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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Life of Richard Cobden
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Whitehurst, Edward Capel [1838-1923]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: p. 98-136 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Review by John Morley of "The Life of Richard Cobden" by John Morley published London: Chapman & Hall, 1881. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 61 (January 1882).
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[1882]
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CT31
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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[The Sacred Anthology]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 2 leaves; 20 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Handwritten review by unknown hand of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from Pall Mall Gazette, February 17th 1874.
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Sacred Books
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Havel: “ The Origins of Christianity.”
397
which after what has been said above can be affirmed only in
a modified fofttij Science and Art and Politics are all Greek,
and to these a constantly larger share of energy and attention
is being devoted. But reactions are apt to be blind and
stupid things: surely the time has come at which it is pos
sible for thoughtful men, who aim to direct the progress of
humanity, to strive towards a definite goal by paths carefully
surveyed and chosen. And certainly, so far as religion is
concerned (and with religion alone we have chiefly to do in
this place), that goal will not be the crude revival of any form
of faith hitherto recognized as flowing from a Hebrew foun
tain. There can, indeed, be nothing truer and deeper than
the fundamental truths of religion and morality as enunciated
by Christ; but they are far fewer and simpler than most men
take them to be, and much less mark off Christianity from
other forms of faith than bind them all together in one great
and comprehensive unity. Still, while the religion of the
future will not become, in the best sense of the word, less
Christian, it will certainly grow less Jewish. Yet we hardly
think it will be Greek, after the fashion in which the Nicenh
Creed is Greek. The Hellenism which it must embrace, or
run the risk of shrinking into a narrow and obsolete sect, will
be that of an earlier and better time—the Hellenism which,
turning a frank face to the universe, strives to pierce the
mystery of its wonders, and is not reluctant to learn their
lesson—the Hellenism which aims at the complete develop
ment of humanity from the side not merely of reverence and
of right, but of beauty—the Hellenism which seeks in the
constitution of human nature for the secret of its perfection,
and finds in what is truly natural what is seemly at once and
good. The world is growing too old, knowledge too vast,
humanity too conscious of its unity, for race-religions : the
only kingdom of heaven henceforth possible is one in which
Jew and Gentile, Semite, Aryan and Turanian, can find an
equal and a rightful place.
Charles Beard.
�( 398 )
VI.—HISTORIES OF THE DEVIL.
Demonology and Devil-lore. By Moncure Daniel Conway, M.A.,
B.D., of Divinity College, Harvard University, &c. With
numerous Illustrations. London : Chatto and Windus, Pic
cadilly. 1879.
Any work which deals with the Devil or his angels and
ministers may reckon upon exciting considerable initial curi
osity and interest.
Many of the current stories about the Devil are sufficiently
quaint and amusing to evoke a desire to hear more of their
hero, and perhaps we retain just enough reverence for his
majesty to give a zest to the flippant familiarity with which
he is often treated in the legends.
Again, the weird and extravagant fancies represented by the
words witchcraft and magic, so closely connected with Demon
ology, still command a speculative interest which reflects, how
ever faintly, the terrific fascination which they must have often
exercised over the minds of those who believed in them as
veritably existing. Now and then we have cast a momentary
glance down the long line of grotesque and fearful images
which these words call up before us, and there is something
almost irresistibly attractive in the offer to reveal the whole
system and machinery of the infernal actions and agents which
have only flitted through our general reading, like the witches
in Macbeth, to leave us with an awakened but utterly unsatis
fied curiosity.
Yet again, while promising to satisfy an irrepressible curiosity
and to provide considerable amusement on the one side, books
of devilry seem to draw us on the other side close to one of
the deepest and most absorbing of the ever-recurring problems
of the universe—the origin of evil. And even if we are suffi
ciently strong-minded to relegate speculations upon such sub
jects to the limbo of “lunar politics” so far as we ourselves are
concerned, we can hardly fail to recognize the varying solutions
of this great problem which have been given or attempted
�Histories of the Devil.
399
through the ages, as possessing a deep historical interest, and
as throwing a light on the development of moral conceptions
which cannot fail to secure them respectful attention.
On these and many other grounds, any attempt to write a
history of the Devil or a treatise on Demonology is almost
sure to find that initial interest which is often the one thing
needful to secure success.
And yet, though scholars and writers of very varied qualifi
cations have in late years written from the most diverse points
of view upon this class of subjects, it would probably be im
possible to point out a single recent work on the Devil which
has succeeded in establishing itself as a really valuable and
permanent addition to the library of the historical and philo
sophical student.
M. Enville’s ingenious epitome of Eoskoff’s Geschichte des
*
Teufels is probably the best known of them all, but even that
is rather a disappointing book.
