2 10 94 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/8734f9b8c9f23fdf5dbc0e923b448d82.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=nitvTEMDTD%7E2hn5Cpxuk-YmpEqR8-l93yZJu4d1yQpWFqlA81D8fvPK-7bNbZRieJHQuSvYMJzMqdL1uElD%7E-pyzR0Xjwg%7EvTaR-xmGFwQEcQ%7EcKMTIiHDDKBDZ%7ETLakY6qFK5Hr1ELNKRMN0YvDHb9wASUMZP0pUBNsAxQ-mc7K4koFQ-L6%7ECZqI8kzPCfffr4huIa1yTTR3DQC1kQruEb94VMKrOdvs61PGzE9k4IM-HblhIf%7E4tJMvLl8lnlbAGBrvcZ1rjHgKHeBcg6ec2kHcM2Miaw45gjd-WsV%7E8ML4UqhohqRsDgSfxMNpQWF%7EIEu96AUCNVuzfJt2L4PpQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f0962fdcc403cb342c0aed562bafdb74 PDF Text Text KJ 4^ MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT BY S. LAING AUTHOR OF “PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE," »A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN,” “HUMAN ORIGINS,’’ ETC. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE AUTHOR BY EDWARD CLODD * ■ * (ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Ltd.) LONDON WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. ��INTRODUCTORY NOTE The career of the author of this book was long, varied, and distinguished. His father, Samuel Laing, after service in the Peninsular War, became, on the death of an elder brother, Malcolm Laing, who was author of a meritorious “ History of Scotland,” owner of the family estates in Orkney, where, for a time, he developed the kelp industry with success. He is remembered as the author of “Travels in Sweden and Norway,” which may still be read with advantage for its trustworthy sketches of the general conditions of life in Scandinavia sixty years ago. But, from the standpoint of scholarship, he did more valuable work in translating the “ Heimskringla,” or chronicles of the kings of Norway, compiled in. the twelfth century by an Icelandic poet-historian, Snorri Sturleson. The lyrical portions of this old saga were translated by the subject of this brief notice. After some vicissitudes of fortune, the father settled in Edinburgh, where Samuel Laing was bom on 17th December, 1811. That is the date given by his friend Mr. C. C. Macrae, in a privately-printed memoir issued in 1899, and may be accepted as against the date 12th December, 1812, which is given in the “ Dictionary of National Biography.”1 His education.was begun at Houghton-leSpring Grammar School, whence he passed as a “ pensioner” (the term means one who pays for his commons out of his own income) to St. John’s College, Cambridge. He graduated as second wrangler and second Smith’s prizeman, and in 1834 was elected a Fellow of his College. For three years he was a mathematical “ coach,” and in June, 1837, was called to the bar, where his acumen seized an opening as counsel in connection with the many railway schemes then agitating the community. The place and prominence which he thus secured led to his start in political life as secretary to Mr. Henry Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton) who was then (1839) President of the Board of Trade, and in the following year he was appointed Counsel to the newly created Railway Department of that Board. Insistence on the detail of the enormous volume of work which this involved is needless here, but an example of its onerous nature may be cited from Mr. Macrae. “ In one session, 1845, the Board reported on 331 separate Bills for various railways, and on these no less than 240 separate reports were presented, each of which, supplying ’In the ninth edition of “ Men of the Time” (1875) the date 1810 is given. �vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE. exhaustive analyses and criticisms, was entirely drafted by Mrs Laing.” His reputation as a great railway administrator was yet to be made, but his influence was manifest in many ways, notably in securing the daily running of the “ Parliamentary ” or penny a mile trains, and it is admitted that had his counsels been heeded, the results of the crisis which followed the wild railway speculation! of that time would have been less disastrous. In 1848, he accepted the Chairmanship and Managing Directorship of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, a position which, in the first instance, he held till 1855. Three years before his retirement therefrom he entered Parliament as Liberal member for Wick, but in 1857 his farsighted and creditable opposition to the war against China cost him his seat. Two years afterwards he regained it, becoming in June, 1860, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a position which was exchanged for the important post of Finance Minister of India, in succession to the eminent economist James Wilson, father-in-law of Walter Bagehot, a man never to be named without words of regret for the grievous loss to literature and economics which his early death involved. Wilson had been carried-off by dysentery in August, 1860, and Samuel Laing’s reputation marked him as the fittest man to continue the task of reform rendered necessary by the financial disorganisation into which the Mutiny and other serious causes had thrown the revenue and expenditure of India. By prudent economies and readjustment of taxes, Laing converted a deficit into a surplus, but the laborious work so told upon his health that his return to England was compulsory. In 1865 he re-entered Parliament, and in 1867 resumed his old position as Chairman of the Brighton Railway, from which he retired only three years before his death, which occurred on the 6th August, 1897. He lost his seat in 1868, and four years passed before he was back at St. Stephen’s; this time as representative of Orkney and Shetland, for which constituency he sat until his final retirement from political life in 1885. It was then, when most men have warrant for margin of rest as fringe to an active career, that Samuel Laing began the writing of a series of volumes popularising the discoveries of modern science and the conclusions based on those discoveries. Of these, “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” was the earliest, and remains the most acceptable. The veteran author wrote with no prentice hand. .From time to time he had published pamphlets on political and social questions ; his long training in the drafting of reports, and in the clear and compendious presentment of abstruse matters, was enviable qualification for the self-imposed task of his old age. Hence his skilful disentanglement of essentials from accidentals, and of the general from the particular, rendered his books as useful as they were opportune. Some twenty years before this he had done good and original work in science. Under the title of “ Prehistoric Remains in Caithness,” he published, in 1866, an account of stone implements, rude pottery, human and other bones found in “kists ” in burial mounds, and in “middens ” or shell-refuse heaps, in the neighbourhood of Keiss Castle. To this Professor Huxley �INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii added a supplement of fifty pages, describing and illustrating the human skulls, nine in all, and other portions of skeletons, some of which were grouped as Thaymn or pre-Celtic. Mr. Laing expressed an opinion, warranted by the split bones discovered among miscellaneous witnesses of feasting, that “ these aboriginal savages were occasionally cannibals. His interest in science was, therefore, no new-born thing, and the prominence given to the human theme in all his books was the sequence (interrupted by the claims of important commercial undertakings on his time) of years of observation, of reading, and of reflection. The main part of the book now reprinted deals with man physically and psychically, and the titles of three out of its four successors—namely, “A Modern Zoroastrian ” (1887), Antiquity of Man” (1891), and “Human Origins” (1892)—evidence what a foremost place the large question of man’s evolution and destiny filled in his mind. The first part of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” is now sub­ jected only to such revision as is required by the advance of knowledge during the last seventeen years. The portions thus affected are those dealing with the continuity of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man in Continental Europe; with the recent discovery of remains, probably of an intermediate form between man and ape, in Java ; and with the remarkable discoveries in Babylonia, which appear to accord to that empire an earlier civilisation than that of Egypt. But the general conclusions, as stated by the venerable author, are strengthened by the newer evidence. In the second part, only a few verbal corrections have been made,' since the arguments which are therein advanced against the theory of the supernatural origin of the several documents making-up the New Testament, and, consequently, against the claims as to revelation advanced on its behalf, need neither addition or revision. And for the rest, we have the author’s confession of j faith, and sage remarks on motives to right conduct, making appeal to minds of the most opposite beliefs in a spirit which must ensure sympathy, if it does not win assent. The writer of this note had not the advantage of Samuel Laing’s personal acquaintance, and it is, therefore, permissible to draw upon Mr. Macrae’s memoir for some presentment of the man. “He had the healthy body as well as the healthy mind; from youth till advanced age he delighted in all field sports. He was fond of good art and music ; his tastes in both were classical and old-fashioned. Beethoven and the Italian Operatic composers were his favourites; ‘ but he could not tolerate the formless­ ness of the modern school led by Wagner.’ His conversation had distinction; he detested gossip and idle talk. He had a retentive memory, and- ‘his accuracy, even to historical details, was astonishing.’ His favourite authors were Scott and Tennyson; in latter life, however, his reading was mainly restricted to scientific books. His charities, always unostentatious, ‘ were, in proportion to his means, liberal,’ and their variety manifested his toleration. Open-minded, he harboured �INTRODUCTORY NOTE viii never a prejudice : nor was his equanimity ever ruffled, ‘ so that the idea of a Stoic sage had become with him a habit of daily life and conduct.’ ... ‘He believed in the people—in the masses—in their broad common-sense and honest judgment on large questions which they understood, and it was mainly to their instruction that he looked in the books that he wrote. His ideals were a plain, simple manner of life, manly conduct and honest- work. His own long life was throughout an example of these things, and as he had lived, so he continued to the end.’ ” Edward Clodd. June 21 st, 1902. �AUTHOR’S PREFACE The object of this book is to give a clear and concise view of the principal Jesuits of Modern Science, and of the revolution which they have effected in Modern Thought. I do not pretend to discover fresh facts or to propound new theories, but simply to discharge the humbler though still useful task of present­ ing what has become the common property of thinking minds, in a popular shape, which may interest those who lack time and opportunity for studying special subjects in more complete and technical treatises. I have endeavoured also to give unity to the subjects treated of, by connecting them with leading ideas; in the case of Science, that of the gradual progress from human standards to those of almost infinite space and duration, and the prevalence of law throughout the universe to the exclusion of supernatural inter­ ference; in the case of Thought, the bearings of these discoveries on old creeds and philosophies, and on the practical conduct of life. The endeavour to show how much of religion can be saved from the shipwreck of theology has been the main object of the second part. Those who are acquainted with the scientific literature of the day will at once see how much I have been indebted to Darwin, Lyell, Lubbock, Huxley, Proctor, and other well-known writers. In fact, the first part of this book does not pretend to be more than a compendious popular abridgment of their works. I prefer, therefore, acknowledging my obligations to them once for all, rather than encumbering each page by detailed references. The second part contains more of my own reflections on the important sub. jects discussed, and must stand or fall on its own merits rather than on authority. I can only say that I have endeavoured to treat these subjects in a reverential spirit* and that the conclusions arrived at are the result of a conscientious and dispassionate endeavour to arrive' at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” ��CONTENTS PART I MODERN SCIENCE CHAPTER I PAGE 1 Comets, and Meteors—Has acted through all Time. CHAPTER II 8 Modern Thought. CHAPTER III 19 Sd Motion-Conservation of Energy-Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action _ Dissipation of Heat—Birth and Death of Worlds. CHAPTER IV 29 L -n f t <51Tnr>lpqt Form Protoplasm—Monera and Protista—Animal and VeZabh°f ?'ri“ 'T’f or Supernatural Theory-Zoological Provinces-Separate Creations-Law ’:: OpHs MSde-DarwSn Theory-Struggle for Life-Survival of the Fittest-Development and Design—The Hand—Proof required to establish Darwin s Theory as a Law Species—Hybrids—Man subject to Law. CHAPTER V 39 ANTIQUITY OF MAN.......................................................................................................... . „ „ a , ■Rplipf in Man’s Recent Origin—Boucher de Perthes’ Discoveries—Confirmed by moth, etc.—Human Types—Neanderthal, SPY’^^^^Dwdfings^lacia^ —Bronze Age—Neolithic—Danish Kitchen-middens—Swiss Lake-Dwellings Glacial Period—Traces of Ice—Causes of Glaciers-Croll’s Theory-Gulf Stream-Dates of Glacial Period-Rise and Submergence of Land-Tertiary Man-Eocene PenodMiocene—Evidence for Pliocene and Miocene Man—Conclusions as to Antiquity. �xii CONTENTS CHAPTER VI man’s place in nature............................................... Origin of Man from an Egg—Like other Mammals—Development of the EmbryoBackbone—Eye and other Organs*of Sense—Fish, Reptile, and Mammalian Stages— Comparison with Apes and Monkeys—Germs of Human Faculties in Animals—The Dog-Insects—Helplessness of Human Infant-Instinct-Heredity and EvolutionThe Missing Link—Races of Men—Leading Types and Varieties—Common Origin Distant-Language-How formed-Grammar-Chinese, Aryan, Semitic, etc.-Con­ clusions from Language-Evolution and Antiquity-Religions of Savage RacesGhosts and Spirits—Anthropomorphic Deities—Traces in Neolithic and Palaeolithic limes—Development by Evolution—Primitive Arts—Tools and Weapons-Fire— Hint Impiements—Progress from Paleolithic to Neolithic Times—Domestic Animals —Clothing—Ornaments—Conclusion, Man a Product of Evolution PASS 65 < PART II MODERN THOUGHT CHAPTER VII MODERN THOUGHT .................................................................... 83 Lines from Tennyson-The Gospel of Modern Thought—Change exemplified by Carlyle, Renan, and George Eliot—Science becoming Universal—Attitude of Orthodox Writers—Origin of Evil—First Cause unknowable—New Philosophies and Religions—Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism—Comte and Positivism—PessimismMormonism—Spiritualism—Dreams and Visions—Somnambulism—Mesmerism. CHAPTER VIII Q2 MIRACLES.............................................. Origin of Belief in the Supernatural—Thunder—Belief in Miracles formerly Universal —St. Pauls Testimony—Now Incredible—Christian Miracles—Apparent Miracles— Beal Miracles—Absurd Miracles—-Worthy Miracles—The Resurrection and Ascension mK tU/^e °* ®v’^ence required—Inspiration—Prophecy—Direct Evidence—St Paul —The Gospels—What is Known of Them—The Synoptic Gospels—Resemblances and Differences—Their Origin—Papias—Gospel of St. John—Evidence rests on Matthew, Mark, and Luke—What each states—Compared with one another and with St John —Hopelessly Contradictory—Miracle of the Ascension—Silence of Mark—Probable Early Date of Gospels—But not in their Present Form. CHAPTER IX CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES........................................................................................................................ Practical and Theoretical Christianity—Example and Teaching of Christ—Christian Dogma—Moral Objections—Inconsistent with Facts—Must be accepted as Parables— Fall and Redemption—Old Creeds must be Transformed or Die—Mahometanism_ Decay of Faith—Balance of Advantages—Religious Wars and Persecutions_ In­ tolerance—Sacrifice—Prayer—Absence of Theology in Synoptic Gospels—Opposite Pole to Christianity—Courage and Self-reliance—Belief in God and a Future LifeBased mainly on Christianity—Science gives no Answer—Nor Metaphysics—So-called Intuitions—Development of Idea of God—Best Proof afforded by Christianity— Evolution is Transforming it—Reconciliation of Religion and Science. CHAPTER X PRACTICAL LIEB........................................................................................................................................................................ Conscience—Right is Right—Self-reverence—Courage—Respectability—Influence of Press—Respect for Women—Self-respect of Nations—Democracy and Imperialism—• Self-knowledge—Conceit—Luck—Speculation—Money-making—Practical Aims of Life—Self-control—Conflict of Reason and Instinct—Temper—Manners—Good Habits in Youth—Success in Practical Life—Education—Stoicism—Conclusion. 113 �MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT PART I.—MODERN SCIENCE CHAPTER I SPACE Ideas—Natural Standards—Dimensions of the Earth— Of Sun and Solar System—Distance of Fixed Stars—Their Order and Size—Nebulae and other Universes—The Telescope and the Infinitely Great—The Microscope and the Infinitely Small—Uniformity of Law—Law of Gravity -«-Acts through all Space—Double Stars, Comets, and Meteors—Has acted through all Time. The first ideas of space were naturally taken from the standard of man’s own impressions. The inch, the foot, the cubit, the fathom, were the lengths of portions of his own body, obviously adapted for measuring objects with which he came in direct contact. The mile was the dis­ tance traversed in 1,000 double paces; the league the distance walked in an hour. The visible horizon suggested the idea that the earth was a flat, circular surface like a round table; and as experience shewed that it extended beyond the limits of a single horizon, the conception was enlarged and the size of the table increased so as to take in all the countries known to the geography of successive periods. In like manner the sun, moon, and stars were taken to be at the distance at which they appeared ; that is, first of the •visible horizon, and then of the larger circle to which it had been found neces:sary to expand it. It was never doubted that they really revolved, as they seemed to do, round this flat earth circle, dipping under it in the west at night, and re,appealing in the east with the day. The conception of the universe, therefore, was of a flat, circular earth, surrounded by an ocean stream, in the centre of a crystal sphere which revolved in twenty* four hours round the earth, and in which the heavenly bodies were fixed as lights for man’s use to distinguish days and seasons. The maximum idea of space was therefore determined by the size of th# earth circle which was necessary to takein all the regions known at the time, with a little margin beyond for the ocean stream, and the space between it and the crystal vault, required to enable the latter to revolve freely. In the time of Homer, and the early Greek philosophers, this would probably require a maximum of space of from 5,000 to 10,000 miles. This dimension has been expanded by modern science into one of as many millions, or rather hundreds of millions, as there were formerly single miles, and there is no sign that the limit has been reached. How has this wonderful result been attained, and how do we feel certain that it is true ? Those who wish thoroughly to understand it must study standard works on Astronomy, but it may be possible to give some clear idea of the processes by which it has been arrived at, and of the cogency of the reasoning by which we are compelled to accept facts so contrary to the first impressions of our natural senses. The fundamental principle upon which all measurements of space, which are beyond the actual application of human standards, depend, is this : that distant objects change their bearings for a given change of base, more or less in propor­ tion as they are less or more distant. �2 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT Suppose I am on. board a steamer’ sailing down the Thames, and I see two churches on the Essex coast directly opposite to me, or bearing due north, the first of which is one mile, and the other ten miles, distant. I sail one mile due east and again take the bearings. It is evident that the first church will now bear north­ west, or have apparently moved through 45 , i.e., one-eighth part of the circumfer­ ence of a complete circle, assuming this circumference to be divided into 360 equal parts or degrees ; while the more distant church will only have altered its bearing by a much less amount, easily determined by calculation, but which may be taken roughly at 5° instead of 45°. The branch of mathematics known as Trigonometry enables us in all cases, without exception, where we know the apparent displacement or change of bear­ ing of a distant object produced by taking it from the opposite ends of a known base, to calculate the distance of that object with as much ease and certainty as if we were working a simple sum of rule of three. The first step is to know our base, and for this purpose it is essential to know the size and form of the earth on which we live. These are determined by very simple considerations. If I walk a mile in a straight line, an object at a vast distance like a star will not change its apparent place perceptibly. But if I walk the same distance in a semi­ circle, what was originally on my left hand will now be on my right, or will have changed its apparent place by 180°. If I walk my mile on the circumference of a circle of twice the size, I shall have traversed a quadrant or one-fourth part of it, and changed the bearing of the distant object exactly half as much, or 90°, and so on, according to the size of the circle, which may therefore be readily calculated from the length that must be travelled along it to shift the bearing of the remote object by a given amount, say of 1°. ’ If, for instance, by travelling 65 miles from north to south we lower the ap­ parent height of the Pole star 1°, it is mathematically certain that we have travelled this 65 miles, not along a flat surface, but along a circle which is 360 times 65, or, in round numbers, 24,000 miles in circumference and 8,000 miles in diameter. And if, whenever we travel the same distance on a meridian or line drawn on the circumference from north to south, we find the same displacement of 1°, we may be sure that our journey has been in a true circle, and that the form of the earth is a perfect sphere of these dimensions. �SPACE Now, this is very nearly what actually occurs when we apply methods of scientific accuracy to measure the earth. The true form of the earth is not exactly spherical, but slightly oval or flatter at the poles, being almost precisely the form it would have assumed if it had been a fluid XftMS rotating about a north and south axis. But it is very nearly spherical, the true polar diameter being 7,899 miles, and the true equatorial diameter 7,926 miles, so that for practical purposes we may say roughly that the earth is a spherical body, 24,000 miles round and 8,000 miles across. This gives us a fresh standard from which to start in measuring greater distances. Precisely as we inferred the distance of the church from the steamer in our first illustration, we can infer the distance of the sun from its displacement caused by observing it from two opposite ends of a base of known length on the garth’s surface. This is the essential principle of all the calculations, though when great accuracy is sought for, very refined methods of applying the principle are required, turning mainly on the extent to which the apparent occurrence of the same event—such as the transit of Venus over the sun’s disc—is altered by observing it from different points at known distances from one another on the earth’s surface. The result is to show that the sun’s distance from the earth is, in round numbers, 93,000,000 miles. This is not an exact statement, for the earth’s orbit is not an exact circle, but the sun and earth really revolve in ellipses about the common centre of gravity. The sun, however, is so much larger than the earth that this centre of gravity falls within the sun’s surface, and, practically, the earth describes an ellipse about the sun, the 93,000,000 miles being the mean distance, and the eccentricity or deviation irom the exact circular orbit, being about one-sixtieth part of that mean distance. This distance, again, gives us the size of the sun, for it is easily calculated how large the sun must be to look as large as it does at a distance of 93,000,000 miles. The result is, that it is a sphere of about 865,000 miles in diameter. Its bulk, there­ fore, exceeds that of the earth in the pro­ portion of 1,300,000 to 1. Its density, or the quantity of matter in it, may be calculated from the effect of its action on the earth under the law of gravity at the 3 distance of 93,000,000 miles. It weighs as much as 332,000 earths. The same method gives us the distance, size, and weight of the moon and planets; and it gives us a fresh standard or base from which to measure still greater dis­ tances. The distance of the earth from the sun being 93,000,000 miles, and its orbit an ellipse nearly circular, it follows that it is in mid-winter, in round numbers, 186,000,000 miles distant from the spot where it was at midsummer. What difference in the bearings of the fixed stars is caused by traversing this enor­ mous base ? The answer is, in the immense majority of cases, no difference at all; i.e., their dis­ tance is so vastly greater than 186,000,000 miles that a change of base to this extent makes no change perceptible to the most refined instruments in their bearings as seen from the earth. But the perfection of modern instruments is such, that a change of even one second, or g/g^th part of one degree, in the annual parallax, as it is called, of any fixed star, would certainly be detected. This corresponds to a distance of 206,265 times the length of the base of 186,000,000 miles, or of 20,000,000,000,000 miles, a distance which it would take light) moving at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, three years and eighty-three days to traverse. There is only one star in the whole heavens, a bright star called Alpha, in the constellation of the Centaur, which is known to be as near as this. Its annual parallax is 0'976", or very nearly 1", and therefore its distance very nearly 20 millions of millions of miles. All the other stars, of which many millions are visible through powerful telescopes, are further off than this. There are about eight other stars which have been estimated by astronomers to give indications of an annual parallax of less than half a second, and therefore whose distances may be somewhere from twice to ten times as great as that of Alpha Centauri. From the quantity of light sent to us from these distances, some approximation has been made to their intrinsic splendour as compared with our sun. That of Alpha Centauri is computed to be nearly 2| times ; that of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, 393 times ; greater than that of the sun. These figures may or may not represent greater size or greater intensity B 2 �4 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT of light, and they are quoted only to give some idea of the vastness of the scale of the universe of which our solar system forms a minute part. Nor does even this nearly fathom the depth of the abysses of space. Telescopes enable us to see a vast multitude of stars of varying size and brilliancy. It is com­ puted by astronomers that'there are at least one hundred millions of stars within the range of the telescopes used by Herschel for gauging the depth of space, and a thousand millions within the range of the great reflecting telescope of Lord Bosse. As many as eighteen different orders of magnitude have been counted, and the more the power of telescopes is increased the more stars are seen. Now, as there is no reason to suppose that this extreme variety of brilliancy arises from extreme difference of size of one star from another, it must be principally owing to difference of distance, so that a star of the eighteenth magnitude is pre­ sumably many times further off than any of the first magnitude, the distance of the nearest of which has been proved to be something certainly not less than 20,000,000,000,000 miles. In fact, these stellar distances are so great that in order to bring them at all within the range of human imagination we are obliged to apply another standard, that of the velocity of light. Light can be shown to travel at the rate of about 178 millions of miles in 16 minutes, for this is the difference of the time at which we see the same periodical occurrence, as for instance the eclipses of Jupiter’s satel­ lites, according as the earth happens to be at the point of its orbit nearest to Jupiter, or at that farthest away. The velocity of light is therefore about 186,000 miles per second, a velocity which has been fully confirmed by direct ex­ periments made on the earth’s surface. These enormous distances are reckoned, therefore, by the number of years which it would take light to come from them, travelling as it does at the rate of 186,000 miles a second. The nearest fixed star, Alpha Centauri, is seen by a ray which left it three years and eighty-three days ago, and has been travelling ever since at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, if the determination of its annual parallax, is correct, is six times further off, and is seen, not as it exists to-day, but as it existed nearly twenty years ago ; and the light we now see from some of the stars of the eighteenth magnitude can hardly have left them less than 2,000 years ago. Even this, however, is far from ex­ hausting our conception of the magnitude of space. Beyond the stars which are near enough to be seen separately, power­ ful. telescopes show a galaxy in which the united lustre of myriads of stars is only perceptible as a faint nebulous gleam. And in addition to stars the telescope shows us a number of nebulae, or faint patches of. light, sometimes globular, sometimes in wreaths, spiral wisps, and other fantastic shapes, scattered about the heavens. Some of these are resolved by powerful telescopes into clusters of stars inconceivably numerous and re­ mote, which appear to be separate universes, like that of which our sun and fixed stars form one. Others again cannot be so resolved, and are shown by the spectroscope to be enormous masses of glowing gas, or cosmic matter, out of which other universes are in process of formation. We are thus led, step by step, to enlarge our ideas of space from the primitive conception of miles and leagues, until the imagination fails to grasp the infinite vastness of the scale upon which the material universe is really constructed. If the telescope takes us thus far beyond the standards of unaided sense in the direction of the infinitely great, the microscope, aided by calculations as to the nature of light, heat, electricity, and chemical action, takes us as far in the opposite direction of the infinitely small. The microscope enables us actu­ ally to see magnitudes of the order of Too&ooJh of an inch as clearly as the naked eye can see those of Wth. This introduces us into a new world, where we can see a whole universe of things both dead and alive of whose existence our forefathers had no suspicion. A glass of water is seen to swarm with life, and be the abode of bacteria, amoebae, rotifers, and other minute creatures, which dart about, feed, digest, and propagate their species in this small world of their own, very much as jelly-fish and other humble organisms do in the larger seas. The air also is shown to be full of innumerable germs and spores floating in it, and ready to be deposited and spring into life, �SPACE 5 wherever they find a seed-bed fitted to periods, in obedience to the same law. receive them. Given a favourable soil in Clouds of meteoric dust revolve in fixed the human frame, and the invisible seeds orbits, determined by the law of gravity of scarlet fever, cholera, and small-pox as surely as the moon revolves round the ripen into full crops, just as the germs of earth, and the earth round the sun. This is a conclusion of such funda­ a fungus invade the potato crops of a whole district, and lead to Irish famines mental importance that it is desirable to fejMt the extermination of more than a give the uninitiated reader some clear idea of what it means, and how it is yaillion of human beings. The microscope also enables us to see arrived at. Newton’s great discovery, the very beginnings of life and watch its the law of gravity, is this—that all primitive element, protoplasm, in the matter acting in the mass attracts other form of a minute speck of jelly-like matter directly as the amount of attract matter, through which pulsations are ing matter, and inversely as the square constantly passing, and we can watch the of the distance. That is, 2 or 2,000,000 transformations by which an elementary tons attract with twice the force of 1 OF cell of this substance splits up, multi- 1,000,000 tons at the same distance, but plies, and by a continued process of with only one-fourth, of the same force development builds up with these cells at double, and one-ninth at triple _thfe all the diversified forms of vegetable and distance. How is this law proved 1 This will be animal life. But far as the microscope carries us best answered by explaining how. it was Sown to dimensions vastly smaller than discovered. The force of gravity^ or those of which the ordinary senses can attraction of the earth on bodies at the take cognizance, the modern sciences of earth’s surface, is a known quantity^ light, heat, and chemistry carry us as The whole matter in a spherical body much farther downwards, as the telescope attracts exactly as if it were all collected parries us upwards beyond the boundaries at the centre. The force of gravity at the of our solar system into the expanses of earth’s surface is, therefore, that of the stars and nebulae. We are transported earth’s mass exerted at a distance of Into a world of atoms, molecules, and about 4,000 miles, and this can be easily iight-waves, where the standard of measured by observing the space fallen Measurement is no longer in feet or through, and the velocity acquired, Inches, oreven in one-hundred-thousandth by a falling body in a given tim^ such part of an inch, but in millionths of as 1". Does the same force act at the distance Millimetres, i.e., in of an inch. The dimensions are such that, as of the moon, or 238,850 miles 1 This was we shall see when we come to deal with the question Newton asked himself, and matter, if the drop of water in which the the answer was got at in the following Microscope shows us living animalcula way. If we swing a stone in a sling round were magnified to the size of the earth, our head, it describes a circle as long.aS the atoms of which it is composed would we keep the string tight, and its pull in­ appear of a size intermediate between wards just balances the pull of the stone to fly outwards, i.e., to use scientific that of a rifle-bullet and a cricket-ball. This, then, is Nature’s scale of space, language, as long as the centripetal just from millionths of a millimetre up to balances the centrifugal force. But if millions of millions of miles. Through­ we let go the string the stone darts off in out the whole of this enormous range of the direction in which, and with the vel®^ city with which, it was moving when the space the laws of Nature prevail. Mattei’ attracts matter by the same law centripetal force ceased to act. The moon is such a sling-stone re­ of gravity in the case of double stars revolving about each other at a distance at volving about the earth. At each instant which a base of 186,000,000 miles has it is moving in the direction of a tangent long since become a vanishing point, and to its orbit, and would move on m a in the case of atoms which form the sub- straight line along this tangent if it were stance of a gas, as in that of an apple not deflected from it by some other force. falling from a tree at the earth’s surface. That is, if the moon were now at Mt, it Comets, darting off into the remote would, after a given interval of time, be regions of space, return after long at M2 if no force had acted on it. But �6 modern science and modern thought in point of fact it is not at M2 but at M3. Therefore it has been pulled down from M2 to M3, or, if you like, fallen through the space M2 M3 in the time in which it would have travelled over Mx M2 with its velocity at Mj. How does this space correspond with the space through which a heavy body would have fallen in the same time at the earth’s surface ? It corresponds exactly, assuming the law of gravity to be that it . decreases with the square of the distance. This may be taken as the first appro­ ximation, but the more accurate and universal proofs of the law are derived from mathematical calculations of what the nature of the attractions must be, in the case of the sun, earth, moon, and planets, to. make them describe such elliptic orbits and observe such laws, as from Kepler s observations we know actually to be the case. The answer here again is the law of gravity, and no other possible law, and this is confirmed in piactice. by tlie fact that we are able, by calculations based on it, to satisfy the requisite of safe prophecy—that of know­ ing beforehand, and to predict eclipses, comets, transits, and occultations, and generally to.compile Hautical Almanacs, by which ships know their whereabouts in pathless oceans. . This, then, affords us a first firm stand­ ing-point in any speculations as to the nature of the universe. One great law, at any rate, is universal throughout all space, and, as we shall see later, suns, stars, and nebulae are composed of the same matter as the earth and its in­ habitants. In like manner comets and meteors, though presenting in other respects phenomena not yet fully understood, are proved to obey the same laws and to consist . of the same matter. Comets are bodies which revolve round the sun, and are attracted by it and by the planets, in obedience to the ordinary law of gravity, though their density is so slight, that although often of enormous volume, they produce no perceptible effect on the planets, even when en­ tangled amidst the satellites of a planet, as Lexell’s comet was amongst those of Jupiter. Their dimensions may be judged of when it is stated that the comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in length and 15 millions of miles in diameter at the widest part, while the diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, or more than 15 times that of the earth. In order that bodies of this magnitude, passing near the earth, should not affect its motion or change the length of the year by even a single second, their actual substance must be inconceivably rare. If the tail, for instance, of the comet of 1843 had consisted of the lightest sub­ stance known to us, hydrogen gas, its mass would have exceeded that of the sun, and every planet would have been dragged from its. orbit. As Proctor says : “A jar-full of air would probably have outweighed hundreds of cubic miles of that vast appendage which blazed across the skies to the terror of the ignorant and superstitious.” . The extreme tenuity of a comet’s mass is also proved by the phenomenon of the tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes to a length of 90 millions of miles in a few hours. And what is remarkable, this tail is thrown out against the force of gravity by some repulsive force, probably elec­ trical, so that it always points away from the sun. Thus a comet which approaches the sun with a tail behind it, will, after passing its perihelion, recede from the sun with its tail before it, and this although the tail may be of the length of 200 millions of miles, as in the comet of 1843. In the course of a few hours, therefore, this enormous tail has been absorbed and a new one started out in an opposite direction. And yet, thin as the matter of comets must be, it obeys the common law of gravity, and whether the comet revolves in an orbit within that of the outer planets, or shoots off into the abysses of space and returns only after hundreds of years, its path is, at each instant, regulated by the same force as that which causes an apple to fall to the ground; and its matter, however atten­ uated, is ordinary matter, and does not consist of any unknown elements. The spectroscope shows that comets shine partly by reflected sunlight and partly by light of their own, the latter part being gaseous, and this gas, in most �SPACE comets, contains carbon and hydrogen, ■possibly also oxygen, in the form of Kydrocarbons or marsh gas, cyanogen and possibly oxygen compounds of carbon. One comet has recently given the line of sodium, and the presence of iron is strongly suspected. As regards meteors, which include shooting stars and aerolites, it has been long known, from actual masses which have fallen on the earth, that they are composed of terrestrial matter, princi­ pally of iron, which has been partially fused by the heat engendered by the friction of the rapid passage through the air. The recurrence of brilliant displays at regular intervals, as for instance those of August and November, when the whole sk'y often seems alive with shooting stars, had also been noticed ; but it was re­ served for recent times to prove that these«meteor streams are really composed of small planetary bodies revolving round the sun in fixed orbits by the force of gravity, and that their display, as seen by us, arises from the earth in its revolu­ tion round the sun happening to intersect some of these meteoric orbits, and the friction of our atmosphere setting fire to and consuming the smaller meteors which appear as shooting stars. This shows the enormous number of meteors by which space must be tenanted. It is proved that the earth encounters more than a hundred meteor systems, but the chance of any one ring or system being intersected by the earth is extremely small, as the earth is such a minute speck in the whole sun-surrounding space of the solar system. On a scale on which the earth’s orbit was represented by a circle of 10 feet diameter, the earth itself would be only about T|oth of an inch in diameter, so that if, as astronomers say, the earth encounters about a hundred meteor systems in the course of its annual revolution, space must swarm with an innumerable number of these minute bodies all revolving round the sun by the force of gravity. Has this law of gravity been uniform through all time as it undoubtedly is through all space ? We have every reason to believe so. The law of gravity, which is the foundation of most of what we call the natural laws of geological action, has certainly prevailed, as will be shown later, through tin enormous periods of geological time, and far beyond this we can discern it operating in those astronomical changes by which cosmic matter has been condensed into nebulae, nebulae into suns throwing off planets, and planets throwing off satellites, as they cooled and contracted. Double stars at a distance exceeding 20 millions of millions of miles revolve round their common centre of gravity by this Jaw. Atoms and molecules almost infinitely smaller than millionths of millimetres derive from it their specific weights with as much certainty as if they were pounds or hundredweights. We cannot speak with quite the same certainty of infinite time as we can of infinite space, for we have.no tele­ scopes to gauge the abysses of time, and no certain standards, like those of th© known dimensions of our solar system, to apply to periods too vast for the imagination. But we can say this with certainty, that the present law of gravity must have prevailed when the outermost planet of our system, Neptune, was con­ densed into a separate body and began revolving in its present orbit, and that it has continued to act ever since; while, as a matter of probability, it is as nearly certain as anything can be, that the law by which the apple falls to the ground is an original condition of matter. What space and matter really may be, we do not know, and if we attempt to reason about the limits of the one and th© origin of the other, if origin it had, we get into the misty realms of metaphysics, where, like Milton’s fallen angels, we Find no end in wandering mazes lost. �& MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT boulders and coarse gravel, sometime! shingle, sand, or fine mud, and, carrying CHAPTER II this material sometimes to a greater and * TIME sometimes to a less distance, according to the velocity of the stream. Evidence of Geology—Stratification—Denu­ Ages hence, when the lake has been dation—Strata identified by Superposition converted into dry land, it will be as —By Fossils—Geological Record shown by ceitain, whenever a pit is dug or a well Upturned Strata—General Result—Palaeosunk in it, that it was the work of a ane and Primary Periods—Secondary— river flowing into a lake, as it is to-day, lertmry—Plme required-Coal Formation —Chalk-Elevations and Depressions of when we can see them at work. Band—Internal Heat of Earth—Earth­ T 1 nd 7r!at is tr^e of the Rhone and the quakes and Volcanoes-Changes of Fauna if+ k of Geneva, is true on a larger scale ®md P lora—Astronomical Time—Tides and of the Ganges, the Mississippi, and of every sea or ocean, with every river or the Moon—Sun’s Radiation—Earth’s Cooltorrent pouring into it. \nrSrGem?Sy and Astronomy-BearingS on Modern Thought. Again, the sea is perpetually wearing the of Geology has done for time what as- awaycliff's coasts soft all lands, and, where the are and the tides and ti onomy has for space—it has expanded currents strong, at a very rapid rate, the limited ideas derived from natural lhe materials swallowed-up are rolled as impression and early tradition into those shingle, ground into sand, or floated as of an almost infinite duration. This 1 Jnud, an result is so important that it is desirable laid down at d all finallyofassorted and the bottom the sea, not that all educated persons, without being in a confused heap, but in regular sucprofessed geologists, should have some clear idea of the nature of the con­ ^^n- Gn some of them generations of shell-fish and other marine creatures clusions and of the evidences on which live and die, and their remains are they rest. covered over by fresh sands or clays, and This I will endeavour to give. preserved for future geologists. All this When we come to examine the struc­ is examine ture of the earth-or rather of the outer thegoing on now, and when we the same find that precisely erust of the earth which we inhabit— sort rocks we has been going on from the of with the care and precision of scientific newest thing to methods, we find that it is not of uniform exception the oldest strata. With the Composition, but consists mainly of dis­ amount of of a comparatively small igneous rock, which has tinct layers, or strata, lying one over the other. This is true not only of the boiled-up from deep sources of molten larger beds, or distinct formations, but matter, and been poured-out in sheets of lava, or porphyry, °! ,. details of each formation, many granite, masses of trap,the amountand according to of of which are built up as regularly as the pressure it has undergone and the time layers of the Great Pyramid, while others it has taken to cool and crystallise, all the are made up of layers no thicker than e&rth s surface may be said to consist of the leaves of a book. Now consider what this fact of strati­ stratified matter, showing clear signs of fication implies. In the first place it having been deposited from water. Some implies deposit from water, for there is of the oldest rocks, such as gneiss, may no other agency by which materials can be a little doubtful, as they have clearly be sorted out and thrown down in hori­ been subjected to great heat under great zontal layers, while this agency is now pressure, until they became plastic doing the same thing every day and all enough to crystallise as they cooled, and over the world. The Rhone flows into thus destroy any fossils embedded in them the Bake of Geneva a turbid stream, and and obliterate most of the ordinary signs tiows out of it as clear as crystal. AU of stratification. But the opinion of the the matter it brings in is deposited at best geologists is that they were originthe bottom of the lake, and in course of a iT stratified, and have become what is time will fill it up. This deposit varies called metamorphic,” or changed by with every alternation of flood and heat and pressure into the semblance of igneous rocks. But even drought; the river depositing sometimes included, enough remains if these are not to justify the �TIME general assertion that th® outer crust of the earth, as known to us, is made up mainly of stratified materials which have been deposited from water. Now this implies another most im­ portant fact, viz., that there must, have been waste or denudation of existing land corresponding to the deposit of Stratified materials under water. Water cannot generate these materials, and every square mile of such strata, say 10 feet thick, implies the removal of 10 feet from a square mile of land surface by rains and rivers, or of an equivalent amount of cubical content in some other way, as by the erosion of a coast line. This is a very important consideration wThen we come to estimate the time re­ quired for the formation of such a thick­ ness of stratified beds as we find existing. There must have been a fundamental crystalline rock as the earth cooled-down from a fluid state and acquired a solid ©rust, and this rock must have been worn down by primeval seas and rivers as the progressive cooling admitted of the con­ densation of aqueous vapour into water. The waste of this primitive crust must have been deposited in strata at the bottom of those seas in thick masses, covering the original rock, and these again must have been partly crystallised by heat and pressure, and over and over again upheaved and submerged, and themselves worn down by fresh erosion, forming fresh deposits which underwent a repetition of the same process. A third important inference from the fact of stratification is that all strata must have been originally deposited horizontally, or very nearly so, and in such order that the lowest is the oldest. Suppose we fill a jar with water, and put some white sand into it, and when that has subsided to the bottom and the water is clear, some yellow sand, and again some red sand, it is clear that we shall have at the bottom of the jar three horizontal deposits or strata, one white, one yellow, and one red, and that by no conceivable means can the order in which they were deposited have been other than first white, secondly yellow, and lastly red. This law, therefore, is invari­ able, that wherever it is possible to trace a series of strata lying one above the Other, the lowest is the oldest, and the highest the youngest in point of time. If, therefore, all the great formations, 9 from the old Lauren tian up to the newest Tertiary, had been deposited uniformly all over the world, and had remained undisturbed, and we could have seen them in one vertical section in a dift twenty-five miles high—for that is about their total known thickness—we should have been able without further difficulty to determine their order of succession and respective magnitudes. But this is plainly impossible, for the deposits going on at any one time are of very different character. For instancy we have at present the Globigerina ooze gradually filling the depths of the Atlantic with a deposit resembling chalk; the Gulfs of Bengal and Mexico silting up with fine clay from river deposits; vast tracts in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Red Sea, covered with coral and tire debris of coral-reefs. How could these, if upheaved into dry land and explored.by future geologists, be identified as having been formed contemporaneously 1. Suppose that coins of Victoria had been dropped in each of them, the geo­ logist who discovered these coins would have no difficulty in concluding that th® strata in which they, were found were all formed in the nineteenth century, The petrified shells and other remains found in geological strata are such coins. Every great formation has had its own characteristic fauna and flora, or aggre­ gate of animal and vegetable life, vary­ ing slowly from one geological age to another, and linked to the past and future by some persistent types and, forms, but still with such a preponder­ ance of characteristic fossils as to enable us to assign the rocks in which they occur to their proper place in the volume of the geological record. Innumerable observations have shown that we can rely, with absolute confidence, on the fossils embedded in the different strata of the earth’s crust as tests of the period to which they belong, however different the strata may be in mineral composi­ tion. The next question is how we can ascer­ tain the thickness and order of succes­ sion of these strata. We have seen that all stratified rocks are due to the action of water, and therefore were originally deposited horizontally. Had they remained so, in the first place, the process of forming stratified rocks must long ago have come to an end, for all the land �modern science and modern thought surface must have been worn down to the sea level, and, with no more land to be denuded, deposition must have ceased at an early period of the earth’s history. In the second place, we could have known nothing more of the earth’s crust than we saw on the surface, and in the shallow pits and borings which we could sink below it. But earthquakes and volcanoes and the various fractures and pressures due to subterranean heat and secular contraction and cooling, have been at work counteracting the effects of denu­ dation, and causing elevations and de­ pressions by which the inequalities of s have been renewed thp balance between sea and land maintained, and strata, originally horizontal at the bottom of the ocean, upheaved until sea-shells are found at the top of high mountains, so that we can walk for miles over their upturned edges. Any one who wishes to understand how geologists have been able to measure such a thickness of the earth’s crust has only to take a book open at page 1 and lay it flat before him. He can see nothing but that one page; but if he turns up the pages on the right-hand side of the book until their edges become horizontal, he can pass over them and count perhaps 500 pages in the space of a couple of inches. This is precisely what geologists have been able to do at various points of the earth s surface where the upturned edges °* j n PaSes history are exposed, and they come out, one behind the other in the due succession in which they were written by Nature. For instance, in travelling from east to west in England we pass continually from newer to older formations—Chalk comes in from below tertiary ; Oolite and Lias from below Chalk; then Permian or New Red Sandstone ; Carboniferous, including the Coal Measures; Devonian or Old Red bandstone ; Silurian, Cambrian, and in xv ®^Ireme north-west of Scotland and the Hebrides, oldest of all, the Laurentian. There are some omissions and inter­ polations, but, in a general way, it may be said that within the bounds' of the British Empire we have such a view of Nature’s volume as would be got, in the case I have supposed, by travelling over its upturned edges from page 1 to page 500. And if each of the great formations be taken as a separate chapter, each chapter will be found to be made-up of a number of pages, each with its own letterpress and illustrations, though con­ nected with the pages before and after it by the thread of the continuous com­ mon subject of their proper chapter; as the chapters again are connected by the continuous common subject-matter of the complete volume. It must not be sup­ posed that the volume is anything like perfect. We have to piece it together irom the fragments found in the limited number of countries which have thus far been scientifically explored, and which do not constitute more than a small part of the earth’s surface. We know nothing of what is below the oceans which cover m°re three-fourths of that surface, and there are great gaps in the record during the times when portions of the surface were dry land, and when, con­ sequently, no deposit of strata or preservation of fossils was possible. Still a great deal lias been accomplished, and the general result, as given by common consent of the best geologists, is as follows : The total thickness of known strata is about 130,000 feet or twenty-five miles, or the iJoth part of the distance from the earth’s surface to its centre. Of this, about 30,000 feet belong to the Laurentian, which is the oldest known stratified deposit; 18,000 to the Cambrian, and 22,000 to the Silurian. These earliest formations, which are grouped as the Primary or Palaeozoic Epoch, have been so changed by slow crystallisation under great heat and pressure that all fossils and nearly all traces of stratification have been well-nigh obliterated. In the Cambrian and Lower Silurian traces of life become more frequent, especially of low forms of seaweeds, and in the Upper Silurian we find an abun­ dance of fossils, consisting of Crustacea, shell-fish, and a few true fish in the upper strata. Some of the shells, as the Lingula, have continued without much change up to the present time ; and on the whole we find ourselves in the Silu­ rian period, if not earlier, in presence of a state of things in which substantially present causes operated and present con­ ditions were in force. Rains fell, winds blew, rivers ran, waves eroded cliffs, shell-fish lived and died, and crabs and sand-worms crawled about on shores left �TIME dry by each tide, very much as is the case at present. . . . . The next great division, to which the nam® of Primary, was given before the existence of fossils was known m the older or Palaeozoic division, comprises the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone ; the Carboniferous, which includes the coal; and the Permian or New Red Sand­ stone. The average thickness of these three systems, taken together, is about 42 000 feet. It may be called the era of Fern Forests and of Fish, the former being the principal source of our supplies of coal, and the latter being extremely abundant within the Devonian and Per­ mian formations. The third great division is formed by the Secondary group, which includes the Triassic, the Jura, and the Cretaceous or Chalk systems, and has an average thick­ ness of about 15,000 feet. This epoch is emphatically the age of Reptiles as the preceding one was that of Fish, and the prevailing vegetation is no longer one of ferns and mosses, but of Gymnosperms, or plants having naked seeds, the most important class of which is that of the Coniferae or Pine tribe. During this pe­ riod the Plesiosauri, Ichthyosauri, and other gigantic sea-dragons abounded in the oceans ; colossal land-dragons, such as the Dinosauri, occupied the continents, and Pterodactyls, a remarkable form of carnivorous flying lizards, ruled the air. Swarms of other reptiles, nearly related to the present lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, abounded both in the sea and land. A few traces of mammals and birds show that these orders had then come into existence, just as a few traces of reptiles are found in the Primary, and of fish in the Palaeozoic, strata, but the few mammalian remains found are of small animals of the marsupial or lowest type, and the birds are of a transition type between reptiles and true birds. This epoch concludes with the Chalk forma­ tion, which is one of relatively deep-sea deposit, where no trace of terrestrial life can be expected. Above this comes the Tertiary epoch, when the present order, both of veget­ able and animal life, is fairly inaugur­ ated ; mammals predominate over other forms of vertebrate animals; existing orders and species begin to appear and increase rapidly ; and vegetation consists mainly of Angiosperms, or plants with n covered seeds, as in our present forests. The total thickness of these strata, from the lowest, or Eocene, to the end of the uppermost, or Pliocene, is about 3,000 feet. Above this comes the Quaternary, or re­ cent period, which comprises the super­ ficial strata of modern formation,.and is characterised by the undoubted existence of man, and of animals which either now exist, or which have become extinct m quite recent geological times. The details of this and of the Tertiary Epoch will be more fully considered when, we come to treat of the antiquity of man, with which they are closely connected^! But for the present object, which is that of ascertaining some standard of time for the immense series of ages proved by geol logy to have elapsed since the earth as­ sumed its present condition, became sub­ ject to existing laws and fitted to be the abode of life, it will be sufficient to refefif to the older strata. . The best idea of the enormous intervals of time required for geological changes will be derived from the coal measures. These consist of part only of one geo­ logical formation known as the Carbon­ iferous. They are made up of sheets, or seams, of condensed vegetable matter, varying in thickness from less than.an inch to as much as thirty feet, and lying one above another, separated by beds of rock of various composition. As a rule, every seam of coal rests upon a bed of clay, known as the “under-clay, and is covered by a bed of sandstone or shale.1 These alternations of clay, coal, and rockJ are often repeated a. great ma,ny times, and in some sections in South Wales and Nova Scotia there are as many as eighty or a hundred seams of coal, each with its own under-clay below and sandstone or shale above. Some of the coal seams are as much as thirty feet thick, and the total thickness of the coal measures is, in some cases, as much as 14,000 feet. Now consider what these facts mean. Every under-clay was clearly once a sur­ face soil on which the forest vegetation grew, whose accumulated dsbi is forms the overlying seam of coal. The under-clays are full of the fibres of roots, and the stools of trees which once grew on them are constantly found in situ, with their roots attached just as they stood when the tree fell, and added to the accumula­ tion of vegetable matter, which in modern times forms peat, and in more ancient �12 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT days, under different conditions of heat and pressure, took the more consolidated form of coal. When these vegetable remains are ex­ amined with the aid of the microscope it is found that these ancient forests con­ sisted mainly of trees like gigantic club­ mosses, mares’-tails, and tree ferns, with a few resembling yews and firs. But in many cases the bulk of the coal is com­ posed of the spores and seeds of these ferns and club-mosses, which were ripened and shed every year, and gradually ac­ cumulated into a vegetable mould, just M fallen leaves, beech-mast, and other Mbris, gradually form a soil in our exist­ ing forests. The time required must have been very great. to accumulate vegetable mat­ ter, principally composed of fine spore dust, to a, depth sufficient under great compression to give even a foot of solid coal. Sir J. W. Dawson, who has devoted great attention to the coal-fields of America, says : “ We may safely assert that every foot, of thickness of pure bituminous coal implies the quiet growth least fifty generations of Sigillaria, and therefore an undisturbed condition of forest growth, enduring through many centuries.” But this is only the first step in the measure of the time required for the formation of the coal measures. Each seam of coal is as we have seen, covered by a bed of sand or shale, t.e., of water-borne materials. Dow can this be accounted for? Evi­ dently m one way only—that the land 8uDace in which the forest grew sub®ded gradually until it became first a marsh, and. then a lagoon or shallow estuary, which silted up by degrees with deposits of sand or mud, and, finally was upraised until its surface became dry land, in which a second forest grew whose debris formed a second coal seam.’ And so on, over and over again, until the whole series of coal measures had been, accumulated, when this alternation of slight submergences and slight rises Came to an end, and some more decided movement of the earth’s surface in the locality brought, on a different state of things. . This is in fact exactly what we see taking place on a smaller scale in recent times in such deposits as those of the delta of the Mississippi, where a well sunk at New Orleans passes through a succession of cypress swamps and forest growths, exactly like those now growing on the surface, which are piled one above the other, and separated by deposits of river silt, showing a long alternation of periods of rest when forests grew, fol­ lowed by periods of subsidence when they were flooded and their remains were embedded in silt. Starting on the foregoing assumption tnat one root of coal represents fifty generations of coal plants, and that each generation of coal plants took ten years p^me to maturity, an assumption which is certainly very moderate; and taking the actually measured thickness or the coal measures in some localities at \2’°P2 Jeet’. Professor Huxley calculates that the time represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of years. Such a figure is, of course only a rough approximation, but it is sufficient to show that when we come to deal with geological time, the standard by which we must measure is one of which the unit is a million of years. This standard is confirmed by a variety N °™er1 considerations. Take the case of the Chalk formation. Chalk is almost entirely composed of the microscopic shells of minute organ­ isms, such as now float in the upper strata of our great oceans, and by their subsld®llc1e> in Die form of an impalpable shell-dust, accumulate what is called the Globigerina ooze,” which is brought up by soundings in the Atlantic and Pacific from great depths. . In fact, we may say that a chalk formation is now going on in the depths of existing oceans, and con­ versely that the old chalk, which now forms hills and elevated downs, was certainly deposited at the bottom of Cretaceous seas. The rate of deposit must have been extremely slow, certainly much slower than that of the deposit of the much grosser matter brought down by the Nile in. its annual inundations, the growth of which has been estimated from actual measurement at about three inches per century. If one inch per century were the rate of accumulation of this microscopic shell-dust, subsiding slowly to depths of two or three miles over areas as large as Europe, it would take 1,200 years to form a foot of chalk, and 1,200,000 years to form 1,000 feet. Now there are places where the thickness of the Cretaceous formation, exposed by the edges of its upturned strata, exceeds �TIME 5,000 feet, so that this gives an approxima­ tion very similar to that furnished by the coal measures. We have thus, on a rough approximation, a period of about 6,000,000 year’s for ^©accumulation of a singlememtoar ofone of the separate formations into 'vrilidh the total 130,000 feet of. measured strata are subdivided. But this takes.no of the long periods during which no accumulation took place at the legalities in question, and of the long pauses which must have ensued between each movement of elevation and sub­ mergence, and especially between the dis­ appearance of an old, and the appearance of an almost entirely new, epoch, with different forms of animal and vegetable life. We may be certain also that. we ar® far from knowing the total thick­ ness of strata which will be disclosed when the whole surface of the earth comes to be explored. All we can say is that we have fragmentary pages left in the geological record, speaking broadly, for 100 millions of years, and that probably the lost pages are quite as numerous as those of which we have an imperfect knowledge. Sir Charles Lyell, the highest authority on the subject, is inclined to estimate the minimum of geological time at 200 millions of years, and few geologists , will say that his estimate appears excessive. Another test of the vast duration of geological time is afforded by the oscil­ lations of the earth’s surface. At first sight we are apt to consider the earth as the stable and the sea as the un­ stable element. But in reality it is exactly the reverse. Land has. been perpetually rising and falling while the level of the sea has remained the same. This is easily proved by the presence of sea-shells and other marine remains in strata which now form high moun­ tains. In the case of chalk, for instance, there must have been in England a change of relative level of sea and land of more than two miles of vertical height, between the original formation of the chalk at the bottom of a deep ocean and its present position in the North and South Downs. In other cases the change of level is even more conspicuous. The Num mul ite lim eston e, which is formed like, chalk from an accumulation of the minute shells of low organisms floating in the oceans of the early Tertiary n period, is found in mountain masses, and b has been elevated to a height of 10,000 feet and more in the Alps »d Hima­ layas. , On a smaller scale, and in mor® went times, raised beaches with existing shells I and lines of cliffs and caves, are found I at various heights above the existing 1 sea-level of many of the coasts of Britain, 1 Scandinavia, Italy, South America I other countries. Now the first question is, were these changes caused by the land rising or by the sea falling? The answer is, by toe land rising. Had they been caused by the sea standing at a higher level it must have stood everywhere at this level, at any rate in the same hemisphere and anywhere near the same latitude. But there are large tracts of land which have never been submerged since remote geo­ logical periods ; and in recent times thgya is conclusive evidence that the changes of level of sea and land.have been parUal and not general. Thus in the well-known, instance of the columns of the ruined temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli in the Bay of Naples, which forms the illustration on the title-page of Lyell’s “ Principle# of Geology,” there can be no doubt that since the temple was built, either the sea must have risen and since fallen, OF the land sunk and since risen, at least twenty feet since the temple was built less than 2,000 years ago, for up to this height the marble columns are riddled by borings of marine shells, whose valyw are still to be seen in the holes they excavated. But an elevation of the level of the Mediterranean of twenty feet would have submerged, a great part of Egypt, and other low-lying lands on the borders of that sea, where we klWW that no such irruptions of . salt, water have taken place within historical, Or even within recent geological, times. The conclusion is therefore certain, that the land at this particular spot must have sunk twenty feet, and again risen as much, so as to bring back.the floor of the temple to its present position, which stood, one hundred years ago just above the sea-level, and that so gradually as not to throw down the three columns which are still standing. A slow subside®®® has since set in and is now going on, so that the floor is now two or three feet below the sea-level. Similar proofs may be multiplied to �14 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT any extent. Along the coasts of the British.Islands we find, in some places submarine forests showing subsidence, in others raised beaches showing elevation, but they are not continuous at the same level. Along the east coast of Scotland there is a remarkable raised beach at a level of about twenty-four feet above the present one, showing in many places lines of cliff, sea-worn caves, and outlying stacks and skerries, exactly like those of the present coast, though with green fields or sandy links at their base, instead of the waves of the German Ocean. But as we go north this inland cliff gets lower and gradually dies out, and when we get into the extreme north, among the Orkney and Shetland Islands, there are no signs of raised beaches, and everything points towards the recent period having been one of subsidence. Again, in Sweden, where marks were cut in rocks in sheltered situations on the well-nigh tideless Baltic more than a century ago, so as to test the question of an alleged elevation of the land, it has been clearly shown that in the extreme north of Sweden, the marks have risen nearly seven feet, while in the central portion of the country they have neither risen nor fallen, and in the southern province of Scania they have fallen. This would be clearly impossible if the sea and not the land had been the un­ stable element, and apparent elevations and depressions had been due to a gene­ ral fall or rise in the level of all the seas of the northern hemisphere. In fact, the more we study geology the more we are impressed with the fact that the normal state of the earth is, and has always been, one of incessant changes. Water, raised by evaporation from the seas, falls as rain or snow on land, wastes it away and carries it down from higher to lower levels, to be ultimately deposited at the bottom of the sea. This goes on constantly, and if there were no compen­ sating action, as the seas cover a much larger area than the lands, all land would ultimately disappear, and one universal ocean cover the globe. But inward heat supplies the compensating action, and new lands rise and new mountain chains are upheaved to supply the place of those which disappear. This inward heat of the earth is an ascertained fact; for as we descend from the surface in deep mines or borings, we find that the temperature actually does increase at a rate which varies somewhat in different localities, but which averages about 1° Fahrenheit for every 60 feet of depth. At this rate of increase water would boil at a depth of 10,000 feet, and iron and all other metals be melted before we reached 100,000 feet. What actually occurs at great depths we do not know with any certainty, for we are not suffi­ ciently acquainted with the laws under which matter may behave when under enormous heat combined with enormous pressure. But we do know from volca­ noes and earthquakes, that masses of molten rocks and of imprisoned gases exist in certain localities, at depths below the surface which, although large com­ pared with our deepest pits, are almost infinitesimally small compared with the total depth of 4,000 miles from that sur­ face to the earth’s centre. This much is clear, that, in order to account for observed facts, we must con­ sider the extreme outer crust, or surface of the earth as known to us, as resting on something which is liable to expand and contract slowly with variations of heat, and occasionally, when the tension be­ comes great, to give violent shocks to the outer crust, sending earthquake waves through it, and to send up gases and molten lava through volcanoes, along lines of fissure, and at points of least resistance. It is clear, also that these movements are not uniform, but that one part of the earth’s surface may be rising while another is sinking, and portions of it may be slowly tilting over, so that as one end sinks the other rises. The best comparison that can be made is to a sheet of ice which has been much skated over and cracked in numerous directions, so as to have become a sort of mosaic of ice fragments, which, when a thaw sets in and the ice gets sloppy, rise and fall with slightly different mo­ tions as a skater, gliding over them, varies the pressure, and occasionally give a crack and let water rise through from below in the line of fissure. The difficulty will not seem so great if we consider that the rocks which form the earth’s crust are for the most part elastic, and that an amount of elevation which seems large in itself does not necessarily imply a very steep gradient. Thus, if the elevation which towards the close of the Glacial period carried a bed of exist- �TIMB jpgaaMhells of Arctic type to the top or the hill, Moel Tryfon, in North Wales, which is 1,200 feet high, were, say, one of 1,500 feet, this would be given by a gradient of 15 feet a mile, or 1 m 333 for 100 miles. Such a gradient would not be perceptible to the eye, and would certainly not be sufficient to cause any ten­ sion likely to rupture rocks or disturb Such movements are as a. rule ex­ tremely slow. In volcanic regions thei e a» occasionally shocks which raise ex­ tensive regions a few feet at a blow, and partial elevations and subsidences which throw up cones of lava and cinders, or let mountains down into chasms, in a single explosion. The most noted of these are the instances of Monte Nuovo, near Naples, 800 feet high, and Jorullo, in Mexico, thrown up in one eruption, and the disappearance of a mountain 2,000 feet high in the Straits of Sunda during an earthquake. The largest rise recorded of an extensive area from the shock of an earthquake, is that wdiich occurred in South America in 1835, when a range of coast of 500 miles from Copiapo to Chiloe was permanently raised five or six feet by a single shock, as was shown by the beds of dead mussels and other shells which had been hoisted, up in some places as much as ten feet. It is pro­ bable that the great chain of the Andes, whose highest summits reach 27,000 feet, has been raised in a great measure by a succession of similar shocks. But for the most part these move­ ments, whether of elevation or depression, go on so slowly and quietly that they escape observation. Scandinavia is ap­ parently now rising and Greenland sinking, but most countries have re­ mained appreciably steady, or nearly so, during the historical period. St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, is still connected with the mainland by a spit, dry at ebb tide and covered at flood, as it was more than 2,000 years ago when the old Britons carted their tin across to Phoenician traders. Egypt, during a period of 7,000 years, has preserved the same level, or at the most has sunk as slowly as the Nile mud has accumulated. Parts of the English and Scotch coast have risen perhaps twenty feet since the prehistoric period, when canoes were wrecked under what are now the streets of Glasgow, and whales were stranded in 15 the Carse of Stirling. There is even some evidence that the latest rise may have occurred since the Roman wall was built from the Forth to the Clyde. In any case, however, the movements have been extremely slow, and there have been frequent oscillations, and long pauses when the level of land and sea remained stationary. The evidence, therefore, from the great changes which have occurred during each geological period, points to the same conclusion as that drawn from the thickness of forma­ tions, such as the coal measures and chalk, which must have been accumulated very slowly, viz., that geological, time must be measured by a scale of millions of years. Another test of the vast duration of geological time is afforded by the change^ which have taken place in animal life as we pass from one formation to another, and even within the limits of the same formation. The fauna, or form of exist­ ing life at a given period, changes with extreme slowness. During the historical period there has been no perceptible change, and even since the Pliocene period, which cannot be placed at a less distance from us than 200,000 years, and probably at much more, the change has been very small. In the limited class of large land animals it has been con­ siderable ; but if we take the far more numerous forms of shell-fish and other marine life, the old species which have become extinct and the new ones which have appeared, do not exceed five per cent, of the whole. This is the more re­ markable as great vicissitudes of climatri and variations of sea-level have occurred, during tlie interval. The whole of the Glacial period has come and gone, and Britain has been by turns an archipelago of frozen islands, and part of a continent extending over what is now the German Ocean, and pushing out into the Atlantic up to the one hundred fathom line. Reasoning from these facts, assuming the rate of change in the forms of life to have been the same formerly, and sum­ ming up the many complete changes of fauna which have occurred during the separate geological formations, Lyell has arrived at the conclusion that geology requires a period of , not less than 200 millions of years to account for the phenomena which it discloses. Long as the record is of geological �16 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT time, it is only that of one short chapter three hours. In this state of things the in , the volume of the history of the moon is supposed to, have been thrown universe. Geology only begins when the ofi from the earth, either by one great earth had cooled down into a state re­ convulsion, or, more probably, by small sembling the present; when winds blew, masses at a time forming a ring like that rains fell, rivers and seas eroded rocks of featurn, which ended by coalescing and formed deposits, and when the con­ single satellite. With ditions were such that life became into a is the principal cause of the moon ’ which the tides possible by the remains of which those so much nearer the earth, their rise and deposits can be identified. enormous But before this period began, which tall must have been somethingbore may be called that of the maturity or and huge tidal waves like the500 orof the Bay of Fundy, but perhaps 1,000 middle age of our planet, a much vaster feet high, must have swept twice during time must be allowed for the contraction each revolution of the earth on its axis and cooling of the vaporous matter of i.e., twice every, three or four hours, along which it is formed, into the state in all the narrower seas and channels and which the phenomena of geology became over all except the mountainous lands possible. And if vast in the case of the adjoining. earth, how much vaster must be the life­ Now these conclusions be true or periods of the larger planets, such as not as regards phases of mayearth’s life the Jupiter, which from their much greater prior to the Silurian period, from which size cool and contract much more slowly, downwards geology unmistakably and are not yet advanced beyond the that nothing of the showsor in the least sort, stage of intense youthful heat and to it, has occurred glowing luminosity which was left behind degree approaching point out is that ali But by our earth a great many tens of this, what I wish to of theory rests on a millions of years ago ! And how vastly basissuperstructure which, really does admit of definite vaster must be that of the sun, whose mass and volume exceed those of Jupiter demonstration and calculation. Halley found when in a far higher ratio than Jupiter sur­ sun, recorded thatancienteclipses of the in annals, are passes the earth ! compared a And beyond all this in a third degree discrepancywith recent observations of is discovered in the rate of vastness come the life-periods of those the moon’s motion, which must have been stars or distant suns, which we know to slightly slower then than it is now be in some cases as much as three Laplace apparently solved the difficulty hundred times larger than oui*sun, and by showing was an inevitable not nearly so far advanced as it in the result of thethat this gravity, when the law of process of emergence from the fiery varying eccentricity of the earth’s orbit nebulous into the solar stage. To give some idea of the vast intervals was properly taken into account; and of time required for these changes, a few the calculated amount of the variation cause was shown to be exactly facts and figures may be given. what was obser One of, the latest speculations of vations. required to reconcile themathe­ great ­ mathematical science is that the rotation matician, But our havingEnglish gone Adams, recently or the earth is becoming slower, or, in over Laplace s calculations anew, dis­ other words, that the day is becomin°' covered that some factors in the problem longer, owingtotheretardingaction of the had been omitted, which reduced Laplace’s tides, which act as a brake on a revolving acceleration of the moon’s motion by wheel. If so, the effect of the reaction to on the moon of this action of the moon about one-half, leaving the other halfthe be explained by a real on the earth, must be that as the length of the sidereal day,increase in one or time earth rotates more slowly, the moon complete revolution of the earth of about recedes to a greater distance. And its axis. required viceversd, when the earth rotated more sufficient The retardation the total is one to account for accu­ rapidly the moon was nearer to it of an hour and a until at length, when the process is mulated loss or, in other words, quarter in the length carried back far enough, we arrive at a 2 000 years,; now time when the moon was at the earth’s of the day is than more by about Arth part a it was 2,000 years ago. surface and the length of the day about of At second this rate it would require 168,000 �TIME years to wake a difference of 1 second in lhelength of the day; 10,080,000 years for a tlifferencs of 1 minute: and 604,800,000 years for a difference of 1 hour. The r&towould not be uniform for the past, for as the moon got nearer it would cause higher tides and more retardationstill, the abyss of time seems almost incon­ ceivable to get back to the state in which the earth could have rotated in three hours and thrown off the moon. It is right, however, to state that all mathematical calculations of time, based on the assumed rate at which cosmic matter cools into suns and planets, and these into solid and habitable globes, are in the highest degree uncertain. If the original data are right, mathematical calculation inevitably gives right conclu­ sions. But if the data are wrong, or, what is the same thing, partial and im­ perfect, the conclusions will, with equal certainty, be wrong also. Now in this ■case we certainly do not know “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” respecting these processes. Take what is perhaps the most difficult problem presented by science—how the sun keeps up so uniformly the enormous amount of heat which it is constantly radiating into space. This radiation is going on in every direction, and the solar heat received by the earth is only that minute portion of it which is intercepted by our little speck of a planet. All the planets together receive less than one 230,000,000th part of the total heat ra­ diated away by the sun and apparently lost in space. Knowing the amount of heat from the sun’s rays received at the earth’s surface in a given time, we can calculate the total amount of heat ra­ diated from the sun in that time. It amounts to this, that the sun in each second of time parts with as much heat as would be given out by the burning of 16,436 millions of millions of tons of the best anthracite coal. And radiation cer­ tainly at this rate, if not a higher one, has been going on ever since the com­ mencement of the geological record, which must certainly be reckoned by a great many tens of millions of years. What an illustration does this afford of that apparent “ waste of Nature ” which made Tennyson “ falter where he firmly trod” when he came to consider “her secret meaning in her deeds ” 1 Yet there can be no doubt that vast as 17 these figures are, they are all the result of natural laws, just as we find the law of gravity prevailing throughout space at distances expressed by figures equally vast. The question is, what laws ? The only one we know of at present at all adequate to account for such a generation of heat, is the transformation into heat of the enormous amount of mechanical force or energy, resulting from the con­ densation of the mass of nebulous matter from which the sun was formed, into a mass of its present dimensions. This is no doubt a true cause as far as it goes. It is true that as the mass contracts, heat would be, so to speak, squeezed out of it, very much as water is squeezed out of _a wet sponge by compressing it. But it is a question whether it is the sole and sufficient cause. Mathematicians have calculated that even if we suppose the original cosmic matter to have had an infinite extension, its condensation into the present sun would only have been sufficient to keep up the actual supply of solar heat for about 15 millions of year®; Of this a large portion must have been exhausted before the earth was formed as a separate planet,and had cooled down into a habitable globe. But even if we took the whole it would be altogether in­ sufficient. All competent geologists are agreed in requiring at least 100 millions of years to account for the changes which have taken place in the earth’s surface since the first dawn of life recorded in the older rocks. Various attempts have been made to reconcile the discrepancy. For instance, it has been said that the constantly re­ peated impact of masses of meteoric and cometic matter falling into the sun must have caused the destruction of a . vast amount of mechanical energy whhA would be converted into heat. This is true as far as it goes, but it is impossible to conceive of the sun as a target kept at a perpetual and uniform white heat for millions of years by a rain of meteoric bullets constantly fired upon it. More plausibly it is said that we know nothing of the interior constitution of the sun, and that its solid nucleus may be vastly more compressed than is inferred from the dimensions of its visible disc, which is composed of glowing flames and vapours. This also may be a true cause, but, after making every allowance, we must fall back on the statement that the c �18 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THONGUT continuance for such enormous periods of such an enormous waste of energy as is given out by the sun, though certainly explainable by laws of Nature, depends on laws not yet thoroughly understood and explained. Even in the case, comparatively small and near to us, of the earth, the condition of the interior and the rate of secular cooling afford problems which as yet wait for solution. The result of a number of careful experiments in mines and deep sinkings shows that the temperature, as we descend below the shallow superficial crust which is affected by the seasons, i.e., by the solar radiation, increases at the average rate of 1° Fahrenheit for every 60 feet of depth. That is the average rate, though it varies a good deal in dif­ ferent localities. Now, at this rate we should soon reach a depth at which all known substances would be melted. But astronomical considerations, de­ rived from the Precession of the Equi­ noxes, favour the idea that the earth is a solid and not a fluid body, and require us in any case to assume a rigid crust of not less than ninety miles in thickness. And if the whole earth below a thin superficial crust were in an ordinary state of fluidity from heat, it is difficult to see how it could do otherwise than boil, that is, establish circulating cur­ rents throughout its mass with disen­ gagement of vapour, in which case the surface crust must be very soon broken up and melted down, just as the super­ ficial crust of a red-hot stream of lava is, if an infusion of fresh lava raises the stream below to white heat, or as a thin film of ice would be if boiling water were poured in below it. All we can say is, that the laws under which matter behaves under conditions of heat pressure, chemical action, and electricity so totally different. as must prevail in the interior of the earth, and a fortiori in that of the sun, are as yet very partially known to us. In the meantime the safest course is to hold by tliose conclusions of geology which, as far as they go, depend on laws really known to us. For instance, the quantity of mud carried, down in a year by the Ganges or Mississippi, is a quantity which can be calculated within certain approximate limits. We can tell with certainty how much the deposit cf this amount of mud would raise an area, say of 100 square miles, and how long it would take, at this rate, to lower the area of India drained by the Ganges a sufficient number of feet to give matter enough to fill up the Gulf of Bengal. And if among the older for­ mations we find one, like the Wealden for instance, similar in character to that now forming by the Ganges, we can ap­ proximate from its thickness to the time that may have been required to form it. In calculations of this sort there is no theory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible amount of error either way In short, the con­ clusions of geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period, when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate facts and not theories, while the astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, like that of 15 millions of years for the whole past process of the formation of the solar system, in others they give results almost incredibly long, as in that which supposes the moon to have been thrown off when the earth was rotating in three hours, while the utmost actual retardation claimed from observation would require 600 millions of years to make it rotate in twenty-three hours in­ stead of twenty-four. To one who looks at these discussions between geologists and astronomers not from the point of view of a specialist in either science, but from that of a dis­ passionate spectator, the safest course, in the present state of our knowledge, seems to be to assume that geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase. So far, however, as the immediate object of this work is concerned, viz., the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modem thought, it is not very material whether the shortest or longest possible standards of time are adopted. The conclusions as to man’s position in the universe, and the historical truth or falsehood of old beliefs, are the same whether man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the. �MATTER last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years of a period of millions. It is a matter of the deepest scientific interest to arrive at the truth, both as to the age of the solar system, the age of the earth as a body capable of supporting life, the successive orders and dates at which life actually appeared, and the manner and date of the appearance of the most highly organ­ ised form of life endowed with new capa­ cities for developing reason and con­ science in the form of Man. Those who wish to prove themselves worthy of their great good luck in having been born in a civilised country of the nineteenth century, and not in Palaeolithic periods, will do well to show that curiosity, or appetite for knowledge, which mainly distinguishes the clever from the stupid and the civilised from the savage man, by studying the works of such writers as Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall, and Proctor, where they will find the questions which here are only briefly stated, developed at fuller length with the most accurate Science and in the clearest and most attractive style. But for the moral, philosophical, and religious bearings of these discoveries on the current _ of modern thought, there is such a wide margin that it becomes almost immaterial whether the shortest possible or longest possible periods should be ultimately established. CHAPTER III MATTER Matter and Motion—Light, Colour, and Heat —Matter and its Elements—Molecules and Atoms—Spectroscope—Uniformity of Mat­ ter throughout the Universe—Force and Motion—Conservation of Energy—Elec­ tricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action—Dissipation of Heat—Birth and Death of Worlds. The contents of the material universe may be expressed in terms of Matter and of Motion. Matter exists in the three­ fold and interrelated states known as solid, liquid, and gaseous, and it is con­ venient to include with these the appa­ rently fourth state called the ethereal. The existence of this last-named is an If) hypothesis by which alone can we account for the phenomena of light and heat, and, as the marvellous researches of Hertz have shown, of the electro-magnetic waves which confirm the theory of con­ nection between electricity, magnetism, light, and radiant heat. More than this we cannot assume regarding ether, for all ponderable matter,—solids, liquids, gases -—consists of ultimate molecules, and w® do not know whether ether is nonmolecular or imponderable. Dealing with Motion, it has been shown that light radiates in all directions from a luminous centre, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. Now what is light ? It is a sensation produced on the brain by something which has been concentrated by the lens of the eye on the retina, and thence transmitted along the optic nerve to the brain, where it sets certain molecules vibrating. What is the something which produces this effect ? Is it a succession of minute particles, shot like rifle-bullets from the luminous body and impinging on the retina as on a tar­ get ? Or is it a succession of tiny waves breaking on the retina as the waves of the sea break on a shore 1 Analogy sug­ gests the latter, for in the case of the sister sense, sound, we know as a fact that the sensation is produced on the brain by waves of air concentrated by the ear, and striking on the auditory nerve. But we have a more conclusive proof. If one of a series of particles shot out like bullets overtakes another, the force of impact of the two is increased ; but if one wave overtakes another when the crest of the pursuing wave just coin­ cides with the hollow of the wave before it the effect is neutralised, and if the two are of equal size it will be exactly neutralised and both waves . will be effaced. In other words, two lights will make darkness. This, therefore, affords an infallible test. If two lights can make darkness, light is propagated, like sound, by waves. Now two lights do constantly make darkness, as is proved, every day by numerous experiments. Therefore light is caused by waves. But to have waves there must be a medium through which the waves are propagated. Without water you could not have ocean waves ; without air you could not have sound-waves. Waves are in fact nothing but the successive forms assumed by a set of particles whichf c 2 �20 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT when forced from a position of rest, tend to return to that position, and oscillate about it. Place a cork on the surface of a still pond, and then throw in a stone ; what follows 1 Waves are propagated, which seem to travel outwards in circles, but if you watch the cork, you will see that it does not really travel outwards, but simply rises and falls in the same place. This is equally true of waves of sound and waves of light. But the velocity with which the waves travel depends on the nature of the medium. In a dense medium of imperfect elasticity they travel slowly, in a rare and elastic medium quickly. Now the velocity of a sound-wave in air is about 1,100 feet a second, that of the light-wave about 186,000 miles a second or about one million times greater. It is proved by mathematical calculation that, if the density of two media are the same, their elasticities are in proportion to the squares of the velocities with which a wave travels. The elasticity of ether, therefore, would be a million million times greater than that of air, which, as we know, is measured by its power of resisting a pressure of about 15 lbs. to the square inch. But the ether must in fact be almost infinitely rare, as well as almost infinitely elastic, for it causes no perceptible retardation in the motions of the earth and planets. It must be almost infinitely rare also because it permeates freely the interior of substances like glass and crystals, through which light­ waves pass, showing that the atoms or ultimate particles of which these sub­ stances are composed, minute as they are, must be floating in ether like buoys floating on water or balloons in the air. The dimensions of the light-waves which travel through this ether at the rate of 186,000 miles a second can be accurately measured by strict mathe­ matical calculations, depending mainly on the phenomena of interferences, i.e., of the intervals required between suc­ cessive waves for the crest of one to overtake the depression of another and thus make two lights produce darkness. These calculations are much too intri­ cate to admit of popular explanation, but they are as certain as those of the "Nautical Almanac, based on the law of gravity, which enable ships to find their way across the pathless ocean, and they give the following results : Dimensions of Light-Waves, Colours. Number of Waves in One Inch. