like the cunning little Phoenician trader that
he was. And it was said that the seven hundred treatises
of Chrysippus would be reduced to a blank if everything
that he had borrowed from others were to be erased. He seems
indeed, to have been the father of review-writers, and to have
used the reviewer’s right of transcription with more than
modern license. Nearly a whole tragedy of Euripides reappeared
in one of his “ articles,” and a wit on being asked what he was
reading, replied, the Medea of Chrysippus.”
In this respect, Stoicism betrays its descent from the encyclo
paedic .lectures of the earlier Sophists, particularly Hippias.
While professedly subordinating every other study to the art
of virtuous living, its professors seem to have either put a very
wide interpretation on virtue, or else to have raised its founda
�The Stoics.
39
tion to a most unnecessary height. They protested against
Aristotle’s glorification of knowledge as the supreme end, and
declared its exclusive pursuit to be merely a more refined form of
self-indulgence ; but, being Greeks, they shared the speculative
passion with him, and seized on any pretext that enabled them to
gratify it. And this inquisitiveness was apparently much
stronger in Asiatic Hellas, whence the Stoics were almost
entirely recruited, than in the old country where centuries
of intellectual activity had issued in a scepticism from which
their fresher minds revolted.
*
It is mentioned by Zeller as a
proof of exhaustion and comparative indifference to such
inquiries, that the Stoics should have fallen back upon their
physics on the Heracleitean philosophy. But all the ideas
respecting the constitution of Nature that were then possible had
already been put forward. The Greek capacity for discovery
was perhaps greater in the third century that at any former time ;
but from the very progress of science it was necessarily confined
to specialists such as Aristarchus of Samos, or Archimedes.
Anil if the Stoics made no original contributions to physical
science, they at least accepted what seemed at that time to be its
established results; here, as in other respects, offering a marked
contrast to the Epicurean school. If a Cleanthes assailed the
heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus on religious grounds, he
was treading in the footsteps of Aristotle. It was far more im
portant that he or his successors should have taught the true
theory of the earth’s shape, of the moon’s phases, of eclipses, and
of the relative size and distance of the heavenly bodies. On
this last subject, indeed, one of the later Stoics, Posidonius,
arrived at or accepted conclusions which, although falling far
short of the reality, approximated to it in a very remarkable
manner, when we consider what imperfect means of measurement
the Greek astronomers had at their disposition.!
In returning to one of the older cosmologies, the Stoics placed
themselves in opposition to the system of Aristotle as a whole,
although on questions of detail they frequently adopted his
conclusions. The object of Heracleitus, as against the Pythago
reans, had been to dissolve away every antithesis in a pervading
* It is significant that the only Stoic who fell back on pure Cynicism should
have been Aristo of Chios, a genuine Greek, while the only one who, like
Aristotle, identified good with knowledge was Herillus, a Carthaginian.
f Posidonius estimated the sun’s distance from the earth at 500,000,000 r
stades, and the moon’s distance at 2,000,000 stades, which, counting the stade
at 200 yards, gives about 57,000,000 and 227,000 miles respectively. The
sun’s diameter he reckoned, according to one account, at 410,000 miles, about
half the real amount; according to another account at a quarter less. Zeller,
Th. d. Gr., iii. 1, p. 190, Note 2.
�40
The Stoics.
unity of contradictories, and, as against the Eleatics, to substitute
an eternal series of transformations for the changeless unity of
absolute existence. The Stoics now applied the same method on
a scale proportional to the subsequent development of thought.
Aristotle had carefully distinguished God from the world,
even to the extent of isolating him from all share in its creation,
and interest in its affairs. The Stoics declared that God and the
world were one. So far, it is allowable to call them pantheists.
Yet their pantheism was very different from what we are accus
tomed to denote by that name, from the system of Spinoza, for
example. Their strong faith in final causes and in Providence—
a faith in which they closely followed Socrates—would be hardly
consistent with the denial of a consciousness to the Supreme Being,
quite distinct from the human consciousness with which it is
identified by some modern philosophers. Their God was some
times described as the soul of the world, the fiery element
surrounding and penetrating every other kind of matter. What
remained was the body of God ; but it was a body which he had
originally created out of his own substance, and would, in the
fulness of time, absorb into that substance again. Thus they keep
the future conflagration foretold by Heracleitus, but gave it a more
religious colouring. The process of creation was then to begin
over again, and all things were to run the same course as
before down to the minutest particulars, human history repeating
itself, and the same persons returning to live the same lives once
more. Such a belief of course involved the most rigid fatalism :
and here again their doctrine offers a pointed contrast to that of
Aristotle. The Stagirite, differing, as it would seem in this
respect from all the older physicists, maintained that there was an
element of chance and spontaneity in the sublunary sphere;
and without going very deeply into the mechanism of motives or
the theory of moral responsibility, he had claimed a similar
indeterminateness for the human will. Stoicism would hear of
neither ; with it, as with modern science, the chain of causation
is unbroken from first to last, and extends to all phenomena
alike. The old theological notion of an omnipotent divine will,
or of a destiny superior even to that will, was at once confirmed
and continued by the new theory of natural law, just as the
predestination of the Reformers reappeared in the metaphysical
rationalism of Spinoza.
*
* The Stoic necessarianism gave occasion to a repartee which has remained
classical even since, although its original authorship is known to few. A slave
of Zeno’s having been detected in some offence, tried to excuse himself by
quoting his master’s principle that he was fated to commit it. “ And I was
fated to chastise you,” calmly replied the philosopher, immediately suiting the
action to the words.
�The Stoics.
41
This dogma of universal determinism was combined in the
Stoical system with an equally outspoken materialism. The
capacity for either acting or being acted on was, according to
Plato, the one convincing evidence of real existence ; and he had
endeavoured to prove that there is such a thing as mind apart
from matter by its possession of this characteristic mark. The
Stoics simply reversed his argument. Whatever acts or is
acted on, they said, must be corporeal; therefore the soul is a
kind of body. Here they only followed the common opinion
of all philosophers who believed in an external world, except
Plato and Aristotle, while to a certain extent anticipating the
scientific automatism first taught in modern times by Spinoza,
and simultaneously revived by various thinkers in our own day.
To a certain extent only; for they did not recognize the inde
pendent reality of a consciousness in which the mechanical
processes are either reflected, or represented under a different
aspect. And they further gave their theory a somewhat
grotesque expression by interpreting those qualities and attri
butes of things, which other materialists have been content to
consider as belonging to matter, as themselves actual bodies.
For instance, the virtues and vices were, according to them, somany gaseous currents by which the soul is penetrated and
shaped—a materialistic rendering of Plato’s theory that qualities
are distinct and independent substances.
We must mention as an additional point of contrast between
the Stoics and the subsequent schools which they most resembled,
that while these look on the soul as inseparable from the body,
and sharing its fortunes from first to last, although perfectly
distinct from it in idea, they emphasized the antithesis between
the two just as strongly as Plato, giving the soul an absolutely in
finite power of self-assertion during our mortal life, and allowing
it a continued, though not an immortal, existence after death.
What has been said of the human soul applies equally to God,
who is the soul of the world. He also is conceived under the
form of a material, but very subtle and all-penetrating, element
to which our souls are much more closely akin than to the coarse
clay with which they are temporarily associated. And it was
natural that the heavenly bodies, in whose composition the
ethereal element seemed so visibly to predominate, should pass
with the Stoics, as with Plato and Aristotle, for conscious beings
inferior only in sacredness and majesty to the Supreme Ruler of
all. Thus, the philosophy which we are studying helps to prove
the strength and endurance of the religious reaction to which
Socrates first gave an argumentative expression, and by which
he was ultimately hurried to his doom. We may even trace
its increasing ascendency through the successive stages of the
�42
The Stoics.
Naturalistic school. Prodicus simply identified the gods of poly
theism with unconscious physical forces ; Antisthenes, while dis
*
carding local worship, believed, like Rousseau, in the existence
of a single deity ; Zeno, or his successors, revived the whole
pantheon, but associated it with a pure morality, and explained
away its more offensive features by an elaborate system of alle
gorical interpretation.
It was not, however, by its legendary beliefs that the living
power of ancient religion was displayed, but by the study and
practice of divination. This was to the Greeks and Romans
what priestly direction is to a Catholic, or the interpretation of
scripture texts to a Protestant believer. And the Stoics, in their
anxiety to uphold religion as a bulwark of morality, went
entirely along with the popular superstition; while at the same
time they endeavoured to reconcile it with the universality of
natural law by the same clumsily rationalistic methods that have
found favour with some modern scientific defenders of the mira
culous. The signs by which we are enabled to predict an event
entered, they said, equally with the event itself into the order of
Nature, being either connected with it by direct causation, as is
the configuration of the heavenly bodies at a man’s birth with
his after fortunes, or determined from the beginning of the
world to precede it according to an invariable rule, as with the
indications derived from inspecting the entrails of sacrificial
victims. And when sceptics asked of what use was the pre
monitory sign when everything was predestined, they replied
that our behaviour in view of the warning wras predestined as well.
To us the religion of the Stoics is interesting chiefly as a part
of the machinery by which they attempted to make good the
connection between natural and moral law, assumed rather than
proved by their Sophistic and Cynic precursors. But before
proceeding to this branch of the subject we must glance at their
mode of conceiving another side of the fundamental relationship
between man and the universe. This is logic in its widest sense,
so understood as to include an account of the process by which
we get our knowledge and the ultimate evidence of its reality
no less than the laws of formal ratiocination.
In their theory of cognition the Stoics chiefly followed Aristotle;
only with them the doctrine of empiricism is enunciated so dis
tinctly as to be placed beyond the reach of misinterpretation.
The mind is at first a tabula rasa and all our ideas are derived
exclusively from the senses. But while knowledge as a whole
rests on sense, the validity of each particular sense-perception
must be determined by an appeal to reason, in other words, to
* Sextus Empiricus, p. 5b2, 18. F.
�The Stoics.
43
the totality of our acquired experience. So also the first
principles of reasoning are not to be postulated, with Aristotle,
as immediately and unconditionally certain ; they are to be
assumed as hypothetically true and gradually tested by the
consequences deducible from them. Both principles well illus
trate the synthetic method of the Stoics—their habit of bringing
into close connection whatever Aristotle had studiously held
apart. And we must maintain, in opposition to the German
critics, that their method marks a real advance on his. It
ought at any rate to find more favour with the experiential
school of modern science, with those who hold that the highest
mathematical and physical laws are proved, not by the im
possibility of conceiving their contradictories, but by their close
agreement with all the facts accessible to our observation.
It was a consequence of the principle just stated that in formal
logic the Stoics should give precedence to the hypothetical over
the categorical syllogism. From one point of view their prefer
ence for this mode of stating an argument was an advance on
the method of Aristotle, whose reasonings, if explicitly set out,
would have assumed the form of disjunctive syllogisms. From
another point of view it was a return to the older dialectics of
Socrates and Plato, who always looked on their major premises
as possessing only a conditional validity—conditional, that is to
say, on the consent of their interlocutor. We have further to
note that both the disjunctive and the hypothetical syllogism
were first recognised as such by the Stoics; a discovery connected
with the feature which most profoundly distinguishes their logic
from Aristotle’s logic. We showed, in dealing with the latter, that
it is based on an analysis of the concept, and that all its imper
fections are due to that single circumstance. It was the Stoics
who first brought judgment, so fatally neglected by the author
of the Analytics, into proper prominence. Having once grasped
propositions as the beginning and end of reasoning, they naturally
and under' the guidance of common language, passed from simple
to complex assertions, and immediately detected the arguments
to which these latter serve as a foundation. And if we proceed
to ask why they were more interested in judgment than in con
ception, we shall probably find the explanation to be that their
philosophy had its root in the ethical and practical interests
which involve a continual process of injunction and belief, that
is to say, a continual association of such disparate notions as an
impression and an action; while the Aristotelian philosophy,
being ultimately derived from early Greek thought, had for its
leading principle the circumscription of external objects and
their reproduction under the form of an abstract classification.
Thus the naturalistic system, starting with the application of
�44
The Stoics.
scientific ideas to human life, ultimately carried back into science
the vital idea of Law, that is, of fixed relations subsisting between
disparate phenomena, and of knowledge as the subsumption of
less general under more general relations.
Under the guidance of a somewhat similar principle the Stoic
logicians attempted a reform of Aristotle’s categories. These
they reduced to four : Substance, Quality, Disposition, and Rela
tion (to V7rOKEt/LL£VOV, TO 7TOIOV, TO 7TMC ^X0VJ an(l ™ 7TjOdf Tl 7TWC
e\ov* ; and the change was an improvement in so far as it intro
)
duced a certain method and subordination where none existed
before ; for each category implies, and is contained in, its pre
decessor ; whereas the only order traceable in Aristotle’s cate
gories refers to the comparative frequency of the questions to
which they correspond.
With the idea of subsumption and subordination to law, we
pass at once to the Stoic ethics. For Zeno, the end of life was
self-consistency; for Cleanthes, consistency with Nature; for
Chrysippus, both the one and the other. The still surviving
individualism of the Cynics is represented in the first of these
principles; the religious inspiration of the Stoa in the second;
and the comprehensiveness of its great systematizing intellect
in the last On the other hand there is a vagueness about the
idea of self-consistency which seems to date from a time when
Stoicism was less a new and exclusive school than an endeavour
to appropriate whatever was best in the older schools. For to
be consistent is the common ideal of all philosophy, and is just
what distinguishes it from the uncalculating impulsiveness of
ordinary life, the chance inspirations of ordinary thought. But
the Peripatetic who chose knowledge as his highest good differed
widely from the Hedonist who made pleasure or painlessness his
end; and even if they agreed in thinking that the highest
pleasure is yielded by knowledge, the Stoic himself would assert
that the object of their common pursuit was with both alike
essentially unmoral. He would, no doubt, maintain that the
self-consistency of any theory but his own was a delusion, and
that all false moralities would, if consistently acted out, inevitably
land their professors in a contradiction.^ Yet the absence of
contradiction, although a valuable verification, is too negative a
mark to serve for the solo test of rightness ; and thus we are
led on to the more specific standard of conformability to Nature,
whether our own or that of the universe as a whole. Here again
* Zeller, p. 93.
4 “ Quid est sapientia ? Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. Licet illam
exceptiunculam non adjicias ut rectum sit quod velis. Non potest cuiquam
semper idem placere nisi rectum.” Seneca: T^nX.xx. 4.
�The Stoics.
45
a difficulty presentsitself. The idea of Nature had taken such a
powerful hold on the Greek mind that it was employed by every
school in turn,—except perhaps by the extreme sceptics, still
faithful to the traditions of Protagoras and Gorgias,—and was
confidently appealed to in support of the most divergent ethical
systems. We find it occupying a prominent place both in Plato’s
Laws and in Aristotle’s Politics; while the maxim, Follow
Nature, was borrowed by Zeno himself from Polemo the head
of the Academy, or perhaps from Polemo’s predecessor,
Xenocrates. And Epicurus, the great opponent of Stoicism,
maintained, not without plausibility, that every animal is led
by nature to pursue its own pleasure in preference to any other
end. Thus, when Cleanthes declared that pleasure was un
natural, he and the Epicureans could not have been talking
about the same thing. They must have meant something
different by pleasure or by nature or by both.
The last alternative seems the most probable. Nature
with the Stoics was a fixed objective order whereby all things
work together as co-operant parts of a single system. Each has
a certain office to perform, and the perfect performance of it is
the creature’s virtue, or reason, or highest good ; these three ex
pressions being always used as strictly synonymous terms. Here
we have the teleology, the dialectics, and the utilitarianism of
Socrates so worked out and assimilated, that they differ only as
various aspects of a single truth. The three lines of Socratic
teaching had also been drawn to a single point by Plato; but
his idealism had necessitated the creation of a new world for
their development and concentration. The idea of Nature as it
had grown up under the hands of Heracleitus, the Sophists, and
Antisthenes, supplied Zeno with a ready-made mould into which
his reforming aspirations could be run. The true Republic was
not a pattern laid up in heaven, nor was it restricted to the
narrow dimensions of a single Hellenic state. It was the whole
real universe in every part of which except in the works of
wicked men a divine law was recognized and obeyed. Nay,
according to Cleanthes, God’s law is obeyed even by the wicked,
and the essence of morality consists only in its voluntary fulfil
ment. As others very vividly put it, we are like a dog tied
under a cart, if we do not choose to run we shall be dragged
*
along.
It will now be better understood whence arose the hostility of
the Stoics to pleasure, and how they could speak of it in what
seems to us such a paradoxical style. It was subjective feeling
as opposed to objective law ; it was relative, particular, and
* Zeller, p. 168, note 2.
�46
The Stoics.
individual, as opposed to their formal standard of right ; and it
was continually drawing men away from their true nature by
*
acting as a temptation to vice. Thus, probably for the last
reason, Cleanthes could speak of pleasure as contrary to Nature^
while less rigorous authorities regarded it as absolutely in
different, being a consequence of natural actions, not an essential
element in their performance. And when their opponents pointed
to the universal desire for pleasure as a proof that it was the
natural end of animated beings, the Stoics answered that what
Nature had in view was not pleasure at all, but the preservation
of life itself.
*
Such an interpretation of instinct introduces us to a new prin
ciple—self-interest ; and this was, in fact, recognized on all hands
as the foundation of right conduct; it was about the question, What
is our interest ? that the ancient moralists were disagreed. The
Cynics apparently held that, for every being, simple existence is
the only good, and therefore with them virtue meant limiting
oneself to the bare necessaries of life ; while by following Nature
they meant reducing existence to its lowest terms, and assimi
lating our actions so far as possible to those of the lower animals,
plants, or even stones, all of which require no more than to main
tain the integrity of their proper nature.
Where the Cynics left off the Stoics began. Recognizing
simple self-preservation as the earliest interest and duty of man,
they held that his ultimate and highest good was complete self
realization, the development of that rational, social, and beneficent
nature which distinguishes him from the lower animals. Here
their teleological religion came in as a valuable sanction for their
ethics. Epictetus, probably following older authorities, argues
that self-love has purposely been made identical with sociability.
“ The nature of an animal is to do all things for its own sake.
Accordingly God has so ordered the nature of the rational animal
that it cannot obtain any particular good without at the same
time contributing to the common good. Because it is self
seeking it is not therefore unsocial.”! But if our happiness de
pends on external goods, then we shall begin to fight with one
another for their possession ;! friends, father, country, the gods
themselves, everything will, with good reason, be sacrificed to
their attainment. And, regarding this as a self-evident absurdity,
Epictetus concludes that our happiness must consist solely in a
righteous will, which we know to have been the doctrine of
his whole school.
We have now reached the great point on which the Stoic
ethics differed from that of Plato and Aristotle. The two latter,
while upholding virtue as the highest good, allowed external
* Diogenes Laertius, vii. 85.
f Dissert. I. xix. 11.
J Ibid. xxii. 9, ff.
�The Stoics.
47
advantages like pleasure and exemption from pain to enter into
their definition of perfect happiness; nor yet did they demand
the entire suppression of passion, but, on the contrary, assigned
to it a certain part in the formation of character. We must add,
although it was not a point insisted on by the ancient critics,
that they did not bring out the socially beneficent character of
virtue with anything like the distinctness of their successors.
The Stoics, on the other hand, refused to admit that there was
any good but a virtuous will, or that any useful purpose could be
served by irrational feeling. If the passions agree with virtue
they are superfluous, if they are opposed to it they are mis
chievous ; and once we give them the rein they are more likely
to disagree with than to obey it. The severer school had more
reason on their side than is commonly admitted. Either there
is no such thing as duty at all, or duty must be paramount over
every other motive—that is to say, a perfect man will discharge
his obligations at the sacrifice of every personal advantage.
There is no pleasure that he will not renounce, no pain that he
will not endure, rather than leave them unfulfilled. But to
assume this supremacy over his will, duty must be incommen
surable with any other motive; if it is a good at all, it must be
the only good. To identify virtue with happiness seems to
us absurd, because we are accustomed to associate it exclu
sively with those dispositions which are the cause of happiness
in others, or altruism; and happiness itself with pleasure
or the absence of pain, which are states of feeling necessarily,
conceived as egoistic. But neither the Stoics nor any other ancient
moralists recognized such a distinction ; all agreed that public
and private interest must somehow be identical, the only question
being should one be merged in the other, and if so, which ? or
should there be an illogical compromise between the two. The
alternative chosen by Zeno was incomparably nobler than the
system of Epicurus, while it was more consistent than those of
Plato and Aristotle. He regarded right conduct exclusively in
the light of those universal interests with which alone it is
properly concerned ; and if he appealed to the motives supplied
by personal happiness, this was a confusion of phraseology rather
than of thought.
The treatment of the passions by the Stoic school presents
greater difficulties, due partly to their own vacillation, partly to
the very indefinite nature of the feelings in question. It will be
admitted that here also the claims of duty are supreme. To
follow the promptings of fear or of anger, of pity or of love,
without considering the ulterior consequences of our action, is,
of course, wrong. For even if, in any particular instance, no
harm comes of the concession, we cannot be sure that such will
always be the case, and meanwhile the passion is strengthened
�48
The Stoics.
by indulgence. And we have also to consider the bad effect
produced on the character of those who, finding themselves the
object of passion, learn to address themselves to it instead of to
reason. Difficulties arise when we begin to consider how far
education should aim at the systematic discouragement of strong
emotion. Here the Stoics seem to have taken up a position not
very consistent either with their appeals to Nature or with their
teleological assumptions. Nothing strikes one as more unnatural
than the complete absence of human feeling ; and a believer in
design might plausibly maintain that every emotion conduced to
the preservation either of the individual or of the race. We find,
however, that the Stoics, here as elsewhere reversing the Aris
totelian method, would not admit the existence of a psychological
distinction between reason and passion. According to their
analysis, the emotions are so many different forms of judgment.
Joy and sorrow are false opinions respecting good and evil in the
present: desire and fear, false opinions respecting good and evil
in the future. But, granting a righteous will to be the only good,
and its absence the only evil, there can be no room for any of
these feelings in the mind of a truly virtuous man, since his
opinions on the subject of good are correct, and its possession
depends entirely on himself. Everything else arises from an
external necessity, to strive with which would be useless because
it is inevitable, and impious because it is supremely wise.
It will be seen that the Stoics condemned passion not as the
cause of immoral actions but as instrinsically vicious in itself.