The fault seems to lie after all with the subject. It by no
means fulfils its promise. The dulness and monotony of the
devil stories soon pall on the wearied attention, and the nearer
we get to their original forms the more totally devoid of humour
and imagination on the one hand, and of all serious significance
on the other, do they appear.
Witches, again, are only interesting as long as they are
shadowy, and the titillation of curiosity soon yields to over
powering somnolence in face of the endless repetition of trivial
absurdities of which the annals of witchcraft consist; while
the ghastly chronicles of persecution, the only substantial out
come of the whole inquiry, turn the heart sick with horror.
In a word, if any one wishes to find amusement in devilry
and witchcraft, he cannot do better than stick to the “ Ingoldsby Legends” and the “Lancashire Witches,” and set all
serious study aside.
But of course the grave authors who write elaborate works
on these subjects aim at something far more than amusing
See Theological Review, Vol. VIII. (1871), pp. 30 sqq.
�Histories of the Devil.
400
their readers. It may be presumed that their purpose is to
present a systematic survey of a distinct and important branch
of human thought, to trace it to its origin, to follow it into its
manifold developments, and to indicate its practical bearing
upon life and character; and if, one after another, they fail to
accomplish anything really noteworthy, we may perhaps learn
from their failure a lesson quite as important and considerably
more encouraging than anything that their success would
have been likely to teach us.
For the inherently chaotic and parasitic nature of evil is
impressed upon us afresh by every fresh failure to present a
systematic view of the attempts that have constantly been made
to erect it into an organism possessing its own laws of deve
lopment and expression. Mr. Conway remarks, with more
*
than usual profundity, that the conception of an absolute
fiend, or personified Principle of Evil, has always evaded, and
must always evade, the popular grasp, remaining at best the
exclusive possession of a small circle of speculative thinkers ;
for a personified being, to be popular, must act upon princi
ples roughly appreciable by the average human mind ; and
the principle of absolute and intrinsic preference for evil is
unintelligible and unrealizable; it falls to pieces by its own
incoherence. Elsewhere the same or a kindred thought is
tersely put as follows :
“ Spinoza’s aphorism, £ From the perfection of a thing proceeds
its power of continuance,’ is the earliest modern statement of the
doctrine now called £ survival of the fittest.’ The notion of a Devil
involves the solecism of a being surviving through its unfitness for
survival. ”t
In the same spirit, St. Augustine, in his keen analysis of the
motives to sinful action, + resolves even the most seemingly
gratuitous vice into some kind of corrupt and perverted pur
suit of good and imitation of God ; and in this sense the wellknown aphorism that Satan is the ape of God, frequently
alluded to by Mr. Conway, gains a far more profound signifiVol. II. pp. 8, 9.
+ Vol. II. p. 441.
Confessions, Book ii. .
�Histories of the Devil.
401
cance than was originally put into it, and goes far towards
demonstrating the impossibility, not only of the Devil’s exist
ence, but even of systematic treatises on his supposed signifi
cance.
This necessity of attributing an adequate motive to any
personal being, makes it simply impossible to conceive of a
fundamental dualism as at once personal and moral. If the
great Spirit of Evil has no plan or ultimate purpose whatever,
but is simply obstructive, he loses all dignity, and ceases to be
in any sense co-ordinate with the Spirit of Good. And, con
versely, as soon as he is raised to any independence and dignity,
we are forced to credit him with some statesmanlike object, so
to speak, and he ceases to be wholly evil. Even Ahriman, as
expounded by Mr. Conway, very often seems to be a defeated
*
candidate for the throne, indulging a natural though reprehen
sible love of thwarting his successful rival, rather than the
absolute Principle of Evil.
In fact, the only fundamental dualism conceivable is that
between God and Matter, not between God and the Devil. A
stubborn and chaotic vXp (whether material or spiritual in the
ordinary sense of the words), yielding or failing to yield to the
evolving spirit, a chaos ever threatening to engulf the cosmos
and defeat its designer, is conceivable enough ; and we may
likewise imagine a mighty spirit, impelled by wounded ambi
tion or any other personal motive, throwing all his power on
the side of chaos, and giving a kind of direction to the blind
and mutinous resistance of the intractable vX-rj; but when we
reach even this point, the antithesis, in becoming to some
extent personal, has ceased to be wholly moral, inasmuch as
the opposing spirit already acts from some motive other than
gratuitous love of evil, and is, in fact, the great “ Second Best,”
as Mr. Conway is rather fond of calling him.
Let philosophers and theologians do what they will, there
fore, it remains a fact that no personification of Evil can be
even approximately complete. The Evil Principle must exist
Vol. II. pp. 20 sqq.