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet 39,000 42 000 44,000 47,000 51,000 54,000 57,000 Number of cillations in Second. Os­ One 477,000,000,000,000 506,000,000,000,000 535,000,000,000,000 575,000,000,000.000 622,000,000,000,000 658,000.000,000,000 699,000,000,000,010 These are the colours whose vibrations affect the brain through the eye with the sensation of light, and which cause the sensation of white light when their different vibrations reach the eye simul­ taneously. But there are waves and vibrations on each side of these limits, which produce different effects, the longer waves with slower oscillations beyond the red, though no longer causing light causing heat, while the shorter and quicker waves beyond the violet cause chemical action, and are the most effec­ tive agents in photography. We must refer our readers to works treating specially of light for further details, and for an account of the vast variety of beautiful and interesting ex­ periments with polarised light, coloured rings, and otherwise, to which the theory of waves propagated through ethsf affords the key. For the present purpose it is sufficient to say that modern science compels us to assume such an ether ex­ tending everywhere, from the faintest star seen at a distance which requires thousands of years for its rays, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, to reach the earth, down to the infini­ tesimally small interspace between the atoms of the minutest matter. And throughout the whole of this enormous range law prevails, ether vibrates and has always vibrated in the same definite manner, just as air vibrates by definite laws when the strings of a piano are struck by the hammers. I now return to the consideration of matter. What is matter 1 In the most general sense it is that which has weight, or is subject to the law of gravity, and, as shown above, it exists, as ponderable stuff, in the three forms of solid, liquid, �MATTER Or gas, according to the amount of heat. Diminish heat, and the particles approach closer and are linked together.by mutual attraction, so as not to be readily parted ; this is a solid. Increase the heat up to a certain point, and the particles recede. until their mutual attractions m the interior of the mass neutralise one an­ other, SO that the particles can move fredy, though still held together as a mass by the sum of all these attractions acting as if concentrated at the centre of gravity ; this is the liquid state. Increase the heat still more, and the particles Separate until they get beyond the sphere of their mutual attraction and tend to dart off into space, unless confined by some surface on which they exert pres­ sure ; this is a gas. . . The most familiar instance of this is afforded by water, which, as we all know, SKists in the three forms of ice, water, and vapour or steam, according to the dose of heat which has been incorporated with it. Pursuing our inquiry further, the next great fact in regard to matter fs that it is not all uniform. While most of the jfommon forms with which we are con­ versant are made up of mixed materials, ^vhich can be taken to pieces and shown separately, there are, as at present ascer­ tained, some seventy-six substances which defy chemical analysis to decompose them, and must therefore be taken as elementary substances. A great majority of these consist of substances existing in minute quantities, and hardly known Outside the laboratories of chemists The world of matter, as known to the senses, is mainly composed of combina­ tions, more or less complex, of a few elements. Thus, water is a compound of two simple gases, oxygen and hydrogen ; air, speaking broadly, of oxygen and nitrogen; the solid framework of the Mrtli, mainly of combinations of oxygen With carbon, calcium, aluminium, silicon, and a few other bases ; salt, of chlorine ^nd sodium ; the vegetable world directly and the animal world indirectly, mainly of complex combinations of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen with carbon, and With smaller quantities of silicon, sulphur, (potassium, sodium, and phosphorus. . The ordinary metals, such as iron, gold, silver, stopper, tin, lead, mercury, zinc, nearly complete the list of what may be called Ordinary elements. 21 Now let us push our analysis a step further. How is matter made up of these elements ; Up to and beyond the furthest point visible by aid of the microscope, matter is divisible. We can break a crystal into fragments, or divide a drop into drops, until they cease to be visibly though still retaining all the properties of the original substance. Can we carry on this process indefinitely, and is matter composed of something, that can b® divided and subdivided into fractional parts ad infinitum? The answer is, No, it consists of ultimate but still definite particles which cannot be further sub* divided. How is this kno wn ? Becaus® we find by experience that substances 1 will only combine in certain definite pro I portions either of weight or measure,* For instance, in forming water exactly eight grains by weight of oxygen combine with exactly one grain of hydrogen, and if there is any excess or fractional part of either gas, it remains over , in its original form uncombined. In like manner, matter in. the form of gag always combines with other matter in the same form by volumes which, bear a definite and very simple proportion to each other, and the compound formed bears a definite and very simple ratio to the sum of the volumes of the combining gases. Thus two volumes of hydrogen combine with one of oxygen to form two volumes of water in the state of vapour. From these facts certain inferences can be drawn. In the first place it is clear that matter really does consist of minute particles, which do not touch and form a continuous solid, but are. separated by intervals which increase with increase of temperature. This is evident from the fact that we can pour a second or third gas into a space already occupied by a first one. Each gas occu pies the enclosed space just as if there were no other gas present, and exerts its own proper pres­ sure on the containing vessel, so that the total pressure on it is exactly the sum of the partial pressures. It is easy to see what this means. If a second regiment can be marched into a limited.space of ground on which a first regiment is already drawn up, it is evident that the first regiment must be drawn up in loose order, i.e., the soldier-units of which it is composed must stand so far apart that other soldier-units can find room be­ tween them without disturbing the for- �22 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT mation. But the effect will be that the fire from the front will be increased, as for instance if a soldier of the second regiment, armed with a six-shooter re­ peating rifle, takes his stand between two soldiers of the first regiment armed with single-barrelled rifles, the effective fire will be increased in the ratio of 8 to 2. And this is precisely what is meant by the statement that the pressure of two gases in the same space is the sum of the separate pressures of each. It is clearly established that the pressure of a gas on a containing surface is caused by the bombarding to which it is subjected from the impacts of an almost infinite number of these almost infinitely small atoms, which, when let loose from the mutual attractions which hold them together in the solid and fluid state, dart about in all directions, colliding with one another and rebounding, like a set of little billiard-balls gone mad, and producing a certain average resultant of momentum outwards which is called pressure. Another simile may help us to conceive how the indivisibility of atoms is inferred from the fact that they only combine in definite proportions. Suppose a number of gentlemen and ladies promenading promiscuously in a room. The band strikes up a waltz, and they at once pro­ ceed to group themselves in couples rotating with rhythmical motion in defi­ nite orbits. Clearly, if there are more ladies than gentlemen, some of them will be left without partners. So, if instead of a waltz it were a threesome reel, in which each gentleman led out two ladies, there must be exactly twice as many ladies as gentlemen for all to join in the dance. But if a gentleman could be cut up into fractional parts, and each frac­ tion developed into a dancing gentleman, as primitive cells split up and produce fresh cells, it would not matter how many ladies there were, as each could be pro­ vided with a partner.. Now this is strictly analogous to what occurs in chemical combination. Water is formed by each gentleman atom of oxygen taking out a lady atom of hydrogen in each hand, and the sets thus formed com­ mence to dance threesome reels in defi­ nite time and measure, any surplus oxygen or hydrogen atoms being left out in the cold. Wonderful as it may appear, science enables us not only to say of these inconceivably minute atoms that they have a real existence, but to count and weigh them. This fact has been accomplished by mathematical cal­ culations based on laws which have been ascertained by a long series of experi­ ments on the constitution of gases. It is found that all substances, when in the form of gas, conform to three laws : 1. Their volume is inversely propor­ tional to the pressure to which they are subjected. 2. Their volume is directly proportional to the temperature. 3. At the same pressure and tempera­ ture all gases have the same num­ ber of molecules in the same volume. From the last law it is obvious that if equal volumes of two gases are of different weight, the cause must be that the mole­ cules of the one are heavier than those of the other. This enables us to express the weight of the molecule of any other gas in some multiple of the unit afforded by the weight of the molecule of the lightest gas, whiqfi is hydrogen. Thus, the density of watery vapour being nine times that of hydrogen, we infer that the molecule of water weighs nine times as much as the molecule of hydrogen, and that of oxygen being eight times greater, we infer that the oxygen molecule is eight times heavier than that of hydrogen. These weights are checked by the other law which has been stated, that chemical combination between different substances always takes place in certain definite pro­ portions. Thus, whenever in a chemical process the original substances or the pro­ duct are or might exist in the state of gas, it is always found that the definite pro­ portions observed in the chemical process are either the proportions of the densities of the respective gases or some simple multiple of these proportions. Thus, the weight of hydrogen being 2, which com­ bines with a weight of oxygen equal to 16 to form a weight of watery vapour equal to 18, the density of the latter is to that of hydrogen as 9 to 1, i.e., as 18 to 2. But to get to the bottom of the matter we must go a step further, and as we have decomposed substances into molecules, we must take the molecules themselves to pieces and see what they are made of. The molecule is the ultimate particle into which any substance can be divided re­ taining its own peculiar qualities. A mole­ cule of water is as truly water as a drop �MATTER or a tumblerful. But when chemical de­ composition takes place, instead of the molecule of water we have molecules of two entirely different substances, oxygen and hydrogen. Nothing can well be more unlike than the product water and the component parts of which it is made up. Water is a fluid, oxygen a gas ; water ex­ tinguishes fire, oxygen creates it. Water is a harmless drink, oxygen the base of the most corrosive acids. It is evident that the water-molecule is a composite, and that its qualities depend, not on the essential qualities of the atoms which have combined to make it, but on the manner of the combination, and the new modes of action into which these atoms have been forced. In his native war-paint oxygen is a furious savage ; with a hydro­ gen atom in each hand he is a polished gentleman. Our theory, therefore, leads beyond molecules to atoms, and we have to con­ sider these particles of a still smaller order than molecules, as the ultimate indivisible units of matter of which we have been in search. And even these we must conceive of as corks, as it were, .floating in an ocean of ether, causing waves in it by their own proper move­ ments, and agitated by all the successive waves which vibrate through this etherocean in the form of light and heat. Working on these data, a variety of refined mathematical calculations made by Clausius, Clerk Maxwell, Sir W. Thom­ son (now Lord Kelvin), and other eminent mathematicians, have given us approxi­ mate figures for the actual size, weight, and velocities of atoms and molecules. The results are truly marvellous. A mil­ limetre is the one-thousandth part of a metre, or roughly one twenty-fifth of an inch. The magnitudes with which we have to deal are all of an order where the standard of measurement is expressed by the millionth part of a millimetre. The volume of a molecule of air is only a small fraction of that of a cube whose side would be the millionth of a millimetre. A cubic centimetre, or say a cube whose side is between one-third and one-half of an inch, contains 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules. The number of impacts re­ ceived by each molecule of air during one second will be 4,700 millions. The distance traversed between each impact averages 95 millionths of a millimetre. It may assist in forming some concep­ 23 tion of these almost infinitely small mag nitudes, to quote an illustration given by Sir W. Thomson as the result of mathe­ matical calculation. Suppose a drop of water were magnified so as to appear of the size of the earth or with a diameter of 8,000 miles, the atoms of which it is composed, magnified on the same scale, would appear of a size intermediate between that of a rifle-bullet and of a cricket-ball. These figures show that space and mag­ nitude extend beyond the standards of ordinary human sense, such as miles, feet, and inches, as far downwards into the region of the infinitely small as they do upwards into that of the infinitely great. And throughout the whole of this enor­ mous range law prevails. The same law of gravity gives weight to molecules and atoms, makesan apple fall to the ground, and causes double stars to revolve round their centre of gravity in elliptic orbits. The law of polarity which converts ironfilings into small magnets under the in­ fluence of a permanent magnet or electric current, animates the smallest atom. Atoms arrange themselves into molecules, and molecules into crystals, very much as magnetised iron-filings arrange them­ selves into regular curves. And the great law seems to prevail universally through­ out the material, as it does also through­ out the moral world, that you cannot have a North without a South Pole, a positive without a negative, a right with­ out a wrong; and that error consists mainly in what the poet calls, “the false­ hood of extremes ”—that is, in allowing the attraction of one pole, oi* of one opinion,- so to absorb us as to take no account of its opposite. The universality of law has received wonderful confirmation of late years from the discovery made by the spectroscope that the sun, the planets, and the re­ motest stars are all composed of matter identical with that into which chemical analysis has resolved the constituent matter of the earth. This has been proved in the following way : If a beam of light is admitted into a darkened room through a small hole or narrow slit, and a triangular piece of glass, called a prism, is interposed in its path, the image, thrown on a screen is a rainbow tinted streak, intersected by numerous fine dark lines, whieh is called a spectrum. If, instead of solar light, light �24 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT from other luminous sources is similarly treated, it is found that all elementary substances have their peculiar spectra. Light from solid or liquid substances gives a continuous spectrum, light from gases or glowing vapours gives a spect­ rum of bright lines separated from each other, but always in definite positions according to the nature of the substance. The next great step in the discovery was that these bright lines become dark lines when a light of greater intensity, coming from a solid nucleu s, is transmitted through an atmosphere of such gases or vapours. We can thus photograph the spectrum of glowing hydrogen, sodium, iron, or other substances, and placing it below a photo­ graph of a solar or stellar spectrum, see if any of the dark lines of the latter are coincident in position with the bright lines of the former. If they are, we may be.certain that these substances actually exist in the sun or star. It is, in fact, just the same thing as if we had been able to bring down a jar-full of the solar or stellar matter and analyse it in our labo­ ratories. It is difficult to convey any adequate description of these grand discoveries made by the new science of spectroscopy without referring to special works on the subject; but it may be possible to give some general idea of the principles on which they are based. As has been shown, light consists of waves propagated through ether. These waves are started by the vibrations of the ultimate particles of matter, which, whether in the simplest form of atoms, in the more complex form of molecules, or in the still more complex form of com­ pound molecules, have their own peculiar and ciistinct vibrations. These vibrations are increased, diminished, or otherwise modified by variations of heat and by the collisions which occur between the par­ ticles from their own proper motions. If we take the simplest case, that of matter in the form of a gas or vapour composed of single atoms, at a temperature just sufficient to become luminous and at a pressure small enough to keep the atoms widely apart, the vibrations are all of one sort, viz., that peculiar to the elementary substance to which they belong, and one set of waves only is propagated by them f hrough the ether. The spectrum, there­ fore. of such a gas is a single line of light, in the definite position which is due to its refrangibility, i.e., to the velocity of the particular wave of light which the par­ ticular vibration of those particular atoms is able to propagate. When pressure is increased so that the particles are brought closer together, their vibrations made more energetic and their collisions more frequent, more waves, and waves of different qualities are started, and more lines appear in the spectrum and the lines widen out, until at length when the gas becomes very dense, some of the lines overlap and an approach is made towards a continuous spectrum. Finally, when the particles are brought so near together that the substance assumes a fluid or solid state, the number of wave-producing vibrations becomes so great that a complete system of different light-waves is propagated, and the lines of the spectrum are multi­ plied until they coalesce and form a con­ tinuous band of rainbow-tinted light. If the particles of the gas, instead of being single atoms, are more complex, as mole­ cules or compound molecules, the vibra­ tions are more complex and the different resulting light-waves more numerous, so that the lines in the spectrum are more numerous, and in some cases they coalesce so as to form, shaded bands, or what are called fluted lines, instead of simple lines. Moreover, whatever light-waves are originated by the vibrations of the par­ ticles of gas are absorbed into those vibrations and extinguished, if they originate from the vibrations of some more energetic particles of another sub­ stance outside of it, whose light-waves, travelling along the ether, pass through the gas, and are thus shown as dark lines in the spectrum of the other source of light. . We can now understand how the asser­ tion is justified that we can analyse the composition of the sun and stars as cer­ tainly as if we had a jar full of their substance to analyse in our laboratory. The first glance at a spectrum tells us whether the luminous source is solid, fluid, or gaseous. If its spectrum is con­ tinuous it is solid or fluid ; we know this for certain, but can tell nothing more. But if it consists of bright lines, we know that it comes direct from matter in the form of luminous gas, and knowing from experiments in the laboratory the exact colours and situations of the lines formed by the different elements of which earthly �MATTER matter is composed, we can see whether the lines in the spectra of heavenly matter do or do not correspond with any of them. if bright lines correspond we are sure that the substances correspond, both as to their elementary atoms and their con­ dition as glowing gas. If dark lines in the spectrum of the heavenly body corre­ spond with bright lines in that of . a known earthly substance, we are certain that the substances are the same and in the same state of gas, but that the solar or stellar spectrum proceeds from an Intensely heated interior solid or fluid nucleus, whose waves have passed through an outer envelope or atmosphere of this gas. Applying these principles, although the science is still in its infancy and many interesting discoveries remain to be made, this grand discovery has become an axiomatic fact—Matter is alike every­ where. The light of stars up to the ex­ treme boundary of the visible universe is composed mainly of glowing hydrogen, the same identical hydrogen as we get by decomposing water by a voltaic battery. Of the 76 elementary substances enu­ merated by chemists, 36 are known cer­ tainly to exist in the sun’s atmosphere. The elements whose presence is proved comprise many of those which are most common in the composition of the earth, as hydrogen, carbon, iron (represented by about 2,000 lines in the. solar spec­ trum), lead, calcium, aluminium, magne­ sium, sodium, potassium, etc.; and if others, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and chlorine have not yet been found, the explanation is that when a mixture of the incandescent vapours of the metals and metalloids (or non-metallic elemen­ tary substances, to which class both oxy­ gen and nitrogen belong), or their com­ pounds, is examined with the spectroscope, the spectra of the metalloids always yield before that of the metals. Hence the absence of the lines of oxygen and other metalloids, carbon and silicon excepted, among the vast crowd of lines in the solar spectrum. Then, too, in extreme states of rarefaction of the sun’s absorbing layer, the absorption of the oxygen is too small to be sensible to us. The main fact is firmly established that matter is the same throughout all space, from the minutest atom to the remotest star. Thus far we have been treating of matter only, and of force and motion but 25 incidentally. These, however, are equally essential components of the phenomena of the universe. What is force ? In the last analysis it is the unknown causa which we assume for motion, or the term in which we sum up whatever produces or tends to produce it. The idea of foreej like so many other of our ideas, is take© from our own sensations. If we lift a weight or bend a bow, we are conscious of doing so by an effort. Something which we call will produces a motion in the molecules of the brain, which is trans­ mitted by the nerves to. the muscles where it liberates a certain amount of energy stored up by the chemical com­ position and decomposition of. the atoms of food which we consume. This contracts the muscle, and the force of its contrac­ tion, transmitted by a system of pulleys and levers to the hand, lifts the weighty If we let go the weight it falls, and th® force which lifted it reappears in th® force with which it strikes the ground. If we do not let go the weight but. plac® it on a support at the height to which we have raised it, it does not fall, no motion! ensues, but the lifting force remain stored-up in a tendency to motion, and can be made to reappear as motion at any time by withdrawing the support^ when the weight will fall. It is evident therefore, that force may exist in two forms, either as actually causing motion^ or as causing a tendency to motion. In this generalised form it has been agreed to call it energy, as less liable to be obscured by the ordinary impressions attached to the word force, which are mainly derived from experiences of actual motion cognizable by the senses. speak, therefore, of energy as of some­ thing which is the basis or primum mobiii of all motion or tendency to motion, whether it be in the grosser forms of gravity and mechanical work, or in the subtler forms of molecular and atonii® motions causing the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemi­ cal action. This energy may exist either in the form of actual motion, when it is called energy of motion, or in that of tendency to motion, when it is called energy of position. Thus the bent bow has energy of position which, when , the string is let go, is at once converted into energy of motion in the flight of the arrow. Respecting this energy modern science has arrived at this grand generalisation^ �26 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT that it is one and the same in all its different manifestations, and can neither be created nor destroyed, so that all these varied manifestations are mere transfor­ mations of the same primitive energy from one form to another. This is what is meant by the principle of the “Con­ servation of Energy.” It was arrived at in this 'way. Speak­ ing roughly, it has long been known that heat could generate mechanical power, as seen in the steam-engine ; and conversely that mechanical power could generate heat, as is seen when a sailor, in a chill north-easter, claps his arms together on his breast to warm himself. But it was reserved for Dr. Joule to give this fact the scientific precision of a natural law, by actually measuring the amount of heat that was added to a given weight of water by a given expenditure of mechanical power, and conversely the amount of mechanical work that could be got from a given expenditure of heat. A vast number of carefully-conducted experiments have led to the conclusion that if a kilogramme be allowed to fall through 424 metres and its motion be then suddenly stopped, sufficient heat will be generated to raise the tempera­ ture of one kilogramme of water by 1° Centigrade ; and conversely this amount of heat would be sufficient to raise one kilogramme to a height of 424 metres. If, therefore, we take as our unit of work that of raising one kilogramme one metre, and as our unit of heat that necessary to raise one kilogramme of water 1° Centigrade, we may express the proportion of heat to work by saying that one unit of beat is equal to 424 units of work ; or, as it is sometimes expressed, that the number 424 is the mechanical equivalent of heat. But the question may be asked, what does this mean, how c^n mechanical work be really transformed into heat or viceversa 1 The answer is, the energy which was supplied by chemical action to the muscles of the man or horse, or to the water converted into steam by combus­ tion of coal, which originated the me­ chanical work, was first transformed into its equivalent amount of mechanical energy of motion, and then, when that motion was arrested, was transformed into heat, which is simply the same energy transformed into increased mole­ cular motion. we wish to carry our inquiry a step further back and ask where the original energy came from which has undergone these transformations, the answer must be, .mainly from the sun. The sun’s rays, acting on the chlorophyl or green matter of the plants of the coal era, rore asunder the atoms of carbon and oxygen which formed the carbonic acid in the atmosphere, and locked up a store of energy in the form of carbon in the coal which is burned to produce the steam. In like manner it stored-up the energy in the form .of carbon in the vegetable pro­ ducts winch, either directly, or indirectly after having passed through the body of some animal, supplied the food, whose slow combustion in the man or horse supplied the energy which did the work. But where did the energy come from which the sun has been pouring forth for countless ages in the form of light and heat, and of which our earth only inter­ cepts the minutest portion 1 This is a mystery not yet completely solved, but one real cause we can see, which has certainly operated and perhaps been the only one, viz., the mechanical energy of the. condensation by gravity of the atoms which originally , formed the nebulous matter out of which the sun was made. If . we ask, how came the atoms into existence endowed with this marvellous energy, we have reached the furthest bounds of human knowledge, and can only reply in the words of the poet: “Behind the veil, behind the veil.” We can only form metaphysical con­ ceptions, or I might rather call them the vaguest guesses. One is, that they were created and endowed with their ele­ mentary properties by an all-wise and all-powerful Creator. This is Theism. Another, that thought is the only reality, and that all the phenomena of the universe are thoughts or ideas of one universal, all-pervading Mind. This is Pantheism. Or again, we may frankly acknow­ ledge that the real essence and origin of things are “ behind the. veil,” and not knowable or even conceivable by any faculties with which the human mind is endowed in its present state of existence. This is Agnosticism. There is another conception, of which we may certainly say that it is not ten­ able.—that is Atheism. For it is the spirit that denies without warrant for �MATTER denial, and pronounces a verdict which fen arrived at without evidence* But these speculations lead us into the misty regions where, like Milton’s fallen angels, “we find no end in wandering mazes lost.” Let us return to the solid ground of fact, on which alone the human mind can stand firmly, and, like Ant-mu s, gather fresh vigour every time it touches it for further efforts to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge and extend the domain of Cosmos over Chaos. The transformation of energy which we have seen to exist in the case of mechanical work and heat, is not con­ fined to those two cases only, but is a universal law applicable to all actions <nd arrangements of matter which in­ volve motions of atoms, molecules, or masses, and therefore imply the existence of energy. In heat we have had an Example of energy exerted in molecular Biotion and molecular separation. In chemical action we have energy exerted in the separation of atoms, severing them from old combinations and mutual attractions, and bringing them within the sphere of new ones.. In electricity, and magnetism, which is another form of electricity, we have energy of position which manifests itself in electrical separation, by which matter becomes charged with two opposite energies, positive and negative, which accumulate at separate poles, or on separate surfaces, with an amount of tension which may be reconverted into the original amount of energy of motion when the spark, passing between them, restores their electrical equilibrium. Of this we have an ex­ ample in the ordinary electrical machine, where the original energy comes from the mechanical force which turns the.handle, and is given back when the electric spark brings things back to their original state. We have also energy of motion, when Instead of electrical separation and tension we have a flow or current of electricity producing the effect of the electric spark in a slow, quiet, and con­ tinuous manner. Thus, in the voltaic battery, the free energy created by the difference of chemical action of an acid on plates of different metals, is trans­ formed into a current which charges two poles with opposite electricities, and when the poles are brought together and the circuit is closed, flows through it in a continuous current. This current is an energetic agent which produces various effects. It deflects the magnetic needle, as is seen in the electric telegraph. It creates magnetism, as is seen whoa the] poles of the battery are connected by a wire wrapped round and round a cylinder of soft iron, so as to make the current circulate at right angles to the axis formed by the cylinder. In fact, all magnetism may be considered as the summing up at the two opposite ex­ tremities or poles of an axis, of the effects of electric currents circulating! round it; as, for instance, the earth is a great magnet because currents caused by the action of the sun circulate round it nearly parallel to the equator. Electric currents further show their energy by attracting and repelling one another,] those flowing in the same direction at­ tracting, and those in opposite di­ rections repelling, the same effect show­ ing itself in magnets, which are in sub­ stance collections of circular currents flowing from right to left or left to right according as they are positive or negative. Again, currents produce an effect by inducing currents in other bodies placed near them, very much as the vibrations! of a tuning-fork- induce vibrations and bring out a corresponding note from the strings of a piano or violin ready to sound it. When a coil of wire W con­ nected with a battery and a current passes through it, if it is brought near toj another isolated coil it induces a CfUmnil in an opposite direction, which, when it recedes from it, is changed into a cur­ rent in the same direction. These principles are illustrated by the ordinary dynamo, by which the energy of mechanical work exerted in making magnets revolve in presence of currents, and by various devices accumulating! electric energy, is made available either ’ for doing other mechanical work, such as driving a wheel, or for doing molecular or atomic work by producing heat and light. Another transformation of the energy of electric currents is into heat, light, or chemical action. If the two poles.of a battery are connected by a thin platinum wire it will be heated to redness in ft few seconds, the friction or resistance to the current in passing through the limited; section of the thin wire producing; great heat. If the wire is thicker heat �28 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT will equally be produced, but more slowly. If the poles of the battery are made of carbon, or some substance the particles of which remain solid during intense heat, when they are brought nearly to­ gether the current will be completed by an arc of intensely brilliant light, and the carbon will slowly burn away. This is the electric light so commonly used when great illuminating power is wanted. Again, the electric current may employ its energy in effecting chemical action. If the poles of a battery, instead of being brought together, are plunged into a vessel of water, decomposition will begin. Oxygen will rise in small bubbles at the positive pole, and hydrogen at the negative. If these two gases are col­ lected together in the same vessel, and an electric current, in the intense and momentary form of a spark, passed through them, they will combine with explosion into the exact amount of water which was decomposed in their formation. Everywhere, therefore, we find the same law of universal application. Energy, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed,. but only transformed. It is therefore, in one sense, eternal. But there is another point of view from which this has to be regarded. Mechanical work, as we have seen, can always be converted into heat, and heat can, under certain conditions, be reconverted into mechanical work ; but not under all conditions. The heat must pass from something at a higher temperature into something at a lower. If the condenser of a steam-engine were always at the same temperature as the boiler, we should get no work out of it. It is.easy to understand how this is the case if we figure to ourselves a river running down into a lake. If the stream is dammed up at two different levels, each dam, as long as there is water in it, will turn a mill-wheel. But if all the water runs down into the lake and, owing to a dry season, there is no fresh supply, the wheels will stop and we can get no more work done. So with heat, if it all runs down to one uniform tem­ perature it can no longer be made available to do work. In the case of the river, fresh water is supplied at the higher levels, by the sun’s energy rais­ ing it by evaporation from the seas to the clouds, from which it is deposited as rain or snow. But in the case of heat there is no such self-restoring process, and. the. tendency is always towards its dissipation;. or in other words, towards a more uniform distribution of heat throughout all existing matter. The process is very slow ; the original fund of high-temperature heat is enormous, and as long as matter goes on condens­ ing fresh supplies of heat are, so to speak, squeezed out of it. Still there is a limit to condensation, while there is no limit to the tendency of heat to diffuse itself from hotter to colder matter until all temperatures are equalized. The energy is not destroyed ; it is still there in the same average amount of total heat, though no longer differentiated into greater and lesser heats, and therefore no longer available for life, motion, or any other form of transformation. This seems to be the case with the moon, which, being so much smaller, has sooner equalised its heat with surrounding space, and is ap­ parently a burnt-out and dried-up cinder without air or water. And this, as far as we can see, must be the ultimate fate of all planets, suns, and solar systems. Fortunately the process is extremely slow, for even our small earth has en­ joyed air, water, sunshine, and all the present conditions necessary for life for the whole geological period, certainly from the Silurian epoch downwards, if not earlier, which cannot well be less than 100 millions of years, and may be much more. Still time, even if reckoned by hundreds of millions of years, is not eternity; and as, looking through the telescope at nebulae which appear to be condensing about central nuclei, we perchance dimly discern a beginning, so, looking at the moon and reasoning from established principles as to the dissipa­ tion of heat, we can dimly discern an end. What we really can see is that throughout the whole of this enormous range of space and time law prevails •, that, given the original atoms and energies with their original qualities, everything else follows in a regular and and inevitable succession; and that the whole material universe is a clock, so perfectly constructed from the beginning as to require no outside interference during the time it has to run to keep it going with absolute correctness. �LIFE CHAPTER IV LIFE. Essence of Life—Simplest Form, Protoplasm —Monera and Protista—Animal and Vege­ table Life—Spontaneous Generation—De­ velopment of Species from Primitive Cells -—Supernatural Theory—Zoological . Pro­ vinces-—Separate Creations—Law or Miracle —Darwinian Theory—Struggle for LifeSurvival of the Fittest—Development and Design—The Hand—Proof required to es­ tablish Darwin’s Theory as a Law—Species —Hybrids—Man subject to Law. The universe is divided into two worlds —the inorganic, or world of dead matter; and the organic, or world of life. What is life 1 In its essence it is a state of matter in which the particles are in a continued state of flux, and the indi­ vidual existence depends, not on the same particles remaining in the same definite shape, but on the permanence of a definite mould or form through which fresh par­ ticles are continually entering, forming new combinations and passing away. It may assist in forming a conception of this if we imagine ourselves to be looking at a mountain the top of which is enveloped in a driving mist. The mountain is dead matter, the particles of which continue fixed in the rocks. But the cloud-form which envelops it is a mould into which fresh particles of vapour are continually entering and becoming visible on the windward side, and passing away and disappearing to leeward. If we add to this the conception that the particles do not, as in the case of the cloud, simply enter in and pass away without change, but are digested, that is, undergo chemical changes by which they- are partly assimi­ lated and worked-up into component parts of the mould, and partly thrown off in new combinations, we shall arrive at something which is not far off the.ulti­ mate idea of what constitutes living matter, in its simplest form of the pro­ toplasm, or speck of jelly-like substance, which is shown to be the primitive basis or raw material of all the more, complex forms both of vegetable and animal life. Digestion, therefore, is the primary attri­ bute. A crystal grows from without, by taking on fresh particles and building them up in regular layers according to fixed laws, just as the pyramids of Egypt were built up by layer upon layer of squared stones upon surfaces formed of I regular figures, and inclined to each other at determinate angles. The living plant or animal grows from U within by taking supplies of fresh matter into its inner laboratory, where it is worked up into a variety of comptoj^l products needed for the existence and reproduction of life. After supplying •] these, the residue is given back in various forms to the inorganic world, and the final residue of all is given back by death, which is the ultimate end of all life. The simplest form of life, in which it I first emerges from the inorganic into the J organic world, consists of protoplasm, or, as it has been called, the physical basis Of I life. Protoplasm is a colourless semi-fluid! or jelly-like substance, which consists of I albuminoid matter, or in other words, of a heterogeneous carbon-compound of very complex chemical composition. It exist^J in every living cell, and performs the functions of nutrition and reproductlcy.^ as well as of sensation and motion. In^| its simplest form, that of the microscopic monera or protista, the lowest of living beings, we find an apparently homo­ geneous structureless piece of protoplasm, without any differentiation of parts. The monera are simple living globules of jelly, without even a nucleus or any sort of organ, and yet they perform all the essential functions of life without any different parts being told off for par­ ticular functions. Every particle or mole­ cule is of the same chemical composition. and a facsimile of the whole body, as in the case of a crystal. They are, there­ fore, the first step from the inorganic into the organic world, and if spontaneow generation takes place anywhere, it is in the passage of the chemical elements! from the simple and stable combinations of the former into the complex and plastic combinations of the latter. The next step upwards is to the cell in which the protoplasm is enclosed in a skin or membrane of modified protoplasm, and a nucleus, or denser spot, is developed in the enclosed mass. This is the primary element from which all the more coni’ plicated forms of life are built-up. Each cell seems to have an independent life of its own, and a faculty of reproduction by splitting into fresh cells similar to itself, which multiply in geometrical progres­ sion, assimilating the elements of their �30 MODERN SCIENCE’ AND MODERN THOUGHT substance from the inorganic world so rapidly as to provide the requisite raw material for higher structures. The first organised living forms are extremely minute, and can only be re­ cognised by powerful microscopes. A filtered infusion of hay, allowed to stand r for two days, will swarm with living r tilings, a number of which do not exceed of an inch in diameter. Minute as these animalcula are, they are tho­ roughly alive. They dart about and digest; the smallest speck of jelly-like subalance shoots out branches or processes to.seize food, and if these come in collision with other substances they withdraw them. They exist in countless myriads, and perform a very important part in the £ economy of nature. They are the scav­ engers of the universe, and remove the remains of living matter after death, which would otherwise accumulate until they choked-up the earth. This they do by the process of putrefaction, which is due mainly to the multiplication of little rod-like creatures known as bacteria, which work up the once living, now dead, matter into, fresh elements, again fitted to play their part in the inorganic and organic worlds. One of the simplest of these forms is the amoeba, which is nothing but a naked little , lump of cell-matter, or plasma, containing a nucleus ; and yet this little Jfcpeck of jelly moves freely, it shoots out tongues or processes and gradually draws itself up. to them with a sort of wave­ like motion; it eats and grows, and in I growing reproduces itself by contracting in the middle and splitting up into two Bndependent amoebae. Th© germs of these various animalcula swarm in the air, and carry seeds of infection wherever they find a soil fitted to receive them; and thus assist the survival of the fittest in the struggle of life, by eliminating weak and unhealthy individuals and species. Thus when the potato, the vine, or the silkworm has had its constitution enfeebled by prolonged artificial culture, there are germs always ready to revenge the violation of natural laws, and bring the survivors back to a more heathy condition. In like manner the germs of cholera, typhoid, and scarlet fever, enforce the observance of sanitary principles. In this simple form the lowest forms of life are not yet sufficiently differentiated to enable us to distinguish clearly between animal and vegetable, and they have been called by some naturalists Protista, while Amceba. Amceba dividing into two. others designate them as Protozoa or Protophyta, according as they show more resemblance to one or the other form of life.. But it is often so doubtful that in looking at the same organism through a microscope, Huxley was inclined to consider it as a plant, while Tyndall exclaimed that he could as soon believe that a sheep was a vegetable. In the next stage upwards, however, life subdivides itself into two great kingdoms, that of the vegetable and of the animal world. Alike in their general definition as contrasted with inorganic matter, and in their common origin from an embryo cell, which divides and subdivides until cell-aggregates are formed, from which the living form is built up by a process of evolution, the plant differs from the animal in this : that the former feeds directly on inorganic matter, while the latter can only feed on it indirectly, after it has been manufactured by the plant into vegetable substance. This is universally true, for if we dine on beef, we dine practically on the grass which the ox ate ; that is, on the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and other simple ele­ ments which the grass, under the stimulus of light and sunshine, manufactured into complex compounds ; and which the ox again, by a second process, manufactured from these compounds into others still more complex, and more easily assimilated by us in the process of digestion. But in no case can we dine, as the plant does, on the simple elements, and thrive on a diet, of air and water, with a small admixture of nitrate of ammonia, and of phosphates, sulphates and chlorides, of a few primitive metals. Vegetable life, �LIFE f-herefora, is the producer, and animal life the consumer, of the organic world. Practically the plant derives most of its substance from the carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, which green leaves under the stimulus of light and heat have the faculty of decomposing, and abstract the carbon giving out the oxygen ; while the animal, by a reverse process, burns up the compounds manufactured by the plant, principally out of this carbon, by the oxygen obtained from the air by the process of respiration, exhaling the sur­ plus carbon in the form of carbonic acid gas. The balancing effect of these two pro­ cesses may be seen in any aquarium, where animals and vegetables live to­ gether in water which is kept pure, while it would become stagnant and poisonous in a few hours, if one of the two forms of life were removed. All that the animal requires therefore for its existence—ma­ terials with which to build up its frame and supply waste ; heat with which to maintain its circulating fluids and other substances at a proper temperature; motive power or energy to enable it to move, feel, and, in the case of the higher animals, to think—are all proceeds of the slow combustion of materials derived from the vegetable world in the oxygen breathed from the air, just as the work done by a steam-engine is the product of a similar combustion, or chemical com­ bination of the oxygen of the air with the coal shovelled into the fire-box. These distinctions, however, between animals and vegetables are not quite absolute, for, even in the more highly-organised forms of life, there is a border-land where some plants seem to perform the functions of animals, as in those which catch, and consume flies and eat and digest pieces of raw meat. Those who wish to pursue this interest­ ing subject further will do well to read the Chapter on Living Matter in Huxley’s “ Physiography,” where they will find it toore fully explained, with the inimit­ able clearness which characterises all the writings of an author who was at the same tirna one of the first scientific authorities and one of the greatest masters, of English prose. But my present, object is not to write a scientific treatise, but shortly to sum up the ascertained results of modern science, with a view to their bearings on modern thought; and from 3f this point of view the immediate question, is, how far unbroken sequence, which has been shown to prevail universally throughout space, time, and inorganic J matter, can be shown to prevail equally throughout the world of life.. Up to a certain point this admits of positive proof. It is as certain that all individual life, from the most elementary protoplasm up to the highest organism, Man, originates in a minute or embryo cell, as it is that oxygen and. hydrogen, combined in certain proportions make water. But if we try to go back one step further, behind the cell, we are stopped. In the inorganic world we can reason OUT way beyond the microscopic matter to the molecule, and from the molecule to the atom, and are only arrested when we come to the ultimate form of matter, and of energy, out of which the universe is built up. But, in the case of life, we are stopped two steps short of this, and can* not tell how the cell containing the germ d of life is built up out of the simpler 1 elements. Many attempts have been made to bridge over this gulf, and to show how life may originate in chemical compound#, but hitherto without success. Experi­ ments have been made which, for a time, seemed to show that spontaneous genera­ tion was a scientific fact, i.e., that the lowest forms of life, such as bacteria arid amoebae, really did originate in infusion# containing no germs of life; but they have been met by counter experiments confirmingHarvey’s dictum, “Omnevivttm ex ovo,” or, all life comes from an egg, i.e., from antecedent germs of life, and the verdict of the best authorities, sueh as Pasteur, Tyndall, and Huxley is, thatspontaneous generation has been “defeated along the whole line.” This verdict is perhaps too unqualified, for it appear® that, on the assumption with which both sides started, all organic life wag de­ stroyed by exposure to a heat of 212'’, or the boiling-point of water, the advocate® of spontaneous generation had the best of it, as low forms of life did appear in infusions which had been exposed to this heat, and then hermetically sealed, So as to prevent any germs from entering. But it was replied that, as a hard pea takes more boiling than a soft one, it might very well be that heat sufficient to destroy life in any moist organism of sufficient size to be seen by the microscope, �32 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT • might not destroy the germinating power of ultra-microscopic germs in a very dry state. And this position seems to have been confirmed by various experiments, showing that such ultra - microscopic germs really do exist, and are given forth in the last life stage of the bacteria which cause putrefaction ; and that if they are absent or destroyed by repeated applica­ tions of heat, infusions will keep sweet for ever in optically pure air. Above all, the germ theory has re­ ceived confirmation from the brilliant practical results to which it has led in the hands of Pasteur, enabling him to detect, and to a great extent eradicate, the causes which had led to the oidium of the vine and the pebrine of the silk­ worm, thereby saving millions to the industries of France. The germ theory has also led to important results in medical science, and is pointing towards the possibility of combating the most fatal diseases by processes analogous to that by which vaccination has almost freed the human race from the scourge of' small-pox. On the whole, therefore, we must be content to accept a verdict of “Not proven ” in the case of spontaneous generation, and admit that as regards the first origin of life, science fails us, and that there is at present no known law that will account for it. Should spontaneous generation ever be proved to be a fact, it will doubtless be in creating living protoplasm from inorganic elements at its earliest stage, before it has been differentiated even into the primitive form of a nucleated cell or that of an amoeba. This is what the doctrine of evolution would lead us to expect, for it would be in contradiction to it to suppose that the starting-point could be interpolated at any stage subsequent to the lowest. It may be also that this step could only be made under conditions of heat, pressure, and otherwise, which existed in the earlier stage of the earth’s existence, but have longed since passed away. This, however, is only a small part of the difficulty we have to encounter in reducing life to law. These primeval embryo cells, like as they are in appearance, contain within them the germs of an almost infinite diversity of evolutions, each running its separate course distinct from the others. The world of life is not one and uniform, but consists of a vast variety of different species, from the speck of protoplasm up to the forest tree, and from the humble amoeba up to man, each one, at any rate within long intervals of time, breeding true and keeping to its own separate and peculiar path along the line of evolution. The first germ, or nucleated cell, of a bacterium develops into other bacteria and nothing else, thatof a coral into corals, of an oak into oaks, of an elephant into elephants, of a man into man. In the latter case we can trace the embryo in its various stages of growth th rough forms having a certain analogy to those of the fish, the reptile, and the lower mammals, until it finally takes that of the human infant. But we have no experience of a fish, a frog, or a dog, born of human parents, or of any of the lower animals ever producing anything resembling a man. How can this be explained ? Naturally the first attempt at explanation was by miracle. At a time when everything was explained by miracle, when all unusual occurrences were attributed to supernatural agency, and men lived in an atmosphere of providential inter­ ferences, witchcraft, magic, and all sorts of divine and diabolic agencies, nothing seemed easier than to say that the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, are all distinct after their kind, because God created them so. But as the supernatural faded away and disappeared in other departments where it had so long reigned supreme, and science began to classify, arrange, and accumulate facts as they really are, it became more and more difficult, or rather impossible, to accept this simple explanation. The very first step de­ stroyed the validity of all the traditional myths which described the origin of life from one simultaneous act of creation at a single centre. The earth is divided into separate zoological provinces, each with its own peculiar animal and vege­ table world. The kangaroo, for instance, is found in Australia and there only. By no possibility could the aboriginal kan­ garoo have jumped at one bound from Mount Ararat to Australia, leaving no trace of his passage in any intermediate district. This isolation of life in separate provinces applies so rigidly, that we may �83 sum it up by saying generally that there art no forms of life common to two provinces unless where migration is possible, or has been possible in past geological periods. In islands at a distance from conEnents, we find common forms of marine life, for the sea affords a means of com­ munication ; and often common forms of bird, insect, and vegetable life, where they may have been wafted by the winds ; (but forms which neither in the adult nor germ state could swim, or fly, or be transported by something which did Swim or fly, are invariably wanting. &ew Zealand affords a most conspicuous Instance of this. Here is a large country with a soil and climate exceptionally well Adapted to support a large amount of animal life of the higher orders, and yet, with the exception of two species of bats, it had absolutely no mammal before they were introduced by man, the dog being probably introduced by the Maoris. If special creations took place to replenish the earth as soon as any portion of its surface becomes fit to. sustain it, why were there no animals in New Zealand ? Or, in the Andaman Islands, in the Gulf of Bengal, which are as large as Ireland, covered with luxuriant vegetation, and within 300 miles of the coast of Asia, where similar jungles swarm with elephants, tigers, deer, and all the varied forms of mammalian life, there are no mammalia except a pigmy black savage and a pigmy ©lack pig, the latter probably introduced by man. The sharpness of the division between Zoological provinces is well illustrated by that drawn by the Straits of Lombok, Kvhere a channel, not twenty miles wide, separates the fauna of Asia and Australia so completely that there are no species of land animals, and only a few of birds and insects, common to the two sides, of a channel not so wide as the Straits of Dover. There is no possibility of accounting for this, except by supposing that the deep water fissure of the Straits of Eombok has existed from remote geo­ logical periods, and barred the migration southwards of those Asiatic animals, which, as long as they found dry land, migrated northwards and westwards till they were stopped by the Polar and Atlantic Oceans. This difficulty of re­ quiring special creations for separate provinces is enormously enhanced if we look beyond the existing condition of things, and trace back the geological record. We must suppose separate crea­ tions for all the separate provinces of the separate successive formations from the Silurian upwards. And the more w« investigate the conditions of life either under existing circumstances or in tliOSO of past geological epochs, the mor® are we driven to enormously multiply the number of separate creations wliida would be necessary to account for the diversity of species. We find life shading off into an infinite variety of almost im­ perceptible gradations from the highest organism, man, to the lowest, or speck of protoplasm, and we can draw no hard and fast line and say, up to this point life originated by natural processes, and beyond it we must have recourse miracle. Either all life or none is a product of evolution acting by defined law, and the affirmation of law is the negation of miracle. Every day brings us an account of some new discovery linking forms of life nearer together and bridging over tervals thought to be impassable. Tho discovery of insectivorous plants, which also devour and digest pieces of raw meat, has added to the difficulty which has been long felt, particularly, in the humbler forms of life, of drawing any clear line of demarcation between th® animal and vegetable worlds. Microscopic research brings to light fresh facts confounding our fixed ideas as to the permanence of particular modes of reproducing life, and showing that the same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual and in others asexual, i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of two beings, of opposite sex, and by fissure or budding from one being only which is of no sex. These, and a multitude of other similar facts, complicate enormously the pro­ blems of life and its developments, whether we attempt to solve.it by calling in aid a perpetual series of innumerable miraculous interpositions, or by ap­ pealing to ordinary known laws of Nature. Is the latter solution possible, and can the organic world be reduced, as the inorganic world has been with all its �S4 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT mysteries and the infinities of space, time, and matter, from chaos into cosmos, and shown to depend on permanent and harmonious laws 1 Is the world of life, like that of matter, a clock, so perfectly constructed from the first that it goes without winding up or regulating ? or is it a clock which would never have started going, or having started would soon cease to go, if the hand of the watch­ maker were not constantly interfering with it ? This is the question which the celebrated Darwinian theory attempts to answer, of which I now proceed to give a short general outline. The varieties among domestic animals are obvious to every one. The race-horse is a very different creature from the dray-horse; the short-horned ox from the Guernsey cow; the greyhound from ths Skye terrier. How has this come to pass ? Evidently by man’s intervention, causing long-continued selection in breed­ ing for certain objects. The English race-horse is the product of mating animals distinguished for speed for some fifteen or twenty generations. The grey­ hound is a similar dog-product by breed­ ing for a longer period with the same object: as the Skye terrier is of selection in order to _ get a dog which can follow a fox into a cairn of rocks and fight him w’hen he gets there. In all these cases it is evident that the final result was not attained at once, but by taking advantage of small accidental variations and accumulating them from one generation to another by the princi­ ple of heredity, which makes offspring reproduce the qualities of their parents. The most precise and scientific experi­ ments on this power of integrating, or summing up, a progressive series of differentials, or minute differences, be­ tween successive generations, are those conducted by Darwin on pigeons. He has shown conclusively that all the races of domestic pigeons, of which there are two or three hundred, are derived from one common ancestor, the wild or blue rock pigeon, and that the pigeon-fancier can always obtain fresh varieties in a few generations by careful interbreeding. Of the existing varieties many now differ widely from one another, both in size, appearance, and even in anatomical structure, so that if they were now discovered for the first time in a fossil state or in a new country, they would assuredly be classed by naturalists as separate species. This is the work of man ; is there any­ thing similar to it going on in Nature 1 Yes, says Darwin, there is a tendency in all life, and especially in the lower forms of life, to reproduce itself vastly quicker than the supply of food and the existence of other life can allow, and the balance of existence is only preserved by the wholesale waste of individuals in what may be called the “ struggle for life.” In this struggle, which goes on incessantly and on the largest scale, the slightest advantage must tell in the long run, and on the average, in selecting the few who are to survive, and such slight advantages must tend to accumulate from one gener­ ation to another under the law of heredity. The cumulative power of selection exer­ cised by man in the breeding of races is therefore necessarily exercised in Nature by the struggle for life, and in the course of time, by the cumulation of advantages originally slight, small and fluctuating variations are hardened into large and permanent ones, and new species are formed. Darwin illustrates this principle of the “struggle for life” with a vast variety of instances, showing how the balance of animal and vegetable life may be pre­ served or destroyed in the most un­ expected manner. For instance, the fertilisation of red clover is effected by humble-bees, and depends on their number ; the number of bees in a given district depends mainly on the number of field-mice which destroy their combs and nests ; the number of mice depends on the number of cats; and thus the presence or absence of a carnivorous animal may decide the question whether a particular sort of flora shall prevail over others or be extirpated. The countless profusion with which any one species, unchecked by its natural foes, may multiply in a given district, is illustrated by the potato disease, which in a few days invades whole countries ; and by the rabbit plague in Australia and New Zealand, where, in less than twenty years, the descendants of a few imported pairs have rendered whole provinces useless for sheep pasture, and stoats are now being imported to restore the balance of life. The tendency in species to pro­ duce varieties which by selection may become exaggerated .and fixed, is illus- �SB LIEF trated by the case of the Ancon herd of sheep A ram lamb was born in Massa­ chusetts in 1791, which had short crooked legs and a long back like a turnspit dog. Being unable to jump over fences like the ordinary sheep, it was thought to possess certain advantages to the farmer, and the breed was established by artificial selection in pairing this ram with its descendants who possessed the. same peculiarities. The introduction of the Merino superseded the Ancon by giving a tame sheep not given to jump fences, with a better fleece, and so the breed was not continued, but it is certain that it might have been established as a per­ manent variety differing from the ordinary sheep as much as the turnspit or Skye terrier differs from the ordinary dog. The tendency of Nature to variation is apparent in the fact that of the many hundred millions of human beings living on the earth, no two are precisely alike, and varieties often appear, as in giants and dwarfs, six-fingered or toed children, hairy and other families, which might doubtless be fixed and perpetuated by artificial or natural selection, until they became strongly marked and permanent. It is evident that if the theory of development is true it excludes the old theory of design, or rather, it thrusts it back in the organic, as it has been thrust back in the inorganic, world, to the first atoms or origins which were made so perfect as to carry within them all subsequent phenomena by necessary evolution. Design and development lead to the same result, that of producing organs adapted for the work they have to do, but they lead to it in totally different ways. Development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the re­ quired direction. Design supposes that organisms were created specially on a predetermined plan, very much as the sewing-machine or self-binding reaper were constructed by their inventors. Until quite recently all adaptations of m eans to ends were considered as evidences of design. A series of treatises, for which prizes were left by a late Duke of Bridge­ water, was published some thirty years ago, to illustrate this theme. Among these one by Sir Charles Bell on the Hand at­ tracted a good deal of attention. It was shown what an admirable machine the human hand is for the various purposesfor which it is used, and the inference was drawn that it must have been created so by a designer who adapted means to ends in much the same way as is done by a human inventor. But more complete knowledge has dispelled this idea, and shown that the design, if there be any, must be placed very much farther back, and is in fact involved in the primitive germ from which all vertebrate life certainly, and probably all life, animal or vegetable, has been slowly developed. The human hand is in effect the last stage of a development of the vertebrate type, or type of life in which a series of jointed vertebrse form a backbone, which protects a spinal cord containing the nervous centres, gives points of attach­ ment for the muscles, and forms an axis of support for the looser tissues. Certain of these vertebrse throw out bony spines or rays ; at first, by a sort of simple process of vegetable growth, which formed the fins of fishes; then some of these rays dropped off and others coalesced into more complex forms, which made the rudimentary limbs of reptiles ; and finally, the continued process of develop­ ment fashioned them into the more perfect limbs of birds and mammals. In this last stage a vast variety of combin­ ations was developed. Sometimes the bones of the extremities spread out, so as to form long fingers supporting the feathered wings of birds and the mem­ braneous wings of bats ; sometimes they coalesced into the solid limbs supporting the bodies of large animals, as in the case of the horse ; and finally, at the end of the series, they formed that marvellous instrument, the hand, as it appears in the allied genera of monkeys, apes, and man. Any theory of secondary design and special miraculous creation must evi­ dently account for all the intermediate forms as well as for the final result. We must suppose not one but many thous­ ands of special creations, at a vast variety of places and over a vast extent of time ; we must take into acount not the successes only, but the failures, where organs appear in a rudimentary form which are perfectly useless, or in some cases even injurious, to the creature in which they are found. For instance, in the case of the so-called wingless birds, D 2 �36 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT like the dodo of the Mauritius, and the apteryxof New Zealand, which werefound in oceanic islands, evolution accounts readily for the atrophy or want of develop­ ment of organs which were not wanted where the birds had no natural enemies and found their food on the ground ; but why should they have been created with rudimentary wings, useless while they remained isolated, and insufficient to prevent their extermination as soon as man, or any other natural enemy, reached the islands where they had lived secure ? If we are apt to adopt the theory of design and special creation, we must be prepared to take Burns’s poetical fancy as a scientific truth, and believe that Nature had to try its “prentice hand,” and grope its way through repeated trials , and fail­ ures from the less to the more perfect. Again, the theory of special creation must account not only for the higher organs and forms of life, but for the lower forms also. Are the bacteria, amoebae, and other forms of life which the micro­ scope shows in a drop of water all in­ stances of a miraculous creation ? And still more hard to believe, is this the origin of the whole parasitic world of life which is attached to and infests each its own peculiar form of higher life ? Is the human tape-worm a product of design, or that wonderful parasite the trichina, which oscillates between man and the pig, being capable of being born only in the muscles of the one, and of living only in the intestines of the other ? These are the sort of difficulties which have led the scientific world, I may say universally, to abandon the idea of separ­ ate special creations, and to substitute for it that which has been proved to be true of the whole inorganic world of stars, suns, planets, and all forms of matter ; the idea of an original -creation (whatever creation may mean and behind which we cannot go) of ultimate atoms or germs, so perfect that they carried within them all the phenomena of the universe by a necessary process of evolution. This is the idea to which the Darwinian theory _ leads up, by showing natural causes in operation which must inevit­ ably tend to originate and to accumulate slight varieties, until they become large in amount and permanent, thus develop­ ing new races within old species, new species within old families, new families within old types, and new and complex types from old and simple ones. The theory is up to a certain point undoubtedly true, and beyond that point in the highest degree probable, but scien­ tific caution obliges us to add that it is still to a considerable extent a “ theory,” and not a “law.” That is, it is not like the law of gravity, a demonstrated cer­ tainty throughout the whole universe, but a provisional law which accounts for a great number of undoubted facts, and supplies a framework into which all other similar facts, as at present ascertained, appear to fit with a probability not ap­ proached by any other theory, and which is enhanced by every fresh discovery made, and by the analogy of what we know to be the laws which regulate the whole inorganic world. To enable us to talk of the “ Darwinian law,” and not of the “ Darwinian theory,” we require two demonstrations : 1. That living matter really can origi­ nate from inorganic matter. 2. That new species really can be formed from previously existing species. As regards the first, we have seen that the efforts of science have hitherto failed to produce an instance of spontaneous generation, and all we can say is that it is probable that such instances have oc­ curred in earlier ages of our planet, under conditions of light, heat, chemical action, and electricity, different from anything we can now reproduce in our laboratories. This, however, falls short of demonstra­ tion and for the present we must be con­ tent to leave the origin of life as one of the mysteries not yet brought within the domain of law. As regards the second point, we are farther advanced towards the possibility of proof. But here also we are met by two difficulties. If we appeal to historical evidence, we are met by the fact that a much greater time than is embraced by any historical record is almost necessarily required for the dying out of any old species and introduction of any new one, by natural selection. And if we appeal to fossil remains we are met by the im­ perfection of the geological record. As to this, it must be remembered that only a very small portion of the earth’s surface has been explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces �hips R the higher forms of animal life. And even these have been so imperfectly exthat where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains in the shape of rudely-fashioned stone tools and weapons lying almost under our feet, it is only Kithin the last thirty years that their (existence has even been suspected. Cuvier, the greatest authority of the last genera­ tion, laid it down as an incontrovertible fact that neither men nor monkeys had existed in the fossil state, or in anything more ancient than the most superficial and recent deposits. We have now at least twenty specimens of fossil monkeys, from bne locality alone of the Miocene period, that of Pikermi, near Athens, and many thousands of human remains, contem­ porary with extinct animals of the Qua­ ternary period, if not earlier. We must be Content, therefore, with approximate solutions pointing up to but not abso­ lutely demonstrating the truth. What is a species ? Speaking generally it is an assemblage of individuals who maintain a separate family type by breeding freely among themselves, and refusing to breed with other species. There can be no doubt that this repre­ sents what, at the first view and for a limited range of time, is in accordance with actual facts. The animal and vege­ table worlds are practically mapped-out into distinct species, and do not present the mass of confusion which would result from indiscriminate cross-breeding. It is clear also that this state of things has lasted for a considerable time, for the paintings on Egyptian tombs and monu­ ments carry us back more than 4,000 years, and show us the most strongly marked varieties of the human race, such as the Semitic, the Egyptian, and the Negro, existing just as they do at the present day. They show us also such extreme varieties of the dog species as the greyhound and the turnspit, then in Existence ; and the skeletons of animals SUch as the ox, cat, and crocodile, which have been preserved as mummies, show no appreciable difference from those of their modern descendants. When we come to look closely, however, into the matter, our faith in this absolute rule of the entire independence of species is greatly modified. In the lower grades of life we see everywhere species shading off into one another by insensible grada­ $7 tions, and every extension of our know­ ledge, both of the existing animal, v®g<e» table, and microscopic worlds, and of those of past geological periods, multiplies instances of intermediate forms, differing from one another far less than do many of the individual varieties of recognised species. In the case of sponges, for instance, the latest conclusion of scientific research is this: that if you rely on minute distinctions as consti­ tuting distinct species, there are at least 300 species of one family of. sponges, while if you disregard slight differences, which graduate into one another, and ana found partly in one and partly in another variety, you must designate them all as forming only one species. Even in higher grades, as species are multipled, it be­ comes more and more difficult to say where one ends and the other begins, Take the familiar instance of the grouse and ptarmigan. The red grouse is believed to be peculiar to the British Island^ while the ptarmigan is a very wid^W spread inhabitant of. Arctic regions and high mountains. Which is more probable —that the grouse was specially created in the British Islands, apparently for the final cause of bringing sessions of Parliament to wind-up business in August, or that, as the rigour of the Glacial period abated, and heather began to grow, cer­ tain ptarmigan by degrees modified their habits and took to feeding on heather tops instead of lichens, and by so doing gradually became larger birds and as­ sumed the colour best adapted for pro­ tection in their new habitation ? In point of fact, grouse showing traces of this descent in smaller size and much whiter plumage are still to be met with. It would be easy to multiply instances, but this consideration seems conclusive. If we reject the Darwinian theory aim adopt that of independent species de­ scended from a specially created ancestor or pair of ancestors, we are driven by each discovery of intermediate or slightly modified forms, into the assumption of more and more special acts of creation, until the number breaks down under its own weight, and belief becomes impos* sible. For instance, in the Madeira Islands alone, 134 species of air-breathing land­ snails have been discovered by naturalists, of which twrenty-one only are found in Africa or Europe, and 113 are peculiar to �38 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT this small group of islands, where they are mostly confined to narrow districts and single valleys. Are we to suppose that each of these 113 species was sepa­ rately created ? Is it not almost certain that they are the modified descendants of the twenty-one species which had found their way there in a former geolo­ gical period, when Madeira was united to Africa and Spain ? There remains only the argument from the fertility of species inter se and their refusal to breed with other species. This also, when closely examined, ap­ pears to be a prima facie deduction, rather than an absolute law. Different species do, in fact, often breed together, as is seen in the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in this case the mule is sterile and no new race is estab­ lished. . But this rule is not universal, and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or hare-rabbit, has been created, which is perfectly fertile. The progeny of dog and wolf has also been proved to be perfectly fertile during the four generations for which the expe­ riment was continued. In the case of cultivated plants and domestic animals, thore can be little doubt that new races, which breed true and are perfectly fertile’ have been created within recent times from distinct wild species. The Esquimaux dog is so like the Arctic wolf that there can be little doubt he is either a direct descendant, or that both are descendants from a common stock. The same is true of the jackal and some breeds of dogs in the East and Africa, and other races of dogs are closely akin to foxes. But all dogs breed freely to­ gether, and can with difficulty be mated with the wild species which they so closely resemble. The modern Swiss cattle are pronounced by Rutimeyer to show undoubted marks of descent from three distinct species of fossil oxen, the Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos frontosus. . There is n°w1 in the Zoological Gardens, in Regent s Park, a hybrid cow, whose sire was an American bison and its mother a hybrid between a zebu and a gayal. This animal is perfectly fertile, and has bred again to the bison; but what is singular is, that this hybrid resembles much more an ordinary domes? 1888. tic English cow than it does any of its pro­ genitors. It is totally unlike the bison, both in appearance and disposition, and except in having a projecting ridge over the withers, it might be mistaken for a coarse, bony, common cow. If a hybrid bull had been born of the same type, and mated with this hybrid cow, there is little doubt that a new race have been established, extremely different from its ancestors. In fact, nearly all the domesticated animals have the essential characters of new races. We cannot point to wild pro­ genitors existing in any part of the world which they are descended, and when they run wild they do not revert to any common ancestral form. In the vegetable world instances of fertile hybrids are still more abundant, and the introduction and establishment of new varieties is a matter of very-day occurrence. Now, whatever artificial selection can do in a short time, natural selection can certainly do in a longer time, and noth­ ing short of absolute proof of the im­ possibility of species coming into ex­ istence by natural laws should induce us to fall back on the supernatural theory with all its enormous difficulties of an innumerable multitude of special creations, most of them obviously im­ perfect and tentative—or rather, useless and senseless on any supposition except that of a necessary and progressive evolution. In fact, if it were not for its bearing on the nature and origin of man, few would be found to maintain the theory of miraculous creations, or to doubt that the world of life is regulated by fixed laws as well as the world of matter. But whatever touches man touches us closely, and brings into play a host of cherished aspirations and beliefs, which are too powerful to be displaced £eacW by calm, scientific reasoning, phall man, who, we are told, was created in God’s image and only “ a little lower than the angels,” be degraded into relationship with the brutes, and shown to be. only the last development of an animal type which, in the case of apes and .monkeys, approaches singularly near to him in physical structure ? Are the saints and heroes whom we revere, and. the beautiful women whom we admire, descended, not from an allglorioiis Adam and all-lovely Eve, ag �ANTIQUITY OF MAN portrayed in Milton’s u Paradise Lost, but ftoin Palaeolithic gavages, more rude and bestial than the lowest tribe of Bushmen or Australians ? Is the ac­ count of man’s creation and fall in the Hebrew Scriptures as pure a myth as that of Noah’s ark, or of Deucalion and Pyrrha ? The only answer to these questions is that truth is truth, and fact is fact, and tW it is always better to act and to believe in conformity with truth and fact, than to indulge in illusions. There are many things in Nature which jar on our feelings and seem harsh and dis­ agretable, but yet are hard facts, which we have to recognise and make the best of. Childhood does not pass into man­ hood without exchanging much that is innocent and attractive for much that is stern and prosaic. Death, with its pro­ digal waste of immature life, its sudden extinction of mature life in the pleni­ tude of its powers, its . heart-rendinr separations from loved objects, is a most disagreeable fact. But it would not im­ provematters to keep grown-up lads in nurseries for fear of their meeting with accidents, or of becoming hardened by contact with the world. Progress, not happiness, is the law of the world ; and to improve himself and others by constant struggles upwards is the true destiny of man. . e . In working out this destiny the tear­ less recognition of truth is essential. Facts are the spokes of the ladder by which we climb from earth to heaven, and any individual, nation, or religion, which, from laziness or prejudice, re­ fuses to recognise fresh facts, has ceased to climb and will end by falling asleep and dropping to a lower level. “ Prove everything, hold fast that which is true,” is the maxim which has raised mankind from savagery to civi­ lisation, and which we must be prepared to act upon at all hazards and at all sacrifices, if we wish to retain that civi­ lisation unimpaired and to extend it further. 3f CHAPTER V ANTIQUITY OF MAN Belief in Man’s Recent Origin—Boucher de Perthes’ Discoveries—Confirmed by Prestwich—Nature of Implements—Celts, Scra­ pers, and Flakes—Human Remains in River Drifts—Great Antiquity—Implements from || Drift at Bournemouth—Bone Caves—Kent’s Cavern—Victoria, Creswell, and other j Caves—Caves of France and Belgium— J Ages of Cave Bear, Mammoth, and Rata* deer—Artistic Race—Drawings of Ma®.moth, etc.—Human Types—Neanderthal—- 1 —Attempts to fix Dates—History—-Spy, Trinil — Bronze Age — Neolithic — Danish Kitchen-middens—Swiss La ke- Dwellings-—- J Glacial Period—Traces of Ice—Causes of Glaciers—Croll’s Theory—Gulf StreamDates of Glacial Period—Rise and Sub­ mergence of Land—Tertiary Man—Eooeo® Period—Miocene—Evidence for Pliocene 1 and Miocene Man—Conclusions as to Antiquity. Great as the effect has been of the wonderful discoveries of modern science of which I have attempted to give a general view in the preceding chapters, there ] remains one which has had the greatest ! effect of all in changing the . whole cur­ rent of modern thought, viz., the dis­ covery of the enormous antiquity of man! upon earth, and his slow progress Op­ wards from the rudest savagery to in»j telligence, morality, and civilisation. It is needless to point out in what flagrant and direct opposition this stands to the theory that man is of recent miraculous creation, and that he was originally en­ dowed with a glorious nature and high faculties, which were partially forfeited by an act of disobedience. It is im­ portant, therefore, to understand clearly the evidence upon which rests a con­ clusion so startling and unexpected as that which traces the origin of man back into the remote periods of geological time. It had been long known that a stona period preceded the use of metals. Flints arrow-heads, stone axes, knives, and chisels, rude pottery, and other human remains lie scattered almost everywhere, on or near the existing surface, and are found in the. sepulchral mounds and monuments which abound in all countries I until they are destroyed by the pro- �40 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT gress of agriculture. These are certainly fuel, and afford many remains of the ancient, for their origin was so com­ pletely forgotten that the stone hatchets■ wallo-Koman and pre-Boman or Celtic or celts (from the Latin celtis, or chisel)‘ Peri<ld-n Hipher UP> on the slopes of the were universally believed to be thunder­i low hills which bound the wide vallev bolts which had fallen from heaven. are numerous beds of gravel, sand, and brick-earth, winch But there was no proof that they were worked for road andare also extensively building materials, very ancient, they were always found at or. near the present surface, and if in these pits remains of the mammoth, animal remains were associated with rhinoceros, and other extinct animals are frequently found, and the workmen had them, they were those of the dog ox occasionally . certain sheep, red deer, and other wild ’ and noticed flints, to which they curiouslygave the domestic species, now found in the same shaped district. Historical record was not sup­ name of langues du chat,” or cats’ posed to extend beyond the 4,000 or 5 000 tongues. Some of these were taken to Monsieur Boucher de Perthes as curiJ years assigned to it by Bible chronology and it was thought that this might be osities for his museum, and he at once sufficient to account for all the changes recognised them as showing marks of which had occurred since man first be­ human workmanship. This put him on came an inhabitant of the earth. Above the track, and in the year 1841 he him­ all, the negative evidence was relied self discovered, in situ, in a seam of sand on, that geologists had explored far and containing remains of the mammoth, a wideband although they had found fossil flint rudeiy but unmistakably fashioned remains which enabled them to restore by human hands into a cutting instru­ ment. During the next few years a the characteristic fauna of so many dif­ large quantity of gravel was removed ferent formations, they had found no trace of man or his works anywhere below the to form the Champ de Mars at Abbeville and these or hatchets present surface. This seemed so con­ were many ofIn 1847,celts Boucher de found. M. clusive that Cuvier, the greatest Perthes published his “Antiquites authority of the day, pronounced an emphatic verdict that man had not existed Celtiques et Antediluviennes,” giving an contemporaneously with any of the ex­ account of these discoveries, but no one tinct animals, and probably not for more would, listen to him. The united than 5,000 or 6,000 years. Here, then, authority of theologians and geologists opposed infallible appeared to be an edifice based on ception ansuch ideas, veto on the re­ and scientific fact, in which geologists and admittedofthat M. Boucher it must be de Perthes theologians could dwell together com­ himself did his best to discredit his own fortably, and the weight of their united discoveries by associating them with authority was sufficient to silence all objections, and ignore or explain away visionary speculations about successive the instances which occasionally cropped deluges and creations of pre-Adamite up, of human remains found in situations men. At length Dr. Falconer, the wellknown paleontologist, who had brought implying greater antiquity. Suddenly, I may almost say in a single to light so many wonderful fossil remains dajq this edifice collapsed like a house of from the Sewalik hills in India, happened through Abbeville and cards, and the fact became apparent that ™ visited the duration of human life on the earth He was M. Boucher de Perthes’ collection. he saw must be measured by periods of tens, if that on so much struck by whatspoke to arriving in London he not of hundreds of thousands of years It happened thus: A retired French Mr- f re^twl<?h, the first living authority On > i? physician, Monsieur Boucher de Perthes and Mr.Tertiary and Quaternary strata, whose residing at Abbeville, in the valley of authority(now Sir John) Evans, every­ was equally great on tfie. Somme, had a hobby for antiquar­ thing relating to the stone implements ian ism as decided as that of Monkbarns found m such numbers in the more mm.self. Abbeville afforded him a recent He urged capita.! collecting-ground ror the indul­ them toor Neolithic period. examine for go to Abbeville and gence of his tastes, as the sluggish themselves whether there was anything feomme flows through a series of peat m these alleged discoveries. They did mosses, which are extensively worked jso, and the result was that on their �ANTIQUITY OF NAN return to England Air. Prestwick read a paper to the Royal Society on the 19th Aiay, 1859, which conclusively and for fever established the fact that flint imple­ ments of unmistakable human workman­ ship had been found, associated with the remains of extinct species, in beds of the Quaternary period deposited at a time when the Somme ran at a level more than 100 feet higher than at present, and Flint HAche, 41 have been found from Western Europe to Tibet; in Africa, and Central Australia j in fact wherever they have been lookedfor, except in northern countries which were buried under ice during the Glacial period. The ea rliest known authentic wit­ ness to man’s presence in Britain are som< rudely-worked flints which were founds mingled with bones of huge extinct anti* mals, at a great depth in brick-earth at Flint IIAchk, From St. Aclieul, Valley of the Somme. From Moulin Quignon, Abbeville. (Half the actual size.) (Half the actual size.) (From Lubbock's ‘ Prehistoric Times.”) was only beginning to excavate its valley. The spell once broken, evidence poured in from all quarters, and although twentyfive years1 only have elapsed since Mr. Prestwich’s paper was read, the number of stone and other implements worked by man, deposited in museums, is already counted by tens of thousands, and they Written in 1884. Hoxne, in Suffolk. Some idea of the im­ mense number of these rude implements may be formed from the fact that the valley system of one small river, the Little Ouse, which rises near Thetford and flows into the Wash after a course of twenty-five miles, has within little more than ten years yielded about 7,000 speci­ mens. They have been found in great abun­ dance also in the valley gravels of the �42 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT Thames, Ouse, Wiltshire Avon, and in fact in all the river-gravels and brick­ earths of the south and south-east of England; and in those of the Somme, Flint HAchb, From Hoxne. (Half the actual size.) From Lubbock’s “ Prehistoric Times.”) Oise, Seine, Loire, and all the principal river systems of France ; and only in less numbers, probably because they have been less looked-for, in similar .situations over an area extending from Central and Southern Europe to the Far East. It is a remarkable fact about these river-drift implements that they are all nearly of the same type and found under similar cir­ cumstances, that is to say, in the gravels, sands, brick-earths, and fine silt or loess deposited by rivers which have either ceased to run, or which ran at levels higher than their present ones and were only beginning to excavate their present valleys. . Also they are always found in association with remains of what is known as the Quaternary (as distinguished from recent or existing fauna) represented by the mammoth or woolly-haired elephant, thethick-nosed rhinoceros, and other wellknown types of extinct animals. The general character of these implements is very rude, implying a social condition at least as low as that of the Australian savages of the present day. They consist mainly of the flake ; the chopper, or peb­ ble roughly chipped to an edge on one side ; the scraper, used probably for pre­ paring skins ; pointed flints used for bor­ ing ■ and by far the most abundant and characteristic, of all, the hdche or celt, a sharp or oval implement, roughly chipped from flint or, in its absence, from any of the hard stones of the district, such as chert or quartzite, and intended to be held in the hand and used without any haft or handle. These ketches are evidently the first rude type of human tools from which the later forms of the axe, adze, chisel, wedge, etc., have been derived by a very slow and lengthened process of evolution. They differ, however, in many essential re­ spects, from the more perfect stone celts of later periods and of modern savages. The chipping is very rude, they are never ground or polished, the pointed end is that intended for use, the butt end being left blunt, showing that the hdche was not hafted but held in the hand; while the converse is al­ ways the case with the finely-chipped or polished stone celts and hatchets of the Neolithic period, which, in its later stages, are to all in­ tents and purposes similar to modern im­ plements, only made of stone instead of metal. But these Palaeolithic laches are Polished Stone Axe. only one step in ad­ Neolithic. vance of the rude (Half the actual size.) (From Lubbock’s natural stone which an intelligent orang “ Prehistoric Times.”) or chimpanzee might pick up to crack a cocoa-nut with, or to grub up a root from the earth, or an insect from a rotten tree. At the same time there is not the r§- �43 ANTIQUITY OF MAN mo test doubt as to their being the work of human hands. When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone batchets actually used by the Australian and otiler savages, it is difficult to detect any difference. If placed in an ascending series, from the oldest and rudest, to the finely-finished axes and arrow-heads of the period immediately preceding the use of metal, the progress may be clearly traced by insensible gradations. The blows given to bring the block to the desired shape by intentional chipping have left distinct marks; and archaeologists have succeeded, ferith a little practice, in fashioning sim­ ilar implements from modern flints In Flint Adze, From Danish Kitchen-middens. (From Lubbock’s fact, forgeries have been made by work­ men in localities where collectors were eager and credulous, though fortunately such forgeries are easily distinguished from genuine antiquities by the different appearance of the old and recent frac­ tures, and other signs which make it almost impossible to deceive an experienced eye. The conclusion, therefore, of one of our best archaeologists may be safely accepted, that it is as impossible to doubt that these rude stone flakes and hatchets are works of human art, as it would be if we had found clasp-knives and carpenters’ adzes. The remains of human skeletons are, as might be expected, very rare in these river drifts, since they have been formed under conditions where the preservation of such remains would be very unlikely. In fact, as Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) points out, the bones found, in the river-gravels are almost invariaoly those of animals larger than man, such as the mammoth and rhinoceros. Still a few human bones have been found, suffi­ cient to show that these river-drift iuen were probably a dolichocephalic or long and narrow-headed race, with prominent jaws, massive bones, and great muscular strength, but still, although rude ana savage, of an essentially human type, and going a very little way towards bridg- Modern Stone Adze, New Zealand. Prehistoric Times.”) ing over the gap between the savage and the ape. A more complete view, however, of the conditions of human life at these remoto periods is afforded by the evidence given by caves, where naturally the remains of man are more abundant and much better preserved. Before entering, however, on the examination of this class of evidence, it may be well to give an instance which may help to familiarise the imagination with the vast periods of time which must have elapsed since Palaeolithic man left these rude implements within reach of river floods. Among the gravels in which Palaeolithic hdches have been found, are some which ��ANTIQUITY OF MAN the cliff at Bournemouth at a height of about 130 feet above the sea. This gravel can be traced in a gradual fall from west to east, along the Hampshire coast and the shores of the. Solent to beyond Spithead, and was evidently de­ posited by a river which carried the drainage of the Dorsetshire and Hamp­ shire downs into the sea to the eastward, and of which the present Avon, Test, and Itchen were tributaries. But for such a river to run in such a course the whole of Poole and Christchurch bays must have been dry land, and the range of chalk downs now broken through at the Needles must have been continuous. To borrow the words of Evans in his “Ancient Stone Implements,” “Who, standing on the edge of the lofty cliff at Bournemouth, and gazing over the wide expanse of waters between the present shore and a line connecting the Needles on the one hand and the Ballard Down Foreland on the other, can fully comprehend how immensely remote was the epoch when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a long range of chalk downs, 600 feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on the south ? And yet this must have been the sight that met the eyes of those primeval men who fre­ quented the banks of that ancient river which buried their handiworks in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and of the course of which so strange but indubitable a memorial subsists in what has now be­ come the Solent Sea.”. Any attempt to assign a more precise date than the vague one of immense antiquity to these early traces of primeval man, had better be postponed until we have examined the more detailed and extensive body of evidence which has been afforded by the exploration of caves, to which the great discovery at Abbeville at once gave an immense impulse, and which has since been prosecuted in England, France, Belgium, and Germany, with the greatest ardour and success. The caves in which fossil remains are found occur principally in limestone districts. They are due to the property which water possesses, when. charged with a small quantity of carbonic acid, of dissolving lime. Rain falling on the earth’s surface takes up carbonic acid from contact with vegetable matter, and a portion of it finds its way through cracks and crevices in the subjacent rock 48 to lower levels, where it comes out in springs of hard water charged with carb­ onate of lime from the rock which it has dissolved. It has been calculated that the average rainfall on a square mile of chalk thus carries away about 140 tons of solid matter in a year. In this way underground channels are formed, some of which become large enough to admit of streams flowing through them, and even rivers, as is seen in the limestone district of Carinthia, where considerable rivers are swallowed up and run for miles beneath the surface. In this way caverns are formed, or sometimes a series of caverns, which represent the pools of the rivers which formerly flowed through them. Accumulations of whatever may have been brought down by the stream were formed at the bottom of these pools, and when, owing to changes in level or denudation of the gathering grounds, the rivers ceased to flow in the old channel, the pools became dry and were converted into caves, in which wild beasts and man found shelter and left their remains. . The debris thus formed accumulated with a mixture of blocks which fell from the roof, and of red loamy earth consisting of the residue of the limestone rock in­ soluble in water, and of dust and mud brought in by winds and floods, and occasionally interstratified by beds of stalagmite, composed of thin films of crystalline carbonate of lime, deposited drop by drop by drippings through the rock forming the roof of the cave. These drippings form what are called stalactites, which hang like pendent icicles from the roof of caves, and as the drip falls from these it forms a corresponding deposit, known as stalagmite, on the floor below. The formation of this deposit is neces­ sarily extremely slow, and it only goes on when the drops of water charged with a minute excess of carbonate of lime come in contact with the air; so that whenever the floor of the cave was under water no stalagmite could be formed. The alternations, therefore, of deposits of stalagmite represent alternations of long periods during which the cave was generally dry or. generally flooded. During the dry periods, when the cave happened to be inhabited, the treadings on the floor would prevent the accumula­ tion of an unbroken deposit of pure stalagmite, and the crystalline matter would be employed in forming a solid �46 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT cement of the various dtbris into what is known as a breccia. Another class of caves, or rock-shelters, has been formed along the sides of valleys bounded by cliffs, where the stratification is horizontal or nearly so but the different beds vary much in hardness and permeability to water. The softer strata weather away more rapidly than the others, and thus form shallow caves or deep recesses in the face of the cliffs, with a floor of hard rock below and a roof of hard rock above, which afford dry and commodious shelters tor any sort of animal, including man. In other respects they resemble the first cmss of caves in having their contents cemented into a breccia by the dripping of water charged with carbonate of lime from the roof, and, if the cave happened to be deserted, for a long period, this deposit would in the same way form a bed of stalagmite and seal up securely everything below it. In some cases, also, the roof would fall in, and thus preserve everything previously existing in the ca"ve for the investigation of future geologists. ^iese general remarks readers will be able to understand the evidence afforded by the remains of man found in caverns. I will begin by taking as a typical case that of Kent’s Cavern, near lorquay, because it is one of the earliest and best known, and all the facts con­ cerning it have been verified by explora­ tions, carefully conducted by a committee appointed by the British Association in 1864, which comprised, the names of the most eminent authorities in geology and paleontology, including those of Sir Charles Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Evans, Mr. Boyd Dawkins, Mr. Pengellv and others. 