Hence their censure extended to the rapturous delight and
passionate grief which seem entirely out of relation to conduct
properly so called. This was equivalent to saying that the will
has complete control over emotion; a doctrine which our philoso
phers did not shrink from maintaining. It might have been
supposed that a position which the most extreme supporters of
free-will would hardly accept, would find still less favour with an
avowedly necessarian school. And to regard the emotions as
either themselves beliefs, or as inevitably caused by beliefs, would
seeni to remove them even farther from the sphere of moral
responsibility. The Stoics, however, having arrived at the per
fectly true doctrine that judgment is a form of volition, seem to
have immediately invested it with the old associations of free
choice which they were at the same time busily engaged in
stripping off from its other forms. They took up the Socratic
paradox that virtue is knowledge; but they would not agree
with Socrates that it could be instilled by force of argument. To
them vice was not so much ignorance as the obstinate refusal to
be convinced.
*
* Zeller, p. 229.
�49
The Stoics.
The Stoic arguments are, indeed, when we come to analyse
them, appeals to authority rather than to the logical understand
ing. We are told again and again that the common objects of
desire and dread cannot really be good or evil, because they
are not altogether under our control. And if we ask why this
necessarily excludes them from the class of things to be pursued
or avoided, the answer is that man, having been created for
perfect happiness, must also have been created with the power
to secure it by his own unaided exertions. But, even granting
the very doubtful thesis that there is any ascertainable purpose
in creation at all, it is hard to see how the Stoics could have
answered any one who chose to maintain that man is created for
enjoyment; since, judging by experience, he has secured a larger
share of it than of virtue, and is just as capable of gaining it by a
mere exercise of volition. For the professors of the Porch fully
admitted that their ideal sage had never been realized, which,
with their opinions about their indivisibility of virtue, was equiva
lent to saying that there never had been such a thing as a good
man at all. Or, putting the same paradox into other words,
since the two classes of wise and foolish divide humanity between
them, and since the former class has only an ideal existence, they
were obliged to admit that mankind are not merely most of
them fools, but all fools. And this, as Plutarch has pointed out
in his very clever attack on Stoicism, is equivalent to saying
that the scheme of creation is a complete failure.
*
The inconsistencies of a great philosophical system are best
explained by examining its historical antecedents. We have
already attempted to disentangle the roots from which Stoicism
was nourished, but one of them has not yet been taken into
account. This was the still continued influence of Parmenides,
derived, if not from his original teaching, then from some
one or more of the altered shapes through which it had passed.
It has been shown how Zeno used the Heracleitean method
to break down all the demarcations laboriously built up by
Plato and Aristotle. Spirit was identified with matter; ideas
with aerial currents ; God with the world; rational with sensible
evidence; volition with judgment; and emotion with thought.
But the idea of a fundamental antithesis, expelled from every
other department of inquiry, took hold with all the more energy
on what, to Stoicism, was the most vital of all distinctions—that
between right and wrong. Once grasp this transformation of a
metaphysical into a moral principle, and every paradox of the
system will be seen to follow from it with logical necessity.
What the supreme Idea had been to Plato and self-thinking
* Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis, cap. xxxiii. p. 1076 B.
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXI.]—New Series, Vol. LX1. No. I.
D
�50
The Stoics.
thought to Aristotle, that virtue became to the new school
*
simple, unchangeable, and self-sufficient. It must not only be
independent of pleasure and pain, but absolutely incommensurable
■with them; therefore there can be no happiness but what it
gives. As an indivisible unity, it must be possessed entirely or
not at all; and, being eternal, once possessed it can never be
lost. Further, since the same action may be either right or
wrong, according to the motive of its performance, virtue is
nothing external, but a subjective disposition, a state of the will
and the affections; or, if these are to be considered as judgments,
a state of the reason. Finally, since the universe is organized
reason, virtue must be natural, and especially consonant to the
nature of man as a rational animal; while, at the same time, its
existence in absolute purity being inconsistent with experience,
it must remain an unattainable ideal.
It has been shown in former studies how Greek philosophy,
after straining an antithesis to the utmost, was driven by the
very law of its being to close or bridge over the chasm by a series
of accommodations and transitions. To this rule Stoicism was
no exception; and perhaps its extraordinary vitality may have
been partly due to the necessity imposed on its professors of
continually reviewing their positions, with a view to softening
down its most repellent features. We proceed to sketch in
rapid outline the chief artifices employed for that purpose.
The doctrine, in its very earliest form, had left a large neutral
ground between good and evil, comprehending almost all the
common objects of desire and avoidance. These the Stoics
now proceeded to divide according to a similar principle of
arrangement. Whatever, without being morally good in the
strictest sense, was either conducive to morality, or conformable
to human nature, or both, they called preferable. Under this
head came personal advantages, such as mental accomplishments,
beauty, health, strength, and life itself; together with external
advantages, such as wealth, honour, and high connections. The
opposite to preferable things they called objectionable; and
what lay between the two, such as the particular coin selected to
make a payment with, absolutely indifferent.
*
The thorough-going condemnation of passion was explained
away to a certain extent by allowing the sage himself to feel a
slight touch of the feelings which fail to shake his determination,
like a scar remaining after the wound is healed; and by
admitting the desirability of sundry emotions, which, though
carefully distinguished from the passions, seem to have differed
from them in degree rather than in kind.t
In like manner, the peremptory alternative between consum
* Zeller, pp. 260-1.
+ Ibid. pp. 267-8.
�51
The Stoics.
mate wisdom and utter folly was softened down by admitting
the possibility of a gradual progress from one to the other, itself
subdivided into a number of more or less advanced grades,
recalling Aristotle's idea of motion as a link between Privation
and Form.
*
It was not, however, in any of these concessions that the Stoics
found from first to last their,most efficient solution for the diffi
culties of practical experience, but in the countenance they ex
tended to an act which, more than any other, might have seemed
fatally inconsistent both in spirit and in letter with their whole
system, whether we, choose to call it a defiance of divine law, a
reversal of natural instinct, a selfish abandonment of duty, or a
cowardly shrinking from pain. We allude, of course, to their
habitual recommendation of suicide. “ If you are not satisfied with
life," they said, “ you have only got to rise and depart; the door is
always open." Various circumstances were specified in which the
sage would exercise the privilege of “ taking himself off/’ as they
euphemistically expressed it. Severe pain, mutilation, incurable
disease, advanced old age, the hopelessness of escaping from ty
ranny, and in general any hindrance to leading a “natural” life
were held to be a sufficient justification for such a step. The first
founders of the school set an example afterwards frequently fol
lowed. Zeno is said to have hanged himself for no better reason
than that he fell and broke his finger through the weakness of old
age; and Cleanthes, having been ordered to abstain temporarily
from food,' resolved, as he expressed it, not to turn back after
going half way to death. This side of the Stoic doctrine found
particular favour in Rome, and the voluntary death of Cato was
always spoken of as his chief title to fame. Many noble spirits
were sustained in their defiance of the imperial despotism by
the thought that there was one last liberty of which not even
Caesar could deprive them. Objections were silenced by the
argument that, life not being an absolute good, its loss might
fairly be preferred to some relatively greater inconvenience.
But why the sage should renounce an existence where perfect
happiness depends entirely on his own will neither was, nor could
be, explained.
If now, abandoning all technicalities, we endeavour to estimate
the significance and value of the most general ideas contributed
by Stoicism to ethical speculation, we shall find that they may be
most conveniently considered under the following heads. First
of all, the Stoics made morality completely inward. They
declared that the intention was equivalent to the deed, and that
the wish was equivalent to the intention—a view which has been
* Zeller, p. 270.
D 2
�52
The Stoics.
made familiar to all by the teaching of the Gospel, but whose
origin in Greek philosophy has been strangely ignored even by
rationalistic writers.
*
From the inaccessibility of motives and
feelings to direct external observation, it follows that each man
must be, in the last resort, his own judge. Hence the notion of
conscience is equally a Stoic creation. That we have a mystical
intuition informing us, prior to experience, of the difference
between right and wrong, was, indeed, a theory quite alien to
their empirical derivation of knowledge. But that the educated
wrongdoer carries in his bosom a perpetual witness and avenger
of his guilt, they most distinctly asserted.f The difference
between ancient and modern tragedy is alone sufficient to
prove the novelty and power of this idea; for that the Eumenides do not represent even the germ of a conscience, it would
now be waste of words to show. On the other hand, the falli
bility of conscience and the extent to which it may be sophisti
cated were topics not embraced within the limits of Stoicism,
and perhaps never adequately illustrated by any writer, even in
modern times, except the great English novelist whose loss we
still deplore.
The second Stoic idea to which we would invite attention is
that, in the economy of life, every one has a certain function to
fulfil, a certain part to play, which is marked out for him by
circumstances beyond his control, but in the adequate perform
ance of which his duty and dignity are peculiarly involved. It
is true that this idea finds no assignable place in the teaching of
the earliest Stoics, or rather in the few fragments of their
teaching which alone have been preserved; but it is already
touched upon by Cicero in a work avowedly adapted from
Pansetius, who flourished more than a century B C.; it frequently
recurs in the lectures of Epictetus; and is enunciated with
energetic concision in the solitary meditations of Marcus
Aurelius.I The belief spoken of is, indeed, closely connected
with the Stoic teleology, and only applies to the sphere of free
intelligence a principle like that supposed to regulate the
activity of inanimate or irrational beings. If every mineral,
every plant, and every animal has its special use and office, so
also must we, according to the capacity of our individual and
* “ Omnia scelera, et.iam ante effectum operis, quantum culpae satis est, perfecta sunt.”—Seneca, De Const. Sap. vii. 4.
t “ Prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus est ... . sacer intra nos spiritus
sedet bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos.”—Seneca, Epp.
xli. 1.
f Cicero, De Off. I. 31; Epictetus, Man. 17, ib. 30; Diss. I. ii. 33, xvi.
20, xxix. 39, II. v. 10, ib. 21, x. 4, xiv. 8, xxiii. 38, xxv. 22; Antoninus,
Comm. VI. 39, 43, IX. 29; cf. Seneca,
Ixxxv. 54.
�The Stoics.
53
determinate existence. By accomplishing the work thus im
posed on us, we fulfil the purpose of our vocation, we have done
all that the highest morality demands, and may with a clear
conscience leave the rest to fate. To put the same idea into
somewhat different terms : we are born into certain relationships,
domestic, social, and political, by which the lines of our daily
duties are prescribed with little latitude for personal choice.
The implications of such an ethical standard are, on the whole,
conservative ; it is assumed that social institutions are, taking
them altogether, nearly the best possible at any moment; and
that our truest' wisdom is to make the most of them, instead of
sighing for some other sphere where our grand aspirations or
volcanic passions might find a readier outlet for their feverish
activity. And if the teaching of the first Stoics did not take
the direction here indicated, it was because they, with the com
munistic theories inherited from their Cynic predecessors, began
by condemning all existing social distinctions as irrational. They
wished to abolish local religion, property, the family, and the
State, as a substitute for which the whole human race was to
be united under a single government, without private possessions
or slaves, and with a complete community of women and
children. It must, however, have gradually dawned on them
that such a radical subversion of the present system was hardly
compatible with their belief in the providential origin of all
things ; and that, besides this, the virtues which they made it so
much their object to recommend would be, for the most part,
superfluous in a communistic society. At the same time, the old
motion of Sophrosyne as a virtue which consisted in minding
one’s own business, or, stated more generally, in discerning and
doing whatever work one is best fitted for, would continue to
influence ethical teaching, with the effect of giving more and
more individuality to the definition of duty. And the Stoic
idea of a perfect sage, including as it did the possession of every
accomplishment and an exclusive fitness for discharging every
honourable function, would seem much less chimerical if inter
preted to mean that a noble character, while everywhere in
trinsically the same, might be realized under as many divergen
forms as there are opportunities for continuous usefulness in
*
life.
We can understand, then, why the philosophy which, when
first promulgated, had tended to withdraw its adherents from
participation in public life, should, when transplanted to Roman
* It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law lias
attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—
sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda
and the Spanish Gypsy.
�51
The Stoics.
soil, have become associated with an energetic interest in politics ;
why it was so eagerly embraced by those noble statesmen who
fought to the death in defence of their ancient liberties ; how it
could become the cement of a republican opposition under the
worst Caesars; how it could be the pride and support of Rome's
Prime Minister during that quinquennium JTeronis which was
the one bright episode in more than half a century of shame
and terror ; how, finally, it could mount the throne with Marcus
Aurelius, and prove, through his example, that the world’s work
might be most faithfully performed by one in whose meditations
mere worldly interests occupied the smallest space. Nor can we
agree with Zeller in thinking that it was the nationality, and not
the philosophy, of these disciples which made them such efficient
*
statesmen.
On the contrary, it seems to us that the “ Roman
ism” of these men was inseparable from their philosophy, and that
they were all the more Roman because they were Stoics as well.
The third great idea of Stoicism was its doctrine of humanity.
Men are all children of one Father, and citizens of one State;
the highest moral law is, Follow Nature, and (Nature has made
them to be social and to love one another ; the private interest
of each is, or should be, identified with the universal interest;
we should live for others that we may live for ourselves; even to
our enemies we should show love and not anger; the unnatural
ness of passion is shown by nothing more clearly than by its anti
social and destructive tendencies. Here, also, the three great Stoics
of the Roman empire—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—
rather than the founders of the school, must be our authorities,f
whether it be because their lessons correspond to a more deve
loped state of thought, or simply because they have been more
perfectly preserved. The former explanation is perhaps the
more generally accepted. There seems, however, good reason for
believing that the idea of universal love—the highest of all
philosophical ideas next to that of the universe itself—dates
further back than is commonly supposed. It can hardly be due
* Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on
Stoicism.
t Seneca, De Trd, I. v. 2 ff., II. xxxi. 7, De Clem. I. iii. 2., De Benej.
IV. xxvi. 1, Bpp. xcv. 51 ff. ; Epictetus, Diss. IV. v. 10; Antoninus VII.
13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It
is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beiDgs by the Stoic
philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealized
ideal of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are
described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.
“Erras,” he exclaims, “si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis : hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus
incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas injicit: aut fame
aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: liomini perdere hominem iibet.—”Bpp. ciii. 2.
�The Stoics.
55
to Seneca, who had evidently far more capacity for popularizing
and applying the thoughts of others than for original speculation,
and who on this subject expresses himself with a rhetorical
fluency not usually characterizing the exposition of new dis
coveries. The same remark applies to his illustrious successors,
who, while agreeing with him in tone, do not seem to have drawn
on his writings for their philosophy. It is also clear that the
idea in question springs from two essentially Stoic conceptions :
the objective conception of a unified world, a Cosmos to which
all men belong; and the subjective conception of a rational
nature common to them all. These, again, are rooted in early
Greek thought, and were already emerging into distinctness at
the time of Socrates. Accordingly we find that Plato, having to
compose a characteristic speech for the Sophist Hippias, makes
him say that like-minded men are by nature kinsmen and
friends to one another.
*
Nature, however, soon came to be
viewed under a different aspect, and it was maintained, just as
by some living philosophers, that her true law is the universal
oppression of the weak by the strong. Then the idea of mind
came in as a salutary corrective. It had supplied a basis for the
ethics of Protagoras, and still more for the ethics of Socrates;
it was now combined with its old rival by the Stoics, and from
their union arose the conception of human nature as something
allied with and illustrated by all other forms of animal life, yet
capable, if fully developed, of rising infinitely above them.
Nevertheless, the individual and the universal element were never
quite reconciled in the Stoic ethics. The altruistic quality of
justice was clearly perceived ; but no attempt was made to show
that all virtue is essentially social, and has come to be recognized
as obligatory on the individual mainly because it conduces to the
safety of the whole community. The learner was told to con
quer his passions for his own sake rather than for the sake of
others; and indulgence in violent anger, though more energetic
ally denounced, was, in theory, placed on a par with immoderate
delight or uncontrollable distress. So, also, vices of impurity
were classed' with comparatively harmless forms of sensuality,
and considered in reference, not to the social degradation of their
victims, but to the spiritual defilement of their perpetrators.
Yet, while the Stoics were far from anticipating the methods
■of modern Utilitarianism, they were, in a certain sense, strict
Utilitarians—that is to say, they measured the goodness or bad
ness of actions by their consequences; in other words, by their
bearing on the supposed interest of the individual or of the com
* Plato, Protagoras, 337 I).
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The Stoics.
munity. They did not, it is true, identify interest with pleasure
or the absence of pain ; but although, in our time, Hedonism and
Utilitarianism are, for convenience, treated as interchangeable
terms, they need not necessarily be so. If any one choose to re
gard bodily strength, health, wealth, beauty, intellect, knowledge,
or even simple existence, as the highest good and the end con
duciveness to which determines the morality of actions, he is a
Utilitarian; and, even if it could be shown that a maximum of
happiness would be ensured by the attainment of his end, he
does not on that account become a Hedonist. Now it is certain
that the early Stoics at least regarded the preservation of the
human race as an end which rightfully took precedence of every
other consideration ; and, like Charles Austin, they liked to push
their principles to paradoxical or offensive extremes, apparently
for no other purpose than that of affronting the common feelings
of mankind, without remembering that such feelings were likely
*
to represent embodied experiences of utility. Thus—apart from
their communistic theories—they were fond of specifying the
circumstances in which incest would become legitimate; and
they are said not only to have sanctioned cannibalism in cases of
extreme necessity, but even to have recommended its introduction
as a substitute for burial or cremation; although this, we may
hope, was rather a grim illustration of what they meant by moral
indifference than a serious practical suggestion.f Besides the
encouragement which it gave to kind offices between friends and
neighbours, the Stoic doctrine of humanity and mutual love was
honourably exemplified in Seneca’s emphatic condemnation of
the gladiatorial games and of the horrible abuses connected with
domestic slavery in Rome.I But we miss a clear perception that
such abuses' are always and everywhere the consequences of
slavery ; and the outspoken abolitionism of the naturalists
alluded to by Aristotle does not seem to have been imitated by
their successors in later ages.§ The most one can say is that
the fiction of original liberty was imported into Roman juris-*
§
* “ He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most
startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them
which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.”—
Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.
f Zeller, p. 281.
J “ Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur .... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.”—Seneca, Epp. xcv. 33. “ Servi sunt ?
Immo homines. Servi sunt ? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt ? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt ? Immo conservi.”—Ibid, xlvii. 1. Compare the
treatise Ee Ira, passim.
§ Seneca once lets fall the words, “fortuna re quo jure genitos alium alii
donavit.”—Consol, ad Marciam,.^. 2; but this is the only expression of the
kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.
�The Stoics.
57
prudence through the agency of Stoic lawyers, and helped to
familiarize men’s minds with the idea of universal emancipation
before political and economical conditions permitted it to be
made a reality.
It is probable that the philanthropic tendencies of the Stoics
were, to a great extent, neutralized by the extreme individualism
which formed the reverse side of their philosophical character;
and also by what may be called the subjective idealism of their
ethics. According to their principles no one can really do good
to any one else, since what does not depend on my will is not a
good to me. The altruistic virtues are valuable, not as sources
of beneficent action, but as manifestations of benevolent senti
ment. Thus, to set on foot comprehensive schemes for the relief
of human suffering seemed no part of the Stoic’s business.
And the abolition of slavery, even had it been practicable,
would have seemed rather superfluous to one who held that true
freedom is a mental condition within the reach of all who
desire it, while the richest and most powerful may be, and
*
for the most part actually are, without it. Moreover, at the
time when philosophy gained its greatest ascendency, the one
paramount object of practical statesmen must have been to save
civilization from the barbarians, a work to which Marcus Aure
lius devoted his life. Hence we learn without surprise that
the legislative efforts of the imperial Stoic were directed to the
strengthening, rather than to the renovation, of ancient insti
tutions. Certain enactments were, indeed, framed for the pro
tection of those who took part in the public games. It was
provided, with a humanity from which even our own age might
learn something, that performers on the high rope should be en
sured against the consequences of an accidental fall by having
the ground beneath them covered with feather beds; and the
gladiators were only allowed to fight with blunted weapons. It
must, however, be noted that in speaking of the combats with
wild beasts which were still allowed to continue under his reign,
Marcus Aurelius dwells only on the monotonous character which
made them exceedingly wearisome to a cultivated mind; just
as a philosophic sportsman may sometimes be heard to observe
that shooting one grouse is very like shooting another; while
elsewhere he refers with simple contempt to the poor wretches,
who, when already half-devoured by the wild beasts, begged to
be spared for another day’s amusement.
*
Whether he knew the
whole extent of the judicial atrocities practised on his Christian
subjects may well be doubted ; but it may be equally doubted
* Seneca, JEpp. lxxx.
j-Antoninus, Comm. vi. 46; x. 8.
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The Stoics.
whether, had he known it, he would have interfered to save
them. Pain and death were no evils ; but it was an evil that the
law should be defied.
Those manifestations of sympathy which are often so much
more precious than material assistance were also repugnant to
Stoic principles. On this subject, Epictetus expresses himself
with singular harshness. ,£ Do not,” he says, “ let yourself be put
out by the sufferings of your friends. If they are unhappy, it is
their own fault. God made them for happiness ; not for misery.
They are grieved at parting from you, are they? Why, then,
did they set their affections on things outside themselves ? If
they suffer for their folly it serves them right.”*
On the other hand, if Stoicism did not make men pitiful, it
made them infinitely forgiving. Various causes conspired to
bring about this result. If all are sinners, and if all sins are
equal, no one has a right, under pretence of superior virtue, to
cast a stone at his fellows. Such is the point of view insisted on
with especial emphasis by Seneca, who, more perhaps than
other philosophers, had reason to be conscious how far his.
practice fell short of his professions.! But, speaking generally,
pride was the very last fault with which the Stoics could be
charged. Both in ancient and modern times satirists have been
prone to assume that every disciple of the Porch, in describing his
ideal of a wise man, was actually describing himself. No mis
conception could be.more complete. It is like supposing that,
because Christ commanded his followers to be perfect even as
their heavenly Father is perfect, every Christian for that reason
thinks himself equal to God. The wise man of the Stoics had,
by their own acknowledgment, never been realized at all; he
had only been approached by three characters, Socrates, Antis
thenes, and Diogenes. “ May the sage fall in love ?” asked
a young man of Panaetius. “ What the sage may do,” replied
the master, “ is a question to be considered at some future time.
Meanwhile, you and I, who are very far from being sages, had
better be careful how we let ourselves become the slaves of
a degrading passion.”!
In the next place, if it is not in the power of others to injure
us, we have no right to resent anything that they can do to us.