�402
Histories of the Devil.
independently of the Devil, and, what is more, the Devil’s own
alliance with evil can only be incidental and partial, can only
be a means to an end.
Any Will absolutely identified with evil must itself be a
kind of unorganized spiritual vXtj, and must stand in the same
relations of mingled subjection and resistance to the Supreme
Organizer as those in which the rest of his unfinished creation
or evolution are supposed to exist.
True Devils, then, are only conceivable at that low stage
of nature and development which is simply mutinous, which
never looks beyond its blind and vulgar instincts of lawless
and heartless rebellion, or asks itself the question, “What
should I do if successful?” No sooner is any internal disci
pline or definite purpose imported into the diabolical ranks,
than they cease to be wholly diabolical.
This fact, which probably lies at the root of the failure of
books on the Devil, is strikingly illustrated by what may be
called the poetical history of Devils.
If, for instance, we pass under review the representations of
Dante, Tasso and Milton, we shall find that just in proportion
as the poets allow the diabolical agents in their dramas to rise
into independent significance and interest, and constitute one
of the true “ motives” in the development, they are compelled
to divest them of their purely diabolical character.
To begin with Dante. The devils in his great poem take
an absolutely subordinate place. In a general sketch of the
Inferno, it would hardly be necessary even to mention them.
Hell is not in any strict sense their own domain; nor do we
feel that they would for a moment sustain its hideous order
and discipline, were not their own brutal and senseless recal
citrance itself held under sternest and most immediate disci
pline, even within the boundaries of Hell. No organization
whatever depends upon them ; and it is possible, therefore, to
represent them as true devils, without any single impulse of a
potentially constructive character in their composition. They
have no self-discipline, no loyalty, no purpose. Resenting the
pressure of the yoke they cannot break, they have nevertheless
�Histories of the Devil.
403
learnt, perforce, to bear it, and to find what scope they can for
their infernal energies within the limits prescribed them ; but
anything which reminds them afresh of their subjection, inva
riably leads to a burst of wildest fury, that only yields to
abject terror.
*
In spite of the demon garrison of the city of
Dis, in spite of the Malebranche, in spite of all the other
devils that have their parts assigned to them, we feel through
out this awful poem that a Higher Power reigns even here,
and holds in their places forces which if left to themselves
would instantly lapse into wildest chaos.
Dante’s devils, with their obscene gestures, their brutal fero
city and their low wit, chopping logic over the dismayed sinner,
snarling at the delivering angel that carries off the soul saved
“ by a sorry tear,” taunting the doomed wretch as he falls into
their boiling pitch, or screaming defiance at the poet and his
guide, are as ready to fall out amongst themselves as to torture
their victims, and the momentary agreement of the Male
branche (aptly signified by the line of tongues thrust through
the mocking teeth), though inspired by a purpose to deceive,
has not cohesion enough to keep them together for an hour;
and when last we see them, two of them have fallen into the
pitch as they buffet and tear one another, and the rest are
madly pursuing the two poets with a baffled fury that has
forgotten even the dreadful penalties that would surely wait
upon its indulgence ! j
*
These are real devils, and for that very reason they could
not take any place except an entirely subordinate one in
Dante’s conception of Hell itself.
Satan, the great arch-fiend, looms fearfully over the central
lake of ice, and champs in his eternal jaws the three great
traitors; but we are scarcely allowed a glimpse into his psy
chology after his fall, and find no traces in Hell of the action
of his mind or will.|
When we turn to Tasso, we find a very different order of
* Compare, e. g., Inf. viii. 82—ix. 105, xxi. 64—87.
+ See Inf. xxi.—xxiii. 57, xxvii. 112—123; Purg. v. 103—129.
I See Inf. xxxiv., and compare Par. xix. 46—48, xxvii. 22—27, xxix. 55—57-
�404
Histories of the. Devil.
conceptions. Hell is with him the kingdom of the devils, and
there at least they are free to govern and combine on their
own principles. We find them capable of deliberation and of
concerted action; and their attempts to thwart Godfrey and
his host, whether on their own motion or under the potent
spells of Ismeno, rise into one of the principal motives of the
*
epic development of the poem. But all this necessitates a
complete change in the manner in which they are represented.
At the terrific blast of the arch-fiend’s horn, the legions of
Hell assemble to deliberate, and their leader addresses them
with passionate eloquence, reminding them of all their suffer
ings and wrongs, appealing to the still unconquered daring
that had once armed them against Heaven, and which still
maintained them, even in the face of their defeat, in the glory
of invincible courage. Finally, with a pathetic cry to them a.s
his faithful companions, as his only strength, he urges them to
the fray. And before the words are fully out of his mouth, his
legions burst from Hell and speed to do his bidding.