65 Hie cave is about a mile east from lorquay harbour, and runs into a hill of Devonian limestone in a winding course, expanding into large chambers connected by narrow passages. The following is a series of deposits in descending order in the large chamber near the entrance : 1. Large blocks of limestone which have fallen from the roof. 2- A layer of black, muddy mould, three inches to twelve inches thick. 3. Stalagmite one foot to three feet thick. 4. Red cave-earth with angular frag­ ments of limestone of variable thickness, but in places five to six feet thick. In the black earth above the stalagmite were found a number of relics of the Neolithic or polished stone period, with a few articles of bronze and pottery, some of which appear to be of a date as late as that of the Roman occupation of Britain. Associated with these are bones of ox, sheep, goat, pig, and other ordinary forms of existing species, and there is an entire absence of any older fauna, or of any of the ruder forms of Paleolithic implements.. When we get below the stalagmite into the underlying cave­ earth, the case is entirely reversed. Not a single specimen of polished or finelywrought stone, or of pottery, is to be found j a vast number of celts or haches, scrapers, knives, hammer stones, and other stone implements, are met with which are all of the rude Palaeolithic type found in river drifts, with a few bone implements such as harpoon-heads, a pin, an awl, and a needle, like those frequently met with in the caves of France and Belgium. Associated with these are a vast number of bones and teeth, all of which belong to the old Quaternary fauna, of which many species have become extinct and others have migrated to distant latitudes. The following is a list of the mam­ malian remains which have been found in this cave-earth below the stalagmite : • Abundant. The Cave Lion, a large extinct species of lion. Cave Hyaena, a large extinct species of hyaena. Cave Bear, a large extinct species of bear. Grizzly Bear. Mammoth (Elephas primigenius}. Rhinoceros (Tichorinus), woolly or thicknosed extinct species. Horse. Bison. Irish Elk. Red Deer. Reindeer. Scarce. Wolf. Fox. Glutton. Brown Bear. Urus. Hare. Lagomys, tailless Arctic hare. Water Vole. « Field Vole. �ANTIQUITY OF MAN Bank Vole. Beaver. And one specimen of the Machairodus, or Great Sabre-toothed Tiger, which is one of the characteristic species of the upper Miocene and Pliocene formations. These constitute a fauna which is char­ acteristic of the Pleistocene, Quaternary, or Palaeolithic period, and essentially different from that of the prehistoric or Neolithic period, which is practically the same as that now existing, Wherever remains of the mammoth, woolly rhino­ ceros, and cave bear are found, Paleo­ lithic implements may be expected, and conversely. In fact Paleolithic man is as essentially part of the characteristic fauna of the Quaternary period, as the Paleotherium is of the Eocene, or the Deinotherium and Hipparion of the Miocene. A large number of other caves have been explored in England, notably the Victoria Cave near Settle, in Yorkshire, the Cresswell Caves in Derbyshire, the Gower Caves in South Wales, the~ Brixham Cave in Devonshire, the Woking Cave in Somersetshire, and King Arthur’s Cave in Herefordshire, and the results have been everywhere practically the same as those at Kent’s Cavern. The same class of implements have been found and the same fauna, with the oc­ casional addition of a few species, among which the hippopotamus and Eleplias antiquus are the most remarkable. So far as the river drifts and British caves are concerned, all that we could, say of the Palaeolithic period is that it is of vast antiquity, and must have lasted for an immense time, as it was in force for the whole time requisite for rivers like the Somme or Avon, which drain small areas, to cut down their present valleys, often two or three miles wide, from the level of their upper gravels, which are in many places 100 to 150 feet above the level of the highest floods of the present rivers. But the caves of France and Belgium supply us with more evidence, and enable us to trace the history of long periods of Palaeolithic time, and study in detail the succession of changes that have occurred, and the habits, arts, and industries of the various tribes of primitive men who occupied these caves and rock-shelters at these remote periods. In fact, it may be said with truth that we know more about 47 the men who chased the mammoth and reindeer in the South of France perhaps 50,000 years ago, than we do about those who lived there immediately before the' classical era, or less than 5,000 years ago. In certain provinces of France and Belgium it happens fortunately that there are extensive districts of limestone, in which caverns and rock-shelters are extremely abundant and full of Palaeo­ lithic remains in an excellent state of preservation. The abundance of such caves may be estimated from the fact that the cliffs, bounding one small river, the Vezere, in the department of Dor­ dogne in the South of France, contain in a distance of eight or ten miles no fewer than nine different stations, each of which has given a vast variety of remains embedded in the breccias and cave-earths of their respective. floors ; and the small river Lesse in Belgium has been scarcely less prolific. Of the abun­ dance of the human and animal remains found in such caverns it may be sufficient to say that one alone, that of Chaleux in the valley of the Lesse, is computed by Dumont to have yielded not less than 40,000 distinct objects. The great abundance of remains thus collected, both of human bones and im­ plements, and of animals contempora­ neous with them, have made it possible to classify and arrange, in relative order of time, a good many of the subdivisions of the Palaeolithic period. This has been done partly by the order of superposition and partly by the greater or less rude­ ness of the implements of stone and bone, and by the greater or less abund­ ance of those animals of the Quaternary fauna which appeared first and disap­ peared soonest. The result has been to show that the period when vast herds of reindeer roamed over the plains of Southern France up to the Pyrenees was not the earliest, but was preceded by a long period when the reindeer was scarce, and the remains of the mammoth, cave bear, and cave hysena were more abun­ dant than in the following ages. The implements of this period are of the earlier river-drift type and extremely rude, and there is an almost entire absence of instruments of bone. Gradually as we pass upwards, the more Southern forms of elephant, rhino­ ceros, antelopes, and great carnivora dis­ appear, and the mammoth and cave bear �48 MODERN SCIENGE AND MODERN THOUGHT become scarcer, while the reindeer be­ be added rock-carvings in Denmark, and comes more and more abundant until at ngures on limestone cliffs in the Maritime length it furnishes the chief source of Alps, while if, as some authorities, among food, and its horns one of the principal them Arthur Evans and Sergi, think, materials for the manufacture of imple­ ments. Concurrently with this change they point to a primitive script, still we find a progressive improvement in the more important are the characters arts of life, as shown by stone imple­ painted m peroxide of iron on pebbles ments more carefully chipped into a discovered by Piette in the Mas-d’Azil greater variety of forms, and arrow and cave, in the South East of France. these We do not, however, depend on lance-heads, barbed harpoons, awls, and needles for sewing skins, made chiefly drawings for evidence of the sort of men who inhabited these caves in Paleolithic from the antlers of the reindeer. large number . At length we arrive at one of the most days A skeletons have of skulls and complete interesting facts disclosed by these re­ dinerent caves, some ofbeen found in which have searches, that during one of the later or served as sepulchral vaults for families reindeer periods of the Paleolithic era many of the caves in the South of France’ and tribes, while in others -individuals and also in Switzerland and Southern have been crushed by falls of rock, or otherwise and in a Germany were occupied by a race who, skulls and interred,have been few cases bones found at like the Esquimaux of the present day great depths in river drifts, and in had a strong artistic tendency, and were loess, or fine glacial mud which fills the up constantly drawing with the point of a flint on stone or bone, or modelling with the valley of the Rhine and other areas over which the flint knives from . horns and bones, melting poured great Swiss glaciers when their turbid streams. sketches of the animals they hunted From more scenes of the chase, or other objects coveries among the of manimportant dis­ of remains himself, there which struck their fancy. These are ex­ ]VaX_, e c^osen as typical: 1. those from ceedingly well done, so that there is no difficulty in recognising the animals in­ the Spy cavern ; 2. from the Neanderthal tended to be represented, among which c^VmV-a .’,a3. from the pliocene deposits of Trinil, Java. are the mammoth, cave bear, reindeer, t. The Betche . aux Roches cavern at wild horse, and wild ox. The sketch of b>py, two nearly com the mammoth which is engraved on a • plete. Belgium, yieldedmale and female­ skeletons of a piece of ivory, from the cave of La number Madeleine m the valley of the Vezere, is associated with a large somewhatof im­ plements particularly interesting, as it corresponds those of of a character The skullsabove the Drift. had exactly with the mammoth whose body enormous superciliary (eyebrows) ridges, was found entire in frozen mud on the receding foreheads, massive jaws, and ba x a rV,er *n Liberia, and it sets at other to which the rest all possible question of man having generalapelike featuresthe rest of the been really contemporary with this ex­ skeletonscharacter of approximated. These remains tinct animal m the South of France. The drawings and carvings of other were discovered in 1886. • years earlier there animals, especially of the reindeer, are m a Quaternary deposit in the was found often extremely spirited, and. one es- cave of the Neander Valley,Feldhofen Rhenish P®c*a-*-V of a reindeer engraved on a bit Prussia, a calvaria, or brain-cap, in­ Q 1 ^rom a Cr,ve. at Thayngen, near dicating similar features to those of the Schaffhausen m Switzerland, would do credit to any modern animal painter. A opy skulls, and pronounced by Huxley as very few.human figures are found amono1 that the most apelikeyet discovered to time, these primeval drawings, but strangely, the. assumedalthough not approaching special features of the while the animals are so well drawn, missing link.” those of men are very inferior and 3. More, remarkable than either of almost infantine in execution. They are sufficient, however, to show that the naked these specimens are the brain-cap, thigh­ in savage of. Perigord, armed with a stone bone, and two molar teeth, found the 1891-92 by Dr. Eugene Dubois in lance or javelin, pursued and slew the upper pliocene , beds at Trinil, on the formidable aurochs. To these may banks of the river Bengavan, in Java, �Portrait of Mammoth. Drawn with a flint on a piece of Mammoth’s ivory ; from Cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne, France. Earliest Portrait of a Mast, with Serpent From Grotto of Les Eyzies. and Horses’ Heads. Reindeer Period. Reindeer Feeding. From Grotto of Tliayngen, near Schaffhausen, Switzerland. �50 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT which he holds to be the fragments of an animal named by him Pithecanthropus Erectus, or “upright ape-man.” The several portions were found adjacent, but at different times, so that their identity as parts of the same individual has been questioned. But although anthropolo­ gists are not in agreement as to the remains being positively human, the majority hold that opinion, and it is not without significance to note that the bones were found in that part of the globe where it is highly probable that man and ape became differentiated. A comparison of the cranium with that of Neanderthal shows that it is of decidedly lower type, and that it may be classified as between the Neanderthal man and the gorilla. In trying to fix anything like definite dates for man’s existence upon earth, we must reverse the process by which we have proved the enormous antiquity of his earliest remains, and ascend step by step from the known to the unknown. The first step is that supplied by history. Until very recently, the palm of an­ tiquity, limiting that term to the historic period, rested with Egypt. Its chron­ ology started with Menes, its reputed ear­ liest king, whose date Professor Flinders Petrie fixes at 4777 B.c. “ with a possible error of a century.” The old scepticism as to the actual personality of the ancient Pharaohs is dispelled by modern research, Professor Petrie having found traces of kings before Menes, while there appears good reason for accepting Dr. Borchardt’s claims to have discovered the actual tomb and personal relics of that king at Nagada, a little north of Thebes. .But it would seem that Egypt must yield priority to Babylonia. For in recent excavations at Nuffar or N ippur, in Northern Babylonia, Dr. -Hilprecht has unearthed from the deepest human deposits in the ruins of the temple of Bel a number of tablets which he contends justify him in dating the founding of that temple, and the first settlement of the city, “somewhere be­ tween 7,000 and 6,000 B.c. and possibly earlier.” .And as the tablets are in­ scribed with cuneiform characters, which are the slow outcome of picture-writing, as are. all other alphabetic and syllabic signs, it may yet be proved that Babylonia possessed a script at least 1,300 years before the earliest known Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is true that their love of the decorative and their veneration for what is old may explain the persistence of the use of primitive modes of writing among the Egyptians, but this cannot weigh against the argument that the more central position of Mesopotamia gave her advantages which quickened culture within her borders. Nor do these two great empires mono­ polise the story of antiquity. Explor­ ations in Greece and the surrounding archipelago have brought to light a third venerable centre, perchance an indigenous centre of civilisation, whose relics show that “ we have probably to deal with a total period of civilisation in the Aegean not much shorter than that in the Nile Valley.” So that centuries before the Phcenicians launched their craft upon the Midland Sea, or sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and at a period when the Iliad and Odyssey were not in existence, there was active intercourse between East and West, intercourse, as evidenced by the discovery of a com­ mercial script, even between Arabia and Iberia. Thus does the epigraphic and other material which the spade of the antiquarian has upturned and the skill of the philologist deciphered, push ever farthei’ back the horizon of history. But beyond that receding marge lie the vast domains of man’s past which it is the province of the prehistoric archae­ ologist, the palaeontologist, and the geol­ ogist to explore. Here, then, we. take leave of the one and follow the guidance of the other. The earliest historical civilisations were all acquainted with metals, chiefly in the form of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, very hard, easily cast, and well adapted for every description of tool and weapon. Indeed, it has only been superseded by iron within recent historical times. But the Bronze Age was preceded by a long Neolithic period, when stone, finely wrought and often ground or polished, was used for the purposes to which metal was afterwards applied: The men of this Neolithic period, who reached Europe from the east or south, probably from both regions, were comparatively civilised; they had all the common domestic animals, the dog, horse, ox, sheep, goat, and pig; also some of the cultivated cereals and fruits ; �51 ANTIQUITY OF MAN they knew the arts of cooking, spinning, weaving, and pottery, they were grouped into clans and tribes, and lived in villages. Some think the Iberian or Basque people may be a remnant of this Neolithic race, who were driven westward by the later wave of Celtic migration just as the Celts were driven by the still later waves of Teutonic and Slavonic immigrants. Be this as it may, it is certain that a Neolithic people were spread very widely over the globe, as -their remains of very ' similar character are found almost every­ where in Europe, Asia, and America, and always in association with the existing or most recent fauna and configuration of the earth’s surface. The difficulty in assigning any precise date for these remains arises very much from the fact that the Neolithic passed into the Bronze or historical civilisation, at different times in different countries. The Australians, the Polynesians, and the Esquimaux were or are still in the. Stone period, while steam-engines are spinning cotton at Manchester, and the most famous cities of Egypt and the East have been for centuries buried under shapeless mounds of their own ruins. It is probable that all Europe remained in the Neolithic stage for many centuries after the his­ torical date of the commencement of the Egyptian empire. Still there are some remains which may enable us to form an approximate con­ jecture of the time during which this Neolithic period may have lasted. The two principal clues are furnished : 1. By the Danish mosses and kitchen­ middens. 2. By the Swiss lake-dwellings. In Denmark there are a number of peat mosses varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, which have been formed by the filling-up of small lakes or ponds in hollows of the Glacial drift. Around the borders of these mosses, and at vari­ ous depths in them, lie trunks of trees which have grown on their margin. At the present surface are found beech-trees, which are now, and have been throughout the whole historical period of 2,000 years, the prevalent form of forest vegetation in Denmark. Lower down is found a zone of oaks, a tree which is now rare and almost superseded by the beech. And still lower, towards the bottom of the mosses, the fallen trees are almost en­ tirely Scotch firs, which have been long unknown in Denmark and when intro­ duced will not thrive there. It is evident therefore, that there have been three changes of climate, causing three entire changes in the forest vegetation in Den­ mark, since these mosses began to be formed. The latest has lasted certainly for 2,000 years, and we cannot tell how much longer, so that some period of more than 6,000 years must be assumed for the three changes. Now, it is invariably found that remains of the Iron Age are confined to the pre­ sent or beech era, while bronze is found only in that of oak, and the Age of Stone coincides with that of the Scotch fir. The kitchen-middens afford another memorial of the prehistoric age in Den­ mark. There are mounds found all along the sheltered sea-coasts of the mainland and islands, consisting chiefly of shells of the oyster, cockle, limpet, and other shell­ fish, which have been eaten by the ancient dwellers on these coasts. Mixed-up with these are the bones of various land ani­ mals, birds, and fish, and flint flakes, axes, worked bones and horns, and other implements, including rude hand-made pottery. The relics are very much the same as those found in the fir zone of the peat mosses, and although old as com­ pared with the Iron or historical age, they do not denote any extreme antiquity. The shells are all of existing species, though the larger size of some of those found on the shores of the Baltic shows that the salt water of the North Sea had then a freer access to it than at present. The bones of animals, birds, and fish are also all of existing species, and no re­ mains of extinct animals, such as the mammoth, or even of reindeer, have been found. By far the most common are the red deer, roe-deer, and wild boar. The dog was known, and appears to have been the only domestic animal among the earliest Neolithic peoples. Most of the stone implements are rude, but a few carefully-worked weapons have been found, and a few specimens of polished axes, which, with the presence of pottery and the nature of the fauna, show conclusively that these Danish re­ mains are all of the Neolithic age’ and subsequent to the close of the Glacial period. In fact, similar shell mounds are found in almost all quarters of the globe where savage tribes have lived on the sea-coast, subsisting mainly on shell-fish, £ 2 �52 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT and they are probably still being formed on the shores of the Greenland and Arctic Seas, and in Australia, and remote islands of the Pacific. Human remains are scarce in these Danish deposits, but numerous skulls and skeletons have been found in tumuli which, from their situation and from stone implements being buried with the dead, may be reasonably inferred to be those of the people of the peat mosses and shell mounds. They denote a short race with small and very round heads, in many respects resembling the present Lapps, but with a more projecting ridge over the eye. On the whole, all we can conclude from these Danish remains is that at some period, not less than 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, when civilisation had already been long established in the valley of the Nile, rude races resembling the Lapps or Es­ quimaux lived on the shores of the Baltic, who, although so. much more recent, and acquainted with the domestic dog, pottery, and the art of polishing stone, had not advanced much beyond the con­ dition of the later cave-men of the South of France ; and that this race was suc­ ceeded by one which brought in the much higher civilisation of the Bronze Age. The lake-dwellings of Switzerland give still, more detailed and interesting infor­ mation as to Neolithic times. During a very dry summer in 1854, the Lake of Zurich fell below its usual level and disclosed the remains of ancient piles driven into the mud, from which a numof deer-horns and other implements were dredged up. This led to farther researches, and the result lias been that a large number of villages built on these piles has. been discovered in almost all the Swiss lakes, as well as in those of Italy and other countries. On the whole, more than 200 have been discovered in Swit­ zerland, and fresh ones are being con­ stantly brought to light. They range over a long period, a few belonging to the. Iron Age and even to Boman times ■ while the. greater number are almost equally divided between the Age of Bionze and that of Stone. Some of them are of large size, and must have been long inhabited and supported a numerous population, from the immense number of implements found, which at one station alone, that of Concise on the Lake of Neufchatel, amounted to 25,000. These implements consist mainly of axes, knives anow-heads, saws, chisels, hammers, awls and needles, with a quantity of broken pottery, spindle-whorls, sinkers for nets and other objects. ’ In the oldest stations, where no trace of metal is found, and the decay of the piles to a low’er level shows the greatest antiquity, the implements are all of. the Neolithic type, and the animal remains associated with them are all of the recent fauna. There are no mam­ moths, rhinoceroses, or reindeer; the wild animals are the red deer and roe, the urus, bison, elk, bear, wolf, wild cat, fox, badger, wild boar, ibex, and other exist­ ing species ; and of domestic animals, the uogf, pig, horse, goat, sheep, and at least two varieties or oxen. Birds, reptiles, and . fish were all of common existing species. Carbonised ears of wheat and barley have been found, as also pears and apples, and the seeds, stones, and shells of raspberry, blackberry, wild plum, hazel-nut, and beech-nut. Twine, and bits of matting made of flax, as well as the occurrence of spindle-whorls, show that the pile dwellers were acquainted with the art of weaving. On the whole, these pile-villages show i r ^arSe population lived in Switzer­ land for a long time before the dawn of history, and that they had already attained a considerable amount of civilisation at their , first appearance, which went on steadily increasing down to the time of the Boman conquest. Various attempts have been made to fix an approximate date for the earliest of these pile-villages, but they have not been very successful. They have been based. mainly on the amount of silting up which has taken place in some of the smaller lakes since the piles were driven in, as compared with that which has occurred since the Roman period. The best calculations appear to show that 6,000 or 7,000 years ago Switzerland was already inhabited by men who used polished stone implements, but how long they had been there we have no distinct evidence to show Perhaps 10,000 years may betaken as the outside limit of time that can be allowed for the Neolithic period in Switzerland, Denmark, or any known part of Europe. In Egypt, however, there is evidence of a much greater antiquity. Fragments of pottery, which was entirely unknown in the Palaeolithic age, have been brought, �ANTIQUITY OF MAN 53 up by borings in the Nile Valley from it is possible to fix any approximate dates forthe commencement and durationot the depths ■which, at the average rate ot ac­ cumulation there during the las^ 3,000 Glacial period. place, how do we know In the years of three inches and a halt in a that therefirst been any such period ? has century, would denote an age of In England we are more familiar with 13,000 to 18,000 years.. Looking at the water than with ice; we therefore recog­ dense population and high civilisation ot nise at once the signs of the action ot Egypt at the commencement of bistory, water. If we come across a dry channel, 7,000 years ago, it is highly probable that in alternating curves between this time at least must have .elapsed windingbanks, and showing deposits, ot since the country was first occupied by a eroded and silt, we say without hesitation, settled agricultural population as tar gravel a river formerly ran.’ But it we “ Here advanced in the arts of life as the lake­ had lived in Switzerland, we should dwellers of Switzerland. Any calculation, however, of N eolith.ic recognise with equal certainty the signs Suppose any one time takes us back a very short step in of glacial action. walks up the valley visiting Chamouni the history of the human race, I he to .the foot of the Mer de Glace where Paleolithic period must evidently have the Arve issues from the glacier, let us been of vastly longer duration. Here it is convenient to note that the say in autumn, when the front, of the back some theory of an absolute break, through geo­ glacier has shrunkRounded and distance, polished logical changes and subordinate causes, what does he see 1 as. if they had been between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic rocks, whicha seem gigantic plane Ages which long held the field, has dis­ planed by over them, and on working downwards these a appeared (except in Great Britain) before mass of miscellaneous rubbish shot down the evidence against tenantless intervals as if from a dust-cart, consisting ot in prehistoric times. The tools and weapons found in certain caves, as at stones of all sizes, some of them boulders house, scattered Solutr6, in the Ma^on district, and at as big as a of clay and sand. irregulaily When he Mentone, show an overlapping of earlier on a mass closely he will see that these and later specimens, which witness to looks morenot rounded as they would be fusion in more or less degree between stones are water, but blunted. at then prehistoric peoples. Doubtless in the by runninga slow grinding action ; and more northerly parts of the Continent angles bycases, both the stones and the there were local migrations and retreats, in many which they rest are. scratched on but there was no wholesale withdrawal rocksstriated in a direction which is that or extermination of the . ruder races, andthe glacier’s motion. At the bottom leaving vacant areas fortheir conquerors. of this rubbish-heap he will find the clay Europe has been continuously inhabited of which the rock has been ground by by man since he first set his foot in it, and into full weight of the glacier, very stifi the proofs of this, ever increasing, come the compact; while if he looks down the in the shape of the rude specimens of and he will see, on a hot day, a swollen, art which link Northern with Southern valley, turbid Europe, and, what is of the deepest and ice andriver issuing from the melt­ flooding the. interest, both regions with the Eastern ing it will leave a depositmeadows, on of fine mud. Mediterranean. For these and other which are effects actually produced by These materials, more advanced in character, ice; and wherever he sees them he can are revolutionising the old theories of infer the former presence of a glacier, as European civilisation, which held it to certainly as when he sees a bed ot be a wholly imported product, and are pebbles, he infers showing how indigenous that culture rounded of running water. the former was, originating, mayhap, as shown presence commonly knownIhe planed as rochet already, in the islands of the JEgean, and rocks are om a fancied resemblance ot mo utonnees,fr diffusing itself, not without Oriental their smooth, rounded hummocks to the influences upon it, in westerly directions. backs of a flock of sheep lying down; In carrying our. researches further back, the possibility of assigning any­ the rubbish heaps are called moraines ; clay with thing like a definite date for the existence and the stiff bottom called theboulders g^wdof man depends on the question whether embedded in it is �MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT moraine, till, or boulder clay ; while the blunted and scratched stones are said to be glaciated. These tests, therefore, roches moutonnees, moraines, boulders, and glaciated stones, are infallible proofs that wherever we find them there has been ice-action, either in the form of glaciers, or of ice­ bergs, which are only detached portions of glaciers floated-off when the glacier ends in the sea. blow, if our inquirer extends his view., he will find that these signs, the meaning of which he has learned at the head of the valley of Chamouni, are to be found equally in every valley and over the whole plain of Switzerland, up to a height of more than 3,000 feet on the slope of the opposite Jura range, while on the Italian side the Glacial drift extends far into the plains of Piedmont. Extending our view still more widely, we find that every high mountain range m the Northern hemisphere has had its system . of glaciers; and one great mountain mass, that of Scandinavia, has been the nucleus of an enormous ice-cap, radiating to a distance of not less than 1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up with solid ice the North Sea, the German Ocean, the Baltic, and even the Atlantic up to the 100 fathom line. This ice-cap, coalescing with local glaciers from the higher lands of England, Scotland, and Ireland, swept over their surface, regard­ less of minor inequalities of hill and valley, as far south as to the present Thames Valley, grinding-down rocks, scattering drift and boulders, and, in fact, doing the first rough sub-soil ploughing which prepared most of our present arable fields for cultivation. The same ice-sheet spread masses of similar drift over Northern Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and the northern half of European Russia, and left behind it numerous boulders which must have travelled all the way from Norway or Lapland. If we cross the Atlantic we find the same thing repeated on a still larger scale in North America. A still more gigantic, ice-cap, radiating from the Laurentian ranges, which extend to­ wards the Pole, from Canada, has glaciated all the minor mountain ranges to the. south up to heights sometimes exceeding. 3,000 feet, and coalescing with vast glaciers thrown off by the Rocky Mountains from their eastern flanks, has swept over the whole Continent, leaving its record in the form of drift and boulders, down to the 40th parallel of , latitude. It is difficult to realise the existence of such gigantic glaciers, but the proofs they have left are incontro­ vertible, and we have only to look to Greenland to see similar effects actually in operation. The whole of that vast country, where at former periods of the earth’s history, fruit-trees grew and a genial climate prevailed, is now buried deep under one solid ice-cap, from which only a few of the highest peaks protrude, and which discharges its surplus accumulation of winter snow by huge glaciers filling all the fiords and pushing out into the sea with a,n ice-wall sometimes forty or fifty miles in length, from which icebergs are continually breaking off and floating away. A still more gigantic ice-wall surrounds the Southern Pole, and in a comparatively low latitude presented an insuperable barrier to the further progress of the ships of Sir J. Ross’s expedition. A. still closer examination of the Glacial period shows that it was not one single period of intense cold, but a pro­ longed period, during which there were several alternations, the glaciers having retreated and advanced several times with comparatively mild inter-glacial periods, but finally with a tendency on each suc­ cessive advance to contract its area, until the ice shrank into the recesses of high mountains, where alone we now find it. Another noteworthy point is that during this long Glacial period there were several great oscillations in the level of sea and land. Such, was the Glacial period, and to assign its date is to fix the date when we know with certainty that man already existed, and had for some long though unknown time previously been an in­ habitant of earth. Is this possible ? To answer this question we must begin by considering what are the causes, or com­ bination of causes, which may have given rise to such a Glacial period. When we look at. the causes which actually pro­ duce existing glaciers, we find that ex­ treme cold alone is not sufficient. In the coldest known region of the earth, in Eastern Siberia, there are no glaciers, for the land is low and level and the air dry. On the other hand, in New Zealand, in �AifTIQUITt OF maf sistent with the general laws of Nature j and with the leading facts of the actual generation of glaciers at the present day. Astronomers believe that they have discovered such a cause in the theory first started by Mr. Groll, that the glacia­ tion of the Northern hemisphere was due to a secular change in the shape of th® I earth’s orbit, combined with the shorter changes produced by the precession of the equinoxes. The latter cause is due to the fact that the earth is not an exact sphere, but slightly protuberant at the equator, and that the attraction of the sun on this I protuberant matter prevents the axis round which the earth rotates, from re­ maining exactly parallel with itself, and makes it move slowly , round its mean I position just as we see in the case of a I schoolboy’s top, which reels round an imaginary upright axis while spinning rapidly. This revolution in the* case ot the earth completes its circle in about 21,000 years, so that if summer, when th| pole is turned towards the sun, occurred in the Northern hemisphere when the earth was in perihelion., or nearest the S6When the two conditions of high land sun, and consequently winter when it was and moist winds are combined, low in aphelion, or furthest away from the temperature increases their effect, and sun, after 10,500 years the position would the snow-fall consolidates into a great be exactly reversed, and winter would ice-cap, from which only, the tops of tne occur in perihelion and summer in highest mountains project, and which aphelion ; the Southern, hemisphere then pushes out gigantic glaciers far. over­ enjoying the same conditions as those, oi surrounding countries and into adjacent the Northern one 10,500 years earlier seas. Such is now the case in Green­ And in another 10,500 years things would land, and was formerly the case in come back to their original position. Scandinavia, where a huge sheet of ice Now if the earth’s orbit were an exact radiated from it over Northern Germany circle this would make no difference, all as far as Dresden, filled up the North Sea, and, coalescing with smaller ice­ the four seasons would, be of the same duration and would receive the same solar caps from the highlands of Scotland, heat in both hemispheres, and if the England, and Wales, buried the British orbit were nearly circular, so that the Islands up to the Thames under massive difference between the perihelion and ice. At the same period glaciers from the Alps filled the whole plain of aphelion distances was small, the effect would be small also. But if the orbit Switzerland, and in North America the flattened out or became more eccentric, icecap extended from Labrador to the effect would be increased. The fiM Philadelphia. of traversing the aphelion portion oi the The first remark to be made is . that, annual orbit would become longer and as these phenomena depend primarily on that of traversing the perihelion portion moist winds, and only secondarily on shorter, as the orbit departed from the cold, and as moist winds imply great form of a circle and became more elliptic. evaporation and therefore great solar Whenever, therefore, the North Pole was heat over extensive surfaces of water, all explanations are worthless which suppose turned away from the sun in aphelion, the winters would be longer than the a general prevalence of cold, either from summers in the Northern hemisphere, less solar radiation, passage through a and conversely, the summers would be colder region of space, or otherwise. longer than the winters when, after an We must seek for a cause which is con­ the latitude of England and with a mean annual temperature very similar to that of the West of Scotland, enormous glaciers descend to within 700 feet ot the sea-level. The reason is obvious ; the Alps of the South Island rise to the height of 11,000 feet above the sea, and the pre­ valent westerly winds strike, on them laden with moisture from their passage over a wide expanse of ocean. In like manner, in the case of the Swiss Alps, the Himalayas, and other great mountain ranges, high land and moist winds everywhere make glaciers. Given the moist wind, any great depression of temperature, whether arising H'om elevation of land or other causes, wbl make it deposit its moisture in the form of snow, and the accumulation of snow on a large surface of elevated land must inevitably relieve itself by pushing down rivers of ice to the point where it melts, just as the rain-fall relieves itself by pouring down rivers to the point .where the surplus water finds its level in the �56 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT interval of 10,500 years, precession in their operation and given us a constant brought about the opposite condition of succession of things, in which winter occurred in commencementGlacial periods since the of geological time, when­ perihelion. ever the . At present the earth’s orbit is nearly occurs at eccentricity became great, which irregular periods, but circular, and the Northern hemisphere is about three times in everypractically 3,000 000 nearest the sun in winter and furthest years. The answer is from it in summer, but the difference is would only occur whenthat the effects the other con­ only . about 3,000,000 miles, or a small fraction of the total mean distance of ditions were present, viz., high land, moist an absence 93,000,000 miles, which makes the winter winds, andwater like of oceanic currents of warm the Gulf Stream, i year shorter than the summer lne latter is one of the main causes which half by nearly eight days. But mathematical calculations show affect temperature. The difference of 1 un(^er ^ie complicated attractions temperature between the equatorial and of the sun, moon, and larger planets, the polar regions causes a constant overflow of heated eccentricity of the earth’s orbit slowly is replacedair from south to north, which an indraught of colder air changes at long.and irregular intervals ri om north by south, which, owing to the to but always w.ithin^xed limits, increasing greater velocity of the earth’s rotation up to a certain point and then diminish­ towards the equator, takes the form of ing till it approaches the circular form trade-winds blowing constantly from a when it again increases. The maximum more These limit of eccentricity makes the difference winds, or less easterly direction. Ocean, sweeping the Atlantic between the greatest and least distances raise its level at overwestern barrier, and its of the earth from the sun range between the 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 miles, which is flowsaccumulation deflected by America off in which tour or five times as great as at present • the western a currentEurope extends to and with this eccentricity, and winter in mildwintersshores of extreme and carries into the North In aphelion in the Northern hemisphere, the the Orkney and Shetland Islands, which winter half of the year in Northern are nearly m the same latitude as Cape latitudes would be twenty-six days longer than the summer half, instead of eight farewell m Greenland, there is so little ice accomplishment days shorter as at present. In this state of andthat skating is a rare game which is curling, the roaring things the quantity of heat received daily popular some degrees further south, so is from the sun in winter would be such as quite unknown. to lower the temperature of the whole diverted, and the Ii the Gulf Stream were highlands of Northern hemisphere by 35° Fahrenheit, upheaved to the height of the Scotland Alps of and reduce the average January tem­ New perature of England from 39 to 4°, while I againZealand, the whole conntry would be buried under glaciers pushing the mean summer temperature would be t into ar*d German Ocean. about 60° higher than at present. But oathese ^ie considerations may show this summer heat, derived from solar every period of great eccentricity why was radiation, would not counteract the cold not necessarily a Glacial period, of .winter, for all moisture during winter under certain conditions it must though inevit­ 1I?3 accumulated in ice and snow, most ably have been so, and geologists are ot the solar heat of summer would be generally agreed that the last period of the expended in supplying latent heat to melt have been one of the main a portion of this frozen accumulation, sort mustthe great refrigeration which causes and dense fogs would intercept a large set m of over the whole Northern hemiamount of the solar radiation. sphere the Pliocene jer lb,500 years this state of things period, towards the close of recent times. and continued until would be entirely reversed, and with But in this case we can fix the date with twenty-six days more of summer, and calculation shows that the earth 12,000,000 miles nearer the sun +k"ea^ accuracy> f°r of great eccentricity the last period m winter, the Northern hemisphere would began 240,000 years ago, and lasted enjoy something like perpetual spring, 160,000 years. For the last 50,000 years v here can be no doubt that these are real the departure of the earth’s orbit from causes, and the only difficulty is to account the circular form has been exceptionally tor their not having been more invariable ;small. We may suppose the Glacial �ANTIQUITY OF MAN period, therefore, to have commenced 240,000 years ago, come to its height 160,000 years ago, and finally passed away 80,000 years before the present time. These dates receive much confirmation from conclusions drawn from a totally different class of facts. A bed of existing marine shells of Arctic type, apparently belonging to one of the latest phases of the Glacial period, has been found on the top of a hill in North Wales which is now 1,100 feet above the sea-level, and the same marine drift seems to extend to a height of upwards of 2,000 feet. There must, therefore, have been a depression of the land sufficient to carry it many fathoms below the sea, and a subsequent elevation sufficient to carry the sea bottom up to a height of certainly 1,100 and probably over 2,000 feet. In all pro­ bability, these movements were very slow and gradual, like those now. going on in Greenland and Scandinavia, for there are no signs of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions in the district; and it is probable that pauses occurred in the movements, and a long pause when sub­ sidence had ceased before elevation began. Without taking these pauses into account, and assuming the elevation only just completed, and that Sir C. Lyell’s average of two and a half feet a century is a fair rate for these slow movements, it would have required 50,000 years of continued elevation to bring these shells, and 80,000 years to bring the marine drifts, up to their present height above the sea; and a similar period previously must be allowed for their submergence. We may fairly conclude, therefore, that upwards of 100,000 years have elapsed since these shells lived and died at the bottom of the sea towards the close of the Glacial period, which corre­ sponds very well with the date assigned by astronomical calculations. Again, another attempt to fix a date for the close of the Glacial period has been made by Monsieur Forel, a Swiss geologist, from actual measurements of the quantity of suspended matter poured into the Lake of Geneva by the Rhone, and the area of the lake which has been silted up since it was filled by ice. It is evident that this silting up at the head of the lake could only begin when the great Rhone glacier, which once extended to the Jura Mountains, had shrunk back into its valley far enough to pour its river into the lake. M. Forel’s calculations give . 100,000 years as the probable time required for the river to silt up so much of the lake as is now converted into dry land. The data are somewhat vague, as on the one hand the rate of deposition may have! been greater when a large mass of ice and snow was being melted, while on the other hand it may have been less, while the glacier still occupied the valley almost to the head of the lake, and the Rhone had only a course of a few miles. All that can be said, there­ fore, is that it gives an approximate date for the close of the Glacial period which, like that derived from rates of depression and elevation, corresponds wonderfully well with the date required by Croll’s theory. Now, whether the date be a little more or a little less, it is clear that man existed on earth throughout a great part, if not the whole, of the Glacial period. He had existed a long while in conjunction with a fauna of morel Southern and African aspect, before the reindeer migrated in vast herds into Southern France. His remains are found in caves and river drifts associated with those of the hippopotamus, an animal which could by no possibility have lived in rivers which for half the year were bound hard in ice. Such remains must therefore of necessity date either from a period before the great cold had set. in, or from some inter-glacial period prior to the great cold which drove the reindeer, musk ox, glutton, and Arctic hare as far south as the slopes of the Pyrenees. In England we can trace distinctly at least four successions of boulder clays, that is of the ground moraines of land ice, separated by deposits of drifts, sands, and brick-earths, formed while . the glaciers were retreating and melting; and a number of the Palaeolithic imple­ ments have been found in what was undoubtedly part of the period of the second or great chalky boulder clay, which overspreads the southern and eastern counties of England up to the Thames Valley. The discovery * of Palaeolithic remains in the deposit oi St, Prest, near Chartres, makes it probable that some at least of the ruder instru­ ments date back to the very beginning of the Glacial period, and a good body �58 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT of evidence points to the conclusion that man was living during the many alter­ nations of climate of that period, and whenever the glaciers retreated, followed them up closely. In seeking to trace back human origin to more remote periods, we must begin by describing shortly the geological periods during which the existence of man may have been possible. It is use­ less to go back beyond the Chalk, which was deposited in a deep sea and forms a great break between the modern and the Secondary period, in which latter reptiles predominated, and mammalia are only known by a few remains of small insectivorous and marsupial animals. The inauguration of the present state of things commences with the Tertiary period. This has been divided into three stages : the Eocene, in which the first dawn appears of animal life similar in type to that now existing ; the Miocene, in which there is a still greater approxi­ mation to existing forms of life; and the Pliocene, in which existing types and species become preponderant. Then comes the Pleistocene or Quaternary, including the great Glacial period, during which the whole marine and nearly the whole terrestrial fauna are of existing or recently extinct species, though very different in their geographi­ cal distribution from that of the present day. And finally we arrive at the recent period, when the present climate and the present configuration of lands, seas, and . rivers prevail with very slight modifications, and no changes have taken place either in the specific character or geographical distribution of life, except such as can be clearly traced to existing causes such as the agency of man. This is the geological frame-work into which we have to fit the history of man’s appearance upon earth. We have traced him through the recent and Quaternary ; can we trace him further into the Tertiary ? Speaking generally, we may say that the Eocene period was that in which Europe began to assume some­ thing like its present configuration, and in which mammalian life, of the higher or placental type, began to supplant the lower forms of marsupial life which had preceded. But these higher types were for the most part of a more primitive or generalised character than the more specialised types of later periods, and u* highest order, that of the primates, which includes man, ape, and lemur, was, as far as is yet known, represented only by two or three extinct lemurian forms. _ The plan on which Nature has worked in the evolution of life seems always to have been this: she begins by laying down a sort of ground plan, or general­ ised sketch of a particular form of life, say, first of vertebrata, then of fish, then of reptiles, and finally of mammalian life. I his sketch resembles the simple theme of a few notes on which a musician pro­ ceeds to work out a series of variations, each surpassing the other in complication and . specialised development in some particular direction. No w, in the Eocene period we are in the stage of the theme and first simple variations of the mammalian melody. It hardly seems likely, there­ fore, that a creature so highly specialised as man, even in his most rudimentary form, should have existed, and in the absence of any direct evidence to the contrary, it is safe to assume that his first appearance must have been of later date. But when we come to the Miocene and Pliocene periods, the case is different. It is true that in the Miocene the speciali­ sation of certain families, as for instance that of the horse, had not been carried out to the full extent, and that all the species of Miocene land-mammals and several of the genera are now extinct. But there were already true apes and baboons, and even two species of anthro­ poid ape, one of which, the Dryopithecus, whose fossil remains were found in the South of France, was as large as a man. Now, wherever anthropoid apes lived it is clear that, whether as a question of anatomical structure or of climate and surroundings, man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as. much special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they resemble bone for bone and muscle for. muscle, and the physical animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialised for erect posture and a larger brain. The larger brain, implying greater intelligence, must also have given him advantages in contending with out­ ward circumstances, as for instance, by fire and clothing against cold, which might �AMNffllUt OP MAN enable him to survive when other species succumbed and became extinct. If he could survive, as we know he did, |3ie adverse conditions and. extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why he might not have lived in the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitsbergen, and when ample forests supplied an abundance of game and edible fruits. The same rea­ sons apply, with still greater force, to the Pliocene period, when existing types and species had become more common and feen a mild climate still prevailed. The JEstence of Tertiary man must antecedently be pronounced highly probable; but probabilities are not proofs, and the near Chartres, which were always con­ sidered to be Pliocene. Since the dis­ covery, however, some geologists have contended that these strata are not Plio­ cene, but of the earliest Quaternary, or perhaps a transition period between Plio­ cene and Quaternary. This evidence canl not, therefore, be accepted as conclusive for anything more than proof that man’s ex­ istence extends at any rate over the whole Quaternary period, comprising the vast glacial and inter-glacial ages which have effected such changes in the earth’s surface* Less disputable evidence is supplied by the Pliocene of Monte Aperto, near Siena, Italy, where bones of the Bakenotus, a sort of Pliocene whale, which bear marks of incisions which to all appearance must Incised Bones of Bal^notus. Pliocene. From Monte Aperto. Figured by Quatrefages, <( Homines Fossiles et Homines Sauvages, p. 93. fact of such existence must be determined by the evidence. All that can be said is that while there ought to be great caution in admitting as established a fact of such gnportance, there ought to be no.deter­ mined predisposition to disbelieve it, like ghii.t which for so many years retarded the acceptance of the evidence for Palaeo­ lithic man. On the contrary, the fact that man existed in such numbers and. under such conditions as have been, described in theQuaternary period, establishes a strong foresumption that his first appearance must date from a much earlier period. Let us see how the evidence stands. Undoubted stone implements, and bones faring traces of cuttings by flint knives, UKie been found in strata at St. Prest, have been made by flint knives emplojw in hacking off the flesh. Doubts thrown at first on this, as it was thought that possibly fish, or somegnawing anim^ like the beaver, might have cut the groovw with their teeth. But later specimens have been found on which the cuts have a regtt^ lar curvature which could not have been made by any teeth, and present precisely the same appearance as the cuts winch are so commonly found on the bon® of reindeer and other animals in hundreds of Palaeolithic caves. M. Quatrefages, who is a very eminent and at the same time very cautious autho­ rity, says, in his last work on the subject published in 1884, “Homines Fossiles st Hommes Sauvages,” that 11 the most in* �60 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT credulous must be convinced. Had they who appointed a commission of fifteen been found in Quaternary beds no one European authori would have hesitated to regard them as of the most eminent to report upon it­ such matters intentionally caused. The hand of man ties mreported that some of the flints Nine armed with a cutting instrument could showed undoubted alone have left marks of this sort on a traces of human plain surface. It is evident that some workmanship, five horde of savages of these remote times were of an opposite had found the carcase of this great ceta­ opinion, and one cean stranded on the shore, and cut the was neutral. Since flesh off with stone knives just as the sav­ then fresh obj ects ages of Australia do at the present day.” have been found, If these bones of the Baleenotus really and M. Quatrefages, bear marks of human tools, the spectacle who had formerly which might have been witnessed on the been doubtful, says shore of the Pliocene sea perhaps 500,000 in his recent work : years ago, must, have closely resembled “These new objects, Flint Scraper. that given by Sir John Lubbock from a and especially a description by Captain Grey of a recent scraper which is one From Thenay. Miocene whale feast in Australia. “ When a whale of the most dis­ Figured by Quatrefages, “ Hommes Fossiles et is washed on shore it is a real godsend to tinctly character­ Hommes Sauvages," p. 92. them. Fires are immediately lit, to give ised of that class of notice of the joyful event. Then they implements, have removed my last rub themselves all over with blubber, doubts.” And certainly, if the figures and anoint their favourite wives in the given at Paoe 92 of his “Hommes same way; after which they cut down I ossiles et Hommes Sauvages ” correctly through the blubber to the beef, which represent the original implements, and they sometimes eat raw and sometimes they really came from Miocene strata, broil on pointed sticks. As other natives doubt.is no longer possible. The evidence arrive they ‘ fairly eat their way into the of design in chipping into a determinate whale, and you see them climbing in and shape is quite as clear as in the similar about the stinking carcase, choosing tit­ class of implements from Kent’s Cavern bits.’ For days ‘ they remain by the car­ or the Cave of La Madeleine. They must case, rubbed from head to foot with stink­ either have been chipped by man, or as ing blubber, gorged to repletion with Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the putrid meat—out of temper from indi­ Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid gestion, and therefore engaged in con­ ape which had a dose of intelligence so stant frays suffering from a cutaneous much superior to the gorilla or chim­ disorder by high feeding—and altogether panzee as. to be able to fabricate tools. a disgusting spectacle. There is no sight But in this case the problem would be m the.world, Captain Grey adds, ‘ more solved and the missing link discovered, revolting than to see a young and grace­ for such an ape might well have been fully-formed native girl stepping out of the ancestor, of Palaeolithic man. the carcase of a putrid whale.’ ” The next instance is from Otta, in the The evidence for Miocene man is much valley of the Tagus, where flint imple­ of the same character: very strong and ments were alleged to have been dis­ conclusive as far as it goes, but resting covered by an eminent Portuguese geolo­ on too few instances to be universally gist, Senor Kibeiro, in Miocene strata. The accepted. In 1868 the Abb£ Bourgeois subject was fully discussed on the spot, laid before the Anthropological Congress at a meeting of the Anthropological Con­ at Paris certain flints which he had gress at Lisbon in 1880. The general found in situ in undoubted Miocene strata opinion seemed to be that some of the at Thenay, in the Beauce, near Blois, implements showed undoubted traces of they were received with general incre­ human design, but some good authorities dulity, and the traces of human design remained sceptical ; and although there were denied. The Abbe, however, per­ was no doubt that they were found in sisted, and having made fresh discoveries Miocene strata, it was thought possible the subject was referred to the next that flints of Quaternary age might have meeting of the Congress at Brussels, fallen into fissures, or been mixed up with �f™QUATE0^^^^ Miocene. Borer, of. Awl. Thenay. Miocene. Congrfes Prihistorique, Bruxelles, 1872. J'C Quaternary. Chaleux, Belgium. Reindeer Period. Congres Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 1872. Scraper, or Rude Knife. Thenay. Mio­ cene. Quatrefages, p. 92. Scraper. Thenay. Miocene Quatrefages, p. 92. Quaternary. Slammoth Period. River Drift, Mesvin, Belgium. Congres Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 18.2. �62 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT Miocene sands by floods at some very remote period, and thus become encrusted in a Miocene matrix. The verdict as to Miocene man in Europe remains “Not proven.” Leaving with bones of the extinct Mastodon and Megalonyx. But, although undoubtedly of great antiquity, there is no proof that it does not belong to the Quaternary period, especially as the mastodon seems to have lived until comparatively recent times in America, its remains being often found in recent bogs and peat mosses. The same remark will apply to the skull which was found, in digging a well at New Orleans, under six distinct layers of cypress forests such as are now grow­ ing on the surface, showing as many periods of successive subsidences, subse­ quent elevations, and stationary periods long enough to allow of a forest growth of many generations of large trees. Here again the antiquity must be very great, but we have no reason to carry it back into Tertiary periods, or beyond the recent periods when the Mississippi began to flow in its present course and form its present delta. Human remains have also been dis­ covered in caves in Brazil and Mexico associated with bones of extinct animals, but we have no clear information as to the^ time when these animals became extinct, or as to the exact order of super­ position in which the human skulls and implements were found, and the occur­ rence of a polished stone celt in the same cave throws still more doubt on their extreme antiquity. Although the instances cited might be multiplied, it must be remembered that remains of Tertiary man are not likely to be abundant. . If man was then living, it was probably in fewer numbers and in Tertiary Hachb. more limited areas. The pressure of From Miocene Strata of TagU3 Valley. (Half the actual size.) population had not yet driven wandering Quatrefages, “ Hommes Fossiles et Homines hordes to follow sea-coasts and cross rivers Sauvages. ” and mountains in pursuit of food. Pro­ bably at this early period man lived the Old World for the Nev/, the same will more on fruits, and therefore required aPply to the alleged discovery of a human fewer implements, and his intelligence skull in Calaveras County, California was less, so tnat he had less power of buried under six distinct layers of har­ fashioning them. For the purposes for dened volcanic ashes, and, presumably which his Palaeolithic descendants chipped of Pliocene date, if not earlier. Whitney stones into shape, he may have used nat­ the Director of the Geological Survey of ural stones which would often answer the the United States, and other American purpose, but which, when thrown away, geologists, believe this skull to be Plio­ would leave nothing by which they could cene, but doubts have been thrown on be recognised. its authenticity, and European geologists If the forests now inhabited by the do not generally accept it. gorilla and chimpanzee were submerged A human bone is described by Lyell and again elevated, no trace would be which was found near Vicksburg in a found of the existence of animals which side valley of the Mississippi, associated had built rude nests, used broken branches �ANTIQUITY OF MAN of trees as clubs, and cracked cocoa-nuts with hammer stones. But above all, the surface of these older strata has been so much denuded, that the situations in which alone we might expect to find remains of man have almost entirely disappeared. Ninety-nine hun­ dredths of our Quaternary implements come from river drifts or caves. Where are the Pliocene or Miocene rivers or caves? They have disappeared amidst the revolutions of the earth’s surface and the constant denudation which wastes continents away. The negative evidence would be strong if we could point to caves filled with bone-breccias of a Plio­ cene or Miocene fauna, in which no trace was found of human remains. . But it is weak as against even, a single well-ascertained instance, if it . merely amounts to such remains not being fre­ quently found where we could hardly expect to find them. And it . is weak against the strong presumption that when Quaternary man is found in such numbers and under such. conditions, spread over wide areas in inhospitable climates, he must have had his first origin in earlier times. The cradle of that origin remains undiscovered, perhaps undis­ co verable. For in seeking for evidence about Tertiary man in Europe, we are off the scent. He must be searched for in the region or zone where Dr. Dubois found the fragments already described, and the search may, nevertheless, be in.vain. For perchance the area of the parting of the ways between the ape-like man and the man-like ape, as lateral descendants of a pithecoid ancestor, is in some Indo­ African land which has long been covered by the sea, and from which, in the warm climates of inter-glacial periods, when a temperate flora grew in northern lati­ tudes, the earliest human beings spread themselves over the then habitable globe, migrating by way of Africa into Europe, and by way of both Europe and Asia into America, while the ancient land-extensions led him dry-footed, to Australia. With these high probabilities, is it possible to assign any approximate date to man’s appearance ? Reckoning by the thickness, of the different stratified deposits which make up the earth’s crust, and assuming the average rate of their deposition, or what is the same thing, the average rate of waste of land surface, to have been the 63 same throughout, the whole Tertiary period carries us back barely onetwentieth part of the way towards the first beginnings of fossil-bearing strata. That is, if 100,000,000 years have elapsed since the earth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000 years; or for 10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell sup­ poses, for U least 200,000,000. years. Even if we take the shorter period, the time is ample for the enormous changes which have taken place since the com­ mencement of the Eocene period. The average rate of denudation over the globe has been taken at about one foot in 3,000 years, from actual calculations of the average amount of solid matter carried down by the Mississippi and other great rivers. Now at this rate it would take only 2,000,000 years to wear the whole of Europe down to the sea­ level, and, in the absence of any com­ pensating movements of elevation, the whole of North America would be washed away and deposited in strata at the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in less than 3,000,000 years. If, therefore, the origin of man. could be traced down to the middle Miocene, or even to the date of the great anthro­ poid Dryopithecus of Southern France (an ape approximating nearest to the chimpanzee), we should have to assume a period for his existence of probably between one and two millions of years, a mere fraction of the time since the earth became the abode of life amd existing causes operated to bring about geological formations. As regards the habits and manners of Quaternary man we know very little that is positive., and can only gather some vague indications from the relics in caves and river drifts. These, how­ ever, are sufficient to establish with certainty that the law of his existence has been one of continued progress. The older the remains, the ruder are the implements and the fewer.the traces of anything approaching to civilisation. As already shown, Neolithic man is comparatively civilised. He has domestic animals and cultivated plants ; he. has clothing and ornaments, well-fashioned tools and pottery,. and. permanent dwellings. He lives in societies, builds �64 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT villages, buries his dead, and shows his faith in a future life by placing with them food and weapons. As we ascend the stream of time these indications of an incipient civilisation disappear. The first vestige of the domestic animals is found in the dog which gnawed the bones of the Danish kitchen-middens, and of the earliest Swiss lake-dwellings. When fairly in Palaeolithic times, even the dog disappears, and man has to trust to his own unaided efforts in hunting wild animals for food. Weapons and implements become more and more rude until, in the oldest deposits, wo find nothing but roughlychipped hatchets, arrow-heads, flakes, and scrapers. Implements of bone, such as barbed harpoons, borers, and needles, which are abundant in the middle Paleolithic or reindeer period, be­ come ruder and then disappear. Pottery which is extremely abundant in the Neolithic period, either disappears alto­ gether or becomes so scarce that it is a moot question whether a few of the rudest fragments found in caves are really Palaeolithic. If so, they clearly date from the later Palaeolithic, and pottery was unknown in the earlier Palaeolithic times. Judging from the portraits engraved on bone . during the reindeer period, Palaeolithic man pursued the chase in a state of nature, though from the pre­ sence of bone needles it is probable that the skins of animals may have been occasionally sewed together by split sinews to provide clothing. There can be no doubt that his habitual dwelling was in caves or rock-shelters. Here was his home, here he took his meals and allowed the remains of his food, to accumulate. His staple diet consisted of the contemporary wild animals, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the caA e bear, the horse, the aurochs, and the reindeer. Even the great cave lion was occasionally killed and eaten, and the fox and other smaller animals were not despised ; while among tribes skilled m the use of the bow and arrow, birds were a common article of food, and fish were harpooned by those who lived near rivers. Wild fruit and roots were also doubtless consumed, and from the forma­ tion of their teeth and intestines it is pro­ bable that if we could trace the diet of the earliest races of men we should find them to have been frugivorous, like their con­ geners the anthropoid apes. The abundance of wild animals and the • for which hunting savages inhabited the same spots may be inferred fkat at one station alone that of Solutr6 in Burgundy, it is com­ puted that the remains of no less than 40,000 horses have been found. All the long bones of the larger animals have been split to extract the marrow, which was, as with the modern Eskimos and other savages, a great delicacy, and seems also to have been used for softening skins tor the purpose of clothing. Among the split bones a sufficient number of human bones have been found to make it certain that Palaeolithic man was, occasionally at least, a cannibal; and m several caves, notably that of Chaleux, in Belgium, these bones, in­ cluding those of women and children have been found charred by fire, and in such numbers as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal feasts. It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more frequent as man advanced in civilisation, and that whne its traces are frequent in Neolithic times, they become very scarce or alto­ gether disappear in the age of the mam moth and the reindeer. As regards religious ideas they can only be inferred from the relics buried with the dead, and these are scarce and uncertain for the earlier periods. The caves in which Palaeolithic man lived on the flesh of the Quaternary animals, have been so often used as buryingplaces in long-subsequent ages, that it is extremely difficult to ascertain whether the skeletons found in them are those of the original inhabitants. Thus the famous cave of Aurignac, in which Lartet thought he had discovered the tomb of men at whose funeral feast mammoths and rhinoceroses were consumed, is now generally considered to be a Neolithic burying-place superimposed on an abandoned Palaeolithic habitation. There are not more than five or six well authenticated instances in which entire Palaeolithic skeletons have been found . under, circumstances in which there is a fair, presumption that they may have been interred after death, and these afford no clear proof of articles intended for use in a future life having been deposited with them. All we can �MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE say, therefore, is that from the commence­ ment of the Neolithic period downwards, there is abundant proof that man had ideas of a future state of existence very similar to those of most of the savage tribes of the present day ; such proof is wanting for the immensely longer Palaeo­ lithic period, and we are left to con­ jecture. The only arts which can with certainty be assigned to our earliest known ancestors are those of fire and of fashioning rude implements from stone by chipping. Everything beyond this is the product of gradual evolution. CHAPTER VI. man’s place in nature Origin of Man from an Egg—Like other Mammals—Development of the EmbryoBackbone—Eye and other Organs of Sense —Fish, Reptile, and Mammalian Stages— Comparison with Apes and Monkeys— Germs of Human Faculties in Animals—The Dog—Insects—Helplessness of Human In­ fant—Instinct—Heredity and Evolution— The Missing Link—Races of Men—Leading Types and Varieties—Common Origin Dis­ tant—Language—How Formed—Grammar —Chinese, Aryan, Semitic,etc.—Conclusions from Language—Evolution and Antiquity —Religions of Savage Races—Ghosts and Spirits—Anthropomorphic Deities—Traces in Neolithic and Palaeolithic Times—De­ velopment by Evolution—Primitive Arts— Tools and Weapons—Fire—Flint Imple­ ments—Progress from Palaeolithic to Neo­ lithic Times—Domestic Animals—Clothing —Ornaments—Conclusion, Man a Product of Evolution. Although the establishment of the great antiquity of the human race has attracted more immediate attention, being a fact at once intelligible to the general public, the researches of ana­ tomists and physiologists, aided by the microscope, have brought to light results quite as remarkable as regards the individual man and his place in Nature. Until recently it was taken for granted that man was a special miraculous creation, altogether superior to and distinct from the rest of the. animal world. This assumption, gratifying alike to our vanity, and our laziness in the laborious search for truth, has been to a 65 great extent disproved and replaced ny the Law of Evolution. The most striking proof of this is found when we trace scientifically the growth of each individual man from his first origin to his final development. Man, like all other animals, is born of an egg. The primitive egg, or ovum, which was the first germ of our existence, is a small cell about the one-hundred-and-twentyfifth of an inch in diameter, consisting of a mass of semi-fluid protoplasm enclosed in a membrane, and containing a small speck or nucleus of more con­ densed proto­ plasm. This nu­ cleated cell is it­ self the first form into which a mass of simple jelly-like proto­ plasm is differen­ tiated in the course of its evo­ Human Egg. lution from its Magnified 100 times. original uniform composition. The nucleated cell is the starting-point of all higher life, and.by splitting up and multiplying repetitions of itself in geo­ metrical progression, provides the cell* material out of which all the complicated structures of living things are built up. In sexual generation, which prevails in all the higher forms of life, this process requires, in order to start it, the co* operation of two such cells or germs of life, one male, the other female. The first remarkable fact is that the human egg is, at its commencement, undistinguishable from that of any other mammal, and remains so for a long period of its growth, going through its earlier stages of development in precisely the same way. At first the egg behaves exactly as any. other single-celled organism, as for instance that of the amoeba, which is considered the simplest form of organised life. It contracts in the middle and divides into two cells, each with its nucleus and each an exact counterpart of the original cell. These two subdivide into four, the four into eight, and so on, until at last a cluster of cells is formed which is called a morula from its resemblance to the fruit of the mulberry-tree. Development goes on, a.n4 the globular lump of cells changes i F �66 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT into a globular bladder whose outside skin is built up of flattened cells. Then condensation takes place, from the more rapid growth of cells at particular points, and the foundation is laid of the actual body of the germ or embryo, the other cells of the germ-bladder serving only for its nutrition. Up to this point the germs not only of all mammals, including man, but _ of all vertebrate animals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, are scarcely dis­ tinguishable. In the next stage the outer surface of the embryo develops three distinct layers, the outer one of which, or epidermis, is modified into the skin, sense-organs, and nervous system; the inner one, of epithelium, into the mucous membrane or lining of all the intestinal organs ; while the intermediate layer is the raw material of muscles, bones, and blood­ pression in the outer skin extends until the edges close and form a hollow space in which the eye is formed- At first it is a mere black pigment mark on the in­ terior surface of the enclosed space, which develops into the retina, with a wonderful apparatus of optic nerves for conveying impressions photographed on it to the brain. The enclosed space itself is filled with a fluid, or vitreous humour, from which a lens is condensed for collecting the rays of light and con­ centrating them on the retina, and by degrees all the beautiful and complicated organs are evolved for perfecting the work of the eye and protecting’it from injury. But this fact must* be kept clearly in view : the process is identically the same as that by which the eyes of other animals are formed, and its various stages represent those by which the Mammalian Egg. First Stage. Second Stage. vessels. The embryo is now contracted in the middle and assumes the form of a violin-shaped disc, and a slight longi­ tudinal furrow appears, dividing it into two equal right and left parts, which is gradually converted into a tube con­ taining the spinal marrow, to protect which a chain of bones or vertebrae is developed, forming the back-bone. And now comes what is the most marvellous part of the process, viz., the development of the brain, eye, ear, and other organs of sense, from these simple elements. The brain begins as a swelling of the foremost end of the cylindrical marrow-tube. This divides itself into five bladders, lying one behind the other, from which the whole com­ plicated structure of the brain and skull is subsequently developed. The eye, ear, and other sense-organs, begin in the same way. A slight de- | Third Stage. organs of vision have gradually risen to the development of a complete eye, in advancing from the lowest to the higher forms of life. Thus in the lowest, or Protista, the eye remains a simple pig­ ment spot, which probably perceives light by being more sensitive to variations of temperature than the surrounding white cells. The next higher family develop a lens, and so on in ascending order, different families developing dif­ ferent contrivances for attaining the same object, but all starting from the same origin, development of the cells of the epidermis, and leading up to the same result, organs of vision adapted for the ordinary conditions of life of the creature which uses them. I say the ordinary conditions, for there are curious instances of the eye persisting, dwindling from disuse, and finally disappearing, in animals which live underground like the �MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE mole, or in subterranean waters like some fish in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky and underground lakes of Carinthia, where the stimulus of light is no longer felt for many generations. The history of the ear and other organs of sense is the same as that of the eye. They are all developments of the cell system of the outer skin, and all pass through stages of development identical with those at which it has been arrested in the progression from lower to higher forms of life. The same principles apply to the development of the inner organs, such as the heart, lungs, liver, etc., a striking illustration of which is found in 67 of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance after the first four weeks’ growth between the embryo of a man and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy. As evolution proceeds, the embryo emerges from the general mammalian type into the special order of Primates to which man belongs. This order, be­ ginning with the lemur, rises through Dog (six weeks). Man (eight weeks). From Haeckel’s “ Schdpfungsgeschichte.” the fact that the gill arches, or bones which support the gills by which fishes breathe, exist originally in man and all other vertebrate animals above the ranks of fish, but, in the development of the embryo, they are superseded by the air.breathing apparatus of lungs, and con­ verted to other purposes in the formation of the jaws and organ of hearing. In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal, and finally of man. If we take him up at the more ad­ vanced stage, where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable time the line the monkey, the baboon, and tailed ape, up to the anthropoid apes, the chim­ panzee, gorilla, orang, and gibbon, which approach nearest to the human type. The succession is gradual from the lower to the higher forms up to the anthropoid apes, but a considerable gap occurs be­ tween these and man. It is true that in his physical structure man resembles these apes closely, every bone and muscle of the one having its counterpart in those of the other. But even at its birth the human infant is already specialised by considerable differences. The brain is larger, its convolutions more complex, the spine has a double curvature, adapting it for an erect posture, and the legs, with a F 2 �68 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT corresponding object, are longer and stronger, while the arms are shorter and less adapted for climbing. The thumb also is longer, making the hand a better instrument for all purposes, except that of clasping the branches of trees, for which the long, slender fingers of the ape are more available. The great toe also is less flexible, and the foot more adapted for giving the body a firm support and less for being used as a hand. As growth proceeds after birth these differences become more and more ac­ centuated. The infant chimpanzee is not so very unlike the infant negro, but after a certain age the sutures of the skull close in the former, making the skull a solid box, which prevents further expansion of the brain, and the growth of the bone is directed towards the lower part of the face, giving the animal a projecting muzzle, massive jaws, and a generally bestial appearance, while at the same time its intelligence is arrested and its ferocious instincts become more prominent. Still these higher apes re­ main creatures of very considerable in­ telligence and warm affections, as may be seen in the behaviour of those which have been caught young and brought up under the influence of kind treatment. There is a chimpanzee now1 in the Zoo­ logical Gardens at Regent’s Park, which can do all but speak, which understands almost every word the keeper says to it, and when told to sing will purse out its lips and make an attempt to utter con­ nected notes. In the native state they form societies, obey a chief, and often show great sagacity in their manner of foraging for food and escaping from danger. Even in lower grades of life than the anthropoid apes we can see plainly many of the germs of human faculties in an undeveloped state. Those who are fond of dogs, and have lived much with them and understood their ways, must have been struck by the many liuman-like qualities they possess, and especially by the very great resemblance between young dogs and young children. They both like and dislike very much the same people and the same mode of treatment. They like those who take notice of them, caress them, talk to them, and, above all, those whom they can approach with per1 1888. feet confidence of receiving uniform kind treatment. They dislike those who have no sympathy with them, or whose treat­ ment of them is either cold or capricious. Their great delight is to play with one another, and often to tease and make a pretence of quarrelling and fighting. Both have an instinct for mischief, and are constantly trying it on how far they can go without getting into serious difficulties. Later in life, and in more serious matters, the dog has certainly the germs of higher intelligence, and does a number or things which require a certain exercise of reasoning power. He has a good memory, and imagination enough to be excited at the prospect of a walk where there is a chance of finding a rat or a rabbit, and to dream of chasing imaginary rabbits when he is lying curledup on the hearthrug. Every dog has an individual character of his own as clearly defined as that of an individual man, nor can the rudiments of reason­ ing be denied to the hound who, in a kennel of twenty others, knows perfectly well that he is Rover, and not Rattler or Ranger, and waits till his name is called to come forward for a biscuit. When he has got it, his sense of property makes him appropriate it as his own, and respect the biscuits appropriated to other dogs, at any rate to the extent of knowing per­ fectly well that he is doing wrong if he takes them by force or steals them. In moral qualities the dog approaches even more closely to man. His fidelity, affection, and devotion even to death, are proverbial. He feels shame and re­ morse when he has departed from the canine sense of right and wrong or from the canine standard of honour, and is happy when he feels that he has done his duty. What is this but the working of an elementary conscience ? Even in the higher’ sphere of religious feeling, the dog feels unbounded love and reverence for the master who is the highest being conceivable to him, or in other words, his God ; and he shudders as that master does in the presence of anything weird and supernatural. Every good ghost story begins by describing how the dogs howled and cringed at their master’s feet when the first shadow of super­ natural presence was cast on the haunted castle. Capacity for progressive improvement �MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE 09 ER hardly be denied to a race which young of other animals, viz., in. the for which a has developed such qualities from ances­ long period of utter it remains m In condition helplessness. tors who, like the wild and half-wild dogs many of the lower forms of lite the of Asia and America, had not even learned young creature emerges into the world to bark, and were as unlike the civilised with many of its necessary faculties com* and affectionate collie as Palaeolithic man to his modern successor. In fact, the plete, and has to learn comparatively The chicken runs progress of the dog seems only to be little from education.food on the day it about and picks up limited by the want of organs of speech, egg, and the and of an instrument like the hand by escapes from thefragments of 'the shell which to place himself in closer relation flycatcher, while still adhere to it, will peck at flies. with the outer world. The same remarks apply to the elephant, As we rise in the scale of creation, these instinctive aptitudes become fewer* whose great sagacity seems clearly at­ and more time is required before, the tributable to the possession, of such an instrument in the trunk, inferior .no young animal can shift for itself ; till, at doubt to the hand, but still very superior length, in the human infant, we arrive at a stage where for some time it can do to the paw of the dog or to the hoot- little to preserve its existence except to enclosed fore-foot of the horse. In all breathe and suck. animals the greater or less perfection of The reason of this is doubtless to be the instruments by which they act upon found in the higher development which and are acted upon by the outer world, it is destined to attain. The facul­ seems to be the principal factor in deter­ ties of every animal depend on two mining the quality of the brain as an causes—first, heredity, or those which have organ of intelligence. been evolved from the type, and become In the insect world we find still more wonderful exemplifications of the 1 esem­ fixed by succession through a long series of ancestors; secondly, adaptation,, or blance between animal and human in­ those which are acquired by education, telligence. Ants . live in organised including in the term everything that is societies, build cities, store-up food for winter, keep aphides as milk-cows, cariy requisite to place the animal m harmony on slave-hunting raids, and push the with its surrounding environment, IhB first are what are called instincts, which division of labour to such an extent that exist from the birth, and are preserved some tribes are all workers, others all unconsciously and without an effort. warriors and slave-owners. These and reference actions are not all merely mechanical The last involve an effort, of the senses from the outer stations and instinctive, for ants can to a con­ along the telegraph wires called nerves, siderable extent adapt themselves to cir­ to the central office of the brain, wherg cumstances, and alter their habits and mode of life when it becomes neces­ the message is recorded and the reply considered and transmitted along another sary in the “struggle for existence. The same is true of bees, beetles, and set of nerves to the muscles, where it other insects, but it. is useless to dwell on translates itself into action. In eithfit case the fundamental fact seems to re­ these, for the organisation of the insect solve itself into a tendency of molecular world is so different from that of the follow beaten rather, mammalian, to which man belongs, that motion to paths. What the brainthan unknown has no safe analogy can be drawn from one once thought or perceived, it will think to the other. It is from the higher mammalian types that we can fairly or perceive more readily a second draw the inference that, if like effects and in like manner, a message which has transmitted read are produced by like causes, the more once beenfrom muscle andbrain off along a nerve, to or from perfect intelligence and morality of man brain to muscle, will be transmitted and must be the same in kind though higher in degree than the less perfect manifest­ read off more readily by practice, until ations of the same qualities in animals at length it ceases to require conscious of similar though less perfect physical effort and becomes instinctive. We may see an illustration of this in the facility organisation. . . with which a piano player, who began There is one respect m which trie human infant differs greatly from the by learning the notes with difficulty, �70 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT acquires such aptitude that the execution of rapid passages becomes mechanical, and can be carried on without a mistake, even when the performer is thinking of something else or talking to a bystander. The outer world with which every animal has to deal from its birth upwards may be compared to a dense forest or jungle through which it has to find its way. A certain number of paths have been cut by its ancestors, and it finds them ready made by heredity ; others it constructs for itself by repeated efforts until they become as broad and easy as those which. it inherited ; and finally, if the forest is thick and its area exten­ sive, it can only be. explored by leaving the beaten paths of inherited or acquired instinct, and groping the way painfully by conscious effort and attention. We can now see why the lower the animal, or in other words the less exten­ sive the forest, the whole vital energy may be concentrated on the few beaten paths opened by heredity, and a few necessary actions may be performed from the first, instinctively and with great perfection, while in higher organisms the vital energy is employed in developing a great mass of future possibilities rather than a small number of inferior present realities. The baby cannot run about the room and feed itself like the chicken, because the baby has to growinto a man or woman, while the chicken has only to grow into a fowl which can do very little more in its adult than in its infant state. w^en we come to analyse the sum of faculties of the adult man, we find that they are derived to a surprisingly small extent from heredity as compared with education. In saying this, however, it must be understood that the term heredity” is limited to that direct heredity which transmits characters by instinctive necessity, and not to the far larger sphere of indirect heredity by which faculties, arts, modes of thought, and rules of conduct, are accumulated m. civilised societies, and become the principal instrument of education in its larger sense. If it were possible to suppose a human infant, born of civilised parents, left entirely to itself, what would ®?*OY into'? It would have the physical characters and advantages of its human ancestry which heredity transP11*8,’ bipedal movement, large, convo­ luted brain with potential capacities; aptness of hand and opposable thumb • but its solitariness would be fatal to its progress. It would not learn to speak, in the sense of using any articulate language; its arts might not extend beyond recognising a few articles of food, and perhaps using stones to crack nuts and constructing some rude shelter from branches of trees. It would know nothing of fire, and on the whole it would not be so far advanced as its oldest 1 alagolithic ancestor. As regards a moral sense, and all that we are accustomed to think the highest attributes of humanity, it is clear that its mind would be a blank. Even at a much more advanced stage, such ideas evidently come .from education, and are not the results either of inherited instinct or of supernatural gift. An English child kidnapped at an early age by Apache Indians or head-hunting Dyaks, would, to a certainty, consider murder one of • ie«.n® ar^s> and the slaughter of an inoffensive stranger, especially if accom­ plished with a treachery that made the °n1e ^le risk, an achievement ot the highest manhood. If brought up among Mahometans he would consider polygamy, if among the Todas polyandry, as the natural and proper relation of the sexes. All that can be said is, that if recaptured and brought back to civilised society, he would perhaps be assisted by heredity in adopting its ideas more readily than would be the case if he had been.born a savage. It is clear, therefore, that the history of the individual man tells the same story of evolution from low beginnings as is told by that of the human race as traced from Palaeolithic, through Neo­ lithic, into modern times. His law is progress, worked out by conscious effort called forth by the environment of out­ ward circumstances, and accelerated from time to time, by the successful efforts of a few superior men, whose greater sum of energy or happier organisation for development, enables them to pioneer new paths through the vast unexplored forests of science, art, and morality. The difficulty of accounting for the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not so great as that presented by the difference in physical structure between man and the highest animal. Given a being with man’s brain and man’s hand and erect stature, it is easy to see �MANS PLAOE IN NATURE 71 the time is insufficient, and if man and how intelligence must have been gradually the ape had a common ancestor that evolved, and rules of conduct best adapted 1 as a highly developed anthropoid ape for his own good and that of the society certainly, and man probably, already in which he lived must have been formed <existed in the Miocene period such an­ and fixed by successive generations <cestor must be sought still further back, according to the Darwinian laws of the at a distance compared with which the “ struggle for life ” and the survival of ■ whole Quaternary period sinks into in­ ^ButMt is not so easy to see how this significance. It is said also that the is covery of man’s antiquity is ot quite difference of physical structure arose, recent date, and that fifty years ago and how a being who had such a biam the same negative evidence was quoted and hand, and such undeveloped capa­ as conclusive against his existence in bilities for an almost ^limited pro­ timesand places which now afford his gress, came into existence. The difficulty remains by tens of thousands. Ail this is this: the difference in structure be­ is true, and it may well make us hesi­ tween the lowest existing race of man and tate before we admit that man, whose the highest existing ape is too great to structure is so analogous to that ot the admit of the possibility of one being the animal creation, whose embryonic growth direct descendant of the other. The negro is so strictly accordant with that ot in some respects makes a slight approxi­ other mammals, and whose higher mation towards the Simian type. His skull faculties of intelligence and morality is narrower, his brain less capacious, his are so clearly not miraculous instincts muzzle more projecting, his arm longer but the products of evolution and than those of the average European man. education, is alone an exception to the Still he is essentially a man, and separated general law of the universe, and is the bv a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or creature of a special creation. gorilla Even the idiot or cretin, whose This is the more difficult to believe, brain is no larger and intelligence no as the ape family, which man so closely greater than that of the chimpanzee, is resembles in physical structure, con­ an arrested man and not an ape. tains numerous branches which graduate If, therefore, the Darwinian theory into one another, but the extremes ot holds good in the case of man and ape, which differ more widely than man does we must go back to some common from the highest of the ape series. If a ancestor from whom both may have special creation is required for man, originated by pursuing different lines ot must there not have been special development. But to establish this as a creations for the chimpanzee, the gon a, fact and not a theory we require to find the orang, and for at least 100 different that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some species of apes and monkeys which are intermediate forms tending towards it. all built on the same lines 1 We require to find fossil remains proving What are the facts really known to us for the genus man what the Hipparion as to man, his nature, and his origin and Anchitherium have proved for the Man is one of a species of which there genus horse, that is, gradual progressive are in round numbers, according to the specialisation from a simple, ancestral computations of Wagner and bupan, some type to more complex existing forms. 