So argues Epictetus, who began to learn philosophy when still a
slave, and was carefully prepared by his instructor, Musonius,
* Epictetus, Diss. III. xxiv.
f Seneca, De Ira, I. xiv. 2; De Clement. I. vi. 2.
J Seneca, Jipp. cxvi. 4. It must be borne in mind that Pansetius was
speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another
man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.
�The Stoics.
59
to bear without repining whatever outrages his master might
choose to inflict on him. Finally, to those who urged that they
might justly blame the evil intentions of their assailants, Marcus
Aurelius could reply that even this was too presumptuous, that
all men did what they thought right, and that the motives of
none could be adequately judged except by himself. And all
the Stoics found a common ground for patience in their optimistic
fatalism, in the doctrine that whatever happens is both necessarily
determined, and determined by absolute goodness combined with
infallible wisdom.
Doctrines like these, if consistently carried out, would have
utterly destroyed so much of morality as depends on the social
sanction ; while, by inculcating the absolute indifference of ex
ternal actions, they might ultimately have paralysed the indi
vidual conscience itself. But the Stoics were not consistent.
Unlike some modern moralists, who are ready to forgive every
injury so long as they are not themselves the victims, our
philosophers were unsparing in their denunciations of wrong
doing ; and it is very largely to their indignant protests that we
are indebted for our knowledge of the corruption prevalent in
Roman society under the Empire. It may even be contended
that, in this respect, our judgment has been unfairly biassed.
The picture drawn by the Stoics, or by writers trained under
their influence, seems to have been too heavily charged with
shadow ; and but for the archaeological evidence we should not
have known how much genuine human affection lay concealed
in those lower social strata where Christianity found a readier
acceptance because it only gave a supernatural sanction to habits
and sentiments already made familiar by the spontaneous ten
dencies of an unwarlike regime.
Before parting with Stoicism we have to say a few words on
the metaphysical foundation of the whole system—the theory
of Nature considered as a moral guide and support. It has
been shown that the ultimate object of this, as of many other
ethical theories, both ancient and modern, was to reconcile the
instincts of individual self-preservation with virtue, which is the
instinct of self-preservation in an entire community. The Stoics
identified both impulses by declaring that virtue is the sole good
of the individual no less than the supreme interest of the whole;
thus involving themselves in an insoluble contradiction. For,
from their nominalistic point of view, the good of the whole can
be nothing but an aggregate of particular goods, or else a means
for their attainment; and in either case the happiness of the
individual has to be accounted for apart from his duty. And
an analysis of the special virtues and vices would equally have
forced them back on the assumption, which they persistently
�60
The Stoics.
repudiated, that individual existence and pleasure are intrin
sically good, and their opposites intrinsically evil. To prove
their fundamental paradox—the non-existence of individual as
distinguished from social interest—the Stoics employed the
analogy of an organized body where the good of the parts
unquestionably subserves the good of the whole; and the
object of their teleology was to show that the universe and,
by implication, the human race, were properly to be viewed
in that light. The acknowledged adaptation of life to its
environment furnished some plausible arguments in support
of their thesis; and the deficiencies were made good by a
revival of the Heracleitean theory in which the unity of nature
was conceived partly as a necessary interdependence of opposing
forces, partly as a perpetual transformation of every substance
into every other. Universal history also tended to confirm the
same principle in ■ its application to the human race. The
Macedonian, and still more the Roman empire brought the
idea of a world-wide community living under the same laws
ever nearer to its realization ; the decay of the old religion
and the old civic patriotism set free a vast fund of energy, some
of which was absorbed by philosophy; while a rank growth of
immorality offered ever new opportunities for an indignant
protest against senseless luxury and inhuman vice. This last
circumstance, however, was not allowed to prejudice the optimism
of the system; for the fertile physics of Heracleitus suggested
a method by which moral evil could be interpreted as a necessary
concomitant of good, a material for the perpetual exercise and
illustration of virtuous deeds.
Yet, if the conception of unity was gaining ground, the con
ceptions of purpose and vitality must have been growing weaker
as the triumph of brute force prolonged itself without limit or
hope of redress. Hence Stoicism in its later forms shows a
tendency to dissociate the dynamism of Heracleitus from the
teleology of Socrates, and to lean on the former rather than on the
latter for support. One symptom of this changed attitude is a
blind worship of power for its own sake. We find.the renuncia
tion of pleasure and the defiance of pain appreciated more
from an eesthetic than from an ethical point of view; they are
exalted almost in the spirit of a Red Indian, not as means to
higher ends, but as manifestations of unconquerable strength;
and sometimes the highest sanction of duty takes the form of a
morbid craving for applause, as if the universe was a Coliseum
and life a gladiatorial game.
The noble spirit of Marcus Aurelius was, indeed, proof against
such temptations; and he had far more to dread than to hope
from the unlightened voice of public opinion; but to him also,
�The Stoics.
61
“ standing between two eternities/’ Nature presented herself
chiefly under the aspect of an overwhelming and absorbing force
Pleasure is not so much dangerous as worthless, weak, and
evanescent. Selfishness, pride, anger, and discontent will soon
be swept into abysmal gulfs of oblivion by the roaring cataract
of change. Universal history is one long monotonous procession
of phantasms passing over the scene into death and utter
night. In one short life we may see all that ever was, or is, or is
to be; the same pageant has already been and shall be repeated
an infinite number of times. Nothing endures but the process
of unending renovation : we must die that the world may be ever
young. Death itself only reunites us with the absolute All whence
we come, in which we move, and whither we return. But the
imperial sage makes no attempt to explain why we should ever
have separated ourselves from it in thought; or why one life
should be better worth living than another in the universal
vanity of things.
The physics of Stoicism were, in truth, the scaffolding, rather
than the foundation, of its ethical superstructure. The real
foundation was the necessity of social existence formulated
under the influence of a logical exclusiveness first introduced by
Parmenides, and inherited from his teaching by every system of
philosophy in turn. Yet there is no doubt that Stoic morality
was considerably strengthened and steadied by the support it
found in conceptions derived from a different order of specula
tions ; so much so that at last it grew to conscious independence
of that support.
Marcus Aurelius, a constant student of Lucretius, seems to
have had occasional misgivings with respect to the certainty of
his own creed ; but they never extended to his practical beliefs.
He was determined that, whatever might be the origin of this
world, his relation to it should be still the same. “Though things
be purposeless, act not thou without a purpose.” “ If the universe
is an ungoverned chaos, be content that in that wild torrent thou
hast a governing reason within thyself.”*
There seems, then, good reason for believing that the law of
* Comm. IX. 28, xii. 14. A modern disciple of Aurelius has expressed
himself to the same purpose in slightly different language :—
“ Long fed on boundless hopes, 0 race of man,
How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!
‘ Christ,’ some one says, ‘ was human as we are.
No judge eyes us from heaven our sin to scan;
We live no more, when we have done our span.’
‘ Well, then, for Christ,’ thou answerest, ‘who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear ?
Live we, like brut es, our life without a plan I ’
�62
The Stoics.
duty, after being divorced from mythology, and seriously
compromised by its association, even among the Stoics them
selves, with our egoistic instincts, gained an entirely new
authority when placed, at least in appearance, under the sanction
of a power whose commands did not even admit of being dis
obeyed. And the question spontaneously presents itself whether
we, after getting rid of the old errors and confusions, may profit
ably employ the same method in defence of the same convictions,
whether the ancient alliance between fact and right can be
reorganized on a basis of scientific proof.
A great reformer of the last generation, finding that the idea
of Nature was constantly put forward to thwart his most cherished
schemes, prepared a mine for its destruction which was only ex
ploded after his death. Seldom has so powerful a charge of
logical dynamite been collected within so small a space as in
Mill’s famous Essay on Nature. But the immediate effect was
less than might have been anticipated, because the attack was
supposed to be directed against religion, whereas it was only
aimed at an abstract metaphysical dogma, not necessarily con
nected with any theological beliefs, and held by many who have
discarded all such beliefs. A stronger impression was perhaps
produced by the nearly simultaneous -declaration of Sir W. Gull
—in reference to the supposed vis meclicatrix natures—that, in
cases of disease, “what Nature wants is to put the man in his
coffin/’’ The new school of political economists have also done
much to show that legislative interference with the “natural
laws” of wealth need by no means be so generally mischievous
as was once supposed. And the doctrine of Evolution, besides
breaking down the old distinctions between Nature and Man,
has represented the former as essentially variable, and therefore,
to that extent, incapable of affording a fixed standard for moral
action. It is, however, from this school that a new attempt to
rehabilitate the old physical ethics has lately proceeded. The
object of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics is, among other
points, to prove that a true morality represents the ultimate
stage of evolution, and reproduces in social life that permanent
equilibration towards which every form of evolution constantly
tends. And Mr. Spencer also shows how evolution is bringing
about a state of things in which the self-regarding shall be finally
So answerest tliou ; but why not rather say :
‘ Hath man no second life ?—Pitch this one high I
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see ?
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey I
Was Christ a man like us ?—Ah ! let us try
If we then, too, can he such men as lie!’ ”
The Better Part, by Mr. Matthew Arnold. The italics are in the original.
�The Stoics.
63
harmonized with the social impulses. Now, it will be readilyadmitted that morality is a product of evolution in this sense
that it is a gradual formation, that it is the product of many con
verging conditions, and that it progresses according to a certain
method. But that the same method is observed through all
orders of evolution seems less evident. For instance, in the
formation, first of the solar system, and then of the earth's crust,
there is a continual loss of force, while in the development of
organic life there is as continual a gain ; and on arriving at sub
jective phenomena we are met by facts which, in the present
state of our knowledge, cannot advantageously be expressed in
teims of force and matter at all. Even if we do not agree with
George Sand in thinking that self-sacrifice is the only virtue, we
must admit that the possibility, at least, of its being some
times demanded is inseparable from the idea of duty;
and without consciousness self-sacrifice cannot be conceived ;
which is equivalent to saying that it involves other than me
chanical notions. Thus we are confronted by the standinodifficulty of all evolutionary theories, and on a point where
that difficulty is peculiarly sensible. Nor is this an objection
to be got rid of by the argument that it applies to all philo
sophical systems alike. To an idealist, the dependence of
morality on consciousness is a practical confirmation of his
professed principles. Holding that the universal forms of ex
perience are the conditions under which an object is apprehended,
rather than modifications imposed by an unknowable object
on an unknowable subject, and that these forms are common to
all intelligent beings, he holds also that the perception of
duty is the widening of our individual selves into that uni
versal self which is the subjective side of all experience.
Again, whatever harmony evolution may introduce into our
conceptions, whatever hopes it may encourage with regard to the
future of our race, one does not see precisely what sanction it
gives to morality at present—that is to say, how it makes self
sacrifice easier than before. Because certain forces have been
unconsciously working towards a certain end through ages past,
why should I consciously work towards the same end ? If the
perfection of humanity is predetermined, my conduct cannot
prevent its consummation; if it in any way depends on me, the
question returns, why should my particular interests be sacrificed
to it ? The man who does not already love his contemporaries
whom he has seen is unlikely to love them the more for the sake
of a remote posterity whom he will never see at all. Finallv, it
must be remembered that evolution is only half the cosmic pro
cess ; it is accompanied at every stage by partial dissolution, to
which in the long run it must entirely give way; and if, as Mr.
�64
The Stoics.
Spencer observes, evolution is the more interesting of the
*
two, this preference is itself due to the lifeward tendency of our
thoughts ; in other words, to those moral sentiments which it is
sought to base on what, abstractedly considered, has all along
been a creation of their own.
The idea of Nature, or of the universe, or of human history,
as a whole—but for its evil associations with fanaticism and
superstition, we should gladly say the belief in God—-is one the
ethical value of which can be more easily felt than analysed.
We do not agree with the most brilliant of the English Positi
vists in restricting its influence to the aesthetic emotions. The
elevating influence of these should be duly recognized, but the
place due to more severely intellectual pursuits in moral training
is greater far. Whatever studies tend to withdraw us from the
petty circle of our personal interests and pleasures are indirectly
favourable to the preponderance of social over selfish impulses ;
and the service thus rendered is amply repaid, since these very
studies necessitate for their continuance a large expenditure of
moral energy. It might even be contended that the influence
of speculation on practice is determined by the previous influence
of practice on speculation. Physical laws act as an armature to
the law of duty, extending and perpetuating its grasp on the
minds of men ; but it was through the magnetism of duty that
their confused currents were first drawn into parallelism’ and
harmony with its attraction. Yet those who base morality on
religion, or give faith precedence over works, have discerned
with a sure, though dim, instinct the dependence of noble and
far-sighted action on some paramount intellectual initiative and
control; in other words, the highest ethical ideals are conditioned
by the highest philosophical generalizations. And what was
once a creative, still continues to work as an educating force.
Our aspirations towards agreement with ourselves and with
humanity as a whole are strengthened by the contemplation of
that supreme unity, which, even if it be but the glorified
reflection of our individual or generic identity, still remains the
idea in and through which those lesser unities were first com
pletely realized—the idea which has originated all man’s most
fruitful faiths, and will at last absorb them all. Meanwhile
our highest devotion can hardly find more fitting utterance
than in the prayer which once rose to a Stoic’s lips :—
“ But Jove all-bounteous ! who in clouds
enwrapt the lightning wieldest;
May’st Thou from baneful Ignorance
the race of men deliver !
* First Principles, § 177.
I
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Stoics
Creator
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Benn, Alfred William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 33-64 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review, 61 (January 1882). A review of Die Philosophie der Griechen by Dr. Edwaed Zeller. Leipzig, 1880.
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[s.n.]
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CT57
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Book reviews
Stoics
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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 Stoics), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Stoics
-
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b5bcbadd5cddfdc86b0b0a10a161e4cb
PDF Text
Text
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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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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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.
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Pamphlet
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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
Type
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Text
Language
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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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d24eeba91b63de303e0a50db960f485d
PDF Text
Text
Ths IB^iSSEQgER.
WBB
NOTICES OF BOOKS.
.
Life of John Co/criaje Patteson, Missionary
Bishop of the Melanesian Islands. By Charlotte
Mary Yonge. In two volumes. (Macmillan.)—
•Missionary enterprise forms one of the brightest
■and most glorious chapters in the history of the
Christian Church—the one common ground on
which all the sects may stand. It has had its
triumphs and its misfortunes, its victories and its
defeats, its disciples, apostles, and, alas! its mar
tyrs. In the roll-call of the latter, Coleridge
Patteson, first bishop of the Melanesian Islands,
takes a foremost place. Never were there more
enthusiastic, single-minded, devoted servants of
the great cause than Williams, Patteson, and
Livingstone. It is well, therefore, that the story
of their lives and labours should be told—not
only as a record of duty faithfully performed, but
as example and encouragement to others. In
these two volumes the authoress of the “Heir of
Bedclyffe ” shows herself a most capable biogra
pher. There was comparatively little of incident
tn the life of Bishop Patteson ; nothing, indeed,
df an extraordinary character, except his deplorable
assassination at the hands of the fanatical Maories ;
and yet how full of interest is the whole narrative !
Briefly enough may the story of his life be related.
John Coleridge Patteson was the son of the wellknown “ Mr. Justice Patteson,” by his second
wife, Frances Duke Coleridge, sister of his friend
and fellow-barrister, John Taylor Coleridge,
nephew of the poet. Fie was born in Gower
(•Street, Bedford Square, on the 1st of April, 1827.
’Early showing a taste for reading and languages,
he was sent, in bis eleventh year, to Eton, where
he equally distinguished himself in learning and
cricket. He entered as undergraduate at Balliol
College, Oxford, in 1845 5 passed his college
Cpurse with credit; in due time took his degrees ;
made the usual Continental tour, of which he
kept a diary ; took holy orders, and, in 1853, be
came curate of Alfingham, a hamlet of the parish
of Ottery St. Mary. Up to this time his life had
differed little from the lives of other well-educated
and well-conducted young men ; but, upon making
tire acquaintance of Bishop Selwyn, a growing
desire for missionary work, “which,” he says,
tl has for years been striving within me, and ought
no longer to be resisted,” determined his future
Career. The next year, therefore, he received or
dination as a priest at the hands of Bishop Phillpotts, in Exeter Cathedral; and in March, 1855,
departed for New Zealand, greatly to the grief,
though not without the consent, of his father and
friends. The scene of his labours was the group
pf islands in the South Pacific between New Zea
land and New Guinea, marked on the maps
Loyalty Islands, Solomon’s Islands, and the
New Hebrides, but now known as the Melane
sians—a group of some seventy islets, included
in the Bishopric of New Zealand. Here the defi
nite work of his life began, and here it sadly
ended. He landed at Norfolk Island, about
haif-way between the North Cape of New Zealand
apd the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, on the 16th
of May, 1856. He soon accommodated himself
to his new life. He visited all the islands in the
s extensive group; he set up his church in the midst
1 of the savages—every one of whom, he says,
I might, under proper treatment, be a Man Friday;
he learned their language, taught their children,
and for seventeen years made himself a home
among them. He was universally beloved. But
the time came wh.en these poor savage men grew
i , be iealcus of their need Bisope. Trouble
;-. -.
..........
C C? :'4
I
arose; whence no oT^knew^ and none now can
tell. The Maori war broke out; and Coleridge
Patteson, its first Bishop, became the first martyr
of the Melanesian Church. There was a disturb
ance among the natives. He went ashore at the
little island of Nukapa, and was there assassinated
—the victim of a fatal mistake, arising out of the
suspicions of the islanders as to the designs of
the English, then in force in Melanesia. Such
is the story of the good Bishop’s life; but
the story, even as told by Miss Charlotte Yonge,
constitutes but small part of the charm of the
biography.
That will be found in the extensive^
correspondence of Coleridge Patteson. He was an
indefatigable and entertaining letter-writer. As soon
as he got to Eton he began to write to his father, his
sister, his cousins—of whom his biographer was
one, though some degrees removed, on his mother’s
side—and to all his old school and college friends.
Some of his letters are very amusing. He tells
us, for instance, how at the Eton Montem of
1838, when the Queen visited Salt Hill, he was
pressed by the throng against the wheel of the
royal carriage, and was on the point of being
dragged beneath it, when her Majesty, with ready
presence of mind, held out her hand, which the
boy grasped, and was so enabled to regain his feet
in safety; but so great was his fright, that the car
riage passed on before he could show any sign of
gratitude. Again, he tells his father how gleeful
he was at his step from class to class ; and to his
sister he writes informing her of what success the
“Eton fellows ” had in their cricket match against
the “Harrow boys.” “ We began our match by
going in first. We got 261 runs by tremendous
hitting ; Harrow 32, and followed up and got 55 ;
Eton thus winning by 176 runs—the most decided
beating ever known at cricket! ” And so of his
college days, his first impressions of missionary
life; his visits to the show places of France and
Germany ; his first voyage ; his efforts among the
islanders, almost down to the last day of his life,
which ended so miserably, yet so nobly—for was
he not at the post of duty, so often the post of
danger ?—before he attained his forty-fifth year !
It would be easy to show how excellent a corre
spondent and how thoroughly good a missionary he
was ; easy to exhibit his many-sidedness, his affec
tionate nature, his tender care for others, his dis
regard of self; but, says his biographer—“ What
more shall I tell ? Comments on such a life and
such a death are superfluous : and to repeat the
testimonies of friends, outpourings of grief, and
utterances in sermons, is but to weaken the im
pression of reality ! ” We need only add that the
memoir is adorned with two portraits—one show
ing Coleridge Patteson in the fresh beauty of his
youthful manhood ; the other, the grave, bearded
soldier of the Cross, at almost the close of his
career—in addition to a fac-simile of his hand
writing and a map of the Melanesian islands.
Lancashire Worthies. By Francis Espinasse.
(Manchester: Abel Heywood.)—Lancashire holds
a high, and perhaps the highest, place in the
history of British commercial progress. It was
well, therefore, that Mr. Espinasse, well known
for many years as a Manchester journalist, should
give us biographies of its greatest worthies.