The mere fact that they are capable of such enthusiasm
removes them more than'half-way from Dante’s sheer devils to
Milton’s infernal demi-gods.
It is in vain that Tasso attempts, by loathsome physical
descriptions, to make his devils hateful. It is in vain that he
speaks of their hoofs and horns and knotted tails; in vain that
he subjects them to the ignominious treatment they tamely
endure from the archangel Michael ;* in vain that he makes
f
stench and smoke and gore issue from the Devil’s jaws as he
harangues his followers ; for in order to enable them to take a
leading part in his drama, he has been compelled to give them
some measure of discipline, of loyalty, of enthusiasm; and
having given them these, he cannot make them simple devils
again in virtue of physical repulsiveness, or even submission
to archangelic insolence.
Passing now to Milton, we find Tasso’s conceptions developed
* See, e. g., Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto iv. Stt. i.—xix., and Canto xiii.
Stt. i.—xii., and subsequent cantos.
f Canto ix. St. lxv.
�Histories of the Devil.
405
and exalted, and almost all attempt to disarm or qualify them
practically abandoned. To all intents and purposes, Satan is
the hero of Paradise Lost; and in order to qualify him for
holding such a place, Milton has been compelled to endow him
with such noble attributes that he rivals Prometheus as the
type of heroic fortitude ; and whenever he stoops to ungenerous
or undignified conduct, the poet feels constrained to explain
and apologize !
* On the other hand, he is satisfied with the
barest formal attempts to maintain his hero’s infernal character,
and, with truer instincts than Tasso’s, perceives that, having
once made the Devil a hero, he must be sparing in his use of
undignified physical adjuncts.^
Thus we see that devils cannot be raised to the dignity of
serious treatment without, so far, ceasing to be devils. Once
let a clear purpose command their assent, and introduce cohe
sion and discipline into their ranks, and they are no longer
devils.
Is not this the real explanation of the utter insignificance of
the great mass of stories of the Devil? We look in vain for
the vast embodiment of Evil, the grand proportions of the
incarnate opposition to God, and find nothing but pettifogging
and often stupid cunning or mere animal ferocity.
In the great dualism of good and evil, of truth and error, of
order and chaos, of discipline and licence, of self-sacrifice and
self-seeking, the power of order and development can be con
ceived as personal, the power of disorder and inertness cannot.
The Devil cannot really be made the author and embodiment
of evil. At the very most he can only be a being who has
made himself the champion of evil for some intelligible and
therefore not wholly evil purpose.
\ Mr. Conway himself would, I think, quite endorse all this.
Indeed, he gives very striking utterance to one aspect of the
* See, for instance, the celebrated passages, Paradise Lost, Book iv. 32 sqq.,
358 sqq.
f See, however, Book x. 504 sqq.; compare Dante, Inf. xxv. 34—144, where
the description excels Milton’s as much in appropriateness as it does in power.
Such scenes have no true place amongst Milton’s devils.
VOL. XVI.
2 F
�406
Histories of the Devil.
central conception I have been trying to illustrate, in the
words : “ The fact of evil is permanent.... Were starry Lucifer
to be restored to his heavenly sphere, he would be one great
brand plucked from the burning, but the burning might still
go on.”*
It is this “ burning,” this resistance to the divine evolution,
this shadow that haunts the divine creation, this rebellion
against the discipline involved in the divine order, this para
sitical growth of evil which has no principle of life or being of
its own, and gnaws into the life which supports it,—it is this
that constitutes the really absorbing problem, but it is this
that histories of the Devil and treatises on Devil-lore do not
touch.
And even if they did, the history of the Devil would
still remain an abortive and preposterous study. It would
be something like a Parliamentary history which should
take cognizance of nothing but the Opposition. Theories
of chaos have no meaning except in connection with and in
subjection to theories of the cosmos. Theories of evil cannot
be the centre of any coherent exposition, for they are but the
reflex of theories of good. A history of non-development, a
chart and plan of chaos, is an impossibility.
Mr. Conway’s own theory of Good, it need hardly be said, is
summed up in the two words “ Evolution” and “ Science.” If
people would only believe in these two, they would instantly
be saved. We should therefore expect the Unevolved to be
our author’s Evil; but as a matter of fact he seems rather to
like it, as supplying material for Evolution.
“To the artist, nature is never seen in petrifaction; it is really
as well as literally a 'becoming. The evil he sees is 1 good in the
making f what others call vices are voices in the wilderness prepar
ing the way of the highest. ”+
Again, our author quotes, from a poem by Cranch,| the fol
lowing fine lines, put into the mouth of Satan :
* Vol. II. p. 393.