1,480 millions of individuals living at the In other words, we require to discover present time on the earth. Taking thir y the “ missing link.” Now it must be years as the average duration of each admitted that hitherto, not only have generation there are thus over 3,600 no such missing links been discovered, millions who are born and die per cen­ but the oldest known human skulls and tury, and this has gone on more or less skeletons show no very decided ap­ during the period embraced by history, proximation towards any such pre­ which extends for a great part of the Old human type. On the contrary, one oi World over thirty centuries, m the case the oldest types, that of the men oi of Babylonia perhaps over ninety, and in the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon, Egypt, certainly over seventy centuries. is that of a fine race, tall in stature,. At the commencement of these historical large in brain, and on the whole! periods population was dense, probably in superior to many of the existing races■ Eo-ypt and Western Asia denser than at of mankind. The reply of course is that �72 modern science and modern thought present, and civilisation far advanced. predict with much confidence that they Ine 1 yramids, which are among the oldest would either not cross, or, if they did, and the largest buildings in the world a hybrid ~ prove this conclusively, both from the mechanical skill and astronomical science But here he would be wrong, for, in shown in their construction, and from tact the opposite the great accumulation of capital and together,most produce araces breed freely and fertile progeny. highly artificial arrangements of society Moreover, when we extend our view which could alone have rendered such beyond the clearly distinguished types of works possible. The great mass of the population in these times lived in what the white, yellow, and black, as seen in Caucasian is known as the Old World, and was ac­ we find Mongoloid, and Negro races types into cumulated mainly in the great valley sub-typesthese shadingbreaking off each and off towards systems of the Nile, and of the various riversand irrigated plains of the southern other, while a large proportion of the halt ot the continent of Asia. Northern human race consists of brown, red olive Asia and Europe were thinly inhabited and copper-coloured people, who may • by ruder tribes. Of America and the either be original varieties, or descended interior of Africa we know little until a from crosses between the primitive much later date, but the population was races. Small _ isolated groups differing in all probability sparse and savage : in from the mam races also crop un of Australia, it was still scantier and more whom it is hard to say from whom they savage-while in New Zealand and are descended or how they got there • as most of the Pacific Islands it has been tor. instance the Hottentots, in South introduced by migration only within Africa ; the pigmy b'ack Negritos of the Andamans and other South Asiatic comparatively recent times. The next leading fact we have to islands ; the Papuans and Australians ; observe is that the human race is not the so-called hairy Ainos of Japan, and everywhere the same, but is divided some of the aboriginal races of India. io a certain extent climate seems to into several well-marked varieties. The most obvious distinction is that of have had an influence in creating or de­ colour In the Old World there are veloping the main typical differences. hus line of black races lies three distinct and clearly characterised . along the mamtropical belt of the earth the hot groups-the white the yellow, and the from Old to New Guinea. But the rule black, these are found mainly in three separate zoological provinces : the white is not universal, there is no similar type America, where a m the temperate and north-temperate m tropical of type and colour singular prevails zones of Europe and Western Asia, the uniformity yellow in those of Eastern Asia, and the throughout the whole continent. Even black in the tropical zone, principally of m Africa we find the Negro type, while Central Africa. Where they are pure and retaining its black colour, shading off unmixed, these race-types differ from one towards higher types and losing its more another not in coiour only but in many animal-like characteristics. Again, colour, other important and permanent charac­ the origin of which remains a perplexing ters. lhe average size of the brain, the problem to the physiologist, becomes complexity of its convolutions, tlie shape generally lighter as we pass from tropical of the skull, the bones of the face and to south-temperate and from south to jaws, the comparative length of the north-temperate regions, probably be­ cause the skin needs less protection from imbs, the structure of the hair and skin the characteristic odour, the suscepti­ the suns rays which the pigmentation bilities to various diseases, are all es­ affords. The exceptions supplied bv the sentially different, so that no observant Esquimaux may be due to their having naturalist, or even observant child or six months unbroken sunlight, and by dog, could ever mistake a Chinaman for the now extinct Tasmanians to their migration from tropical regions. a £egro, or a Negro for an Englishman. Even within great and well-defined races ouch a naturalist, seeing for the first time typical specimens of the three races, themsel ves there are clearly marked varie­ would pronounce them without hesita­ ties. thus the white race consists of tion to be distinct species, and would the two distinct types of the fair-whites and dark-whites, the former prevailing in �MAN’S PLAGE IN NATURE Northern Europe and the latter in South­ ern Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa; the contrast between a fair Swede with flaxen hair and blue eyes, and a swarthy Spaniard with black hair and eyes, being almost as marked as between the latter and some of the higher black or brown races. Throughout a great part of Europe, including specially England, it is evident that the existing population is derived mainly from repeated crosses of these two races with one another and probably with earlier races. In the existing state of things also it is evident that if the different races of man­ kind ever really did pass into one another under influences like those of climate, the time of their doing so is long past. A colony of English families transported to tropical Africa would to acertainty dieout long before they had taken even the first step towards acquiring the black velvety skin, the woolly hair, the proj ecting muzzle, and the long narrow skull of the typical Negro, while a Negro colony transported to Scotland or Scandinavia would as cer­ tainly disappear from diseases of the chest and lungs, long before they began to vary towards the European type. The yellow race seems to be on the whole the best fitted to withstand climate and other ex­ ternal influences, and it certainly shows no signs anywhere of passing over either into the Caucasian or the Negro type. On the whole, therefore, if the fact of fertile inter-crossing is to be • taken as proving the unity of the human race and their probable descent from a common ancestor, and we are to assume that all the great varieties which we find existing are the result of modifications gradually introduced by climate and surrounding circumstances, it is evident that the point of divergence must be put at an immense distance. This is the more certain, as when we look back for a period of more than 4,000 years, we find from the Egyptian monu­ ments that some of the best-marked ex­ isting types have undergone no sensible change. The portraits of negroes and of Semitic dark-whites painted on the walls of temples and tombs of the 12th dynasty, about 2,000 B.C., might be taken as charac­ teristic portraits of the negro and Jew of the present day, and the modern Egyp­ tian fellah reproduces with little or no change the features of the ancient Egyp­ tians of the days of Raineses and Ameno- 73 phis. It is evident, therefore, that where no great change has taken place from crossing of races, they will maintain their special characters unaltered for more than 100 generations. Indeed we might say for 200 generations, for the statues and wooden statuettes from the tombs, of Sakkara, the ancient Memphis, which cer­ tainly date back for more than .5,0.00 years, show us the Egyptian type in its highest perfection, and with a more intel­ lectual and I might say modern expression than is found 1,000 or 2,000 years later, when the type of the higher classes had evidently deteriorated somewhat from a slight infusion of African elements. The same conclusion of the great dis­ tance at which any common point of divergence of the various races of man­ kind must be placed, is confirmed by a totally different line of inquiry, that into the origin of language. Philologists have clearly proved that languages did not spring into existence ready made, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, but have followed the general law of Nature, and have had their pe­ riods of birth, growth, and evolution from simple into complex organism. Now there is a vast variety of languages, some say more than a thousand. A large propor­ tion of these are, of course, only what may be called dialects of the same original lan­ guage, as in the case of the whole IndoEuropean family, includingSanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Sla­ vonic, with all their offshoots and derived branches, as well as many others. . Any one who wants to be convinced of this has only to refer to Max Muller’s works and trace the history of one verb, viz., that used to denote individual existence. Asmi in Sanscrit has become eimi in Greek, sum in Latin (whence sono, suis, and all the modern derivatives of . Latin races), and “ am ” in English ; while the Latin est, the Greek esti, and the German 1st, are clearly akin to the . original asti. It may help in understanding how lan­ guage has been formed if we point out that “ I am ” originally meant “ I breathe,” and “ he is ” is the more general and abstract form of “ he stands.” But there are a number of languages between which no such relationship can be traced, which are constructed on radi­ cally different principles, and have no resemblance with one another in their roots, or primitive sounds used to express �74 modern science and modern thought objects and simple ideas, except in the few cases where it can be traced to importation from abroad, or to imitation of naturallysuggested sounds, such as those which have led so many nations to express the idea of “mother” by a sound resembling the bleating of a lamb. Obviously, simi­ larity of sound in such words as are used for the ideas of father, mother, cow, crow, thunder, crack, splash, and so on, sug­ gests no common origin, and as most, or at any rate a great many roots, were prob­ ably derived originally in this manner, though long since, diverted to express other ideas by associations which it is im­ possible to trace, the wonder rather is that we should find so many languages with so few roots in common. The best authorities tell us that a list of fifty to one hundred languages could be made of which no one has been satisfactorily shown to be related to any other. The main distinction between lan­ guages, however, is. to be found in their inner .mechanism, or grammar, rather than in the mere difference of root-sounds. The result of years of mechanical training in barbarous Latin and Greek grammars in our English public schools has been to leave the average Englishman completely ignor­ ant of the real meaning of the word “grammar,” and almost incapable of comprehending that it can mean any­ thing else than a string of arbitrary rules to be learned by heart for the vexation of small boys. And yet grammar is really most interesting, as showing the modes by which the dawning human intellect has proceeded, at remote periods and among different races, in working out the great problem of articulate speech, by which man rises into the higher regions of thought and is mainly distinguished from the brute creation. Consider first what the problem is, and then some of the principal modes which have been in­ vented to solve it. Suppose some primitive race to have accumulated a certain stock of root­ words, or simple sounds to signify definite objects and simple ideas, they must soon find that these alone are not sufficient to convey briefly and clearly to other minds the ideas which they wish to express. For instance, suppose a tribe had got root-words to express the ideas of “man,” bear,’ and “ kul.” What one of the I tribe wants to convey from his own mind to that of his neighbour may be, “ The man has killed the bear,” or “The bear has killed the man,” or “The” (or “A) man has killed a bear,” or “bears,” or will ” or “ may have ” killed, and so on through, a vast number of variations on the original three-note theme. Up to a certain point, a man might succeed in making himself understood by using his three root-sounds in a certain order, aided by the pantomime of accent and gesture ; and the Chinese, though one of the oldest civilised peoples of the world, have scarcely got beyond this stage. But the process would be difficult and uncertain, and. at length it would occur to some genius that such modifications as those of definite and indefinite, past and present, singular, and plural, etc., were of general application, not to the particular three or four roots which he wished to connect, but to all roots. The next step would be to invent a set of sounds which, attached in some way to the root-sounds, should convey, to the hearer the sense in which it was intended that he should take them. This is the. fundamental idea of grammar, but it has been worked out by different races in the most different manner. The Chinese and other allied races in the South-east of Asia, such as the Burmese and Siamese, have solved it in the simplest manner. Their languages are what is called monosyllabic—that is, each, word consists of a single syllable, and is a. root expressing the fundamental idea, without distinction of noun from verb, active from passive, or other modi­ fications. They have to trust, therefore, to express their meaning, mainly to syntax, or the order in which words succeed one another, which, up to a certain point, is the simplest method, and is largely adopted in modern English. Thus, “ Man kill bear,” “ Bear kill man,” convey the meaning just as clearly as the classical languages do by cases, when they distinguish whether, the man is the killer or the killed by saying homo or hominem. But. the monosyllabic system limits the nations who use it to an inconveniently small number of words, and fails in expressing their more complex relations, so that we find the same word in Chinese or Siamese often expressing the most different ideas, and the meaning can only be conveyed by supplementing the root­ words and syntax by accent and other �MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE conventional signs which are akin to the primitive devices of gesture language. Thus, in Siamese, the syllable ha, according to the note in which it is intoned, may mean a pestilence, the number five, or the verb “ to seek.” This very primitive and almost in­ fantine form of language is confined to one family, that of the Chinese and IndoChinese, who, it may be observed, are by no means simple or primitive in other respects, but stand and have stood for centuries at a comparatively high level of civilisation. All other races, including • the most savage, have adopted some form or other of grammar, i.e., of modifying original root-sounds by additional generic sounds of definite determination ; but the devices on which they have hit for this purpose are most various. Thus, the grammar of the Aryan family of languages has been formed by reasoning out such general categories of thought as articles, pronouns, and prepositions, coining sounds for them and prefixing these sounds to the root-sounds as separate determinating signs. More complex shades of meaning are conveyed prin­ cipally by inflections, i.e., by adding certain generic new sounds to the original root-word, and incorporating them with it so as to form modifications which area sort of secondary words. Thus the ideas of present, past, and future love, loving, and being loved, lovely, and so on, are formed by transforming the root amo into such modifications as amor, amavi, amabo, amans, amabilis, etc. We can see this process in the course of formation in the change which converted the old English form “Caesar his” into the modern genitive “ Caesar’s.” Other families again obtain the same results by very different processes. The Semitic languages, for instance, including Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, and Phcenician, are what is called “triliteral,” i.e., they consist of roots mostly of three con­ sonants, and express different shades of grammatical meaning by altering the internal vowels. Thus, from the root m-l-k are derived melek, a king ; malak, he reigned, and so on. The so-called Turanian family, com­ prising Huns, Turks, Finns, Lapps, and other Mongolian races of Northern Asia, all speak agglutinative languages, i.e., languages in which the root is put first and is followed by suffixes strung on to 7b it, but not incorporated, with it and remaining distinct. Thus in Turkish,, the root sev, to love, is. expanded into sevishdirilmedeler, meaning “ incapable of being brought to love one another. These are only given as specimens of some of the most marked of the vast varieties of language which have been examined and classified by philologists. They suggest a great many interesting reflections, but I confine myself to those which bear more immediately on the subject of man’s origin and development. It is evident that . they imply great antiquity for the existence, not of man only, but of separate races of men speak­ ing separate languages. Babylonian inscriptions, estimated by Dr. Hilprecht to be 9,000 years old, show that the characteristic features of the Semitic languages were as clearly estab­ lished then as they are now; and the hiero­ glyphics of Egyptian monuments, 7,000 years old, show the Coptic language essen­ tially the same as modern Coptic, and al­ though presenting some points of analogy with Semitic, too different to be classed with it. If these are descended from a com­ mon ancestor, clearly their origin must be extremely remote. And even with un­ limited time it is difficult to conceive how such radical differences in the structure of languages could have arisen unless the dif­ ferent races had branched off before any clear form of articulate speech had be­ come fixed. Could a race accustomed for generations to the free-flowing inflec­ tional Aryan, have deserted it for the cramped forms of the Semitic, or, vice versa, could the Semite have adopted the modes of thought and expression of Sanscrit ? And the same difficulty would apply in at least twenty or thirty cases of other families of language. It must be recollected that language is not merely the conventional instrument of thought, but to a great extent, its creator, and the mould in which it is cast. The mould may be broken, and races abandon old and adopt new lan­ guages by force of external circumstances, such as conquest or contact with and absorption by superior races, but there is no instance of its being so transformed from within as to pass into a totally different type. Nor can we very well see how root-words once attached to fundamental ideas, such for instance as the simpler numerals, should come to be �76 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT forgotten and new and totally diCerent words invented. Of course, the explanation was easy in the olden days, when everything was referred to miracle. Languages were different because God, to baffle the at­ tempt of united mankind to build a tower high enough to reach to heaven, had made them so. But the theory of special miraculous creation for each language cannot stand a moment’s investigation. As in the. case of the animal world, special creations, if admitted at all, must be multiplied to an extent which becomes absurd. Is every petty tribe of savages who speak a language unintelligible to others to be supposed to have had it conferred upon it as a miraculous gift ? Was the language of the extinct Brazilian tribe, of which Humboldt tells us that a very old parrot spoke the last surviving words, one of the languages used to scatter the builders of the Tower of Babel ? Or, still more conclusively, where we know and can prove that one part of a language is the product of natural laws, can we assume that another part of the same language is the result of miracle ? Did it require Divine inspiration to make the old Egyptians call a cat miaou, or to teach so many nations to ex­ press the idea of mother by imitating the bleating of a lamb? If not, why should half the words in a dictionary be miraculous and half natural ? And if Caesar is correctly reported to have been more proud of discovering a new case than of conquering Gaul, ought we not to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and assign grammar as well as words to human invention ? In short, no reasonable man who studies the subject can doubt that language is just as much a machine of human invention for communicating thought, as the spinning jenny is for spinning cotton. 8eneral conclusion, then, to be a'rawn from the study of language points m the same direction as that of all other branches of science, viz., that their true history is that of evolution from simple origins by the operation of natural laws over long periods of time into forms of greater complexity and higher develop­ ment. What language really does for us is to take up the thread where the oldest history fails us, and show that even at this date it is impossible to doubt that the human race must have been already in existence for a very long period, and in existence as at the present day in several sharply distinguished varieties, so that the common origin, if there be one, must be placed still further back. As history verified by the Babylonian monuments extends over a period of, say nearly 9,000 years, this, is equivalent to saying that such a period can only be a very small part of the total time which has. elapsed since man became an in­ habitant of the earth. The origin and development of re­ ligions have been much discussed, but too often with a. desire to make theories square with .wishes. The subject also does not admit of such precise determina­ tion as in treating of arts and languages, which have left traces of themselves in the form of primitive implements and primitive roots. The history of religions really begins with written records, or, at the earliest, . with the older myths which are embodied in these records. But these are all com­ paratively modern, and imply a con­ siderable progress in civilisation before they could have existed. If we wish to form some idea of what may have been the primitive elements from which re­ ligion was evolved during the long Neolithic and still longer Palaeolithic periods which preceded history, we must look at what are actually the religious ideas of contemporary savage and semibarbarous races. As we rise above the level of the lowest savagery we find ideas of religion be­ ginning to grow from two main tap-roots. One is the idea of ghosts or spirits, which arises naturally from dreams and visions and develops itself into ancestor and hero-worship, and belief in a world of spirits, good and evil, influencing men’s lives and fortunes, and in many forms of sickness taking possession of their bodies. This spirit-worship also necessarily leads to some dim perception of a future life. The. other tap-root is the inevitable disposition to account for the phenomena of nature, when men first began to reflect on. them, by the agency of invisible beings like themselves ; in other words, of anthropomorphic gods. Perhaps this is a higher and later stage of religious belief than the former, for it implies a certain disposition to inquire into the causes of things and a certain amount of reasoning �MAN'S PLAGE IN NATURE power to infer like causes from like results. But the two often blend together, as m the religions of the Aryan-speaking peoples, in which we see deified heroes and ancestors crowding the courts of Olympus, with a multitude of anthropoSnorphic gods, who are often merely obvious personifications of natural pheno­ mena or astronomical myths. Thus, Varuna, Ouranos, or Uranus, are said to be personifications of the vault of heaven ; Phoebus, the shining one, of the sun; Aurora, of the dawn; while Hercules is half deified hero and half solar myth. Sometimes, however, of the two stems of religion one only has flourished, and the other has either never existed, or been overshadowed by the first and relegated to a lower sphere. Thus the great Chinese civilisation, comprising such a large portion of the human race, has apparently developed its popular religion from the idea of spirits and spirit­ worship. The worship of ancestois is its main feature, and its sacred books are, in effect, treatises on ethics and political economy, with rules for rites and cere­ monies to enforce decent and decorous behaviour, rather than what we should call works of religion. With other races again, and specially the Hebrew, the idea of a tribal anthropo­ morphic God has gradually swallowed up that of other gods, developed into that of one Almighty Being, and dwarfed that of ghosts and spirits. Their primi­ tive God was anthropomorphic,. and modelled on the idea of an Oriental sultan—sometimes good and beneficent, but sometimes cruel and capricious, and above all jealous of any disrespect and enraged by any disobedience. Morality seems at first to have had little or nothing to do with these conceptions, and there is not the remotest trace in. the early history of any religion, of its having been bom ready-made from the necessary intuition of one Almighty God of love, mercy, and justice, which is so. con­ fidently assumed by many metaphysicians and theologians. On the contrary, con­ science had to be first evolved, and the process may be followed step by step by which, as manners became milder and ideas purer, the grosser attributes of Deity gradually yielded to the idea of a just and merciful God. These considerations, however, lead us far from the question of the first dawn of religion among primitive man. Judg­ ing from the earliest facts of history, and the analogy of modern savage races, we might look for the first traces of religious ideas from the contents . of tombs and from idols. When a tribe had attained to some definite idea of a future life it would almost certainly bury weapons and implements with its dead, as is the case with modern savages. When it had reached the stage of worshipping anthropomorphic deities, it would prob­ ably frame images of them, some of which would be found in their tombs and dwell­ ingsThe latter test soon fails us. In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the prehistoric cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox­ headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found, or,, if • found, it is so rarely that archaeologists still dispute as to their existence. Cer« tain crescents found in the Swiss lake­ dwellings were at one time thought to indicate a worship of the moon, but the better opinion seems to be that they were used as rests for the head during sleep, as we find similar objects now used in many parts of the world. Among the many thousand objects recovered from these Swiss lake-dwellings and other Neolithic abodes, there are only a very few which may possibly have been rude idols or amulets, and the only ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols, are one or two discovered by Mons, de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period, excavated in the chalk of Champagne, which appear to be in­ tended for female figures of life size with heads somewhat resembling that of the owl-headed Minerva. When we pass to Palaeolithic times the evidence of idols becomes more faint, and rests solely on the slender conjecture that some of the figures carved by the Reindeer­ men of La Madeleine.and other caves, may probably have been intended for amulets. As they were skilful carvers, and fond of drawing whatever impressed itself on their imagination, the presumption is strong that they had not advanced to the stage when the worship of gods symbolised by idols had come into existence, as other­ wise more undoubted idols must have �78 MODERN SGIENGE AND MODERN THOUGHT been found in the caves which were so viduals, and it may be doubted whether long their habitations, and which have they were buried there, or merely died in yielded such a number of remains of works the caves in which they lived, in which of art. case any implements found with them The evidence for a belief in a future ex­ do not necessarily imply that they were istence and in spirits is more conclusive. placed there for use in a future life. On Throughout the whole Neolithic period we the whole it seems doubtful whether any find objects which were evidently intended certain proofs of burials denoting know­ for use in a future life buried with the ledge of a future life can be found in dead. Wefind alsoinmany Neolithic tombs Palaeolithic times, and if there are, they a singular fact which points to the exist­ are certainly few and far between, and ence of a very long belief in evil spirits. C0^.ned ie W'er stages of that period. Many of the skulls, especially of young All we can say is, that religion certainly people, have been trepanned, that is, a did not descend ready-made among these piece of the skull has been cut out, making aboriginal savages, butthat, like language, a hole, apparently, to let out the evil spirit it was slowly developed from beginnings which was supposed to be causing epilepsy as rude as those we now find among the or convulsions ; and where the patient had lowest races of savages. recovered and the wound healed, when he It may be well, however, to say here, died long afterwards, a piece of the skull, once for all, what is applicable to many including this trepanned portion, was other. passages in this book, that the sometimes cut out and used apparently question of the origin of any religion is as an amulet. The objects deposited in entirely different from that of its truth graves show that the idea of a future life, or falsehood. To explain a thing is not as with most savages of the present day’ to disprove it; on the contrary, a thing was that of a continuation of the same only really becomes true to us when we life as he had led here, though perhaps in understand it. A stately oak, with widehappier hunting-grounds. In some cases spreading branches, that give shade and a great chief seems to have had wives shelter to the cattle of the fields, is not and slaves slaughtered and buried with the less a fact because we know that it him, though the proofs of this are did not drop ready-made from heaven, more clear and abundant in later times but grew from, an acorn. The intrinsic than during the Neolithic period. Can­ truth of a religion must be tested by the nibalism, however, seems to have occasion­ conformity which, in a given stage of its ally prevailed both in Palaeolithic, Neo­ evolution, it bears to the facts of the lithic, and prehistoric times, as it did so universe as disclosed by science, and to extensively among modern savage races the feelings and moral perceptions which before they came under civilising influ­ have been equally developed by evolution ences. This is clearly proved by the num­ in the contemporary world. ber of human bones, chiefly of women and All I contend for is, that all religions young persons, which have been found have grown and been developed from charred by fire and split open for extrac­ humble origins, and that their history, tion of the marrow. impartially considered, does not contra­ The evidence of belief in a future life dict, but on the contrary greatly confirms becomes more rare and uncertain in Palaeo­ the law of natural evolution. lithic times. Perhaps it may be because Of the two faculties by which man is we have so few authentic discoveries of commonly distinguished from the brute Palaeolithic burying-places, and so many creation, viz., that, of being the speaking instances of caves, once inhabited by and, the tool-making animal, the former Palaeolithic races, being used long after­ attribute has been shown to be the pro­ wards as Neolithic sepulchres. After the duct of evolution from origins long famous cave of Aurignac it is difficult to since lost in the far-off distance of remote trust any evidence as to the discovery of a ages. real Palaeolithic sepulchre which has not The same remark is even more certainly been subsequently disturbed. true.as regards the other attribute of tool­ In the few cases also where Palaeolithic making, or, in its widest sense, adapting skeletons have been found, as in that of natural laws and. natural objects to the the men of Neanderthal and Mentone, arts of life by intelligent application. they have often been those of single indi­ The primitive roots, so to speak, of this �MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE industrial language, which in the case of spoken language for the most part elude our search, are here furnished by the Palaeolithic remains found so abundantly in river drifts and caves. There can be no doubt whatever that the modern wood­ cutter’s axe and carpenter’s adze are the lineal descendants of the rudely-chipped haches, or celts, which are dug out of the gravels of St, Acheul, or from below the stalagmite of Kent’s Cavern. The regu­ lar progression can be traced from the mass of flint rudely chipped to a point, with a butt-end left rough to grasp in the hand, up to more symmetrical and carefully-chipped forms ; to implements intended to be hafted or fastened to a handle; to implements ground and polished to a sharp edge and pierced for the handle; and finally to the finished specimens of the later Neolithic period, which exactly represent the adze and battle-axe, and are almost identical with those used quite recently by the Polyne­ sians and other semi-civilised races who had no access to metals. From these the transition to metals is easily traced, the first bronze implements and weapons be­ ing facsimiles of those of polished stone which they superseded, and the gradual development of bronze, and from bronze to the cheaper and more generally use­ ful metal, iron, being a matter of quite modern history. In like manner, the development of the knife, sword, and all cutting instru­ ments, from the primitive flint-flake, can be traced step by step, and is beyond doubt; and equally so the development of all missiles, from the primitive chipped flint, used as a javelin or arrow-head, up to the modern rifle. When we catch the first glimpse of the beginnings of human art or industry, the furniture or stock-in-trade of Palaeolithic man appears to have been as follows : He was acquainted with fire. This seems to be clearly established by the charred bones, charcoal, and other traces of fire which are found in the oldest Palaeolithic caves, and even in the. far distant Miocene period, if we can believe in the flints discovered by the Abbe Bour­ geois in the strata of Thenay, some of which appear to have been split by the action of fire. This is a remarkable fact, for a knowledge of the means of kindling fire is by no means a very simple or obvious attainment. Apes 79 and monkeys will sit before a fire and enjoy its warmth, but no monkey has yet developed intelligence enough even to put fresh sticks on to keep up the fire, much less to rekindle it when extinct. Primaeval man must often have had experience of fire from natural causes, as from forests and prairies scorched by a tropical sun being set on fire by light­ ning, or from volcanic eruptions ; but how he learned from these to kindle fire for himself is not so obvious. Savage races, as a rule, do so by converting mechanical energy into heat, by. the friction of a stick twirled round in a hole, or rubbed backwards, and forwards in a groove in another piece of wood ; and there are old observances among civilised nations which show that this was the mode practised by their an­ cestors, as when the sacred fire, in the Temple of Vesta was relighted in this manner by the old Romans if. it had chanced to be extinguished. It is prob­ able, therefore, that . this was the original mode of obtaining fire, but if so, it must have required a good deal of intelligence and observation, for. the dis­ covery is by no means an obvious one, nor is it easy to see any natural process that might suggest it. Neither ancient history nor the accounts of existing savage races throw much light on the question. The narratives of the discovery of fire con­ tained in the oldest records are obviously mythical, like the fable of Prometheus, which is itself a version of the older Vedic myth of the god Agni (cognate with Latin ignis or fire) having been taken from a casket and given to the first man, Manou, by Pramantha, which in the old Vedic language means taking forcibly by means of friction. Of the same character are the mythical legends of savage races of fire having been first brought by some wonderful bird or animal; and there is nowhere anything like an authentic tradition of the fact of its first introduction. There have been reports of savages who were unac­ quainted with'"fire., but they have never been well authenticated, and the nearest approach to such a state of things was probably furnished by the aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land, of whom it is said that in all their wanderings they were particularly careful to bear in their hands the materials for kindling a fire, in the �80 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT shape of a firebrand, which it was the duty of the women to carry, and to keep carefully refreshed from time to time as it became dull. On the whole, traditions all point to fire having been first obtained from friction, and it is possible that the first idea may have been derived from the boughs of trees, or silicious stalks of bamboos, having been set on fire when rubbed together by the action of the wind, or by the rubbing of the hands together. It is easier to see the origin of the remaining equipment of primitive man, viz., chipped stones, for flints splintered by frost or fire often take naturally the forms of sharp-edged flakes and rude hatchets or hammers, and very little invention was required to improve these specimens, or endeavour to imitate them by artificial chippings. It is rather surprising that this art did not improve more rapidly, for it is evident that the old Palaeolithic period must have lasted a long time before any decided progress began to show itself. And during this long period a singular uniformity appears to have prevailed throughout the Palaeolithic world. The rude form of the celt or hache, with a blunt butt and chipped roughly to a point, is found in the oldest river gravels and caves wher­ ever they have been investigated, and the forms of the Somme and the Thames specimens are repeated in the quartzite implements of the Madras laterite. In the very oldest caves and river deposits the tool-equipment of man seems to have been very much limited to these rude celts, used probably for smashing skulls in war and the chase, and splitting bones to get at the marrow; sharpedged flakes for cutting ; rude javelin­ heads ; and stones chipped to a rounded edge, very like those used by the Esqui­ maux for scraping bones and skins. As we ascend in time we find arrow-heads of stone and bone, at first unbarbed and gradually becoming barbed, showing that the bow had been discovered ; harpoons of bone and fish-hooks; bone pins and needles; and a much greater variety and more carefully-chipped forms of flint tools and weapons ; until we finally reach the upper reindeer stage of caves like that of La Madeleine, where artistic drawings and carvings are found, and the equipment generally is superior to that of many existing savage tribes, and | not much inferior to that of the Esqui­ maux and other Arctic races. We then pass into Neolithic times, when many of the chief elements of civilisation are already in full force. Man has emerged in many localities from the hunter into the pastoral stage, the principal domestic animals are known, and in some of the later lake­ dwellings he has advanced a stage further, and has become an agriculturist living in villages.. From this to the Bronze and early historical periods, there is no great break, and the ruder tribes of barbarians described by Caesar and Tacitus may well have. been the lineal descendants of the Neolithic men whose polished axes and finely-shaped arrow­ heads lie scattered over the surface of Europe and are found in innumerable burial-mounds and dolmens. But in Palaeolithic times, though we can see constant progress, mankind is still.in a state of unmitigated barbarism. Agriculture was clearly unknown, for the. hand mills, pestles, and mortars, which are among the most enduring and abundant relics where grain was used for food, are never met with. Pottery was unknown in. all the earlier periods, and it is questionable whether even the rudest forms of baked clay, moulded by hand, are found where there is no inter­ mixture of a subsequent Neolithic habi­ tation. The dog was clearly not a companion of man prior to the era of the Danish kitchen-middens, for the spongy parts of bones which are always gnawed by dogs when dogs are present, are invariably preserved in the debris of Palaeolithic caves, and the few bones of dogs, wolves, and foxes found with human remains in these caves almost always show that the animals had formed part of the food of the inhabitants. Other. domestic animals were, in all probability, equally unknown, although it has been thought possible that some of the tribes of the reindeer period may have had herds of the half-tame deer, like the modern Laplanders. This con­ jecture, however, appears to rest solely on the large number of bones and horns found at certain stations, which may have arisen from their having been occu­ pied for a very long period, and as the dog was unknown, it seems probable that no other animals had been domesticated. As regards clothing, the first certain �DEVELOPMENT OE THE ARROW. Flint Arrow in Vertebra of Reindeer. Palaeolithic. La Madeleine. Mammoth Period. Le Moustier. Palaeolithic. Reindeer Period. Palaeolithic. Reindeer Period. First vestige of barb. Palaeolithic Reindeer Period. Neolithic. Recent. Denmark. Esquimaux. a �82 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT proofs of its use are afforded by the bone pins and needles, which were evidently employed for fastening the skins of animals together, while the scrapers were used for scraping these skins and fashioning the bone implements. It is probable, therefore, that the use of skins as a protection against the cold of the Glacial period, was known at a very early period. Ornaments, also, are of very early date. Perforated shells, sometimes fossil, and pierced teeth of the bear and other ani­ mals are frequently found under circum­ stances which show that they must have been strung together as necklaces. The skeleton found in a cave at Mentone had a number of perforated shells of Nassa, and a few stags’ teeth also perforated, dispersed about the skull, evidencing that they had formed some sort of head ornament. Lumps of red hematite, also, probably used for paint, have been found in some of the caves of the reindeer period. Captain Cook’s description of the sav­ ages of Tierra del Fuego would have ap­ plied to the men of that period, “although content to be naked, they were very am­ bitious to be tine; ” and probably like these poor Fuegians, they adorned them­ selves with streaks of red, black, and white, and wore bracelets and anklets of shell and bone. If we wish to form some ideas of the manners and customs of our Palaeolithic ancestors, we must look for them among existing savage races whose mode of life, and equipment of tools and weapons, most nearly resemble those of the earliest cave-dwellers. The Australians, the Bush­ men of South Africa, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, and the Fuegians are probably the lowest specimens of the human race known in modern times ; but even these are in some respects further advanced in the arts than Palaeolithic man. The Bushmen are skilled in the use of the bow, and have discovered the art of poisoning their arrows. The Australians, Mincopies, and Fuegians have canoes, harpoons, and fish-hooks. The latter approach more nearly to the conditions of life of the savages who ac­ cumulated the kitchen-middens on the coasts of Denmark at a much later period, and the Bushmen probably re­ present _ those of the cave-men who lived principally on the produce of the chase of large animals, such as the mam­ moth, rhinoceros, cave bear, horse, and deer. The pigmy Bushman will attack the elephant, the rhinoceros, and even the lion, and often succeed in killing them by pitfalls or poisoned arrows. The inferences, therefore, to be drawn, alike from the physical development of the individual man, and from the origin and growth of all the faculties which specially distinguish him from the brute creation—language, religion, arts, and science—point to the conclusion that he is a product of laws of evolution, and not of special or miraculous creation. Still, granting this, we must admit on the other hand, that until more of the “ missing links ” are discovered, and the origin of man thus placed on a basis of scientific certainty, there is an opening left for the belief that here, if nowhere else, there was some supernatural inter­ ference with the laws of Nature, and that the finger of the clock-maker did here alter the hands of the clock from the position which they would have occu­ pied under the original law of its con­ struction. But if this were so, it must equally in candour be admitted that the miracle did not consist in placing man and woman upon earth, at any recent period, or with faculties in any way de­ veloped, but could only have consisted in causing a germ or germs to come into existence, different from any that could have been formed by natural evolution, and containing within them the possi­ bilities of conscious and civilised man, to be developed from the rudest origins by slow and painful progress over countless ages. �PART II.—MODERN THOUGHT That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deedsj And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear, I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares, Upon the great world’s altar-stairs That slope thro’ darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope. CHAPTER VII MODERN THOUGHT Lines from Tennyson—The Gospel of Modern Thought—Change exemplified by Carlyle, Renan, and George Eliot—Science becom­ ing Universal—Attitude of Orthodox Writ­ ers—Origin of Evil—First Cause unknow­ able—New Philosophies and Religions— Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism—Comte and Positivism—Pessimism—Mormonism— Spiritualism—Dreams and Visions Som­ nambulism-Mesmerism. LVI. “ So careful of the type ? ” but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, “ A thousand types are gone : I care for nothing, all shall gof “ Thou makest thine appeal to me : I bring to life, I bring to death : The spirit does but mean the breath : I know no more.” And he, shall he, LIV. Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ; Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another’s gain. Who trusted God was love indeed, And love Creation’s final law— Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek’d against his creed— Behold, we know not anything. I can but trust that good shall fall At last—far off—at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal’d within the iron hills ? So runs my dream : but what am I ? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry. No more ? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match’d with him. LV. The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul ? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams ? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; 0 life as futile, then, as frail ! 0 for thy voice to soothe and bless 1 What hope of answer, or redress ? Behind the veil, behind the veil. Tennyson, Tn Jifemoriam. I (By kind permission of Lord Tennyson. G 2 �Si modern science and modern thought These noble and solemn lines of a great poet sum up in a few words what may be called “ the Gospel of Modern Thought.” They describe what is the real attitude of most of the thinking and earnest minds of the present generation. On the one hand, the discoveries of science have so far established the universality of law, as to make it impossible for sin­ cere men to retain the faith of their an­ cestors in dogmas and miracles. On the other, larger views of man and of history have shown that religious sentiment is an essential element of human nature, and that many of our best feelings, such as love, hope, conscience, and reverence, will always seek to find reflections of themselves in the unseen world. Hence faith in dogma has diminished and charity increased. Fewer believe old creeds, and those who do, believe more faintly ; while fewer denounce them, or are insensible to the good they have done in the past and to the truth and beauty of the essential ideas that underlie them. On the Continent, and especially in Catholic countries, where religion inter­ feres more, with politics and social life, there is still a large amount of active hostility to it, as shown by the massacre of priests by the French Communists; but, in this country, the old Voltairean infidelity has died out, and no one of ordinary culture thinks of denouncing Christianity as an invention of priest­ craft. On the contrary, many of our lead­ ing minds are at the same time sceptical and religious, and exemplify the truth of another profound saying of Tennyson: There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. The change which has come over modern thought cannot be better exemplified than by. taking the instance of three great writers whose workshave produced a powerful influence—Carlyle, Eenan, and George Eliot. They were all three born and brought up in the very heart of different phases of the old beliefs— Carlyle, in a family which might be taken as a type of the best qualities of Scottish Presbyterianism, bred in a Lowland farm­ house, under the eye of a father and mother whom he loved and revered, w*ho might have been the originals of Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” or the de­ scendants of the martyrs of Claverhouse. His own temperament strongly inclined to a stern Puritanical piety; his favourite heroe? were Cromwell and John Knox; his whole nature was antipathetic to science. As his biographer, Froude, re­ ports. of him, “He liked ill men like Humboldt, Laplace, and the author of the ‘Vestiges.’ He refused Darwin’s transmutation of species as unproved; he fought against it, though I could see he dreaded that it might turn out true.” And yet the deliberate conclusion at which he arrived was that “He did not think it possible that educated honest men could even profess much longer to believe in historical Christianity.” The case of Eenan was equally remark­ able. He was born in the cottage of Breton peasants of the purest type of simple, pious, Catholic faith. Their one idea of rising above the life of a peasant was to become a priest, and their great ambition for their boy was that he might be so far honoured as one day to become a country curd. Young Eenan, accord­ ingly, from the first day he showed cleverness, and got to the top of his class in the village school, was destined for the priesthood. He was taken in hand' by priests, and found in them his kindest friends ; they sent him to college, and in due time to the Central Seminary where young men were trained for orders.' All his traditions,, all his affections, all his interests, led in that direction, and yet he gave up everything rather than sub­ scribe to what he no longer believed to be true. His conversion was brought about in this way. Having been ap­ pointed assistant to a professor of Heb­ rew he became a profound scholar in Oriental languages; this led to his studying the Scriptures carefully in the original, and the conclusion forced itself upon him that the miraculous part of the narrative had no historical foundation. Like Carlyle, the turn of his mind was not scientific, and while denying miracles he remained keenly appreciative of all that was beautiful and poetical in the life and teaching of Jesus, which he has brought more vividly before the ’world in his writings than had ever been done by orthodox commentators. George Eliot, again, was brought up in yet another phase of orthodox Chris­ tianity—that of middle-class nonconform­ ist Evangelicalism. She embraced this creed fervently, and, as we see in her “Dinah,” retained a keen appreciation �MODERN TH OUGHT of all its best elements. But as her intellect expanded and her knowledge widened, she too found it impossible to rest in the old belief, and, with a painful wrench from a revered father and loving friends, she also passed over from the ranks of orthodoxy. She also, after a life of profound and earnest thought, came .to the conclusion recorded of her by an intimate friend and admirer, M”. Myers : “I remember how at Cambridge, I walked with her once in the Fellows’ Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men—the words God, Immortality, Duty—pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how un­ believable the second, and yet how per­ emptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecom­ pensing law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned toward me like a Sibyl’s in the gloom ; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of pro­ mise, and left me the third scroll only, awTful. with inevitable fates.” Such instances as these cannot be the result of mere accident. As long as scep­ ticism was confined to a limited number of scientific men it might be possible to think that it was merely the exaggera­ tion of a particular train of thought pur­ sued too exclusively. But when science has become the prevailing mode of thought, and has been brought home to the minds of all educated persons, it is no longer possible to represent it as an exceptional aberration. And where the bell-wethers of thought lead the way, the flock will follow. What the greatest thinkers think to-day, the company of thinkers will think to-morrow, and the great army of non-thinkers will treat as self-evident the day after. This is very nearly the case at the present day ; the great thinkers have gone before, the mass of thinkers have followed, and the still greater mass of non-thinkers are waver­ ing and about to follow. It is no longer, with those who think at all. a question of absolute faith against absolute dis­ belief, but of the more or less shade of “ faintness ” with which they cling to the “ larger hope,” 85 This is nowhere more apparent than in the writings of those who attempt to stem the tide which sets so strongly against orthodoxy. They resolve them­ selves mainly into one long wail of “oh the pity of it, the pity of it 1 ” if th® simple faith of olden times should dis­ appear from the world. They show eloquently and conclusively that science and philosophy cannot satisfy the as­ pirations or afford the consolations of religion. They expose the hollowness of the substitutes which have been pro­ posed, such as the worship of the un­ knowable, or the cult of humanity. They win an easy triumph over the ex­ aggerations of those who resolve all the historical records of Christianity into myths or fabulous fulfilment of pro­ phecies, and they wage fierce battles over minor points, as, for example, whether the first quotations from the Gospels are met with in the first or second half of the second century. But they nowhere at­ tempt to grapple with the real diffi­ culties, or to show that the facts and arguments which converted men like Carlyle and Kenan are mistaken facts and unsound arguments. Attempts to harmonise the Gospels and to prove the inspiration of writings which contain manifest errors and contradictions, have gone the way of Buckland’s proof of a universal deluge, and of Hugh Miller’s attempt to reconcile Noah’s ark and the Genesis account of creation with the facts of geology and astronomy. Not a® inch of ground that has been conquered by science has ever been reconquered in fair fight by theology This great scientific movement _ is of comparatively recent date. Darwin’s “ Origin of Species ” was published only in 1859, and his views as to evolution, development, natural selection, and the prevalence of universal law, have already annexed nearly the whole world of modern thought and become the founda­ tion of all philosophical speculation and scientific inquiry. Not only has faith been shaken in the supernatural as a direct and immediate agent in the phenomena of the worlds of matter and of life, but the demonstration of the “ struggle for life ’’ and “ survival of the fittest ” has raised anew, and with vastly augmented force, those questions as to the moral constitution of the uni­ verse and the origin of evil, which have �MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT so long exercised the highest minds. Is it true that “ love ” is “ Creation’s final law,” when we find this enormous and apparently prodigal waste of life going on; these cruel internecine battles be­ tween individuals and species in the struggle for existence; this cynical in­ difference of Nature to suffering ? There are, approximately, 3,600 millions of deaths of human beings in every century, of whom at least 20 per cent., or 720 millions, die before they have attained to clear self-consciousness. What be­ comes of them ? Why were they born ? Are they Nature’s failures, and “cast as rubbish to the void ” ? To such questions there is no adequate answer. We are obliged to admit that as the material universe is not, as we once fancied, measured by our standards and regulated at every turn by an intelligence resembling ours ; so neither is the moral universe to be explained by simply mag­ nifying our own moral ideas, and explain­ ing everything by the action of a Being who does what we should have done in his place. If we insist on this anthropo­ morphic conception we are driven to this dilemma. Carlyle bases his belief in a God, “the infinite Good One,” on this argument: “All that is good, generous, wise, right—whatever I deliberately and for ever love in others and myself, who or what could by any possibility have given it to me but One who first had it to give 1 This is not logic; this is axiom.” But how of the evil 1 No sincere man looking into the depths of his own soul, or at the facts of the world around, can doubt that along with much that is good, generous, wise, and right, there is much that is bad, base, foolish, and wrong. If logic compels us to receive as an axiom a good author for the former, does not the same logic equally compel us to accept the axiom that the author of the latter must have been one who “ first had it in himself to give ” ? That is, we must ac­ cept the theory of a God who is half good, half evil; or adopt the Zoroastrian conception of a universe contested by an Ormuzd and Ahriman—a good and evil principle, whose power is, for the present at any ratoj equally balanced. From this dilemma there is no escape, unless we give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic God, and adopt frankly the scientific idea of an “ Infinite | and Eternal Energy,” inscrutable and past finding out; and of a universe whose processes we can trace, but of whose ulti­ mate essence we know nothing, only suspecting, or faintly discerning, a funda­ mental law which may make the polarity of good and evil a necessary condition of existence. This is a more sublime as well as more rational belief than the old orthodox conception ; but there is no doubt that it requires more strength of mind to embrace it, and that it appears cold and cheerless to those who have been accustomed to see special provi­ dences in every ordinary occurrence, and to fancy themselves the special objects of supernatural. supervision in all the details of daily life. Hopes and fancies, however, are powerless against facts; and the world is as surely passing from the phase of orthodox into that of scientific belief as youth is passing into manhood ; and as the planet which we inhabit is passing from the more fiery state into that of temperate heat, progressive cool­ ing, and final extinction as the abode of life. In the meantime, what can we do but possess our souls in patience, follow truth wherever it leads us, and trust, as Tennyson advises, that in the long run everything will be for the best, and “every winter turn to spring ” ? The decay of old religious beliefs, and the introduction of new conceptions based on scientific discovery, have given rise to many attempts to found new philosophies, and in some cases hew sects and religions, of some of the principal of which a short account may be given. , One of the greatest thinkers of modern times, Herbert Spencer, has expanded the theories of modern science, especially those of the conservation of energy and of Darwinian evolution, into a general­ ised philosophy, embracing not only the phenomena of the material and liv­ ing universe, but also history, religion, politics, and all the complex relations of social life. He starts from the principle that throughout the universe, in general apd in detail, there is an unceasing re­ distribution of matter and motion. This shows itself as evolution where there is a predominant aggregation of matter and diminution of motion, and as dissolu­ tion where matter is disintegrated and motion increased. Thus, in the formation of coal, the motion of the sun’s rays is fixed in the condensed matter of the �MODERN THOUGHT chemical products of vegetation, and is dissipated when, after, countless ages, the coal is burned and its substance dis­ solved into its elements. . These changes constitute a transformation of the uni­ form or homogeneous into the differenti­ ated or heterogeneous, as seen in rhe con­ densation of nebulous or cosmic matter into suns and planets; in the varied elements of the inorganic world ; in each organism, vegetable or animal , in the aggregate of organisms, thought and geologic time ; in the mind ; in society ; in all products of social activity.” These changes are all in the direction of passage from an indefinite whole to de­ finite parts, and they are inevitable, un­ less the original substance were so absolutely uniform as to Bo absolutely stable. Once started, this process of differen­ tiation tends necessarily to go on, the sur­ rounding conditions being ever at work, whether by aggregation or dissolution, by joining like to like, or separating un­ like from unlike, to sharpen and make more definite existing differences. This is in effect a generalised conception of Darwin’s laws of the “ struggle for life and “survival of the fittest.” J inally, however, the result of all these changes is that an ultimate equilibrium will be reached, which is rest in the inorganic and death in the organic world ; as when the sun with all its planets shall have parted with all its heat, and all its energy shall have run down to one uniform level. From this state it can only be roused by some fresh shock from without, dissipat­ ing it again into a mass of diffused matter and unbalanced motions. Hence we come to the final statements of the Spencerian philosophy, as given in the words of its author 11 This rhythm of evolution and dissolu­ tion, completing itself duringshortperiods in small aggregates, and in the vast aggre­ gates distributed through space com­ pleting itself in periods which are im­ measurable by human thought, is, so far as W0 can. sec, universal and eternal, each alternating phase of the process predo­ minating, now in this region of space and now in that, as local conditions determine. All these phenomena, from their great features even to their minutest details, are necessary results of the persistence of force under its forms of matter and motion. Given these as distributed through space, and their quantities being 8? unchangeable either by increase or de­ crease, there inevitably result the con­ tinuous redistributions distinguishable as evolution and dissolution, as well as those special traits above enumerated. That which persists, unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible appearances which the universe presents to us, transcends human know­ ledge and conception, is an unknown and unknowable power,. which we are obliged to recognise as without limit in space and without beginning or end in time.” This is, in its highest form, the philo­ sophy of Agnosticism. A very different thing, be it observed, from Atheism, for it distinctly recognises an underlying power which, although “ unknown and unknowable,” may be anything harmon­ ising with the feelings and aspirations in which all religious sentiment has its origin, so long as it fulfils tne condition of not, by too precise definition, coming into collision with something which is not “ unknown ” but “ known ” and irre­ concilable with it. For instance, there is nothing in Agnos­ ticism to negative the possibility of a future state of existence. Behind tae veil there may be a-nything, and no one can say that individual conscious­ ness may not remain or be restored after death, and that our condition may not be in some way better or worse, ac­ cording to the use we have made of the opportunities of life. But if any one at­ tempts to define this future state and say we shall have spiritual bodies, live in the skies, sing psalms, and wave palm­ branches, we say at once, “This is partly unknowable and partly known to be im­ possible.” . That which has given the philosophy of Spencer a wide influence is the manner in which he applies it to the subjects which more immediately concern the mass of thinking minds, such as history, politics, and the problems of social life. What Darwin shows in animal life and the origin of species, Spencer traces in the rise and fall of empires, the growth and decline of religions, the increasing complexity of social relations, the con­ flicting forces of evolution and dissolution at work around us in our every-day life in the relations of science and theology, capital and. labour, state socialism and lai&s.sz-faire. For instance, the decline of �8» MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT the Roman Empire and its overthrow by homely proverb that “ charity begins at the barbarians is analogous to the de­ home, and as we widen the sphere of cay of a planet from loss of internal heat patriotism or philanthropy we are very and its dissipation into matter capable of apt to diminish their intensity and find fresh evolution, by the shock of a comet. them evaporate in a mist of high-sound­ The ever-increasing gulf between wealth ing phrases. The “ friend of man ” is and poverty, science and superstition, very apt to be the friend of no one man resembles the process by which the one­ in particular, and to make universal toed ho rsebecame gradually differentiated philanthropy an excuse for neglecting more and more from the common five-toed individual charity. type of its remote ancestor. Apart, however, from this objection These speculations of Spencer, pursued and granting that with increased inter­ with vast acuteness and research through course and increased culture “Humanity” all branches of social science, though they might become a more practical idea, we have not founded a new religion or es­ be. tablished a new sect, have undoubtedly it the .basis of a a l°ng waY from making new religion. It is here exercised a great influence on modern that Comte has laid himself open to such thought, especially among the rising criticism as that of Huxley, who defined generation. Positivism as “Catholicism without Chris­ Another “ism” which, although it has tianity.” With the narrow systematising exercised a much narrower influence than logic so characteristic of the French inthe philosophy of Spencer, has founded a tellect Comte has worked out a complete sect.and put forward more definite claims scheme of ritual, hierarchy, and all the to give the world a new religion is that apparatus of an old religion. A supreme which is known as “Positivism,” or pontiff at its head, associated with a “ Comtism,” from the.name of its founder, supreme priestess to represent the female Auguste Comte. It is not easy to under­ element; for saints, the distinguished stand, but its essence seems to be this :— men of philosophy, theology, art and Admitting that science has killed theo­ science ; for days of worship, fete days of logy, and that the old forms of super­ these saints, and meetings to commemo­ natural religion, inevitable in the child­ rate their merits, and to observe certain hood of the world, have become incredible, sacraments.” Comte cast about for some idea which All this savours too much of the “ God­ should be at the same time “ positive,” dess of Liberty,” and of the theo-philanor based on ascertained fact, and fervid thropy of the French Revolution, when enough to satisfy the cravings of re­ the disciples of Rousseau cut off heads ligious sentiment. He thought he found in the name of universal benevolence, to it in “ Humanity ; ” that is, in love and find much acceptance in a sceptical age veneration for the abstract idea of the and among, a practical people. Robuster human race, taken collectively, and con­ intellects,, like George Eliot, even where sidered in its past, present, and future they incline to accept Humanity as an relations. As patriotism, a very ardent ennobling idea, and to recognise Comte feeling, is the love of a limited section as an original thinker, reject all the con­ of the human race; and as it has been structive and ceremonial part of his new gradually enlarged from the limits of a religion as unworthy of notice; while tribe to those of a city, and from those to the mass of thoughtful persons the of a city to those of a country or nation­ whole thing appears unreal and para­ ality, he conceived that it might be still doxical. further enlarged so as to embrace all One more “ ism ”—Pessimism, the mankind. . So far it may be admitted gospel of feebleness and failure—has had that there is a germ of truth in Comte’s a considerable effect on the Continent, idea, and. that elevated minds may en­ though little in this country. It is based large their view beyond the narrow on.the fact that, in accordance with the bounds of a particular country at a par­ universal law of polarity, progress is not ticular period, and may derive fresh an unmixed good, but develops a corre­ incentives to action, and fresh sub­ sponding negative of failure. In simple jects for ennobling thought, from a con­ forms of society the distinctions between templation of the past progress, present wealth and poverty, capital and labour, condition, and future possibilities of the culture and ignorance, are not so sharply collective human race. But there is a defined, and the lot of those who fail in �MODERN THOUGHT the battle of life is not so hard as when men are congregated in crowded cities, exposed to temptations, and tantalised by the sight of wealth and luxury before their eyes and yet beyond their reach. A mass of misery and discontent is thus created, which in lower natures.translates itself into anarchism and fanatical hatred of all above them, while in higher ones it takes the form of theories for the re­ generation of the world by levelling everything that exists, and .building anew on fresh foundations. Still higher minds see the futility of these theories, and take refuge in a philosophy which pronounces the world a mistake, life an evil, and universal suicide the only possible solution of what is radically bad. This is, in substance, the philosophy of Scho­ penhauer and the school of Continental Pessimists. It has something in common with Buddhism, which regards all personal existence as a painful dream or illusion, and places supreme happiness in escape from it by annihilation of individuality. To understand how such a doctrine can have found acceptance, we must remem­ ber that the tendency of modem civil­ isation is to throw more and more work on the brain and nervous system and less on other organs. This of itself tends, to produce more ill-health both of mind and body, especially of those digestive organs upon which the sensation of health and well-being so mainly depends. A dyspeptic man is of necessity an un­ happy and desponding man. Moreover, in ruder states of society such weaklings were got rid of by the summary process of being killed off, while with the more humane and refined arrangements of modern times they live on and “ weary deaf heaven with their fruitless cries.” It is among such men, with cultivated intellects, sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the prophets and disciples of the gospel of Pessimism. They feel, and feel truly,. that as far as they are concerned life is an evil, the pains of which far outweigh its pleasures, and, having lost faith in a future life where the balance will be redressed, they see no remedy for the miseries of the world but that of ceasing to be, or annihilation. This affords another illustration of the extent to which religions and philoso­ phies are, like the spectre of the Brocken, reflections of our own selves on dissolving mists, clothed with our own clothes and 89 repeating our own gestures. To a healthy man or to a strong man the pessimist view of the universe is simply impossible. If he has experienced, a fair average of happiness and success in life, he instinctively rejects a creed which tells him that there are no lights as well as shadows. If he has a mind of average strength, he feels that suffering is a thing to be avoided prudently, borne stoically, or grappled with courageously, and not to be run away from by moral or physical suicide. Accordingly Pessimism is not a creed which is ever likely to exert much in­ fluence on the strong, practical AngloSaxon race, and we can discern some faint traces of it only in the tendency of certain very limited cliques of so-called fiEstheticism to admire morbid and selfconscious ideals, both in poetry and painting. . It is a very curious and remarkable fact, that while so many highly intellec­ tual attempts have been made in vain in modern times to found new sects and religions, the only one which has had any real success is that which is based on the most gross and vulgar imposture—Mor­ monism. Mormonism is a fact which, without the vestige of a reasonable argu­ ment to show for itself, originating in the vulgar ravings and forgeries of a vulgar Yankee, and violating the first instincts of the family and of. society by polygamy, still flourishes, in spite of persecutions and prohibitions, llie reason seems to be that, instead of being a theory in the air or over the heads of the masses, it is, with all its faults, a prac­ tical system in contact with the actual realities of life. Its success is mainly owing to its being an organised system of emigration, and a faith which places its Paradise here on earth and not in the skies. A poor ignorant labourer in Wales or Norway, who becomes a convert to Mormonism, is taken in hand at once, forwarded to his destination, and when he arrives there looked after and put in a way of earning an honest livelihood and probably becoming a landed proprietor. The ideal set before him is not a very high one, that of becoming a sober, industrious, respectable, narrow-minded citizen of the State of Utah, and a cre­ ditable member of the community of Latter Day Saints. But to a poor labourer from the slums of Liverpool, to lead such a life, in the pure mountain air �90 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT in the valley of the Salt Lake, and see his flocks and herds increasing and his family growing up, without care for the future, is indeed the realisation of an earthly Paradise. The moral to draw from this is, that the success of a religion, under the conditions of modern society, does not depend so much on its theory as on the way in which it takes hold of the practical problems of life and shows an aptitude for grappling with them. Another wide-spread modern delusion, that of Spiritualism, is akin to Mormonism, as showing how little reason has to do with the beliefs which are most readily propagated among large classes of the community. Nothing but the most morbid appetite for the supernatural, combined with the most absolute ignor­ ance of the laws of evidence, could induce sane people to believe that, if a corner of that mysterious and awful veil were lifted which separates the living from the dead, we shall discover what? — spirits whose vocation it is to turn tables and talk twaddle. In vain, medium after medium is de­ tected, and the machinery by which ghosts are manufactured exposed in police-courts ; in vain, the manifestations of the so-called spirits are repeated by professional conjurors like Maskelyne and Cooke, who disclaim any assistance from the unseen world. People are still found to believe the unbelievable because it gratifies their taste for the marvellous, and enables them to fancy themselves the favoured recipients of supernatural communications. The explanation that Spiritualism has received a certain amount of acceptance from men of a very different order, like Crookes and Wallace, may be found in the phenomena associated with it, such as mesmerism and clairvoyance, which have a certain basis of fact, and open up interesting fields for scientific investi­ gation. The working of the nervous apparatus in certainabnormal conditions, and the physical effects of imagination, are subjects imperfectly understood, but well deserving accurate inquiry. Take, for instance, dreams, which afford the first certain starting-point towards a theory of visions and appari­ tions. It is as certain that we dream as that we sleep, and that in our sleeping state we often live a sort of second life, which is different from our ordinary waking life. Dreams are made up of im­ pressions which have been recorded by the brain in its waking state, and which are revived in new combinations and imaginary scenes, when consciousness is suspended. These impressions are thus 0-ten worked, up into a succession of dreams so vivid as to be scarcely distin­ guishable from reality. It happened to mo, about th© middle period of my life, to be sent, almost at a day’s notice, to India, where for more than two years I had a period of intensely hard work and great responsibility, as Finance Minister, this naturally leit a number of strong impressions on my brain, which for years afterwards kept reviving in a series of connected dreams, in which I fancied myself back in India. I had thus a dream life as well as a real life of Indian experiences, and the former was so vivid that, if I were writing remini­ scences, I should sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between the two. This enables me to realise how dreams may reaclily pass into visions. If I had dozed oft" in an arm-chair after dinner, and fallen into one of my Indian dreams, I might have seen Lord Canning, who had been dead for years, walk into the room as distinctly as if he had been present in person. In a less critical age, and with a less sceptical turn of mind, I might readily have been convinced that I had seen his ghost. There can be no doubt that, in this way, dreams must often, in pre-scientific ages, have originated a bona fide belief in spirits. Herbert Spencer traces to this cause the origin of all religious belief. Perhaps this may be carrying it too far, but doubtless it was one of the main causes, especially of that portion of religion which took the form of offerings to the dead, and ancestor-worship. But a still further step may be taken from the ordinary dream to the waking dream or vision. It is a well-established fact that under peculiar and rare circum­ stances. the brain may dream, that is, revive impressions where there is no corresponding reality, without losing its consciousness. There was a celebrated case of a Berlin bookseller in the last century, who, having fallen into bad health, lived formore than a year in the company of ghosts—that is, he constantly saw men and women, with every appearance of being alive, enter the �MODERN THOUGHT room and come and go as. if they had been ordinary visitors. Being a man of a scientific turn of mind he never sup­ posed that these were really ghosts, but reasoned on them and recorded his ex­ periences. Instead of sending for a priest and resorting to exorcisms, he called in a physician and took a course of medicine, with the result that after a considerable time the ghostly visitors gradually became dim and finally disappeared. . Numerous other cases are recorded m which there is no doubt that visions have been seen, especially under the influence of religious excitement, and a large number of so-called miraculous appear­ ances and ghost stories are probably owing to this cause rather than to con­ scious imposture. When we consider the enormous num­ ber of dreams, and probably considerable number of visions, which occur, instead of being surprised at occasional coinci­ dences, the wonder rather is that they are not more frequent. If only one per cent, of the 30,000,000 inhabitants of the British Isles dream every night, that would give 109,500,000 dreams per annum, a large proportion of which are made up of vivid impressions of actual persons and events. It is impossible that some of the combinations of these im­ pressions should not form pictures which are subsequently realised, and we. may be sure that the successes only will be noted, and the failures forgotten. It is strange, therefore, that the researches of the Psychical Society should not have brought to light more instances of death­ warnings and other remarkable coinci­ dences. To take the vulgar instance of horse-racing. A number of minds are greatly exercised over the problem of picking out winners, and doubtless a vast number of dreams show colours flashing past winning-posts, and numbers hoisted on the telegraph board. And yet I re­ member only two tolerably well-authenti­ cated instances in the last half-century, in which any one is said to have backed a winner on the faith of a dream. . .The only positive result of dreams and visions is that they frequently occur under cir­ cumstances where they are almost certain to be mistaken, by unscientific persons in unscientific ages, for actual super­ natural appearances. Another field of inquiry is opened out 91 by the effects which are undoubtedly produced under certain abnormal con­ ditions of the brain and nervous system, as in epilepsy, somnambulism, and mes­ merism. In the simplest case, that of epilepsy, the effect is mainly shown by a more intense action of nerve-currents, causing convulsive motions and an unnatural increase of muscular strength and rigidity, so that two strong men may be scarcely able to hold one weak woman. In somnambulism, the effects are more complex. The reception of outward im­ pressions seems to be limited, so that the whole consciousness and vital energy are concentrated on particular actions, which are thus performed safely, while in the ordinary waking state they would be im­ possible. Thus a somnambulist walks securely along a plank spanning an abyss, because the impressions of surrounding space do not reach the brain and confuse it with a sense of danger. In this state also past impressions photographed on the brain, which in the ordinary waking state are obscured by other impressions, seem to come out occasionally .as in dreams, enabling the somnambulist to do and remember things which would otherwise be beyond his faculties. Mesmerism is closely akin to somnam­ bulism. Apart from delusion and char­ latanism the fact seems to be established that it is possible, by artificial means,, to induce a state resembling somnambulism in persons of a peculiar nervous tempera­ ment. As regards the means, the essen­ tial point seems to be to throw the brain into this abnormal state partly by keep­ ing an unnatural strain on the attention, and partly by acting on it through the imagination. The experiments of Dr. Braid showed that the mesmeric sleep could be induced just as well by keeping the eye strained on a black wafer stuck on a white wall, as by the manipulations of an operator. This experiment dis­ poses of a great deal of mysterious non­ sense about magnetic fluids, overpower­ ing wills, and other supposed attributes of professional mesmerisers, and reduces the question to the plain matter-of-fact level of the relations between the brain, will, imagination, and nervous system, which exist in natural and in artificial somnambulism. These are undoubtedly very curious, and open up a wide field for physiological and mental research. As �92 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT far as I have seen or read, they seem to turn mainly on the reflex effects of an excited imagination on other organs and faculties. I do not believe that any one could be mesmerised who was absolutely ignorant of the subject and unconscious that any one was operating. On the other hand, any one who had frequently been mesmerised would fall into the sleep1 if led to believe that an operator was1 at work when there was really not one. And the peculiar effects shown in the mesmeric state are attributable mainly, to the imagination acting with, morbid activity on the slightest hint or suggestion of what is expected, ihus the will disappears in the more powerful suggestion of the imagination that the patient has to obey the will of the operator, or do certain things which are. m the programme. I can readily believe also that in this state the imagination can perform feats which would be impossible to it in a natural state when it is kept in check by other faculties, and that a good deal of what is called clair­ voyance may be explained by the way in which the slightest hint from expresSi.?n’ involuntary muscular motion, or otherwise, is taken advantage of as a substitute for the ordinary modes of com­ munication. Such a faculty may also doubtless be cultivated by practice, and thus explain many of the phenomena of what are called spiritual communications and thought-reading. But that imp ressions can be made on the brain, or that one mind can communicate with another without some physical medium between object and subject, is unproved and remains incredible. CHAPTER VIII MIRACLES Origin of Belief in the Supernatural—Thunef in Miracles formerly Universal —bt. Paul s Testimony—Now Incredible— Christian Miracles—Apparent Miracles— Real Miracles—Absurd Miracles—Worthy Miracles—The Resurrection and Ascension —.Nature of Evidence required—Inspiration —Prophecy—Direct Evidence—St. Paul— lhe Gospels—What is Known of Them— ® Synoptic Gospels—Resemblances and th Terences—Their Origin—Papias—Gospel of St. John—Evidence rests on Matthew, Mark, and Luke—What each states—Com* pared with one another and with St. John — Hopelessly Contradictory—Miracle of the Ascension-Silence of Mark-Probable i» their When men began to reason on the phenoplena of the world around them, it was inevitable that they should begin bv referring all striking occurrences to supernatural causes. Just as they mea­ sured space by feet and inches, and time by days and years, they referred unusual events to. personal agencies. They knew by experience that certain effects were produced by their own wills, muscular energies, and .passions ; and when they saw effects which seemed to be of a like nature, they inferred that they must have been produced by like causes. lo take the familiar instance of thunder. The first savage who thought about it must have said : “The sound is very like the roar with which I spring on a wild beast or an enemy ; the flash of lightning, is very like the flash of the arrow or javelin with which I strike him : the effect is often the same, that he is killed. Surely there must be some one m the clouds, very strong, very angry, very able to do me harm, unless I can propitiate him by prayers or offerings.” But aiter long centuries, science steps in An elderly gentleman at Philadelphia, .Benjamin Franklin by name, sends up a silk kite during a thunder-storm, and behold . the lightning is drawn down tiom the skies, tamed, and made to emit harmless sparks, or to follow the course of a conducting wire, at our will and pleasure. There is no more room left for the supernatural in. the fiercest tropical -storm than there is in turning the handle of an electrical machine, or sending-in a tender to light the streets of London by electricity. And the result is absolutely certain. In the contest between the natural and the super­ natural, the latter has not only been re­ pulsed but annihilated. The most ortho­ dox believer in miracles, if his faith were, brought to. the practical test of .backing his opinions by his money, would, rather insure a gin-palace or gambling saloon protected by a light­ ning-conductor than a chapel protected by the prayers of a pious preacher. �MIRACLES This instance of thunder is a type of the revolution of thought which has been brought about by modern science in the whole manner of viewing the phenomena of the surrounding universe. Former ages saw miracles everywhere, the age in which we live sees them nowhere, except possibly in the single instance of the miracles recorded in the. Bible. In the annals of grave Roman historians, In every page locutus bos. Not a Caesar or a Consul died, without an ox speaking, or a flaming sword in the skies predicting portents. If the moon happened to pass between the sun and the earth the dim eclipse With fear of change perplexes monarchs. If the winds blow it is because tEoIus releases them from the cave ; if the rains fall it is because Jupiter opens the win­ dows of heaven, or Indra causes the cloud-cows to drop their milk on the parched earth. Perhaps no better proof can be afforded of the universal belief that miracles were considered matters of every-day occurrence than is given by the passage in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he enumerates the principal Christian gifts, and assigns, as it were, their comparative order and the number of marks that should be given to each in a competitive examination. The power of “ working miracles ” comes low in the list. “.First apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, ' diversities of tongues.” And he goes on to say, in words that come home to every heart in all centuries, that all those things are worthless as compared with that true Christian charity which “suffereth long, and is kind ; envieth not; vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own,, is not easily provoked, thinketh.no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” This is in the true spirit of modern thought, which, when the externals of religion fail, strives to look below them at its essence, and to retain wha,t is eternally true and beautiful as the ideal of a spiritual and the guide of a practi­ cal life, while rejecting all the outward apparatus of metaphysical creeds and 93 incredible miracles, which had only a temporary value, and can no longer be believed without shutting one’s eyes to facts and becoming guilty of conscious or unconscious insincerity. But to return to miracles. Almost the entire world of the supernatural fades away of itself with an extension of our knowledge of the laws of Nature, as surely as the mists melt from the valley before the rays of the morning sun. We have seen how, throughout the wide domains of space, time, and matter, law, uniform, universal, and inexorable, reigns supreme; and there is absolutely, no room for the interference of any outside personal agency to sus­ pend its operations. The last remnant of supernaturalism, therefore, apart from the Christian miracles which we shall presently consider, has shrunk into that doubtful and shady border-land of ghosts, spiritualism and mesmerism, where vision and fact, and partly real, partly imagin­ ary, effects of abnormal nervous condi­ tions, are mixed up in a nebulous haze with a large dose of imposture and credulity. Even this region is being contracted every day by every fresh revelation in a police-court; in every fresh discovery, of the laws which regulate the transmission of nervous energy to and from the brain ; and in the abnormal state which con­ stitutes epilepsy and somnambulism, and which enables an excited imagination to produce physical effects, such as those of drastic drugs on a patient who has actually taken nothing but pills of harm­ less paste. . . The question of Christian miracles, however, rests on a different and more serious ground. They have been accepted for ages as the foundation and proof of a religion which has been for. nineteen centuries that of the highest civilisation and purest morality, and for this reason alone they deserve the most reverent treatment and the most careful con­ sideration. Of a large class of these miracles it may be said that there is no reason to doubt them, but none to consider them as violations of law, or anything but . the expression, in the language of the time, qf natural effects and natural causes. When a large class of maladies were universally attributed to the agency of evil spirits which had taken possession of the patient’s body, it was inevitable that �04 Modern science and modern thought many cures would be effected, and that these cures would be set down as the casting-out of devils. In many cases also a strong impulse communicated to the brain may send a current along a nerve which may temporarily, or even per­ manently, restore motion to a paralysed limb, or give fresh vitality to a paralysed nerve. Thus, the lame may walk, the dumb speak, and the blind see, with no more occasion to invoke supernatural agency than if the same effects had been produced by a current of electricity from a voltaic battery. There is no reason to doubt that miracles of this sort have been frequentlj wrought by saints and relics, and that even at the present day they may possibly be wrought at Lourdes and other shrines of Catholic faith. Only at the present day we scrutinise the evi­ dence and count the failures, and admit nothing to be supernatural which can be explained as within a fair average result of exceptional cases under the operation of natural laws. In like manner we set down all visions or apparitions as having . no objective reality if they can be ex­ plained by the known laws of dreams or other vivid revivals of impressions, on the brain of the person who perceives them. There remains the class of really super­ natural miracles, or miracles which could by no possibility have occurred as they are described, unless some outward agency had suspended or reversed the laws of Nature. As regards such miracles, a knowledge of these laws enormously in­ creases the difficulty in believing in them as actual facts. Take for instance the conversion of water into wine. When nothing was known of the constitution of water or of wine, except that they were both fluids, it was comparatively easy to accept the statement that such a conversion really took place. But now we know that water consists of oxygen and hydrogen combined in a certain simple proportion, and of these and nothing else; while wine contains in addition nitrogen, carbon, and other ele­ ments combined in very complicated proportions. If the water was not really changed into wine, but only seemed to be so, it was a mere juggling trick, such as the Wizard of the North can show us any day for a shilling. But if it was really changed, something must have been created out of nothing to supply the elements which were not in the original water and were not put into it from without. Again, those who have followed the question of spontaneous generation, and witnessed the failure of the ablest chemists to produce the lowest forms of protoplasmic life from inorganic ele­ ments, will hardly believe that such a highly organised form of life as a serpeilt could have been really produced from a wooden rod. And this, be it observed, not only by Moses the prophet of God, but by the jugglers who amused the court of Pharaoh by their conjuring tricks ; and for an object of no greater moment than to persuade a king to allow some of his subjects to emigrate, which object, moreover, notwithstanding the miracle, entirely failed, as the king simply “hardened his heart” and per­ sisted in his refusal. But passing from this class of grotesque and incredible miracles, let us examine those which may be called worthy miracles; that is, miracles disfigured by no absurd details, and wrought for ob­ jects of sufficient importance to justify supernatural interference, if ever such interference were to take place. At the head of such miracles must undoubtedly be placed those of the Kesurrection of Jesus. The appearances to the Apostles, and above all the bodily Ascension to heaven in the presence of more than 500 witnesses, were a fitting termination to the drama of his life and sufferings, and afforded a conclusive test of the fact which was the foundation-stone of the new religion. “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain,” says St. Paul; and he proceeds to argue that the whole ques­ tion of the reality of a future life hinges on the fact that Christ really rose from the dead. His theory is that death came into the world by the sin of the first man, Adam, and has been destroyed and swallowed up in immortality by the victory of the second man, Christ. This theory has, from that day to this, been the key-stone of Christian theology. There can be no doubt, therefore, that if any miracle is true this must be the one, and, on the other hand, if this miracle cannot be established by suffi­ cient proof, it is idle to discuss the evi­ dence for other miracles. In order to go to the root of the matter therefore, it is necessary to consider, in a calm and �MIRACLES judicial spirit, the evidence upon which this-miracle of the Resurrection really In the first place we must consider what sort of evidence is required to prove a miracle. Clearly it must be evidence of the most cogent and unimpeachable character, far more conclusive than would be sufficient to establish, an ordinary occurrence. The discoveries of modern science have shown beyond the possi­ bility of doubt that the miracles which former ages fancied they saw around them every day had no real existence, and that, except possibly in the solitary instance of the Christian miracles, there has been no supernatural interference with the laws of Nature throughout the enormous ranges of space, time, and matter. It may be going too far to say with Hume that no amount of evidence can prove a miracle, since it must always remain more probable that human testi­ mony should be false than that the laws of Nature should have been violated. But it is not going too far to say that the evidence to establish such a viola­ tion must be altogether overwhelming and open to no other possible construc­ tion. Consider, now, the significance of the statement that a dead man rose in the body from the grave, ate, drank, and held intercourse with . living persons. There are some 1,500 millions of human beings living in the world, and somewhat more than three generations in each century, that is, there are some 3,600 millions of deaths per century, and this has been going on for some forty or fifty centuries, or longer. It is certain, there­ fore, that at least 150,000 millions of deaths must have taken place, and a large proportion of these under circum­ stances involving the most heart-rending separations, and the most intense longing on the part of the dying to give, and of the living to receive, some token of affection from beyond the grave. And yet no such . token has ever been given, and the veil which separates the dead from the.living has never been lifted, except possibly in one case out of this 150,000,000,000. Surely it must require very different evidence to establish the reality of such an excep­ tion, from that which would be sufficient to prove the signature to a will or the date of a battle. But just when the new views opened 95 up by modem science made it more diffi­ cult "to believe in miracles, and more exacting in the demand for stronger evi­ dence to support them, the old evidence became greatly weakened. The main evi­ dence which satisfied our forefathers was that the Bible was inspired, and that it asserted the reality of the miracles. This, when critically examined, was really no evidence at all, for how did we know that the Bible was inspired ? Because it was proved to be so by miracles. The argu­ ment was therefore in a circle, and re­ sembled that of the Hindoo mythology, which rested the earth on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. But what did the tortoise rest on ? To examine the matter more closely, what is the meaning of inspiration ? It means that a certain book was not written, as all other books in the world have been written, by writers who were fallible, and whose statements and opi­ nions, however admirable in the main and made in perfect good faith, inevit­ ably reflected the views of. the age in which they lived and contained matters which subsequent ages found to be obsolete or erroneous, but that this particular book was miraculously dic­ tated by an infallible God, and there­ fore absolutely and for all time true. But, as a chain cannot be stronger than its weakest link, if any one of these statements was proved not to be true, the theory of inspiration failed, and human reason was called on to decide by the ordinary methods, whether any, and if any, what parts of the volume were inspired and what uninspired. Now it is absolutely certain that portions of the Bible, and those import­ ant portions relating to the creation of the world and of man, are not true, and therefore not inspired. It is certain that the sun, moon, stars, and earth, were not created as the author of Genesis supposed them to have been created, and that the first man, whose Paleolithic implements are found in caves and river gravels of immense antiquity, was a very different being from the Adam who was created in God’s likeness and placed in the Garden of Eden. It is certain that no universal deluge ever took place since man existed, and that the animal life existing in the world, and shown by fossil remains to have existed for untold ages, could by no possibility have originated from pairs of �96 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT animals living together for forty days in the ark. Another test of inspiration is afforded by the presence of contradictions. If one writer says that certain events occurred in Galilee, while another says that they took place at Jerusalem, they cannot both be inspired. They may be both reminiscences of real events, but they are obviously imperfect and not in­ spired reminiscences, and require to be tested by the same process of reasoning as we should apply in endeavouring to unravel the truth from the confused and contradictory evidence of conflicting historians. Inspiration is clearly as much a miracle as any of the miracles which it relates, and there is only one way conceivable by which it could be proved, so as to afford a solid basis for faith and give addi­ tional evidence in support of the super­ natural occurrences said to have taken place ; that would be if it carried with it internal evidence of its truth. Such evidence might be afforded in one way, and in one only—by prophecy. If any volume written many centuries ago contained a clear, definite, and distinct prophecy of future events, which the writer could by no possibility have known or conjectured, such a prophecy must have been dictated, by some agency different from anything known in the ordinary course of nature; and future ages, seeing the fulfilment of the pro­ phecy, could scarcely doubt that the volume which contained it was inspired. But such a prophecy must be quite de­ finite, so that there could be no doubt as to whether it had been fulfilled or not, and must not consist of vague and mystic utterances, in which future believers might find meanings, probably never thought of by the /prophets themselves, confirming the faith which, from other considerations, they thought it a sin to disbelieve. Nor must it consist of pas­ sionate aspirations for deliverance, and predictions of the downfall of cruel con­ querors, wrung from the hearts of an oppressed people in times of imminent danger and crushing despair; because such predictions have been partly veri­ fied and partly transformed in future ages, so as to receive a new and spiritual significance. There is one prophecy which affords a test by which to judge of the value of all others as a proof of inspiration, for it is perfectly distinct and definite, and comes from the highest authority—that of the approaching end of the world contained in the New Testament. St. Matthew reports Jesus to have said : “ For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels ; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they seethe Son of man coming in his kingdom.” It is certain that all standing there did taste death without seeing the Son of Man coming with his angels. The con­ clusion is irresistible, that either Jesus was mistaken in speaking these words, or else Matthew was mistaken in sup­ posing that he spoke them. St. Paul predicts the same event in still more definite terms. He says : “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” Here is the most distinct prediction possible, both of the event which was to happen, and of the limit of time within which it. was to take place; and, to give it additional force, it is specially de­ clared to be an inspired prophecy uttered as “ the word of God.” The time is distinctly stated to be in the lifetime, of some of the existing generation, including Paul himself, who is to be one of the “ we which are alive,” who are not to “ prevent,” or gain any precedence over, those who have “ fallen asleep,” or died, in the interval before Christ’s coming. By no possibility can this be construed to mean a coming at some indefinite future time, long after all those had died who were to remain and be caught up alive into the clouds. St. Paul doubtless meant what he said, and firmly believed that he was uttering an inspired prophecy which would certainly �MIRACLES be fulfilled. But it is certain that it was not fulfilled. Paul and all Paul’s con­ temporaries have been dead. for 1,800 years, and the shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump .of God, have never been heard. What is this but an absolutely irresistible demonstration that prophecy not only fails to prove inspira­ tion, but, on the contrary, by its failure disproves it, and shows that St. Matthew and St. Paul were as liable to make mis­ takes as any of the hundreds of religious writers who, in later times, have prophe­ sied the approaching end of the world or advent of the millennium. Turning to the evidence for miracles, this must be taken on its own merits, without aid from any preconceived theory that it is sinful to scrutinise it because the books in which it is contained are inspired. Applying to it impartially the ordinary rules of evidence, let us see what it amounts to for that which is really the test case of all other miracles, that of the Resurrection. The witnesses are St. Paul and the authors of the four Gospels according to St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. Of these, St. Paul is in some respects the best. When a witness is called into court to give evidence, the first question asked is, “Who are you? Give your name and description.’' St. Paul alone gives a clear answer to this question. There is no doubt that he was an historical personage, who lived at the time and in the manner described in the Acts of the Apostles, and that the Epistle to the Corinthians is a genuine letter written by him. In this Epistle he says : “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures ; “ And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures : “ And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve : “ After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once ; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. “After that, he was seen of James ; then of all the apostles. “ And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” This is undoubtedly very distinct 97 evidence that the appearances described by St. Paul were currently believed in the circle of early Christians at Jerusalem within twenty years of their alleged occurrence. This is strong testimony, but it is weakened by several considerations. In the first place, we know that Paul’s frame of mind in regard to miracles was such as to make it certain that he would take them for granted, and not attempt to examine critically the evidence on which they were founded, and this was doubtless the frame of mind of those from whom he received the accounts. Again, he places all the appearances on the same footing as that to himself, which was clearly of the nature of a vision, or strong internal impression, rather than of an objective reality. Upon this vital point, whether the appearances which led to the belief in Christ’s resurrection were subjective or objective—-that is, were visions or phy­ sical realities—Paul’s testimony therefore favours the former view, which is quite consistent with the laws of Nature and with experience in other cases. And finally, St. Paul’s account of the appearances is altogether different from those of the other witnesses, viz., the four Evangelists. When we come to consider the testi­ mony of the four Gospels we are con­ fronted by a first difficulty : Who and what are the witnesses ? What is really known of them is this : Until the middle of the second century they are never quoted, and were apparently unknown. Somewhere about 150 A.D., for the exact date is hotly disputed, we find the first quotations from them, and from that time forwards the quotations become more frequent and their authority in* creases, until finally they superseded all the other narratives current in the early Church, such as the “Gospel of the Hebrews,” and the “ Pastor ” of Hermas, and are embodied in the New Testament canon. From the earliest time where there is any distinct recognition of them, they appear to have been attributed to the Evangelists whose names they bear, viz., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When we look to internal evidence to give us some further clue as to their authorshipand date, we at oncemeet with a great difficulty. The three Gospels of SS. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called H �98 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN INOUGHT “Synoptic,” because they give what is substantially the same narrative of the same facts arranged in the same order, and the same sayings and parables giving the same view of the character and teach­ ing of Jesus. In whole passages this resemblance is not merely substantial but literal, so that w’e cannot suppose it to arise merely from following the same oral tradition, and cannot doubt that the authors must have copied verbatim either from one another or from some common manuscript. But then comes-in this per­ plexing circumstance.. After passages of almost literal identity we have state­ ments which are inconsistent with those of the other Gospels, and narratives of important events which are either altogether wanting or quite differently described in them. Thus, in the vital matter of the Resur­ rection, Matthew says that the disciples were especially commanded to “ go into Galilee ; there shall you see him,” and that they did go accordingly, and there saw Jesus on a mountain where he had appointed them to meet him ; while Luke distinctly says that “he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem,” and describes them as remain­ ing there and witnessing a number of appearances, including the crowning miracle of the Ascension (the same, doubtless, as that which St. Paul describes as having taken place in the presence of more than 500 witnesses), of which Mat­ thew, Mark, and John apparently know nothing. And yet the final injunction of Jesus to preach the gospel in his name to all nations is given in almost the same words in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, showing that they must have had before them some common tradition describing the course of events after the Crucifixion. So in minor matters, Mark mentions the cure of one blind man, Bartimseus, who sat by the roadside begging; in Matthew there are two blind men, and yet the dialogue that passed—“ What will ye that I shall do unto you?” “Lord, that our eyes may be opened ”—is almost word for word the same. It would seem that if they did copy from an original manuscript, they felt themselves free to take any liberties with it they liked, in the way of omission and alteration. The only light thrown on this per­ plexing question of the origin of the Gospels Is that afforded by the celebrated passage from Papias quoted by Eusebius. Papias was Bishop of Hieropolis, in Asia Minor, and suffered martyrdom, when an aged man, about the year 164. He was therefore brought-up in personal con­ tact, not with the Apostles themselves, but with those who, like Polycarp and others, had been their immediate dis­ ciples, and had known and conversed with them. In the passage quoted he states his preference for oral tradition over written documents, and his reasons for it. He says : “ If I found some one who had followed the first presbyters, I asked him what he had heard from them : what said Andrew or Peter, or Philip, Thomas, James, John, or Matthew ; and what said Andrew and John the Presbyter, who were also disciples of the Lord; for I thought I could not derive as much advantage from books as from the living and abiding oral tradition.” And he goes on to give his reasons for not attaching more weight to the two written sources of information which were evidently best known and looked upon as of most authority in his time, viz., the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St, Mark. He says that Matthew wrote down in Hebrew the Logia, or principal sayings and discourses of the Lord, “ which every one translated as he best could,” evidently implying that these numerous trans­ lations were, in his opinion, loose, in­ accurate, and unreliable. As regards Mark, he says that “ Mark, who had not known the Lord personally, and had never heard Him, followed Peter later as his interpreter ; and when Peter, in the course of his teaching, mentioned any of the doings or sayings of Christ, took care to note them down exactly, but without any order, and without making a con­ tinuous narrative of the discourses of the Lord, which did not enter into the inten­ tion of the Apostle. Thus Mark let nothing pass, jotting down a certain number of facts as Peter mentioned them, but having no other care than to omit nothing of what he heard, and to change nothing in it.” This testimony of Papias is very valu­ able and very instructive. In the first place, it seems conclusive that the Gospel of St. John was not known to him, and not received in the early Christian Churches of Asia Minor as a work of authority. Had it been so received, Papias must have known of it, brought �MIRACLES up as he was at the feet of men who had been John’s disciples, and bishop of a Church closely connected with those of which, if there is any faith in tradition, John had been the patriarch and principal founder. And if he had known of such a written Gospel as that of St. John, and believed it to have been really written by the “ beloved disciple ; ” the Apostle second only, if second, to St. Peter; it is inconceivable that he should nave ex­ pressed such an unqualified preference for oral tradition, and made such an almost contemptuous reference to written documents. He must have said: “lor, with the exception of the Gospel of the blessed John, I found that little was to be got from books?' It seems clear, therefore, that although the Gospel of St. John may contain genuine reminiscences of an early date, and possibly some which really came from the Apostle himself, the work in its present form could not have been written by him, and must have been compiled at such a late date as to have been unknown in the Christian Churches of the East in the time of Papias. The same remark applies to the Gospel of St. Luke, of which Papias has equally no knowledge, and which, from internal evidence, appears to be a later edition of the two earlier Gospels, or of the original manuscripts from which they were taken, altered in places to meet objections of a later date, as where the injunction to “go into Galilee; there shall ye see him,” is changed into “as he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,” obviously to reconcile the state­ ment with the subsequent belief that the Ascension took place at Jerusalem. There remain the two original Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Mark. Volumes of erudition have been written to try and reconcile them with one another, and with the other two Gospels, and to explain the extraordinary resem­ blances and no less extraordinary differ­ ences. Translations have been heaped on translations, and successive editions and revisions piled on one another until the edifice toppled over by its own weight, but after all, we have nothing better to rely on than the statement of Papias, which there is no reason to mistrust. The basis of the three Synoptic Gospels was probably a collection of facts and anecdotes written down in Greek by Mark, and of discourses 99 wi-itten in Hebrew by Matthew. These have been worked up subsequently, at unknown dates, and by unknown authors, aided possibly by oral traditions, into connected narratives or biographies of the life and teachings of the Founder of the religion. Possibly, though by no means certainly, we have in the present Gospel according to St. Matthew the nearest approach to the original Logia or doctrinal discourses, and in the present Mark the nearest approach to the original notes recorded by Mark from the dictation of St. Peter. As regards the Gospel according to St. John, it appears perfectly clear, both from the silence of Papias, the absence of any reference to it by other early Christian Fathers until the end of the second century, and still more from internal evidence, that it could not possibly have been, written by the Apostle whose name it bears. John, as we know from St. Paul’s Epistles, was one of the pillars of the Christian Church of Jerusalem, whose doctrine was in all respects Hebraic, and who opposed the larger idea that a man could be a Christian without first becoming a Jew. The writer of the Gospel is not only ignorant of matters which must have been well known to every Jew, but he is positively prejudiced against Judaism, and represents it in an unfavourable light. His narrative of the events of the life of Jesus, including the miracles, is totally different from that of the Synop­ tics, and his view of his character and report of his speeches wide as the poles asunder. To the Synoptics Jesus is the man-Messiah foretold by the prophets ; to the author of John he is the “Logos,” the incarnation of a metaphysical attri­ bute of the Deity. The terse and simple clearness of his sayings recorded by the first, is exchanged in the latter for an involved and cumbrous phraseology reminding one of a Papal Encyclical. The amiablity and “sweet reasonableness” of the Jesus of the Synoptics, have become acrimonious un­ reasonableness and egotistical self-glori­ fication in many of the long harangues which are introduced on the most unlikely occasions in the fourth Gospel. It is evident, therefore, that this Gospel can afford no aid towards a critical examination of contemporary I evidence, and that for this we must look 1 H 2 �100 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT almost entirely to such remains of early records as are preserved in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. With these data, how does the evidence stand as regards the miracle of the Resurrection which is the test case of all alleged miracles ? It is important to observe that the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of St. Mark stop at the Sth verse of the last chapter, and that the subsequent verses, 9—20, have every appearance of being a later addition made to reconcile this Gospel better with the prevailing belief and with the other Gospels. Comment­ ators discover a difference in the style and language, and the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection are described in vague and general language, very different from the distinct details given of them in the other Gospels, and in­ consistent with the formal statement twice repeated in the genuine Mark that they were to take place in Galilee. Moreover, if these verses were really in the original Gospel, it is inconceivable how they should have dropped-out in the oldest manuscripts, while it is per­ fectly conceivable how they should have been added at a later period, when the Fathers of the Church began to occupy themselves with the task of harmonising the different Gospels. But if the genuine Mark really termin­ ated with the Sth verse, not only is there no confirmation of the four miraculous appearances, including the Ascension, recorded by St. Paul as being currently believed by the early Christians within twenty years, of their occurrence, but there is positively no mention of any ap­ pearance at all. A young man, clothed in white, tells three women who went to the tomb that Jesus is risen, and that they were to tell his disciples and Peter that they would see him in Galilee; an injunction which was not carried out, for the women “were afraid, neither said they anything to any man.” in St. Matthew the young man has be­ come an angel, and as the women return from the tomb Jesus met them and said, “All hail,” repeating the injunction to tell the disciples to go into Galilee, where the eleven accordingly went into a moun­ tain where Jesus had appointed them, and “when they saw him they worshipped him : but some doubted.” This is the whole of Matthew's testimony. St. Luke, again, in his Gospel and Acts, amplifies the miraculous appearances almost up to the extent described by St. Paul, though with considerable dif­ ferences both of addition and omission. The three women become a number of women ; the one angel or young man in shining clothes, two; the appearance to the women disappears; Peter is mentioned as running to the sepulchre but departing without seeing anything special except that the body had been removed; the first appearance recorded is that to the two disciples walking from Emmaus, who knew him not until their eyes were opened by the breaking of bread, when he vanished; the next appearance is to the eleven sitting at meat with closed doors; and finally there is the crowning miracle of the Ascension, stated somewhat vaguely in the Gospel, but with more detail in the Acts, describing how he was taken up to heaven and received in a cloud, in the sight of numerous witnesses. This is probably the same miracle as that mentioned by St. Paul as having occurred in the presence of “ more than five hun­ dred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain alive unto this present; ” though he mentions two sub­ sequent appearances—one to James and a second to all the Apostles—of which no trace is found in any other canonical narative. . It is to be noted that all St. Luke’s miracles are expressly stated to have occurred at Jerusalem, where Jesus had commanded his disciples to remain, and are, therefore, in direct contradic­ tion with the statements of Matthew and Mark, that whatever occurred was in Galilee, where the disciples were ex­ pressly enjoined to go. When we come to St. John, we find the first part of the narrative of the other . Gospels repeated with several variations and a great many additional details. Mary Magdalene is alone, and finds the stone removed from the sepul­ chre. She tells Peter and John, who run together to the tomb • John outruns Peter, but Peter first enters and sees the napkin and linen grave-clothes, but nothing miraculous, and they return to their homes. Mary remains weeping and sees, first two angels, and then Jesus him­ self, whom she at first does not recognise, and mistakes for the gardener. The walk to Emmaus is not mentioned, and the �MIRACLES next appearance is to the disciples sitting with closed doors. Another takes place after eight days, for the purpose of con­ vincing Thomas of the reality of the resurrection in the actual body, and here apparently the narrative closes with the appropriate ending, “That these things are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of. God ; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” But a supplementary chapter is added, describing a miraculous draught of fishes and appearance to Peter, John, and five other disciples at the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee, in which the com­ mand is given to Peter to “Feed my sheep,” and an explanation is introduced of what was doubtless a sore perplexity to the early Christian world, the death of St. John before the coming of the Messiah. These are the depositions of the five witnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, in which the verdict “ proven” or “ not proven ” must rest in regard to the issue “miracle” or “no miracle.” The mere statement of them is enough to show how insufficient they are . to establish any ordinary fact, to say nothing of a fact so entirely opposed to all ex­ perience as the return to life of one who had really died. Suppose it were a question of proving the signature of a will, what chance would a plaintiff have of obtaining a verdict who produced five witnesses, four of whom could give no certain account of themselves, while the fifth spoke only from hearsay, and the details to which they deposed were hopelessly inconsistent with one another as regards time, place, and other par­ ticulars ? The account of the Ascension brings this contradiction into the most glaring light. According to St. Luke and St. Paul this miracle took place at Jeru­ salem, in the presence of a large number, St. Paul says over 500 persons, before whose eyes Jesus was lifted-up in the body into the clouds, and more than half, or over 250 of these witnesses, remained alive for at least twenty years afterwards to testify to the fact. Consider what this implies. Such an event occurring publicly in the presence of 500 wit­ nesses is not like an appearance to a few chosen disciples in a room with closed doors : m have been the talk of all Jerusalem. The prophet who had shortly before 101 entered the city in triumphal procession amidst the acclamations of the multi­ tude, and who, a few days afterwards, by some sudden revolution of popular feeling, had become the object of mob­ hatred ; who had been solemnly tried, condemned, and executed; that this prophet had been restored to life and visibly translated in the body to heaven in the presence of more than 500 witnesses, must inevitably have caused an immense sensation. However prone the age might be to believe in miracles, such a miracle as this must have startled every one. The most incredulous must have been converted ; the High Priest and Pharisees must, in self-defence, have instituted a rigid inquiry ; the Proconsul must have reported to Rome ; Josephus, who, not many years afterwards, wrote the annals of the Jews during this period with considerable detail, must have known of the occurrence and men­ tioned it. And above all, Matthew, Mark, and John must have been aware of the oc­ currence ; and in all probability, Mat­ thew, John, and Peter, from whom Mark derived his information, must have been among the 500 eye-witnesses. How then is it possible that, if the event really occurred, they not only should not have' mentioned it, but partly by their silence, and partly by their statement that they went into Galilee, have virtually contra­ dicted it. The Ascension, if true, was a capital fact, not only crowning and com­ pleting the drama of Christ’s life which they were narrating with its most tri­ umphant and appropriate ending, but confirming, in the strongest possible manner, the doctrine for which they were contending, that he was not an ordin­ ary man or ordinary prophet, but th® Messiah, the Son of God, who. had redeemed the world from its original curse and conquered sin and death, One might as well suppose that any one writing the life of Wellington would omit the Battle of Waterloo as that any one writing the life of Christ would knowingly and wilfully omit all mention of the Ascension. It must be evident that whoever wrote the original manuscripts from which the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John were compiled, must either never have heard of the Ascension, or having heard of it did not believe it to be true. This must algo �102 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT apply to the other miraculous appear­ ances said to have occurred at Jerusalem. How was it possible for writers who knew of them to make no mention of them, and virtually contradict them by assert­ ing that they did not remain at Jeru­ salem, but went to Galilee in obedience to a command to that effect, and that the final parting of Jesus from his dis­ ciples took place there ? The. most unaccountable fact is the total silence of Mark, who was nearest the fountain-head if he derived his infor­ mation from St. Peter, as to these mira­ culous appearances. If his Gospel ended with verse 8 of chapter, xvi., as the oldest manuscripts and the internal evidence of the postscripts afterwards added appear to prove, there is absolutely no statement of a,ny such appearance at all. Nothing is said but that three women found the tomb empty and saw a young man clothed in white, who told them that Jesus had risen and gone into Galilee. Now, if there is one fact more certain than another about miraculous legends, it is that as long as they have any vitality at all, they increase and multiply and do not dwindle and dimi­ nish.. We have an excellent example of this in the way in which a whole cycle of miracles grew up in a short time about the central fact of the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket. If, therefore, Matthew and Mark knew nothing of the series of miracles, which from St. Paul’s statement we must assume to have been currently believed by the early Christians twenty years after the death of Christ, the only possible ex­ planation is that their Gospels were com­ piled from narratives which had been written at a still earlier date, before these miracles had been heard of. We must suppose that Mark really wrote down what he heard from Peter, and that Peter, being a truthful man, though he probably had a sincere general belief that Christ had risen, declined to state facts which he knew had never occurred. This is in entire accordance with what we find in the whole history of ecclesiastical miracles, from those recorded in Scripture down to those of St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, and of St. Francis Xavier in the sixteenth. Innumerable as are the ac­ counts of miracles said to have been wrought by relics or by other holy per­ sons, there is no instance of any state­ ment by any credible person that he had himself worked a real miracle. St. Augustine describes in detail many won­ derful miracles, including resurrections from the dead, which he said had been wrought to his own knowledge, within his own diocese of Hippo, by the relics of the martyr Stephen. In fact, he says that the number of miracles thus wrought within the last two years since these relics had been at Hippo, was at least seventy. This testimony is far more precise than any for the Gospel miracles, for it comes from a well-known man of high , character, who was on the spot at the time,, and speaks of these and many other miracles having occurred to his own knowledge. But he never asserts that he himself had ever wrought a miracle. In like manner Paulinus relates many miracles of his master, St. Ambrose, in­ cluding one of raising the dead ; but Ambrose himself never asserts that he performed a miracle. Neither does St. Francis of Assisi, or any of the 25,000 saints of the Roman calendar to whom miracles are attributed. Even Jesus himself seems, on several occasions, to have disclaimed the power of working miracles, as when he refused to comply with the perfectly reasonable request of the Jews to attest his Messiahship by a sign, if he wished them to believe in it. There is every reason, therefore, to believe that when we find narratives making no mention of important miracles which were afterwards commonly re­ ceived, they must be taken from records of an earlier date, and proceeding directly from those who, if the miracles were true, would have been the principal eye-wit­ nesses to vouch for them. But, if this be so, how near to the fountain head do these narratives carry us 1 We lose the miracles, but in compensation we get what may be considered fresh and lively narratives of the life and conversation of . Jesus, and confirmation both of his being an historical personage, and of the many anecdotes and sayings which de­ pict his character, and bring him before us as he really lived, the mythical theory cannot stand which found in every saying and action an ex post facto attempt to show that. he. fulfilled prophecies and realised Messianic expectations. We can see him walking through the fields on a �MIRACLES Sabbath afternoon with his disciples, plucking ears of corn, and rebuking the Pharisees for their puritanical adherence to the letter of the observance of that day : we can see him taking little children in his arms, and talking fami­ liarly at the well with the woman of Samaria ; we can hear him preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and dropping parables from his mouth, like precious pearls of instruction in love, charity, and all Christian virtues. We can sympathise with the agony in the garden as with a real scene, and hear the despairing cry, My God, my God, why hast thou for­ saken me?” ... ... It seems to me that faith m the reality of scenes like these is worth a good deal of faith in the metaphysical conundrums of the Athanasian Creed, or in the actual occurrence of incredible miracles. Another argument in favour of the early date and genuine character of the primitive records which have been worked up in the Synoptic Gospels, is afforded by the sayings attributed to Jesus. It is impossible to imagine that these could be the invention of a later age, when theo­ logical questions of faith and doctrine had absorbed almost the entire attention of the Christian world. We have already seen how wide is the difference, both as regards style and phase of thought, be­ tween the discourses reported in the fourth Gospel and those of the Synoptics. No one writing in the second or towards the end of the. first century, or even earlier in the religious atmosphere of St. Paul’s Epistles, could have composed the Sermon on the Mount or the Lord s Prayer. The parables and maxims, in­ stead of teaching nothing but a pure and sublime morality in simple language, must have contained references to the doctrine of the Logos, and the disputes between the Jewish and the Gentile Christians. Even if these discourses had passed long through the fluctuating medium of oral tradition, they must, when finally reduced to writing, have shown many traces of the theological questions which agitated the Christian world. The only explanation is that Apostles like St. Matthew, and St. Peter through Mark, really recorded these say­ ings in writing while they were fresh in memory, and that their authority secured them from adulteration. At the same time it must be borne m 103 mind that while portions of the original narrative appear to carry us back very near to the fountain-head, a large part of the Gospels in their present form is evidently of much later date and of un­ certain origin. It is clear that Papias, writing about the year 150, knew nothing of the Gospels of Luke and John^ and nothing of those of Matthew and Mark in their present form. The discourses of Matthew and the disconnected notes, of Mark, to which he refers, were something very different from the complete histories of the life and teaching of Jesus con­ tained in the present Gospels. It is equally clear that Justin Martyr , and Hegesippus, who wrote about the middle of tiie second century, and made frequent quotations of the sayings and doings of the Lord, made them, not from the pre­ sent canonical Gospels, but from. other sources relating the same thing’s in dif­ ferent order and different language. ‘ A Gospel according to the Hebrews ” and “ Memoirs of the Apostles ” seem to have been the principal sources from which they quoted. . It is evident however, that during the first two centuries there were a great number of so-called Gospels and Apos­ tolic writings floating about in the Christian world along with oral tradi­ tions. The author of Luke tells us this expressly, and later writers refer to a number of works now unknown or classed as apocrypha], and complain of forged Gospels circulated by heretics. None of these writings, however, seem to have had any peculiar authority or been con­ sidered as inspired Scripture, winch term is exclusively confined to the Old Testa­ ment, until the middle of the second century. At length, by a sort of law of the survival of the fittest, the present.Gospels acquired an increasing authority and superseded the other works which had competed, with them; but the selection was determined to a great extent, not by those principles of criticism which would now be applied to historical records, but by doctrinal considerations of the sup­ port they gave to prevalent opinions. In other words, orthodoxy and not authen­ ticity was the test applied, and it is pro­ bable that no Christian Father of the second or third century would have hesi­ tated to reject an early manuscript trace­ able very clearly to an Apostle, in favour �104 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT of a later compilation of doubtful origin, if the former contained passages which seemed to favour heretical views, while the latter omitted those passages, or altered them in a sense favourable to orthodoxy. To sum up the matter, it appears that apart from the fact that the antecedent improbability of miracles has been enor­ mously increased by the constant and concurrent proofs of the permanence of the laws of Nature, the evidence for tnose recorded in the New Testament, with which alone we are concerned is rendered null and void by the discordant reports of hearsay witnesses. CHAPTER IX. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES Practical and Theoretical Christianity—Ex­ ample and Teaching of Christ—Christian . Moral Objections — Inconsistent with Tacts—Must be accepted as Parables - t ail and Redemption—Old Creeds must be Transformed or Die—Mahometanism— Decay of Faith—Balance of Advantages— Religious Wars and Persecutions—Intoler­ ance—Sacrifice—Prayer—Absence of Theo­ logy hi Synoptic Gospels—Opposite Pole to Christianity—Courage and Self-relianceBelief in God and a Future Life—Based mainly on Christianity—Science gives no Answer—Nor Metaphysics—So-called In­ tuitions—Development of Idea of GodBest Proof afforded by Christianity—Evo­ lution is Transforming it—Reconciliation of Religion and Science. their own proof with them, and such parables as that of the Good Samaritan require no support, either from historical evidence or from supernatural signs to come home to every heart whether in the hrst or m the nineteenth century. The tact that the son of a Jewish mechanic Loin in a small town of an obscure pro­ vince, without any special aid from posi­ tion, education, or other outward circum­ stance, succeeded, by the sheer force of the purity and loveliness of his life and teaching, m captivating all hearts and founding a religion which for nineteen centuries has been the main civilising influence of the world and the faith of its noblest men and noblest races : this tact I say, is of itself so admirable and wonderful as not to require the aid of vulgar miracles and metaphysical puzzles in order to be recognised as worthy of the highest reverence. And when such a lite was crowned by a death which re­ mains the highest type of what is noblest m man, self-sacrifice in the cause of truth and for the good of others, we may well call it divine, and not quarrel with any language or any forms of worship which tend to keep it in view and hold it up to life W°rld aS an inducement to a higher Miracles are not only unnecessary for a faith of this description, but are a positive hindrance to it. To put it at the lowest, miracles, in an age which has learned the laws of Nature, must always be open to grave doubts, and thus throw doubt on the reliability of the narratives which are supposed to depend on them. Can Christianity continue to exist with­ Moreover, the touching beauty and force of example of the life of Jesus are almost out miracles ? . Io answer this question we must dis­ lost it he is evaporated into a sort of supernatural being, totally unlike any tinguish between practical and theoreti­ conceivable member of the human family cal Christianity. The essence of practical W e may strive to model our conduct at Christianity consists in such a genuine a humble distance on that of the man acceptance of its moral teaching, and love and reverence for the life and char­ Jesus, the carpenter’s son, whose father and mother, brothers and acter of its Founder, as may influence familiar figures in the streetssisters, were of Nazareth conduct, and be a guide and support put hardly on that of a “Logos,” the m life. Theoretical Christianity is that metaphysical conception which professes to teach a complete incarnation of aof the Deity, who existed o. an attribute theory of the creation of the world and before all worlds and by whom all things P.an’ °* khe relations between man and were made. his Creator, and of his position and But, on the other hand, miracles are in­ ^e^-ny.la a future state of existence. dispensable for the dogma, or theoretical The former needs no miracles. The side of Christian theology. Let us con­ bermon on the Mount, and St. Paul’s sider frankly what this dogma is, and description of Christian charity? parry now tar it is trite—that is, consistent or �CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES inconsistent with known and indisput­ able facts. The Christian dogma cannot be better stated than in the words of St. Paul, who was its first inventor, or, at any rate, the first by whom it was elaborated into a complete theory. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” This may be expanded into the follow­ ing propositions : 1. That the Old Testament is miracu­ lously inspired, and contains a literally true account of the creation of the world and of man. 2. That, in accordance with this ac­ count, the material universe, earth, sun, moon, and stars, and all living things on the earth and in the seas, were created in six days, after which God rested on the seventh day. 3. That the first man, Adam, was created in the image of God and after His own likeness, and placed, with the first woman, Eve, in the Garden of Eden, where they lived for a time in a state of innocence, and holding familiar converse with God. 4. That by an act of disobedience they fell from this high state, were banished from the Garden, and sin and death were inflicted as a penalty on them and their descendants. 5. That after long ages, during which mankind remained under this curse, God sent His Son, who assumed human form, and by His sacrifice on the cross appeased God’s anger, removed the curse, and de­ stroyed the last enemy, death, giving a glorious resurrection and immortal life to those who believed on Him. This theory is a complete one, which hangs together in all its parts, and of which no link can be displaced without affecting the others. It is the theory which has been accepted by the Christian world since its first promulgation ; and, although expounded with metaphysical refinements in the Athanasian Creed, and set forth with all the gorgeous sur­ roundings of poetical imagination in Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” it remains in substance St. Paul’s theory, that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’’ It is obvious that this theory is open to grave objections on moral grounds. It is more in the character of a jealous Oriental despot than of a loving and 105 merciful Father, to inflict such a punish­ ment on hundreds of millions of un­ offending creatures for an act of dis­ obedience on the part of a remote ancestor. And it is still more incon­ sistent with our modern ideas of justice and humanity to require the vicarious sacrifice of an only Son as the condition of forgiving the offence and removing the curse. Nevertheless it must be admitted that, notwithstanding these objections, and harsh as the theory is, it has had a wonderful attraction for many of the highest intellects and noblest nations. It was the creed of Luther, Cromwell, and Milton; and the inspiring spirit, of Scotch Presbyterianism and English Puritanism. It has inspired great men and great deeds, and although responsible for a good deal of persecution and fanaticism, it must always be spoken of with respect, as a creed which has had a powerful effect in raising men’s minds from lower to higher things, and has on the whole done good work in its time. But the question of its continuance as a creed which it is possible for sincere men to believe, as literally and his­ torically true, depends not on wishes and feelings, nor on reverence for the past, but on hard facts. Is it or is it not con­ sistent with what are now known to be the real truths respecting the constitu­ tion of the universe and the origin of life and of man ? To state this question is to answer it. There is hardly one of the facts shown in the preceding chapters to be the un­ doubted results of modern science which does not shatter to pieces the whole fabric. It is as certain as that two and two make four that the world was not created in the manner described in Genesis ; that the sun, moon, and stars are not lights placed in the firmament or solid crystal vault of heaven to give light upon the earth ; that animals were not all created in one or two days, and spread over the earth from a. common centre in Armenia, after having been shut up in pairs for forty days in an ark, during a universal deluge. And finally, that man is not descended from an. Adam created quite recently in God’s image, and who fell from a high state by an act of disobedience, but from a long series of Palaeolithic ancestors, extending back certainly into the Glacial and probably �106 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT into the Tertiary period, who have not fallen but progressed, and by a slow and painful process of evolution have gradu­ ally developed intelligence, language, arts, and civilisation, from the very rudest and most animal-like beginnings. Belief in inspiration, the very key­ stone of the system, becomes impossible when it is shown that the accounts given of such important matters in the writings professing to be inspired are manifestly untrue ; and when the ordinary rules of criticism are brought to bear upon these writings it is at once seen that they are compilations of different ages from various and uncertain sources. The improbability of miracles is enor­ mously increased by the proof of the uniform operation of natural law throughout the vast domains of space, time, matter, and life; and where the supernatural was formerly considered to be a matter of every-day occurrence, it has vanished step by step, until only the last vestige of it is left in a possible belief in some of the more important and impressive miracles of the Christian dispensation. Even this faint belief is manifestly founded more on reverence for^ tradition, and love of the religion which the miracles are supposed to sup­ port, than on any dispassionate view of the evidence on which they rest. Tried by the ordinary rules of evidence, it is apparent that it is contradictory and uncertain, and not such as would be sufficient to establish in a court of law any ordinary fact, such as the execution of a deed. It is apparent also that the evidence for the most crucial and import­ ant of all miracles, that of the Ascension, is not nearly so precise and cogent as that for. a number of early Christian and mediaeval miracles which we reject without hesitation. What follows? Must we reject these venerable traditions as old wives’ fables ? I answer, No; but we can accept them as parables. A great deal of the best teaching of the New Testament is conveyed in the form of parables. Take for instance that of Lazarus and Dives. No one supposes that this.is an historical narrative ; that this particular Jew, out of the millions poor and good Jews who have lived and died, was actually taken up into Abraham’s bosom j and that the remark­ able dialogue across the gulf is a literal transcript of an actual conversation. But the moral is taught for all time, that it is bad for the rich to indulge in selfish luxury and take no thought of the mass of poverty and misery weltering around them ; and that the condition of the poorest of the poor, borne with piety and resignation, may really be better and higher than that of the selfish rich. Apply the same principle to the dogma of the.fall and redemption, and we may see in it a parable of the highest meaning. Every one of us must be conscious of having fallen by yielding to temptation and giving way to animal passions. We may have fallen so low that without some redemption, or friendly influence from without, we cannot raise ourselves from the lower level and regain our lost place. We can see that there are thous­ ands round us, who, from poverty or other adverse circumstances, have got immersed in evil conditions from which it is hopeless to extricate themselves without friendly aid. We can see also that there is nothing more noble and divine than to make sacrifices in order to be the redeemer who saves as many souls as. possible from this entanglement of pvil, and gives them a chance of rising into a happier and better life. We may feel this, and use as an incentive to attempt some- humble imitation of it, the parable which presents it to us in its highest aspect, and has been the efficient means of stimulating so many good men to do good works. This is surely better than paltering with. the truth, and enervating our conscience and intel­ ligence by professing to believe in the literal historical accuracy of things which Note.—Since writing this chapter, I have seen with much pleasure an article entitled “ Christmas,” by Matthew Arnold, in a recent number of the Contemporary Review, which takes exactly the same view of the allegorical or parabolic sense of miraculous narratives. He takes the instance of the Immaculate Conception and Birth of Jesus, and shows that it was a myth which grew up, almost inevitably, from the strong impression made on the minds of early Christians by the idea of purity set forth by the life and teaching of Jesus, which stood in such striking contrast with the corruption of the heathen world. The same idea led to ,a similar myth in the case of Gautama, the pure and self-sacrificing founder of the Buddhist religion, and it teaches an eternal truth to all who can look below the letter to the spirit of the parable, �CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES have become incredible to all thinking and educated minds. Of course, I do not mean that these dogmas and miraculous narratives were intended by the original writers to be parables, but only that they have become so to us .; and the alternative lies between rejecting them altogether or accepting them as having an allegorical meaning or latent truth, or, it may be added, as recording the state of intelligence and knowledge of the age which produced the stories. . At any rate, whether we like it or not, this is what we shall have to do, for the conclusions of science are irresistible, and old forms of faith, however venerable and however endeared by a thousand associations, have no more chance m a collision with science than George Stephenson’s cow had if it stood on the rails and tried to stop the progress of a locomotive. It is not enough to say that a thing is lovely and amiable, and that its loss will leave a blank, to ensure its continuance. The law of Nature is progress and not happiness. Stars, suns, planets, human individuals, and human races have their periods of youth, maturity, and decay, and are continually being transformed into new phases. The old order changes, giving place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways. Childhood, with its innocence and engaging ways, passes into the sterner and more prosaic attributes of the grown­ up man ; fancy decays as reason ripens ; simple faith is replaced by larger know­ ledge ; and the smooth brow of infancy becomes often marred by wrinkles of strife and suffering, impressed during the more or less successful struggle in the battle of life ; and yet we could not if we would, and would not if we could, arrest the progress of Nature, and say that the child shall never grow into a man. Such also is the fate of creeds. They must be transformed or die ; and the best test of the vitality and intrinsic truth of a religion is just that capacity for transformation against which theo­ logians exclaim as sacrilege. In this respect Christianity has a great ad­ vantage over other religions. The pious souls who are shocked at any denial of the inspiration of Scripture may console themselves by considering what has been the fate of other religions which have been 107 imprisoned too closely within the limits iof a sacred book. Mahometanism, the <religion of one God and a succession of iprophets or great men who have taught ] his doctrines, is not in theory . incon­ Jsistent with progress and civilisation. ►But Mahomet unfortunately, wrote a book, the Koran, which, while, it con­ I tained much that to the Arab mind was sublime and beautiful, was of necessity f }impregnated with the ideas of the age he of much 1in which and lived; an age imperfect ignorance superstition, of isocial arrangements, and of barbarous s and ferocious manners. This book came < to be accepted as the inspired word of 1Allah, which it was impious to question, to which nothing could be added, and •from which nothing could be taken away. Hence Mahometanism has be­ come what we see it—a narrow and 1 fanatical creed, incompatible with pro­ :gress and free thought, and stereotyping • institutions, such as polygamy and slavery, which are fatal to any advance > towards a higher civilisation. From this fate Christianity has been saved by the fortunate circumstance that its. sacred books are collections of a variety of writings of different authors and dif­ ferent ages, reflecting such various and often conflicting phases of thought and belief that of necessity their interpreta­ tion was very elastic, and lent itself readily to the changes required by the spirit of successive periods and of dif­ ferent nationalities. Wherever for a time a system of infallibility was en­ forced, as in Spain by the Inquisition, Christianity became cruel, barbarous, unprogressive, and really very little better than the religion of Islam, to which it closely approximated. Decay of faith, therefore, in dogmatic Christi­ anity is, like other great revolutions of thought, a question, not of absolute gain nor absolute loss, but of a balance between conflicting advantagesand disadvantages. The loss is evident enough, and is set forth with much eloquence and force by the few remaining champions, of ortho­ doxy. The simple, undoubting faith, which has been for ages the support and consolation of a large portion ot mankind, especially of the wTeak, the humble, and the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving, for a time, a great blank behind. But, on the other �108 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT hand, there are a great many real and important advantages which have to be set on the credit side of the account. Intolerance is the shadow which dogs the footsteps of faith, and in many cases more than obscures its benefits. When we. consider the mass of human misery which has been occasioned by religious wars and persecutions ; as in the ruth­ less extirpation of the Albigenses ; the slaughter of the saints whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; the Thirty Years’ War, which desolated Germany and threw civilisation back for a century ; the civil wars of France ; the Spanish Inquisition; and a thousand other instances of the baleful effects of religious hatreds, we can almost sympa­ thise with those who pronounce religion an invention of priests for the promotion of evil, and exclaim with the Roman poet: Religio tantum potuit suadere malorum. Athanasian Creed less, but we practise Christian charity more, in the present than in any former age. Another great advantage is that as freer thought has been brought to bear on the mysteries of religion, we have purged off the grosser ideas, and arrived at much more enlarged and spiritual conceptions, lake, for instance, prayer and sacrifice. In its crude form, sacrifice was a sort of bargain struck with an unseen Power, by which we noped to obtain some favour which we greatly desired, in exchange for giving up something which we greatly valued. ■ This is the form in which sacrifice appears in the Old Testament, in Abraham’s offer to kill his son Isaac, and in the record of the Moabitish stone, how the king, when besieged in his capital, sacrificed his son, and by so doing obtained the favour of his God and defeated his enemies. In an­ other form, sacrifice was considered as a propitiation to appease the anger of an offended Deity, pictured as a sort of Oriental despot, who must have some one for a victim, and was not particular who. it might be; and even in the Christian dogma the merit of the sacrifice is very closely analogous to that of the Mayor of Calais who went out to King Edward with a halter round his neck, ready to be hanged, so that he might save the lives of his fellow-citizens. Nowadays, 'no one thinks of sacrifice as anything but the sacrifice of lower instincts, and passing temptations to a higher ideal, and the voluntary re­ nunciation of selfish ease and pleasure for the good of others. In like manner, the original idea of ! prayer was that, of obtaining a request by flattery or importunity, just as a courtier might do at the court of some earthly king of kings or sultan. It is now spiritualised into the conception that its effect is entirely subjective ; that it never really obtains any reversal of the laws of Nature, but that it often exalts the mind to a frame in which things otherwise impossible become possible. A German regiment marches to battle singing Luther’s grand old hymn— To this must be added the misery caused by the belief in demonology and witchcraft, and the tortures inflicted on innumerable innocent victims by pre­ judices inspired by a literal construction of passages of the Old Testament. Nor is it a small matter to have escaped from the nightmare dreams which must have oppressed so many minds, especially of the young and imaginative, in an age when such a book as Dante’s “Inferno” could be written, and accepted as a gleam of prophetic insight into the horrors of the invisible world. . Even in more recent and humane times, intolerance remained as a general mode of thought, inspiring hatred of those whose form of belief differed from that which was generally adopted. It is only within the present generation that true tolerance has come to be established as the law of modern thought, and that men have learned to live together and love one another, without reference to intellectual differences of creed and doc­ trine. Surely this is a great advantage, and.we are nearer to the true spirit of Christianity than in the days when a Em feste Burg ist unser Gott. Birmingham mob sacked Priestley’s house because he professed his belief in the Half the regiment may be freethinkers, saying of Jesus, that “my Father is but it is nevertheless true that they are greater than I.” We may read the more likely to stand firm and win the �CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES victory if they chant the hymn, than if they march in silence. taking all these things into account, there is no reason to despair because the irresistible progress of science has made us Falter where we firmly trod, and changed a great deal of what was once fixed and certain faith into vague aspirations and less definite, though larger and more spiritual, conceptions. There is next to no theology in the Christianity of the Synoptic Gospels, which give us by far the nearest and most authentic record of what its founder actually taught; and it may be that in sloughing-off the mythical legends ®nd metaphysical dogmas which have grown up around it, we shall be, . in reality, not banishing the Christian religion from the world, but making it revert to its more simple and spiritual ancestral type, in which form all that is really valuable in its pure and elevated morality may be incorporated more readily with practical life, and assimi­ lated without difficulty with the pro­ gressive evolution of modern thought and science. At the same time we must bear in mind that even Christianity in its purest form does not escape from the universal law of polarity, and presents, not the whole truth, but only one very important side of truth. It is the religion of love, purity, gentleness, and charity ; im­ portant virtues, but not all that con­ stitute the perfection of men or nations. In fact, if carried to the “falsehood of Extremes,” its very virtues become vices. It would not work in practice, if smitten on one cheek to turn the other ; and any one who attempted to follow literally the precept of “taking no thought for the morrow,” and trusting to be fed like the sparrows, would, in modern society, come dangerously near being what we call in Scotland a “ne’er-do-weel,” that is to say, a soft, molluscous sort of creature, who is a burden on his friends, and ends his days as a pensioner on charity or a writer of begging letters. The foremost men and foremost races of modern society are precisely those who act on the opposite principle, and do look ahead and steer wisely and boldly amidst dangers and difficulties for distant and definite ends. In one of the old Norse sagas there is a 109 saying which has always impressed me greatly. An aged warrior, when asked what he thought of the new religion, replied: “ I have heard a great deal of talk of the old Odin and of the new Christ, but whenever things have come to a real pinch, I have always found that my surest trust was in my own right arm and good sword.” This strong self-reliance and hardy courage to do or to endure is, beyond all doubt, the solid rock foundation upon which the manly character of individuals and of nations must be built up. The softer virtues and graces which are to refine and adorn, and convert the man into the gentle man, or one of Nature’s true gentlemen, come afterwards. But without the harder gifts of courage and self-help, a man is not a man, and the raw material is not there out of which to fashion a Gordon or Christian hero. This may be called the Norse pole as contrasted with the pole of Chris­ tianity, and the perfect man is he who can stand firmly between the two oppo­ sites, controlling both while controlled by neither. While I have thought it right, however, to call attention to this counter-pole to Christianity, I should add that with the strong, practical Teutonic races there is not much danger of erring on the side of too much weakness, humility, or asceti­ cism, and therefore the influence of the Christian religion makes mainly for good. Modern civilisation has been formed, to a great extent, by grafting the gentler virtues of the Gospel on the robust primitive stock of the barbarians who overthrew Rome. It is the example and teaching of Jesus, the son of the car­ penter of Nazareth, which have been mainly instrumental in diffusing ideas of divine love, charity, and purity through­ out the world, and humanising the iron­ clad and iron-souled warriors, whose trust was in their stout hearts and strong right arms, and who knew no law but The simple plan, That he should take who has the power, And he should keep who can. In another respect it is most important that the world should, as far and as long as possible, hold on to Christianity and struggle to save its essential spirit from the shipwreck of its theology, and from �110 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT the sheer impossibility of believing in been dissolved by death and no longer the literal and historical truth of many exist. We know as little in the way of of its dogmas. accurate and demonstrable knowledge of The highest and most consoling beliefs our condition after death as we do of our of the human mind are to a great extent existence—if we had an existence—before bound up with the Christian religion. birth. If we ask ourselves frankly how much, If we turn for an answer to these apart from this religion, would remain of questions from science to metaphysics, faith in a God and in a future state of we find ourselves in cloud-land. Mists existence, the answer must be, very of fine phrases and plausible conjectures little. Science traces everything back condense into philosophies, and dissolve? to primeval atoms and germs, and there away again without leaving a vestige it leaves us. How came these atoms and of positive knowledge. Take Descartes’ energies there, from which this wonderful famous fundamental axiom, “ Cogito, universe of worlds has been evolved by ergo sum,”—I think, therefore I am. Is inevitable laws ? What are they in their it really an axiom 1 Does it take us any essence, and what do they mean ? The nearer to what thought really is, and only answer is, it is unknowable. It is what is the true meaning of existence ? “ behind the veil,” and may be anything. If the fact that I am conscious of think­ Spirit may be matter, matter may be ing proves the fact that I exist, is the spirit. We have no faculties by which converse true, that whatever does not we can even form a conception, from any think does not exist ? Am I existent discoveries of the telescope or microscope, or non-existent during the seven or from any experiments in the laboratory, eight hours of dreamless sleep out of or from any facts susceptible of real every twenty-four, when to a certainty human knowledge, of what may be the I am not thinking? Does a child only first cause underlying all these phe­ begin to exist when it begins to think ? nomena. If “Cogito, ergo sum,” is an intuition In like manner we can already to a to which we can trust, why is not great extent, and probably in a short “ Non cogito, ergo non sum,” an equally time shall be able to the fullest extent, good foundation on which to build a to trace the whole development of life system of philosophy, and spin out of from the lowest to the highest; from the brain an ideal system of God, man, protoplasm, through monera, infusoria, and the universe 1 mollusca, fish, reptile, and mammal, up i The so-called intuitions of metaphysics to man—and the individual man from I seem really to amount to little more than the microscopic egg, through the various translations into philosophical language stages of its evolution up to birth, of our own earnest wishes and aspirachildhood, maturity, decline, and death. I tions. We shudder at the notion of anWe can trace also the development of the ! nihilation ; we revolt at the idea that all human race through enormous periods of the high faculties of the mature and cultime, from the rudest beginnings up to tivated mind are to be extinguished by its present level of civilisation, and show death ; we long for a future life, in. which how arts, languages, morals, and religions we may again see beloved faces, and, have been evolved gradually by natural pondering on these things, we have a laws from primitive elements, many of strong impression that it must not and which are common in their ultimate form cannot be, which presently takes the to man and the animal creation. form, in some minds of a philosophical But here also science stops. Science turn, of what is called an intuition, on can give no account of how these germs which they proceed to build up a demon­ and nucleated cells, endowed with these stration of God and immortality. marvellous capacities for evolution, came But, again, what do they really know into existence or got their intrinsic more than science has already told us? powers. Nor can science enable us to The essence of all spiritual existence, as form the remotest conception of what far as we know anything of it, is per­ will become of life, consciousness, and sonal consciousness. This clearly depends conscience, when the material conditions on, or is indissolubly associated with, a with which they are always associated certain condition of a material organ— while within human experience, have i the brain. With a less active condition �CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES of this organ, as in sleep, personal con­ sciousness is suspended. In. the case of a man recovered from drowning by arti­ ficial means, it is gone, and the man is to all intents and purposes dead for per­ haps a quarter of an hour, and would remain dead if warm blankets and arti­ ficial respiration did not recall him. to life. Where and what was he. during this interval ? and, if his personal identity and conscious existence were gone for that quarter of an hour, why and when did they return ? and, if the Humane Society’s men had been less prompt, would they ever have returned 1 These are questions to which no meta­ physical system that I have ever seen can return the semblance of an answer. Again, how is it possible for philosophy to lay down as an axiom that man has an intuitive perception of a Deity, in the face of the fact that whole races of savage men have no such perception, and have not got beyond rude fetichism and a vague superstitious fear of ghosts and evil spirits, while others, further advanced, have made their own anthropomorphic gods, obviously from reflections of their own faculties and passions on the distant mists of the unknown, like the spectres of the Brocken ? We can trace the idea of Deity, step by step, from early attempts to explain phenomena of nature, astro­ nomical, legendary, and linguistic myths, and reverence for departed ancestors ana heroes, up to the philosophical concep­ tions of a Plato or a Marcus Aurelius. In the same way we can trace, step by step, the transformation of the tribal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the national God of Israel, who was at first only better and stronger than the gods of the surrounding nations, but finally became the sole God of the uni­ verse, degrading the other gods to the category of dumb idols. So, also, we can see the first crude anthropomorphic con­ ceptions of this Deity gradually giving way to purer and nobler ideas. The God who required rest on the seventh day becomes the Almighty one at whose word all things were created. The jealous and cruel God who withdrew His favour from the chivalrous Saul, because he would not hew his captives in pieces before the Lord, is transformed into the God who “loves mercy and not sacrifice.” The God who found after His own heart the man whose depraved mind could con­ 111 ceive such an act of foul villainy as David practised towards Uriah, and who not only condoned the crime, but rewarded it by giving the succession to the son of the adulterous intercourse with Bath­ sheba, has become the God of holy love and purity of the New Testament. At which of these stages entered that, philo­ sophical intuition of God which is said to be an innate faculty of the human mind, and the surest base of all our know­ ledge of the universe? Where is the inevitable intuitive perception of a per­ sonal Deity in the minds of some of the deepest thinkers and purest livers of the present day, who, like Herbert Spencer, can discern nothing behind the veil but a great unspeakable and unknowable ? After all, we must fall back on Chris­ tianity for any grounds upon which to trust, more or less faintly, in the “ larger hope.” The Christian religion, apart from auy question of miracles, is an existing fact. It is a fact which for nineteen cen­ turies has proved, on the whole, in accord­ ance with other facts and with the deepest feelings and highest aspirations of the noblest men and women of the foremost races in the progressive march of civili­ sation. Why do we say that its moral teachings, such as we find in the Sermon on the Mount, and in St. Paul’s definition of Christian charity, carry conviction with them and prove themselves ? Be­ cause they accord with, and. give the best expression to, feelings which, in the course of evolution of the human mind from barbarism to civilisation, have be­ come instinctive. We may be able to trace their origin and development, we may be able to see that they are not primary instincts, implanted, at birth, like those of the lower animals, but secondary instincts, formed by the action of a civilised environment on hereditary aptitudes. Still, there they are, and being what they are, and living in the age and society in which we actually live, they are inevitable and necessary instincts, and it requires no train of reasoning or laboured reflection to make us feel that “ right is right,” and that it is better for ourselves and others to act on such pre­ cepts as those of “ loving our neighbours as ourselves,” and “doing as we would be done by,” rathei’ than to reverse these rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal nature Of the same order, though less clear and cogent, are the teachings of �112 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT the Gospel respecting God and immorta­ lity. They are less clear and less cogent, because the only evidence by which they could be demonstrated from without, that of miracles, has broken down and failed us; and because we cannot verify them experimentally by an appeal to facts, as we can in regard to the working of moral laws and precepts. But it still remains that they are ideas which have arisen inevitably in the course of the evolution of the human mind ; and that they fit in with and satisfy, in a way which no other ideas can do, many of the best and deepest feelings which have equally been deve­ loped in that mind, in the course of its progressive ascent from lower to higher things.. It remains also true that science, while it can add nothing to this proof, takes nothing from it, and that while it excludes miracles and supernatural interference after the order of the uni­ verse has been once established, it leads us back step by step to a great Unknown, in which, from the very fact that it is unknown, everything is possible. Further than this it is not possible to carry the proof. If we are to believe at all in a God, we must be content to believe that He knows better than we do what is right and consistent with the conditions of our own existence and that of the universe ; and that part of the scheme is that at a certain stage of the develop­ ment of our race we should have to exchange the certainty , of simple and limited faith for the fainter trust in a larger hope. We may, perhaps, dimly discern something analogous in the progress of each individual from child­ hood to manhood. He has to part with many a «simple belief and unhesitating trust, and climb the hill of life staggering under many a burden of doubt and difficulty; and yet it is better for him to “set a stiff heart to a steep brae,” and struggle upwards while life is in him rather than to remain an innocent child playing at its foot. Anyhow, whether we like it or not, this is. the fact we have to accept; but the hill is steep, the burden heavy, and we may well be grateful to anything which, however vaguely, helps and cheers us on the way. From this point of view, the ideas of God and of a future life taught by the Christian religion, ac­ cepted by so many good men, and hallowed by so many venerable traditions and. sacred associations, should be cherished, as far as it is possible to do so without shutting our eyes to facts and indulging in conscious insincerity. For the same reason we shall do well to be tender with the forms and creeds 2* religion, even when they appear to be getting obsolete, and their strict and literal interpretation becomes no longer consistent with known truths. It is far better, that the transformation requisite to bring them into accordance with the evolution of modern thought caused by the discoveries of science, should take place gradually and spon­ taneously from within, ratherthanforcibly and abruptly from without. Evolutionists specially ought to trust to the healing influences of time, and the inevitable though gradual survival of that which is. most in harmony with its existing en­ vironment. Already a great deal has been quietly done in this direction. Intolerance and fanaticism have almost disappeared from cultured minds. Even in the ranks of the. clergy themselves, many, in all denominations, are devoting themselves more and more to good works, and less to theological disputes and sectarian wranglings. The metaphysical side of Christian dogma is fast receding into the far distance. The Athanasian Creed, which once convulsed, empires and occupied a foremost place in the thought of the age, has become a mere form, read once or twice a year by lukewarm preachers to indifferent or scandalised audiences, who would be only too glad to have a decent excuse for dropping it out of sight alto­ gether. Let any sincere Christian put to himself candidly the question what part the “Holy Ghost,” or the definition of the. Logos,”really has in the living faith which guides his actions, and he will be astonished to find into what infinitesimal proportions these once vital dogmas have actually faded. It will be the same with all dogmas which, in their literal and historical interpretation, contradict established facts. They will be either forgotten, or, if they contain a kernel of spiritual meaning, will be transformed into truths taught by parables. In the meantime, it behoves those who see more clearly than others the absolute certainty of the conclusions of science, and the inevitably fatal results to �PRACTICAL LIFE Wigion of staking its existence on literal interpretations which have become flatly incredible, to do their best to assist the ■ransformation of the old dogmatic theo­ logy into a new “ Christianity without jtoiracles,” which shall retain the essential spirit, the pure morality, the consoling beliefs, and, as far as possible, the vener­ able forms and sacred associations of the old faith, while placing them in thorough accordance with freedom of thought, and with the whole body of other truths, d&covered and to be discovered, respect­ ing the universe and man. CHAPTER X PRACTICAL LIFE Conscience—Right is Right—Self-reverence —Courage—Respectability—Influence of Press—Respect for Women—Self-respect of Nations—Democracy and Imperialism—Self - knowledge—Conceit— Luck— Specula­ tion—Money-making—Practical Aims of Life—Self-control—Conflict of Reason and Instinct—Temper—Manners—Good Habits in Youth—Success in Practical Life—Edu­ cation—Stoicism—Conclusion. Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncalled for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear ; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. Tennyson, (Enone. In these lines, which he puts into the mouth of the goddess of wisdom, Tenny­ son, the.same poet who has already con­ densed the essence of modern thought in the lines already quoted from “In Memoriam,” gives us what may be well palled “ the Gospel of practical life.” It is clearly our highest wisdom to follow right, Hot from selfish calculation or hope of reward, but because “ right is right ” ; in other words, because we have a standard pvithin us which tells us, in an unmis­ takable voice, what to do and what to refrain from doing. For practical pur­ poses, it is comparatively unimportant how this standard got there ; whether, Recording to old creeds, by direct inspira­ 113 tion or, as modern science tells us, by the slow evolution of primitive faculties, and the accumulation through countless generations of hereditary influences tending towards the survival of the fittest, both of individuals and of societies, in the struggle for life. In either case the standard is there, not as a vague and theoretical, but as an absolute and imperative, rule, and the difficulty is not to discern it, but to act up to it. It may be that it is to a great extent the product of education, and depends on the environment in which we are brought up. It is pretty certain that if I had bees kidnapped when a child by Comanche Indians, I should have grown up with a very different moral standard touching the taking of scalps and the practice of treacherous murder. But I have not been so kidnapped, and having been born and brought up in a civilised country of the nineteenth century, it is inevitable that outward influences combined with inward capacities should give me a con­ science, which tells me in clear enough accents whether I am doing right or wrong. And it is equally certain that by acting in accordance with this conscience^ I shall, on the whole, be doing better for myself and better for others than by disregarding it. It is none too easy to make our life even a tolerable approxi­ mation towards doing right for the sake of right, and it would be folly to allow any theoretical considerations as to the origin of the idea of right to be an excuse for relaxing any of the constant and strenuous effort which is requisite to keep our feet from straying from the straight path. It is much wiser to cast around us for influences and inducements to strengthen the inward law, and to en* deavour by clear insight to .bring reason to the aid of faith, and enable us to see intelligently the main causes both of our weakness and of our strength. This is what the poet does for us in the lines above quoted. Rightly considered, “self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self­ control ” are the three pillars which sup­ port the edifice of a wise and well-ordered practical life. Self-reverence, in its widest meaning, includes the faculty of forming some ideal standard superior to the lower nature of animal man, and recognising in ourselves some power of approximat­ ing to it. The higher the standard the I �114 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT nobler will be the man who cherishes it and tries to attain to it, but it is by no means a rare gift confined to a few select natures. On the contrary, it is the com­ monest and most universal incentive to good conduct. Even in the rudest and simplest form of admiration for physical courage, it makes heroes of many a common soldier and sailor. If poor Tommy Atkins, fresh from the plough­ tail, stands firm in the shattered squares of Waterloo, or on the bloody ridge of Inkermann, it is because he has been brought up in the fixed idea that a Briton must not run away from a Frenchman or a Russian. In civil life the idea of respectability, though not a very elevated one and apt to degenerate into narrowness, and that which Carlyle and Arnold sneer at as “ Gigmanity ” and “ Philistinism,” is yet one of universal and, on the whole, bene­ ficial influence. A large majority of the middle and upper working classes lead decorous lives very much because they feel it incumbent on them to be “re­ spectable ” in their own eyes and those of their neighbours. In the case of one half of the human race, the female half, the feeling of self-respect and the desire to be what is called respectable afford the strongest and most constantly present securities both for good morals and good manners. The immense majority of British women are modest maidens and faithful wives, not so much from any cold calculation of the balance of ad­ vantages, or from fear of consequences, as from an instinctive feeling that they cannot be otherwise without losing caste and forfeiting their own self-respect and that of their neighbours. From these common and universal forms of “ self-reverence ” we rise, step by step, to the higher ideals, which, in every rank and every condition of life, give us among gifted natures what may De called the “salt of the earth,” and the shining examples which guide the world to higher things—noble men and noble women. A Sidney, dying on the field of Zutphen, hands over the cup of water to a wounded soldier because his soul, nourished on noble thoughts, and his fancy, fed by the old ballads which, like that of “ Chevy Chase,” stirred him like a trumpet-blast, had led him to conceive an ideal of a perfect knight which would have been tarnished by any shade of a selfish action. Gordon sacrifices his life at Khartoum, not only cheerfully but almost instinctively, because the sugges­ tion that he might save himself by abandoning those who had trusted in him seems an absolute impossibility. It is a great advantage of the present day that education and the press bring such instances of devoted heroism vividly before millions who would never other­ wise have heard of them. The influence of the press, both in the way of books and newspapers, is happily in this country almost entirely one which makes for good. There is not a noble act done throughout the world, by high or low, by private or officer, by soldier or civilian, which is not held up for praise and admiration ; while any signal instance of cowardice or selfishness is held up to contempt. Newspaper correspondence and leading articles have, to a great ex­ tent, superseded sermons, and do the prac­ tical moral work of the world in asserting the right and rebuking wickedness in high places. In like manner all the higher works of poetry, fiction, and biography, have a good tendency, and are read by an ever-increasing number of readers. Enid and Elaine, Jeanie Deans, Laura Pendennis, Lucy Roberts, are the sort of models set before girls ; while boys who have any heroic fibre in their nature are fed with such lives as those of Lawrence and Gordon. For all, but especially for the young, there is no help to self-improvement so great as to read good, books in a generous spirit; and nothing which dwarfs the mind so much as to debauch it by frivolous reading, and by the moral dram-drinking of sensational rubbish, until it loses all natural and healthy appetite for the pure and ele­ vated. An affectation of narrow know­ ingness is also a very fatal tendency in the youthful mind. A man from whose mouth such words as “rot’’and “hum­ bug” are constantly heard is, in nine cases out of ten, a very poor, rotten creature himself. Among the many advantages of selfrespect, not the least important is that it teaches respect for others. The petty jealousies and suspicions, the senseless quarrels, theslanderings and backbitings, which so often turn sour the wine of life, disappear of themselves when a proper standard of self-respect has been firmly established, and a high ideal of human �PRACTICAL LIFE life has become part of our nature. As Tennyson says: Like simple noble natures credulous Of what they wish for, good in friend or foe; while on the other hand • ' The long-necked geese of the world Are always hissing dispraise, because their natures are little. There are some who delight in running down everything and everybody, and whose appetite for scandal is so great that they are positively unable to re­ frain from believing and spreading an ill-natured tale, if it affects some emi­ nent man, and still more if it affects a well-known woman. Such are as­ suredly not the sort of persons whom we should like to resemble ourselves, or to see our sons and daughters resemble. I have always found through life, a safe rule to go by was, if you hear an illnatured story of a man, discount ninetenths of it as a lie, and if of a woman, don’t believe a word of it. Perhaps the best test of the amount of real “self-reverence” in an individual or a nation, is to be found in the tone and manner in which women are treated. A low toneinvariablybespeaks a low nature, and testifies to innate coarseness and snobbishness, however high may be the rank and polished the outward varnish of the person who indulges in it. On the other hand the roughest miner or back woodsman is already more than half a gentleman, if his attitude towards women is one of chivalrous courtesy. Nothing looks more hopeful for the future of the human race than to see that the female half of it are constant gainers by the progress of freedom and education. It goes a long way to reconcile one to the dangers of democracy, to find that in the newest and most democratic countries of the world, such as the United States and British colonies, women can travel alone without fear of insult, and have far more innocent liberty and freedom of thought and action than they have in older societies. Whatever may be the case as regards men, for women there can be no doubt that there is a progressive scale upwards from East to West, from despot­ ism to freedom, from Turkey to America. What has been said of individuals is 115 even more true of nations. Self-respect is the very essence of national life. A great nation may suffer great disasters, and survive them, if the spirit of its people remains intact. England survived the war of American independence, and Prussia recovered from the defeat of Jena. But if a nation loses its vigour and selfrespect, if it begins to groan under the burdens of extended empire, and to pre­ fer comfort to honour, ignoble ease to noble effort, the hour of its decline has sounded. Imperial Rome did not long survive when she began to contract her frontiers and buy off barbarians. The most fatal thing any Government can do for a country is to destroy its sense of self-respect and teach it to acquiesce in what is felt to be dishonourable. Looking forward to the future of the great British Empire, this is evidently a turning-point of its destinies. The tri­ umph of democracy is an inevitable fact; for knowledge is power, and whether for good or evil, the masses have either acquired, or are fast acquiring know­ ledge, and with equal political rights numbers will tell. How will this demo­ cracy of the future affect Imperial interests, and what will be its attitude in regal’d to foreign and colonial policy ? On the one hand it may be hoped that by making our institutions more popular, and going down to the heart of the masses, our policy will acquire fresh energy and our public men fresh vigour. The working classes are very patriotic, and, on the whole, more open to the in­ fluence of generous ideas than the class immediately above them. In the recent instance of the great civil war in the United States, we have seen a democracy making greater sacrifices of men and moneyfor theideaof maintaining national greatness, than was probably ever volun­ tarily made by any monarchical or aristo­ cratic country. The Copper-heads, who preached peace where there was no peace, and advised letting the erring sisters go their way rather than spend lives and money in the attempt to coerce them, found no response from a nation who felt that the union was their union, and its greatness the separate personal possession of each individual citizen. But, on the other hand, demagogues will never be wanting to flatter the people, and angle for power by appeal­ ing to their lower instincts and advoi 2 �116 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT eating measures of present ease and popularity. If a necessity arises for maintaining by the sword an empire which has been won by the sword, the army of parochial politicians who gauge everything by the standard of pounds, shillings, and pence, will be reinforced by the far more respectable body of sentimentalists and humanitarians, who shrink from the shedding of blood in wars the abstract justice of which is not absolutely demonstrated. A large num­ ber, perhaps a majority, of platform orators will therefore be found now, as it was in the days of Demosthenes, to de­ nounce armaments, ridicule precautions, minimise responsibilities, and look upon India, the Colonies, and extended empire generally, as troublesome encumbrances rather than as glorious possessions. The t wo conflicting ideals constantly set be­ fore our future political rulers, the four millions whose votes decide the fate of policies and of ministries, will be, on the one hand, that our first duty is to hand down the British Empire to our sons no less great and glorious than we received it from pur fathers ; on the other, that it is better to stay at home, mind our own affairs, avoid entanglements, con­ tract responsibilities, pass reform bills, and reduce taxes, trusting to the “silver streak ” and the chapter of accidents to protect us from invasion. It is the old story of the fable of Hercules, which pre­ sents itself constantly to each individual and to every nation. Shall we follow the strait and narrow path which leads up­ wards, or the broad and easy one which leads, with a pleasant slope, to a lower level 1 Would it have been better for' Paris to give the golden apple to Minerva, counselling “ self-reverence, self-know­ ledge, self-control,” or to Venus, promising pleasure ? SELF-KNOWLEDGE Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us ! Burns. A gift -which is unfortunately as rare as it is necessary. Without self-know­ ledge to see our faults how shall we correct them ? How shall we become wise if insensible to our follies ? How shall we achieve success if we learn no lessons from cur failures ? There are some men so blinded by vanity that they go through life committing ungentlemanly actions while fancying themselves perfect gentle­ men ; who are convinced that all men admire them and all women are in love with them, while in reality every one sees through them and laughs at them. A thoroughly impervious vanity is like a waterproof, which throws off the wholesome rain on the outside, while on the inside it is soaked with unhealthy exhalations. Fortunately this type of vanity is not a common one with our English race, who are too proud and self-reliant to feel the petty anxiety of the really vain man to be always shining in the eyes of others. With us it takes more the form of priding ourselves on artificial distinctions, and attaching an exaggerated importance to matters of trivial importance. Your commonplace English swell, for instance, is apt to class all mankind under two categories—those who associate with lords and wear clothes of a fashionable cut, and those who do not, and to set down all the former as the “ right sort,” and all the latter as “ brutes.” It is a sign of narrowness to make a fetich of these or any other arbitrary distinctions between an upper ten and the rest of mankind, and self-knowledge is never more required than to show the hollowness of adventitious advantages which are not supported by intrinsic merit. A true gentleman feels The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that, and feeling this, he holds out the hand of hearty human sympathy to peasant as well as to peer. If born to rank and riches, self-knowledge tells him that he is simply placed on a pedestal, where, if he fails to act on the maxim that “ noblesse oblige,” the failure will be the more conspicuous. No man who really knows himself can ever be conceited, for he must be aware how far he has fallen short in practice ofhisown idealstandard, and how constantly “ he has done things he ought not to have done, and left un­ done things he ought to have done ” On the other hand, there is an opposite extreme from which self-knowledge will save a man : that.of undue despondency and want of proper confidence and selfreliance, There are men who fail ip �PRACTICAL LIFE everything they undertake because they have not the heart to undertake it resolutely, and who at last sink down into the hopeless condition of querulous men­ tal invalids, who cherish their ailments rather than combat them, and are rather proud than otherwise to be considered as interesting victims of untoward circum­ stances. For all the relations of practical life the one essential requisite of success is to see things as they really are, and not as we wish them to be ; and for this purpose self-knowledge is the foundation of clear insight. If the focus of the glass is wrongly adjusted it will show only dis­ torted images, but if a clear eye looks through a properly focussed glass, out­ ward objects will be truly represented. Perhaps the commonest of all delusions is that of being born under a lucky star. A man gambles, bets, or speculates be­ cause he thinks he is lucky and sure to win. Now, there is in reality no such thing as luck, it is all a question of averages. The only approach to what may be called luck is, that a fool will probably have more of it than a wise man, for as the fool foresees nothing, whenever fortune’s die turns up in his favour he sets it down to luck, while the wise man, who has schemed and worked for the event, calls it foresight. But the actual average of events, which depend entirely on chance, will be the same. If a man plays at rouge et noir with one chance in a hundred in favour of the bank, it is certain that if he plays often enough, he will lose his capital once at least for every hundred times he plays. Or, if he speculates on the Stock Exchange, the turn of the market and broker’s commission will, in the long run, certainly swallow up his original capital. And yet men will gamble and speculate, because they cannot resist the pleasing illusion that they are lucky, and that it would be very nice to win a large stake without having had to work for it. There is nothing for which self-know­ ledge is more indispensable in practical life than to enable a man to steer a straight course between opposite ex­ tremes, and to discern clearly the boun­ dary line between right and wrong. The law of polarity, by which things good in themselves if pushed to extremes become bad, and every truth develops a corre­ II? sponding error, is of daily and universal application in practical affairs. Take, for instance, the much-debated question of the pursuit of money. Poets and novelists are never tired of denounc­ ing the “ Auri sacra fames,” and there is no doubt that, when carried to excess, it is the fertile source of crime ; and even in a less degree, it leads to meanness and dishonesty, and has a degrading influence on the individual or the nation who give themselves up too exclusively to the worship of the “almighty dollar.” But, on the other hand, the desire, or rather the necessity under the conditions of civilised society, of making money, is by far the most powerful and all-pervading influence of practical life. And, within due bounds and under proper conditions, it is a healthy and beneficial influence. At the lowest stage it obliges men to work instead of being idle, and this is an immense advantage both to the com­ munity and to the individual. An idle man, in every grade of society, is generally a worthless and often a bad man; while an honest working man, whether the work be of the head or hand, is far more likely to be happy and respectable. Again, the necessity of earning money is a wonderful test of the real value of a man in the world’s market. We should be all very apt to become pretentious wind-bags of conceit, if we were not brought to our senses by the wholesome douche of having to work for a livelihood. Many a man who fancies himself intended for a poet or politician, and some who by accident of birth or fortune are pitchforked into prominent positions, would find it difficult to point out any occupa tion in which they are honestly worth a couple of hundred a year. Even in the higher departments of art and literature, it may be questioned whether the healthy, natural desire to turn an honest penny has not inspired greater works than a morbid appetite for fame. Shakespeare’s ambition was to retire to his native town with a moderate competency ; Walter Scott’s to become a laird, with a family estate, in the border-land of the chief of his clan —“the bold Buccleuch.” And, in the present day, literature is becoming more and more an honourable profession, which men take to, as they do to law �118 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT or medicine, as a means of earning a livelihood. It must always be borne in mind that under the practical conditions of modern civilisation, money means not only the possibility of bare existence, but nearly all that makes existence tolerablehealth, recreation, culture, and independ­ ence. The number and locality of the rooms a man lives in, the number of cubic feet, and purity of the air he and his family breathe, are questions of rent ; the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the books they read, the holidays they enjoy, are all questions of money. And above all, without money there is no in­ dependence. An absolutely penniless man has to fall back on crime or the workhouse; a poor man is at the mercy of a thousand accidents ; sickness, fluc­ tuations of trade, caprice of employers, pressure of creditors, may at any mo­ ment reduce him and those who depend on him to want. It admits of no ques­ tion, that the first duty of every one is to endeavour to raise himself above this level of ignoble daily cares, and plant himself in a position where he can face the present and look forward to the future with tolerable equanimity. As we rise in the scale of society the problem becomes more difficult. Money­ making is very apt to be pushed to excess and lead to gambling and dis­ honesty ; while the worship of wealth, which is perhaps the besetting sin of the age, is distinctly the cause of much lax morality and snobbish vulgarity. But on the other hand, money is power, and a large fortune honestly acquired and well spent, gives its possessor unrivalled opportunities for doing good. He can assist charities, patronise art, and if gifted with force of character and fair abilities may become a legislator and statesman, and enrol his name in the annals of his country. It is hard to say that if a man has an opportunity of making a large fortune honestly, and feels that he has it in him to use it nobly, he should refrain from doing so because moralists cry “Sour grapes,” and tell him that riches are deceitful. But for nothing is “self-knowledge” more requisite than to enable a man to see clearly how high he can safely aim, and what sort of stake he can prudently play for. The immense majority of man­ kind have neither the opportunities nor the faculties for playing for very high stakes, and must be contented with the safe game for moderate and attainable ends. One such end is within the reach of almost every one : To make a happy household clime For weans and wife, Is the true pathos and sublime Of human life. So says Burns, who has a rare faculty of hitting the right nail on the head ; and the ideal he sets before us in these simple lines is at once the truest and the most universal. The man who fails in this is himself a failure; while the man who by his industry and energy supports a family in comfort and respectability according to their station, and who, at the same time, by control of temper, kindness, unselfishness, and sweet reasonableness makes his household a happy one, may feel, even though fortune may not have placed him in a position of higher responsibilities, that he has not lived in vain, that he has performed the first duties and tasted the truest pleasures of mortal existence, and that, whatever there may be behind the im­ penetrable veil, he can face it with head erect, as one of “Nature’s gentlemen.” SELF-CONTROL This is, after all, the vitally import­ ant element of a happy and successful life. The compass may point truly to the pole, the chart may show the right channel amidst shoals and rocks, but the ship will hardly arrive safely in port Unless the helmsman stands at his post in all weathers, ready to meet any sheer of the bow by a timely turn to starboard or to port. So self-reverence and selfknowledge may point out ever so clearly the path of duty, unless self-control is constantly present we shall surely stray from it. . At every moment of our lives natural instinct tells us to do one thing, while reason and conscience tell us to do another. It is by an effort that we get up in the morning and go about our daily work. It is by an effort that we refrain from indulgences and forego pleasures, control our passions, restrain our tempers. The uncultured man is �PRACTICAL LIFE violent, selfish, childish ; it is only by the inherited or acquired practice of self­ control that he is transformed into the civilised man—courteous, considerate, sensible, and reliable. The necessity of self-control in all the more important relations of moral and practical life is so obvious that it would be only repeating commonplaces to enlarge on it. But there is often danger of its being overlooked, in those minor morals of conduct which make up the greater part of life, and determine the happiness or misery of oneself and others. For instance, control over the temper. A man never shows his cousinship to the ape so much as when he is in a passion. The manifestations are so exactly similar —irrational violence, nervous agitation, total loss of head, and abdication of all presence of mind and reasoning power. To see a grown-up man reduced to the level of a spoiled child, or of a monkey who has been disappointed of a nut, is a spectacle of which it is hard to. say whether it is more ridiculous or painful. Even worse than occasional violence is the habitual ill-temper which makes life miserable to those who are obliged to put up with it. We call a man who strikes a woman or child with his fist a brute ; what is he if he strikes them daily and hourly, ten times more cruelly, with his tongue 1 A ten times greaterbrute. And yet there are men., calling themselves gentlemen, who do this, either from sheer brutality of nature, or oftener from inconsiderateness, coarseness of fibre, and inability to exercise self­ control in minor matters. There is one very common mistake made, that of considering relationship an excuse for rudeness. The members of a family may relax something of the stiffness of company manners among themselves, but they should never forget that it is just as much ill-breeding to say a rude thing to a wife, a sister, or a brother, as it would be to say it to any other lady or gentleman. In fact, it is worse, for the other lady can treat you with contempt and keep out of your way, while the poor woman who is tied to you feels it keenly, and has no means of escape from it. Good manners are, in practical life, a great part of good morals ; and there is something to be 119 said for religions which, like the Chinese, lay down rules of politeness, and make salvation depend very much on. the ob­ servance of rites and ceremonies intended to ensure courtesy and decorum in the intercourse of all classes of the com­ munity in daily life. Although not so bad as the indulgence of a violent or morose temper, a great deal of unhappiness is caused by a fussy and fidgety disposition, which makes mountains out of molehills, and keeps every one in hot water about trifles. This is one of the common faults of idleness, as genuine work both strengthens the fibre to resist and leaves no time to brood over petty troubles. The excuse one commonly hears from those who give way to these petty infirmities is, “that they cannot help it, they are born with thin skins and excitable tempers.” This is the excuse of sloth and weakness. If, as the poet says, Man is man, and master of his fate, what sort of an unmanly creature must he be who cannot master even the slightest impulse or resist the slightest temptation, and allows himself to. be ruffled into a storm by every passing breath, like a shallow roadside puddle? If he will not try he certainly will not learn; but if he will honestly try to correct faults, he will find it easier every time, until the fancied impos­ sibilities fade away and are forgotten. A man who is so much afraid of tumbling off that he will never mount a horse, may fancy that Nature has dis­ qualified him for riding; but for all that, nine men out of ten, if obliged to try—say as recruits in a cavalry regi­ ment—though they may not all turn out accomplished horsemen, will all learn to ride well enough for practical purposes. It is peculiarly important for the young to set resolutely about correcting bad habits and forming good ones, while the faculties are fresh and the brain supple ; for, in obedience to the law by which molecular motions travel by preference along beaten paths, every year cuts deeper the channels of thought and feeling, whether for good or evil. A brain trained to respond to calls of duty soon does so with ease and elasticity, just as �120 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT the muscles of the blacksmith’s arm or of the ballet-dancer’s leg acquire strength and vigour by exercise; while, on the other hand, motion is a pain and selfcontrol an effort to the soft and flabby limb or brain which has been weakened by self-indulgence. It is scarcely necessary to say-that for success in practical life, self-control is the one thing most needful. To take the simplest case, that of a young working man beginning life with health, knowledge of a trade, or even without it with good, thews and sinews, he is the most free and independent of mortals, on one condition—that he has saved £10. With this, he is a free agent in disposing of his labour, he can make his contract with an employer on equal terms, he can carry his goods to the best market, and is practically a citizen of the world, ready to start for San Francisco or Melbourne if . he thinks he can better himself. Without it, he is a serf tied to the soil, he cannot move from place to place, he must take whatever wages are offered him or starve. But how to save the £10? That is a question of daily and weekly recurrence ; whether to spend an extra shilling in the pleasant way of going to a public-house and sitting with a pipe and a jug of ale by the fireside among jolly companions, or. to forego the pleasure and save the shilling. A shilling a week saved will, in four years, give him the £10, and go a good way to establish habits which, if he is enterprising and goes to a colony, or is clever and has any luck at home, may readily make the ten a hundred, or even a thousand pounds. So in every class of life, the man who gets on is the man who has schooled himself never to ask whether a thing is pleasant, but whether it is right and reasonable ; who always keeps a bright look-out ahead, and who does his best at the task, whatever it may be, that is set before him. Education really resolves itself very much into teaching the young to acquire this indispensable faculty of self-control. The amount of positive knowledge, useful in after life, acquired at our English public schools, is really very little beyond the three B’s. A boy who could teach himself French or German irrfive months spends five years over Latin and Greek, and in nine cases out of ten forgets them as soon as he leaves school or college. Almost everything we know that is worth knowing we teach ourselves in after life. But the discipline of school is invaluable in teaching the lesson of self-control. Almost every hour of the day a boy at school has to do things that are dis­ agreeable and abstain from doing things that nature prompts, under pain of getting a caning from the master or a thrashing from other boys. The memory also is exercised, and the faculty of fixing the mind on work is developed, by useless almost as well as by useful studies. In this point of view even that ne plus ultra of technical pedantry, the Latin, grammar, with its “Propria quse maribus’’ and “As in presenti,” may have its use in teaching a boy that no matter how absurd or repulsive a task maybe, he has got to tackle to it or worse will befall him. But it is in a moral sense that the influence of a good school is most valu­ able. The average boy learns that he must not tell lies, he must not be a sneak or a coward, he must take punishment bravely, and conform to the school­ master’s standard of discipline and the school-boy’s standard of honour. In this way the first lesson of life, stoicism, becomes with most English lads a sort of instinct or second nature. For stoicism, after all, is the foundation and primary element of all useful and honourable life. Whether as Carlyle’s “Everlasting No,” or as George Eliot’s advice, to take the pains and mishaps of life without resorting to moral opium, the conclusion of all the greatest minds is that a man must have something of the Red Indian in him and be able to suffer, silently, and burn his own smoke, if he is to be worth anything. And still more a woman, who has to bear with and make the best of a thousand petty an­ noyances without complaint. Men can bear on great occasions, but in the innumerable petty trials of life women as a rule show more self-control and moral fortitude. What would the life of a woman be who could not stand being bored with a smiling face, put up with the worries of children and servants with cheerful fortitude, and turn away an angry word by a soft answer ? There is much more that might be said, but my object is not to preach or �PRACTICAL LIFE moralise, but simply to record a few. of the practical rules and reflections which have impressed themselves on me in the course of a long and busy life. I do so in the hope that perchance they may awaken useful thoughts in some, es­ pecially of the younger readers, who may happen to glance over these pages. This much I may say for them, I have tried them and found them work well. I have lived for more than the Scriptural span of threescore and ten years, a life of varied fortunes and many experiences. . I may say, in the words which my favourite poet, Tennyson, puts into the mouth of Ulysses: For ever roaming with a hungry heart, Much have I seen and known, cities of men, And councils, climates, governments. 