Beginning with the first Stanley, Earl of Derby,
he tells us all he knows—and tells it well—of
Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter and founder of
the Manchester Grammar School; John Bradford,
saint and martyr; Jeremiah Horrocks, the Preston
cotton-spinner; Humphrey Chetham, the founder
�. of the library and Hospital; the Great Duke of
thafeit
valuable anthology of the Scrip
; Bridgewater, who made the canal-that unites
tures of all races—a garland of beautiful passages
Manchester to Liverpool; John Kay, James Har ? from the writings of many authors, principally
greaves, and Richard Arkwright—men who will
Oriental. Believing that such a collelfidn would
be honoured through all time. In addition, we
be useful for moral
re, h JfEs
have notices of John Byrom, the poet-laureate
aimed at bringing together the converging teMlI
of the Jacobites ; John Collier, the author of the
monies of ages and races, and separating “the*
famous “Tim Bobbin;” and Booth, the actor.
more universal and enduring treasures, contained
To Byrom, whose witty pen was never idle, and
in ancient scriptures from the rust of superstition
whom Warburton, the irascible, acknowledged as
and the ore of ritual.” Of course ljehal omitted
“certainly a man of genius,” is attributed the
much that seemed local and temporary, but he
celebrated epigram—
has retained also many noble sentences highly
venerated in the lands of their birth and not
“God bless the King I I mean our Faith’s defender;
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender I
generally accessible to European readers. Under
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
such headings as Law, Worship, Wisdom, Charity,
God bless us all, that’s quite another thing ! ”
Nature, Justice, Friendship, and Love, he has
John Collier yas Byrom’s contemporary, and
made large extracts from the Hebrew, Chinese,
shares with him the honour of Lancashire’s con
Persian, Arabian, Scandinavian, and Christian
tributions to English literature in the eighteenth
poets,—not omitting those wide fields of theolo
century._ “ When,” says Mr. Espinasse, “worthy
gical and moral disquisition, the Hindoo and
Dr. Aikin published, some seventy years ago, his
Buddhist scriptures. It is curious to note the
‘ Description of the Country round Manchester,’
likeness or sympathy between many of the say
the literary biography of the region was represented
ings of the early Indian and Hebrew poets: and
by memoirs of Byrom and Collier exclusively, nor
it would almost seem as if some of the latter had
does he seem to have been guilty of any glaring
borrowed from the former. We find, for instance,
oversight. Both were humorists—Collier, how^
in the “ Wisdom of the Brahmins,” many such
ever, more distinctly than Byrom ; both wrote
passages as these:—“Devoutly look, and naught
prose as well as verse, and they were about the
but wonders shall pass by thee; devoutly read,
first authors of any note—Byrom slightly, Collier
and all books shall edify thee ; devoutly speak,
conspicuously—to employ the broad, easy, and
and men shall listen to thee; devoutly act, and
expressive dialect as a literary vehicle. In the
the strength of God acts through thee.” And in
eyes of their contemporaries, Byrom was far the
the Hindoo “Hitopadesa” such as these:—“Si
most celebrated of the two.” The “whirligig of
lence for the remainder of life is better than false
time brings in his revenges, ” Shakspeare tells us,
speaking. Empty are all quarters of the world
and it now happens that, “for one reader of
to an empty mind. Many who read the Scrip
Byrom’s metrical theosophy, there have been, and
tures are grossly ignorant, but he who acts well is'
there are, thousands of Tim Bobbin’s ‘ Tummus
a truly learned man.” And from the Chinese:—
and. Meary.’” Since then Lancashiremen have
“ Words are the key of the heart. A little im
cultivated verse and prose in the vernacular of the
patience causes great trouble. Riches adorn a
County Palatine till now we reckon them, not by
house, but virtue adorns the person. ” And from
twos or threes, but by dozens, with Edwin Waugh,
the Persian :—“ All nations and languages repeat
still living, at their head. This poet has himself
the name of God. Yet cannot His praise be duly
written a memoir of Collier, and corrected some
expressed by mortal till the dumb man shall be
errors in Baines’s Flistory of Lancashire concerning
eloquent, the stocks and stones find a voice ; and,
this worthy. It would, perhaps, have been as
the silent universe rejoices in language.” Might
well had Mr. Espinasse omitted Booth from his
they not have been written by David or Solomon ?
list, and, instead, have included some of the
Side by side with such extracts from ancient
county’s later versifiers. Booth was certainly of
writers we have quotations from the Old and New
Lancashire parentage; but he can hardly be
Testament, so arranged, by simple omission of
esteemed as one of Lancashire’s worthies. Dean
extraneous sentences, as to present a sequence of
Stanley has reminded us that the surname of this
idea and language very easy to follow and under
actor has acquired a fatal celebrity ; but we think
stand. The extracts, though all of a moral cha- i
it has elsewhere been stated that Wilks Booth, the
racter, are, however, by no means confined to the I
assassin of President Lincoln, is not a descendant
religious scriptures of the ancients. Many a quaint
of the Booth who created the part of Cato in
apothegm and amusing fact find their way into this
Addison s now forgotten tragedy. It would be
Anthology. Here is one from the Persian :—
easy to find fault with many of Mr. Espinasse’s
“ The philosophers of India once possessed a book
statements respecting the Arkwrights,the Stanleys,
so large that it required a thousand camels to bear
and others—for nothing is easier than fault-finding
it. A king desired to have it abridged, and it
but we prefer to take his book as it stands, and
was reduced so that it could be carried by a hun
to pronounce it a painstaking, entertaining, and
dred camels. Others demanded that it should be
well-written production ; only too brief in that it
still more diminished, until at last it was reduced
omits the mention of many worthies—the later
to four maxims. The first bade kings to be just;
dialect pdets, the manufacturers, and the merchant
the second prescribed obedience to the people; '
pnnces especially — whom Lancashiremen are
the third recommended men not to eat except
proud to honour and unwilling to forget.
when they were hungry ; and the fourth advised
Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scrip
women to be modest.” Here is another quoted
tures. Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel
from Sir William Jones’s Persian Fables:—“A ,
Conway. (Triibner.)—Prefacing his works by an
raindrop fell into the sea.
‘ I am lost! ’ it
aphorism from Hesiod,—“ The utterances of many
cried; ‘ what am I in such a sea? ’ Into the shell i
peoples do not whollyperish: nay, they are the voice
of a gaping oyster it fell, and there became a j
of God ”—Mr. Conway proceeds to describe the
beauteous pearl. Humility creates the worth it i
purpose of his book as simply moral. There was
underrates.” With the following from the Scan- I
no necessity, however, to quote the Greek poet
dinavian we must close our extracts
“ There j
by way of either justification or apology; for a
was once a giantess who had a daughter ; and this '
very slight examination of the volume will show
child saw a husbandman ploughing in the field. •
�I he Bookseller, L'et. 3>■fs®’ -— r—'———- —- —
undulation; this is very-necessary to be well
She ran and picked him up with her finger and
apprehended, and, when, properly understood| wi 11
thumb, and put hinr and his plough and his oxen
smooth
way fqr much that follows, in the
into her apron, and carried him to her mother.
‘ Mother,’ said she, ‘ what sort of a beetle is this ; lecture on the “ interference of light,” and ‘‘dif
fraction. ” It was Dr. Young who finally placed
I have found wriggling on the land ? ’ But the
mother said, ‘ Child, go put it on the place where . the qndulatory theory of light on a firm and
enduring foundation, notwithstanding, the severe
thou hast found it. We must be gone out of this
strictures passed on his writings by Lord Broug
land, for these little people will dwell in it.’ ”
ham, in the Edinburgh Review of that day. These
The late Prince Jyonsoft happily versified this
criticisms are worth reading, at this time (now
gMttle fable under the title of \
'
that all which Young wrote has been proved
THE TOY OF THE GIANT'S CHILD,
as showing how much the Doctor was in advance:'
BUBl'tle. giant’s daughter once came forth the castle gate
of his time. In his fourth lecture the Professor ex
before,
plains the cause of the beautiful blue of our
.. And played with all a child’s delight before her father’s
door;
summer skies; an observed fact which it had long'
Then sauntering down the precipice, the girl would
puzzled philosophers to account for; and goes on
Mr2 gladly go,
:
.
to show how artificial skies may be produced, and
MToBge, kierehance. how matters went in the little world
their identity with the natural one proved beyond
below.
. AnSi^l^he gazed, in wonder lost, on all the scenes around,
doubt; that is, as regards the blue colour, namelyj
I She saw a peasant at her feet a-tilling of the ground.
the presence of scattered particles in our atmo
‘ O pretty plaything,’ cried the child, ‘ I'll take thee home
sphere, small by comparison with the ether waves.
with me.'
.
Therfivith her infant hand she spread her kerchief on her
To read these lectures, illustrated by diagrams,
■knee,
instead of listening to the Professor himself, illus
And cradling man and horse and plough so gently on her
trating with all his perfect experimental appliances,
' arm,
She lio re them home quite cautiously, afraid to do them . would, perhaps, be dull by comparison; but ii,SdB
harm.
happens, in this case, that there are very few of
‘See, father! dearest father ! what a plaything I have
the experiments recorded in the book that could
found !
not be performed, sufficiently well for the purposes
‘ I never saw so fair a thing on all our mountain ground !’
But the father looked quite seriously, and shaking slow
of study, by an ingenious student, without any ex
ik’
Ulis head,
pensive apparatus: and although a principle may
* jjyfetlhast thou brought me here, my girl? This is no
be well apprehended by the mind, the exacttoy,’ he said.
Q ‘ Go take it to the vale again, and put it down below ;
agreement of experiment with theory always
The peasant is no plaything, child ! how could’st thou
serves to fix more vividly the truth of the law,
think him so ?
and should always be resorted to where possible.
So ga, without a sigh or sob, and do my will,’ he said ;
The student who reads the text of these lectures, I
* For,know, without the peasant, child, we none of us had
Bi bread.
and makes for himself the experiments, will have
’Tis from the peasant’s hardy stock the race of giants are—
a very good knowledge of the nature and proper
The pedant is no plaything, girl; and God forbid he
ties of light.
were'.’ ”
At Nightfall and Midnight: Musings after
The poem, we think, is longer; but we quote
Dark. By Francis Jacox. (Hodder and Stough
from memory enough of it to show how closely
ton.)—Intelligent, earnest, and indefatigable are
Prince Albert followed the original fable. Many
the terms by which we may characterise the
other equally pleasant and instructive Moralities
authorship of Mr. Jacox. He is evidently an in
will be found in Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthodustrious reader and a judicious annotator of his
logyr which, with its index, list of authorities,
literature of the hour. We gather much from the j
explanatory notes, and chronological memoranda,
work. He does not appear to have a very exten
is as complete and entertaining a volume as one
sive acquaintance with what are called out-of-thewould wish to read.
way books, but every volume he reads he reads
Air Lectures on Light, delivered in America,
thoroughly. Hence, when he undertakes to make
1872-1873, by John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S.
a collection of elegant extracts on any special topic,
(Longman and Co.)—Readers who take up this,
we are satisfied that, as in this instance, the work
Dr. Tyndall’s latest volume, will recognize in it the
will be thoroughly and conscientiously performed,
same forcible style, and apt illustration, which
and the result a really interesting and useful comB
was so conspicuous in the same author’s “ Heat
pilation. It is not every reader who has leisure,
as a Mode of Motion.” Beginning with the most
ability, or taste to select for himself choice passages
elementary ideas concerning the properties of light,
from his favourite authors, much less method
these lectures take the student by easy steps
enough to classify and properly arrange them ; but
through all the phenomena presented by beams of
for most readers such a collection, when intelli
mght’under varying conditions ; some of them
gently made, possesses an indescribable charm. In
very complex, and difficult to make clear to the
uninitiated. It seems strange to us, now, that 1 his present volume Mr. Jacox tells us what the
poets and essayists have said about twilight and
such a mind as Newton’s should have failed to
midnight; how they and their friends have mused
hbfn^cia'te the undnlatory theory of light, and
in the sunset and the gloaming, rejoiced in the
^rayganaintained against it the corpuscular, which,
warm cozy room with the shutters closed and. the
although it was competent to account for nearly
curtains drawn ; Sat absorbed and watched the
,,all the phenomena observed, yet required the
faces in the fire ; found food for contemplatioiSn
invention’of some new principle every time that
the shadows on the wall; consolation or terror
teameJnMiv discovered fact presented itself for
explanation. On the other hand, the undulatory
from the dreams of night. Taking a character
from Dickens, Thackeray, or Bulwer, he shows what
theory, pure and simple,leaves nothing unaccounted
such a man or woman might have thought or said
for, and has, even by Theoretical considerations
only, led to the prediction of certain phenomena
or done under peculiar circumstances, and then
not previojjslyftpjjs^fved ; but which, on experi gives a few judiciously-made extracts to show what
they did think, say, or do. In other chapters he
ment,- were found to yield results exactly agreeing
withthos^B^juirM by the theory. The Professor
tells us of the last words and the last looks of the
dying, the thoughts of the sleepless, the nocturnal
has been very careful to explain, with great
feniwmimSM'vmwj should be understood by an
wanderings of the restless, the terrors of the
�imaginative, the studies of the aged, the dead
friends who visit us in the dark, and the night
"tho'^ghts, fears, and fancies ,of poetg and j^gilar *
[writers,'—n^^iy
of bald .and detached pa£sages, but strung together by a graceful thread of
pleasant and'appreciative comment. Mr. Jacox’s
last volume is an agreeable and appropriate com- .
panrontohis previously published, books, and, like
his “Traits of Character ” and “Aspects of Authorship,” will be received with a warm welcome by
all sorts of readers.
Contemporary English Psychology. Translated
from theFrench of Th. Ribot. (Henry S. King and
Co.)—We are not quite satisfied that Psychology
is the right word under which to describe the
writings of Messrs. John Stuart Mill, Herbert
Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and the rest of the
Philosophers named in this volume. Would the
once popular member for Westminster have so
employed it? Did he ever discourse upon the
soul ? Has he not in his Autobiography almost
said that he had no belief in souls ? Are not the
principles professed by Mr. Mill and his followers
just a trifle too hard and practical for any dealings
^with the poetical Psyche? Mental philosophy,
free-will, metaphysics, anything but the soulscience, would seem nearer and more applicable to
Mr. Mill’s philosophy. These questions apart,
however, there is much in M. Ribot’s treatise
that will compel attention. Beginning with an
inquiry into the origin of philosophy, the essayist
Eiscusses the association of ideas, the science of
character, the law of intelligence, the growth of
voluntary power, and other characteristics of
the sensations, the senses, and the will; thence
he proceeds to the history of philosophy and
the theories adopted by the ancients and
moderns, from Plato to Hobbes, and thence to
the present time; discussing, as he goes on, the
science of languages, of morals, and the meta
physical doctrines upheld by Descartes and the
rest; of idealism and realism, motive and resolu
tion, perception and imagination, consciousness
and causality, logic and ethology, the reasoning
powers, the appetites, and the instincts, conclud
ing with the dictum that pyschology can be and
ought to be a distinct science; that the word
“ liberty” must be expunged from it—as an inexact
term, and serving only to create confusion—and
“aptitude” substituted for it, as all voluntary facts
are subject to the universal law of causality.
Though a little too profound for the general reader,
this treatise will fitly take its place in Messrs.
Henry S. King’s “International Scientific Series,”
beside the “ Mind and Body” of Professor Bain.
Toilers- and Spinsters-; and other Essays. By
Miss Thackeray. (Smith and Elder.) — Very
cheerful and pleasant reading are these Essays,
collected from the .Cornhill and the Pall Mall,
where they have been accepted as the opinions of
a really earnest and practical writer.
Miss
Thackeray’s first paper, which gives its name to
the. volume, shows that, contrary to the common
notion, old maids need not be melancholy, pining,
restless women, but that there are for them many
and varied spheres of usefulness, which the
majority of the sisterhood are only too glad and
ready to fulfil. Again, in “ Little Scholars” we
see how poor gutter-children are fed and taught by
energetic and well-meaning ladies—the feeding
generally more efficacious than the teaching. In
like manner we have bright pictures of Country
Sundays, Easter Holidays, and New Flowers, with
gossips about Jane Austen’s tales, Five O’clock I
Teas, Books of Autographs, and the contrasts
between the earlier and later heroines of popular |
fiction—-all charmingly penSM in th" manner,
though not consciously imitated, so familiar to
everybody in “ Pendennis ” and the “ Newcomes. ”
Diamonds and Precious (Stones: A Popular
Account of Gems. Containing their history, their
distinctive properties, ancMal description of the
most famous ; gem-cutting, and engraving, and the
artificial production of real and counterfeit jewels.
From the French of Louis Dieulafait, Professor,
of Physics. Illustrated by 126 Engravings on
Wood. (Blackie and Son. ^-From time imme
morial, diamonds and precious stones have had a
peculiar and wonderful fascination for all sorts of
people. They have a history and literature of
their own. Though nowr used simply as ornaments,
they w’ere formerly supposed to possess medicinal
and spiritual powers of remarkable potency : by
their aid diseases were cured, calamities averted,
and the demons of earth, air, and sea set at
defiance. In the dim half-knowledge of the
ancients, the alliance between religion and science
was close and intimate ; every part of man’s body
was believed to have a corresponding part in the
world of nature, and thus it was that gems came
to be regarded as having a real and abiding influ
ence upon the actions of mankind and the fate of
the soul. These notions, born in the East, travelled
through Egypt to Greece and Rome, and ulti
mately permeated the whole civilized world. So
it might be possible, says Babinet, to follow the
history of gems through that of humanity ; from
the Ephod of Aaron to the Pastoral Cross of the
Archbishop of Paris ; from the offerings of rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, in the temples
of Jupiter, to the riches accumulated in what in
the sixteenth century was called the Treasury of
Christian Churches. Mythology, sculpture, and
ballad history are full of references to precious
stones and their symbolic value ; and in the astro
logical formularies that preceded modern chemistry
we find special virtues attributed to the emerald,
the sapphire, and many other scarce and brilliant
gems. All this, and much more, is related in
Mons. Dieulafait’s interesting little volume. The
origin, history, modes of cleaving, cutting, polish
ing, and setting all kinds of gems are given in
perspicuous detail, together with explanations
respecting the manufacture of artificial jewels and
means of distinguishing the true from the false ;
the whole amply illustrated with carefully engraved
woodcuts, and forming a popular treatise on a sub
ject which has undoubted claims to consideration.
Master-Spirits. By Robert Buchanan. (Henry
S. King and Co.)—Justifying his title by a quotation
from Milton—“ Good books are like the precious
life-blood of master-spirits ”—Mr. Buchanan has
reprinted some of his contributions to the “ Fort
nightly,” the “Contemporary,” and other perio
dicals, and asks the indulgence of the reader for
any verbal blunders they may contain, on the
valid plea that the state of his health “ does not
permit the laborious verification of quotations.”
We greatly regret that, as in the only chapter we
have read—and read, we may add, with consider
able pleasure—on the “Good Genie of Fiction,”
there are several statements that, with the later
knowledge we all possess of Dickens’s works,
might have been advantageously modified. But
this apart, who is there unwilling to read what a
clever writer may say of* Tennyson, Browning,
Victor Hugo, and De Musset—to say nothing of
what he has to tell us of George Heath and other
obscure poets ? Admirers of Mr. Buchanan—
and we presume they are many, despite Mr. Swin
burne—will accept this reprint thankfully. It is
a handsome and acceptable volume.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The Sacred Anthology
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: 92-93 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unnamed reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'The Bookseller', February 3, 1874. Printed in double columns.
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1874
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G5599
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Book reviews
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
-
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Text
FROM “THE ACADEMY,” OCTOBER 33st, 1874.
B The Sacred Anthology.”
A Book of Ethnical Scriptures, collected and edited by M-. D. Conway.
London : Triibner & Co., 18.74. 12s.
This book shows what may be achieved by enthusiasm and perseverance. Mr. Conway tells us that
he is not an Oriental scholar, but he has given us what no Oriental scholar has yet given to the world,
though for many years the world has been expecting and demanding something like a Sacred Anthology,
viz., Bcollection of the most important passages from the sacred writings of the East, translated into
■EnfLWh. As Oriental scholars shrank from the undertaking, Mr. Conway set to work, collecting all the
translations which he could find ready to hand, and extracting from them whatever seemed to him of real
valuqH
*
*
*
But Mr. Conway was not dismayed by these difficulties. He knew
what he could, and what he could not do, and by limiting the scope of his undertaking, and giving to his
collection a purely practical character, he has certainly succeeded in accomplishing a useful and important
task. 1 ®‘e believed,” as he tells us, “that it would be useful for moral and religious culture if the sympathy of religions could be more generally made known, and the converging testimonies of ages and races
to great principles more widely appreciated.” If we may judge by the rapid succession of editions, Mr.
Conway has certainly roused by his Sacred Anthology a wide interest in a subject hitherto strSigely
neglected, and he will have rendered an important service, if it were only by dispelling some prejudices
most detrimental to a true appreciation of the value of all religions.
Those who study the history of the human race in all its various phases, from the lowest savagery to
the highest civilisation, know that neither in the most perfect work of discursive thought, nor in the
grandest achievements of creative art, has the human mind put forth all its powers in greater force or
fulness than in religion. We are, from our very childhood, so familiar with the highest religious concep
tions, that it is difficult for us to appreciate the mental struggles by which they were conquered and
secured for us. We forget that the simplest conception of the Divine requires an almost superhuman
effort, and was therefore among most nations ascribed to a divine revelation. We forget that every name
.of the Deity was the reward of more than one sleepless night at Peniel, and that even in a prayer, such
,as the Gayatri, are hoarded up the scant earnings of the patient labours oi many generations. That
.tribes, even in the lowest scale of civilisation, should address a Being whom they have never seen, as their
Father, that they should never for one moment doubt his existence, should regulate their lives by what
they suppose to be his will, should actually offer to him what they value most on earth, may no longer
strike us as extraordinary, but in itself it is more marvellous than anything else in the whole of human
nature.
And what is more marvellous still, is the striking uniformity with which that power of religion has
manifested itself almost everywhere. There are differences, no”doubt, and profound differences between
.the religions of the world, but the similarities far outweigh these differences. Let readers open Mr.
Conway’s Anthology, without looking at the references, and they will find it by no means easy to say
whether any given extract comes from a Jewish, a Mohammedan, or a Hindu source. Mr. Conway has
arranged his extracts according to subjects. We find passages on Charity, Nature, Man, Humility,
Sorrow and Death placed together, and these passages are taken promiscuously from all the sacred books
of the world. No doubt we at once recognise the extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly
when they are given in the authorised version ; but even these, if translated more literally or more freely,
might often be supposed to be taken from the Buddhist Canon orfrom the Chinese King. The same
sentiments, sometimes in almost the same words, occur again .and again in all the sacred books of the
world. * * *
It is hardly surprising that a perusal of Mr. ConwaySacred Anthology should have left on many
.readers the impression of the great superiority of the Biblical extracts, if compared with the rest. The
fact is, that what we call the beauty or charm of any of the sacred books can be appreciated by those only
whose language has been fashioned, whose very thoughts have been nurtured by them. The words of our
own Bible cause innumerable strings of our hearts to vibrate till-they make a music of memories that
passes all description. The same inaudible music accompanies all sacred books, but it can never be
rendered in any translation. To the Arab there is nothing equal to the cadence of the Koran, to us even
the best translation of Mohammed’s visions sounds often dull and dreary. This cannot be helped, but it
is but fair that it should be borne in mind as a caution againsWeclaring too emphatically that nobody
else’s mother can ever be so fair and dear as our own.
One of the most eminent Oriental scholars expressed the following judgment as to the relative merits
of the Sacred Scriptures of the world :—
“ The collection of tracts, which we call from their excellence the Scriptures, contain, independently
■of a Divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important historv,
and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected, within the same compass, from all
other books that were ever composed in any age, or in any idiom. The two parts of which Scriptures
consist are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance in form or style to any that
can be produced from the stores of Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian learning ; the antiquity of
those compositions no man doubts ; and the unstrained application of them to events long subsequent to
their publication, is a solid ground of belief that they were genuine compositions, and consequently
inspired.”
Would any Oriental scholar endorse this judgment now?
We have intentionally abstained from all critical remarks with regard to.the translation of single
passages. Such remarks might be addressed to the translators, but not to Mr. Conway. He deserves
our hearty thanks for the trouble he has taken in collecting these gems, and stringing them together for
the use of those who have no access to the originals, and we trust that his book will arouse a more general
interest in a long-neglected and even despised branch of literature, the Sacred Books of the East.
MAX MULLER.
Other works by the same Author.
“The Earthward Pilgrimage.” Chatto and Windus. 5s.
“Republican Superstitions.” H. S. King and Co. 2s. fid.