J Satan: a Libretto.
t Vol. II. p. 447.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.
1874.
�Histories of the Devil.
407
111 symbolize the wild and deep
And unregenerated wastes of life,
Dark with transmitted tendencies of race
And blind mischance ; all crude mistakes of will
And tendency unbalanced by due weight
Of favouring circumstance; all passion blown
By wandering winds ; all surplusage of force
Piled up for use, but slipping from its base
Of law and order.”
On which he observes :
u This is the very realm in which the poet and the artist find
their pure-veined quarries; whence arise the forms transfigured in
their vision.”*
All this prepares us for the optimistic view of things in
general which Mr. Conway’s two talismans, “Evolution and
u Science,” enable him to take.
“ The hare-lip, which we sometimes see in the human face, is there
an arrested development. Every lip is at some embryonic period
a hare-lip. The development of man’s visible part has gone on much
longer than his intellectual and moral evolution, and abnormalities
in it are rare in comparison with the number of survivals from the
animal world in his temper, his faith, and his manners. Criminals
are men living out their arrested moral developments. They who
regard them as instigated by a devil are those whose arrest is mental.
The eye of reason will deal with both all the more effectively, because
with as little wrath as a surgeon feels towards a hare-lip he endea
vours to humanize.” t
. And yet we have fancied in reading these volumes that when
the Unevolved, the arrested mental growth, takes the form of
disbelief in Evolution and Science, or belief in an Omnipotent
Will, or, above all, faith in a Priesthood, Mr. Conway’s caustic
is applied with a little more “ wrath” than suits his philoso
phical creed, and his knife is brandished in a style not strictly
surgical.
We are very far from complaining of this. A surgical calm
ness in the face of what we regard as pernicious error is happily
* Vol. II. p. 447.
Query: is “he” ‘the eye of reason’ ?
f Vol. II. p. 439.
2
f
2
�408
Histories of the Devil.
impossible, and we are all of us practical dualists at heart.
All earnest men have their moral antipathies, rising, if not
into wrath, at least into indignation.
Even Mr. Conway, philosopher as he is, cannot deal with
priests quite as graciously as he does with serpents. “Taught
by Science,” he says, when speaking of the latter,
“ Man may, with a freedom the barbarian cannot feel, extermi
nate the Serpent; with a freedom the Christian cannot know, he
may see in that reptile the perfection of that economy in nature
which has ever defended the advancing forms of life. It [i. e. Science]
judges the good and evil of every form with reference to its adapta
tion to its own purposes.”*
But when he is speaking of priests, Mr. Conway seems to
feel no desire to “justify their place in nature,” or to “judge
the good and evil” of this special form of existence solely
“ with reference to its adaptation to its own purposes.”
Superstition, then, in Mr. Conway’s mind, appears to be that
form of the Unevolved which approaches most nearly to a
positive principle of Evil, and a desire to reclaim this waste
land appears to have inspired the more serious purpose of his
volumes.
“ The natural world is overlaid by an unnatural religion, breeding
bitterness around simplest thoughts, obstructions to science, estrange
ments not more reasonable than if they resulted from varying notions
of lunar figures,—all derived from the Devil-bequeathed dogma that
certain beliefs and disbeliefs are of infernal instigation. Dogmas
moulded in a fossil Demonology make the foundation of institutions
which divert wealth, learning, enterprize, to fictitious ends. It has
not, therefore, been mere intellectual curiosity which has kept me
working at this subject these many years, but an increasing convic
tion that the sequelae of such superstitions are exercising a still
formidable influence.”!
Elsewhere Mr. Conway gives us an elaborate allegory founded
on the fate of a certain holy tree in Travancore :
“ Why should that particular tree—of a species common in the
district and not usually very large—have grown so huge ? ‘ Because
Vol. I. pp. 418 sq.
f Vol. I. p. vii.
�409
Histories of the Devil.
it is holy,’ said the priest. ‘Because it was believed holy/ says the
fact. For ages the blood and ashes of victims fed its roots and
swelled its trunk; until, by an argument not confined to India, the
dimensions of the superstition were assumed to prove its truth.
When the people complained that all their offerings and worship did
not bring any returns, the priest replied, You stint the gods and
they stint you. The people offered the fattest of their flocks and
fruits : More yet! said the priest. They built fine altars and tem
ples for the gods : More yet! said the priest. They built fine houses
for the priests, and taxed themselves to support them. And when
thus, fed by popular sacrifices and toils, the religion had grown
to vast power, the priest was able to call to his side the theologian
for further explanation. The theologian and the priest said—1 Of
course there must be good reasons why the gods do not answer all
your prayers (if they did not answer some, you would be utterly
consumed) : mere mortals must not dare to inquire into their mysteries : but that there are gods, and that they do attend to human
affairs, is made perfectly plain by this magnificent array of temples,
and by the care with which they have supplied all the wants of us,
their particular friends, whose cheeks, as you see, hang down with
fatness.’”*
i
Evolutionist as he is, Mr. Conway can really look upon this
as an adequate view of ecclesiastical history !