121 And the conclusion I come to is, not that of the Preacher, “ Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” but rather that life, with all its drawbacks, is worth living ; and that to have been born in a civilised country in the nineteenth century is a boon for which a man can never be sufficiently thankful. Some may find it otherwise from no fault of their own; more by their own fault; but the majority of men and women may lead useful, honourable, and on the whole fairly happy lives, if they will act on the maxim which I have always en­ deavoured, however imperfectly, to follow—Frar NOTHING ; MAKE THE BEST OE EVERYTHING. �THE (Limited). LATEST PUBLICATIONS. Supernatural religion. Thoroughly Revised and brought up to date by the Author, several new and important sections being added. Cloth, xvL-920 pp., 6s. net, by po t 6s. 6d. Superior Edition, 10s. net, by post 10s. 6.L Letters on reasoning. By J. M. Robertson. net, by post 3s. iod. Cloth, 280 pp., 3s. 6d. “Pleasantly discursive, well-reasoned, persuasive, and suggestive, the book will prove profitable reading to any one who wishes to refresh his mind on matters regarding which "the scholastic teaching is, as a rule, like dust and ashes on the palate.”—Scotsman. MR. BALFOUR’S APOLOGETICS CRITICALLY EXAMINED. net, by post 3s. rod. Cloth, 3s. 6d. A NEW CATECHISM. By M. M. Mangasarian, Lecturer of the Inde-. dependent Religious Society of Chicago. Speciallyprepared British Edition. “ M. M. Mangasarian’s New Catechism contains in succinct form the very essence of advanced thought in religious matters.”—Chicago American. “ The New Catechism comes nearer to being the trite catechism than any book of this kind which we have ever read.”—L. K. WASHBURN (Boston). In preparation. AN Easy outline of evolution. By Dennis Hird, Warden of Ruskin Hall, Oxford. Cloth, 2s. 6d. net, by post 2s. iod. Agents of the R.P. A. : WATTS & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Modern science and modern thought: with a biographical note on the author by Edward Clodd Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Laing, Samuel [1812-1897] Clodd, Edward [1840-1930] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: xii, 121 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. Notes: Date of publication from introductory note. First published, London: Chapman and Hall, 1885. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Ltd. Printed in double columns. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts and Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1902] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N430 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Science Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Modern science and modern thought: with a biographical note on the author by Edward Clodd), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English NSS Science https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/fdb523bb56c4fc9d368f2cb66cf6da2e.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=gIfohwCsC1lJdYHXIOcGITF9lVAU11YSsNRz5Oa80ChJoMKPifNyNI31nuqzkRcV4YVlOUOvslKT1VZ6PVnNRpw3HtrJZROA3fbxXZTcoLS-i7LIq0yUW1%7EmmmRHJ6miIYI75uPXZn3Z4xxRP9z4iaN5sX%7E-H6otdZ1sC-QuNlCe%7EX4IfOTXIQHtBuv%7E2InA3wHeVcJ8-ecLUEDbHHiq7q-utPJq2jZthNkNNgYy6lYN62PGer2Jfzdr7LsAv7Gm4UiFCOe58TSOSbpDYGpcjfASJbqwSTBN0wkjq0l4ozsefIQE55qj9ZGLxI5cLdPb7TS6yTaHG3WjgEr2gQQWLg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 41677df9f026c0d2336489ac966ff33f PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY FOURT& EDITION. “TRUTH SEEKER” PAMPHLETS, No. 4.] THE DECAY OF BELIEF. —— BY C. COHEN. PRICE ONE PENNY �THE DECAY OF BELIEF. “ If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed.” Professor Max Muller. I. Science impresses upon every careful student the universality y*’’* of one process—change. Everywhere, in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, in the growth of Society, and in the development of ideas, we find change and decay, birth and death, going on side by side. Serfdom gives place to Feudalism, Feudalism to Industrialism, one system of thought succeeds another, but so gradually that it is impossible to say just where the old order ends and the new begins. So long as we confine ourselves to certain departments of life, it is tolerably easy to make this process plain—even to the ordinary understanding; it is when we attempt to apply the same comparative principle to current religious ideas that we find it met with bitter opposition. Nor is this surprising. The fundamental idea of religion —particularly of revealed religion—is antagonistic to change. Religion delivers its message, not as something to be improved upon as the race develops, but as a message which contains the beginning and end of all that may be said upon the subject. Infallibility and growth are contradictory terms. A system that claims to be infallible closes the door to development; and thus it is, that while in other departments of life we readily recognise that the past is full of error, and that our chief duty is to improve upon it, in religion we are taught—in effect if not in so many words—that as we value the past we are bound to perpetuate its follies and mistakes. •Yet the “Time Spirit” makes its presence felt in religion as in other matters, and as we look abroad we cannot but notice that the creed which satisfied men and women for so long is steadily crumbling away. A century and a half ago Bishop Berkeley could boast that Geology failed to demonstrate that man had existed upon the Globe for a longer period than the biblical 6,000 years, the doctrine of hell fire was being preached with all it primitive warmth, the genesaic days of creation were believed to be ordinary days of 24 hours each, Wesley was declaring that to give up the belief in witchcraft was to give up the bible, and educated Christians were asserting—as uneducated ones still assert —that a refusal to accept Christian doctrines was merely an excuse for aa^odern �3 leading an immoral life. And now mark the change ; the vast antiquity Of man is admitted by all who are capable of forming a correct judgment upon the matter ; witchcraft is admitted by Christians to be an imaginary crime; the days of creation are extended to indefinite periods of may be millions of years each ; and, finally, even the bitterest opponents of Secularism are driven to admit that a large number of those who have rejected all religions lead lives that many (who pride themselves upon their Christianity) would do well to imitate. The breaking up of the old creed is observable in every direction. There is not a church in England that is not honey-combed with unbelief; not a single doctrine of Christianity which is not called into question by men and women whose characters are beyond reproach, and whose intellectual ability admits of no question. There is scarcely a prominent preacher in England who does not lament the unwillingness of people to attend church, and the lack of interest shewn in its teachings by those who do. A speaker at a recent church Congress, held at New­ castle, said: “Indifference to religion was prevalent among all classes of the community, even the churches were not free from the prevailing infection. If this indifference was old it had a new aspect; it was instructed indifference. Many of its advocates knew the Bible as well as they did. This added enormously to the gravity of the situation.** Another pointed out that while the seating accommodation in places of worship in England was only sufficient for one-fifteenth of the population, even that was not half taken up. General Booth laments that “ A great wave of infidelity is sweeping over the country, and Humanitarianism is taking the place of soul saving.” Archdeacon Farrar informs a reporter of the Newcastle Leader that: “ It would require a prophet to arise to cause people to attend church.” And prophets are scarce now-a-days. And meanwhile, in the hope of retaining a few within the fold, Christ and his gospel are compelled to play an ignominious second to a tea meeting, lantern entertainment, or a musical festival. Nothing could demonstrate the decay of belief better than the attempts made, more or less successfully, to tone down, or explain away altogether, much that Christianity once prided itself upon teaching. You read the Bible, the New Testament, early Christian literature, and then in sweet simplicity set out expecting to find something like the same sort of teaching, and something like the Jesus of the New Testament, believed in by those who still pass under the name of Christian. But do you? You discover from the lips of your religious teachers that it is not absolutely necessary to believe in future rewards and punishments, nor even in miracles; the Bible is not all inspired, only a part, though which part eminates from God and which from man—God only knows. As for Jesus, he undergoes a parallel transformation. In apologetic literature he appears in a quite up-to-date costume; and a fitting introduction to many of the volumes of sermons upon such subjects as “Christianity and the Social Question” would be a picture of Jesus in corduroy and slouch hat, addressing the mob of Jerusalem upon the “Living Wage.” Jesus, we learn, was a communist and a conservative: a socialist and an individualist; an advocate of Papal infallibility and “The greatest Freethinker that ever lived;” a charming variety of �4 characters to suit all classes—you pay your money and you have your choice. In the hands of modern apologists, the prophet of Nazareth becomes like one of the characters in “ Pinafore,”—“ A living ganglion of irreconcileable antagonisms.” II. The two principal causes responsible for this decay of religious belief, are,'—The growth of scientific knowledge, and the development of industrial life. By familiarising the mind with the conception of undeviating natural law, Science has, in the most effectual manner, sapped dhe foundations of religion. Doctrines that possessed a certain air of plausibility so long as men’s knowledge of natural processes was small, became utterly ridiculous in the light of the positive knowledge afterwards acquired. Previous to the development of Modern Science, it was comparatively easy to entertain a belief in miracles, the efficacy of prayer, and kindred doctrines; but now that our scientific knowledge is becoming more perfect with each successive generation, we find the acceptance of such beliefs becoming increasingly difficult. It may be said to be almost a law of the mind,—answering to the first of Comte’s three stages—that whenever the causes producing phenomena are unknown, there is a tendency to endow such phenomena with intelligence and will similar to our own. This tendency, noticeable among even educated people, finds actual expression among uneducated races, in the growth of their religious doctrines—from which our own are remotely descended. We find this principle illustrated in the deification of all natural forces by primitive man : and universally, we find a decline in this personification of Nature wherever positive knowledge is allowed to develop. So long as Astronomy was in its infancy the planets were viewed, and worshipped, as living beings. The demoniacal theory of disease, as taught in the New Testament by Jesus, was believed in only so long as the causes inducing disease were unknown. Not one to-day views a comet as a messenger from God, shaking war and pestilence from its hair —a conception dominant in the Christian world as late as the fifteenth century. The reason why these beliefs, once universally accepted, are now rejected by all educated people, is obvious—every advance in our knowledge of the order in which phenomena occur has involved the overthrow of the conception of intelligent agencies at work in the world around us, and the recognition of nature in all its departments as a beautiful piece of machinery, unconscious, self-adjusting, self­ repairing, and self-regulating. And thus it happens that as Science has developed, religious beliefs have declined. The fundamental ideas of religion and science are thoroughly antagonistic • one can only develop at the expense of the other; and just as history shows that periods of great religious activity have also been periods during which positive knowledge made but small progress, so a study of the development of the human mind shows that step by step with the growth of scientific investigation then has gone on a decline of the religious sentiment. And this brings me to a vital distinction between the present religious �5 conflict and preceding ones. In previous contests the fight has been between rival religions, involving as a result the acceptance of Paganism On the one hand or Christianity on the other, or a selection of one of the many forms of Christianity itself. The difference between the contending parties was thus a difference of degree only, to-day it is a difference of kind. The present struggle involves as a final issue the affirmation of religion as a fundamental article of our social creed, of its rejection as something artificial, hysterical, and useless ; the issue involves the supremacy of either the volitional or the scientific theory of the universe. In previous contests the result has been decided quickly, because the same type of mind sufficed for either side ; the struggle is longer to-day because a certain mental discipline is necessary before one can rank oneself intelligently with the new order. The second cause I have mentioned as producing the decay of belief Operates in a more direct manner. Broadly it shows itself in binding together people who were formerly leading isolated lives. Sydney Smith who gave utterance to some very wise sayings—for a clergyman—once said that, “ If Bears were only to meet together occasionally and growl out their ursine grievances, their general behaviour would undergo an improvement.” This applies with equal truth to human beings. While people are separated they are unsocial; it is chiefly by association that we become civilised ; in associating with people of different habits and temperaments we acquire a breadth of character which it is almost an impossibility to acquire in any other manner. The sharp corners are rubbed off, our characters are rounded by this social friction, we begin to have sympathy with each other's failings, and to admire each other’s virtues. But in addition to this the development of our modern industrial and commercial life which necessitates a rapidity and ease of communication unknown to earlier times, introduces, almost uncon­ sciously, a new principle by which to estimate conduct. Men begin to judge their fellows by an altogether different standard; the very man who, formerly, would have drawn back in horror at the bare idea of associating with an Atheist, now finds himself embarked in the same enterprises, working on the same platform, and cherishing the same political and social ideals. The man whom he views, religiously, with horror, he regards socially with respect—and even admiration. These conflicting feelings at first neutralise each other, but gradually one of them gains the ascendant, and from the whole tenor of our modern lives, that one is bound to be the secular estimate of life and its duties. Thus a new standard by means of which to judge conduct, is introduced; instead of judging men and women by their adherence to a stereotyped code, a tendency—and one which becomes more powerful year by year —develops to judge them upon the grounds of the intrinsic worth of their actions. Every social reform that helps to break down class distinction, and to bring into closer relation different frames of mind hitherto isolated, is thus helping to disintegrate religious beliefs. Historically, civilisation has always followed the lines of commercial enterprise, and in our own day we can note how each successive step in the development of industrial life, or in the social emancipation of the people, has involved a decrease of the religious sentiment. �6 I do not pretend that these are the only causes operating against religion, only that they appear to me to be the principal ones; and I believe that all other causes, working in the same direction, will be found to be merely modifications of one—or both—of these two. III. Necessarily the disposition of the mind towards the same object varies from age to age, all mental growth implies this much. The beliefs of the wise men of one generation become fairy tales for the children of another. The Greek mythology was once believed in, so was the Roman, so was witchcraft believed in by many of the leading men of Europe two centuries ago. Who believes in these things now ? The temper of the age has changed ; it no longer discovers in the history of the Hebrew race the hand of divinity, nor in an earthquake the anger of God. The old beliefs no longer live because the type of mind which rendered their life possible is dying out. In the nursery there may be life in the old tales yet, the mind of the child is fitted for wonder, but in the church there is death. Tales that live in the child, die in the man ; but the formulas belonging to the dead beliefs are not always buried with them, and the result is that divorce between belief and conduct which makes our modern English life such a living lie. During the Middle Ages the Christian world possessed two kinds of truth ; truth according to philosophy, and truth according to theology! As a result of this convenient arrangement a statement might be true in one department and false in another. Without acknowledging it in so many words the modern Christian adopts the same vicious practice; principles taught in church have no place out in the world, and so we go on saying one thing and doing another. We shut out the Bible from our legislation, we exclude it in practical politics as much as is possible, we refuse to allow religion any place in five-sixths of our social life, and then utter the frightful lie that our civilization is based upon the Bible and its teachings. Ignoring, consciously or unconsciously, the fact that over each successive generation Christianity exerts a lessening influence, many of its adherents stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the signs of decay everywhere confronting them. But it is not by limiting our view of Christianity to our own day or generation that we can hope to perceive how great the decline of that creed really is, We need to go further back and bring under our survey several centuries, and then we at once recognise what a poor insignificant thing Christianity has become. Time was when the Church held within its grasp the entire life of man, when art crawled to it for patronage, and music for shelter; when science and philosophy clipped their wings and worked humbly in the sphere to which theology had consigned them. To-day all is changed ; people no longer believe, despite their protestations to the contrary, that the Church possesses any information that cannot be obtained by ordinary methods. Men die and go out into the great unknown with far less fear than they formerly did, when the priest stood at their bedsides croaking out his miserable message—concern for the spiritual welfare of the patient, not unmixed with the hope of becoming the possessor of his �7 worldly* goods. Science, Art, Literature, and Music, are no longer provinces of the Church’s kingdom. Science pursues its course and cares little whether the Church approves or disapproves; Art no longer depends upon Church parronage for its existence ; Music has established a kingdom of its own, and no longer exists to illustrate Church doctrines, as it did only 300 years ago; while year by year the proportion of books published upon theology become less and less. Like a kingdom being dismembered, the Church has lost one province after another; it stands to-day, a mere shadow of its former self, a follower where it once led, obeying orders where it once issued commands, receiving thankfully a kind word, thrown to her like a bone to a hungry dog, from men whom she would have burned at the stake had they but lived when the Church was still strong. Decay is as true of systems of thought as it is of inanimate objects. Just as the “ everlasting hills ” crumble away under the action of a number of hidden forces, so system after system of religion crumbles away before the advance of thought. It is not that the change is sudden or abrupt; on the contrary, it is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. Like the sepulchre of Moses, no man knoweth the grave of a religion, but the change takes place all the same; and it is only after a long period has passed that we are able to look back and show that the fundamental character of the creed has changed. Just as the seed by sheer expansion breaks through the membrane that surrounds it, so a religion finds itself shattered by the steady growth of thought. It matters not the particular religion with which we are dealing, for all present substantially the same features. Everywhere, North, South, Bast, and West, in Ancient and Modern times, we find men sooner or later breaking through the bonds of ancient creeds and formulating rules of life born of human experience, and more in harmony with present needs and desires. In our own day we see this tendency at work stronger than ever; on all sides we find the old order breaking up and giving place to the new. Dogmatic authority has had its day; the future is for Freethought. “ Away, away from the darkened rooms, Where they grudge you the light of day, Where men low bowing in craven fear To their mis-shapen idols pray. Of superstitious worshippers Enough in the years of old! To day Have done with portent, myth, and ghost, Leave them to your teachers gray.”—Goethe. BY THE SAME AUTHOR :---- “Evolution and Christianity.” Price 2d. “What is the Use of Prayer?” Price 2d. “ An Outline of Evolutionary Ethics,” Chapter 1.—Introductory. 2.—The Meaning of Morality. 3.—The Moral Standard. 4.—The Nature and Authority of Conscience. 5.—Society and the Individual. London.—R. FORDER, 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C. Bradford.—TRUTH .SEEKER COMPANY, 36, Villiers Street. �THE Edited by C. GOHEN. A Monthly Journal devoted to Mental Freedom and Progress Should be read by all Freethinkers. PUBLISHED ON THE FIRST OF EACH MONTH. LONDON!:—R. FORDER, 28, Stonecutter St., E.C. BRADFORDTRUTH SEEKER CO., 36, Villiers St. “TRUTH > SEEKER” PAMPHLETS. No. No. No. No. No. No. 1.—GENESIS AND SCIENCE, by Stanley Jones .. .. 2.—CHRIST AND ALLY SLOPER, by Sam Standring .. 3.—SECULARISM, by John Grange ..................................... 4.—THE DECAY OF BELIEF, by C. Cohen......................... 5.—HIS SATANIC MAJESTY, by S. H. Alison .. .. 6.—BIOGRAPHY OF A. B. MOSS, by Wm. Heaford. .. s. 0 0 0 0 0 0 d. 1 1 1 1 1 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The decay of belief Description An account of the resource Edition: 4th ed. Place of publication: London; Bradford Collation: 7 p. ; 21 cm. Series title: Truth Seeker Pamphlets Series number: No. 4 Notes: Portrait of author on front cover. Advertisement for monthly journal The Truth Seeker, on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available R. Forder; Truth Seeker Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1897] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N139 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The decay of belief), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English NSS Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/1cd224be0e557ddad9dc4b7ccd75eb3e.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=Xq%7EudR3Fe6UKLIGTql2cFmvHcoeU-PLJ8HL5ABELMqhDxmxwG4NPyhueCb9gf80UrpwYisfM50ILloWIqn-YSKK9x7YJz1O7Web0q1-NLHqaBy21fOQF0MtKvCniW0A6Er1wxIflDCzjLSDG485a-R3MT4lLBwcL1jPKpcrRbctX09NxZzYeyJySUD76iN7bpxXluVQddXP4zvELk5uNen6KTyPc9UJkihO6o119cUzhQjxcIBglxKU7E%7E1TmaiVxbxpifFePiZvlku6wj-jFpaKAMfS2kNaPb8HYvBC-m-TAuRPNwlHvO6i2vtpz7e%7ESOBYSJT3QVkKoAmXGI2oew__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 26da9afba5f4d211298141719d01dbbb PDF Text Text •nil THE NEW RELIGION IN ITS ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE OLD. yd A SERMON PREACHED AT iinti #nutjr /fete, Wnuimunrflr, &J WEDNESDAY, 19th MOSES, 71 [19th JANUARY, 1859], aal ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF AUGUSTE COMTE, I 19th JANUARY, 1798. fygm. M By RICHARD CONGREVE. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. POLLEY, HIGH STREET, WANDSWORTH. 1859. 'ice Threepence^ ��A SERMON. I would ask you fora few minutes to turn your thoughts to the other members of our church, wherever they may be, and more especially to the two centres, where, on this day, a similar act of worship will be performed— Paris, and Long Island, New York. I read rather than speak to you, as our small number makes speaking difficult. It is scarcely possible to avoid a conversational style when there are but few present. Yet my wish is to avoid it to-day, for reasons which I need not here state. When writing, though we write what is to be heard directly by a few only, and though perhaps it is a good rule to write with some one person ever, as it were, before one, yet we can keep the consciousness that what we write may be heard by a larger circle outside, and whilst the one person pre­ serves us from vagueness, the sense of the larger audience stimulates and controls. I would ask you to keep this in mind, if what I have written seem out of place in so small a congregation. I use the word “ congregation” purposely, as the technical term for a religious meeting, for such I con­ sider this. I do not, I am aware, speak to you as a Priest of Humanity. My age is a bar to that. Nor were our church in possession of its full organization, should I speak as one of the second order of her ministers —as a vicar. My insufficient scientific training would prevent me. But under existing circumstances, I feel �4 that Mr. Edger is right in saying that I exercise in a sense the vicar’s office. Where there are disciples or members, there, however limited their number, is a church. We have a faith, the outlines of a ritual, and sufficient members. It would be an undue shrinking from responsibility not in such a case to supply, within the limits of what is absolutely necessary, that which alone is wanting—a ministration. I look on this dis­ course as the first definite act of such a ministration; and though in the immediate present the case is not very likely to occur, yet should it occur, should there be a call for other acts of a minister, such as the ad­ ministration of the indispensable sacraments, I mean Presentation and Marriage, I feel warranted in saying that I should have’ power to administer them with the full sanction of our central direction, duly sought and obtained. For the present, preaching is all we want, and that part of our institutions I hereby inaugurate. I am aware that such a step implies much; that it im­ poses obligations. I accept its consequences—I will meet those obligations to the full measure of my strength I have during the last few months anxiously tested our position and its needs. I have listened to the objections made to us, to the advice offered. I have examined also the position of our opponents, whether friendly or not. I have also looked at the general state of our country; the evils under which it labours, and their remedies ; the state of opinion, and the measures which, with a fair attention to prudence, we may attempt. The general conclusion I have come to is, that the boldest course is the wisest, that the doctrine we advocate, the faith we hold, must be put forward as a religion, as something to believe in and live by—not as something which demands intellectual assent; that here in England we can be nothing if we do not claim, �5 and show the grounds for our claim, to be everything-; that we must make it clear that we are not a philoso­ phical school, but a church. On the practical measures which this conclusion involves I will not detain you now. My only aim has been to make it quite clear in what light I look on this present act of joint religion, as the inauguration, however imperfect, of the minis­ terial functions in the English branch of the Church of Humanity. Two days have been set apart as festivals of the Religion of Humanity. Both have reference to its founder. The one commemorates the birth, the other the death, of our Master, Teacher, and Guide, Auguste Comte. On the latter, in September, in the present state of things, it is an object, as far as possible, to make the celebration of his memory as collective an act as possible. Whenever we have it in our power, we should, I think, consider it as a duty to join with our brothers, of whatever nation, assembled at Paris, to visit the tomb of our founder, and be present at such ceremony as our head shall think proper. On the day set apart in memory of his birth, the nature of the case, and our local separation, rather point to a national celebration at the outset, to merge, as our faith extends, in more local ones. I have at times regretted the choice of this second day. I have wished that the first of the year had been taken. I have wished, that is, that there had been one directly personal day, whilst the second had been at once consecrated as the Festival of Humanity. Yet it is more in the spirit of our religion to accept cheerfully what has been done, and turn it to the best account. The ground of the decision was, I believe, that we were not ripe for the more abstract worship; that in our existing state we could join most truly and �6 with most reality in such worship as had direct refer­ ence to our founder. This language of course implies that the other had been better, and points us onward to that riper state. How, then, can we best make this day serve that purpose—let it keep, that is, its own character as a personal festival, at the same time that it assumes a preparatory character as leading on to the direct worship of Humanity, which I confidently trust will ere long be begun? A comparison of the two events which we commemorate will give us the answer. When on its anniversary we mourn our master’s death, we naturally concentrate our attention on him, on his life and services. We worship Humanity in and through her noblest servant and organ, Auguste Comte. Our worship of her takes something of an indirect character; we insist more on the individual instrument and on the work done, less on the power which it served or on the cause in which it was done. To-day, on the other hand, we may take a different view. Placing ourselves, as we naturally do, at a period prior to the work which Comte did, we ask our­ selves what was the preparation made for it? And the answer makes us look back on the past which had preceded him—on the upward movement of our race, on the accumulation of materials, on the means placed at his disposal. We concentrate, then, our attention, not now on the work done, but on the cause in which it was done; not on the servant, but on the power he served; not on the product, but on the producer. We reverse the former process, and contemplate Comte in and through Humanity. So looked at, both festivals equally bear on one of the most prominent characteristics of our religion—the worship of the dead. In the one, we worship them in and through the last and greatest of those eminent few �7 who, being dead, yet speak to the race of which they were the servants. In the other, we worship implicitly the aggregate of those whose collective services had prepared his way, who had hewn the materials which he was to employ in his construction. We worship that ever-increasing portion of humanity to which he is now joined, which comprehends all those who have lived worthily. Again, the second is the more collec­ tive, the first the more individual view. Let us place ourselves in thought at the period of Comte’s birth, quite at the end of the eighteenth cen­ tury, and estimate, on as comprehensive a scale as we can, the result of the past history of our race and its then condition, at the time, that is, prior to the first promulgation of his conceptions. The prevalent feel­ ing was one of uncertainty, distrust, almost despair. Movement there had been, and still was; and that the movement in the past had been, in the ordinary sense, a progress, was scarcely denied. Whether it was so in the present, was a matter of question. Looking back, men saw that one organization after another had been tried, and attentive study might show that each succes­ sive one had been larger than the last. All, however, including the last and widest, that of Catholicism, had failed; or, at least we may say, it had been broken up for a time, so that even its most devoted admirers only ventured to put its restoration as a possible alternative. The crash of the old society still ringing in their ears, men were glad to accept any temporary shelter which might avert anarchy; but such shelter as they found could satisfy no competent judge. They questioned history, and whatever the value of the answers they elicited, they did not succeed in so interpreting her teaching as to draw any guiding principle from it. They saw that not merely temporal organizations, king­ �8 doms and empires, had broken up, but that spiritual ones also had ceased to command men’s faith. They were looked on as fancies which the world had out­ grown ; disencumbered from which we might proceed onwards without hesitation. In a word, the intellect of man had acquiesced in denial, in negation. Yet it was clear to the blindest, for it was subsequent to the great crisis of 1793 and 1794, that the heart of man had not, and could not, acquiesce in negation and de­ nial ; that it was at issue with the conclusions of the intellect; or that, if it accepted them, the result was evil. For the nature of man was there still with its eternal combination of two elements, eternal under every difference of name, its selfishness and its un­ selfishness. The first was universally recognised, by some even made to constitute the whole nature; the second was only recognised as an independent element by a few; yet its existence was felt by the vast ma­ jority, felt if not explicitly acknowledged. Science and feeling were at variance. The questions put by the heart were disallowed by the intellect, whilst the conclusions of the intellect were rejected by the heart. Under such conditions action was difficult. Had, then, the past been a failure ? Had the efforts of the human race been wasted ? had its movements been governed by no law, and so did they afford no light for the future? Was all to begin again, and without any definite aim was society to go through a cycle of new changes to end in a new crash, instinc­ tively suiting itself to its wants, and turning itself, like the sick man, only to get a change of position, under the impulse of mere weariness? Was history but a record of action, with an interest of its own but with no teaching, of the same character as a work of fiction, serving to occupy the learned, or to amuse those who had a taste for it ? �9 But ten years before Comte’s birth, a different feeling had been common. The European world had been full of hope on the eve of a great change which had held out the brightest prospects—a new era of justice, and peace, and universal brotherhood. But the change had come ; the event had disappointed all, and a gene­ ral lassitude was the consequence. A large destruction had taken place, but no new construction had followed; and men were building again their temporary shelter with the materials which had failed them so often. The consciousness of this was discouraging. In all times, since the earliest dawn of history, men who had not been absorbed in the immediate present had looked inquiringly on the spectacle of man’s nature and human society, and had sought to give a reason to themselves of what they saw. As the race grew older, and its experience consequently increased, the judgments of such inquirers had become more com­ prehensive. An immutable destiny had presided over human action as over the order of nature, nay, even over the gods whom men and nature equally obeyed. An overruling Providence, in the person of an all-wise and all-powerful God, the Maker and Preserver of all things, had taken the place of that earlier belief, the creation at once of the philosophic intellect, as well as of the popular instinct. Subordinate to this general conception, there had been a dim sense that man’s actions and social development depended on fixed laws, traceable by observation, and capable of giving a cer­ tain measure of guidance. A combination of these two ideas had led men to frame schemes on which they could arrange the events of history, and the sequence of human revolutions. Boldly rejecting the first part of the combination, others had gone so far as to look for the solution of all such questions simply in man’s �10 circumstances, and nature, and history. Strong in the results of a limited and one-sided observation, they had trusted to their instinct, and proclaimed that progress was the law which humanity obeyed—progress ever onwards in a direct line, with an indefinite horizon before them of perfectibility, encouraging the most magnificent, must we not also add, the most visionary hopes—hopes, however, valuable even in their wildness, as testifying to the instinct which had induced their formation. That instinct, we may truly say, had never been wanting; we may trace it in the earliest periods of our race, in the creations of the poet, in the con­ ceptions of the philosopher, in the anticipations of the prophet. The old language is true. The earnest ex­ pectation of the creature waited for the manifestation; the whole creation groaned and travailed in pain until now. Such was the state of things, such the materials prepared, at the time when Comte’s powers were suf­ ficiently matured to form a judgment on them, and on the use to which they might be put; such I may add was the instinct of man, such the great want to be satisfied. The old interpretations of nature, and of human government, and social organization had failed. Was a new interpretation possible? Such was the problem to be solved. We say with confidence, and with gratitude; It has been solved. The interpretation has been given. Reading afresh the writing which had lain before the gaze of statesmen and philosophers, by the help of aids which they had not had, Auguste Comte was enabled to give an interpretation which they had missed from the want of these aids. He saw that in one depart­ ment there had been unbroken progress, whilst in all others there had been interchange of growth and decay. �11 He saw that in regard to that outer world, which is the theatre of man’s actions, a certain method had been allpowerful to reduce it more and more within the range of man’s knowledge and consequent power of dealing with it for his own purposes. That method had been the recognition of invariable laws, which we could learn by observation, and turn to useful account by obedience. Two branches only, of all that were accessible to man, remained exempt from the application of this method— the social and the moral. Once show that they could be brought within its range, and the philosophical problem was solved. The intellect was enabled to move evenly over all the field of human knowledge, without any abrupt separation of its parts. This Comte is acknowledged by competent judges to have shown. Social and moral laws being demonstrated, it re­ mained to apply them to practice. The philosophical study of human nature must find its expression, its application in practical politics. So alone could the truth and utility of its results be tested. But here his work undergoes a change. Its character is raised, might I say transfigured. The powerful philosophical elaboration becomes a creation. The treatise on the principles of government and morals passes into the constitution of a living church. The teacher and phi­ losopher stands before us as the apostle and the priest. He had long worked alone, and under the most ad­ verse outward circumstances. His intellect had been severely tasked, his affections repressed, his character exposed to all hardening influences, his daily life em­ bittered by constant domestic annoyances. He had borne up against all during seventeen years, in the faith that the truths he had to discover and reveal would be of real social value. He had laboured to fix on a firm basis the great discovery of his earlier life, the law of B �12 social development, the law of the three states of all our conceptions, holding good equally for the race and for the individual. With this object he had gone through the whole range of abstract thought, whether as applied to the outer world or to man. In this work he had found his refuge, in this work and in the spirit of love in which he had undertaken and continued it. Hence his great endurance, which had been tried at times even too severely. His life had been a constant act of devotion to the power he served. Outwardly impassive, the fire had burned more strongly within, and the afiection which could find no worthy individual object had been concentrated on a collective one. As he studied the movement of the human race in its history, we cannot doubt that half unconsciously his sympathy had grown more lively, his conviction of a brighter future more intense. This was but the natural result of such work as his. Every artist loves his work, and as Comte worked out into fuller light, the concep­ tions of the past stages of man’s existence, those con­ ceptions became, though under a strictly scientific garb, what his poem is to the poet. And all his conceptions and studies tended one way, to raise him out of himself, and to make him lose himself in his race. In silence, then, I conceive a great work had been going on; he had been preparing for a new existence. At the end of his philosophical elaboration, he rested before entering on the subsequent construction for which that had been but the basis. It was in this interval of rest that he became acquainted with Madame de Vaux. His inter­ course with her was short, one year saw its beginning and end. His intercourse, I mean, in the ordinary sense of the word. In the truest sense it ended only with his death, eleven years later. But that one year was enough. The inner deep was broken up; the great �13 springs of affection were opened; the long pent-up nature revealed itself, and as on the high mountain tract, what was but yesterday snow, was to-day the grass and the flower. His endurance and faith had met a reward. For him, too, there was a possibility of individual sympathy and affection, and the love of the race might be quickened by the genuine human love of a noble woman. I have heard it said, that for the truest tenderness you require great strength, and the language is certainly so far correct, that where a strong nature does not harden, but suffers itself to develope its tenderness, there this latter quality will master the man in a way which poorer natures find it hard to conceive. Be this as it may, it is clear that his love for Madame de Vaux revealed him to himself, placed his being and his work consequently in a new light before him, at the same time that it gratified the want of personal sympathy under which he had nearly sunk. In the vivid sense of blessedness which this change brought with it, in the enjoyment of this individual love, I again say it with the full consciousness of what I am saying, he was transfigured His true nature was shown forth, the warmth of his sympathies became evident, his character was softened, yet lost none of its force; his genius became clearer under the impulse of his heart. He trusted himself more fully, and gave himself a more complete expression. In the highest sense of the term, as well as in its more limited and more ordinary sense, he became purified. He had him­ self drunk at the true spring of human happiness, which is love, and he had been prepared for its effects by his self-sacrifice. He was enabled to see that for others, too, for all men, there was no other source to which they could go but to this, where the laws of happiness and duty are fused into one. �14 He stood revealed to himself, and his work also stood in a new light before him. The unity of the human race, over whose progress he had pondered, had long been a conviction with him With the conception, too, of Humanity, as a higher organism he had familiarized himself, and by the light of that conception had inter­ preted its past and meditated on its future Neither in this respect any more than with regard to his own moral nature was there any abrupt change. The phi­ losophical character had been predominant; it gave way to the human. The conviction became faith ; the organism in which he had believed claimed and received his veneration and his love, in other words, his worship. So I read his progress. We who share that faith, that veneration, and that love; we who would worship as he worshipped; we who would preach by our lives, and, where possible, by our spoken or written words, that great Being whose existence is now revealed; that Being of whom all the earlier divinities which man has created as the guardians of his childhood and early youth are but anticipations, we can appreciate the greatness of the change which his labour has effected. We can see, and each in his several measure can proclaim to others, that what was but a dim instinct, has become a truth, in the power of which we can meet all difficulties; that where there was inquiry, now there is knowledge; where there was anxious searching, now there is possession; that un­ certainty has given way to confidence, despondency to courage. We see families forming into tribes, and tribes into cities or states, and states into still larger unions. And distinct from all such unions we see, besides, different races co-existent, distrustful, or hostile. We feel that the ascending series is not com­ plete ; that as the family in the earliest state is at war �15 with other families, the tribe at war with other tribes, so the nations and races are at variance with each other; and that as the remedy in each previous case has been the fusion of the smaller into the larger organism, so it must be still the same if the process is to be completed, and that no more than the single family or the isolated tribe can the greatest nation or the most powerful race stand wholesomely alone. All must bend, all must acknowledge a common superior, a higher organism, detached from which they lose themselves and their true nature, become selfish and degraded. Still higher organisms there may be; we know not. If there be, we know that we cannot neglect the one we know, nor refuse to avail ourselves of the aid which it can give us when once acknowledged and accepted. We accept it then, and believe in it. We see the benefits Humanity has reaped for us by her toilsome and suffering past; we feel that we are her children, that we owe her all; and seeing and feeling this, we love, adore, and serve. For we see in her no mere idea of the intellect, but a living organism, of which we all are parts, and from which we cannot conceive ourselves cut off, the highest organism within the range of our knowledge. The family has ever been allowed to be real; the state has ever been allowed to be real; St. Paul felt, and since him, in all ages, Christians have felt that the Church is real. We claim no less for Humanity; we feel no less that Humanity is real, requiring the same love, the same service, the same devotion. We see the General Assembly and Church of the first-born, the faithful who in all ages have served, not themselves, but their race. We would be joined to them ourselves. We see with Isaiah, in the visions of the future, all nations coming to join us and them. The great apostle saw the Christian Church in �16 its glory, without spot or wrinkle. We throw open wider than he could the portals of the Church to which we belong—the Church of Humanity. The world to him lay in wickedness, and was given over to the service of devils. We can trace the good underlying the evil —can sympathize with our fellow-men in all their phases of existence ; and where he saw devils, we can see creations of as much validity as his own God; and, as I have said already, in his and their objects of worship we find anticipations of our own. True, St. Paul spoke of there being neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ being all and in all. And the language testifies to the largeness of his love, and the grandeur of his intellectual conception. But for the union to which he aspired a condition is implied which could not be fulfilled for the time which preceded him, and has not been fulfilled since his time; which, we may safely say, never will be fulfilled. Christendom is not Chris­ tian, nor becoming Christian. How should it convey to others that which it does not believe in and live by itself? How should it convert Heathendom ? We are limited by no such condition. We cannot restrict our admission. The very idea of Humanity forbids any such exclusion. In one way or other she admits all human beings within her pale. Nay she goes further, and recognises the services of the animal races that promote her welfare. Nor is this the limit of her power. She may borrow Shelley’s words, and say— I am the eye with which the universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; All harmony of instrument or verse, All phrophecv, all medicine are mine, All light of art or nature ;—to my song Victory and praise in their own right belong. �In the exercise of her power she proceeds to com­ plete herself by two great creations. As we contemplate man’s action and existence, we are led to think of the sphere in which they take place, and of the invariable laws under which they are de­ veloped. We rest not, then, in any narrow or exclusive spirit in Humanity, but we pass to the earth, our common mother, as the general language of man—the correct index to the universal feeling—has ever delighted to call her; and from the earth we rise to the system of which she is a part. We look back on the distant ages when the Earth was preparing herself for the habitation of man, and with gratitude and love we acknowledge her past and present services. With the same feelings, though with less* intensity, we regard the heavenly bodies, which in a greater or less degree influence this abode of man—the Sun, the Moon,, and the Earth’s fellow-planets; the World, in short, in the real sense in which we use the term. The stars in their brightness, the hosts of heaven are a sight of beauty, but beyond that (I speak broadly, not unaware that the statement requires a certain limitation scientifically), they offer us nothing. And in the spirit of self-discipline we accept their beauty gratefully, but we seek not to penetrate further, for we recognise the limits of our powers, and we can afford no waste of them. The invariable laws under which Humanity is placed have received various names at different periods. Destiny, Fate, Necessity, the Heaven, Providence, all are so many names of one and the same conception : the laws which man feels himself under, and that without the power of escaping from them. We claim no exemption from the common lot. We only wish to draw out into consciousness the instinctive acceptance �18 of the race, and to modify the spirit in which we regard them. We accept; so have all men. We obey; so have all men. We venerate; so have some in past ages or in other countries. We add but one other term—we love. We would perfect our submission, and so reap the full benefits of submission in the im­ provement of our hearts and tempers. We take in conception the sum of the conditions of existence, and we give them an ideal being and a definite home in Space, the second great creation which completes the central one of Humanity. In the bosom of Space we place the World; and we conceive of the World and this our mother Earth as gladly welcomed to that bosom with the simplest and purest love, and we give our love in return. Thou art folded, thou art lying In the light which is undying. Thus we complete the Trinity of our religion, Humanity, the World, and Space. So completed, we recognise its power to give unity and definiteness to our thoughts, purity and warmth to our affections, scope and vigour to our activity. We recognise its power to regulate our whole being; to give us that which it has so long been the aim of all religions to give—internal union. We recognise its power to raise us above ourselves, and by intensifying the action of our unselfish instincts, to bear down into their due sub­ ordination our selfish ones. We see in it yet un­ worked treasures. We count not ourselves to have apprehended, but we press forward to the prize of our high calling. But even now, whilst its full capabilities are unknown to us, before we have apprehended, we find enough in it to guide and strengthen us. It har­ monizes us within ourselves by the strong force of love, �19 and it binds us to our fellow-men by the same power. It awakens and quickens our sympathy with the past, uniting us with the generations that are gone by firmer ties than have ever been imagined hitherto. It teaches us to live in the interest and for the good of the gene­ rations that are to follow in the long succession of years. It teaches us that for our action in our own generation we must live in dutiful submission to the lessons of the past, to the voice of the dead, and at the same time we must evoke the future by the power of imagination, and endeavour so to shape our action that it may conduce to the advantage of that future. Such are the general principles, by the light of which the institutions of our nascent church and social or­ ganization have been sketched by its Founder. A detailed notice of these institutions I avoid at present. Enough if in brief I state some of their leading points. On the basis of the Family, the primary and indestruc­ tible element of all human society, we raise the Country or the State, and the Church, as the three social forms which can never be dispensed with, which admit neither of diminution nor of increase when the human organism is rightly constituted. Marriage indissoluble even by death; the parental and filial relation strengthened by an education which shall not neglect the intellect, but which shall never forget its essential subordination as the minister of the affections and the guide of action; which shall therefore recognise the mother’s influence as predominant during childhood, and shall direct all its efforts to preserve it and strengthen it during youth and early manhood,—Women freed from all hard labour; freed from the necessity of leaving their homes, and maintained by the labour of man; honoured as the highest influence in domestic and public life, as the purest representatives of humanity;—a Priesthood, �20 which as every other great priesthood has been, shall be the depositary of all the intellectual accumulations of the race, and which shall, with perfect gratuitousness, freely give out from that store to all equally, without distinction of sex or of rank; a priesthood which shall bring to the performance of its high duties devotion and zeal such as we honour in the better members of other priesthoods, whilst it shall give guarantees which have never been as a whole exacted from them; which shall renounce all temporal power and all property, all tendency to isolation of interests and distinctness of position as given by celibacy, whilst it brings a long novitiate and ripe age to insure so far as may be its intellectual and moral competence; a priesthood which, as the fountain of education, and the dispenser of knowledge—(a knowledge, be it remembered, accessi­ ble to all, and consequently guarded against any undue concentration or abuse,)—shall reject all claims to mysterious power, and stand on the right and noble performance of its educational functions, but which, on that firm basis shall speak to all classes and on all questions with freedom and sincerity, thus exercising a great consultative influence over those whom it has educated; a priesthood, finally, to which all orders and degrees of man shall look for their sanction and con­ secration whilst living, for the judgment on their life after death, that consecration to be given, that judg­ ment to be pronounced, by virtue of a common faith and common principles of action.—Capital and labour both honoured, both recognised as essential; the capitalist looked on as wielding the most indispensable of material functions in the accumulation and trans­ mission of wealth; as the comptroller and dispenser of the treasures which the industry of man has brought into existence by its long efforts, but never suffered to �21 forget that he is the steward of society, the depositary of a trust to he used for no selfish ends; the workman released from his now brutalizing toil-released .to an extent which as yet it would be thought wild to dream of—taught to estimate aright and acquiesce in his po­ sition; taught at the same time to modify it so far as is compatible with such acquiescence; accepting labour not as a curse but as a blessing; only asking that the treasures of affection and of art and of thought shall be opened to him largely and freely, so that he, too, may feel and enjoy his human nature; finding therefore in the rich enjoyment of the family life, in the powers conferred on him by education, in the consciousness of his freedom from their responsibilities a compensation for the absence of power and wealth; yet feeling at the same time that by the sympathy of the priesthood and that of his fellow-workmen there is placed in his hands a strong power to moderate the action of the other social forces from which he at present suffers so grievously.-^ Such are the points to which my present limits confine me, but they may be enough to give in a measure the conception of society such as we view it from the vantage ground of Humanity. I would add that such a form of society looks to no law or despotic agencies to establish it or to maintain it. It must rest on a purely spiritual basis, on the free convictions of those who form it, such convictions to result from a common education. On no point are the statements of our founder clearer; on no point are they so little un­ derstood. The degree to which they are misunderstood or misrepresented is scarcely conceivable by any one who has honestly read his works. I have stated the problem which Comte found un­ solved. I have stated the personal conditions under which he solved it. I have stated very briefly the �22 solution he has given. I turn to the consideration of ourselves who accept that solution and its fullest con­ sequences, who are to begin to reap where he has sown. It is true we are but a small body; it is true we are but pioneers of the future; that we can never hope to see the organization of that future otherwise, speaking generally, than as he saw it, as an ideal. Yet by virtue of his labours and of his creations we have en­ tered into our inheritance. We are of age—we claim the full possession of that which is ours. 1 feel that we must work mainly for the future, but I do not therefore feel that we need renounce any part of that which the past has bequeathed to us. We have the consciousness of being the children and the servants of Humanity. We would use in her service all the ma­ terials with which she endows us. We would enjoy as her children all the property she has stored up for us. Her existence is one and continuous—a constant struggle to raise herself and increase her possessions; to adapt herself to her home and her home to herself; and whilst we would add in our turn, we feel that we may freely enjoy the results already attained. Our inheritance consists of the great actions that have been done, the great words that have been spoken, the great creations of art in all its forms. Religion, philosophy, art, science, industry, all are put under contribution. So, too, are the various social organizations which men have formed, and in which they have embodied their conceptions of order, of law, and government. We are made free of Humanity, and we pass upwards or downwards in her course by the power of sympathy. Nor does our freedom stand us in less stead with re­ ference to the problems of the present day, and the co-existent branches of the great human family. Our �23 sympathy is in this case limited only by the imperfec­ tion of our knowledge. It will increase as our know­ ledge increases. We are sure that the faith by which we live is sufficient for all our requirements. It has been felt that Catholicism, and still more Protestantism, stand in a difficult relation to the arts and civilizations that preceded them, as also to those which exist at the same time with them, though distinct from them. The difficulty has been variously met, but never quite got rid of. We feel no such difficulty. In the unity of Humanity we set ourselves clear of it. All previous, all co-existent civilizations are different in form only. We accept all as useful and true in relation to the wants of those who lived or who live under them. We seek to understand and sympathize, not to regret or condemn. We can admit no break. Nay more, we seek to trace out the ideas and feelings which men have clothed so variously, that we may incorporate them so far as we can, for our faith is not new in its elements, but new in its combination of those elements. With the simple worshipper of the Fetich period, we endow the world without us with will and feeling; we do not treat all the beautiful forms around us as inert matter, we only refuse them intelligence. But whereas he rested in that belief as sufficient, and assumed that it was an adequate account of the external world, we consciously adopt it, and after the labour of the scien­ tific intellect is complete we turn from it and borrow the eye of the poet. With the later worshipper of the gods of Polytheism we can also sympathize, and recog­ nise the services of his graceful faith, as the poets of our western civilization have ever done. The severe conception of the Jewish legislator or the Arabian prophet, their pure monotheism finds no stinted ad­ miration from us, any more than the modification of �the former aimed at by early Christianity, or the half polytheistic system of Catholicism. The framework of polity which all the religious lawgivers have constructed on their religion is made to conduce to our teaching. And we so treat all the past, so seek to combine it, not as a mere intellectual question,—for the pleasure of contemplation,—glorying in “ the wide thought and the vast hope,” as a species of personal distinction and acquisition. Rather would we share the simplest and the lowest of previous faiths than thus dwell alone in our palace of art, however richly adorned with all forms of beauty, replete with all high associations. No, we seek to sympathize with all, to understand all, to em­ brace all, in order that we may serve more usefully. The real and the useful, such are the tests to which we bring alike philosophical conceptions and poetic visions, —such is the basis on which we build. Men amongst our fellow-men, we raise our palace towers on the broad foundations of our common humanity. Resting on this cordial sympathy with the past, on this dutiful submission to the influence of the dead, we feel no difficulty when we try to penetrate and call up before us the future. Experience teaches us no distrust. On the contrary, it inspires us with full confidence. We are sure that what has been an unbroken progress shall contiue to be so, and with this conviction borne in upon us, on the most rational grounds, we cast aside all hesitation. The imagination of the poet, the vision of the prophet, we use them both. And within the limits of man’s condition soberly estimated, there is no good of which we do not see the certain fruition. We see wars cease and jarring interests reconciled by virtue of the convergent tendency which we verify in the past history of our race, and not by any fanciful anticipation. We see the human race, conscious of its destination, �25 advancing towards a more complete mastery over itself, its energies, and its circumstances. We see the numerous evils to which we are liable met with more skill where skill is available, with greater resignation where resignation is necessary. We see many of those evils disappear as the natural result of the greater unity of the whole man, which the Religion of Humanity en­ sures. The forms of European disease are unknown, many of them, to the simple Fetichists of Africa. It seems no mere dream to suppose that the return of mental harmony to the distracted populations, whether of Europe, Asia, or America, may have a like result. The past civilizations have seen the arts cultivated, and productive of fruits which are the heirloom of the race. The civilization of the future, we doubt it not, shall see the same effect on a grander scale, in proportion as the basis on which it rests shall be firmer, and men’s sense of possession stronger. True, that for the present the new faith exists but in outline, and appears but meagre in this point of view, when put side by side with its predecessors, Polytheism or Catholicism. This is its necessary condition at its birth. But whilst it adopts, nay, claims as its own the productions of its rivals, it will in due time match them and complete them Till it does so we enjoy what others enjoy with a better title than theirs, and a more inspiriting hope. For the present in which our lot is cast, its considera­ tion is less cheering. We need the strength derived from the other two, and the steadiness of conviction which our view of them is calculated to give. We need, I hesitate not to say it, to live as little as we can in the present, as much as we can in the past and future. Still we must live and act, and whilst I allow the gloomy character of the present, I feel that our faith can meet it and master it. The more we rise above it, the clearer �26 will be our view of its wants and of our own conduct. We know that, wander and revolt as it may, no gene­ ration or succession of generations can withdraw itself from the operation of the fixed laws of our nature. It may not be for us to see how the existing condition of things is leading on to the future of which we are so confident; yet we may be sure that it is so leading, and by an attentive study we shall discern the how. We must not be led astray by the noise and hurry around us, but watch what has preceded us, and be sure that in silence influences are at work which will set matters right. We are freed from all nervous excitement and impatience by this conviction; at the same time I can trace in it no tendency to enfeeble our action. Our great object must be to get a clear conception of the nature and limits of our intervention if it is to be useful, so as to avoid waste of efforts. There is scarcely any feature of the present time in England which is more discouraging than the waste we see going on owing to the want of such a conception and the misunderstanding of the social problems. We can avoid this, and yet find abundant scope for our activity. For whilst we acknowledge the evils and imperfections that exist, and would sound to their very depths the social wants, we avail ourselves to the full also of all remedies that offer, nay, even largely of palliatives; and we feel the real interest which society, however disorganized, can never lose. This follows, of course, from our view of life. This earth is to us our home, its actual inhabi­ tants those whom we are to help, and by whom we are to be helped more immediately. We feel that, if accepted, our faith can largely minister to the good of mankind. We acquiesce in no desparing abandonment of our position. We acquiesce not in the general sauve qui pent cry which I hear loudly preached from �27 the Christian pulpits. We would stand ourselves and gather others round us, turning the rout into resistance, and resistance into victory. We call on others to do the same, or to confess that they cannot, and as confessing that, to stand aside whilst we act, guide, and govern. It will, I hope, be seen from this language, that when I say we ought to live mainly in the past and in the future, I speak in no spirit of quietism, or from any wish to shirk the questions and difficulties and duties of the present. If we are to clear ourselves of the present, it is in order that we may serve it better, and gain strength for that service. In another form the language would be accepted by all religious minds. The acts of devotion, prayer, meditation, the Christian sacrament of the Mass or the Lord’s Supper, what are they but communion with the invisible—the not present? and what is one great object of them but to enable those who are most careful in performing them to act the better on the visible—the present? We differ not in principle if we modify and enlarge the form. We, too, would live in faith or communion with that which is not seen, whether that communion take the shape of commemoration of benefits received, or of imagination of the future blessings to be conferred by Humanity. As a necessary link in the great chain of these blessings we would exert ourselves with all vigour. Thus imperfectly I have touched on the main points of our position considered in relation to our direct action. But we can nope of us forget that we are in the midst of opponents, and that our bearing towards them is of the greatest practical importance. We cannot hope to escape the fate of all who have broken off from received opinions and the traditional faith of �28 their time or country. In vain we urge that ours is a ■continuation, a development of the past. It is antago­ nistic to the present; that is undeniable and enough. Nor however much we may wish to strip our faith of any aggressive character, can we prevent its being in competition with existing forms of religious belief. Opposition then we must meet, and considerable hostility; and though I cannot wish even not to have the former, nor hope to conciliate the latter, still I would do what lies in me to make our own attitude as inoffensive as possible, and to attract the sympathy of the better amongst our opponents. In their ranks, and with the same general professions, are to be met men as widely apart in feeling as is con­ ceivable. With some few I know the sympathy I offer will not be rejected, that which I court not be denied me. I feel also that there are many on whose strongest opposition I count who will not lose all kindly feeling. With such I would wish the contest to be of a very simple character. I would say to them—We differ as to means, but in a large degree our end is the same; we would serve our fellow-men, so would you. Where there is misery, or ignorance, or vice, there we both would try our remedies. We, the servants of Human­ ity, accept and honour your efforts as the servants of Christ; the more truly you .serve him, the more thoroughly you mould yourselves into his image, the more keen will be our sympathy and admiration. I speak as one who was once a Protestant to those who are still Protestants. We have in no way lost our sympathy with the church of our fathers, with the faith taught us in infancy, which guided us in youth and early manhood. Our memory is stored with all holy and gentle associations; we can yet appreciate the attractions of Protestantism, we yet dwell with �pleasure on its greater names, on the devotion which it has inspired, and still inspires, on the great influence for good which it can yet exercise. We can look on you as unconscious servants of Humanity. We are glad that you should look on us, as I know some have done, as unconscious servants of Christ. Again, if you are, either by birth or by change, members of the Catholic Church, our language need not essentially alter, whilst in one respect our sympathy is quickened. For of all the steps by which the race has advanced, on none do we linger with more respect­ ful and enthusiastic admiration than on mediaeval Catholicism, on the church of the Gregorys, the Innocents, the Bernards. None of the transitional forms of spiritual organization has conferred greater services on Humanity. We study the traditions of your Papacy, and we seek to adopt them into our system. To Catholicism we owe the distinction between the spiritual and temporal power, the great cardinal principle of all right social organization. To Catho­ licism, in combination with Feudalism, we owe the worship of the Virgin, in which creation we find a more perfect anticipation of our Divine Humanity than in the God-Man of early and northern Christianity. Our debt is deep to your Church, and we freely admit it. Or take another and not uncommon case, and suppose that the opponents, such as I am dealing with, have wandered from all the paths which have hitherto been accepted, but feel it impossible to acquiesce in the new one we offer. Again we have no difficulty. We have many of us been in the same condition—we have passed through a stage of negation, and can sympathize with those who remain in it. Your efforts to attain some­ thing more satisfactory are such as ours were; your labour to do good in your generation in spite of your �30 negative state is inspired by the same spirit which we wished to direct our own. To all such, whether Pro­ testant or Catholic, or neither, we can say indifferently —Let the only question be which shall work most efficiently in the cause which he considers the right one. You may not accept our aid, we will give it unaccepted and unsought. As your dangers thicken round you, you may adopt a different spirit, and welcome those whom you now reject. Come when it may, we shall be ready to meet such a change. Even now we would organize a league between all who feel the evils of our time, its social anarchy, its religious negation. If you say you cannot join us, that to you our remedy is a worse evil than the actual state, we shall none the less feel that there is such a league, though its existence be unrecog­ nised by you; and we shall be glad when you are ready on your side to recognise it. It were well if that time were come. With the large mass of our opponents those whom I have been addressing have almost as little in common as they have with us. Nominally they have the same cause, but their spirit is widely different. They profess the same belief, but with the one it is the guiding principle of their lives, on the other it has no visible effects. Here will be the worst hostility. We cannot hope to disarm it. Suspicion, reproach, cold friendship, and zealous enmity—such was the treat­ ment Arnold taught us to expect whilst Christian, and his teaching was the legitimate result of his experience. We can hardly drink a more bitter cup than he drank. We may count even more surely on the same in our new faith. We can only submit in patience, calling on our adversaries to make it clear by their conduct that they really value the faith which they profess. We can urge on them to act up to it, or not to attack us if they do not. But at the best we must bear their en- �•31 mity as we may; the less easily as we feel that those who show it have no warrant either intellectual or moral. Generally with regard to all opponents of whatever creed and whatever conduct, our attitude must be respectful and patient. And widening our view so as to take in all who are not with us, we must seek to act on them in as sympathetic a spirit as possible. Inflexible in principle, conciliating in action—such is our rule, as we know. But few will join us at present. Yet we are in contact with many. Whilst firmly asserting our own faith and rules of practice, and heartily trying to make our life accordant with them, we may treat all others around us, be their faith or practice what it may, with respect; they are men with human sympathies and under strong temptations, and with but slight aids to withstand them. Let ns seek, then, to take them at the point we find them, understand that, and without impatience try to urge them on from that point, not too abruptly severing them from their past. Where they express a want for what we can offer, there we freely offer it; where they do not, let us act on their present condition as we best may, here a little and there a little. Our business is, in fact, to convert where we can, but to serve all, whether they join us or no. And this the character of our faith enables us to do without any compromise or duplicity. For myself, I have been met, as a general rule, in a spirit which I can hardly think generous, even when I have not been attacked with personal abuse. I can promise my assailants that I will never fight them with their own weapons. I can promise them that no at­ tack shall ever draw from me a direct answer, but that each one, when worth considering, shall lead me more carefully to examine my own position, and to �32* endeavour to set it forth more clearly and convincingly to others. Each attack shall, in fact, he a stimulus tb renewed exertion, so long as I am capable of exertion. When I believed and preached the faith of Christ, I gave no reluctant or timid service. This I may confi­ dently say. When later I doubted that faith, yet had accepted no other, when, therefore, whatever work I could do could be done only in the general faith that what was good, and true, and beautiful would ulti­ mately be clear, I say with equal confidence that whilst I regret many things I said and did, yet my service was in spirit at least not grudgingly given, that where I saw my way I spoke and acted uncompromi­ singly. In the new period of my life on which I have entered, and so long as it shall last; in the new reli­ gion which I preach with the most cordial assent and the fullest satisfaction—satisfaction for whatever ener­ gies, or intellect, or feelings are left me—I feel that my service will be only different in form, the same in spirit. As I look back on my work, and such writings as I have published, I cannot but think that my adver­ saries have been mistaken in their tactics, that a less personal warfare wuuld have been wiser. To that I now invite them. The contest will, I foresee, be hot enough. So long as men are merely negative they are tolerated, or meet with secret sympathy; but when the work of reconstruction begins, when we offer something positive as a basis, the character of the struggle changes, and it will be war to the knife. I shrink not from such war, but it is the interest of all parties to strip it as far as is practicable of its evil features. In the cause to which I have devoted my­ self I would fight with all possible courtesy. Thoughts crowd in on me on an occasion like the present. I cannot express all. I have endeavoured to give a general idea of our faith, its origin, its foun- �QQ O<5 bti fB i0'; iiej n; ia xi ui.; [tf' 3»ih ii j4 sqf jo| io j xmf h?<f Io! ^1 ufil HOI W! "aS ?T6 •sioi JJfljB r:>v4 der, the position of its disciples in England, viewed in itself and in reference to their opponents. Other subjects must be reserved for other similar occasions, or for utterance in other ways. I would end to-day by a return to the point from which I set out. I would return to him whose birth we commemorate; to him and to her whose love he so highly valued, to whose influence he attributed such a powerful modification of his work. Each separate part of this discourse should but make us feel more profound gratitude for the joint services of these great benefactors of their race; gra­ titude to him who set forth Humanity to man, grati­ tude to her who supported him by her affection, and, as I said above, revealed him to himself. As time passes their names shall brighten; we can but antici­ pate by imagination the benefits of their services to our posterity, and the fulness of its gratitude. In the present sense of the benefits gained, in the enjoyment of the regeneration of which we see but the faint be­ ginnings, that posterity will seek and find an adequate expression for that gratitude. At the close of the long preparation of our race, at the commencement of the new era, surrounded by the great who preceded them, and who shall have followed them, in high pre-eminence will stand the pair from whom we date the foundation of bur religion—Clotilde de Vaux and Auguste Comte. Nor may we separate those whom he has associated— the two who with Madame de Vaux are commemorated on the tomb in which for a time he rests—his mother, and his adopted daughter. The first we know but through him, but his grateful and reverent remembrance is sufficient to ensure our honour. The second some of us are privileged to know, and are enabled to appre­ ciate the singular beauty of her lofty yet self-denying and humble love to him, and not to him only, but to­ wards all who share his faith. �> ’4 In conclusion, I turn from her chosen servants and organs to Humanity, the power whom we serve, in whosp name we are met to-day. We repeat our ac­ knowledgment that we owe to her whatever we are; we repeat our resolution to consecrate to her cause all our powers. This is our reasonable service, and in the discharge of it we have great encouragement. We pray that we may not be found wanting, each in his several station—each according to his opportunities soundly estimated. We pray that we may feel the influence of the holy faith we preach; that we may be led by it to all good in thought, word, and deed; that we may discipline ourselves—our heart, our intellect, our character—not suffering ourselves to commit the common error, and neglect ourselves and our own change into good whilst we are endeavouring to reform others; but fully sensible that efforts upon others are but hypocrisy unless accompanied by constant efforts on ourselves. So may we grow purer, and gentler, and more loving, at the same time that we grow wiser, and firmer, and more enduring. So shall we modify, even where we do not win. . In communion with the illustrious dead, and still more living communion with those whom we have ourselves known and loved, in sympathy with all men and the world without us, in loving obedience and re­ signation to the laws of our own nature and of that outer world, in loving acceptance of our destiny, we may feel, and think, and act, we may find peace our­ selves and do useful service to others. May the blessing of Humanity be with you all. THE END. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The new religion in its attitude towards the old. A sermon preached at South Fields, Wandsworth, Wednesday, 19th Moses 71 [19th January, 1859], on the anniversary of the birth of Auguste Comte, 19th January 1798. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Congreve, Richard [1818-1899] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 34 p. ; 10 cm. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available W. Polley Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1859 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3370 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (</span>The new religion in its attitude towards the old. A sermon preached at South Fields, Wandsworth, Wednesday, 19th Moses 71 [19th January, 1859], on the anniversary of the birth of Auguste Comte, 19th January 1798.<span>), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Religion Auguste Comte Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4929b9c5520cb7fe31b86ccd9c1747b9.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=rmRDIxWcpZetw7vbqRVG5T1WruOuWYIOstYDmv3nvrz%7E5v%7EzX8ZVIXGvI%7EWCd1%7EYvitCQ1wrJOGciDgdoowVMpS400rS-DME5grYlaJqxh%7E9CLDGvh2NtT6rSO9Q%7EngxU4Ui%7EOHHufi9JH7GSsetKSy4lB299mbBV1wE4eJjILb-9UdDnUR8zmFaiGWA3op0zeIklZUWXvN5I9FJqolpqB5WV8Gi3ibpfHZrbGMey6bS%7EGptnhDuIRS0fxryqNLJuJNrmxRHg0DjsKJa1XUu0bR22UswlTCyG1ZFwmvlTSGPmyYHbOPfh-SxoqC-MOenfZ2xwfsPM%7EgrX63e0QK83A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 25e6667ff182612c52f75f6168cb2877 PDF Text Text RELIGION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ HACKNEY AND KINGSLAND GAZETTE. Sir,—As you have for some time past been favouring your readers with the views of several of the ministers of the neighbourhood on Theology, perhaps you will kindly find space for the following views of a layman on what he presumes to call “ Religion,” and oblige, Yours respectfully, I believe in Rational Christianity, pure and simple, or Christian mo­ rality, as was taught by Christ; in contra-distinction to the adulterated clerical Christianity now so prevalent, and which has almost elbowed the Christianity of Christ out of the world; whereby superstition and foolish rites and ceremonies are substituted in the room of pure morality, true vir­ tue, and genuine religion. I believe the Christianity of Christ to he “ Peace on earth, goodwill to man,” the love of God and our neighbour, universal charity and benevolence, and the golden rule of “ doing to others as w7e would have them to do unto us,” and not in the incomprehensible creeds and unintelligible dogmas of popular theology. I believe in a God of perfect justice, who rewards the good in exact proportion to their merits, and proportionately punishes the wicked ; such punishments being correc­ tive and purifying : “ whatsoever a man sows so shall he reap.” That the favour of God and happiness are to be procured by repentance and amend­ ment; by personal not by vicarious agency. That well-matured reason and conscience are the best guides to be depended on, and if we neglect or re­ nounce their directions and admonitions, we lay ourselves open to all man­ ner of delusion and priestcraft, hateful to God and destructive to mankind. That instead of stereotyped creeds, blind zeal, and religious persecution for “righteousness’ sake,” we should promote love, peace, temperance, gratitude, charity and universal benevolence : so as to reduce religion to that plain, simple system^ of aiming to attain that abstract perfection as taught by Christ, wJ^Bjd“ Be ye perfect.” The principles to promote $hese are few and easy: lst/l^^e is a God, an Almighty Creator, to whom all existence belongs and is subject) and who ought to be worshipped by all mankind. 2nd, That by his7 immutable laws, the good are rewarded and the wicked punished here and hereafter. 3rd, That repentance and reformation are .required to obtain the one and escape the other. 4th, That true religion �2 is that which was stated by Christ, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”' To love God is to love all “ Good,” as truth, justice, charity, and every good work ; to love truth is to love the “ God of Truth,” &c. I do not believe in the orthodox view of the atonement, that Christ came to reconcile God to us, but rather that he came to reconcile us to God.. I do not believe in the necessity of his having to be crucified, and to take upon himself the sins of all, before man could be saved ; if such were the case how infinitely grateful we ought to be to those orthodox Jews who cruelly put him to death, in order that we might be saved ! Neither do I •believe in the orthodoxy of the present day, which says “there are three Gods all equal,” and yet so unequal that one God is ever interceding, and endeavouring to appease the wrath of another God ! if so, one must be in the wrong ! I believe in the absolute perfection of a Divine Creator, and who does not thus require to be changed in order that endless punishment may be averted, for temporary sins. I believe that God is love, and that his “ mercy” and not his chastisement “ endureth for ever.” I do not believe in “ original sin” and that man was pre-ordained to be its victim ; nor in the destruction of unbaptized infants, as the Roman and Anglican priests tell us. I prefer Christ’s doctrine ; he says “ of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” I do not believe in that best friend of priest­ craft,—a personal devil, and who is said to be more mighty than the Allmighty in obtaining the greatest number of immortal souls, thus having power to thwart God’s providence,—nor in a material hell-fire, which is ever consuming those souls. I do not believe “ in three Gods, yet one God” which the Church of England says we must believe or “ without doubt perish everlastingly.” Its creeds are to me downright blasphemy. 1 do not believe that the Bible was divinely inspired” from beginning to end and was all written by the “finger of God.” I believe the Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible, that it is an historical, moral and spiritual teacher, not altogether correct, but containing many truths and many errors ; a compilation of different works by different authors, written at different periods, and by the most learned and wise men of their day, but that neither they nor their works are infallible, as the science of geology and astronomy, and even their own contradictions prove. That men in after ages collected and bound together such of these books as they thought proper and called them the Bible, and that these selfsame human beings, at the Council of Nice, &c., rejected such other books as they thought of less worthy note ; that these men were also as learned and wise as the times would permit, but not infallible and possibly not altogether without prejudice or partiality. I believe real Christianity to be absolute religion, which thinks and works ; goodness towards man, and piety towards God; undogmatic, un­ sectarian, liberal, broad and free, preached wdth faith and applied to life, being good and doing good. There is but one real rel i gih we need only open our eyes to see, and which requires neither creeds nor catechisms to discern; only live it, in love to God and man, and we are blessed by Him who liveth for ever, in spite of all that priests and their dupes may say to the contrary, for thank God they are not to be our judges, other­ wise few would escape. �RELIGION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ HACKNEY AND KINGSLAND GAZETTE.” Sir,—As you have for some time past beeD favouring your readers with the views of several of the ministers of the neighbourhood on Theology, perhaps you will kindly find space for the following views of a layman on what he presumes to call “ Religion,” and oblige, Yours respectfully, C. I believe in Rational Christianity, pure and simple, or Christian mo­ rality, as was taught by Christ; in contra-distinction to the adulterated ■clerical Christianity now so prevalent, and which has almost elbowed the Christianity of Christ out of the world; whereby superstition and foolish rites and ceremonies are substituted in the room of pure morality, -true vir­ tue, and genuine religion. I believe the Christianity of Christ to be “ Peace on earth, goodwill to man,” the love of God and our neighbour, universal charity and benevolence, and the golden rule of “ doing to others as we would have them to do unto us,” and not in the incomprehensible creeds and unintelligible dogmas of popular theology. I believe in a God -of perfect justice, who rewards the good in exact proportion to their merits, and proportionately punishes the wicked ; such punishments being correc­ tive and purifying : “ whatsoever a man sows so shall he reap.” That the favour of God and happiness are to be procured by repentance and amend­ ment; by personal not by vicarious agency. That well-matured reason and ■conscience are the best guides to be depended on, and if we neglect or re­ nounce their directions and admonitions, we lay ourselves open to all man­ ner ot delusion and priestcraft, hateful to God and destructive to mankind, that instead of stereotyped creeds, blind zeal, and religious persecution for “righteousness’ sake,’ we should promote love, peace, temperance, gratitude, charity and universal benevolence : so as to reduce religion to that plain, simple system of aiming to attain that abstract perfection as taught by Christ, who said “ Be yeperfect.” The principles to promote these are few .and easy: 1st, There is a God, an Almighty Creator, to whom all existence belongs and is subject, and who ought to be worshipped by all mankind. 2nd, 1 hat by his immutable laws, the good are rewarded and the wicked punished here and hereafter. 3rd, Ihat repentance and reformation are .required to obtain the one and escape the other. 4th, That true religion �2 is that which was stated by Christ, (t Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”' To love God is to love all “ Good,” as truth, justice, charity, and every good work ; to love truth is to love the “ God of Truth,” &q. I do not believe in the orthodox view of the atonement, that Christ’ came to reconcile God to us, but rather that he came to reconcile us to Gods I do not believe in the necessity of his having to be crucified, and to take upon himself the sins of all, before man could be saved ; if such were the case how infinitely grateful we ought to be to those orthodox Jews who cruelly put him to death, in order that we might be saved ! Neither do I believe in the orthodoxy of the present day, which says “ there are three Gods all equal,’" and yet so wnequal that one God is ever- interceding, and endeavouring to appease the wrath of another God! if so, one must be in the wrong ! I believe in the absolute perfection of a Divine Creator, and who does not thus require to be changed in order that endless punishment may be averted, for temporary sins. I believe that God is love, and that his “ mercy” and not his chastisement “ endureth for ever.” I do not believe in “ original sin” and that man was pre-ordained tn be its victim ; nor in the destruction of unbaptized infants, as the Roman and Anglican priests tell us. I prefer Christ’s doctrine ; he says “ of such' is the kingdom of Heaven.” I do not believe in that best friend of priest­ craft,—a personal devil, and who is said to be more mighty than the Allmighty in obtaining the greatest number of immortal souls, thus having power to thwart God’s providence,—nor in a material hell-fire, which isever consuming those souls. I do not believe “ in three Gods, yet one God” which the Church of England says we must believe or “ without doubt perish everlastingly.” Its creeds are to me downright blasphemy. I do not believe that the Bible was divinely inspired” from beginning toend and was all written by the “finger of God,” I believe the Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible, that it is an historical, moral and spiritual teacher, not altogether correct, but containing many truths and many errors ; a compilation of different works by different authors, wr itten at different periods, and by the most learned and wise men of their day, but that neither they nor their works are infallible, as the science of geology and astronomy, and even their own contradictions prove. That men in after ages collected and bound together such of these books as they thought proper and called them the Bible, and that these selfsame human beings, at the Council of Nice, &c., rejected such other books as they thought of less worthy note ; that these men were also as learned and wise as the times would permit, but not infallible and possibly not altogether withottt prejudice or partiality. I believe real Christianity to be absolute religion, which thinks and ivorks ; goodness towards man, and piety towards God; undogmatic, un­ sectarian, liberal, broad and free, preached with faith and applied to life, being good and doing good. There is but one real religion, which we need only open our eyes to see, and 5vhich requires neither creeds nor catechisms to discern; only live it, in love to God and man, and we are blessed by Him who liveth for ever, in spite of all that priests and their dupes may say to the contrary, for thank God they are not to be our judges, other­ wise few would escape. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Religion. To the editor of the "Hackney and Kingsland Gazette." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conner, W.E. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1865] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Subject The topic of the resource Theology Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Religion. To the editor of the "Hackney and Kingsland Gazette."), 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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5257 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 2 p. ; 22 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A letter to the editor of the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette. Pencilled inscription on front page below the printed 'yours respectfully C.' : 'W.E. Conner, formerly of So. Pl. Chapel". An illegible word pencilled opposite the Conner signature. Reprinted from the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, October 7, 1865. Ink stain on front page. Christianity Conway Tracts Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/59027e9239504aa355bafd3d5e43b8e0.