Mr. Conway’s works may be obtained by addressing “ The Librarian, South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
London,” where also may be obtained his Pamphlets on W. J. Fox (3d.); Strauss (3<l.); Mill (2d.) ■
Sterling and Maurice (2d.) ; and Mazzini (Id.).
�
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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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The Sacred Anthology
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Muller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
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Collation: 1 leaf unnumbered ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'The Academy', October 31, 1874
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Book reviews
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Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
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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 Ethical Society
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The Life of Richard Cobden
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Whitehurst, Edward Capel [1838-1923]
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Place of publication: [London]
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Notes: Review by John Morley of "The Life of Richard Cobden" by John Morley published London: Chapman & Hall, 1881. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 61 (January 1882).
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16
THE INTOLERANCE OF HETERODOXY, AND THE
NARROWNESS OF LATITUDINARIANISM.
A recent article in this Magazine directed attention to the remarkable
mutilations to which many well-known Christian hymns had been subjected,
in order that they might find acceptance with the congregation worshipping
at Bedford Chapel, under the leadership of the Rev. Stopford Brooke.
It must have occasioned surprise and mortification in many quarters,
and especially in quarters where Mr. Brooke was known simply
as a competent critic and able literary man, to follow the pastor of
Bedford Chapel in his crusade of slaughter against the hymnology of
Christendom. We had a right to expect at least that the laws of good
taste would not be violated by a public teacher whose writings bear every
sign of a refined and cultivated mind. If certain hymns were unsuited to
the new requirements of the congregation worshipping at Bedford Chapel,
it surely would have been the fairer course frankly to pass them by in the
compilation of the new collection. Such a hymn-book might possibly have
formed a very thin volume, but it would have had an unity of its own.
The inevitable problem arising from such a circumstance is briefly this:
What can be the nature of that intellectual change whose first result, in
the mere sphere of literature, is that a master of criticism sins flagrantly
against the laws of criticism, and a teacher of the broadest tolerance
publishes a book of hymns which, from one point of view at least, may be
considered as masterly a specimen of intolerance as hymnology possesses?
The publication of a book of Christian Hymns, in which every trace of
Christ is carefully eliminated by a cultured and accomplished critic,
preacher, and biographer, would not however be sufficient in itself to justify
the title that stands at the head of this paper. The circumstance is simply
suggestive of a line of criticism which it may be profitable to follow out,
and the material for that criticism is found in two small volumes, which
bear the title of South-Place Discourses. South Place, Finsbury, is the
locale of the well-known Unitarian chapel with which the eloquent
W. J. Fox was for many years connected. His place is now filled by
Mr. Moncure D. Conway, who, however, does not call himself a Uni
tarian. Mr. Conway, too, is a man of fine literary taste; he is well
known in the literary circles of London; and his congregation, like Mr.
Brooke’s, is eclectic in the extreme. Mr. Brooke, however, is a new convert
to Unitarianism, while Mr. Conway, as becomes the traditions of SouthPlace Chapel, is in the van of the new beliefs, and his congregation is composed
of the Pharisees of the Pharisees in the ‘ advanced school ’ of religious
criticism. The order of service adopted at South Place is printed with the
sermons, and it presents a curious study. Occasionally passages from the
Scriptures are read by way of lesson, but oftener the reading is from
�The, Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
17
purely secular publications. Thus the readings for a single service, are as
follows :
‘Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the motion of the
Earth.’
‘ Personal Experiences of George Coombe.’
‘ Professor Clifford on the Publication of Truth.’
In this instance the English Bible is entirely closed. The place of prayer
appears to be given up to what is styled a meditation on such subjects as
‘ Sociability,’ ‘ Little by Little,’ and ‘ Absolute Relativity.’ The service
of song includes such lines as
‘ I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty,
I woke, and found that Life was Duty.’
'Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, and original hymns by A. T. Ellis, F.R.S.
etc., whose discourses are printed together with Mr. Conway’s, and of whose
genius for hymnology the following is a specimen :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell
When Death flits from each to all,
And Life fails upon our ball,
Where or whither it shall dwell.
L
‘ This the darkness I have past,
Darkness haunted still with dreams,
Dread surmises, doubting screams,
Souls staked madly on a cast.’
By, way of ‘ Dismissal,’ after the singing of this hymn, the congregation is
invited to enter upon a somewhat analytical explanation of its scope and
meaning: and we cannot doubt that it needs it. ‘ Doubting screams’ is in
itself a phrase so daring and original, that it alone might well absorb the
entire time devoted to explanation.
But the nature of this programme of worship provokes more than a
mere sensation of curiosity; we cannot but ask, Is this, after all, any intel
lectual advance upon the ordinary manner of worship among the orthodox?
We have a right to press the question, because the assumption which under
lies each of the five discourses by Mr. Ellis, and the ten by Mr. Conway, is
that of complete contempt for orthodox modes and manners. When we
are rebuked for our fanatical regard for the ancient customs of universal
Christendom; when the prayers of the Litany, for example, are held up
for scornful vivisection j when the intellectual blindness, stubbornness, and
prejudice of believers are made matter for repeated ironical compliment, it
is only natural that we should seek instruction from our critics, and
narrowly observe the methods of our adversaries. Mr. Conway tells us
that ‘ the Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye holding
.the Apocalypse of Man.’ He firmly believes that the party he leads is in
�18
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
the van of true progress, that already it has possessed itself of the ‘ shining
summits ’ of the future, and that the world, as it grows in enlightenment,
must needs follow. Is, then, the manner of service here described the best
that he can offer for the future worshippers ? Mr. Conway’s opinions on
the doctrine of inspiration may be widely divergent from ours, but surely, the
sublimest sacred Book the world possesses, is scarcely treated with common
fairness when, in three services out of five, it is not so much as opened. Interest
ing as the 1 Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the Motion of the
Earth ’ may be, we cannot help thinking that the Sermon on the Mount,
or even certain passages of Old Testament poetry, might afford infinitely
higher intellectual, as well as moral, stimulus and comfort; and the 1 Ex
periences of George Coombe ’ must be poor reading as a substitute for the
experiences of the Apostle Paul. The Litany may be offensive to those
who are freed from the ‘ superstition ’ of prayer, for which ‘ Meditation ’ is
made not the incitement but the substitute; but what sort of substitute is
a quarter of an hour’s ‘ Meditation’ on A bsolute Relativity? The hymns
of Wesley, one of which is quoted by Mr. Conway in support of an even
more than usually unfair and distorted criticism, may have literary demerits
as well as literary merits which are sufficiently well established, and are
fairly open to criticism in common with all hymns; but what shall we say
of such a hymn as that already quoted, with its ‘ doubting screams ? ’
Can a more doleful caricature of the holy cheerfulness of a Christian
Sabbath-day’s service be painted, than the picture of a congregation rising
after a ‘ Meditation ’ on 1 Absolute Relativity,’ to sing such a verse as
this :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell,
How Life burst upon our ball,
Whence, diffused to each through all,
Thought upon the Wanderer fell ? ’
Even when a somewhat more cheerful lyric is announced, whose first
lines run :
‘ “ Go, my child,” thus saith the Highest,
“ Warning, cheering, day by day,” ’
we are carefully informed in a foot-note that ‘ the Highest ’ does not mean
the Most High God; but is meant to signify merely ‘ earthly being.
Humanity, speaking by the mouth, and loving with the heart of the wise
and good, at all times and in all places.’ What can be the reason of this
-evident uneasiness lest the name of God by any accident should slip into a
hymn meant for Divine worship! Is there any other solution of this
strange phenomenon, except the terrible hypothesis that the leaders of what
they choose to term ‘ Rational Religion ’ in South Place, do ‘ not like to retain
God in their knowledge’? Yet Mr. Conway is, avowedly, not an atheist; and
if we may judge of his creed by the ten sermons before us, he is still less a
Positivist. If God be worshipped at South Place, why is it necessary to
explain that one of the titles by which we know God really means nothing
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
19
of the sort, but some vague abstraction of Humanity ? If the minister and
congregation of South Place are really inspired with the sublime belief
that they are in the ‘ foremost files of time; ’ that they are emancipated
from superstitions that hold half the world in night; that they are sure of
victorious recognition by the future generations for whom they are heroic
pioneers,—how is it such exalted sentiment finds expression in no more
hopeful hymnology than such doubtful hymns and anthems as we have
quoted, one of them carefully fenced and purged from all suspicion of
God, and another dreary enough to have been sung in the awful blackdraped cathedral of James Thomson’s ghastly dream, where the preacher
is an atheist, and the text is Suicide ? There is a certain brilliance of
rhetoric and paradox about the utterances of the South-Place pulpit:
but surely, after all, that creed must be cursed with intellectual and
spiritual sterility that has such scanty power of inspiration for sentiment
and emotion.
It is in this and similar matters that we see what we have ventured to
call the intolerance of heterodoxy. The process of heterodoxy is essentially
narrowing. It pretends to extreme 1 breadth; ’ in reality it is extreme
narrowness. The fascination that heterodoxy has for the unwary is that it
offers magnificent promises of emancipation from vulgar prejudices; it
assumes that orthodoxy must needs imply a fettered intellect ; that to live
in the light of the faith of Christendom is really to live in spiritual dark
ness j that, indeed, orthodoxy must needs riiean intellectual imbecility, or
intellectual prostitution: while heterodoxy is the proud stronghold of
gigantic minds who have achieved a great deliverance and entered ona glorious
liberty. All this is absurd assumption, but it serves its purpose. This
is one-half of the programme, and it effectually appeals to human vanity
and pride. The other half describes heterodoxy as the higher spirituality j
as the purer and loftier worship, freed from vain and polluting traditions.
And it is this portion of the programme that seduces some higher natures—
young men of more than common earnestness of thought, through their
very earnestness; devout natures, through their very devoutness; though
never even in these rare cases without some side-appeal to the intellectual
pride that loves to have its own way, even though it must emigrate to a
desert in order to secure it. But where is the breadth and charity of view
that heterodoxy promises ? It passes from its criticism of the Bible to its
degradation. In its effort to avoid the habits of worship sanctioned and
sanctified by centuries of devotion, it closes a Book which even Freethinkers have valued as a source of priceless instruction, or it varies the
words of the ‘ Fourth Gospel ’ with the ‘ Experiences of George Coombe.’
In its fear lest it should approach too nearly to the dangerous phraseology
of orthodox hymnology, it hastens to explain away its hymns, and to assure
us that though the Scripture term for God is used, yet nothing of the kind
is meant. Is this breadth or is it narrowness ? Does it not appear as if the
spirit of denial, once admitted into the temple, closes window after window
c2
�20
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
to the light, until but one outlook is left—the narrow aperture of solitary
dogmatism ? Stripped of the false romance that usually attaches itself to
intellectual adventure, what fascination is there in such a position of
isolated denial ? And whether is the more tolerable, the bondage of this
individual dogmatism which walks in fear of itself, or the wholesome
restraints which are no more than the landmarks of guidance which
experience has set up ?
This process of contraction and distortion in the intellectual outlook is
strikingly illustrated in some portions of the fifteen discourses that con
tain the views of Mr. Conway and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Conway in his fifth
discourse dwells very strikingly upon what he terms the ‘ morality of the
intellect.’ He says that there may be and is such a thing as intellectual
immorality: ‘ To believe a proposition aside from its truth, to believe it
merely because of some advantage, becomes intellectual prostitution. The
purity of the mind is bargained away.’ In this we heartily agree, and we
do not for a moment suppose that Mr. Conway and his followers have
fallen into the sin he so forcefully repudiates. But it seems to us that the
code of intellectual morality includes many things not covered by the
definition of Mr. Conway. It includes fairness of thought, and soberness
and perfect integrity of judgment. It commands that the balances be held
evenly, that judgment shall be in strict accordance with facts, and that the
verdict should be received and recorded, even though it be adverse to the
claim of the most favourite theory. And it seems to us, upon full and
honest examination, that the ‘higher culture’ of the advanced school has
only resulted in the flagrant violation of each of these laws; that its awards
are partial, its views one-sided, and its judgments of others chiefly distin
guished by wilful distortion and misapprehension. And this is all the more
remarkable because it is the work of trained thinkers, of scholars and
gentlemen, from whom we should at least expect that the intellect would be
free from warp, whatever the deranging bias of the creed.
But as mere matter of human experience, it must be noted that the creed
a man holds is really the lever of his actions, and a greater thinker than
Mr. Conway — Goethe — has remarked that ‘everything depends on
what principle a man embraces ; for both his theory and practice will be
found in accordance therewith.’ Probably the critics of South Place would
vehemently dispute this axiom, for the uselessness of creeds is a favourite
subject for derision, and Mr. Conway has announced that Theology—which
is the scientific statement of creed—‘ is the great enemy of Religion.’ But
so many things are disputed, and so wilfully, with so great a lack of intel
lectual conscientiousness, that this passes for a very small matter. Thus
the most striking discourse of Mr. Ellis—The Dyers Hand—contains a con
temptuous attack on Paley’s argument of design, on this ground,—that to
design is not to invent; that the maker of a watch invents nothing; he
discovers natural laws and properties, and in making his chronometer he is.
simply a designer.
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
21
‘So then (says Mr. Ellis) all that man does with his materials is to put them together.
And we say that grand abstraction, “ Nature,” does the rest. Now if we apply this
to God, we see that some other god must have made the materials, and their laws, and
the laws of their connection, and that He merely puts them together. What a degrading
conception ! The great God, the expression of utter boundlessness, a piecer of other
, gods’ goods 1 Shame on man that he ever inculcated such a doctrine. Shame on
those natural theologians who would found our very reason for believing in the
existence of a God on such transparent fallacies, which can be knocked down like
nine-pins by the first bowl of a cunning atheist 1 ’
But we ask, who ever did inculcate such £ a degrading conception ’ ? Who
but Mr. Ellis ever conceived it ? Boes Mr. Ellis suppose that Paley repre
sents God as only £ the piecer of other gods’ goods ’; or does he really
imagine that this conception of the argument of design, upon which he wastes
so much indignation, is one of the stupid follies of orthodox belief ? It
needs no very £ cunning atheist ’ to bowl down such a conception; but any
candid atheist of average ability will see at a glance that the nine-pins he
knocks down so easily are set up by Mr. Ellis himself, and not by Dr.
Paley. We are well aware that one of the meanings of the Latin word
designo, and one of the meanings of the English word design, is : ‘ to mark
out, to trace out; ’ but who does not also know that the Latin word also
means £ to contrive ’; and that language is largely determined by usage, and
very frequently departs more or less in that process from what was originally
its most prominent meaning ? The average mind understands with perfect
clearness what Paley means by the term £ design,’ and the dictionary is clear
enough. The argument to which Mr. Ellis applies the term £ preposterous
nonsense/ is certainly not Paley’s, but Mr. Ellis’s own quibbling caricature
of Paley’s ; and Mr. Ellis’s whole position is occupied by taking an unworthy
advantage of the fact that one word has often more than one meaning, and
by arbitrarily fastening on that word a meaning far different from that
which the great reasoner obviously attached to it, in accordance with
common usage. Mr. Ellis is welcome to his conception; but it is disingenuous
to assume that ‘orthodox Christendom ’ can in any such manner misinterpret
the language of a standard English writer who is also a consummate
reasoner.
The very same strategy is employed by Mr. Conway in his last discourse
on The Ascension of the Criminal, in which Methodism is introduced, in the
garments of her hymnology, as a witness to the immoralities of orthodoxy.
It is a strategy which requires no genius for either its conception or its
execution; it creates a false assumption, accredits it to orthodoxy, and
then exposes orthodoxy to ridicule for what orthodoxy never said or
thought. If it can be made clear that orthodoxy does not hold what her
critics so confidently assume and assert that she does, the whole attack,
delivered with so much vehemence and passion, is merely a sham-fight
contrived for the entertainment of the South-Place congregation.
It is sufficient to quote from this single discourse to prove that the above
statement is fully borne out by the facts of the case. Thus Mr. Conway
�22
The Intolerance of Haterdoxy, and the
starts with the proposition that 1 religion and morality use totally different
weights and measures. The vilest scoundrel to one may be a saint to the
other.’ The religious instruction provided for the masses teaches them,
says he, ‘ that the supreme rewards of existence are attainable without
reference to life and character. The voice most authentic to the masses says
to them,—In the name of God we declare to you that your thefts, murders,
adulteries, cruelties, and general baseness, may be to man of vast import
ance ; but to God the one question is, Do you believe in His Son or not ? ’
Christianity finds its strongest motives of appeal in a judgment day and
an eternal hell. ‘ Now these,’ says Mr. Conway, £ would be very strong if
they were penalties for immorality; but Christianity ’ (sic, not orthodoxy
merely) ‘ repudiates the idea. Hell, it declares, is for those that forget God,
or do not believe in His Son. Consequently the criminal may snap his
fingers at the day of judgment. . . .Those sects that deal with the masses are
pervaded with a contempt for good works. The Wesleyans sing :
“ Let the world their virtue boast,
Their works of righteousness ;
I, a wretch undone and lost,
Am freely saved by grace;
Other title I disclaim ;
This, only this, is all my plea,
I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.” ’
The charge culminates thus, that Christianity positively discourages ‘ the
formation of self-reliant and moral character ’; in the ‘ plan of salvation no
provision is made for morality. Not one item in it refers to morality.
Morality is not made a condition, nor immorality a disqualification for its
full enjoyment’; so that Christianity is a criminal system—‘ it assures the
criminal, converted after he can sin no more, that heaven has the same
place and rewards for the fife of crime and the life of virtue.’ Indeed,
the success of orthodox Christianity is represented as chiefly due to the
fact that it appeals powerfully to the criminal instincts of mankind, that is
to say, to the instincts of the criminal mind, whose creed is to secure all
the advantages of virtue with the weapons of vice.
We have purposely avoided the more offensive sentiments in this remark
able discourse, simply selecting the brief sentences that indicate the course
of thought pursued in it. We can only ask, with something like amaze
ment, Can Mr. Conway bring himself to sincerely believe that this loath
some monstrosity which he paraded before the congregations assembling at
South Place, and the Athenaeum, Camden-Road, on the 2nd of March,
1879, as orthodox Christianity, is the actual Christianity preached in
so many hundreds of pulpits on every side of him, and sung by so
many thousands of worshippers, from Sabbath to Sabbath ? From what
pulpit has he ever heard it announced that ‘ the supreme rewards of exist
ence are attainable without reference to life and character ’ ? Where has
he heard it proclaimed that ‘ the adulteries, cruelties and general baseness ’
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
23
of mankind are of no importance to God, or that the dreadful penalties of
future judgment pass over the immoralities of men, and fall only upon
those who have departed from the faith of orthodoxy, and have denied the
Divine Sonship of the Saviour ? If a life of baseness and immorality bo
not 1 forgetting God,’ what is ? How is it that a man who is capable of
writing able and sympathetic criticism upon secular subjects, can allow
himself to be so unfair as to take a single hymn, which is the lyrical
expression of personal conviction, expressly designed and designated ‘ For
mourners convinced of sin,’ as a complete summary of orthodox belief,
and to infer from the omission of any mention of the deeds of a holy life
in a solitary verse of Wesleyan hymnology, that the Wesleyans have a
‘ contempt for good works.’
A similar process of criticism, confined to garbled utterances and founded
on omission, might be made to prove the grossest calumnies against the
greatest authors. And how can any man who has read the Gospels and
Epistles, and who knows that it is from the Divine ethics of Christianity
that a thousand pulpits are drawing their inspiration and instruction from
Sabbath to Sabbath, dare to stand up and affirm that Christianity is a
criminal system, and makes no provision for morality! If orthodox
Christianity is a criminal system, how is it that it has proved the most
powerful deterrent from vice ? And if Mr. Conway’s scheme of religion is so
much loftier, why is it that it exhibits itself mainly in false paradox and the
intellectual fireworks of an explosive and yet random criticism, instead of
weaving its mightier spell for the exorcising of the foul spirits that defile
and deform society, and which, according to his view of the case, Chris
tianity encourages, but cannot cast out ? We can only suppose, in charity,
that Mr. Conway knows next to nothing of the Christianity which he so
wantonly caricatures. And what can be a preacher’s notion of the Ethics of
Quotation who, having given one verse of a hymn, is careful to keep
back another verse which would at once refute his calumny:
‘ Jesus, Thou for me hast died,
And Thou in me shalt live,
I shall feel Thy death applied,
I shall Thy life receive?
And what a reckless and audacious contempt for recent history, as well as
for conspicuous and admitted contemporary facts, is betrayed by an able
* public teacher—fair-speaking on all other subjects but Christianity—
who can, within a few yards of Moorfields and City Road Chapel, coolly
tell his disciples that the Wesleyans have ‘ a contempt for good works.’
Who does not know that by the self-same tactics John Wesley and the
Wesleyans have been denounced as ‘ merit-mongers ’ and ‘ Pelagians,’ and
Papistical criers up of the desert and absolute necessity of ‘ good works,’ and
the attempt to sustain the charge has been made precisely on the same principle,
or with the same disregard of principle, as is exhibited by Mr. Conway. Only
�24
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
the slightest observation is sufficient to bid back again the spectral de
formity which he has conjured up and misnamed orthodox Christianity.
■The self-styled ‘rational religion’has a strange method of cultivating
and inculcating intellectual morality, when it can deliberately set forth from
both pulpit and press Charles Peace as a representative Christian saint, and
can make his last utterances the typical confession of orthodox piety, in order
to construct a sermon, under the title of The Ascension of the Criminal.
Nor does it shape well with the laws of intellectual morality that it should
be conveniently forgotten in such an attack upon Christianity and Chris
tians, that orthodox Christianity teaches that ‘ faith, if it hath not works, is
dead, being alone ’ (James ii. 17). And surely Mr. Conway’s revolt is not
so much from revelation as from common sense, when he can venture to
quote an obscure Indian myth concerning all animals being once imprisoned
in a monster, and owing their deliverance to co-operation—with the solemn
announcement that this ‘ is a much more moral and scientific genesis of
man than that in the Bible.’
Such, then, is the tolerance of1 heresy. The spirit of denial proves him
self to be no holy iconoclast, who moves onward through the wreck of
crumbling traditions to a larger inheritance of truth. It is simply a
mocking, railing spirit, unable or unheedful to discriminate between good
and evil. We are so often taunted with the bigotry of orthodoxy, the
galling fetters it imposes on the intellect, the fierce anathemas it thunders
forth to all who cast away its shibboleth, that it is time to look our accusers
in the face. It seems to us that the palm of intolerance belongs to hetero
doxy, and its bigotry is all its own. It professes to reject the tyranny of
any standard of faith; but it sets up its own crude standards of faith
nevertheless, in the arrogant egotism of its high priests. It weaves its
boasted ethics from negations; it affirms only to accuse. Of its charity
and tolerance let Mr. Conway’s own discourses bear witness. We are told
that our generation is stricken with the pestilence of doubt, though there
is good reason to believe that large exaggerations are mixed with its
statistics. The infected area is probably much smaller than some think.