But to go on with the tree. In the end it was cut down
by an English missionary to make the planks and beams of
his own church, and, continues our author,
I
|
I
I
|
“The victorious missionary may be pointing out in his chapel
the cut-up planks which reveal the impotence of the deity so long
feared by the natives; and perhaps he is telling them of the bigness
of his tree, and claiming its flourishing condition in Europe as proof
of its supernatural character. Possibly he may omit to mention the
blood and ashes which have fattened the root and enlarged the trunk
of 7ws holy tree.”t
|
|
I
If we ask what this holy tree of the Europeans is, we cannot clearly ascertain whether it is belief in God or in the
Devil, because Mr. Conway has a confirmed habit of mixing
[
Vol. I. pp. 301, 302.
t P. 303.
�410
Histories of the Devil.
up the two ; but it is evidently one or both of these beliefs, as
appears from the following very powerful passage :
“All that man ever won of courage or moral freedom, by con
quering his dragons in detail, he surrenders again to the phantom
forces they typified when he gives up his mind to belief in a power
not himself that makes for evil. The terrible conclusion that Evil
is a positive and imperishable Principle in the universe carries in it
the poisonous breath of every Dragon. It lurks in all theology
which represents the universe as an arena of struggle between good
and evil Principles, and human life as a war of the soul against the
flesh. It animates all the pious horrors which identify Materialism
with wickedness. It nestles in the mind which imagines a personal
deity opposed by any part of nature. It coils around every heart
which adores absolute sovereign Will, however apotheosised..........
“. . . . Happily the notion of a universe held at the mercy of a
personal decree is suicidal in a world full of sorrows and agonies,
which, on such a theory, can only be traced to some individual
caprice or malevolence. However long abject fear may silence the
lips of the suffering, rebellion is in their hearts. Every blow inflicted
directly or permissively by mere Will, however omnipotent, every
agony that is consciously detached from universal organic necessity,
in order that it may be called ‘ providential/ can arouse no natural
feeling in man nobler than indignation.......... The heart’s protest
may be throttled for a time by the lingering coil of terror, but it is
there.”*
We have now, perhaps, a pretty clear idea of Mr. Conway’s
purpose in writing this book, and may see more clearly
than ever that a history or systematic survey of the most
objectionable portion of the Unevolved, can only rise to
importance in proportion as it forsakes its own impossible
centre of vision, and becomes a chapter in the history of
Evolution. Demonology and Devil-lore are only interesting
when they become branches of folk-lore, or hover in constant
retreat upon the margin of theology, philosophy or science.
The attempt to isolate them and treat them as independent
centres of interest, must inevitably fail.
This, then, is the lesson taught by the failure of books on
Vol. I. pp. 426, 427.
f
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Demonology and Devil-Lore
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 398-410 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-Lore' from Theological Review, vol. 16, July 1879. The review is incomplete. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
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[1879]
Identifier
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G5607
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Book reviews
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Demonology and Devil-Lore), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Morayshire
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grant Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone [1829-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 66-96 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Review of The History of the Province of Moray. New ed. / Rev. L. Shaw. From Westminster Review 13 (January 1858). Attributions from The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900.
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[s.n.]
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CT67
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Book Reviews
Scotland
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Morayshire (Scotland)
Scotland
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1879.]
Recent Literature.
rfáI Sheppard’s sketch of the school-house “ by
Ixlj Great Kenhawa’s side ” are characteristic
I of West Virginia. It was not essential that
vsdj i they should be characteristic, but if fidelity
I
!
t
I
t
►
l in such things can be added to the ideal
truth and beauty, it is something to be glad
of. Another of the lesser satisfactions of
the book, for which the reader is to be grate
ful to Mr. Anthony, is the occurrence of the
pictures at just the point in the text which
they are meant to illustrate, and not several
pages before or beyond.