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=kRw3i40kahmTkfwU5NjEuOzLDqInsV3-dtB2Zdb1Y6XKMh2DbFmG1ZhRygEZyw%7Ezf5BbkVr706Sz23wxS2d0Zj3wlIhMWp-S2aWEJnHnzQ6IbBi1kQWvbZK20wxaqDj89i3Les0ge9Q3%7EO2zlFaOb5639uM%7ENuJcylVfUFrXVTrkhQ80nYnk7G4h69sJEYuILTVnqqT6jBvOS0kTuT9HBzWkv8vBww4tyaG2yoZtEL%7EqX5RLA2SfPUWdAIUWuCkj57sb-aD-6wHC4LuChUMFhZ8bSRDlyp5UA4vuUppmSKHgMmkwt6uAvOjSsJ0tg-uloO4HMainFoSrTA2vHjSjFQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e5fd20ec709e7833aff570aa90e0ed38 PDF Text Text WHAT 18 RELIGION? (F. Max Midler's First Hibbert Lecture) A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT ^OUTH j-’LACE J^HAFEIz, MAY $th, 1878, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY, PRICE TWOPENCE. �LONDON: PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITHD, LONDON WALL. �WHAT IS RELIGION? The community may congratulate itself upon the fact that the bequest of an advanced liberal man for the promotion of free religious inquiry, should find its fulfilment in the ancient chapter-house of Westminster Abbey. It is probable that if the dogmas which founded that Abbey still reigned, the first Hibbert lecturer would have been sooner burnt than listened to. But now, amid those historic walls are repre­ sented ideas of religion which have been raised quite out of the region of authority, and worthily claim only to stand or fall along with the reason and knowledge of man,—acknowledging no revelation but the history of man. On Thursday last, in his second lecture, the Pro­ fessor remarked that even if the theory of human pro­ gression could be proved m all other affaiis of mankind, that would not prove the same theory true of religion. �4 This remark applied to the far past; and it is true that what is called religion was for ages the unpro­ gressive, the stationary institution of the world. And this because the religious sentiment was confused with theology,—identified with alleged revelations,—thus removed from the normal current of human interests. But the scene- in the chapter-house marks a great change. The Hibbert Trust is, I believe, outcome of money earned by toiling negroes on West Indian plantations. The House of Commons freed those slaves. The wealth they coined comes back to the room in «which the House of Commons first sat. There African degradation is turning to English cul■ ture. The progress in civilisation represented in that fact is not greater than the religious progress it implies. The leading Unitarian (Martineau) and the . Dean of Westminster have united to bring a German liberal there to raise the standard of a human religion. It is now a religious House of Commons. Four centuries ago an old monk frescoed the walls of it with the visions of the Apocalypse. The angels and dragons are now fading around a wider apocalypse. The Isle of Patmos sinks beneath the horizon. The ■ Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye ■ holding the Apocalypse of Man. The eminence of Max Muller is the work he has . done in recovering the vast fields of human experi­ �5 ence represented by the Aryan race. No West Indian slave was more bound under his master than our: English brains under thraldom to ancient Semitic notions. Hebraism waved its sceptre over European culture, and excluded two-thirds of the world and of history as heathenism and devil’s work. Many have been our deliverers from that prison, but no one of them has done more than our first Hibbert lecturer to carry this liberation from the scholar’s study to the layman’s home. It was because of this that he was called to expound the religion of humanity amid walls built to fortify the dogmas of one tribe against the rest of mankind, and against universal progress.Westminster Abbey has survived to hear sentence passed upon every creed for which it stood. And so at last even tardy religion is caught up into the great loom of the world to be woven in with general civili­ sation. That is, so far as it is a sound thread. But is it sound ? Is it real ? Some say it is rotten, some say unreal: man’s childish awe of phantoms, conjured up by his own ignorance. But Max Muller detaches re­ ligion from all its special forms or accidents; maintains its reality and vitality; rests it upon the universal human sense and feeling of the Infinite. He appeals to the broad facts common to the civilized man and the barbarian, to East, West, North, South; and he thus, �6 in laying his foundation, leaves out of sight those facts not universal; such as the special and narrow theories of which a Christian may feel conscious here and a Buddhist there. His question relates not to this so-called religion or that, but to religion itself. All religions might perish, and this essential religion still stand. That he declares to be a natural thing, which has had natural evolutions comprehensible by science. Supernaturalism may, therefore, so far as the present atmosphere of Westminster Abbey is con­ cerned, be regarded as a small way one religion] has of saying to another “ Stand aside, I am holier than thou.” The interest of the human intellect has passed beyond that pious egotism. It is now pro­ foundly concerned to know, not whether Christianity is true, but whether religion itself is real; or whether our spiritual emotion is merely surviving emotion of waves after the blasts of superstition have so long swept over them. The main principle affirmed is, that religion is man’s apprehension of the Infinite. In searching the largest and the smallest, man reaches an end of his com­ prehension, the limit of the heavens he can see, the limit of the atom he can divide; but where compre­ hension ends, apprehension continues; imagination, wonder, admiration, faith, hope, soar on into an immea­ surable expanse; and the emotion awakened within �7 for that transcendent immensity is the religious emo­ tion. Now there are certain inferences from this principle which it hardly lay in the way of the lecturer to un­ fold. It was intimated, however, in what he said about the progressive development of conceptions of colour, and I will use that to illustrate my own point. In arguing that the ancient races of men apprehended the Infinite vaguely, though they had no word for it, he said, 11 We divide colour by seven rough degrees. Even those seven degrees are of late date in the evolu­ tion of our sensuous knowledge. In common Arabic, as Palgrave tells us, the names for green, black and brown are constantly confounded. In the Edda the rainbow is called a three-coloured bridge. Xenophanes says that what people call Iris is a cloud, purple, red and yellow. Even Aristotle still speaks of the tricoloured rainbow, red, yellow and green. Blue, which seems to us so definite a Colour, was worked out of the infinity of colours at a comparatively late time. There is hardly a book now in which we do not read of the blue sky. But in the ancient hymns of the Veda, so full of the dawn, the sun and the sky, the blue sky is never men­ tioned in the Zendavesta the blue sky is never men­ tioned ; in Homer the blue sky is never mentioned; in the Old, and even in the New, Testament, the blue sky is never mentioned. In the Teutonic languages �S' blue comes from a.root which originally meant bleak and black. The Romance languages found no useful word for blue in Latin and "borrowed their word from the Germans.’7 The Hibbert lecturer believes those ancients saw the blue sky as we do, but they had no word for it because they had not detached it mentally from dark or bright. But whether the outer eye has un­ folded or the inner eye,—visual power or the analytic mind behind it,—it is equally shown that the full phenomena were not revealed; and we are again reminded that in going back to the ancient world for his beliefs man suffers a relapse from the height he has attained. In the matter of blue sky the Bible is as much a blank as the Vedas. So far neither was a revelation—or unveiling—of phenomena. That know­ ledge, by natural means and scientific culture, we have reached, and see seven colours where our ancestors saw three or four. Are we to suppose their spiritual senses were finer, while their other senses were duller, than ours? Are we to suppose that their religious analysis was more perfect than ours ? If so, it would be a miracle; but where is the evidence of any such miracle? Compare the God of the Vedas or of the Bible—Indra or Jehovah—with the God of Theodore Parker, nay, of any living Theist, and only a blindness worse than blue-blindness can declare those thunder-- �9 gods equal to the Divine Love adored by the en­ lightened heart to-day. That conclusion is inevitable from the moment it is admitted that religion is a subject for scientific treatment. Once let it be admitted that religion is to be dealt with by unbiassed reason,—by such calm sifting of facts as if the subject were electricity,—and from that instant every particular system of religion must take its place in the natural history of mankind. Be it Brahminism, be it Christianity, it comes down from the bench and goes into the witness-box. Each testifies what it knows, but it cannot coerce the judg­ ment of Reason, Christianity may testify that it saw miracles; Confucianism that it saw none; Islamism that it was revealed from Allah ; but it is no longer the sword which determines their credibility; it is Reason. So their testimony goes for precisely what it is worth. If they saw only three colours where there were seven, possibly they also saw miracle where there was only natural fact. The world cannot go back to the year One for its ideas of the Infinite any more than for its optics. It may recognise in Christ a great religious teacher, just as it recognises in Aristotle a great scientific teacher; but as it cannot diminish the known colours because Aristotle knew only three, so it cannot deny religious facts because unknown to Christ. But it may find fresh �IO reason for faith in science and religion in that, with grand vitality, they far outgrow both Aristotle and Christ, and all the systems that would confine them. Now, as to this apprehension of the Infinite in which the Hibbert lecturer finds the religious faculty; it sounds at first rather metaphysical. It is tolerably clear that no abstract notions of the Infinite can have any commanding power over the nature and passions of mankind. We must, therefore, in considering historic religions, think rather of the forms with which human imagination has peopled the Infinite. The Infinite in itself is metaphysical; but its vault, popu­ lous with gods, becomes practical. The creed which has. swayed the world has been in an Infinite just transcending man s finite in power or excellence ; while it is finite enough to deal with him and feel with him. The god or personality which man asso­ ciates with infinitude may be of unknown strength, so separate from finite man; but he may be angry» loving, ambitious, so-linked on to the finite? It is just in this twofold aspect of these images of the Infinite that we may discover the reality and meaning of religion. To which side of the god does it belong—his finite or his infinite side ? his likeness to man or his transcendency of man? his compre­ hensibility or incomprehensibility. Religion,—whether it be a sense of dependence, or �II awe, of emotion, or aspiration—whatever its aspect, •refers to that in which the object of worship passes beyond the worshipper. In this it differs from theology, which concerns itself with that side of the god which is within the knowledge of man. The Theology of one period may describe the gods, as the Greeks did, even to the colour of their hair; the Theology of another period may disprove such gods’ existence, substituting invisible Beings, as that of Paul ‘did. One Theology may build up a Trinity; another may supersede it with a Quatemity or Unity. ‘ But it would be an error to suppose that Religion is either directly making those images, or directly replacing them. These personifications are the successive inventions of a changing science; they are utilised by priests who support theologians to maintain them, or, when they become discredited, to modify or replace them. But, although the religious condition of man may be har­ monious with such images at one time, discordant with them at another, what human worship adores is the unknown, the eternal, the vast, the perfect, all expanding beyond its conception, but yet believed to be powerfully existent. ' Thus Religion is different 'from Fear. Man would never fear the Infinite. It is only when to its vastness Theology adds a smallness like man’s own that men begin to tremble. It is not J ove, the incomprehensible �12 Heaven, man fears; but Jove, the comprehensible Chieftain, going about with a thunderclub to kill him. That Jove men fear, because they understand him; they go about themselves with clubs less big but equally murderous. That is not Religion—it is Theology; a primitive speculative science of gods. But we have reached now a Science of Religion, and understand that its reverence, its devoutness, emotion, love, so far as really awakened in man, were for what rose above his own weakness, his passions, and his sorrows. What, then, does this apprehension (which must be distinguished from comprehension) this feeling about the Iniinite amount to ? Simply to man’s belief in something better than himself. Man believes in a Wisdom greater than his own. Theology may per­ sonify it in Minerva, or in the Holy Ghost; but the worship is not for the work of man’s wisdom—it is for the wisdom ascending beyond man. So the forms perish : the worship of wisdom perishes not. Man adores a power beyond his own: theology may identify it with mountain and lightning, sea and whirl­ wind, and these may overawe his heart so long as he knows nothing of them : but when the mountain is climbed, and the sea voyaged over, the cloud seen as vapour, the wind weighed, the lightning bottled and sealed up, the ever-kneeling spirit of Religion passes �i3 onward, and amid innumerable forms and names that come and go, seeks still the better, the wiser, the > more powerful and happy,—ever leading on from the finite to the Infinite. And this high seeking, born of each heart’s faith in a better than, it knows, is the religious force, because it is the controlling and creative force. It is idle to' tell us, in face of the moral progress of the world, that the life of man has been the result of correct metaphysics, theological definitions, abstractions about the Absolute and co-eternal Persons. The force that is moving the world onward is the longing in each human being for somewhat more perfect than what they have or are. It is Maya in India praying her babe Siddartba (Buddha) may be wise beyond all men she ever knew; or Mary in Palestine praying the same as she watches her baby Jesus ; or any mother that hears- me, whose tender breast feels stirring within hope that the new nature she has started on its career may ascend till she can kneel in homage before it. It may be the humblest workman dreaming of a more perfect skill; the young artisan feeling after an inven­ tion pregnant with results incalculable. Wherever and however manifested it is the great vision of a glory transcending our own; and though such ideals are always being reached and passed by—infinites becoming finites—so, endlessly the spirit grows, so �14 immortal is its nature, so unceasing the work of creation, the outline is never filled up. Over crumbled gods and goddesses, religion ascends for ever, burning, disintegrating, generating, regenerating,—Humanity’s passion for the Perfect. There is a danger in the method of the historian and archseologist of religion. Because he must trace the evolution of religion through its visible and definable effects—fetish, shrine, dogma, temple— there is danger that these may be regarded as types and forms of religion itself. When a geologist walks over hills, cliffs, rocks, he traces the path of drifting glaciers scratched on rock; he finds sea-shells on the hill-tops, boulders dropped in meadows, pebbles rounded by waves long ebbed away to channels many miles distant: he says, seas and rivers have smoothed and deposited these shells and sands, and shaped these undulations of hill and vale. Yet these are not the sea,—they are but fringes and accidents in the history of the sea. But in religion men still have the habit of seeing the shards and shells of theory—the pebbles of theology worn from crumbled temples—as forms of Religion itself. They are but things which Religion influenced, they report its ancient tides and currents, but they are not—never were — religion itself. Having now detached the religious sentiment from �i5 the forms which have borrowed its consecration; having identified it as man’s impulse towards the Perfect—which philosophy calls the Infinite—let us ask whether we are genuine and true in calling this religion. Or is our use of that word only a piece of conventionality ? Does Religion mean anything diffe­ rent from morality, or different from conscience ? If not, then our use of it is mystification, conformity, cowardice. I believe Religion to be a different thing from Morality. I understand by morality rules and stan­ dards of conduct relating to recognised social duties. But there is something in man which leads him to defy the rules and standards around him. A bad man violates moral rules for the sake of self: but another man breaks them at the cost of self. What leads Jesus to break the Sabbath, or Buddha to refuse offerings to the gods ? Or what leads the reformer of to-day to challenge the social and political order ? Are such men seeking the benefit of the majority ? The majority are against them. The majority is made uncomfortable by them. Are they seeking general advantages ? They are often plunging everything into revolution, and doing it consciously. You might per­ suade a freethinker that to disestablish the Church would leave the majority poorer than now; or that innumerable advantages to millions would be lost if �t6 the Athanasian Creed were exploded. But would any consideration of majorities make him support the Church: would any advantages make him advocate the Creed ? It may be said he is obeying the voice of conscience. That explains nothing. Conscience is an organ of forces beyond itself. It dictates war to one tribe, peace to another. Conscience is a majestic throne, but we search for the power behind the throne. Now, here we have a force in man which often confronts customs, moralities, the social and political order, which disregards majorities and their interests, disregards self-interest also; and this force with passion, enthusiasm and martyrdom, seeks something it never saw, something that never existed. It is manifested in all history, and is known in universal experience; it actuates theists and non-theists; it is especially visible in the overthrow of popular idols and dogmas claiming its worship. Is that morality ? Not a whit more than it is politics, or trade, or art, or any one of the manifold human interests which slowly but steadily follow the lead of that pillar of cloud and fire. I call it Religion, because that is a universal name which no sect or nation has ever tried to monopolise : but I do. not care for that name if any one has a better. I do care that it shall not be confused with �'1'7 wholly different things, with either morality, politics or science. Much less, with Theology. For Theology is the great enemy of religion. Morality, Society, Science, are its ministers, but Theology is its rival,— the Opposer that would arrest the current of its life, and nail man down to bestow upon a fragment of his universe and himself the passion born for aspiration to the perfect whole. To call it ideality, poetry, harmony, love of humanity, is to name the fruits by which this religious life is known. To name it Religion may, indeed, be very inadequate ; neither etymologically or practically can that word do more than preserve the distinction and witness the existence of that which language cannot define; but as in­ accuracy of words like “ sunrise ” and “ sunset ” cannot now mar the glories they suggest, so no etymologic fault can disparage that only catholic name we have (Religion) so long as it is left us by Sectarianism and Superstition to • designate the universal aspirations of mankind. Christianity can only claim to be a religion; it cannot claim to be Religion. No sect can claim to be Religion itself. That is an older banner than any existing nation or church; under its broad folds and heaven-born tints thousands of sects have perished; it widens with the ages, blends with all grandeurs without and within, leads onward the steady march of �i8 man with his world to that supreme beauty which enchains his senses and enchants his heart. For essential religion no adequate word or definition has ever been discovered, or is likely to be discovered. If the lecturer’s statement there halts, it is because the Infinite, the Perfect, cannot be defined. To call it the Infinite leaves the moral sentiment unexpressed. To call it “ morality touched with enthusiasm,” leaves the progressive life untold. The philosophers of Germany and America in the beginning of this generation called it Transcendentalism;—but that white light wanted fire, and faded. Some have called it absolute Being. Jesus called it Love; and no fairer emblem of it was ever named than that supreme glory which quickens the world, from the marriage of flower with flower which to-day clothes the earth with blossoms, to the mother and her babe, and all the manifestations of that unselfish joy which alone can transfigure human passions. But man needs Light as well as Love. And so it is that the highest in us is as ineffable as that which it seeks. When we have dwelt on its varied intimations ; when we have thought of Ideality and Poetry, perfect Being, the Infinite, the Immortal, Supreme Reason, pure Beauty, universal Love—even then the wise heart is conscious that it has touched but a few chords of the harp with a thousand strings ; and when the thousand strings have all been swept, �when human language has rehearsed all its concepts and its dreams to the last accent, yet in the silent heart the still small voice will go on sweetly singing of a dawn fairer thap. all the rest. Waterlow & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London. '• �•■9 • WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. 0. CONWAY, M.A. PRICES. The Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scriptures .. The Earthward Pilgrimage Do, do. Republican Superstitions.. Christianity Human Sacrifices in England David Frederick Strauss .. Sterling and Maurice Intellectual Suicide The First Love again Our Cause and its Accusers Alcestis in England Unbelief: Its nature, cause, and cure Entering Society .. The Religion of Children The Peri! of War 10 5 2 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 d. 0 0 6 6 6 0 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Christianity), 350 pp............................ 7 6 s. NEW WORK BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. Members of the Congregation'can obtain this work in the Library at 5/-. BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation .......... 0 Truth ....................................................... 0 Speculation ... 0 Duty ....................................................... 0 The Dyer’s Hand ........ 0 2 2 2 2 2 BY REV. P. H. WICKSTEED, M.A. Going Through and Getting Over .. 0 2 BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON. The Modern Analogue of the Ancient Prophet .......... 02 BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A. The Conduct of Life Hymns and Anthems ......................... 0 2 1h 2h 3/- � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource What is religion?: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th, 1878 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 19, [1] ; 15 cm. Notes: Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. 'F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture' [From title page]. Publisher's list on back page. Printed by Waterlow & Sons, London Wall. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1870] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4885 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is religion?: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th, 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English God (Christianity) Moral Philosophy Morality Morris Tracts Religion and science Science and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b6f152012e7be291ba2c6f3579138703.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=Nb253DR4ls9Izvdo1PJ7YzG-A4N1a699GudzHUcciF1M27NFGNdO4WjRLeWOSRPSW5fmGxyrx0Wdy-MwQLPfZoLQn10GDSQcPjaCggAKmEs27NeOIG18Jigkich4htQRQlQpWDaUMee2Oc2w7wTrj2DfI7w07r0U-3hnuZdfr74vfFHcm51E%7EcxmrFIu8h5uEOIGTCqEcgjd9BhM6Hiuzbdzz7g21Q3l6I0JtUr4PM05iaHeaYK6SFPH0vDe355OXG8DD6cwGbX%7E4isBgD2xcTuA6tV6QemSfMSpxOTTLIIGL7QoRITcjkJ%7EpbO2Su8lAp9n-p8aI-ZqrRcTXSxMMw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8d914a9f2fe84a97522f22289d1f7fa2 PDF Text Text WHAT 18 RELIGION? {F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture) A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT JSOUTH J^LACE JThAFEL, MAY $th, 1878, by' MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY. PRICE TWOPENCE. �LONDON: PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED, LONDON WALL. �WHAT IS RELIGION? The community may congratulate itself upon the fact that the bequest of an advanced liberal man for the promotion of free religious inquiry, should find its fulfilment in the ancient chapter-house of Westminster Abbey. It is probable that if the dogmas which founded that Abbey still reigned, the first Hibbert lecturer would have been sooner burnt than listened to. But now, amid those historic walls are repre­ sented ideas of religion which have been raised quite out of the region of authority, and worthily claim only to stand or fall along with the reason and knowledge , of man,—acknowledging no revelation but the history of man. On Thursday last, in his second lecture, the Pro­ fessor remarked that, even if the theory of human pro­ gression could be proved in all other affairs of mankind, that would not prove the same theory true of religion. �4 This remark applied to the far past; and it is true that what is called religion was for ages the unpro­ gressive, the stationary institution of the world. And this because the religious sentiment was confused with theology,—identified with alleged revelations,—thus removed from the normal current of human interests. But the scene in the chapter-house marks a great change. The Hibbert Trust is, I believe, outcome of money earned by toiling negroes on West Indian plantations. The House of Commons freed those slaves. The wealth they coined comes back to the room in which the House of Commons first sat. There African degradation is turning to English cul­ ture. The progress in civilisation represented in that fact is not greater than ,the religious progress it implies. The leading Unitarian (Martineau) and the Dean of Westminster have united to bring a German • liberal there to raise the standard of a human religion. It is now a religious House of Commons. Four centuries ago an old monk frescoed the walls of it with the visions of the Apocalypse. The angels and dragons are now fading around a wider apocalypse. The Isle of Patmos sinks beneath the horizon. The Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye ■ holding the Apocalypse of Man. The eminence of Max Muller is the work he has done in recovering the vast fields of human experi­ �5 ence represented by the Aryan race. No West Indian slave was more bound under his master than our English brains under thraldom to ancient Semitic notions. Hebraism waved its sceptre over European culture, and excluded two-thirds of the world and of history as heathenism and devil’s work. Many have been our deliverers from that prison, but no one of them has done more than our first Hibbert lecturer to carry this liberation from the scholar’s study to the layman’s home. It was because of this that he was called to expound the religion of humanity amid walls built to fortify the dogmas of one tribe against the rest of mankind, and against universal progress. Westminster Abbey has survived to hear sentence passed upon every creed for which it stood. And so at last even tardy religion is caught up into the great loom of the world to be woven in with general civili­ sation. That is, so far as it is a sound thread. But is it sound ? Is it real ? Some say it is rotten, some say unreal: man’s childish awe of phantoms, conjured up by his own ignorance. But Max Muller detaches re­ ligion from all its special forms or accidents; maintains its reality and vitality; rests it upon the universal human sense and feeling of the Infinite. He appeals to the broad facts common to the civilized man and the barbarian, to East, West, North, South; and he thus, �6 in laying his foundation, leaves out of sight those facts not universal; such as the special and narrow theories of which a Christian may feel conscious here and a Buddhist there. His question relates not to this so-called religion or that, but to religion itself. All religions might perish, and this essential religion still stand. That he declares to be a natural thing, which has had natural evolutions comprehensible by science. Supernaturalism may, therefore, so far as the present atmosphere of Westminster Abbey is con­ cerned, be regarded as a small way one religion’ has of saying to another “ Stand aside, I am holier than thou.” The interest of the human intellect has passed beyond that pious egotism. It is now pro­ foundly concerned to know, not whether Christianity is true, but whether religion itself is real; or whether our spiritual emotion is merely surviving emotion of waves after the blasts of superstition have so long swept over them. The main principle affirmed is, that religion is man’s apprehension of the Infinite. In searching the largest and the smallest, man reaches an end of his com­ prehension, the limit of the heavens he can see, the limit of the atom he can divide; but where compre­ hension ends, apprehension continues; imagination, wonder, admiration, faith, hope, soar on into an immea­ surable expanse; and the emotion awakened within �7 for that transcendent immensity is the religious emo­ tion. Now there are certain inferences from this principle which it hardly lay in the way of the lecturer to un­ fold. It was intimated, however, in what he said about the progressive development of conceptions of colour, and I will use that to illustrate my own point. In arguing that the ancient races of men apprehended the Infinite vaguely, though they had no word for it, he said, 11 We divide colour by seven rough degrees. Even those seven degrees are of late date in the evolu­ tion of our sensuous knowledge. In common Arabic, as Palgrave tells us, the names for green, black and brown are constantly confounded. In the Edda the rainbow is called a three-coloured bridge. Xenophanes says that what people call Iris is a cloud, purple, red and yellow. Even Aristotle still speaks of the tricoloured rainbow, red, yellow and green. Blue, which seems to us so definite a colour, was worked out of the infinity of colours at a comparatively late time. There is hardly a book now in which we do not read of the blue sky. But in the ancient hymns of the Veda, so full of the dawn, the sun and the sky, the blue sky is never men­ tioned in the Zendavesta the blue sky is never men­ tioned ; in Homer the blue sky is never mentioned ; in the Old, and even in the New, Testament, the blue sky is never mentioned. In the Teutonic languages �§ blue comes from a root which originally meant bleak and black. The Romance languages found no useful word for blue in Latin and 'borrowed their word from the Germans.” The Hibbert lecturer believes those ancients saw the blue sky as we do, but they had no word for it because they had not detached it mentally from dark or bright. But whether the outer eye has un­ folded or the inner eye,—visual power or the analytic mind behind it,—-it is equally shown that the full phenomena were not revealed j and we are again reminded that in going back to the ancient world for his beliefs man suffers a relapse from the height he has attained. In the matter of blue sky the Bible is as much a blank as the Vedas. So far neither was a revelation—or unveiling—of phenomena. That know­ ledge, by natural means and scientific culture, we have reached, and see seven colours where our ancestors saw three or four. Are we to suppose their spiritual senses were finer, while their other senses were duller, than ours ? Are we to suppose that their religious analysis was more perfect than ours ? If so, it would be a miracle; but where is the evidence of any such miracle ? Compare the God of the Vedas or of the Bible—Indra or Jehovah—with the God of Theodore Parker, nay, of any living Theist, and only a blindness worse than blue-blindness can declare those thunder-; �9 gods equal to the Divine Love adored by the en­ lightened heart to-day. That conclusion is inevitable from the moment it is admitted that religion is a subject for scientific treatment. Once let it be admitted that religion is to be dealt with by unbiassed reason,—by such calm sifting of facts as if the subject were electricity,—and from that instant every particular system of religion must take its place in the natural history of mankind. Be it Brahminism, be it Christianity, it comes down from the bench and goes into the witness-box. Each testifies what it knows, but it cannot coerce the judg­ ment of Reason. Christianity may testify that it saw miracles; Confucianism that it saw none; Islamism that it was revealed from Allah; but it is no longer the sword which determines their credibility; it is Reason. So their testimony goes for precisely what it is worth. If they saw only three colours where there were seven, possibly they also saw miracle where there was only natural fact. The world cannot go back to the year One for its ideas of the Infinite any more than for its optics. It may recognise in Christ a great religious teacher, just as it recognises in Aristotle a great scientific teacher; but as it cannot diminish the known colours because Aristotle knew only three, so it cannot deny religious facts because unknown to Christ. But it may find fresh �IO reason for faith in science and religion in that, with grand vitality, they far outgrow both Aristotle and Christ, and all the systems that would confine them. Now, as to this apprehension of the Infinite in which the Hibbert lecturer finds the religious faculty ; it souhds at first rather metaphysical. It is tolerably clear that no abstract notions of the Infinite can have any commanding power over the nature and passions of mankind. We must, therefore, in considering historic religions, think rather of the forms with which human imagination has peopled the Infinite. The Infinite in itself is metaphysical ; but its vault, popu­ lous with gods, becomes practical. The creed which has swayed the world has been in an Infinite just transcending man’s finite in power or excellence ; while it is finite enough to deal with him and feel with him. The god or personality which man asso­ ciates with infinitude may be of unknown strength, so separate from finite man ; but he may be angry, loving, ambitious, so linked on to the finite? It is just in this twofold aspect of these images of the Infinite that we may discover the reality and meaning of religion. To which side of the god does it belong—his finite or his infinite side ? his likeness to man or his transcendency of man? his compre­ hensibility or incomprehensibility. Religion,—whether it be a sense of dependence, or �II awe, of emotion, or aspiration—whatever its aspect, refers to that in which the object of worship passes beyond the worshipper. In this it differs from theology, which concerns itself with that side of the god which is within the knowledge of man. The Theology of one period may describe the gods, as the Greeks did, even to the colour of their hair; the Theology of another period may disprove such gods’ 'existence, substituting invisible Beings, as that of Paul ‘did. One Theology may build up a Trinity; another may supersede it with a Quaternity or Unity. But it would be an error to suppose that Religion is either 'directly making those images,or directly replacing them. These personifications are the successive inventions of a changing science; they are utilised by priests who support theologians to maintain them, or, when they become discredited, to modify or replace them. But, although the religious condition of man may be har­ monious with such images at one time, discordant with them at another, what human worship adores is the unknown, the eternal, the vast, the perfect,—all expanding beyond its conception, but yet believed to ■be powerfully existent. Thus Religion is different from Fear. Man would hover fear the Infinite. It is only when to its vastness Theology adds a smallness like man’s own that men beginto tremble. It is not Jove, the incomprehensible �.12 Heaven, man fears; but Jove, the comprehensible Chieftain, going about with a thunderclub to kill him. That Jove men fear, because they understand him;, they go about themselves with clubs less big but equally murderous. That is not Religion—it is Theology; a primitive speculative science of gods. But we have reached now a Science of Religion, and understand that its reverence, its devoutness, emotion, love, so far as really awakened in man, were for what rose above his own weakness, his passions, and his sorrows. What, then, does this apprehension (which must be distinguished from comprehension) this feeling about the Infinite amount to ? Simply to man’s belief in something better than himself. Man believes in a Wisdom greater than his own. Theology may per­ sonify it in Minerva, or in the Holy Ghost; but the worship is not. for the work of man’s wisdom—it is for the wisdom ascending beyond man. So the forms perish : the worship of wisdom perishes not. Man adores a power beyond his own: theology may identify it with mountain and lightning, sea and whirl­ wind, and these may overawe his heart so long as he knows nothing of them : but when the mountain is climbed, and the sea voyaged over, the cloud seen as vapour, the wind weighed, the lightning bottled and sealed up, the ever-kneeling spirit of Religion passes �T3 onward, and amid innumerable forms and names that come and go, seeks still the better, the wiser, the, more powerful and happy,—ever leading on from the finite to the Infinite. And this high seeking, born of each heart’s faith in a better than it knows, is the religious force, because it is the controlling and creative force. It is idle to tell us, in face of the moral progress of the world, that the life of man has been the result of correct metaphysics, theological definitions, abstractions about the Absolute and co-eternal Persons. The force that is moving the world onward 'is the longing in each human being for somewhat more perfect than what they have or are. It is Maya in India praying her babe Siddartha (Buddha) may be wise beyond all men she ever knew; or Mary in Palestine praying the same as she watches her baby Jesus ; or any mother that hears me, whose tender breast feels stirring within hope that the new nature she has started on its career may ascend till she can kneel in homage before it. It may be the humblest workman dreaming of a more perfect skill; the young artisan feeling after an inven­ tion pregnant with results incalculable. Wherever and however manifested it is the great vision of a glory transcending our own; and though such ideals are always being reached and passed by—infinites becoming Unites—so endlessly the spirit grows, so �14 immortal is its nature, so unceasing the work of creation, the outline is never filled up. Over crumbled gods and goddesses, religion ascends for ever, burning, disintegrating, generating, regenerating,—Humanity’s passion for the Perfect. There is a danger in the method of the historian and archaeologist of religion. Because he must trace the evolution of religion through its visible and definable effects—fetish, shrine, dogma, temple— there is danger that these may be regarded as types and forms of religion itself. When a geologist walks over hills, cliffs, rocks, he traces the path of drifting glaciers scratched on rock; he finds sea-shells on the hill-tops, boulders dropped in meadows, pebbles rounded by waves long ebbed away to channels many miles distant: he says, seas and rivers have smoothed and deposited these shells and sands, and shaped these undulations of hill and vale. Yet these are not the sea,—they are but fringes and accidents in the history of the sea. But in religion men still have the habit of seeing the shards and shells of theory—the pebbles of theology worn from crumbled temples—as forms of Religion itself. They are but things which Religion influenced, they report its ancient tides and currents, but they are not—never were—religion itself. Having now detached the religious sentiment from �i5 the forms which have borrowed its consecration; having identified it as man’s impulse towards the Perfect—which philosophy calls the Infinite—let us ask whether we are genuine and true in calling this religion. Or is our use of that word only a piece of conventionality ? Does Religion mean anything diffe­ rent from morality, or different from conscience ? If not, then our use of it is mystification, conformity, cowardice. I believe Religion to be a different thing from Morality. I understand by morality rules and stan­ dards of conduct relating to recognised social duties. But there is something in man which leads him to defy the rules and standards around him. A bad man violates moral rules for the sake of self: but another man breaks them at the cost of self. What leads Jesus to break the Sabbath, or Buddha to refuse offerings to the gods ? Or what leads the reformer of to-day to challenge the social and political order ? Are such men seeking the benefit of the majority ? The majority are against them. The majority is made uncomfortable by them. Are they seeking general advantages ? They are often plunging everything into revolution, and doing it consciously. You might per­ suade a freethinker that to disestablish the Church would leave the majority poorer than now; or that innumerable advantages to millions would be lost if �the Athanasian Creed were exploded. But would any consideration of majorities make him support the Church: would any advantages make him advocate the Creed ? It may be said he is obeying the voice of conscience. That explains nothing. Conscience is an organ of forces beyond itself. It dictates war to one tribe, peace to another. Conscience is a majestic throne, but we search for the power behind the throne. Now, here we have a force in man which often confronts customs, moralities, the social and political order, which disregards majorities and their interests, disregards self-interest also; and this force with passion, enthusiasm and martyrdom, seeks something it never saw, something that never existed. It is manifested in all history, and is known in universal experience; it actuates theists and non-theists; it is especially visible in the overthrow of popular idols and dogmas claiming its worship. Is that morality? Not a whit more than it is politics, or trade, or art, or any one of the manifold human interests which slowly but steadily follow the lead of that pillar of cloud and fire. I call it Religion, because that is a universal name which no sect or nation has ever tried to monopolise : but I do not care for that name if any one has a better. I do care that it shall not be confused with �i7 wholly different things, with either morality, politics or science. Much less, with Theology. For Theology is the great enemy of religion. Morality, Society, Science, are its ministers, but Theology is its rival,— the Opposer that would arrest the current of its life, and nail man down to bestow upon a fragment of his universe and himself the passion born for aspiration to the perfect whole. To call it ideality, poetry, harmony, love of humanity, is to name the fruits by which this religious life is known. To name it Religion may, indeed, be very inadequate ; neither etymologically or practically can that word do more than preserve the distinction and witness the existence of that which language cannot define; but as in­ accuracy of words like “ sunrise ” and “ sunset ” cannot now mar the glories they suggest, so no etymologic fault can disparage that only catholic name we have (Religion) so long as it is left us by Sectarianism and Superstition to designate the universal aspirations of mankind. Christianity can only claim to be a religion; it cannot claim to be Religion. No sect can claim to be Religion itself. That is an older banner than any existing nation or church; under its broad folds and heaven-born tints thousands of sects have perished; it widens with the ages, blends with all grandeurs without and within, leads onward the steady march of �i8 man with his world to that supreme beauty which enchains his senses and enchants his heart. For essential religion no adequate word or definition has ever been discovered, or is likely to be discovered. If the lecturer’s statement there halts, it is because the Infinite, the Perfect, cannot be defined. To call it the Infinite leaves the moral sentiment unexpressed. To call it “ morality touched with enthusiasm,” leaves the progressive life untold. The philosophers of Germany and America in the beginning of this generation called it Transcendentalism;—but that white light wanted fire, and faded. Some have called it absolute Being. Jesus called it Love; and no fairer emblem of it was ever named than that supreme glory which quickens the world, from the marriage of flower with flower which to-day clothes the earth with blossoms, to the mother and her babe, and all the manifestations of that unselfish joy which alone can transfigure human passions. But man needs Light as well as Love. And so it is that the highest in us is as ineffable as that which it seeks. When we have dwelt on its varied intimations ; when we have thought of Ideality and Poetry, perfect Being, the Infinite, the Immortal, Supreme Reason, pure Beauty, universal Love—even then the wise heart is conscious that it has touched but a few chords of the harp with a thousand strings ; and when the thousand strings have all been swept, �i9 when human language has rehearsed all its concepts and its dreams to the last accent, yet in the silent heart the still small voice will go on sweetly singing of a dawn fairer than all the rest. Waterldw & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London. �WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. PRICES, s. The Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scriptures .. The Earthward Pilgrimage Do. do. Republican Superstitions.. Christianity ......................... Human Sacrifices in England .. David Frederick Strauss .. Sterling and Maurice Intellectual Suicide The First Love again Our Cause and its Accusers Alcestis in England Unbelief: its nature, cause, and cure Entering Society......................... The Religion of Children The Peri! of War 10 5 2 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 d. 0 0 6 6 6 0 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 Idols and Ideals fincluding the Essay on Christianity^, 350 pp............................ 7 6 NEW WORK BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. Members of the Congregation, can obtain this work in the Library at 5/-. BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.8., &c., &c. Salvation .......... 0 Truth .......................................................0 Speculation ........................ ; .. 0 Duty .......... 0 The Dyer's Hand ........ 0 2 2 2 2 2 BY REV. P. H. WICKSTEED, M.A. Going Through and Getting Over .. 0 2 BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON. The Modern Analogue of the Ancient Prophet .......... 02 BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A. The Conduct of Life Hymns and Anthems .. .. .. 0 2 V; 2f: 3/. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource What is religion? : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th 1878 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 19, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. List of works to be obtained from the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. About F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture on 'The Perception of the Infinite' given at Westminster Abbey in April 1878. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1878] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3338 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is religion? : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English God (Christianity) Moral Philosophy Morality Morris Tracts Religion and science Science and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/679c637a5a2d0813bcde98a3a4bbae28.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=SKAJlBHj-UByxgdlEacZ7jV%7EFf93UwllhilgIQRai06NChCX8ImRRD-KTLjZ44fx-SKGRHFAxtGQhWodw0PaoW9Z0GR2ua6KH-OkwkyWdqTKBJf-zCD%7E5ROOkh0gHxVIw6YYEOQsp%7EFKwDfV7-TdSxfBgOqthaqYCUYEccLOacms%7EG7q6Lti5SiqrtmqrZIZ494ByEn6-y5DVe3l%7EvhotDzW9V5bl8TZGaAXYlEdcW1fu5ec7v0GWnss3hL9-0sp8VhPtGkKORNU%7EFa79WuSuTcjqRQb276FUMVM6TG-uYoE8i4JjLfEDg2OAfLNbrr4BxWeU8H8O3LzSdp21XLDkQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0243bc6bf1d71e89bea706628bc36933 PDF Text Text un L i7 What is the Religion of Humanity ? A DISCOURSE p AT SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, MAY i 6th, 1880, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY. PRICE TWOPENCE, i Mcfi 2.9 2. �LONDON : Waterlow & Sons Limited, LONDON WALL. �WHAT IS THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY? ^JpHE phrase Religion of Humanity has been much and vaguely used; and best phrases so used are liable to degenerate into cant. There is some­ thing pleasant to everybody in the word “Humanity”; no doubt all sects would claim that theirs is the religion of humanity. Even sects with creeds based upon a curse on human nature would declare their religion adapted to, and revealed to save, humanity, therefore the religion of humanity. Among more liberal people we sometimes hear the word ‘ humanitarian ’ used for a believer in the religion of humanity. ‘ Humanitarian ’ was coined to represent the doctrine that the nature of Jesus was human as distinguished from divine or angelic : it is a good sign when such theological disputes are so far past that their phrases are put to more substantial work. And this other phrase, the Religion of Humanity, which I believe came from the mint of Positivism, also shows a tendency to do various duty. To the majority it probably means a �( 4 ) religion which believes in the perfectibility of mankind; it would include the idea of human progress, also the sentiment of charity, of sympathy with mankind, and a spirit of benevolent reform. No doubt underneath the humanitarian hypothesis of the nature of Jesus there was at work a faith in human nature; and under any conception of a religion of humanity there would be found the spirit of love to man, the feeling of fraternity, and belief in a happy destiny for all mankind. These high feelings will, however, be reinforced in proportion as it can be made clear to our minds whether there is any sense in which that group of sentiments in us which relate to humanity can be defined as a religion; if so, in what sense it is a religion distinct from other so-called religions; and whether it is one which is fully credible to us,— whether, that is, it represents the facts and phenomena regarded by the religious sentiment. That which we call ‘ Humanity ’ is the totality of all that is moral in nature ; all that distinguishes and chooses, which discriminates right from wrong, good from evil, where all nature not human is unmoral— gives equal support to good and bad, All history is the history of the war of mankind against external nature ; when we go beyond history to tradition, and behind tradition to mythology, we �( 5 ) we find this and only this—man combating Arctic frost and torrid heat, tempest and flood, the barren­ ness, the ferocities of the earth, the pitiless cruelties of the pestilential and the rainless atmosphere. That siege of man against nature has never been relaxed ; it goes on still; and in that time man has learned that his own nature represents all that is moral in the universe he can comprehend. I say represents : for certain animals seem capable of love and mutual service; but they possess this in the ratio of their approach to human nature, and of their association with it. Therefore they are man’s humble constituency; their feebler minds and affections are represented by him as against the inorganic universe, their common enemy. Now, this ancient interminable war between man and inanimate nature has not been one of sentiment, but of necessity. To wage it has always been the condition of human existence on the planet; all the animals that could not wage it to some extent have become fossil; and man would have followed them into extinction if he had not steadily resisted his hostile environment. But during all this war man’s sentiments were on the side of his great adversary. He sang hymns to the sun which consumed him, to the storm which beat upon him; evoked a vast array of �( 6 ) deities out of the elements, and prostrating himself before them in one moment, in the next arose to fight and conquer their cruelty. Primitive man ascribed to the gods as their particular realm all the elements and regions of nature which he himself could not control. His own empire was built up in practical hostility to this elemental empire of the gods. It was the necessity of the humanised world that it should ever be encroaching on the gods’ world, turning the chaos they had created to order and use. Thus there was no love lost between the two. Man’s attitude towards the gods was fear; and that of the gods towards man was deemed to be jealousy, sometimes fear also, lest he might build a tower high enough to besiege heaven, or seize on the apples of immortality. There resulted a divorce between man’s practical life and his theology. That set of beliefs, and diplomatic ceremonials to the sky which were called religion, had nothing , to do with man’s humanity, which was necessarily devoted to constant revision and correction of that nature supposed to be the creation of the gods. All of which may seem very childish notions. Yet the so-called religions of the world have been generally cast in the same mould; and that is the shape they bear to this day. �( 7 )' The wild powers of nature are translated by theology and catalogued in the creeds. Where do you find the doctrine of satisfaction or expiation? Where do you find any basis for the doctrine that no deity can forgive an offence except the penalty be suffered and the law satisfied? You find it in every creed, but you do not find it in the heart and life of humanity. People do not so exact from others rigid legal satisfaction. The parent who worships a god demanding satisfaction, forgives the child daily without any satisfaction. Humanity could not have survived if it had practised the theology of invariable expiation. But you will find that dogma a reflection of the unswerving course of natural objects, the unvarying sun and seasons, the ever-recurring remorseless powers that now freeze, now bring famine, and listen to no entreaties. Where will you find the doctrine of vicarious suffering? Not in the voluntary life of humanity. The judge or the parent may worship a deity satisfied by the suffering of the just for the unjust, but he would be shocked at any suggestion in the court or the home that the innocent should, be made to suffer for the guilty. And in the house­ hold or in society, who would deliberately visit the sin of a father upon his children ? Where then, do the creeds get these notions ? From the �( 8 ) hard forces of nature, which punish transgressions of natural law even though they be virtuous deeds, secure the good of one by sacrifice of another; now make the mother victim of the child, next the child heir of the parent’s infirmities. We might indeed go through the whole list of dogmas that make up what is called religion, and we should find them to be a rough translation of nature’s roughness; not religion at all, because confusing good and evil; unrelated to the moral sentiment; a crude primitive science, or attempt at a scientific theory of nature. Those which were anciently deities personifying the inorganic aspects of nature, are now abstract dogmas reflecting the same thing; and as when they were deities or demons, so now when they have become dogmas, they represent precisely all that part of nature which it is the business of humanity to resist, restrain, or even exterminate. We must, indeed, never forget that human . beings are much better than their creeds; that inside their stony dogmatic walls are cultured spots of humane feeling; that they speak and act gently while they worship wrath, and deal justly while worshipping an unjust deity. There is a blessed necessity which exterminates from the practical life anti-social principles; and while it �( 9 ) allows tongues to recite what creeds they please, holds heart and hand to their need and duty with an iron grip. Nevertheless mankind are not passing unharmed through this opposition between their dogmas and their humanity. It is a very serious thing that men should throw the sanctions of sentiment and piety around deified reflections of that inorganic world which it were man’s real religion to master, and make into his own human image and likeness. These ancient ‘ religions ’ have adopted many humane sentiments, some of them even patronise human life and its joys; but they never make humanity the main thing, the great religous force and director: all that immense power of piety, devotion, enthusiasm, which to­ gether make religion, are still on the side of the inorganic universe and its traditional phantasms. We may then answer our question, ‘ What is the Religion of Humanity,’ by saying, it is a religion which transfers to the moral and intellectual forces which are mastering nature all the piety that now worships personifications of the ob­ structions mastered. There is need that our sentiment and our work should be on the same side in this great struggle of humanity with mountain and desert, volcano and flood. It is a grievous anomaly to worship the mountain-god �( IO ) while we tunnel the mountain, and praise the lightning-god while we raise a rod to divert his bolt. That kind of homage and praise are due to skill and to science, and hard-handed labour; not to the wild powers they are levelling and curbing for us. It may be said that such adorations of natural forces do no harm; they are directed to powers that cannot hear or heed them. But there is harm done when the finest seed are sown on clouds, instead of in a soil where they might bear fruit. We can little dream what a reinforcement of the human work of the world it would be if all the devotion and wealth lavished on deities and dogmas were directed to aid and animate man in his tremendous task of humanising his world. But, it may be asked, and it is the anxious question of many hearts, is there no God of nature, no God in nature? Is there no power above our­ selves—or power not ourselves—that makes for righteousness? And, if there be none, are we not orphans? Are we not robbed of all heart and hope in our struggle with earthly evil, having no certainty of ultimate success ? The Religion of Humanity answers, Yes, there is a God in nature, a God and ruler of nature; but that divine parent is nowhere discoverable except in �( II ) the spirit of humanity. You may cry for help to glowing suns and circling stars, to gravitation and electricity, to ocean and sky, or to all of them together; but no help or ray of pity will you get until you have turned to lean on the heart and arm of human love and strength. For these are the answers of the universe to your cry. The proof of love in nature outside you is a loving heart inside you. Nature has laboured through untold ages to give you that heart to rest upon, that hand to clasp yours. We must credit nature with -what has come out of it. Wild as are the forces around us, terrible as is this vast machinery roaring around us,—amid which we move like wondering children, or at some misstep of ignorance are caught up and crushed, we may still say that out of it all was evolved the thinker to warn us, the man of skill to devise good for us, the man of science to show us the safe path, the physician to heal us, the artist to beguile us on the way, the poet to cheer us; the friend, the lover, the father, the mother, who try to guard us, or, if we are wounded, seek to heal our wounds. All these were evolved out of nature. They show us nature pointing us to humanity,—to humanity, the crown and hope of nature’s own self, the power which nature has created for its own deliverance,—in distrusting which we distrust the only God in nature, the God manifest within us, and in the sweet humanities around us. �( 12 ) Therefore must we love nature. As we go froth to contend against its inorganic forces, we recognise that our contest with nature is a friendly contest, for deliverance of that inanimate world itself which suffers the pains of labour until now, awaiting its adoption into the liberty of the sons of God : it is the steadfast transfiguration of nature in a light higher than any dawn, a grandeur which its beauties but faintly hint and symbolize. In these days when, under the fierce light that beats upon the throne of superstition, the ancient images are falling from many household shrines,— images which, however low their origin, have been hallowed by the tender pieties and associations twining around them,—there is a pathetic cry on the air. The fine gold has waxed dim! the white statues are crumbling ! ‘ Give us back our gods ! ’ cried the pagans of old when the Christians shattered the fair idols of Europe; ‘Give us back our Saints, our Blessed Mother,’ cried the Catholics when Protestantism broke up the altars; ‘Give us back our Faith, our divine Lord,’ cry Protestant hearts in turn. But know they not why these perished and can never return? They could not do the work of humanity; they could not hear, they could not heed the cry of hearts that needed something more than statues, pictures, or sentimental beliefs. �( !3 ) The other day we heard of the Holy Virgin appearing in Ireland. The press even sent reporters who gathered detailed information about the light that was seen, and Mary, Joseph and John in the midst. But in their descent these heavenly beings did not bring bread to save one starving Irish family. That was left to Saint America who came over with a loaded ship, and is now doing for poor human beings what the Virgin Mary does only for her own altars and priests. The heretic is not heartless because he cannot be silenced by the piteous appeal of piety that its idols and illusions shall be spared. He is listening to a more sorrowful cry than that; it comes from the great deeps of human agony, want, evil, despair; it is a cry ever burthening the air, but never heeded by the idols which have neither eye, ear, heart, nor hand. How sweet those idols seem to those who decorate them, cover them with devotion, heap on them their gold, their love, and bathe them with their tears; even so cruel they seem to one who knows that it is for want of just that devotion that millions of human beings find this world a hell. Poor Humanity, how is it tortured even by those abstract dogmas, which inheriting the sway of demons, have power to pervert the human heart; to make it �( i4 ) act cruelly, unrelentingly, like the brutal elements they embody in words and images ! I picture Humanity as poor Juliet in her agony. There she is, the beautiful soul, the perfect heart, the supremest thing in nature ! Around her an environment of persons who represent the wild elements. The vin­ dictive feud of Montague and Capulet, cruel as venom of serpents; parents who have taken pea­ cock pomp into their breast instead of hearts; a silly ignorant nurse. They all represent the inorganic elements surviving in human nature, pride, ignorance, vengeance; these not hidden there as shameful things but consecrated as duty and dignity: this is the lot with which that heaven, to which Juilet has prayed all her life, has surrounded her gentle soul in its sore need 1 Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the Lottom of my grief ? O, sweet my mother, cast me not away ! But the mother, slave of her lord, has gone. Then once more to the clouds Juliet cries, ‘ O God ! ’ No answer. The poor ignorant nurse alone is left her. O nurse! how shall this be prevented ? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven ; How shall that faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth ? —comfort me, counsel me.— Alack, alack, that Heaven should practice stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself! �( *5 ) Alas, Juliet finds that heaven is against her. She thinks how different it would be if Romeo were only able to leave earth and be god for a time. She meets religion presently: the sympathetic, helpful friar, is a disguise for the Religion of Humanity. For this friar is a true holy father where the lordly father had failed ; he does not point Juliet or Romeo to heaven nor bid them pray, sing, or confess. When Romeo has slain one in his desperation, the friar gets him off to a safe place. He has drugs, and secret schemes, by which he tries hard to outwit the inorganic tempers that are crushing the lovers. He fails in the end ; but that torch he holds over the dead faces of those he sought to save, is the torch of the true Religion, burning through a midnight of tragedies on to the hour that shall raise its light to be a flaming dawn. Do you ask what tidings more glad can the Religion of Humanity bring to hearts in their agony, the agony caused by the discord, pride, ungentleness of spirit in men and women ? Why, it brings hope of a time when hearts will not be proud and harsh, because religion will have concentrated all its power of renovation upon them. Religion will recall its protecting forces from the nature-gods and gather them all around human beings, to love them, help them, save them; so that when Juliet cries ‘O God! her father shall be at hand, her mother shall serve her �( 16 ) as if Juliet were the one Holy Virgin, so that no human being shall ever be brought up to fancy that there is any higher religion than to promote human happiness, purity, and wisdom. The religion of humanity thus has its meaning and promise for the individual heart, for the soul with its own grief, in that it brings back piety from its wanderings to seek out and love the divine in every heart; but it also holds out to the world at large a hope unknown to any theology, the promise of a perfectly developed Humanity implying a perfect world. For this religion shows mankind to be the creator, and a loving creator ; whose eternal design is not the salvation of certain elect ones, of those only after they are dead, and from evils that do not exist, but the salvation of all, of the living, from actual evils. It reveals to each generation that it is not only the heir of all the ages, but the incarnation of their summed-up powers; that this trust bequeathed from all preceding generations, represents not only man in the past, but all that preceded man; every bird that ever sang to its mate, every tiger that ever defended its young; nay, every atom that ever clung to its fellow-atom amid the star-mist, in the first throb of that spirit of life which has climbed on to the splendour of reason and glory of a heart, beside which the sun and moon are mere sparks. �This is the Holy Mother. This is the ever-blessed unwearied Madonna bearing the man-child in her arms. A legend runs that when Mary was travelling in Egypt, and her arm failed from long bearing her babe, a third hand grew out to sustain Jesus : even so is it with the maternal spirit which is caring for the world, watching over human hearts, bearing it onward. Does the old support fail ? Io, another ! Already our dear Mother is many-handed. Wherever are love, thought, sympathy, and a devotion to truth and right, there are her sustaining arms. Her unwearied watch is with the student seeking truth and wisdom, with the reformer, the philanthropist, the physician, the man of science, the poet, the artist. Wherever there is one who is contriving a new benefit for the earth, some relief from evil, some mitigation of pain, some beauty which shall soothe and delight earth’s wayworn pilgrims, some sweet song to beguile sorrow and pain into self-forgetfulness, win hearts from vain regrets, cast a sunbeam into the darkened breast of guilt, proffer a draught of Lethe to the lips of Despair and Death, there is our divine Father, and there our heavenly Mother, majestic and beautiful: nature is glorified in them : with them are the sign and seal by which all nature, however wild, is for ever bound to follow and obey their eternal attraction. This Religion of Humanity therefore has not the �( i8 ) disadvantages of some new sect or new idea: it not only exists already, but it has existed for ages. I believe it to be the only religion that does really exist, and that alone which the great teachers have taught. It is a very common experience with those who abandon an established church, sect, or creed, that they never cease to honour the great teacher said to have founded that church or creed. Most free­ thinkers feel that they love Christ much more genuinely than Christians. The same phenomenon appears throughout the world. Wherever there is a protestant movement we hear the cries, ‘Not Buddhism but Buddha!’ ‘Not Confucianism but Confucius!’ ‘Not Christianity but Christ!’ It is not difficult to see why we love the teacher while opposing the system named after him. The teacher represented the religion of humanity. No matter what he taught, he was another step; he sought to remove some evil or error, and added something to the growing life of the world. But the system which has borrowed his good name is invariably one based on that which he resisted. Every socalled religion is a new edition of the old nature­ worship : it is a system trying to sanction its power with the prestige of a breaker of systems. But such power can never be built up except by reversing �the freedom and humanity of the system-breaker, because it must rule by bribe and menace. There never was a prophet who did not teach love, forgiveness, gentleness; there never was a system which did not make its prophet teach wrath, expiation, satisfaction. ‘ Love your 'enemies,’ says the prophet as he was; £ Depart into fire,’ says the prophet as the system makes him. As time goes on this anomaly is seen. The human religion is at work; people grow ashamed of their dogmas; they more and more dwell on the sweet parables, the kindly deeds, the human side of their prophet; they try to hide and forget the awful character which the system assigns him. But it is impossible : that awful character is an old role in the drama of the gods; Jehovah had to play it, and Jove, and Jesus; every successful name has to be put to that part if a creed is to survive after it is unloved and unbelieved. So, steadily, as know­ ledge and liberty advance must such systems crumble and their idols follow them; when their supernatural terrors have become grotesque and their celestial promises antiquated, there are left only the vulgar fears and interests to which an existing order appeals, and from that moment the familiar face of selfishness is seen beneath the mask of piety. Such is the process now going on; �( 20 ) by it true and faithul hearts are hourly set free; and there is fair prospect of seeing a swiftly-growing and expanding spiritual union among the really religious, though the discovery that what each sincerely loves in his prophet his seeming opponent loves equally; and what he discards is that which none can love, though it may be tolerated. No man loves Jesus for his miracles: no heart responds to his curse on a figtree; none rejoices in his formula for cursing the goats at the last day. The Jesus beloved is he who spoke of the forgiven prodigal, who wept tears over his dead friend, knew the scripture of the lilies and the waving corn, promised peace, and gave men rest in the faith that even as they forgave the trespasses of men all the more would the divine love forgive them. That is the Jesus really beloved by the sincere and lowly hearts that are not concerned in Christianity as a politic system; and they do not love him more than those called ‘infidels.’ There is one belief concerning Christ in which all sects, churches, Secularists, Theists, Atheists agree: they all agree that he was a man. Some believe he was a God-man, others a miraculous man; all agree that he was a man. That then is the only doctrine that can be pronounced literally Catholic, that is universal. And as the definition of a man grows �( 21 ) truer, and as more and more mankind come to feel how dependent they are for all advancement upon the fidelity and wisdom of great and good men, it will not be thought derogatory to Jesus that he should be called a man. But it will be found derogatory to connect him with the thundergods of primitive ages. It will be resented more and more as a lowering of his goodness and greatness to call him the incarnation of Jehovah, whose biblical record is one of wrath, injustice and cruelty. As Jove and Jehovah have died of inhumanity, so will the Doomsday Christ pass out of human love and belief. It will be realised that the whole thought and work of Jesus was to abolish that system of belief which Jehovah repre­ sented, and all the gods like unto him. Those personifications of crude, cruel nature, and Jesus representing the love and morality which soften and subdue nature, are practically opposite principles, and their necessary combat makes all the serious contro­ versies of our time. When the orthodox talk of God becoming man, we have only to say,—Let him be a real man and we can believe on him. Remove from him the theologic costume of miracle, of unforgiving last day wrath, of ceremonial and ritual preserved from' the ancient worship of the elements by cowed and terrified barbarians; give us the great heart and brain, the real �( 22 ) man as he was, ally him with the grand work of humanity on earth, unite him with his true brothers, his peers of every age and race, and be sure there will be no heart on earth which shall fail to surround him with love and homage ! Already there are signs that this is the way Christianity is tending. The character of its defence has completely changed. We no longer hear its defenders resting it upon miracles or upon Judaic history, but upon the morality and the humanities they believe bound up with it. They plead for the social and domestic virtues, and say that to the masses these rest upon Christianity. That is a good sign. It is necessary to prove to them that Christianity does not come into this moral tribunal with clean hands; that it carries into innumerable homes a book containing cruelties and obscenities, as God’s word; that it propagates superstition, and teaches man to rest for safety upon metaphysical dogmas rather than righteousness : but, while main­ taining this, we may gladly recognise the happy change by which the dogmas are being steadily overlaid by considerations of practical virtue. This I believe will go on until out of these transitional controversies shall emerge the full-formed religion of Humanity, to be loved and honoured of all, and to include all races in a fraternal competition �( 23 ) to promote the health, happiness, and virtue of the family of man. Christian apostles felt and foresaw this. ‘ Be not deceived,’ cried one, ‘ he who doeth righteousness is righteous.’ Said another, ‘ Pure religion and undefiled is to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted by the world.’ A third added, ‘ Love is the fulfilling of the Law.’ Equally was this the testimony of Zoroaster, of Buddha, of Confucius. In this religion have the prophets and sages lived and died ; and this will remain for ever the religion of the faithful and true, the helpful and the just, when all our controversies have died away. When the dogmatic systems have taken their place among other relics of antiquated philosophy, there will still be growing and expanding in the earth the religion of humanity,—the hatred of pain, which superstition worshipped; hatred of all sacrifice of human welfare; passionate horror of all evil, and that which inflicts suffering; passionate love of all that promotes welfare; concentration of all powers within and without to the humanisation of man and his world; and the immortal hope that Humanity will survive for ever, conquer all evil, attain perfect know­ ledge and joy. .This religion will flourish over the graves of all idols and creeds,—and this is the Religion of Humanity. �SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL. WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. The Sacred Anthology: a Book of Ethnical s. d. Scriptures........................................... .... 10 0 The Earthward Pilgrimage................................. 5 0 Do. do.......................................... 2 6 Republican Superstitions ................................. 2 6 Christianity ....................... ............. ... 1 6 Human Sacrifices in England ....................... 1 0 Sterling and Maurice........................................... 0 2 Intellectual Suicide........................................... 0 2 The First Love again........................................... 0 2 Our Cause and its Accusers................................. 0 1 Alcestis in England...................... 0 2 Unbelief : its nature, cause, and cure ............. 0 2 Entering Society ........................................... 0 2 The Religion of Children................................. 0 2 What is Religion ? 0 2 Atheism: a Spectre........................................... 0 2 The Criminal’s Ascension................................. 0 2 Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Chris­ tianity ), 350 pages ................................. 6 0 Members of the Congregation can obtain this Work in the Library at 5s. BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation ...................................................... Truth ................................................................ Speculation ...................................................... Duty ................................................................ The Dyer’s Hand ........................................... 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 New Work by Mr. Conway—“A Necklace of Stories,” illustrated by W. J. Hennessy, is now ready. Price 6s. Mr. ALEXANDER J. Ellis’s Discourses:—“ Salvation:” “Truth:” “Speculation:” “Duty:” and “The Dyer’s Hand. Bound in 1 Vol., price Is. Mr. Conway’s “ Demonology and Devil-lore.” Second edition, revised and enlarged, 2 vols, illustrated. 28 s. Members of the Congregation may obtain this work in the Library at 23 s. 4 d. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. With a list of works to be obtained in the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1880] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3347 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Ethics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Free Thought God-Attributes Human Nature Humanism Moral Theology Morality Morris Tracts Positivism Religion and Ethics https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2e2f6f2d360f9b69fea6db67ee15e085.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=MWaVJU7IWbLKN7w5aPKA3CV1dbu3Dj8T7B2f6zALs1erORWN7tDBb3gA08PXDeTzK%7EUbPkRXntSsD7HG5JumH%7EGJ8V7%7E5AEJ737Ct0FQBReOMqhmHjqyNAL6xUBU1hyoTycovCxYWc1bAT1CEU34eyden8ooKiNo5wADUG5kY2JK-fjqzZKrWdaVheJflzd1KKFGrac7ejcQyqqIRQKviqkhkpjxcD8j2T1-CF5TxPE-v498beeA3l3IUqq2gP387zMn3yndJMQ7wxUVgSGCaEE8OBNADuBH2f1V9KYVnIRQv1d38YKhCFMcpD9MzW6z5Ccg6buXu9PUi6%7E9ivp%7Euw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8450359937ee5db15d9d5edd9355fea2 PDF Text Text ENTERING SOCIETY: A DISCOURSE BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. DELIVERED AT SUNDAY, 29th July, 1877. frige twopence. �LONDON : PRINTED BY WATERLOW & SONS LIMITED LONDON WALL. I �ENTERING SOCIETY. Every physical law runs through the universe; ex­ plains equally the rolling world and rolling pebble ; harmonises flowers and constellations. In the moral and social world there is a like self-similarity. A certain unity may be discovered in the culture of a child, a nation, or the human race. » Constant is the unity of interests, feelings, thoughts, making what we term society. There is an endless variety in human nature, but its distinction from all lower nature is that its varieties can be utilized to form a society. In animal swarms and herds same­ ness is their strength; feather flocks with-its feathei. There is a strange tribe of American Indians who have a tradition that mankind is descended from the animal world. There was, they say, a mountainous monster who devoured all manner of animals. He swallowed them alive, and once, when he had taken this various meal, a certain Little Wolf that had �4 been swallowed, found the animals inside the monster quarrelling with each other; and he persuaded them that instead of quarrelling they should one and all unite, and contribute their several powers of horn, tooth, or other faculty to get out of the monster and slay him. The animals co-operated; liberated them­ selves ; slew the monster; and, in doing that, they were changed to men, and the human race began. It is a much more moral and scientific genesis of man than that in the Bible. Intelligent co-operation of different species imply humanity; and there are facts enough to show that, on the other hand, pro­ longed strife disintegrates society, and men may be transformed back to animals. All human beings are born members of society. Some pietists and fanatics have tried to escape this necessity, because society is what they call worldly ; but, though they hide in nunneries, monasteries, caves and deserts, they do not get out of society any­ more than they get out of the world. If society were to cease its work of coining, baking, weaving, trading, then the hermit would get out of it in the one way possible—death. There is nothing more grotesque, were we not so familiar with it, than where the abject language of her­ mits who fled society,—and sometimes escaped from it by the door of death,—and their anathemas on the �5 world are repeated by Christians enjoying society and ambitious of its rewards. Possibly they feel bound for form’s sake to carry the skeleton of asceticism round the banquet, but, as in the Egyptian custom, the performance only seems to stimulate the more the avidity with which the so-called pious utilise and enjoy the kingdom of this world. The Church of England merits the credit of having to a large extent abolished the fiction of a world of sinners and an un-world (so to say) of saints; and it might become a fairly good church if it were to lay aside its pretence that the world is morally an invalid in need of its holy medi­ caments. The temptation is great where the deceived patient is rich, for priests as well as for the doctors who proffer bread-pills. (The “ Priest in Absolution really believes in the deadly situation of human nature, and goes on with the old practice of drugging, blister­ ing and bleeding.) The unpardonable sin of nearly every theology ■ the sin by which it must perish—is the separation it has effected between two parts of man’s nature, the antagonism instituted between his social and spiritual activities, in whose harmony man’s well-being can alone be found. That only a few eccentric priests believe and act on that principle does not mitigate the evil fact that all are taught it, and that the young and simple have their consciences bruised and their lives �6 misdirected by it. A result of this figment lias been that the strongest moral agencies, which a true religion would have cultivated, have been left to trail or climb as they could; no sect being willing to acknowledge that any good force belonged to human nature. Still, without any aid from the churches, and mostly against their opposition, Society has been partially able to cultivate the motives, feelings, aims which constitute the actual religion,—the guiding, moulding, animating religion,-—of each civilised community, so far as it is really guided, leaving the churches to become more and more museums of antiquarian dogmatic remains. What is the Social Religion ? Its motive is the sentiment of honour, the sin it specially hates is meanness : these two—love of the honourable, hatred of the dishonourable—branch out from the individual heart into endless adaptations. Out of the social sentiment of honour emerge patriotism, justice, forti­ tude, supporting states; and that loyalty in personal relations, generating sympathy and friendliness, which, when men make the most of them, will cement the w'orld better than gunpowder. No state can ever be perfectly civilised until it is held together by simple force of friendliness. There is a print often seen in shop-windows which has been sent by thousands through the world. It is inscribed—“Simplyto thy cross I cling,” and repre­ �7 sents a young woman with the waves of a sea dashing around her, clasping for safety a cross which rises from the mid-ocean. It is a perfect mirror of Chris­ tian idolatry: it is translatable into many systems of superstition, where above the billows Faith clings now to a lingam, next to a wheel, or it may be, to the symbol of a serpent. But from what engulphing waves will a stone cross, or any of the like idols, save those who cling to them? From billows of sorrow, loss of their friends, or from disease, pain, and death ? By no means. It is truly written in the Bible that one fate happens to all alike, whatever be their prayers and sacrifices; and it almost broke the hearts of the old prophets and psalmists that the pious got no advantage at all over others in these things; in fact, nature’s strict impartiality between the prayerful and the prayerless was a main reason why priests fell to abusing nature and building up a cloudy realm, in which, being its sole creators, they could like other romancers have things turn out as they liked—all the “ pious ” happy, all the rest damned. In that world where cause and effect are of no importance all the stone crosses are in order. They are effective enough to save clinging Faith from imaginary billows, from storms that are not raging, floods non-existent, ' waves of delusive sin against a demonic majesty, and fabulous furies of a phantasmal hell. �But for all of these the real religion that grows around us day by day -will substitute the definite recognition of actual moral dangers, and the study of ■rational methods by which they may be escaped, and the health of man and society be preserved. Even now the finest hearts and minds in this world are impressing upon us the real hells beside which those of the sects appear petty and ridiculous. While the “ lake of fire,” to an increasing number, reads like something seen by Baron Mun­ chausen on his travels, it is no dream that bright and sweet children are growing up to people asylums and prisons, to break hearts and desolate homes, and to pass into degradations which sometimes make death . seem a tardy joy. If a man has ever had the sorrow of seeing one youth beginning with promise, throwing away his life in debauchery and selfishness, much more if he have seen the anguish of a home when all its fairest promises are broken, he will hardly require more to show him the absurdity of priest-made horrors in the presence of these that are real. I think it not too soon to maintain that somewhat more gravity—even solemnity, if you please—should be associated with what is called “entering society.” That phrase usually denotes participation in festal society—a realm of gaiety, beauty, mutual felicitation, where persons are seen in picturesque tableau. �9 There are some silly moralists who look upon all that as vanity j all the beauty of raiment, each effort to look the best, to be happy and make others happy, as ministering to ostentation and selfishness, and as injurious to modesty, humility, and simplicity. Nothing of the kind. It will never harm the modesty of youth to enjoy life’s springtide, as nature invites with her blossom and melody. All that purity requires is that their mirth and dance keep always in the light, and that there be no blind ways such as priests in absolution” provide, and other spiders that weave their webs along the flower-fringed paths of early life. There are hard, odious men (not many .women I hope), who would turn this world into a coal depot, or a grocer’s shop; but the social health is too vigorous for them ; and it is a satisfaction to know that there is a demand for roses as well as cabbages. They who wear the roses, or other decoration, are they vain? On the contrary they are conscious of their need of the rose or the gem to supply that wherein they fall short. Nor are they selfish; they do not array themselves for self-admiration; they long to contribute their part to the general happiness, to make the social circle beautiful, tasteful, and worthy of the enormous cost and toil by which it is sup­ ported. The only danger is that the young will believe some �IO evil whisper that their circle of social enjoyment is quite apart from their round of religious interests and moral duties. They may not indeed adopt the vulgar cant that these are opposed to each other—one holy, the other wicked. But even where that notion is not found, some regard society as a worldly thing, a region of persons not of principles. The merchant who regards religion as a thing for Sunday and not Monday; who conceives the commandments proper between lids of the Bible, out of place between lids of the ledger ; the preacher who on Sunday rehearses creeds declaring the human race under a doom, and everybody moving amid satanic snares, and then passes the rest of his week as smilingly as if there were no danger;—these, and others like them, are generally so unconscious of the duplicity of their lives that we may see plainly that the actual every-day world and the so-called religious world are to those they represent as different as two planets. But it is impossible that this tradition can be suffered to go on much longer. That religious world which has no relation to society, but only to an anthropomorphic deity and another world, has already received the verdict of human intelligence that it is no real religion at all, but a morbid excrescence on the body of Humanity. The verdict has been passed, and the sentence can not long be delayed; for it is impossible that the real interests of man can be �preserved if his energies, his means, above all his moral enthusiasm, are diverted from a society in need to a deity not in need ; from actually existent men and women to possibly existent angels; from the momen­ tous day that is to that which is not. The fundamental law of society is one with the fundamental law of religion. It is a higher law than the Hebrew golden rule (though not inharmonious with it), for it teaches us that our self-love must not equal our love of others. In every case the social instinct requires our personal interest to be held subordinate to the general good; and there is no other* foundation of either morality or religion than just that: self-denial, self-restraint, even self-sacrifice, for things larger than self, are varied growths from the one germ of our moral nature—the social self rising above the personal self. Unless the endless combinations of society be at­ tended and supervised by the moral principle just stated, increase of wealth and power is but increase of things anti-social, selfish, unprogressive. An irre­ ligious society is self-disintegrating; but how is society to be kept in pure elevation when religion is off at­ tending to mansions in heaven; and when the majority of young people are taught such notions of religion that they are only too glad to get rid of it during the rational days of the week ? They are perfectly right; �12 the introduction of cant and sanctimoniousness into the drawing-room, or theatre, or club, or business, would be like the new beetle amid grain ; for that is vast selfishness disguised as religion. But there is such a religion as charity and kindness, as self-control and love and service to others ; the spirit that desires to learn and be set right; the courtesy, the sympathy, which alone can make the true gentleman or gentle­ woman j and if this kind of religion does not beat as pulse of the social heart to transfuse the social body and all its members, the life of these will be coarse, their end corruption. Let us for example consider one of the great social growths of modern times—the club system. To what is called polite society the club is almost as important a development as the railway system to trade. It re­ sults from the application of the principle of co-opera­ tion to secure personal intercourse under favourable conditions, and all manner of comfort and culture with utmost economy of means. That is the most powerful principle in the world—combination and though society is itself a product of it, it has hardly imagined its farther results. But what are the social effects of club life at present? It appears to me that great as are their advantages they are fostering some very serious evils, and it is to be feared, even vices. Every respectable young man has the opportunity of �13 entering one or another of the innumerable clubs, and if he obtains a little means the club almost doubles them. The average home cannot rival the average club for comfort, luxury, or various society. The wife may make herself a slave, but if great wealth be not given her she cannot make her home compete with the ample attractions of the club. And how little the cost 1 A young man, for little more than half of what it would cost him to marry and found a home of moderate comfort, may live luxuriously, passing his free hours in the finest library, with all the current litera­ ture of the world, amid decorated rooms for use or amusement, dining magnificently with clever com­ pany ; and all by combining his small means with the small means of other young men. All very good, and rightly helpful to many a youth. But for that youth duties are waiting, tasks presently clamour to be done by him j and if he remains in his palace after ne has heard their voice, it becomes to him tne Castle of In­ dolence, and probably also the home of sensuality. It is no narrow or ascetic judgment to say that large numbers of young men of high tastes and talents are sinking into lives of selfishness, dilettantism, and worthlessness through the enticing luxuries of club­ life. Nor is the evil much, if at all, diminished when we consider how many homes after they are foimed are robbed of their rights by this overpowering growth of modern society. �14 How are such evils to be met ? Is there any case for a crusade against clubs ? If there were it would be a quixotic crusade. But clubs are not an evil; they supply great and necessary advantages. All we need is that there shall be a social religion attending and guarding these vast social formations. Our need is that moral culture shall turn from star-gazing and face moral facts, and a religion rise up to teach every man from the cradle to the grave that his duty is not to a dead Christ but to a living humanity, not to a Virgin Mary but to womanhood around him, not to a « Holy Ghost” but to a principle of honour,—aye, an honour which, when it has a religious sanction, will not be unarmed, but remand every idler in club or else­ where to his task, will place every self-indulgent circle under ban of intolerable shame, and get from each his or her high duty, with every pure pleasure in its train. When there is a religion appealing to the highest motives in every human heart, that leads each youth of either sex who enters society to consider that every advantage corresponds with a duty, then all develop­ ments of power and wealth in any direction must be diffused through every part of society as benefit. We hear a great deal of social science ; there is one very old piece of social science confirmed by ages of experi­ ence_ that we are members one of another. Hand �cannot be so well off if foot is lame ; all are weak if one is weak. Great nations have learned at terrible cost that when one class or interest advances very far it is sure to be brought to a stop till other classes gain their share. The white people in America found lately that their own freedom could not last another year unless the black people enjoyed the same. Europe is learning a severe lesson of the same kind about some long neglected Eastern tribes. But the law holds with equal truth of any community, or any social circle in it. If, for example, co-operation has exemplified its power in the club, the club cannot monopolise it with­ out danger; it must become the economy of homes also ; both sexes must share it; working men and working women must share it. And if there is any society where wise principles are not thus diffused those who belong to it will be themselves fragmentary and inharmonious. Every man or woman entering society should carry a whole heart into it. Not one instinct or faculty should be reserved, or left to take the veil. Each and all, let them enter into life, love it, enjoy it, and not fail to do their duty by it. The price is not fairly paid unless you endeavour to diffuse what there is acquired. You enter the hive to create the sweet as well as to enjoy it. And in the human hive the creation means the progressive purification, and per- �i6 fection of it. In society you have found new thoughts —higher truth—liberal views ; they all belong to the hive. And in a high sense your debt to all is secured : you can have no benefit genuinely unless by giving it. If God himself were to offer you a private favour and advantage of which nobody else could reap the least good, far better decline it. That which is sweet to you That which is pure and true to is sweet to others. you, would be so to others if they felt it as you do. Then give others your very best. So shall you stimulate them to diffuse their best; and all shall become apostles of the sunshine. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Entering society : a discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday 29th July 1877 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 16 p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Printed by Waterlow & Sons, London Wall. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1877] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3336 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Society Ethics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Entering society : a discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday 29th July 1877), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Moncure Conway Morris Tracts Religion and Civil Society Social Ethics Social Justice Society https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/fe6781239e469b8c124f6e600cdde962.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=A%7EgnNAhbo8bkk916JNumUwXfXinzkYs8NDBfWHuN0cm7J1Qg-gNO%7Eyyym8wGAcRTpgo5aQ2A%7EbFu-iJUg0DqOBKTHrNCj7O6VUScjjwTagoBWS%7Epf6ed1rjfbwKmnYkJASt8SCN%7EHCIgyGPT%7EogZVuAWmUW0LtP6OG7znsmp6qhVPhrIsQb5avsS1EDHzFOXG2MurLnCbNpmEgkQwGZ8KyBsQoX2TskPftVP4a1TPbFrPVC4DlD33F5o6iGNVnkDCLq2GBHIYgLyMBuQ9i3FN5iJ2bx-kHZFF%7EZkM8T1PNlYowAv5n04Ee1vUEDT3yeVXNu2Jhlz7ziZyjO1qMyGTQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f0a2459e50f0cdad9cd6f9d474eebca1 PDF Text Text THE RELIGION OF CHILDREN A DISCOURSE, WITH READINGS AND MEDITATION, given at SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, OCTOBER 2i, 1877, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. frige twopence. �ORDER 1. Hymn 132— “ Smiles on past misfortune’s brow.”—Gray. 2. Readings, pages 3 to 7. 3. Hymn 180— “I think if thou could’st know.”—Adelaide Procter. 4. Meditation, p. 8. 5. Anthem 22— “Gently fall the dews of eveP—Saralt P. Adams. 6. Discourse, p. 9. 7. Hymn, 191 — “ Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill. ”—Tennyson. 8. Dismissal. �HYMN 132. READINGS. HEBREW PROVERBS. My son, if base men entice thee, ■Consent thou not. Walk not in the way with them : Keep back thy foot from their paths : Tor their feet run to evil. .'Surely in vain the net is spread, In the sight of any bird ; But these lay snares for their own lives. .Such are the ways of everyone greedy of gain; The life of those addicted to it, it taketh away. Because they hated knowledge, Therefore they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, And from their own counsel they shall be filled. T’or the turning away of the simple shall slay them, And the carelessness*of fools shall destroy them. �4 ORIENTAL FABLE. The learned Saib, who was entrusted with the education of the son of the Sultan Carizama, related to him each day a story. One day he told him this from the annals of Persia “A magi­ cian presented himself before King Zohak, and breathing on his breast, caused two serpents to come forth from the region of the king’s heart. The king in wrath was about to slay him, but the magician said, ‘ These two serpents are tokens of the glory of your reign. They must be fed, and with human blood. Thisvon may obtain by sacrificing to them the lowest of your people ; but they will bring you happiness, and whatever pleases you isjust.’ Zohak was at first shocked ; but gradually he accustomed himself to the counsel, and his subjects were sacrificed to the serpents. But the people only saw in Zohak a monster bent on their destruction. They revolted, and shut him up in a cavern of the mountain Damarend, where he became a prey to the two serpents whose voracity he could no longer appease. “ What a horrible history ! ” exclaimed the young prince, when his preceptor had ended it. “ Pray tell me another that I can hear without shuddering.” “ Willingly, my lord,” replied Saib. “ Here is a very simple one :—-A young sultan placed his confi­ dence in an artful courtier, who filled his mind with false ideas of glory and happiness, and introduced into his heart pride and volup­ tuousness. Absorbed by these two passions, the young monarch sacrificed his people to them, insomuch that in their wretchedness they tore him from the throne. He lost his crown and his treasures, but his pride and voluptuousness remained, and being now unable to satisfy them, he died of rage and despair.” The young prince of Carizama said, “ I like this story better than theother.” “ Alas, prince,” replied his preceptor, “itis neverthelessthe same.” �5 FROM “THE SPIRIT’S TRIALS.” By J. A. Froude. A TALENT, of itself unhealthily precocious, was most unwisely pushed forward and encouraged out by everybody—by teachers Ld schoolmasters, from the vanity of having a little monster to display as their workmanship; by his father, because he vms anxious for the success of his children in life, and the quicker they <mt on the better : they would the sooner assume a position It had struck no one there might be a mistake about it. Tw one could have ever cared to see even if it were possible they migat, or five minutes’ serious talk with the boy, or to have listened to his laurh, would have shown the simplest of them that t rey we. e but developing a trifling quickness of faculty ; that the powe which should have gone for the growth of the entire rec bein-directed off into a single branch, which was su ed g disproportioned magnitude, while the stem was quietly decaying. L to the character, of the entire boy-his temper, dispos tion, health of tone in heart and mind, all that was presumem It made no show at school exhibitions, and at east due dy assumed no form of positive importance as regarded after So this was all left to itself. Of course, if a boy knew half the Iliad by heart at ten, and had construed the Odyssey through a eleven, all other excellences were a matter of course. . . was naturally timid, and shrunk from all the amusements and Xes of other boys. So much the better : he would keep to his books He was under-grown for ms age, infirm, an un healthy'"and a disposition might have been observed in him even then in all his dealings with other boys and with Ins master X evade difficulties instead of meeting them-a feature whi should have called for the most delicate handling, anc uou have far better repaid the time and attention which were w �6 in forcing him beyond his years, in a few miserable attainments, . . In a scene so crowded as this world is, or as the little world of a public school is, with any existing machinery it is impossible to attend to minute shades of character. There is a sufficient likeness among boys to justify the use of general, very general laws indeed. They are dealt with in the mass. An average treatment is arrived at. If an exception does rise, and it happens to disagree, it is a pity, but it cannot be helped. “Punish,” not “prevent,” is the old-fashioned principle. If a boy goes wrong, whip him. Teach him to be afraid of going wrong by the pains and penalties to ensue—just the principle on which gamekeepers used to try to break dogs. But men learned to use gentler methods soonest with the lower animals. As to the effects of the treatment, results seem to show pretty much alike in both cases ; but with the human animal an unhappy notion clung on to it, and still clings, and will perpetuate the principle and its disas­ trous consequences, that men and boys deserve their whipping, as if they could have helped doing what they did in a way dogs cannot. . . It would be well if people would so far take example from what they find succeed with their dogs, as to learn there are other ways at least as efficacious, and that the desired conduct is better if produced in any other way than in that. . . On the whole, general rules should have no place in family education. It is just there, and there perhaps alone, that there are opportunities of studying shades of difference, and it should be the business of affection to attend to them. When affection i s really strong, it will be an equal security against indulgence and over-hasty severity. . . . I take it to be a matter of the most certain experience in dealing with boys of an amiable, infirm disposition, that exactly the treatment they receive from you they will deserve. In a general way it is true of all persons of unformed character who. �7 Come in contact with you as your inferiors, although with men it cannot be relied on with the same certainty, because their feel­ ings are less powerful, and their habit of moving this way or that wZy under particular circumstances more determinate. But with the very large class of boys of a yielding nature who have very little self-confidence, are very little governed by a determined will or judgment, but sway up and down under the impulses of the moment, if they are treated generously and trustingly, it may be taken for an axiom that their feelings will be always strong enough to make them ashamed not to deserve it. Treat them as if they deserved suspicion, and as infallibly they soon actually will deserve it. People seem to assume that to be governed by impulse means, only “ bad impulse,” and they endeavour to counteract it by trying to work upon the judg­ ment, a faculty which these boys have not got, and so cannot possibly be influenced by it. There never was a weak boy yet that was deterred from doing wrong by ultimate distant con­ sequences he was to learn from thinking about them. It is idle to attempt to manage him otherwise than by creating and foster­ ing generous impulses to keep in check the baser ones. And the greatest delicacy is required in effecting this. It is not enough to do a substantial good. Substantial good is Oiten diy or repulsive on the surface, and must be understood to be valued ; just, again, what boys are unable to do. . . Strong natures may understand and value the reality. Women, and such children as these, will not be affected by it, unless it shows on the surface what is in the heart. Provided you will do it in a kind, sympathising manner, you may do what you please with them ; otherwise nothing you do will affect them at all. HYMN iSo. �8 MEDITATION. As we gather to-day, apart from the conventional world of worshippers, we are still between those vast realms of moral good and evil which are reflected in all human consciousness. Beneath, stretches that abyss which human imagination has peopled with demons and devils, and the manifold tortures of souls in eternal pain and despair ; above, the fair realms of joy with its spirits of light, angels, cherubim and seraphim. But these are all within each of us. All those demons mean only hearts sunk low in selfishness ; all those angels mean hearts raised high in burning love. Not mean or poor is any lot which gives room to deny self, to put all self-seeking passions under foot, to ascend by the ardour and spirit of love. There is the grand conflict between angel and demon waged, the struggle between light and darkness, and there the victory is being won. Great is love 1 Whether it sends its sweet influence through a community or a home, whether it is saving a world or a heart, great and divine is love! For it closes over and hides the dark region of guilt and baseness within us, it quickens the mind and expands the heart to their fulness of life. In each heart are the two doors—one opening downward to the pit of selfishness in all its forms, one opening upwards to the purest joys ; and it is when we give all to the spirit of Love that the hell is for ever conquered, and we build around us henceforth our eternal heaven. ANTHEM 22. �THE RELIGION OF CHILDREN. In some respects the child living in the present age finds its lines fallen in pleasant places. It is not, like its ancestors, tortured with nauseous drugs, nor so much with the rod. The clergyman no longer pro­ nounces over the babe at baptism, as he once did, “ I command thee, unclean spirit, that thou come out of this infantnor delivers it up to be dealt with as if its natural temper and will were efforts of the unclean spirit to get back again. In Iceland the old people account for elves by saying that once when the Al­ mighty visited Eve after the fall, she kept most of her children out of the way because they were not washed; on which these were sentenced to be always invisible, were turned into elves, and became the progenitors of such. But we are beginning to be more merciful than that even for the unwashed, and have gone a consider­ able way towards humanising them and making them presentable. �Id As to their literary culture and entertainment, there were probably more good and attractive books for children published in the last ten years than in the whole of the last century. Many of the finest writers of our generation—Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne, Kingsley—the list would be long—have rightly thought it a high task of genius to write books for children. But in religious matters the children can hardly be congratulated on the age upon which they have fallen. The child is a piece of nature—physical, mental, moral nature. Heaven and earth meet in it; the laws of reason are in its instincts as well as zoologic laws; and these harmonise in it. The child is a unit. Con­ science is for a time external; it knows good and evil in the parental conscience, not in itself. There is no divorce between the two kinds of goodness—what is good for eye and mouth, and what is good, for the soul. There is no fruit inwardly forbidden. Confucius said 11 Heaven and earth are without doubleness,’’ but Hebrew Scriptures say God has made all things double —one is set against the other. Our theology has been largely evolved out of this Hebraism, but our children live morally in that primitive age which cannot realise profoundly any dualism. The child, therefore, lives in a heaven and earth without doubleness; if its parent only consents to a thing, it feels no misgiving; but it is early introduced to a religion full, not only of double- �II ness, but of duplicity. It is the gangrene of our age that it says one thing and means another; professes one thing and believes another; and nearly . every child, taught any religion at all, is taug t mgs incongruous. I used, in childhood, to wonder about the meaning of that prayer in the Zh Dam, e us never be confounded;” but as time went on, whatever else was obscure, the confusion grew clear. Not only that old sense of a word which reqmres philology to explain ; but the sense of every chapter •n the Bible, every sentence in the Catechism, requires the interpretation of knowledge and. expe­ rience; whilst the sentences being m Eng , apparently, the young mind is compelled p some meaning into them-a meaning pretty certain to be wrong—or else be put to confusion It is not, however, the double tongue of formal teaching wh 1 is worst; the mental confusion is not so bad as the moral; and there it is impossible to conceive anything more anomalous than most of the rehg.ous induct o —so-called—around us. It is the necessity of the home, the nursery, and of the school, that the c> should be taught to be forgiving, gentle knd and never angry or hateful. It is instructed that all X be «». But just so fast, and so far as dogmas can be crammed into the child, it is1 asyste which begins with God’s wrath against the whole �12 world, and ends with Christ’s damnation of vast multitudes. A little boy in an American family with which I am acquainted, being in a passion with his playmate, declared that he hated him, and never would see him again. His sister rebuked him, told him that was very wrong, and not like Christ. “ Christ never hated and abused others, not even his enemies.” “No,” said the boy, “but he’s going to.” It may be that only one boy in many would be clear-headed enough to say that, but many can feel what one or none can say. It is impossible that children can be taught in one breath a vindictive Christianity and a gentle Christianity—dogmas of fear and principles of trust—and not imbibe either muddy waters of confusion or the waters of bitterness, where they should find only fountains of light and joy. In one respect the Reformation had an unhappy effect upon the work of nurturing little children. It trans­ ferred the care of “ saving its soul,” as it is called, from the outside to the inside of a head too small to manage it. In the Catholic family the drop of holy water and sign of the cross on the child’s forehead are alone required; and for many years it is mainly left to a natural growth; at any rate, not encouraged to grapple with everlasting problems. Under the reformed religion there grew an increasing anxiety as to how the souls of the children were to be saved; and the �13 way fixed on was to stimulate strongly its fears and its hopes. Luther brought with him a bright children s para­ dise from the Church of Rome. Here is his letter to his son, aged 4 :—• il Grace and peace in Christ, my dearly beloved little son. I am glad to know that you are learning well and that you say your prayers. So do, my little son, and persevere; and^hen I come home I will bring home with me a present from the annual fair. I know of a pleasant and beautiful garden into which many children go, where they have golden little coats, and gather pretty apples under the trees, and pears, and cherries, and plums (pflaumen), and yellow plums (spillen); where they sing, leap, and are merry; where they also have beautiful little horses, with golden bridles and silver saddles. When I asked the man that owned the garden ‘ Whose are these children ? ’ he said ‘ They are the children that love to learn, and to pray, and are pious.’ “ Then I said, ‘ Dear Sir, I also have a son I he is called Johnny Luther (Hanischen Luther). May he not come into the garden, that he may eat such beautiful apples and pears, and ride such a little horse, and play with these children ? ’ Then the man said ‘ If he loves to pray and to learn, and is pious, he shall also come into the garden; Philip too, and �14 little James; and if they all come together, then they may have likewise whistles, kettle-drums, lutes and harps; they may dance also, and shoot with little crossbows.’ “Then he showed me a beautiful green grass­ plot in the garden prepared for dancing, where hang nothing but golden fifes, drums, and elegant silver cross-bows. But it was now early, and the children had not yet eaten. Thereupon I could not wait for the dancing, and I said to the man, ‘ Ah, dear Sir, I will instantly go away and write about all of this to my little son John; that he may pray earnestly, and learn well, and be pious, so that he may also come into this garden; but he has an aunt Magdalene, may he bring her with him ? ’ Then said the man, (So shall it be ; go and write to him with confidence.’ Therefore, dear little John, learn and pray with de­ light ; and tell Philip and James, too, that they must learn and pray; so you shall come with one another into the garden. With this I commend you to Almighty God—and give my love to aunt Magdalene ; give her a kiss for me. Your affectionate father, Martin Luther.” (In the year 1530.) It is plain that the man who wrote that letter was himself a child. Thunder for the Emperor, lightning for the Pope, but a shower of rainbows for little Johnny. But that child’s paradise is now as obsolete �iS as the Elysian Fields, or the Indian’s happy hunting ground There was already a worm amid its blossoms while Luther described them: for Calvinism was lurking near, with terrors to blacken not only the earth but the blue sky. Happily for Johnny, his father was not logical, else it might have occurred to him that if prayer and piety were the way to reach the heavenly garden, they would naturally be the chief occupation there. But Calvin was logical; and there is no worse affliction than your logical man when his premisses are false. Calvinism made heaven into a large Presby­ terian assembly, all the children turned to rigidly righteous elders ; no children there at all. One by one in the child’s paradise the blossoms fell blighted. Instead of the dance, behold a Puritan Sabbath school; instead of plums and cherries, texts and hymns ; cross­ bows yield to catechisms ; and the child learned at last that its heaven was to be a place where congrega tions ne’er break up, and Sabbaths have no end. Well, we have measurably recovered from that. . At least, many well-to-do families have; the Puritan paradise is one we are generally quite willing to give to the poor. It is still largely the ragged-school para­ dise, and I suspect that endless Sabbath fixes m many a ragged boy the resolve never to go there. Meanwhi e, for the children of a happier earthly lot, the fading away of the little Luther paradise has left them almost none at �i6 all. Protestantism, with its education, has shot out into various theories of the future life for grown-up people. The Reformer hopes for a scene of endless progress. The Theologian imagines the supreme bliss of seeing his own doctrines proved true, and his oppo­ nents’ all wrong. The Baptist’s heaven shows the sprinkling parson confounded; and the Wesleyan will shout glory at the convicted Calvinist. “ There,” say all of them, “ we shall see eye to eye”—that is, everybody shall see as we always saw. But what has all this to do with the children ? They do not care for the theological heaven, nor the heaven of endless progress. The learned Protestant world is so absorbed in the controversy whether there be any future at all, that it forgets the little ones who would like to know whether it be a future worth having. What is provided for them as the reward of their prayers, piety, and self-denial ? They go to church ; they read the Bible; they sit through the tragedy; but when they look for the curtain to rise on beauty and happiness, it rises on metaphysical mist, not by any means attractive or even penetrable to a child. Since, for us, Luther’s plum-paradise, and the Puritan paradise, are equally gone beyond recall, we may look at them calmly and impartially; and we may see that both have their suggestiveness, and point to a truth. Luther’s letter is a celebration of �17 the child’s nature—the purity and sweetness and even holiness of its little aims and joys. It is like birds singing over again the old theme—“ Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’’ But the paradise Luther promised his child was much too definite. He went too far into detail; and when little Johnny grew from the age of four to ten or twelve, and during that time had learned his lessons, he would see his paradise losing its summer beauty. By that time he might have outgrown the whistles, and become careless of kettle-drums. He might prefer gold in his pocket to a golden coat. He might find it, as time went on, impossible to stimulate prayer by a prospect of silver cross-bows, or even of yellow plums. And so leaf by leaf, blossom by blossom, his paradise would fade away; and it could never bloom again. On the other hand, the Puritan paradise, with all its sombreness, did have the advantage of raising the mind to large conceptions. It was false—cruelly false __in crushing the innocent mirth and despising the little aims of the child. That which Puritanism called petty, was not petty. The boy at his sports is training the sinews which master the world. The doll quickens to activity maternal tenderness. It is said Zoroaster was born laughing, and a sage prophesied he would be greatest of men. That sage was wiser than the �i8 Puritan. But it is not necessary to chill the mirth or to dispel the illusions of childhood, in order to keep it from the delusion of holding on to its small pleasures as if the use of existence lay between a penny trumpet on earth and a golden trumpet in heaven. It appears to me that the true religion of a child is to grow ; and when it is old, its religion will still be to grow. The child ■will turn from its toys ; will return to them after longer and longer intervals ; and lastly leave them, and turning say, “ Mother, what shall I be when I grow up ? ” If the mother only knew it, all the catechisms on earth have no question so sacred as that! The child that dreams of its future in the great wrorld has already learned far enough for the time the pettiness of life’s transient aims : it is already overarched by an infinite heaven. In the great roaring world, seen from afar, nothing is defined, nothing limited—it is a boundless splendour of possibility. All that man or woman may dream of heaven, a child may dream of the great world of thought and action into which it must enter at last, and find there a heaven or a helk Religion can teach the child no higher lesson than that, nor stimulate its good motives by any nobler conception. As its sports train to manly strength, its little pleasures develop the longing for intellectual �i9 and moral joys. And if the parent’s tongue is not equal to the high task of telling the truth about the tragic abyss of evil to be shunned, or the beautiful heights of excellence to be won, there are noble books awaiting the child, the boy, the youth j ready to meet every phase of the growth, and follow every fading leaf with a flower more fair, more full of promise than the cast-off toy or pastime. What a training for the child entering upon school­ life are the stories of Miss Edgeworth—a training in manliness, independence, sincerity, and justice, which can make the playground the arena of heroism and duty ! And there is Scott: the horizon grows lustrous with noble presences, as the boy reads. Dickens will tell him the romance of humble life how kindness and sympathy can find pearls in London gutters, and scatter them again wherever they go. Plutarch’s “Lives” frescoe earth and heaven with heroic forms that remain through life as guardians of conscience and measures of honourable conduct. Happily the catalogue is long—too long to be now repeated—of the good books which tell the young, what brave and faithful men have done, and can do, to help the weak, redress wrong, uplift truth and justice, and make human lives melodious and beau­ tiful amid the jarring discords of the world. And the lives of noblest men and women have for �20 their dark background the evils they conquered, the wrongs they assailed; evils and wrongs which are the ■only real hell to be shunned. It is only the fictitious hell that terrifies the child. The snare set on pur­ pose to injure it by a “ ghostly enemy ” ; the dangers it incurs unknowingly, from an invisible assailant it may not avoid; these are the terrors that unnerve and unman. The real dangers of life, when seen, nerve the strength, man the heart, endow with resolu­ tion and courage. The old man said to a child afraid to go into the dark—“Go on, child; you will see nothing worse than yourself.” And that is the fundamental doctrine for a child. All the hells—their mouths wide open on the street—the seductive haunts of vice in all its shapes—they are the creations of human passion and appetite. According to what they find in us do those fell dragons devour us, or else feel the point of our spear in their throat. And even so we make or mar our own heaven. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. The little boy came to his mother, angry and weep­ ing, complaining that in the hills some other boy had called him bad names. He had searched, but could not find him. But the mother well knew that other concealed abuser of her son. il It was,” she said, �21 “but the echo of your own voice. Had you called out pleasant names, pleasant names had been returned to you; and all through life, as you give forth to the world, so shall it be returned unto you. Amid these ever-present hells and heavens your child must move—onward from the cradle to the grave : why give it dismay or hope of heavens and hells not present ? Do not pour that living heart into ancient moulds and examples, even the best. While it has to thread its way through London, why give it the map of Jerusalem? While it must live high or low in the nineteenth century, why bid it build for a distant age or clime? True it is, that a noble and brave life is worthy to be studied, whether lived mthe year One or One thousand or in r877 J but its noble­ ness is in itself, not in its accidents of time and space, not in its vesture of name and scenery. When a youth reads of the fidelity of Phocion, is it that he may confront Alexander, or withstand the follies oi Athenians ? It is that he may be true and faithful m his relations to living men and women. If he fancies that it is like Phocion to slay the slain, and deal with dead issues, let him repair to Don Quixote, and see what comes of fighting phantoms and giants that do not exist And if the life be that of Christ, the fact is nowise changed. That life is not yet written ; we have the figure-head of a Jewish sect, painted to suit itself, and �22 -called Christ; the figure-head of Gentile sect, painted to suit itself, and called Christ; and so we have a Greek, an Alexandrian, a Roman, a Protestant Christ, each with its sectarian colours and glosses; each an anomaly .and an impossibility. There is no volume you can put into the hand of a child, and honestly call the Life of Christ. The time has not come when that great man can be brought forth as he really was, to quicken men instead of supporting prejudice. But where there is no prejudice instilled, the heart may be trusted to pick out from the New Testament the record of a valiant soul, the deeds of a hero, thoughts of a sage, death of a martyr; and these too will help to idealise life for the young, and teach them its magnificent possibilities. Let the child know well that all it reads of Christ is true of itself. Let him know that all he reads there or elsewhere which marks that or any ■other life off from human life, as something miracu­ lous, is mere fable• and that his own daily life is passed amid wonders equally great, and conditions just as sacred and sublime. Ah, how sublime! What tears are there to be wiped away ; what faces of agony to which smiles may be called ; what wrongs to be righted, high causes to be helped; what heights of excellence to be won—summits all shining with the saintly souls that have climbed them, and radiant with the glories of which poets and prophets have dreamed I �23 That teaching which belittles our own time, and lowers our powers beneath those of any other, may be called a religion, but it is a moral blight and a curse. When we demand of our children the very highest aims that were ever aspired to, the very truest, noblest lives ever lived—nor let them be overshadowed by any names, however great—then shall we see rising our own prophets and heroes, and see our own world redeemed by a devotion not wasted on a buried society, by an enthusiasm no longer lavished on a world for us unborn. HYMN 191. Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins-of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. DISMISSAL. Printed by waterlow and sons limited, London wall, London. �WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. The Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scriptures......................... The Earthward Pilgrimage Do. do. Republican Superstitions......................... Christianity >..................................... Human Sacrifices in England .. David Frederick Strauss......................... Sterling and Maurice......................... Intellectual Suicide . ......................... The First Love again......................... Our Cause and its Accusers Alcestis in England ......................... Unbelief: its nature, cause, and cure .. Entering Society .. PRICES. 8. IO 5 2 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 d. 0 0 6 6 6 0 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 NEW WORK BY M. D. CONWAY, M. A. Idols and Ideals {including the Essay on Christianity^ 350 pp. 7 6 Members of the Congregation can obtain this work in the Library at 5/-. BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation....................................................... 0 ' Truth ....................................................... 0 1 0 Speculation .. •• ■• •• 1 0 Duty .• .....................................' The Dyer's Hand........................................... 0 1 2 2 2 2 2 BY REV. P. H. WICKSTEED, M.A. 0 1 2 The Modern Analogue of the Ancient Prophet....................................................... 0 1 2 Going Through and Getting Over •• BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON. BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A. The Conduct of Life Hymns and Anthems ................................ 0 * .. 2 V-, 2Si- � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The religion of children : a discourse, with readings and meditation, given at South Place Chapel, October 21, 1877 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Includes extract from the text of 'The spirit's trials' by J.A. Froude. Printed by Waterlow and Sons Limited, London Wall. With a list of 'works to be obtained in the Library' of South Place Chapel at the end of pamphlet. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1877] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3337 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Education Child rearing Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The religion of children : a discourse, with readings and meditation, given at South Place Chapel, October 21, 1877), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects Children Moral Education Morris Tracts Religious Education https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/dd9c7efb20b9eb000469c5dfecf84ed0.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=ao43fQbdT1vjEJC5-jlm3qJ1MomW0qgqZH9lGp6v2VIa9mW489-raPK024kowvcuoJe0S%7EcI8VFIxvhYPHub495mzyc5jduoi55tgnzlZ%7EbvFZ7dXbLCerUBSylnLNJWzUVFLZtHw1GEXa2EfCyrYIuCFwz9oqMnI3DU4jRFJEbPduPKIYx81OPh-T3qDyb6%7EiGYFnaKXXv9dyT0-ZrmV1Xgki67uLRAK6TuzAKBuyBrAXsBvqLJmJMaCTRUwUorw0Fzfj%7EiDUcNfBpMj-EGZAt4oqedmN2zMMvsbC7oBQPGcwOa8s7LVg8EldTK-LB4C3LvSh54y2yHN3ZwX7Ysmw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 03fab77ec34ba2916405a1326a098b09 PDF Text Text HUMAN SACRIFICES IN ENGLAND. FOUR DISCOURSES BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A., Minister of South Place Chapel, and at the Athenaeum, Camden Road. LONDON: TRUBNER AND CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1876. �CONTENTS. PAGE 1. Human Sacrifices 2. The Daughters of ... ... ... $ Jephthah ... ... 7 3. Children, and their Moloch ... ... 19 4. The Sabbath-Jugernath 33 5. The Martyrdom 51 of Reason �HUMAN SACRIFICES. I passed a morning of the last week in the St. Marylebone Police Court, having been summoned there as a witness. As I waited through the hours there passed by a dismal gaunt procession or chain­ gang of the captives of the ignorance, the brutality, the shame, sorrow, despair, of this vast metropolis. There were young men arrested in one drunken brawl, and women arrested in another. A shop-girl of twentyone, who had been sent by her humble parents from the country to earn her living, had stolen a little finery, perhaps for a babe that would soon be born. A young “ gentleman,” as he was described, who had run through an estate, was sentenced for assaulting a young woman, whose downcast eyes and deep blush of shame confessed to the judge what her lips could not utter. A woman of twenty-two, who might once have been comely, had been arrested for intoxication. During the night she had three times attempted �4 suicide, and was barely saved for a life of despair. It is terrible to look upon a face which tells only of a life in ruins, and to listen to sobs broken by no plead­ ing or word indicating any interest, however faint, in what the next moment may bring. A little boy five or six years old, wretched and ragged—with hardly rags enough to cover him—charged with being “ desti­ tute.” Every eye that saw him could testify to the truth of that charge. The poor boy had been found asleep on the pavement, and said he had slept there for three weeks. The magistrate set himself to ferret out the facts, and little by little was revealed his story. He was one of six children who had been living with their father and mother, in utter poverty, all in one room. At length the mother left that miserable room to wander and live as she could. But this little boy had followed her, clung to her; she carried him about with her for one day, in some strange place he slept with her the same night; but in the morning she sent him back home. The father drove him out because he had gone off with his mother, and so he had found a London pavement the only pillow extended to his little head. The magistrate was consideratej he did his best to do justice to all, but he must have known—it was plain—that in no case did he judge or sentence the real criminal. The visible offenders before him were �5 victims. Behind each stood the grim and awful shadow of some ghoul that had fastened upon him. As the wretched men, women, and children were led away in custody, free and unfettered beside them stalked their demons,—Ignorance, Strong Drink, Neglect, Injustice, Hereditary Taint, Malformation of Brain. These are the real criminals, and it is they that elude the grasp of the law which can only deal its penalties to the already punished, the utterly helpless creatures on whom the ghastly vampires of our time are battening. I am about to speak for a few Sundays of what seem to me the heaviest wrongs of the present time; but I do not wish to point out wrongs for which there are no remedies. Indeed, we can only very dimly dis­ cover evils, we can not feel deeply concerning them, until the light of its remedy falls upon each wrong. The remedies may be, as yet, ideal; but that is not their fault; they are necessarily ideal until they are applied : it is the fault of those great Interests, em­ bodying public Selfishness or Superstition, which reject the truth and the justice which threaten them. But I believe in the power of ideas. In the end they are stronger than armies. Waiting there at St. Marylebone—as it were in some weird whorl of Dante’s Hell __till, to my eyes, all present seemed impersonal, types and shadows of remorseless forces which once �6 St. Mary-the-Good tried to conjure down with her tender image, and then departed, leaving only her name, made way for the police,—there came upon me by some association, a memory of early days passed in a land where the Black-tongued Plague was raging. Hundreds were struck down daily with swift death; mourning was heard along the streets of every town and village ; cries were heard in many homes that had been happy. Every face was pallid ; the strong­ est men and women moved about in the silence of fear. One night the thermometer fell a degree, and the Plague was dead. Not swift and sudden, but just as certain is the in­ visible power of the air which works through ideas. “ God is a spirit.” There is an intellectual, a religious atmosphere, in which lurks the miasma of moral death, or through which breathes the spirit of life ; and any least change in that ideal region will tell upon the earth as surely as on it is recorded in frost or flower the viewless march of the seasons. �THE DAUGHTERS OF JEPHTHA. Jephtha, Judge of Israel, marching against the Ammonites, made a vow unto the Lord that, if victorious, he would offer up as a burnt-offering to Jehovah the first person that should come forth from his house to meet him. Wife or daughter it must have been : Jephtha had no other offspring but an only daughter, and who so naturally should hasten to welcome a father’s return from war and danger as an only daughter? So went forth the happy maiden with timbrels and dances to meet her father, the Prince. The father was in distress, but it never occurred either to him or his daughter that the Lord might sympathise with their love and their reluctance rather than with the vow, and so the fair maid was slain and burnt on the Lord’s altar. Some efforts have been made by casuists to show that Jephtha’s daughter was not sacrificed literally, but only consesecrated to the Lord by not marrying : but such attempts are unworthy of notice. Human sacrifices were a recognised part of the Jewish religion, and �8 careful provisions were made for the redemption of a man or woman vowed to the Lord by money,—except when devoted by anathema, in which case the man or woman the law declared (Lev. 27) “ shall surely be put to death.” I do not wonder that theologians would like to escape the effect of the story, for it is said “ the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephtha,” in the Old Testament, and in the New that king who sacrificed bis daughter is enumerated among saints of whom the world was not worthy. Well, the story drifted about the world and had its effect. Jephtha’s daughter was caught up by the Greek imagination, and reappeared as Iphegenia (probably Jephthagenia), the daughter of Agamemnon, who was nearly sacrificed in obedience to a similar vow made by her father to Artemis. Human sacrifices were unknown to the ancient Aryan race until it came in contact with this dark and horrible Shemitic belief that the deity required blood—and especially the blood of some spotless being, as the dove, or the lamb, and finally the most beautiful virgin. This wild and guilty superstition may be tracked in blood wherever the Jewish religion passed, and when Humanity had by reaction revolted from it, the spirit of it was caught up and preserved in the Christian idea that the world was to be saved only by the sacrifice of the one most vir­ ginal unblemished Soul, the Lamb offered up on Cal­ vary to soothe the wrath of God. �9 But even after that offering, though it was said to be a final satisfaction of Jehovah’s universal claim and thirst for blood, the old superstition survived to the extent of teaching women that it was a holy thing to vow their virginity to the Lord, to seclude themselves from the world, and to count themselves especially happy if they lost their lives by ascetic devotion to their invisible Spouse. All the nuns of Christendom were, and are, Jephtha’s daughters. But that has been by no means the worst result. The ancient Hebrew idea that woman is the natural sacrifice to God coloured the whole relation of that religion and its civil laws towards the female sex. Woman became the law’s normal victim. We never read of a Jewish Queen; we rarely read praises of a woman of that race, except as part of the estate of some man who was to her the representative of God. She is sold and bought with her dead lord’s assets. It is deemed no blot on Abraham when he drives Hagar from his door. There is no law in the decalogue, or elsewhere in the Bible, that mitigates the masculine decree—“ Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” All this was reflected in Christianity. It taught women to submit to their husbands as to the Lord himself; never to speak in public, or to appear there unveiled; to stay at home and obey their husbands,— �IO “ as also saith the law,” adds Paul,—and understand that woman is made for man and not man for woman. I need not pause here to discuss the origin of this view of the position of woman. We may admit that, far away in some hard wilderness, or amid certain primitive exigencies of society, such a theory of woman was inevitable as a phase of social evolution. To keep at home and obey might have been the only way of continuing to exist, or to escape capture. But when a particular phase of human evolution gets asso­ ciated with divine sanction, it gains a permanence which fetters progress. Most gods have been the means of perpetuating the barbarism of the age which invented them. The Christian system brought this idea of woman into Europe. Whatever relation it may have had to Arabia or Syria, whatever justification it might have had in savage periods, surely it was out of place and out of time when imported into Europe. And there is not a more cruel chapter in history than that which records the arrest by Christianity of the natural growth of European civilisation as regards woman. In Germany it found woman participating in the legisla­ tive assembly, and sharing the interests and counsels of man, and drove her out and away, leaving her to­ day nothing of her ancient rights but a few honorary idle titles, titles that remain to mark her degradation �11 and ours, as they remind us that a peeress, a duchess, a baroness, a princess, a queen, are not the political equals of many an illiterate sot who calls himself a man. Even more fatal was the overthrow of woman’s position in Rome. Read the terrible facts as stated by Gibbon, by Milman, and Sir Henry Maine, read and ponder them, and you will see the tremendous wrong that Christianity did to woman. All the laws by which women were protected in their individual existence were overthrown. The sum of money which Roman law demanded should be settled by her father on every married woman, the new Christian code caused to be paid to the husband instead of her, as a dowery, or consolation for taking her off her father’s hands. The idea that the virgin belonged to God survived, and her espousal to a man could only be by payment of redemption-money, which is the marriage fee. Christianity struck the fatal blowat the independence of woman by allowing her but two alternatives,—im­ prisonment in a nunnery or servitude in a husband’s house; anything else was for generations accounted sin. But am I speaking of the far past ? Is it not true also this day that women are sacrificed to this old Jewish regime and its Lord? What woman needs to­ day is to have her rights and her wrongs decided in accordance with the conditions and the needs of �12 Europe, not those of Judea; what she requires is the unbiassed verdict of the sense and sentiment and science of the present day ; and yet her case is yielded up to the authority and law of an ignorant tribe, whose very Judge knew no better than to burn his daughter as an offering to his god. It is to that same Jehovah, to the laws he is supposed to have proclaimed, the Bible he is said to have written, and the religion in which his ferocity is still reflected through all later mitigations,—it is to him that womanhood is still sacrificed; and so long as the name of Jehovah, the god of Jephtha, is bowed to with awe and fear, so long will the victim-daughters of Jephtha surround us. But how are women sacrificed ? First of all in education. The intelligence and common sense of Europe declare that there can be nothing more important, both for themselves and for man, than the right and thorough education of women. As the physical mothers of the race they have the utmost need to know the laws of life, the nature of their own frame, the principles of health. As the intellectual and moral guides of all human beings during the years when they are most susceptible of impressions and influences, women have need of the very best knowledge. Their need of scientific drill is, if anything, greater than that of men. Yet in �education they are thrown the mere crumbs that fall from the table of our male youths. It has been shown that over ninety per cent, of the provision for education in this country is devoted to boys and young men. It has been shown that in our universities there are large sums of money inadequately used,—wealth accumu­ lated from ancient endowments, furnishing annual revenues to the extent of ^500,000,—and yet amid all the discussions as to what shall be done with that money, hardly one voice is heard demanding that it shall be devoted to redressing the heavy wrongs which woman has suffered through ages, and now suffers as she sits famishing in sight of such abun­ dance. And while the universities are thus barred against her, and the keys of knowledge denied her, she is compelled to hear the very weakness and ignorance so entailed quoted for her further disparage­ ment. We are told, woman cannot reason; she is not logical; she acts by mere impulse and sentiment; she is superstitious. Well, why is it so ? Who has so made her? The god of Jephtha, the deity who exacted the sacrifice of the fair virgins of Israel, and who by his Bible still demands that we hold English women mere appendages to man, against all the best light and conscience of our own time. Again, women are morally and physically sacrificed by the denial to them of the right of freedom to enter �i4 into all the avocations of life by which human beings may find support, livelihood and independence. In the laws made by the worshippers of Jephtha’s god it was enacted that every woman should be sold to some man as wife or concubine. It was strictly obligatory. Even that miserable means of obtaining a livelihood is impossible in this country, where women are in ex­ cess of men by nearly a million; but still we find male prejudice and law providing that marriage shall be regarded as the only recognised profession, trade, or vocation by which women may obtain an honour­ able livelihood. Compelled by the over-powering exigencies of modern life we are tolerating them in a few other simple occupations, but without according social equality to such; and we make no adequate provision for their apprenticeship or training for occu­ pations which would yield them that independence which our theology and conventionality most dread. The sacrificial results of such a state of things are so appalling that I can hardly name them. By shutting the usual lucrative professions and occupations to women, society is driving them by thousands to sell that which is alone left to them to sell, their own honourj that which not one woman in a hundred would part with, were not pauperism and starvation the dread alternative ; and thereby society sacrifices to ancient superstition the health and the purity of both manhood and womanhood. �i5 I have named but two out of the many forms in which women are bound hand and foot on the altar of Jephtha’s god. Why need I repeat the long catalogue of her wrongs as a wife and a mother ? Even after the battles and the appeals of generations have wrung from the reluctant hand of her master a link or two from the chain with which she was so long fettered, sheis still liable to alienation of her children, and other­ wise subject to the caprice and the cruelty of man. And yet we are told that her interest and necessities may safely be entrusted to the care of a legislature in which she has no voice or representation j and that personally she is not equal to the task of political deliberation and voting. The ballot is not my idol. My desire to see woman enfranchised is not because of any abstract theory of human rights. I admit that because of the long thraldom that sex has undergone, and because of the long denial of education and all re­ lation to the large affairs of the world, it would be better if men could be induced to relieve them of their oppressions—liberate them from the altar to which they are in large part bound by chains of their own superstition, and so prepare them for that share in political power which should be accorded only to intelligence and moral freedom. Women need the full advantages of education far more than they need votes. What they are perishing for is not a ballot, �i6 but the opening of all the work and culture which make the equality and secure the liberties of man. But, with them, I despair of such practical results until they are admitted among the constituencies of Par­ liament. They have amply proved their case. They have clearly defined their wrong and its remedy. They have appealed for redress in vain. They are met by frivolous sneers, by sentimental evasions, not by reason and argument. Their sufferings have edu­ cated them sufficiently to know at least their own needs, and the unwillingness of men to respond to them. Their cry for enfranchisement is the cry of victims bleeding on the altar of established error j it is the cry of despair ; and it can only increase in painful in­ tensity and grief until it shall be redressed. Indeed, the very sentiment, no doubt sincere with the great majority of men, which dreads the departure of woman from the sacred sphere of domestic life, must ere long be enlisted on the side of her enfranchisement. It will become more and more clear that there can be no peace with injustice ; that women in increasing num­ bers are, and will continue to be, excited to protest against the wrongs of their sex. They will appear on platforms; they will be public speakers; they will be stimulated to that very life of political agitation which so many fear, but are blindly engaged in promoting. For the sake of peace and quietness, if for no higher �motive, this justice must assuredly be done to woman, and my own apprehension is that it will not be done until society has suffered yet more serious disturbances through the obstinacy and folly of the opposition to a measure which, if adopted, could not cause anything more revolutionary than has been caused by the ad­ mission of woman to the municipal franchises they now possess. That which is to-day demanded in the name of justice, must to-morrow be conceded in the interest of social order. But this is a poor, mean way of securing any measure of justice. When wisdom pre­ vails the right will be conceded to reason, not wrested by agitation. But however men may throw away experience, it still remains true that trouble tracks wrong like a shadow, and justice alone is crowned with peace. 2 ��I9 CHILDREN AND THEIR MOLOCH. Five years ago I clipped from a newspaper the follow­ ing letter, addressed to the Editor from Shetland :— “Lerwick, July, 7, 1871. “ Sir,—It may interest some of your readers to know that last night (being St. John’s Eve, old style) I •observed within a mile or so of this town, seven bon­ fires blazing, in accordance with the immemorial custom ■of celebrating the Midsummer solstice. These fires were kindled on various heights around the ancient hamlet of Sound, and the children leaped over them, and ‘passed through the fire to Moloch,’ just as their ancestors would have done a thousand years ago on the same heights, and their still remoter progenitors in Eastern lands many thousand years ago. This per­ sistent adherence to mystic rites in this scientific epoch seems to me worth taking note of.—A. L.” In ancient times, however, the children had to leap into the bonfire—which is defined in Cooper’s “ The- �20 saurus ” as 11 Pyra, a bonefire, wherein men’s bodyes. were burned,”—and not over it. I have often leaped over a bonfire myself, with little thought that my sport was the far away relic of the tragedies of human sacri­ fice. Our bonfires of Virginia had been lighted from those of Scotland, whence the first settlers of the neigh­ bourhood had come; and there is some reason to believe that in some obscure nooks of Scotland the Midsummer fires are yet kindled, and some may still be found who believe that it is good for a child to passover them. The Reformers of Scotland made a tremendous effort to trample out these survivals of ancient super­ stition, and measurably succeeded in suppressing the outward manifestations of them. But they preserved, the very atmosphere of superstition amid which such practices were bred originally, and there is reason to fear they made matters worse. The sacrifice of chil­ dren to Moloch had become a pastime, but their subsequent sacrifice to Jehovah ofSabaoth was serious. The Scottish Reformers also exterminated with fierce piety the superstitions of the Church of Rome. They particularly punished pilgrimages to the so-called1 holy wells which abounded in that region. On the 28th November, 1630, Margaret Davidson, a married woman, residing in Aberdeen, was adjudged in an “unlaw” of £5 by the Kirk Session “ for directing �21 her nurse with her bairn to St. Fiack’s Well, and washing her bairn therein for recovery of her health - . . and for leaving an offering in the well.” The point of idolatry, as stated by the Kirk Session, was “in putting the well in God’s room.” After the fine Margaret, perhaps, put God in the well’s room; but we may doubt whether the change was of any advan­ tage to the bairn. Pure water has its sanative effects, and it is very likely that the wells became holy because they were healing. But St. Fiack—a Scottish saint— had to go, leaving only his name to a vehicle {fiacre), in which his French devotees travelled to his shrine, and instead of him was set up a Judaic deity whose providence was not associated with anything so rational as the use of pure water. Not one particle of super­ stition the less remained in Scotland when the fires of Moloch and the candles of Rome were put out. The only religious advantage one could have hoped from the revolution was not gained. It might have been hoped that when popular Superstition was divested of its picturesque features, its pilgrimages to holy wells and shrines, and bonfires and images, its grim and ugly visage would have been simply repulsive, and its further reign impossible. But, strange to say, the Scotch seemed to cling more to superstition the uglier it became. A Puritanism arose in which all the Molochs were summed up, and all human joys were �22 represented, in Shakspeare’s phrase, as 11 the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire,” the flowery path tohell. It is passing strange that this hideous system should have been able to desolate beyond recovery the “merrie England of the olden time,” and to over­ shadow America for more than a hundred years. There is a singular society which met last week, called the Anglo-Israel Society, whose object is to persuade this people that they are the lost tribes of Israel, and the eagerness with which the majority of this nation has always laid hold upon everything Semitic, gives some plausibility to their notion; but one thing is certain, if we are the tribes that Israel lost, we have never lost Israel. We have hebraised for ages, made long prayers, sung psalms, named children Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and otherwise pertinaciously adhered to the Semitic idolatry. When Jehovah was brought to Scotland, Moloch was nominally dethroned, his bonfires extinguished; but the change was only nominal; all that was dark and cruel in Moloch was superadded to all that was dark and cruel in Jehovah; and the result was a Scotch Jehovah more harsh and oppressive than the phantasm which haunted the Jews. For the ancient Jews do not seem to have generally entered into the spirit of Moloch,—that old brass deity, whose head was that of a calf, and whose stomach �23 was a furnace in which children were consumed. The Jews generally were careful of their children, and those of them that worshipped Moloch and sacrificed their children were sternly denounced. That old idol which, according to Amos (v. 26) the Israelites bore with them from Egypt through the wilderness, would per­ haps have faded away had it not been for Solomon. Solomon is odiously memorable for two things. He erected a temple for Moloch on the Mount of Olives, where children were burned to death, and he wrote the sentence—which might appropriately have been inscribed on that Temple—“ Spare the rod and spoil the child.” The man who wrote that sentence had, of course, no idea that any people would exist foolish enough to believe it the very word of God; but, nevertheless, in conjunction with human superstition, he has been the cause of more evil to the human race than any other one man that ever lived. The rod is a little thing, but it is full of deadly poison ; it has fostered in the world more deceit, meanness, cowardice, servility, stupidity, and brutality than our race will outgrow for many generations. Mr. Edward Tylor recently exhibited at the Royal Institution the poison­ ous Calabar bean used as an ordeal in Africa, whose consecration enables the savage kings to put out of the way every man who proposes any change in their government; and he (Mr. Taylor) expressed �24 his belief that the continued savagery of Africa was in large part an effect of that little bean. And I be­ lieve that it can be shown that the rod has been the means of preserving the savage rule of physical force in the greatest nations of the world. The parent or teacher who strikes a child does so because his parent or teacher struck him; and the child that is struck catches the idea, transmitted all the way from Solo­ mon, that the way to deal with people who don’t do what you like is to strike them. That is, if you are stronger than they. If they are little and you large, that is a sign that the Lord has delivered them into your hand. You must make the child yield his will to yours, not by love and persuasion, but by brute force and pain; break his spirit, though that harms him far more than breaking his back-bone; make the child another you : so will your child do the like by his children, and they by theirs, and independence and individuality be beaten down by violence, genius crushed, character made characterless, as “ To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” and all our yesterdays light us on the highway of commonplace, though not, I hope, to the last syllable of recorded time. Does it not strike you that a child consists of an individuality, a will, a spirit, a mind, and that its real �25 existence depends upon these; and that if these are not trained, encouraged, cultivated, the child has no real existence at all? An animal existence it may have, but beyond that it were a mere appendix or sequel to somebody else, unless its peculiar powers are healthily carried forward to maturity. If these are sacrificed the child is sacrificed, and the man that is folded up in him. Will a gardener beat his rose-buds with a stick to make them grow ? The growing of thoughts and emotions is more tender work than the culture of roses. But children will be naughty; of course they will sometimes be naughty if they are healthy, and they will require restraint until they can restrain themselves : they must learn morals as they learn letters. But one might as well flog a child for not knowing Greek as to flog it for a deception or for selfishness. Every blow is an appeal to selfishness, and a lesson in deception. We pardon our parents and predecessors in this, for they knew not what they did. But it is a scandal that the rod should linger in the homes and schools of England, after Herbert Spencer and others have proved the evil of it. For many months now I have been trying to find a school in Kensington for a boy in his eleventh year, and in that great parish I cannot find one in which they do not insist on two things,—Beating and the Bible. I must leave the parish to find a school which will give me a. conscience clause on these points. �26 Now, I may ask any person of intelligence, not hopelessly blinded by superstition, is the Bible a fit book to put into the hands of a child ? I do not believe that a child as it advances to boyhood and girlhood should, with prudish jealousy, be kept in ignorance as to the follies and vices of the world in which it lives. But our children do not live in ancient Judea. The Bible, moreover, is not limited to any years. It is believed by bibliolaters to be so holy that it can do no harm even to a child of tenderest years, who so soon as he or she can read is permitted to receive the unnatural stimulant of perusing narra­ tives obscene, shocking and cruel. What would be a glass of gin in the child’s throat, compared with its first familiarisation with the grossest vices of semibarbarous tribes; vices many of which are even unfit for more advanced youth to read about, for they are not those which they will now find in the world around them, or require to be guarded against. The very memory of some of the primitive brutalities of mankind is kept alive only by the Bible. With its pages are broadcast narratives which the law does not permit to be printed in any other book. And when these crimes and vices are laid before a child as the word of God ; when it reads in that book that many of the worst of them were instigated by Jehovah,— that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and ordered persons �27 to be stoned to death, and children to be put to thesword, and so on,—why it is enough to slay theirreverence on the spot, and strike them with moral idiocy. This is, indeed, the way in which, morallyspeaking, the sins of the father are visited on the children, to much more than the third and fourth generation. The Bible is an invaluable book, but it is not a book for children : there are many forms in which the incidents and chapters suitable for them can be separately procured; and for the rest, the volume may be safely left on the shelf to be searched out when it is wanted. The Rod, and the Bible which consecrates the Rod, along with many other barbarities, make up princi­ pally the Moloch of children in the present time. The sacrifice of the young among us is mainly moral and intellectual. Physically a great deal is done for the average of them. There are indeed terrible regions where children are caught up in the great engine of commerce and labour, and crushed. There are mines, and fens, and factories where the struggle for existence means a joyless existence—hunger and pain, and pre­ mature death to many a child ; and yet, because it isa struggle for existence we can only look upon it with sympathy and with resolution that no man shall add tothe anguish of it. But when we follow even such appa­ rently inevitable evils as these to their causes, we dis- �2S •cover that they could not continue but for the radical •error of English Christianity—the principle of sacrifi­ cing man to God. We can never hope thoroughly to master the evils of society while the great religious organisations of the country, and their vast endow­ ments, are directed to divine service instead of human service, and the poor are taught that their ■chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever. When the wealth and the religious earnestness of this nation are devoted to the benefit of humanity, instead •of to the childish notion of personally pleasing and ■.satisfying the deity, there cannot long remain an unhappy home in it. But until that Gospel of Pure Reason is heard round the world, bringing its glad tidings, the weak and ignorant must still bleed as victims on the altar of an imaginary being who may be called God, but is much nearer the ideal of a Demon. Dogma, too, has still its altar in England upon which the child is sacrificed. It is true that among the educated the old doctrine that every child is at birth a child of the devil, and human nature totally de­ praved, has ceased to exist; and even among the illiterate parental affection has been too strong to admit of its practical realisation. But still it is taught by vulgar sects to many millions, and avails to mis•»direct many fathers and mothers, and teachers, in their �29 dealing with the natural instincts and needs of child­ hood. The mirth, the love of beauty, the longing for amusement, in the young, so indispensable for a healthy and happy growth, are forbidden, the dance is held tobe sinful, the theatre immoral, and thus many thousands of children never have any real joy, and pass on to a youth of precocious anxiety, and a manhood or woman­ hood of hard, morose alienation from nature. The only relief to the gloom of this unnatural religion, which casts its shadow over so many young lives, is that dogmatic preaching has become so inhar­ monious with the enlightenment of civilised society, that it tends more and more to sink into the hands of pulpit mediocrities, who rehearse it in such a dull, perfunctory way that it loses all impressiveness, and can now hardly keep congregations awake. Sermon­ ising is almost another name for boreing. In an admirable story just published, called “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain,” the author presents a picture of an average congrega­ tional assembly on Sunday, among whom his little hero was a sufferer. After the lugubrious hymn came the long, long prayer. “ The boy,” says the author, “ did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it—if he even did that much. He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously -—for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of �3° old, and the clergyman’s regular route over it—and where a little trifle of new matter was introduced, his ■ear detected it, and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the pew in front of him ”—but I will pass over the fate of that fly. The sermon came on. “ The minister,” writes our author, il gave out his text and droned along monoto­ nously through an argument that was so prosy that by and by many a head began to nod, and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone, and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. The boy counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.” Once, indeed, he became interested for a moment. It was when the preacher, instead of his own dreary thoughts, drew from an ancient poet the picture of the hosts of the world gathering at the millennium, when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them. The boy said to him­ self that he would like to be that child, if it was a tame lion. I suppose there are many poor little sufferers like this lad, dragged this day into the chapels and churches of the world, but we may console ourselves partially �3r with the reflection that in their sufferings many a false­ hood is smothered. The deadly dogma is happily also dull, and sinks through the vacant mind into the gulf of oblivion. And yet that boy is passing through the years which should be sown with the seeds of truth, and the germs of thought and purpose. His faculties need encouragement : they say briars and thorns are non-encouraged buds. So long as those sweet, susceptible years are passed amid such errors that apathy to them all is the child’s best hope, we must still confess that in this age of light innumerable children are still passing through the fire to Moloch. �_______ _ __ �33 THE 8ABBATH-JUGERNATH. On the sands at Puri, in India, stands the famous temple of Jugernath. It is nearly seven centuries old, and the building of it cost as much as a half million sterling. It is six hundred and fifty feet square, and its sanctity consecrates the soil for twenty miles around it,—that land being held rent-free on condition of the tenants performing certain sacred rites in honour of Jugernath. There are twelve great festivals held every year at this shrine, and the alleged performances at these festivals have been the never-ending theme of mission meetings ever since we can remember. You must have been fortunate children if you have no memories of Sunday School days when your childish heart was harrowed by accounts of poor Hindoos crushed under the wheels of Jugernath, and a tithe of all you possessed annually sent away to convert that hard god into a Christian, and stop that terrible car. Some old missionary once estimated the immense amount of money and labour devoted to the care, the 3 �34 ablutions, and other affairs of this temple, and he said the same amount of wealth and toil usefully bestowed might make every barren spot of India into a garden ; and that missionary might have added that the amount of money which has been evoked from Christian pockets by that one idol might have made an equal number of gardens there, or here,—whereas it has all been spent, and the car rolls on just as grandly as ever. And not only this, but we have now learned on the best authority that all those pictures of Hindoos cast­ ing themselves beneath the Jugernath car to be crushed were purely imaginary. When the car is drawn, with the sacred image of Vishnu set up in it, the crowd of the curious and the devotees is enormous, and no doubt many accidents have happened. It may be, because some from a distance are ignorant of the danger, or that enthusiastic devotees put themselves unintentionally in danger by going too near the image they believe holiest on earth, or try to draw the car with hundreds of others when they are too weak or aged to do so. But there are no intentional sacrifices under the car of Jugernath, nor could there ever have been at any period. For Jugernath, or rather Jaganatb, means simply “ the Lord of Life •” it is a title of Vishnu, and the temple is purely sacred to Vishnu. Nothing is more rigidly forbidden than to slay anything that has life in �35 the neighbourhood of the Lord of Life. The Hindoos declare that the holy pages of the Vedas themselves sprang from drops of blood lost by their Saviour while protecting Agni in form of a dove from Indra in form of a hawk; and to Vishnu they offer only things that are fresh and beautiful, like flowers, and even the . flowers must not be in the least faded. So it is impossible that there could have been human sacrifices to Jugernath except by accident. The accidents were probably very frequent at one time,—at least it is •charitable to missionary reporters to think so,—the vast increase of popularity in the festivals having made the crowd unwieldy. But in recent years British authority has insisted upon carefulness—threatened to stop the car if men and women were injured—and there is now far less destruction of life by the car of Jugernath than by the London cab. Happy Hindoos ' who have at hand an enlightened authority willing to respect their religious customs so long as they are harmless, but ready to put Vishnu himself under arrest if he injures humanity. I would match an Englishman against any man living for good sound sense in dealing with such superstitions, pro­ vided they are not his own. But when that clear­ headed English authority which has put out the fires that burned widows in India comes to deal with laws that torture women here, it gets confused among �36 Scripture texts and precedents. When it is needed to curb a fanaticism here which deliberately sacrificeshuman life—that, for instance, of the Peculiar People, who, because of a text in the New Testament, refuse to call medical aid for their sick, letting them die in numbers every year, even helpless children—why then all that common sense seems to vanish. When it is called upon to regulate our Sabbath-Jugernath, beside which the car at Puri is an innocent toy, beneath whose wheels millions of hearts and brains are crushed in this kingdom, why then the intelligence of the nation grows timid, and its arm is paralysed. The celebrations of Jugernath, the Lord of Life, bring to the poor twelve festivals in the year, The celebrations of the Sabbath, Lord of Lifelessness, bringto our poor fifty-two funereal vacancies in their exist­ ence. They ought to be fifty-two festivals of Reason, of Beauty, of Happiness, but to the poor they are days of unreason, of ugliness, of torpor and drunkenness ; days hateful to children and hurtful to all. Now it is not merely fanciful to bring together the Jugernath and the Sabbath superstitions. Even in origin their consecra­ tion came from the same source. Our theology has arbitrarily transferred the sanctity of the Jewish Sab­ bath, the Seventh Day of the week, to the Sun-day, the day consecrated to sun-worship, our first day of the week. I say arbitrarily, for' there is not a word in the �New Testament consecrating Sunday, but there are •strong sentences declaring one day as holy as another. The early Christians when they went among so-called pagan ” races met for worship on the first day of ■the week because it was a holiday, and they could only then get at the people. For the same reason we meet to-day, because it is the day when people are liberated from business. But the Primitive Christians had as •little thought of consecrating the “pagan” Sun’s day as the Jewish Sabbath, just as most of us would abhor •the notion that any day is less sacred than another. But Vishnu also was to his provincial worshippers the -quickening sun, and his chariot is the car of Jugernath. So the two institutions are linked together archeeologi•cally. But in a more important sense they are related by the fact that they are both idolatries. lhe Sab­ bath is one of the only two visible idols which pro­ nounced Protestantism has left standing for a race of kindred origin to the Hindoos, and like them naturally loving outward symbols and images. We •all belong to the Great Aryan race, from which pro­ ceeded all the bright gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, and Germany, and all their variegated symbolism. Through certain historic combina­ tions our Aryan race as it migrated westwaid, became invested with a Shemitic religion, one which had no arts and pictures itself, and regarded them as impious �38 in others. In obedience to this alien religion, our race now wrote on its temples, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images, or pictures of anything in heaven, earth or sea.” But it was one thing to say this, another to practise. The Eastern Church evaded the law by putting up certain holy pictures with frames in relief, which are something like sculpture. The Roman Church boldly disregarded the law in its lordly way of requiring the Bible to accommodate itself to the Pope. In this country all the sacred visible images were swept away by Puritanism from its own and . many other churches—leaving all the more graven images in the mind ; but that race-instinct, that love of outward symbols and objects of worship with which the Eastern Church compromised, and to which the Romish Church succumbed—that instinct and senti­ ment remained in our people, and in the empty niche of the Madonna, on the altar from which god and goddess and crucifix had been successively swept, there were now set up the only two visible images of determined Protestantism—the Bible and the Sabbath. There are some branches of the Church of England which approximate to the Catholic Church enough to preserve other symbols—exalting the sacrament, mag­ nifying the cross, or the liturgy—and such care less tomake overmuch of the Sabbath, and respect saintly tradition as much as the Bible. But when you find �an out-and-out Evangelical, or a Calvinist, or a member of a sect which has nothing symbolical about it, you find one who will fight for the literal Bible and the literal Sabbath, exactly as a barbarian fights for his idol. They are his idols. They are to him precisely what the Jugernath is to the devotee in India. The Bible and the Sabbath are all he has left; and if you were to really take from the average sectarian his idolatry of those two visible objects, he would feel as if he had nothing to lean upon at all. For this aver­ age religionist has not a vivid interior life, he has not the mystical sense cognisant of pure ideals, most visible when the outward eye is closed. He needs to have something he can see and handle, and feel physically, or realise by physical effects. There is not the least use in trying to argue with an idolator. Nothing can be influenced by reasoning which was not reached by any effort of reason. Real thinkers, even in the sects themselves, have tried their strength against this miserable Sabbath superstition, Luther and Calvin, and George Fox, as well as the most learned men of the English Church. But the Sabbath stands like the Hindoo Temple described in the curse of Kehdma :— “ And on the sandy shore, beside the verge Of ocean, here and there a rock-cut fane Resisted in its strength the surf and surge That on their deep foundation beat in vain.” �40 Even so, deep-cut in the plutonic rock of human ignorance, is this idol shrine, against which all our protests, appeals, facts, and arguments will beat in vain, until the ignorance itself shall be undermined and crumble away. There is no advantage, therefore, in pleading with Sabbatarians. The more we groan the better they feel, for it shows them that Jehovah is having his will by crushing ours. But there is great reason that we should appeal to the constituted rulers of England, in the name of our religious liberty, against the claim of Sabbatarians to oppress consciences that are not Sabbatarian. The right of any individual to be him­ self a simpleton seems inalienable. We do not deny, though we may deplore, the claim of Sabbatarians to pass their “ holy time ” in any depth of sanctimonious stupor they like. But they have no right to bind on the altar of their ugly idol the life of other people. That they are still able to do so is not due to any Sabbatarianism in those who make our laws. There is not one member of our Government or Parliament who does not violate the Judaic Sabbath law every week of his life. Nearly fifty years ago, William Lovett, and several thousand working men with him, drew up a petition to Parliament, declaring their conviction that much of the drunkenness and crime in London is due to the absence of proper resources for instruction and �amusement on Sunday. Honest Joseph Hume pre­ sented their petition and appealed to Parliament for the opening of such resources. Since then the appeal has been repeated by Sir Joshua Walmsley, Peter Taylor and others, but steadily refused, even while the principle has been conceded by the opening of museums in Ireland, where Puritanism is not strong. The last-named valiant member of Parliament has now for some years moved that body to admit the poor drudges of this metropolis to gain some know­ ledge, to catch some gleam of light and beauty, on the one day when they are released from toil, in our grand national collections which they help to support but never see—institutions which represent the secrets of nature and ideality of poets and artists, the history of man in his steady mastery of the earth by skill and genius, the sacred story of heroes, saints, saviours of humanity. But at last that member has declined to renew his appeal, because, as he has stated to me, he has ample evidence that while the majority of the House are quite convinced that his motion is right, and have no respect for Sabbatarianism, they yet vote for it. The Puritan Sabbath can always roll up a majority even in a House that applauds arguments against it. The member referred to is naturally not willing to go on convincing men already convinced. But why then do these politicians vote against the �42 relief of suffering non-Sabbatarians ? Why, because they do not wish to be also victims of the Sabbath. To the average Member of Parliament his seat there is the immediate jewel of his soul. He would, no doubt, like to have right on his side, but he must have his borough. He knows perfectly well that if he votes for opening museums and picture galleries to the people, on the very next Sunday his constituency will be listening to awful burdens against him from all the reverend Chadbands and Stigginses and Mawworms and Cantwells and Pecksniffs, whose com­ bined power can defeat any man in England, as their like defeated the great man in Jerusalem who broke the Sabbath, and declared it subject to man, not man to it. Nevertheless, we must not proceed upon the opinion that the average Member of Parliament is so much afraid of this power behind him, or so tenacious of his seat, that he will carry it to the extent of sup­ porting what he felt to be a very serious oppression. All the honour and courage have not entirely gone out of this nationality. Men will be found ready to risk their seats when they have fully apprehended the nature and extent of the wrong that is suffered. Parliament consists mainly of wealthy gentlemen, whose every earthly need is so com­ pletely answered that they can only with difficulty realise the wants of the poor. On Sunday they have �their carriages to drive in, their right to visit botanical and zoological gardens, their libraries, pictures, clubsand billiard-rooms. Their Sunday is free enough. They turn it to repose or recreation as they may need, In all their lives they have never had one day of serious want, not one day of confinement in a miserable lodging with no alternatives but the chill street or thegin-shop. In some way it must be brought before these gentlemen, and kept before them— like the widow’s plea in the parable before the judge, who waswearied out at last—that the lot of the masses whose labour makes so much of their comfort is a mean and miserable lot. They must be made to know that there are millions who from the cradle to the grave, toil—and toil—and toil, year in and year out, and whose life is one long want. It must be impressed upon them that a large part of the sorrow and heavi­ ness of the poor man’s and poor woman’s fate is the presence in them of mental and moral faculties and possibilities which are a perpetual hunger without any supply, which never rise to be real intellects and tastes because they are kept by drudgery as seeds under the sod, unquickened by any beam of light shining from all the knowledge around them, unsunned by any ray of beauty. Then they will comprehend that a fearful system of human sacrifice is going on around them, and they will not find their parliamentary seats easy �44 if retained by any connivance with those sacrifices. There is an Eastern fable of a throne luxuriously soft to any monarch who sat upon it, until a wrong had risen somewhere in his realm; then the throne became so hard that no sovereign could sit upon it, until the wrong was sought out and redressed; and there is •conscience enough among our commoners to change many a legislative seat to flint, when its holder shall know that he maintains it only as a coward, through the servility that dare not grapple with serious in­ justice because it is in the majority. Those are the men who must ultimately listen to our cause and decide it rightfully. And our cause is that the brain and heart, and even the work of the poor, is suffering grievously because of the restrictions placed by superstition upon that day of the week which represents their all of opportunity for any high enjoyment or improvement. The Sundays of life represent one-seventh of every man’s time; but for the drudges of the world it represents the whole of their time. All the rest of life is not their time; it belongs to their employer; it is mortgaged by physical toil. What life is at their own disposal is counted by .Sundays. If those free days are unimproved or unhappy the whole life goes sunless to the grave. What provision does this nation make, and wnat ■does it permit to be made, for the elevation, instruc­ �tion, and happiness of those whose other days, asGeorge Herbert said, “trail on the ground,” on the one day susceptible to nobler impressions ? First it provides sermons. Twenty thousand churches are open this day for the people, and in them are places for a limited number of the poor. Well, let us forget how many dull sermons are preached, how many gloomy, false, repulsive dogmas,, how many threadbare superstitions, and how few work­ ing people have any disposition to enter these assem­ blies, or such dress as would let them feel comfortable when there. Let us pass over all that. Admitting that one hour and a half or two hours of the poor man’s only leisure day may be so passed, what provision is made for the remainder ? Why, there are the parks in which he may walk. But that is a very inadequate reply. Our English weather renders the park attractive for but a small part of the year. Much of the labour done is too wearisome to render mere walking on Sunday any delight to the workers. Nor is there anything in that merely physical exercise which answers the real demand, a demand not of the feet but of the head. Well, there is the great provision that comes next to the church, the public house. This great nation has been appealed to by some of its noblest scholars for permission to accompany the poor on Sunday �46 ■afternoons, when churches are closed, through the national collections of art and science, to explain to them the objects of interest, to interpret for them the wonders of nature and unfold the splendours of art. But thus far our rulers have replied, “ No, we will deliver you to the publican, but never to Dr. Carpenter; Ruskin shall not teach you the glory of Raphael’s •cartoons, but you may gaze at pleasure on the interior decorations of the gin-palace; you must not see the grandeurs of art, nor the fine traceries of skill, nor the antiquities of humanity, nor the wondrous forms and •crystals of Nature, but do not complain : do we not allow you limitless supplies of whiskey and beer?” And just here, by the way, I remark a little sign of hope. The Sabbatarians begin to perceive the scandal that the beer-house should be kept open while the museum is closed, and they begin to demand the closing of the public-house also. They have carried a. measure of that kind for Ireland, and I sincerely hope they will manage to carry one for England. For the day that sees the beer-house close will see the door •of the museum start. The great ally of the Sabbatarian has been the publican, and when that alliance is broken our success will draw near. The parson drugs the people’s brains with superstition, and the publican drugs with beer those whom the parson cannot reach; and the streams from church and tap-room blending �47 together reinforce the Lord’s-day people, so that they can always outnumber us. If the Sabbath were not an idol it would long ago have recoiled from all this part of its work. It would have said, “ Open a thousand museums rather than drive the poor to find their only Sunday amusement, and spend the means for which their wives and children suffer, in drink !” But an idol may always be recognised by just this fact: z? demands human sacrifices. It may not always demand the cutting-up or burning of its victims; but, if not that, it will demand the sacrifice of his intellect or his affections, his happinesss or his welfare; in some way a human body, or heart, or brain will be found bound wherever an idol stands. And though I cannot, in such brief space, enter into all the details of the holocaust of human benefits offered up to the Sabbath, I will affirm for myself that the more I have considered the needs of this people, and the lost opportunities of meeting them, the more have I felt that there is now no cause worthier of a good man’s zeal than the overthrew of this Sabbath oppression. It is a wrong for which I have no toleration at all. I can tolerate any man’s religious conviction about the Sabbath or anything else ; but I cannot tolerate him when he insists on binding his dogma upon others. I will not tolerate his intolerance. This is no issue of abstract opinion for theological fencing. It is no �48 sentimental grievance. The hunger of a million famished souls is in it. It is a great heart-breaking wrong, crushing lower and lower one class of society at a time when other classes are rising higher daily. And that the poor do not feel it to be so, are in boozy contentment with their beer or their prayers and demand nothing better, is only a proof of how fully the oppression has done its miserable work. Yet they use this as an argument against us ! They cry, “The workmen do not want it; behold our majority.” I answer, the majority is always wrong. The majority crucified' Christ and poisoned Socrates. Part of the masses you have deceived by the con­ temptible fiction that their day of release from toil will be endangered by that which would make it more attractive and therefore more precious; and a larger part you have so besotted with beer and ignorance that they are pauperised in soul as well as body, and hug their own chains. Theirs is not the real voice of the people. A true statesman will take the only suffrage they are competent to cast from their degraded foreheads and their brutalised forms and faces. The gardener will not follow the will of the weeds, though they report the soil he works in. At any rate a rational man’s duty is clear. The authority of the Sabbath rests upon what every intelligent mind knows to be fiction; upon a deity who is said to have created the �49 universe in six days and rested on the seventh, and then ordered that anyone working on the seventh should be stoned to death. That is a fiction. There is no deity who did anything of that kind. We are told this is the Lord’s day. We know that if that Lord be other than a phantom every day is his day. J esus said, 11 My Father works on the Sabbath and so will I.” Rest is not stupor. It is well to change our occupation occasionally, but never well to be idle. There is no ground whatever for this superstition. The day of rest originated no doubt in a human want, afterwards invested with sanctity: but the sanctity must be entirely removed if the day is to be changed from a curse to a human benefit. 4 ��51 THE MARTYRDOM OF REASON. Reason is that supreme faculty of man by which he is cognisant of principles apart from their applica­ tions, of laws as distinct from particulars, of ideas as separate from relations. It differs from the under­ standing, which is concerned with those special appli­ cations and relations, as a code of laws differs from the various decisions of courts and judgments made under that code. A man may reason rightly when his understanding is in error. A Hindoo walking out saw a large and dangerous cobra, as he supposed, across his path, preparing to dart upon him ; it so overcame his nerves that he fainted; the object proved to be a piece of rope. The man had reasoned correctly; he knew the nature of the cobra, and rightly inferred the danger, but his judgment was in error. Now judg­ ment is at the point of distinction between reason and understanding. By origin it is an organ of rea­ son, by result it is the agent of the understanding. �52 When we consider our human faculties in this abstract way, we find them perfectly harmonious. They move in their appointed orbits, in constant rela­ tion and interaction, but without collision or jar, their very differences completing the harmony. Abstractedly no mortal can conceive of a special judgment with no general principles to guide it, and none can think of ideas and laws as things inapplicable to the particulars of nature and life. And yet we find in all races and ages a wide-spread suspicion of reason. Even at this day, and in nations which are daily reaping and enjoying the fruits of reason, we find vast numbers of people who have an impression like that which Shakspere puts into the mouth of Caesar, “ He thinks too much ; such men are dangerous.” Still more general is the notion that the man of ideas must be unpractical. It is easy to perceive the origin of that notion; it is suggested in the common saying, “That is well enough in theory, but it won’t do in practice.” Of course the phrase is a mistake ; it should be, “ That is wrong in theory, for it won’t do in practicebut it discloses the fact that there has been so much false reasoning in the world that many have come to distrust reason itself. And just here arises a misunderstanding and a quarrel between the theorist and the practical man. One says the error is in the theory, the other that it is �53 in the application of it. Among educated people the matter would be tested by experiment. Science, for instance, has long affirmed that when salt water freezes it loses its saltness; but the Arctic explorers melting the sea-ice found it so briny that they could not drink it. The result is, of course, a revision of theory by experiments which will probably show that the salt does not remain strictly in the ice, but between its crystals, that the theory is not wrong but requires more careful statemeht to include the practical fact. In this way the old feud between theory and practice has entirely ceased from the domain of science. • But it is in religion that we find the distrust of rea­ son most intense and familiar. On that distrust Christianity is founded. Christ appealed to reason; but Christianity has very little to do with him ; it re­ lapses into barbaric ages and finds its corner-stone in a fable that the first effort of intellect led to the cor­ ruption of the whole human race. It said that when God made man and woman he put them into a para­ dise for enjoyments sensual and sensuous. The one thing he was opposed to was knowledge. So resolute was the Creator on that point, that he did not hesitate to accompany his prohibition of that one fruit with a deception. He told them that on the very day they should eat of the tree of Knowledge they would die. The serpent persuaded the woman that this was a �54 fiction, as it proved to be. The truthful serpent also said, “ Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” and no sooner was the fruit eaten than Jehovah, making no mention of what he had said about their dying, acknowledged the veracity of the serpent. “ Behold,” he said, “ the man is become as one of us (gods) to know good and evil.” Then, lest the gods should have no advantage at all, and man should eat of another fruit and become immortal, the first pair were expelled from Paradise. This fable, which re­ presents the first priestly scream against education, shows us a deity cursing knowledge and a demon en­ couraging it; it shows a deity trying to delude man to remain in ignorance, while the demon speaks the truth, and secures the birth of intelligence for man and woman, where Jehovah meant them to live only the life of the senses. On that fable the whole Plan of Salvation is founded. The knowledge gained that day brought on mankind the curse of total depravity, and doom of eternal torture. To avert that the Son of God became incarnate on earth and suffered in a few years all the agonies which the whole human race would have suffered if every man, -woman and child that ever lived were damned to all eternity. All of this is meaningless, and the whole theology of Chris­ tendom mere chaff, except to avert the wrath and undo the curse which fell from a deity jealous of the attain­ �55 ments of his own creature, upon man, because of his first endeavour to gain knowledge. Fortunately, while that is the theology it is not the religion, and still less the morality of this country. It is a sublime example of the kind of theory which does not do in practice. Nevertheless we must not under­ rate the results of the long pressure of instructions like these upon every human being through a period of sixteen hundred years. Even now, in the most en­ lightened nations, the money devoted to teach that theology is counted by millions where the money devoted to pure knowledge is counted by tens. And we need not wonder that the spirit of that old curse on knowledge still survives to haunt every seeker of it for its own sake. It is still strong enough to cast a certain odium on the tasks of reason. To the popular mind there is something uncanny about the rationalist, which means a reasoner, and the sceptic—literally, he who considers a thing—has still an evil name. Thou­ sands who shout for every other kind of freedom will cry down freethought. They will mourn over an en­ slaved African thousands of miles away, but have no tears to shed for fettered minds at their own door. Nay, even among those liberated from the old theology, how much suspicion of reason do we en­ counter ! How often do we hear such speak of science as cold, and of the intellect as inferior to something �56 they call faith or intuition ! They who have no doubts about reason are still comparatively few. And yet our age is full of the grandest facts and illustrations, proving that it is among the devotees of reason and science that the divinest life and fire of our age is manifest. I have just been reading a history, written by the leading rationalist minister in America, of what is called “ the transcendental movement” in that country. * And it is well called a “movement ;” for the chief impres­ siveness of it lies in the fact that what had been mainly a speculative philosophy in Europe, there, among one of the most shrewd and practical nations of the world, blazed out into a movement, a noble enthusiasm for humanity, a passionate religion which kindled the hearts of young men and women, and made them Reformers, Apostles, Martyrs, who gave up all their goods for the poor, who brought glad tidings to woman and lifted the heaviest burthens of her life, and who broke off the bonds of the slave. There was not an orthodox man or woman among them. They were rationalists. The Bible they studied was Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason,” Goethe’s Works, Carlyle’s Essays, Cousin’s Philosophy: the ideas of Europe became ideals in America, rose up like pillars of flame; they became a * Transcendentalism in New England. A History. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York : E. P. Putman & Sons, 1876. �57 gospel in the genius of Emerson, the mind of Parker, and the heart of Margaret Fuller, and under its charm humble people formed themselves in communities, ceasing to care for worldly wealth and honours. There is no type of character that is beautiful in the past which did not reappear. St. Francis d’ Assisi, Fenelon, Madame Guion, Berkeley, Sydney, they all had true counterparts in the piety, devotion, virtue, and genius, which characterised that movement. This is the hundredth birth-year of America as a nation; they who established its independence in the name of humanity were free-thinkers—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Thomas Paine—and they broke for ever the power of a priesthood in the State. And now remark, in that country where conscience is free, a hundred years has witnessed but one great religious movement—but one which corresponds with the movements under George Fox, and Wesley and Whit field in this country—but one which exhibited power to command the passions, conquer selfishness, and trace itself in practical reforms and a new Church and that one was a movement born of pure reason. Such has ever been the work of reason where it has been set free. And yet there are eloquent men, like Pere Hyacinthe, who are going about imploring the priests and prelates of Europe to make a holy alliance of Anglican, Greek, and Gallican Churches against �58 this terrible monster—Rationalism. I rejoice to hear they think there is need of a new league. It is a valu­ able testimony to the stream of tendency that makes for truth. But we must not allow the good father’s confession, that many people are not only, like him­ self, denying that two and two make five, but even running into the excess of denying that two and two make three—a radicalism he so much deplores—we must not allow that to make us over-confident. We must still face the fact that Reason is a sacrifice and a martyr amid the great institutions around us. What is the history of nearly every child born in this country? The few who are brought up by rational methods, and taught to cultivate and obey reason as their highest guide, are hardly notice­ able as to numbers. A large proportion are neglected, so far as Christian fables are concerned, but they are victims of popular superstitions, believe in ghosts and goblins, fortune-telling and the evil eye, their minds overgrown with rank weeds. The ave­ rage Christian child is taught superstition above every­ thing else ! Other and true things may be taught, but they spring up only amid those briars which choke each other growth before it can bear its fruit. Car­ dinal, and bishop, and cabinet, alike agree that no seed of wheat shall be sown in any mind without a tare of fable or dogma beside it. Of what use is �59 geology if one believes that Jehovah created the universe in six days ? What is the use of any science to a mind which believes that the laws of nature are arbitrary, have often been suspended, and may be changed and altered by the breath of a mortal’s peti­ tion ? There can be no reason cultivated where the law of cause and effect is disregarded. To believe in the connection of things that have no connection—for instance, that a man’s word can raise the dead to life—is to strangle reason. To believe in an effect without adequate cause—for instance, that the world stopped revolving that a captain might have more daylight to fight by—vastates the mind. To believe in anything whatever for which there is no evidence, or insufficient evidence, is superstition; and the essence of superstition is that reason is dethroned and a mere compulsion of habit, fear, or self-interest set up in its place to direct the life. Well, the ordinary studies of the average Christian child having thus been prevented from developing his reasoning powers in the direction of religion, he is completely subjected to the powerful stimulants of those preternatural fears and hopes which make the ordinary sanctions of what is called religion, but really is selfishness. He is warned to avoid certain things, and do others, because he will go to hell if he doesn't comply, but will enjoy eternal bliss if he �6o does,—motives of calculating self-interest, which it is the very mission of Reason to restrain and to remand for the work of mere physical self-preservation. While we despise the man who loves and serves a wife or a friend from such base calculations of interest, children are taught to love God and serve him for fear of punishment and hope of reward. But let us follow the growth of the child thus in­ structed. The time comes when he must enter into life. Physical cares, business, the healthy work of the world claim him. Amid them he is pretty sure to discover that the theology he has been taught is not confirmed by experience. Then, haply, he may be able to assert the rights of his own reason. But, sup­ posing he does not, one of several other results will follow, i. He may believe that the doctrines he has been taught must have a formal homage as divine mysteries which he is not expected to understand, but only blindly to obey. 2. He may become a hypocrite. 3. He may become utterly indifferent to the whole thing, and utterly reckless. In either case his sacred reason has been sacrificed. But do we fully appreciate the tragedy which has thus happened ? Do we fully realise that even when men and women do not become either hypocrites or reckless, they are almost certain, as things now stand, to reach some day the appalling discovery that they �6i have wasted the best years of their life on a sham and a fraud ? In the twenty-five years during which I have been in a position to receive the confidences of those who were struggling amid doubts, and in the pangs of transition, the chief agonies I have witnessed have been those whose awakening came too late for oppor­ tunities to be recovered. Youth is gone, enthusiasm has gone, the time for study and devotion for ever passed away, and the collective force of all the light around them enters at last only to bring the bitter consciousness that the glory of life has been cast away upon the barren deserts of delusion. These are the martyrs whom every devotee of reason should see around him. There is no sorrow equal to theirs. No doubt rationalism may bring with it many trials so far as the world is concerned. There may be separations, friendships clouded, affec­ tions wounded ; for superstition can turn hearts to stone even against their own blood where its autho­ rity is denied. There may be intellectual doubts, too, not to be satisfied, some loved legends vanish­ ing, and some pretty dreams made dim along with the nightmares escaped. But amid all these there is nothing half so terrible as the fate of those who have no alternatives but either to slay their reason .altogether, or to admit its testimony only to find that the whole life has been a gigantic mistake. �62 Therefore it is the high duty of every human being to maintain openly and valiantly the verdict of his own faculties. Unfortunately the guardians of the young are so eager to teach them how to say prayers, and keep sanctimonious on Sunday, and to refrain from kneeling down to graven images, that few have ears to hear the great decalogue announced in their own time. The first of the new commandments is this,—Seek truth ! and the second is like unto it, Live the Truth in thought, word, and deed 1 So little has the virtue of self-truthfulness been taught, that we often meet people who actually make a merit of con­ cealing their convictions, especially if they think they are thereby saving somebody’s feelings. There is a great deal of selfishness, as well as sentiment, sheltered under Paul’s dangerous maxim about being all things to all men, and a great deal of Jesuitism hides itself under Christ’s admonition against casting pearls before swine, which is true only if read by the light of his own martyrdom for speaking the truth. As a rule the men and women you meet are not swine, and you need not fear to offer them—it is cruel to refuse them —your pearls of truth and sincerity. Many of them, indeed, are going about silently seeking those very pearls. No doubt there are times for reserve, no doubt there are rocks of prejudice and ignorance which have to be slowly pulverised into a soil before any seed can �63 y 11 jl 0] 'j’l d ill t'i g $ <i if w Eff Itl oi rfl itt be sown in them. But no one will ever lack wisdom for all occasions who is animated purely by that love which is not seeking his own, nor vaunting himself, but seeking only to advance Truth. Reason supplies an instinct adequate to all emergencies. Remember again what reason is, and the ground of its supremacy I Remember now and always, that its very soul is dis­ interestedness. It is the clear vision of the mind as it rises above all the considerations of self-interest, pre­ judice, conventionality, passion, which would lower and discolour its pure light. Reason is to see things as they are, and not as majorities or institutions say they are, or wish them to be. And it is just as much as a mind can do to keep that holy lamp burning steadily through life in a world where the most powerful threats and bribes are continually used to sway and pervert the judgment. In legal affairs no judge is allowed to decide a case involving his own interest; a heavy punishment follows any attempt to bribe judge or jury­ man. So we can get just verdicts. But how are we to get just verdicts on religious questions, when untold millions and all social advantages are set apart by Church and State to influence every mind in favour of creeds and dogmas, as against pure reason? We can hope for a true verdict only from those who have ascended above such considerations, and surrender themselves wholly to the guidance of reason and right. �64 When the poet Heine was in Paris, poor, sick, wretched, he renounced his rationalism. His friends in Germany heaped scorn upon him. Heine then wrote :—“ They say Heine has changed and become a reactionist. Ah, well, lately I went to the Louvre, and knelt before our lady of Milo. Many tears did I shed as I gazed upon her beautiful form and face, but I rose and left her, for she had no arms. She had no arms, and I was poor and needy.” So he turned to our lady of the Church, for she had arms and hands, all full of rich gifts to reward any poet for singing her praises. We cannot help feeling compassion for those who yield to rich and powerful superstition the homage which is due to reason alone: but the standard cannot be lowered, whoever may go away sorrowful. He alone is a true man who stands firm to the mandate of the Sinai within him, and sees that whatever may bend or break, it shall not be his fidelity to truth. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Human sacrifices in England : four discourses Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 64 p. ; 16 cm. Notes: Contents: I. Human sacrifices -- 2. The daughters of Jephthah -- 3. Children and their Moloch -- 4. The Sabbath-Jugernath -- 5. The martyrdom of reason. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Trübner and Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N178 G3343 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Human sacrifices in England : four discourses), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects Children Children's Rights Education Morris Tracts NSS Rationalism Reason Religion and Civil Society Sabbath Social Justice Women-Religious Aspects-Christianity Women's Rights