However this may be, contemporary literature swarms with smart doubters,
with whom the lack of faith is no longer considered a calamity, but a badge
of intellectual distinction. They invite the novice to the larger air of lib
eral ideas, but the novice soon finds that ‘ free thought ’ has its Inquisition,
and that denial has its dogmas. He flees from orthodoxy because his new
instructors have branded it as narrow and intolerant, to find, when the
awakening comes, and natural revulsion follows fascination, that he has
fallen at the feet of an arrogant heterodoxy, immeasurably narrower and
more intolerant.
D. J. W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism
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Dawson, W.J. [Dawson]
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 16-24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review essay by Rev. W.J. Dawson of 'South Place Discourses' from Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, January 1883. The article is signed D.J.W. but is known to be the Rev. W.J. Dawson.
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[s.n.]
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[1883]
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G5608
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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 (The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism</span>), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Human</a><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">ist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Heterodoxy
Latitudinarianism
Moncure Conway
-
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406
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
the barbaric Cosmos, and raised into an independent object of
speculation. Once “ differentiated’ it begins itself to unfold, and
at the same time to gather round it the at first alien facts of
sensation, appetite, and bodily feeling generally. These are in
creasingly matter of inquiry, and theories respecting them take the
hue and shape of the sciences which relate to the material world.
The science of motion evolves, and the idea of orderly sequence
enters into Psychology. Natural Philosophy rises from motion to
force, and Psychology passes from conjunction to causation. Che
mistry tears aside a corner of nature’s veil, and a shaft is sunk in a
mysterious field of mind. The sciences of organic nature receive
a forward impulse, and mind and life are joined in inextricable
union. A philosophy of the universe, incorporating all the
sciences, is created, and Psychology, while attaining increased
independence as regards the adjacent sciences, is merged in that
deductive science of the Knowable which has more widely
divorced, and yet more intimately united, the laws of matter
and of mind.
Art. VII.—The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
1. Deutsche Glassiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und SacherJcldrungen. Begriindet von Franz Pfeiffer. Erster
Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus. 18*70.
2. Das Lehen Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig : B. G.
Triibner. 1865.
TN the history of German literature no period is more inteJl resting, than that short classical epoch at the end of the twelfth
century and the beginning of the thirteenth, which gave rise to the
literature written in Middle High German. More especially does
it attract attention, because within very narrow limits it com
prises many and great names, but above all it is remarkable
because within these limits it saw the birth and death of a new
kind of poetry, a poetry of an entirely different character from
that of the old epic poems. They were grand, massive, and
objective ; the new style was light, airy, plaintive, aod subjective.
To this style belongs the German Minnesong. The songs of three
hundred Minnesingers are preserved all belonging to this short
period. In their themes there is not much variety. The changes
of the seasons, and the changes of a lover’s mood do not in fact
present a wide range of subjects to the lyric poet. And most of
the Minnesongs are confined to these. But the following simile
seems true. If any one enters a wood in summer time, and listens
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
407
to the voices of innumerable birds, he hears at first only a con
fused mixture of strains. In time, however, he distinguishes
now a petulant cry, now a deep bell-like reiterated note, and now
the unbroken song of some joyous chorister. Finally he recog
nises the individual character of each strain, the music runs
clearly in ordered threads,
“ E come in voce voce si discerne
Quan do una e ferme e l’altra va e riede.”
And the Minnesong of this period exhibits a phenomenon not
dissimilar from that described. The subjects and the songs them
selves are likely at first to seem monotonous. Lamentations at
winter, the russet woodlands, and ashen grey landscapes, no less
than the joyous welcomes to spring, are repeated over and over
again. But notwithstanding this, the German Minnesong, as the
rich and peculiar growth of an extraordinary literature, is worthy
of attention. As in the former instance so now in this forest of
song, the listener soon discovers that some notes are clearer and
more solemn than others, and that in them he may follow a
music well worthy the hearing.
The Minnesong is entirely distinct from the lyrics of the Pro
vencal Troubadours. A feminine character has been attributed
to it, and a masculine character to the songs of the South. To a
certain extent this description expresses the difference between
them, but it does so only partially. The Minnesong is certainly
more reticent and coy. It sighs deeply, it smiles and blushes;
it seldom laughs aloud. It is pervaded by an innocent shame.
But it is bold and brave too. It has a scornful contempt for
danger, a profound belief in honour and virtue, and an unutter
able longing for love and beauty.
This is how the Minnesong came to be born. When
Conrad III. led his people to the Holy Land, Louis VII. of
France brought to the same place his French hosts. There,
amidst the magnificence of the East, the German knights
and soldiers listened to the songs of the troubadours who accom
panied the French armies. The “gay science,” as the trou
badours named their art, was then in its bloom. The soldiers
of Conrad were enchanted with the soft melodies and musical
rhymes; they could not forget the rich colours and gallant
romances of the Southern singers when they went back to the
North. They felt indeed that such poetry was not for them. It
had not the deep sentiment, and that inner soul of song which
their sterner natures required. But the Minnesong sprang from
this contact of Teuton and Celt under Eastern skies.
The greatest of the Minnesingers was Walther von der
Vogelweide, with whose life and poems it is proposed to deal
ee2
�408
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
briefly in this paper. And as his works cannot be understood
without reference to the events of his life, and as those events
were controlled by the wider movements of political affairs, it
will be necessary to speak in some detail of the circumstances
which mark the decadence and follow the fall of the illustrious
Hohenstaufen dynasty.
*
. The place and date of Walther’s birth have been matters of
dispute. The former may now be considered as settled, the
second difficulty can only be approximately solved. For while
we are thrown back to Walther’s poems for most of our infor
mation in reference to the events of his life, those poems are by
no means autobiographical, and it is only partially that we can
construct a connected history of the poet’s life.
Quite as many countries have contended for the honour of
being Walther’s birthplace as strove to enrol Homer amongst
their citizens. Switzerland, Suabia, the Rhineland, Bavaria,
Bohemia, Austria, the Tyrol and others have claimed him.
There is scarcely a district of Germany that has not sought the
honour of being connected with him. All this, however, is a
point of minor interest in the face of his own words—Ze
Osterriche lernt ich singen und sagen. But as a matter of
fact the question has been recently set at rest by the discovery,
in the Royal Library at Vienna, of a MS., which shows the
revenue of the Count of Tyrol towards the end of the 13th
century. Amongst the returns therein recorded is found the
yearly sum paid by the Vogelweide estate, namely, three pounds.
This entry is between those of Mittelwald and Schellenberch,
* The first edition of Walther’s poems, founded upon the Paris MS., was
that by Bodmer and Breitinger, published at Zurich in 1758. In 183S Von
der Hagen sent out a second edition. It was of little value. The first really
critical edition was that of Carl Lachman. Wacknernagel’s edition of 18G2
was also good. Pfeiffer’s edition of 1864 is perhaps, upon the whole, the best.
Its speciality is the excellent commentary which accompanies it, but it is
admirable from every point of view. It is the first edition which has laid the
treasures of Walther’s poetry open to the ordinary German reader. The intro
duction is good, and the prefatory remarks to each poem are well and judi
ciously written. It is provided with explanatory notes, and the glossaries
and index are models of arrangement. Middle High German has been so
long the monopoly of a few students that it is desirable it should be known
that, with a fair knowledge of German, a moderate acquaintance with some
good Middle High German grammar, and Herr Pfeiffer’s book. Walther von
der Vogelweide is easily accessible to all who are interested in Minne song.
There has sprung up rapidly in the last few years a whole body of literature
around the name of Walther von der Vogelweide. Uhland’s book is perhaps
the most widely known: Pfeiffer uses it freely. The best and completest life of
the poet is that by Dr. Menzel. The book is complete and instructive, but
fails to be popularly interesting through abundance of minute historical
details. Where Menzel and Pfeiffer differ, the preference has been given
in this paper to Pfeiffer’s theories. All the references are to Pfeiffer’s edition.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
409
places ten miles apart upon the Eisach. The exact site of the
poet’s house cannot be pointed out, but a wood divided into two
parts still bears, according to investigations made in the winter
of 1863, the double name of Upper and Lower Vogelweide. Of
all the places previously suggested, this alone corresponds with
the indications which the poet gives of his early home.
There is nothing to fix the exact date of his birth; a con
sideration of his poems leads Dr. Menzel to place it earlier than
1168 by, perhaps, ten or twelve years. His life thus comprises
the period of at least sixty years, for we find him in 1228 a bowed
and venerable pilgrim from the Holy Land, ready to lay his head
in its last resting-place. These sixty years were filled by impor
tant events not uninfluenced by the poet.
It is probable that he belonged to the lower ranks of the
nobility. The name of his family and the land-tax which they
paid prevent us from ranking them with the great families of
the time. Probably, too, his childhood was passed amongst the
bowery solitudes of the Tyrol, where a free and happy boyhood,
which he never forgot, grew amid the songs of birds and the
music of waters into a manhood no less musical and free.
Somewhere between the years 1171 and 1183 Walther left
his home for the ducal Court at Vienna. It was then a general
practice for the younger sons of noble families to seek education by
such means as this, and the renown which the Court of Vienna
acquired for the splendour of its pageants and the patronage
which it bestowed upon music and poetry, made it peculiarly
attractive to a youth whose imagination had already been
awakened. And no eager dreams which Walther had dreamed
in the woods of Tyrol were to be rudely banished when he
reached the ducal Court. The star of the German empire never
shone brighter than it did at that time. Then it was that the
old Barbarossa finished his Italian wars. The Church was deve
loping her powers. Chivalry had reached its highest point and
had not begun to decline, and over all Europe swept that in
spiring breeze which hurried away warriors and priests to do
pious duty in the Holy Land. Everywhere there was a keen
atmosphere of new and large ideas. The contact with the East,
even at that time, lent more of magnificence to the national
pomp, and the great festival which Frederick celebrated in
Mayence, at Whitsuntide of the year 1184, stands out still as
the greatest national festival which Germany has celebrated.
All the spiritual and temporal lords of Germany were present.
Princes from far lands, from Italy, France, Illyria, and Sclavonia
assembled with innumerable followers. And it is no wonder if
the centre figure of such an assembly kindled then an enthu
siasm over all the Empire which has never since been extin-
�410
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
guished, however hidden the sparks have lain. For, as a con
temporary averred, “ The flower of chivalry, the strength of do
minion, the greatness of the nation, and the glory of the empire
were united in his single majestic person.” With these great
events the Court of Vienna was closely connected. The Duke
Leopold VI. took the most active interest in the policy of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, and was a conspicuous sharer in the
Mayence pageant. Nor was his own Court behind any other of
that time in such knightly display. With Leopold’s two sons,
the young and promising princes, Frederick and Leopold,
Walther was, as we may divine from later poems, upon terms
of intimacy and affection, which, at least in the case of Frederick,
never suffered change.
But if the stirring spirit of the times did much to give the
poet a love for magnificent energy, the Court at which he resided
furnished him with modes of culture which scarcely another
could. Whatever was graceful and chivalric in life flourished
here, and here the Minnesong was oftenest sung. The master
poet of this early time was Reinmar, the “ nightingale of
Hagenau,” as they delighted to call him, and in him Walther
found the best model for his poems. But it was only for the
lighter poems that Reinmar could serve as a model. Walther's
earnest political lays belong to the sphere of poetry, which
Reinmar’s flight never reached.
Yet the education which
Walther derived from his residence at the Court was gained by
no system of learned instruction, nor at that time (any more
than at present) did courtly culture deem learning requisite.
Life, action, the free circulation of ideas, and a readiness to
receive them were the means of instruction, by using which
Walther acquired the deep knowledge of mankind, and the
perfect command over artistic material which are exhibited in
his poems.
Leopold died in 1194, and was succeeded in Austria by his
son Frederick the Catholic, a youth twenty years of age. For
four years Walther enjoyed under his patronage all that a poet
and a patriot could desire, for the Empire was yet in its splendour,
which seemed to wax rather than to wane. But this splendour
was to meet with a speedy and long-lasting eclipse ; and never
again do we find in the poems of Walther the bright
and careless happiness with which they open. Henry VI. the
successor to Barbarossa, succeeded likewise to that idea of the
Empire, which filled the mind of Frederick. He swayed an
Empire greater than any since the time of Charlemagne, and
possessed qualities which rendered him likely to sway one yet
greater. Regarding himself as the heir of the old Caesars, he
deemed his Empire incomplete until all that belonged to them
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers*
411
should own him as its liege lord. Once more the East should be
won back to the West and far-away kings hold their power only
as vassals to the Kaiser. To follow out this idea, and advance
his power in the East he announced a crusade. All preparations
had been made, part of the Eastern countries had acknowledged
his authority, and much more was about to yield, when suddenly,
on the 25th of September, 1197, at Messina, Henry died.
With him died too the splendour of the German Empire; but
it was to this, as it sank lower and lower, that Walther continually
turned his gaze, and it is this which colours his political
poems, and gives them their significance in the eyes of his
countrymen. Yet it was not only the destruction of so much
glory that caused the change in the tone of Walther’s song.
With the national catastrophe his own fall at the Court of
Vienna was nearly contemporaneous. The exact cause of the
Prince’s disfavour is uncertain, but with the departure of
Frederick the Catholic, on Henry’s crusade, Leopold, who was
Regent, began to withdraw the Court patronage from Walther,
and at Frederick’s death in 1198, Walther found himself com
pelled to leave Vienna.
And here it will be well, before we follow him out into the
dark and troublous times which follow, to refer to those poems
which are associated with this period of his life—associated with
it, though it is impossible to assert with certainty that all the
songs of “ Minnedienst ” which we still have were composed
before he left Vienna.
Walther’s poems fall into two divisions. They are either
Minnesongs, such as court-singers of the time were wont to sing,
differing only in degree of excellence from contemporary lays, or
they are poems of an earnest, religious, and political tendency.
Of these latter we shall presently see something. But certainly
the greater part of the former class belong to the Vienna period.
All the fairest and freshest of these' were written before the
trouble came, and possess that charm of conscious happiness
which does not recur. And although, from the nature of the
poems, it is not possible to refer them to a fixed date, a process
of growth and development is to be traced in them. In Wal
ther’s youth court-poetry had not as yet crystallized into those
rigid forms in which development ceases. Nor was the first
inspiration of a young poet’s fancy likely to exhibit itself in the
mould of artificial excellence, at least as long as that freedom
from care, which external circumstances guaranteed, favoured a
spontaneous and happy production of works of art. For this
reason Menzel, unlike Pfeiffer, is inclined to place many of the
“ Lieder” in a later period. He is inclined to think that Walther
did not submit to conventional trammels until the necessity of
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finding an audience and patrons became dominant. Be this as
it may, the songs of the early period are undoubtedly pleasing,
and amongst them may be reckoned the exquisite lyrics:—
“ Undei* der linden, an der lieide,”
and
“ So die bluomen uz dem grase dringent.”
We have altogether about eighty of Walther’s “ Lieder,” but
probably many of the earliest are lost. With those that remain,
some German critics (as was to be expected) have endeavoured
to build up a consistent history of Walther’s youth. Little
success, however, has attended the attempt, and the best critics
dismiss the autobiographical theory altogether. Nor is it
necessary to literary enjoyment that the theory should be estab
lished ; it is better to regard these exquisite poems as blossoms
of a happy period. If indeed we think of him as the laureate
of a dazzling and polite Court, the friend and favourite of a
prince only a little younger than himself, amidst the circum
stances of an Empire whose highest glory did not yet seem to
have been reached, in enjoyment of a reputation that was ever
growing, we shall be more prepared to understand the change
that came over the spirit of his verse when the Empire was
racked by internal dissension, and he himself was sent from the
light and kindliness of a Court into the uncertainty of a wander
ing life.
The condition of the Empire was now such that it might well
leave him in doubt where he should find a home. The rightful
heir to the Imperial throne, Frederich the Second, was a child
three years of age. Besides him Henry had left two brothers,
Otto of Burgundy and Philip of Suabia. Henry’s death set
free all those elements of disorder which his iron hand had kept
in subjection. The Pope would not recognise the claims of
Frederick, and Otto and Philip became competitors for the
crown. Philip was indeed willing to act as regent for the child,
but the partisans of the Hohenstaufen dynasty were cold in
their interest for Frederick, and desired to see Philip himself
Emperor. Meanwhile confusion was universal, the Empire was
wasted in a destructive war, its wealth squandered, and its
power broken. The Court of Vienna took the side of Philip,
and Walther became his poet-champion. It was now that he
commenced those poems or “Sprucke ” which were the first of
their kind, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth, exercised
considerable influence upon events. In the Paris manuscript of
his works there is a picture of the poet musing upon the disorder
of the times. He is represented as a bearded man in the prime
of life; a cap covers his curly hair; he wears a rich blue cloak
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
413
and a red coat, and looks pensively to the ground, whilst in his
right hand he holds a scroll of his poems, which winds upwards
between the escutcheon and crested helm of Vogelweide. And
in somewhat similar attitude the first “ Sprtich ” represents him.
“ I sat upon a stone and mused, one leg thrown over the other; my
elbow rested upon my knee, and upon my hand I leant my head,
cheek, and chin. There I mused with much despair what profit it
were to live now in the world. I saw no way by which a man might
win three things that are good. Two of them are Honour and
Wealth, which often injure each other. The third is God’s Favour,
which is more excellent than the two. Would that I might bring
these into one life. But, alas ! it may not be that Wealth and
Honour and God’s Favour should ever come to one heart again ; the
ways and paths are closed against them. Untruth lies in ambush;
Might rules in the highways, and Peace and Justice are wounded sore.
So the Three can come no more till the Two are healed ” (p. 81).
. To Walther, the only method of healing the wounds of Peace
And Justice seemed to be in electing Philip king. In him he
Irecognised a man strong enough and good enough to stay the
disorders of Germany. And his song gave no uncertain sound.
He says:—
“ The wild beast and the reptile, these fight many a deadly fight.
Likewise, too, the birds amongst themselves. Yet these would hold
themselves of no esteem had they not one common rule. They make
strong laws, they choose a king and a code, they appoint lords and
lieges. So woe to you, ye of the German tongue ; how fares order in
your land ? when now the very flies have their queen, and your honour
perishes ! Turn ye, turn ye. The Coronets grow your masters, the
petty kings oppress you. Let Philip wear the Orphan-diadem, and bid
the princes begone ” (pp. 81-2).
The “petty kings’' are the other competitors for the crown.
The “orphan ” is a jewel in the crown of the Roman emperors.
Albertus Magnus, according to Menzel, says of it:—“ Orphanus est lapis, qui in corona Romani imperatoris est, neque unquam alibi visus; propter quod etiam orphan us vocatur.”
Philip’s chief competitor seemed to be Berthold, of Zuriugen,
and he had on his side Adolphus, the Archbishop of Cologne ;
but as Berthold did not prove an open-handed candidate, Adol
phus entered into negotiations with Richard of England, and
(after being well paid for his trouble), consented to crown
Richard’s nephew, Otto of Poitou, on the 12th of July, 1198.
Previously to this, Otto had taken Aix-la-Chapelle, which had
refused to recognise him, and Philip seeing that there was now
no time to be lost, was crowned in the following September, at
Mayence, by the Archbishop of Treves. This coronation, subse
quently deemed insufficient, was performed with great splendour,
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
and gave hopes to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of once more be
holding an united empire.
The diadem of Charlemagne wherein glittered the peerless z
“ orphan” was placed upon Philip’s head, and amongst those
who swelled the train of the young King and his wife Irene was
Walther. The crown, said Walther, seemed made for him.
“ Older though it be than the king, yet never smith wrought crown
to fit so well. And his imperial head no less becomes the diadem, and
none may part the twain. Each lights the other. The crown is
■brighter by its sweet young wearer, for the jewels gladly shine upon
the true prince. Ah! if any one doubts now to whom the Empire
belongs of right, let him but see if the ‘ Orphan’’ so shines upon
another brow. This jewel is a star that finds the true prince.”
Walther’s enthusiasm for the “sweet young” king seems justi
fied by contemporary evidence. An old chronicle says with quaint
.Latinity ;—“ Erat Phillippus animo lenis, mente mitis, erga homi
nes benignus, debilis quidem corpore, sed satis virilis in quantum
confidere poterat de viribus suorum, facie venusta et decora,
capillo flavo, statura mediocri, magis tenui quam grossa.”
We have, however, now two emperors ou the stage. The
Chronicle has described Philip: Otto presented a complete contrast
to the gentle brother of Henry. Nearly the same age as his
rival, he was a man of lofty and commanding stature and
resembled both in person and character his uncle Richard.
His bravery was rash and impetuous, and his unyielding
severity alienated more hearts than his courage could retain.
The literary tastes of the two Emperors exhibited a contrast
no less striking than that presented by their persons. Otto
listened with pleasure to the masculine strains of the Trouba
dours. Philip heard with delight the soft complaining rhymes of
the Minnesingers. It was by these rhymes that Walther won
the favour of Philip and found admission to his court. But there
was need of something else to be done than to listen to the
strains of troubadour or minnesinger, before either of the rival
Emperors could deem his empire safe. Philip had the wider
support, and Otto, perhaps, the more valuable foreign assistance.
Philip had on his side all South Germany, Bohemia, and Saxony.
He was supported, moreover, by many Episcopal princes both in
the south and in the north. Abroad France was his ally. The
centre of Otto’s power was Cologne, then the chief town of Ger
many, and though his kingdom was more contracted than that
of Philip, the inequality was rendered less dangerous by the effi
cient help which his uncle Richard of England was ready to
supply. Thus all Europe was divided into two parts awaiting
the decision of its destiny. This seemed to hang upon the word
a power which had not yet spoken the Papacy.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
415
Now Walther saw clearly enough, nor yet more clearly than the
Pope himself, that whatever dissensions arose between native
princes, the real antagonistic power to the German Empire was
the papal supremacy. For a man now sat upon the papal chair
whose ambition was even more imperial than that of Henry VI.,
and who possessed an energy of character and a subtle power of
statecraft that seemed likely to bring his designs into effect.