We do not know how far it may be feasi
ble to assign each poem to a particular art
ist, as in these early numbers the Coplas
de Manrique has been given to Mr. Rheinhart, The Children of the Lord’s Supper to
Mr. Abbey, and The Spanish Student to
Mr. Fredericks; but we hope it may be
done at least in the case of the shorter
poems throughout the edition. The work of
Mr. Fredericks especially is of charmingly
good effect. He has shown more than any
Other of our designers an aptness for that
sort of dramatic expression which makes
much of costume and of mise en scene ; he is
in a good sense theatrical, and he is here
at his best. In looking at his illustrations,
one feels that if this delightful play could be
perfectly put upon the stage, the people in
it'would dress, and would sit, stand, move,
and look, as they do here. What an admi
rable scene, for instance, is that first one,
where Lara sits smoking in his dressinggown, and chatting with Don Carlos; how
delicious is Preciosa where Victorian has
climbed to her on the balcony ; how superb
where she finds Lara in her chamber; what
Jiife and humor there is in her dance before
the applauding cardinal and archbishop ;
how picturesquely gay and Spanish the en
counter of Victorian with Hypolito and Don
Carlos in the Prado ! It is quite like seeing
The Spanish Student played ; and we mean
this for the highest praise, since a drama de
mands theatrical, not realistic, illustration.
The realism of these charming pictures is in
the men’s dress, minutely yet vividly studied
from that of the close of the last century,
when the strange taste of the Parisian mcroyables had penetrated everywhere; the
women’s dress suggests rather than repro
duces the period; but all is of a fitness, a
harmony, in which Mr. Colman’s serenad
ing scene, with its cavalieresque costume,
strikes a jarring note, rich and fine as it is
in its own way.
Of a very different excellence are Mr.
Abbey’s pictures for The Children of the
VOL. XLIII.—no. 260.
53
817
Lord’s Supper, with their tender Northern
blonde types of childhood. The little girl
pacing churchward, beside the dark stone
wall, is as blue-eyed and yellow-haired as
if she were a sketch in color, instead of
black and white. She is wholly Scandina
vian and peasant ; and so are ther children
kneeling in church before the bishop. The
group of angels in another illustration are
not so good : they are respectively self-satis
fied and thoughtfully sentimental in expres
sion ; but then it is perhaps difficult to do
angels for want of studies from life. Mr.
Abbey, however, has radiantly succeeded in
his full-page picture for The Skeleton in
Armor : that is full of the ideal truth and
loveliness which he has missed in his com
pany of complacent seraphs ;
•— “ the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half-afraid,”
is a dream of tender, girlish beauty.
Among the other more notable illustra
tions in these numbers are Mr. Moran’s rich
night-scene for The Light of Stars ; Mr.
Brown’s group of autumn trees and stretch
of autumn meadow for Autumn ; Mr. Ab
bey’s fancy for The Two Locks of Hair ;
Mr. Schell’s vignette for The Rainy Day, —
a bit of vine-clambered wall from which the
gusts beat the dying leaves, and from whose
flooded eaves coldly spills the wind-tossed
rain ; and Mr. Waud’s vista in the Dismal
Swamp, with the gaunt-limbed, moss-grown
trees about the stagnant water.
As may have been inferred, the plan of
all these illustrations is in distinct opposition
to the theory that the illustration of mod
ern literature should be in the spirit of mediæval illumination ; that is, that it should
pictorially annotate the text with whatever
wayward fancy it suggests to the artist.
This theory, if a whole work could be de
livered to one designer for the occupation
of his life, might be realized, and might be
more or less satisfactory; but it is quite
incompatible with contemporary conditions.
Illustration must still, and probably always
will, — with very rare exceptions, — be done
upon the plan of reproducing in line what
is said or hinted in words, and the designer
will succeed or fail as he infuses more or
less of his own life into what must be first
literally faithful. It is the question, in an
other form, of translation or paraphrase,
of trying to give the spirit in the body, or
the spirit without the body. The latter is
a task so delicate that it will probably re
main the unattainable ideal of critics who
can do neither. In fact, after all the talk,
�818
Recent Literature.
and all the print, in praise of illuminative
illustration, it would be difficult to allege
any quite successful or striking instance of
its application. There are occasional pleas
ing touches of it in the vignettes of this
Longfellow, as of other beautiful illustrated
works, where the text seems to break into
quaint conceit of bird or blossom, or run
ning vine, framing a face or a glimmer of
landscape; and here it probably fulfills its
only possible office, leaving a vast field for
more positive interpretation, into which we
may be sure the mediaeval illuminators
would have entered if they had known how.
But if illuminative art is scantily present
here, the spirit of the most suggestive dec
orative art abounds in the exquisite titles
designed by Mr. Ipsen. In the three num
bers before us there are some ten of these,
in which it is hard to say which is most
suggestive and charming, — the varied use
of conventional forms, or the refined ca
price with which a bit of realism in bird or
flower is here and there introduced. The
second title to The Spanish Student and
the first to Poems of Slavery are rich in
stances of the first; those of Voices of the
Night and Earlier Poems, of the second.