Innocent III. had inherited the ambition and the ideas of
Gregory VII. With him he looked upon the Pope as the
rightful source of all power, as above all kings, emperors and
princes, who received from him their unction and their virtue,
and who held their possessions as vassals of the Bishop of Rome.
This notion he caused to prevail in Italy, and there the papal
power regained all it had lost. The two candidates for the Empire
he contrived for some time to keep without a decisive answer, by
means of evasions and deceptions as unscrupulous as they were
diplomatic. Yet he left no doubt in the minds of Otto’s friends
that he preferred the candidature of their monarch, though it
may have escaped their notice that his chief object was the dis
solution of the Empire, which had stood so firmly under the
dynasty to which Philip belonged. It did not escape the notice
of Walther, and he set himself to work against the papal machi
nations with that patriotic and impassioned enthusiasm with
which his love for the German Empire had inspired him. The
Pope seemed to him the incarnation of the anti-national spirit,
and only that king to be worthy of the name who strove once
more to realize the imperial ideal which had animated Germany
under Barbarossa and Henry. Such a monarch he thought at
this time he recognised in Philip. And since Philip, after his
coronation, had met with some successes in the field, and his
rival had been deprived of his chief support by the death of
Richard, it was not unnatural that he should look upon the
festival which Philip held, Christmas, 119.9, as the dawn of a
better era. The dawn of a better era, however, it was not, in
spite of Walther’s joyous song. The war which Philip was now
waging did not advance his cause, and once more we find
Walther at Vienna, reconciled to Leopold, perhaps, through the
intervention of Philip, or, perhaps, with some political commis
sion to the Duke. Meanwhile (1201) Otto advanced as far as
Alsace, and Philip invaded the district of Cologne, when the
long delayed decision of the Pope fell like a thunderbolt. Otto
was declared Emperor by the title of Otto IV., and Philip, with
his followers, was excommunicated. But though this bull
caused more anger than terror amongst the partisans of Philip,
its practical consequences were serious. Many supporters fell
away, and Walther gave utterance to his grief in a poem
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which deprecates the use of religious weapons for political
purposes.
“ I saw,” he says, “ with mine eyes the secrets of the hearts of men
and women. I heard and saw what each one says and does. At
Rome I found a Pope lying, and two kings (Philip and Frederick)
deceived. Then arose the greatest strife that has been or shall be.
The priests and the people began to take opposite sides, a grief beyond
all griefs. The priests laid down their swords and fought with their
stoles. They laid the bann on whom they would and not on whom
they should, and the Houses of God were desolate ” (pp. 81-3).
In March, of this year, those of Philip’s party who were faith
ful, renewed their oath of allegiance, and a formal protest against
the Pope’s decision was sent to Rome. The Pope received it
with consideration but firmness, and fresh successes followed the
arms of Otto. Philip sought to strengthen his connexion with
France, by an embassy, to which Walther was attached. As we
are at present more interested in Walther than in the history of
events, it will be well to mention a conjecture of some critics,
that it was upon his return from this journey that he wrote his
celebrated song (39) in praise of German ladies:—
i.
“ Ye should bid me welcome, ladies,
He who brings a message, that am I.
All that ye have heard before this,
Is an empty wind, now ask of me.
But ye must reward me.
If my wage is kindly,
Something I can tell you that[will please ;
See now what reward ye offer.
ii.
“ I will tell to German maidens
Such a message that they all the more
Shall delight the universe,
And will take no great payment therefor.
What would I for payment ?
They are all so dear,
That my prayer is lowly, and I ask no more
Than that they greet me kindly.
in.
“ I have seen many lands,
And saw the best with interest.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
417
Ill must it befall me
Could I ever bring my heart
To take pleasure
In foreign manners.
Now what avails me if I strive for falsehood ?
German truth surpasses all.
IV.
“ From the Elbe to the Rhine,
And back again to Hungary,
These are the best lands
Which I have seen in the world.
This I can truly swear,
That, for fair mien and person,
So help me heaven, to look upon,
Our ladies are fairer than other ladies.”
Philip’s supporters continued to fall away and to swell the
ranks of Otto ; his ecclesiastical adherents, terrified by the fulminations of the Pope, were amongst the earliest deserters.
Indeed, at one time it seemed likely that the whole party would
be broken up, but the judicious concessions which Philip made
to the Pope turned the current, and Philip’s cause was strength
ened by the accession of the Bishop of Cologne, who, perhaps,
found Otto ungenerous. At any rate he was now willing (upon
the receipt of pecuniary remuneration) to crown Philip and his
wife. This second coronation took place in 1205. We have no
poem by Walther in reference to it. In fact, he was losing faith
in Philip. The Emperor of Germany should have been a man
firm in will and ready in deed. Philip was not realizing this
ideal. A second coronation was in itself a confession of weak
ness. Bachmann imagines that there had even been a per
sonal quarrel between the king and the poet, but the ground
for such a belief seems hard to find. In J 208 Philip was
assassinated, and Otto was now universally recognised as
Emperor.
Without doubt Walther had been much disappointed in
Philip. He had grown up under Barbarossa and Henry, and
the magnificent ideas of the Empire had grown strong with his
growth. Those brilliant anticipations of supreme dominion in
German hands he expected to see fulfilled by Philip, and they
had not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the papal power, which
he detested, was leaving everywhere a contracted sphere for
another Empire, and, when a year before his death Philip be
came, as a matter of political necessity, reconciled to Innocent,
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Walther, whose ideal monarch was no king, but an emperor,
saw with a despair which is reflected in his poems, the dissolu
tion of his hopes.
From 12O4j to 1207 Walther resided at the Thuringian Court.
This is to be gathered from certain indications in his poems,
and from a consideration, of the history of events. Until 1204
Hermann the Landgrave had been on Otto’s, and Walther upon
Philip’s side. The poet’s residence at the Landgrave’s Court
could not, therefore, have belonged to an earlier period. The
exact length of its duration is uncertain : it was probably three
years. And had Walther been able to see the Empire in a
prosperous state, his days might have been as bright under the
“gentle Landgrave” as they had been at the Court of Vienna.
The Landgrave was not only gentle but generous. His Court
was a regular caravansary of warriors and minstrels. “ Day and
night,” says Walther, “there is ever one troop coming in, and
another going out. Let no one who has an earache come hither,
for the din will assuredly drive him wild.” The Landgrave’s
hospitality was, indeed, unbounded. “ If a measure of good
wine cost a thousand pounds no knight’s beaker would be
empty” (p. 99). And later too, upon another occasion, Walther
sings of his host, that he does not change like the moon, but
that his generosity is continuous. When trouble comes, he re
mains still a support. “ The flower of the Thuringians blossoms
through the snow” (p. 109).
About the year 12Q7 Walther found it necessary to leave the
Court. He had not been without enemies there, especially
amongst those of his own craft. Hermann was not to blame
for this, nor did Walther lose his favour; for later on we find
him again at the Thuringian Court. There seems to have been
two parties amongst the Minnesingers, and Walther was in the
minority. For the next two years Vienna was again his home,
and Leopold forgot or forgave the old quarrel that had been
between them. But he did not long remain here, and his life
until 1211 was unsettled, and was spent at various Courts. But
it will be necessary to bring down the history of the nation to
this period, for several great and important events had occurred.
The death of Philip was followed by an interval, in which
lawlessness and crime prevailed throughout the country. Pillage
and incendiarism desolated the inheritance of the Hohenstaufens,
and recalled to the recollection of the superstitious the comets
and eclipses which had appalled them during the previous year.
Many persons thought that the last day was approaching, and Wal
ther found the signs in the heavens corroborated by the unnatural
wickedness of man. “ The sun,” he says, “ has withheld his
light. Falsehood has everywhere scattered her seeds along the
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
419
way. The father finds treachery in his child; brother lies to
brother. The hooded priest, who should lead us to heaven, has
turned traitor.” It was indeed a dark time for Germany, nor
did it at first appear from what quarter amendment should come.
The real representative of the Hohenstaufen line was the young
Frederick, who was now fourteen years old, but this was no time
for a boy-emperor. Many of those who might have protected
his interests had already joined the party of Otto, a party that
openly took the supremacy when Otto declared his intention of
espousing Beatrice, the daughter of Philip, and the storm of
party passion for awhile abated. The interests of the Empire,
too, clearly pointed to Otto as Emperor. Walther saw this, for
Otto was by no means a man who would not follow up the advan
tages which his position gave him. Personally the poet could
feel little cordiality towards the new monarch, whose patronage
of song would little benefit the Minnesingers. And when Otto
received the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope, in
Rome, it was accompanied by no strain of triumph from Walther.
This coronation was in the autumn of 1209. But Otto, instead
of leaving Italy to its ghostly monarch, remained there for a
year, in which time he restored the imperial authority in Nor
thern and Central Italy, and then marched into Southern Italy.
One result of this policy was inevitable. He was excommuni
cated by the Pope, who now put forward the young Frederick, as
king in his stead. Then first, when Otto was under the Papal
bann, did Walther step forward as his fellow combatant for the idea
of the Empire. As reconciliation with the Pope had estranged
him from Philip, so now it was a variance from the same autho
rity that was to place him upon close terms of sympathy with
Otto. And for the next two years we find Walther at the height
of his political influence. .
The Pope, not contented with the declaration of excommuni
cation, set in motion other measures for Otto’s destruction. Once
more he fanned the subsiding embers of civil discord in Ger
many. At the Pope’s call the Archbishops of Mayence and
Magdeburg, the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Meissen, and
the Landgrave of Thuringia, formed a confederation, whose
object was the deposition of Otto, and the elevation of Frederick
to the throne. This confederation was accomplished in the
autumn of 1211, and was joined by the Archbishop of Treves, and
the Dukes of Bavaria and Austria. In February of the following
year Otto returned from his victorious campaign in Italy once
more to German soil, and held a parliament at Frankfort.
In the political complications which followed these circum
stances, we find Walther an influential diplomatist, for it was
undoubtedly through his influence that the two princes of
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Meissen and Bavaria returned to their allegiance to Otto ; and
the princes themselves thanked him for his services upon that
occasion. Further : through his negotiations the crown of Bohe
mia was given to the Margrave's nephew, and to the Duke’s son
as consort the daughter of the Count Palatine, by which union
the Palatinate afterwards passed into the ducal family. These
important negotiations, and the results which attended them,
give us an adequate notion of Walther’s position at this crisis.
The time came when he found the Margrave forgetful (as even
monarchs may be) of former services, but he could still refer with
conscious dignity to the benefits he had conferred upon the Mar
grave’s family: “ Why should I spare the truth ?” he asks, “ for
had I crowned the Margrave himself the crown had even yet
been his” (p. 157).
But Otto had still important ’enemies. Amongst them was
the Landgrave of Thuringia. Whilst engaged in operations
against him he heard of the approach of Frederick, who with a
gathering retinue of supporters was gradually winning the whole
of the Rhineland and North Germany. In 1213 Frederick
ratified his submission to the Pope, and resigned all German
pretensions to the disputed territory in Italy. Thus for awhile
we have the curious spectacle of a Guelph fighting for that
Imperial idea which should have been the heirloom of the
Hohenstaufens, and a Hohenstaufen carrying the banner of the
Papacy.
Whilst thus the power of Frederick was increasing, and the
followers of Otto were falling away, Walther struggled both as
poet and politician against the Pope, and the corrupt use of
ecclesiastical power for political purposes. That he himself
respected the office of the clergy, and that his own religious
convictions were deep-seated, is certain. He viewed, however,
with aversion the struggle of the Papacy for temporal power,
and the humiliation of the German national spirit In a struggle
of this kind he seemed to see the decay of faith, and the immi
nent ruin of the Church herself, and his language to the Pope
was outspoken from the first. He bade him remember that he
himself had crowned and blessed the Emperor (p. 131) ; he
reminded the people that the same mouth which had pronounced
the bann had declared the blessing (p. 132) ; and he referred the
Pope to the scriptural command, that he should render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's (p. 133). The corruption of
the clergy he rebuked almost with the fire which afterwards was
to belong to Luther.
“ Christendom,” he says, “ never lived so carelessly as now. Those
who should teach are evil-minded. Even silly laymen would not com
mit their crimes. They sin without fear, and are at enmity with
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
421
God. They point us to heaven and themselves go down to hell. They
bid us follow their advice, and not their example.”
Again :—
“ The Pope our father goes before us, and we wander not at all from
his way. Is he avaricious ? So are we all with him. Does he lie ?
We all lie, too. Is he a traitor ? We all follow the example of his
treachery.”
And then he calls him a modern Judas. He accuses him of
simony, and hints at his collusion with infernal powers. Against
the Pope’s attempt to collect tithes in Germany he spoke out
strongly, and not without effect, for his poem on this subject
(116) aroused much bitterness.
Yet even in Otto, the Pope’s enemy, Walther did not find an
Emperor like those whose names he loved. His star waned
before that of Frederick. His manners were marred by an
unroyal boorishness; his Court was the scene of drunken and
disorderly revels, and the flower of poetry no longer blossomed
in its ungracious precincts. In 1214 Walther joined the party
of Frederick. With this new allegiance closes the dependent
period of Walther’s life, for Frederick presented him with a
small estate, which he enjoyed until his death. His first feeling
was one of intense delight, and he celebrated the event in a
strain of fervent gratitude (150). However, in the interval
stretching from 1217 to 1220 he does not appear to have resided
there. Probably he did not find it so valuable as he at first
imagined it to be, when he sang his paean as a landholder.
There were ecclesiastical claims upon it, and he was in no mood
to satisfy them with equanimity. At any rate he determined,
after the residence of a year or two, to betake himself to the
Court of Vienna. It was no longer that brilliant home of poets
and fair women which it had once been. The Duke Leopold
was absent in the Holy Land: his two youthful sons were in
need of an instructor and guardian, and it is probable that until
the return of their father Walther undertook their instruction.
In 1219 Walther greeted the Duke with an ode of welcome
(152), and this is followed by a sarcastic poem (120) directed
against the miserly habits of the Austrian nobility. This poem
may perhaps indicate the reason why Walther left the Court of
Vienna, but all reasoning here rests upon conjecture. A quarrel
between himself and Leopold has been surmised, but upon
insufficient grounds. Then, in 1220, we find him at the Court
of Frederick II. His political muse had been silent since
his adoption of Frederick’s cause: his vehement protestations
against the papal influence were hushed : he aided in no agita
tion for the imperial cause. This silence was probably in
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accordance with Frederick’s wishes. Honorius III. was now
upon the Papal throne, a man of a different disposition from
that of Innocent.
Four important subjects were still matters of consideration
between the Papal and Imperial Courts:—Firstly, the separation
of the Italian and German crowns; secondly, the supremacy of
Lombardy; thirdly, the succession to Matilda; and fourthly,
the fulfilment of Frederick’s promise to enter upon a crusade.
And so long as no open breach had been made in the friendship
of Pope and Emperor, and whilst Frederick was furthering his
views more by policy than war, there was no room for the efforts
of Walther. From this time, however, till 1223 we find several
political odes dictated by his sympathy with Frederick. After
this period he returned to his own estate, and henceforth his
mind seems to have been occupied with religious ideas and the
support of the Crusaders. He did not cease to urge the German
princes to that holy undertaking. Frederick had, long before,
promised Innocent that he himself would lead an army to the
East; he had delayed to do so during the life of Honorius; he
was punished for his delay with excommunication by Gregory IX.,
and set out upon the crusade in 1228. Amongst his followers
was Walther the Minnesinger.
For it is clear that the bright dream of a restored Empire,
which once filled the poet’s mind, had now given place to
another feeling. Fainter and fainter the hope had grown
which inspired so many of his songs. Barbarossa could not
come again; at least not now, and there was no comfort remain
ing, except in religion. An overwhelming longing for the Holy
Land seized him. The last winter a terrible storm had swept
over the country. What else could it denote than the anger of
God at the negligence of Christians who left the Infidel in
undisturbed possession of his Holy City ? The bands of pilgrims
who passed through town and village did not fail to warn those
who lingered that they were incurring the divine wrath. Terror
and enthusiasm took possession of all, and Walther, old and
worn as he was, left once more his home and his repose. His
steps were turned towards the Alps. He travelled through the
Bavarian Oberland, and the Inn Valley, until he came to the
Brenner Pass. There at the foot of the hills lay the place of his
birth, a place which he had not visited since his boyhood. And.
here he wrote the renowned poem (188) which touchingly and
truthfully depicts his feelings:—
“Ay me! Whither are vanished all my years ? Has my life been
indeed a dream, or is it all true ? Was that aught whereof I
believed it was something? Nay, I have slept and knew it
not.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
423
“ Now I have awakened, and no longer know that which of old was as
familiar to me as mine own hand. People and land where I grew
up from a child, these are become strange to me, as though what
is past had never been.
“ They who were playmates of mine are feeble and old; that which
was wild land is planted and trained; the woods are felled. Only
the rivulet flows as it flowed of old ; otherwise my sorrow were
fulfilled.
“ I scarce win a greeting from those who once knew me well; the
World has become ungracious. Of old I had here many a happy
day ; all has fallen away like the print of a stone on the waters,
alas! for evermore.
“ Ay me ! there is a poison in all sweetness. I see the gall above the
honey. Outwardly the World is fair hued, white and green,
inwardly she is black and dark, and coloured with the colour of
death.
“ Yet if she has misled any one, let him take this to heart, for he may
with slight service be free from great sin. Look to it, knights ;
this touches you. Bear the light helm and thering-linked pano
ply of arms;
“ Also the strong shield, and consecrated sword. Would God that I,
too, were worthy to join in the Crusade. Then should I, for all
my poverty, become most rich, though not in land nor lordly
gold;
“ But I should wear that eternal crown, which the simple soldier may
win by his own spear. Could I but fare that happy journey
oversea, then would my song be ‘Joy!’ and never more ‘Ay
me !’ nor ever more ‘ Alas !’ ”
If Walther sang joyous songs after his return from the
Crusade, these songs are no longer to be found. We cannot
doubt, as has been doubted, that he accompanied the expedition
to the Holy City. Two devotional poems (78, 79) remain, which
were probably written later, but they are not songs of triumph.
His voice does not reach us any more; only the grave at
Wurzburg gives further indications of his fate. For he died,
as they say, in 1229, at the age of seventy-two.
Yet another pleasing memorial. In his will the poet left
a sum of money to provide seed which the birds might gather
every day upon his grave. And four holes for water (still to be
seen) were scooped in the stone that covered him. The birds
no longer derive any benefit from his legacy, it is commuted
into a dole which upon his birthday is given to the choristers of
the Church.
It has already been indicated that Walther’s poems fall into
Ff2
�424
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
two divisions, “Lieder” (songs) and “Spriiche” (poems.) These are
different both in form and purpose. A Lied was intended to be
sung to a musical accompaniment; a Spruch was to be read
or recited. The form of a Lied was artistic and severe, that
of a Spruch admitted of anomalies. Their subjects were also
different. The Lied chanted a lover’s hopes and fears, welcomed
the Spring and Summer, bemoaned the Winter, or a lady’s cold
ness ; the Spruch dealt with ethical situations, or, as is mostly
the case in Walther’s poems, expressed strong political convic
tions. A Minnelied was a complex work of art. It comprised
three elements, which may be named, after the German analysis,
the tone, the time, and the text. The tone was the rhythmical
form or metre into which it was thrown ; the tune was the melody
to which it was sung; the text was the verbal wordingof the poem.
A Minnesinger must, therefore, be artist, musician, and poet. Of
the three elements the tone was almost the most important, for it
was no traditional lyric form, but in each case the invention of the
individual poet. No poet could creditably appropriate another’s
metre, nor could any poet repeat without danger to his reputa
tion the same tone upon several occasions. Hence the infinite
variety of tones which characterize the poems of Walther. But
in all this variety one rule prevails—the rule that each stanza
should have three parts (two Stollen and an Abgesang). Each
stanza begins with corresponding portions, and concludes with a
third, differing metrically from the others. To some of Walther’s
poems this triple character is wanting. We may unhesitatingly
assign them to a very early period of the writer’s life. The
following simple little Minnelied is an example :—
“ Winter has injured us every way :
Copseland and woodland are russet and grey,
Where many voices rang merry and gay.
Ah, would that the maidens could come forth to play,
And the birds again carol their roundelay.
“ Would I could slumber the winter through ;
Now, when I waken my heart is low,
In winter’s kingdom of ice and snow.
God knows that at last the winter must go;
Where the ice lingers now flowers will grow.”
To an early period also belongs the poem already referred to,
“ Under der Linden.” It is, perhaps, impossible to reproduce in
English verse the delicate music of this airy lyric. The follow
ing is a literal translation. It preserves the triple division of the
tone:—
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
i.
“ Under the lindens,
On the heather,
Where the couch of us two was,
You may discover,
Both beautiful
Broken flowerbells and grass,
By the woodside in the vale.
Tandaradei,
Sweetly sang the nightingale.
ii.
“ I went, I hastened
To the meadow;
Thither my love had gone before.
There was I welcomed
Lady Mary!
That I am happy evermore.
Did he kiss me ? A thousand times,
(Tandaradei),
See how red my lips are yet.
hi.
“ There he had fashioned
A beautiful
Flowercouch and bed of flowers ;
And laughter arises
In inmost heart,
If any one passes that way;
By the roses he may well
(Tandaradei)
See yet where my head was laid.
IV.
“ That he lay beside me,
Should any know,
(0 God forbid !) I were ashamed.
And what he did with me,
No one—never—
Shall know but he and I alone,
And one dear little bird that sang
Tandaradei,
And he will ever be true.”
425
�426
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
In reference to this poem, Simrock has remarked that the
folksong also is not without instances of lyrics, whose simplicity
throws the magic light of innocence upon situations which would
be intolerable in any other. But in reality to raise a moral
question upon this artless song is wholly inappropriate: the
difficulty for a modern reader is to appreciate the subtle delicacy
and infinite reserve which characterize Minne poetry. To name
his lady’s name was deemed a shameless breach of good taste in a
lover ; and Walther has one indignant poem addressed to those
who sought with some importunity to win such a secret from
him (19). In another graceful little poem (21), he speaks of
his eyes as ambassadors to his lady, ambassadors that return
always with a kindly message. But these eyes are not those of
his corporal vision, for they have long been unblessed by behold
ing her ; they are the eyes of his mind.
“ Es sint die gedanke des herzen min.”
“ Shall I,” asks the poet, “ ever be so happy a man as that she
shall gaze upon me with eyes like mine?”
It was not much, indeed, that the Minnesinger asked from his
lady. That she should smile upon him when he greeted her, or
that, if others were by, she should at least look toward the place
where he stood. A glance threw him into an ecstacyof delight,
yet if his lady endured the presence of other admirers he sank
into the depths of despair. Thence again he rose buoyantly
with the slightest straw of hope. Here is the immemorial
love-oracle (24):
i.
“ In a despairing mood,
I sat me down and pondered.
I thought I would leave her service,
Had not a certain solace restored me.
Solace it may not rightly be called. Alas, no,
It is indeed scarcely a tiny comfort,
So tiny that if I tell you you will mock me,
Yet one is comforted by a little, he knows not why.
ii.
“ Me a blade of grass has made happy,
It tells me that I shall find favour.
I measured this selfsame little blade,
As of old I have seen children do.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
427
Now listen and mark if it does so again.
‘ She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she does not, she does.’
As oft as I have done it, the result is good,
That comforts me ; but one must have faith, too.”
Who the lady was whom Walther wooed is unknown now, if
it was known in his time. It has been conjectured that she
was of low birth, and the following poem (14) gives some
ground for the conjecture. Walther’s treatment of the sub
ject is different from the way in which Horace handled a subject
of similar nature.
i.
“ Maiden, heart beloved of me,
God give thee ever help and aid ;
And were there any dearer name,
That would I gladly call thee.
What can I dearer say than this,
That thou art well beloved of me ? Alas! ’tis this that pains me.
n.
“ They taunt me oft that I
Turn to a lowly maid my song.
That they can never know
What love is, is their punishment.
Love never came to those
Who woo for wealth or beauty. 0 what love is theirs ?
ill.
“ Hate often follows beauty ;
Be none too eager for it.
Love is the heart’s best tenant,
Beauty stands after love.
’Tis love makes lady fair,
Beauty can not do this, it never made lady fair.
IV.
“ I bear it as I have borne
And as I shall ever bear it.
Thou art fair and wealthy enough,
What can they tell me of this ?
�4'28
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Say what they will, I love thee.
The crystal ring that thou givest is better than royal gold.
*
v.
“ If thou art faithful and true,
Then I am thine without fear;
Thine—that no sorrow of heart
Can come against me by thy will.
If thou art neither of these,
Then thou canst never be mine. Ah me, should this happen to be!”
In another poem (17), however, he praises his lady’s beauty
with much enthusiasm. The following stanza runs more lightly
into the mould of English verse :—
“ God formed with care her cheeks so bright
And laid such lovely colours there,
Such perfect red, such perfect white,
Here tinted rose, there lily fair,
That I will almost dare to say
On her with greater joy I gaze
Than on the sky and starry way.
Alas ! what would my foolish praise ?
For if her pride should grow,
My lip’s light word might work my heart some bitter woe.”
But in fact it is useless arguing from these poems to the actual
circumstances of the poet’s life. The Minne of this period was
after all rather a subject of the imagination than a passion of
the heart. The nameless lady whose praise a poet sang, be
longed to the ideal portion of his life. We find nowhere among
the poems of the Minnesingers songs which celebrate what we call
“ domestic happiness,” or which look forward to nuptial union.
The ideal and the real were kept widely sundered by the knights
and poets of Minne. In actual life the poet composed and sang
these Lieder at the court of some noble patron, whose approval
was his reward. Often he sang, too, with the hope of receiving
a more substantial recognition, the gift, perhaps, of a small estate
where he might settle, and marry the daughter of a neighbour
ing vassal landholder. For her, however, there were certainly
neither Stollen nor Abgesang. She reared his children, and
directed his frugal household. She managed the estate in sum* A glass ring for pledging a lover’s faith was not unfrequently used in the
Middle Ages by the poorer classes.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
429
mer whilst he visited his patrons, gave orders to his servants and
herself set arrow to bow, if any burglarious miscreant attacked
the house. Possibly the poet appreciated what she did, and was
a good husband and father. But the domestic life lacked poeti
cal utterance ; it was not within the region of the art of the
time. Hence there is an artificial atmosphere about the whole
circle of Minnesong. It does not come into close contact with
real life. It is, if not in opposition, at least in contrast with the
masculine and adult energy by which the German character of
the Middle Ages was marked. Minnesong was of the court,
courtly. It sprang, it is true, from the same source as the great
folk-epic of Siegfried and Brunhild, but the waters of that fer
tilizing stream were diverted now to rise in the private fountains
and tinkling cascades of royal gardens. If Walther’s muse had
been confined to this line of poetry alone, the poems which he
has left us would amply have justified the title which has been
assigned him in this paper. But his large and earnest nature is
inadequately commemorated in such a title. He was the
greatest of the Minnesingers, and he was much more. He
was a politician penetrated with the idea of the necessity of
German union. In his maturer years he applied himself more
and more rarely to the composition of Lieder, and in the later
works there is breathed a very different spirit from that which
animates the lyrics of the Court of Vienna. We find in them
the real life of the poet, as we should expect to find it, when a
poet is possessed by an idea which is neither selfish nor small.
The idea which possessed Walther was a great one, and has
never been absent from the best minds of Germany, the idea of
national union. What suffering, what immense power run to
waste would have been spared that noble country, if the dream of
our Minnesinger had been realized five centuries ago. This
was not to be. Perhaps even now the full attainment is distant.
But it is well for his countrymen to look back upon his pen
sive figure seated, as shown in the Paris manuscript, in the atti
tude of deep thought.
M Ich saz uf eime steine
Und dahte bein mit beine,
Bar uf sast’ ich den ellenbogen;
Ich hete in mine hant gesmogen
Min kinne und ein min wange.
Do dahte ich mir vil ange,
Wes man zer werlte solte leben.”
For strangely enough, the ecclesiastical and political contest
of the present day, has much resemblance to that which was
fought in the times of Walther. To-day, as then, Rome and the
�430
Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.
Empire dispute the point of supremacy. The question at issue
may be disguised and deceive even the wise and far-sighted.
But the present is not the first time that Rome has learnt to
throw an appearance of right over audacious and transcendant
injustice. Five hundred years ago she failed to blind to her
designs the vision of our Minnesinger, and now-a-days, happily
there are men numerous enough and strong enough to be true to
the spirit of these poems of Walther, and to insist upon wrest
ing from the hands of Rome, at least the national education
of their children.
“ Tiuschiu zuht gat vor in alien.”
Art. VIII.—Moral Philosophy
at
Cambridge.
First Principles of Moral Science. A Course of Lectures
delivered in the University of Cambridge. By Thomas
Rawson Birks, Knightsbridge, Professor of Moral Philo
sophy. London : Macmillan and Co. 1873.
EARLY forty years have passed since Mr. Mill, in his review
of Professor Sedgwick’s celebrated Discourse, declared that
“ the end, above all others, for which endowed universities exist,
or ought to exist, is to keep alive philosophy.” The “ studies of
the University of Cambridge” in 1835 were not the studies of
the present year. In every department there has been progress.
Great reforms have been instituted from without: those which
have proceeded from within have still been greater. Unattached
students have received recognition. Dissenters, at first admitted
within college precincts for study and then allowed to graduate,
after many years of probation have been placed on a footingof equa
lity in the competition for college fellowships. The badge ofcreed
has been abolished: the stigma of sex is passing away. Lec
tures and Examinations for Women have been inaugurated, and
there is a fair prospect of the entire removal, at no distant time,
of the intellectual disabilities under which they still labour.
University influence has been extended far beyond the boundaries
of Cambridge by the institution of Local Examinations; and
more recently still, by the official establishment of Courses of
Lectures by university men in provincial towns. New professor
ships have been founded. Degrees are conferred for proficiency
n Moral and in Natural Science. The course of study for the
�1875]
The Civil Service.
of obtaining a good article. By the
time this number is in the reader’s
hands the intentions of the Govern
ment may possibly have been ex
pressed, and whether it determines
to try the scheme of the Commis
sioners at first upon some one office
as an experiment, or to let the
matter drop as one beyond its
energies and strength, it is certain
that the warm thanks both of the
Civil Service and the public are
due to Dr. Lyon Playfair and his
colleagues for the ability with which
they have sifted an almost over
whelming mass of evidence, and for
the courage with which they have
exposed what the real grievances
are under which the public service
suffers.
But though, in our opinion, such
thanks are due, it is evident that,
so far as the Civil Service is con
cerned, they have not been generally
accorded. Mr. Farrer, in the Fort
nightly Review for May has forcibly
answered the three principal objec
tions which appear to have been taken
to the recommendations of the Com
missioners, and though he seems to
attach more weight than we should
to such of the opinions of the Service
as a.re ‘ expressed by their organs
in the press,’ it is undoubtedly a
fact that the report has been re
ceived with much disfavour.
In this, however, the Com
missioners have only shared the
VOL. XI.—NO. LXVI.
NEW SERIES.
729
common fate of all who attempt to
reform professions. The obstinate
resistance offered by the Proctors
to the reformation in Doctors’
Commons will be remembered by
many ; the gloomy predictions with
which the Abolition of Purchase
was greeted by the Colonels in and
out of Parliament are still fresh in
the memory of all. But it is to
be hoped and expected that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, if
clearly convinced that the proposals
of the Commissioners are really
sound and salutary, will have the
courage of his opinion, and will not
sacrifice a national reform to noisy
professional clamour.
Individual
cases of hardship should be met by
liberal or even lavish compensation,
rather than be allowed to constitute
arguments for continuing abuses in
the Public Service.
The Civil Service of England
deserves good and generous treat
ment at the hands of the country.
It has never been servile like that
of Russia; it has never been
‘ bureaucratic ’ like that of France ;
it has never been corrupt like that
of America ; and if the abuses in it
be swept away and steps be taken
to supply it with proper organisation
and payment, it will be in the future,
even more than it has been in the
past, a legitimate source of pride
and strength to the Nation and
Sovereign it serves.
A. C. T.
3 E
�
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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 Ethical Society
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The greatest of the Minnesingers
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 406-430 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Review of Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und Sacherklarungen. Begrundet von Franz Pfeiffer, Erster Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1870 and Des Leben Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: B.G. Trubner, 1865. From Westminster Review 45 (April 1874).
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Book reviews
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
German Literature
Germany
Minnesingers
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Text
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.
�
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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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.
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G5606
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Book reviews
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[Unknown]
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[n.d.]
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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 (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>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Unitarianism
-
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PDF Text
Text
Literary Notices.
LITERARY NOTICES.
The Earthward Pilgrimage. By Moncure D. Conway. London: John
Camden Hotten. 1870.
Mr. Conway in this book has accomplished a rare feat of intellectual dar
ing in a country where acts of such positive religious non-conformity have
to be paid for, even by such men as John Stuart Mill, with a seat in Parlia
ment. Indeed, the sincerity, the plainness of speech, and fearlessness as to
all consequences, which mark each line of this book, cannot sufficiently be
commended, as manifested amid a people whose mental health is mortally
injured by the cancer of cant. The practical value of the work is, moreover,
enhanced by the popular method in which the subject is treated, which will
probably insure it a wide circle of miscellaneous readers.
The introductory chapter is a very clever parody of Bunyan’s allegory.
The pilgrim has, according to immemorial prescription, journeyed to the
domain of the prince of other-worldliness ; where, after having overcome the
well-known difficulties, he finds himself comfortably settled on a purple cloud,
blowing a golden trumpet: —
“ For a time this was pleasant enough. The purple cloud acted as a screen
against many disagreeable objects. The dens of misery and vice, the hard
problems of thought, the blank misgivings of the wanderers amid worlds
unrealized, were all shut out from view; and though I was expected, as a
matter of course, to say I was a miserable sinner, it was with the distinct
understanding that I was all the more our Prince’s darling for saying so.”
This existence, however, becomes somewhat stale. He is also struck by
some new facts about him. He notices that the wayfarers who now enter
the celestial city in crowds, so far from being worn out from their painful
journey, have a sleek and fat appearance. He converses with some of them,
and learns “ that the celestial railway had been opened, and that this had led
to a tide of immigration. The pilgrim could now travel in a first-class car
riage, and his pack be checked through. A pilgrim has since made the
world familiar with this result of the enterprise of Mr. Smooth-it-away.
His account, however, is, as I have learned, not entirely accurate; for in
stance, the Slough of Despond was not filled up by volumes of French
and German philosophy, but by enormous editions of an English work,
showing the safest way of investing in both worlds. Moreover, it is but just
to say that the engineering feat by which the Hill Difficulty was tunneled is
due to Prof. Moonshine, whose works, showing that the six days of creation
mean six geoligical periods, and that miracles are 'due to the accelerated
workings of natural law, also furnished the patent key by which many pil
grims are enabled to pass with ease through Doubting Castle.” The dan
gers and difficulties now, on the contrary, beset the travelers who would
�Literary Notices.
r-
T57
journey from, not to, the Celestial City; 'and our pilgrim, therefore, prepares
to bend his steps in the direction of the city of Destruction, to which he
must go through the tedious paths of study, ideality, and devotion.
Thus by a glittering thread of fun are we lured on to face the grave prob
lems of the present. The pilgrim lifts the mask from the apparently flour
ishing creed and beholds a death’s head grinning behind. Wherever you
touch what looks like a solid body, the seeming substance, as though you
handled a mummy,'crumbles into dust. There in Canterbury Cathedral an
archbishop is consecrated to the music of the very chant, probably, which
was sung by Augustine and his monks as they marched from the sea-shore
to Canterbury. But now what a mere farce it is, not influenced by nor
influencing the stirring realities around it! Here in St. Albans the ritualists
believe that with the revival of mediaeval candles and vestments they can
also rekindle the old fervent faith that has for ever passed'out of them.
Wherever we turn we may see in fact, what the poet has revealed by the
searing lightnings of lyric wrath, how —
Mouldering now, and hoar with moss,
Between us and the sunlight swings
The phantom of a Christless cross,
Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings.
1
But Mr. Conway does not rest contented with exposing the purely forced
existence of the Christian religion in this country, which, by a capital
stroke of fancy, he likens to the fauna or flora of the tropics, only flourishing
in an English park by the help of an artificial habitat. In his effort to act
as a dissolvent on petrified dogmas he seeks to deprive Christianity of part
of its prestige by demonstrating how its roots have derived their nourish
ment from the buried remains of Hindu, Greek, Scandinavian mythologies.
So far from being a direct and abrupt revelation, it is an organic religious
development which has absorbed into its life the spiritual and ethical sap of
bygone faiths. Thus the cross, that most characteristic symbol of what is
deepest in Christianity, casts its shadow far back on the first glimmer of reli
gious thought. Christmas, believed to be hallowed by the birth of Jesus of
Nazareth, has sacred associations and holly and mistletoe entwined round it
by a gray pagan past, now buried sphyhx-like beneath the accumulated sands
of centuries.. The evil spirits haunting the hill and river sides of mediaeval
Europe were but the transformed shapes of gods and goddesses now luring
the ill-starred wanderer on to eternal perdition. Even the pitiless ugliness
of those images that leer in stone from portal and crypt of the Gothic dome
are but gracious Nix and Elf pressed into the service of Hell.
The author, however, does not confine his onslaught to the religious petri
factions of thought. Secular forms of prejudice rouse his indignation no
less. The Madonna is the starting-point which leads him to the Woman’s
Suffrage. He contends that/ woman’s influence on politics would be of
incalculable benefit, and aptly remarks : “ She is inharmonious with every
�158
Literary Notices.
remnant of barbarism, with all that is passing away — with war, with husf>
ing mobs ; but how stands she related with the society for which good men
are striving ? ”
From Moses to Shelley seems also a wide leap, yet the author boldly
takes it, and asserts that wherever a right and true man stands there is
Mount Sinai. Shelley, of course, offers the best possible occasion to casti
gate that spirit of narrow bigotry which was so rampant in school, univer4
sity, church, and state, and is still sufficiently thriving to convert the English
Sunday to a period of monotonous gloom and lethargy. We cannot here
refrain from pointing out the remarkable influence exerted by Shelley over
different classes of minds. Whereas Mr. Morley, for example, in fiis excel
lent article on Byron, speaks of the “ abstract humanitarianism ” of Shelley,
Mr. Conway, on the other hand, selects him as the most typical figure of the
' revolutionary poet. The fact is that his genius transcends either of these
estimates. So far from having less fellow-feeling for the sufferings of hu
manity than Byron, he was so tortured that he might well say, —
“ I am but as a nerve o’er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of the earth.”
i
But he had imbued himself too deeply with the inmost spirit of nature not
to feel the unity of life at all moments of it, and that is a temper of mind
incompatible with the aggressive rebellion which moans and thunders
through Byron’s verse. Shelley, however, brings not “the first streak of
the day of Humanity,” as Mr. Conway says : his soul rather projects the
rays of its genius into an incalculably remote future where the transposed
paradise of Dante and Milton lure on the lagging feet of mankind with the
divine magic of ideal beauty.
From Shelley the transition to Mary Wollstonecraft is natural enough.
This truly brave-hearted woman, the first to agitate the question of the sub
jection of women in that large, liberal spirit more characteristic of the close
of the last century than of our age, should never be named without rever
ence-as having inaugurated the movements whose influence is but now posi
tively manifest. Her name inextricably connected with the protest against
our present marriage laws, she herself an example of the persecution dealt
inexorably by society against any one who dares attack its cherished strong
holds, leads Mr. Conway on to treat of some of the drawbacks and injurious
consequences of that institution. That such but too truly exist no one who
unites perfect sincerity with clearsightedess will deny. Sensuality, hypoc
risy, and moral corruption, are but too often the direct result of a union
which was doubtless intended to act as a safeguard against much misery and
vice. But it is not so much a liberation from without as from within that
must be effected ere there can be any hope of a beneficial renovation in the
relations between the sexes. Else probably confusion, misery, and a thou
sand-fold increase of degradation, would be the result of a change. An
effective re-adjustment of the laws relating to marriage can only be hoped
. i
�Literary Notices.
159
for when the entire position of the female sex will have undergone a radical
transformation through the changes which are even now taking place,
■woman, who has hitherto found hpr most sacred place in the marriage tie,
will never wantonly loosen it; but with her delicate perceptions of moral rectitude, she will also, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that her appar
ently fair domain flourishes at present over bottomless morasses of human
(putrescence; and, if she has but once thought the thought to the end, she
will not stay her feet for any moral cowardice as to the possible effects of
change. There can be no doubt then that this question, like many others,
should, from time to time, be theoretically aired. Though the accumulated
dust which will be set flying in all directions by that process may prove
rather trying to weak lungs and sore eyes, there is no doubt that the act is a
salutary one, and the more disagreeable it is the more should the author be
thanked for taking the office into his own hands.
From a literary point of view we cannot award the same unqualified praise
to “ The Earthward Pilgrimage,” which most unreservedly we give to its
moral qualities. We find in it a certain crudity of material and a diffuse
ness of expression which often seems to grope around its object rather than
hit straight at the heart of it. In one word, the matter collected by vast
and varied reading has not exactly been fused in the heat of the writer’s
own mind, and hence to emerge a re-shapen whole. The parts might, like
ore which has particles of its original bed still clinging to it, be tracked back
to various layers of thought.
But this, we fancy, is less a characteristic of Mr. Conway’s method than of
the American literary process generally. It seems as if the boundlessness
and wealth of the world possessed such an irresistible charm for this young,
impetuous nation, that its writers rush headlong to the four quarters of the
globe to gather in their multitudinous facts, while scarcely allowing them
selves sufficient time to let the accumulated seeds germinate afresh in the
soil of their own minds. What their literature chiefly lacks (with some re
markable exceptions of course) is that distinguishing flavor which imparts
to a product of the intellect somewhat of the quality of good wine, where the
peculiar earthy qualities which nourished it now linger on the palate, trans
muted into an ethereal bloom of taste.
It would, however, be ungracious and hypercritical to dismiss a book,
which will doubtless do more effectual work than many more labored pro
ductions, with any words of dissent or dispraise. What is urgently required
in England is precisely work of a kind that shall leaven the thought of the
great mass of readers. In Germany and France the modern era of free
thought has long ago been victoriously ushered in by such master minds as
Lessing and Voltaire. In England, on the other hand (though at one time
in the van of both these nations as regards philosophical speculation of the
boldest kind), the fact of the body of the people being steeped in Puritanism
necessitates that the work shall be done over again in a more popular form.
The surest way of accomplishing this is by propelling the shafts aimed at
�160
Literary Notices.
superannuated myths and dogmas on the light breath of persiflage. The
chapters in which Mr. Conway has succeeded in raising a hearty laugh at
the cost of the venerable anachronisms that stili flourish amongst us are, in
our opinion, the most useful as well as the most brilliant ones of his book.
Mathilde Blind.
Song-Tide, and other Poems. By Philip Bourke Marston.
erts Brothers. 1871.
Boston : Rob
Mr. Marston, who here prints his first volume of poems, is a son of the
editor of “ The London Atheneum,” and has been afflicted with blindness
from an early age. As we read, however, we are disposed to imagine that
he would resent our saying he has been afflicted; for the day shines in these
verses, the color of roses and the sky are revealed as by sight, the forms of
women, the outlines of landscapes, are clearly defined. This objective life
is a rather surprising element to observe here. But the poems chiefly deal
with the moods of love, absence, anticipation, the joys of music, the sub
jective life of passion. Sometimes the page is a little too Swinburnish.
Where ? asks instantly the reader who dotes upon being referred to an
indelicacy, and likes a critic whose deprecation points a passage clearly
with page and line.
There are fifty or more sonnets, which seem to us the best, though not,
perhaps, the most highly colored and attractive portion of the volume. They
show a refined and gentle taste, and a musical ear. And their simplicity is
a good omen for Mr. Marston, for when he reaches a more mature expres
sion, and busies himself with subjects of a longer breath, he will be fore
armed against the new tendency to verbal dexterities and conflagrations of
style.
„ J. W.
Little Men. By Louisa M. Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.
A delightful book for the young — and the oldest grow young as they turn
its pages. Miss. Alcott deserves and receives, we know, the heartfelt thanks
of all little men and women the world over where her books have found
their way. The publishers’ report shows that everybody who read “ Little
Women ” is reading “ Little Men,” and they will not regret it, we are sure.
�
Dublin Core
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Earthward Pilgrimage
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Blind, Mathilde
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 156-160 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: A review from an unknown journal, possibly The Radical, 1871 or 1872, of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage'. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871-2?]
Identifier
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G5591
Rights
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<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><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Unitarianism