But in whatever spirit these designs are,
they sparkle with a fresh and joyous life;
they dance to the delighted eye; they are
full of variety and beauty and sympathy,
and once seen they immediately relate them
selves to the poetry which they announce.
All but two of the pictures here are ex
ecuted in pure line, and we learn that
throughout the edition none others will be
done in the manner reprobated on another
page of this magazine by Mr. Linton as
alien to the function and genius of wood
engraving. What this bad and false school
is the present critic gladly leaves Mr. Lin
ton to explain, and contents himself with
stating the fact of its exclusion from the
illustrated Longfellow. Mr. Anthony, whom
we have already mentioned as the artistic
editor, is no less tjian Mr. Linton the enemy
of the corrupt school and the friend of pure
line, and with hint has rested a decision
which must have a large influence on Amer
ican wood-engraving. It would not be easy
to explain how much the edition owes in
all respects to his zeal, his taste, and his
vigilance. It has been his affair not merely
to suggest and place the illustrations, but
often to prescribe the treatment of the sub
ject, and to furnish the designer the his
torical material to work from, in accurately
studied armor, costume, and locality. It is
[June,
to him that the first numbers owe their per
fection in this respect, and it is to his labors,
otherwise tacit, that the work must owe the
harmony in which its vast variety of detail
unites.
— A book whose subject has long and
deeply fascinated the writer has always a
quality of its own, which seldom fails to
prove an engaging one. The charmed in
terest with which objects have been regard
ed by him becomes in his book1 an atmos
phere about them whose effect is poetic, like
that of the physical atmosphere upon the ob
jects of the landscape. This quality should
be possessed in a high degree by Mr. Con
way’s elaborate and unique work. Twenty
years ago he was already writing and speak
ing upon his present subject; and it has
clung to him, rather than he to it, ever
since. A stranger to superstitious terror, he
has nevertheless been haunted by the mon
strous shapes which the terrors of imagina
tive superstition have created. The spell,
partly intellectual curiosity, partly an in
terest of a graver sort, which conjured them
up wrought almost too effectually ; and he
found that the only means to lay them must
be an elucidation of their mystery. When
he should cause the light to shine through
them, discovering the secret of their exist
ence, then, and not sooner, he would be quit
of his ghostly company. The task thus pro
posed to him, or rather imposed upon him,
was by no means a light one. It is easy to
laugh at the grotesque and absurd, easy to
inveigh against the revolting and horrible,
in the dark imaginings of mankind ; but to
explain is hard, for it is to find the reason
of unreason, the being and substance of un
reality, the law of folly, and logic of lunacy.
The difficulty which thus arises from the
quality of the matter is enhanced by its
quantity and variety. The human mind has
been astonishingly fruitful of monstrous and
menacing shapes, each with its own pecul
iarity of ugliness. Now a century since it
might have been thought enough to show
that these apparent objects are unreal, and
belief in their existence is a superstition;
but the scientific spirit of our day, in its
search of natural origins, does not content
itself so easily. Superstitions are a very in
teresting study, and the interest in them be
gins at the point where, as recognized su
perstitions, they quite cease to claim belief.
When it is out of doubt that the seeming
1 Demonology and Devil-Lore. By Moncurb
Daniel Conway, M. A. With Numerous Illustra
tions. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 1879
�Recent, Literature.
»bjlfet» before which credulity has cowered
are of its own creation; when it is also seen
that this process has been universal, and
therefore due to a mental necessity, and,
moreover, that it has been at least an at
tendant upon the spiritual development of
humanity, we become aware that those ap
paritions, remote, strange, uncalled for, as
they now appear, belong to the history of
the human mind ; and one may well inquire
what is the law of their apparent existence.
Science says of them that they are the forms
in which the human race has spontaneously
and unconsciously pictured its afflictions, its
temptations, and sins; as, on the other hand,
its aspirations have been painted in the
shapes of heroes and gods. At once, how
ever, the further inquiry arises, Why that
unconscious picturing ? The answer is that
it was the necessary form of primitive think
ing. There is a language of the mind as
well as one of the tongue; and even more
than verbal speech that mental language
changes from stage to stage of intellectual
development. This it is which makes the
difficulty of reading the most ancient books
with understanding. When the words have
been translated, it is found that the thoughts
must be translated also. Primitive mind,
when it began to conceive of supersensual
fact, produced a figure of some sort, a picto
rial representation, which was taken for a
real existence. Its thoughts appeared to it
as external personal beings. In these forms
of imagination, not known to be merely such,
the ideal life of man first disengaged itself,
and became pronounced. “Personification,”
it is called; but of what ? Of outward ob
jects only, so many have said. In truth,
it was always the thought and sentiment, the
motion and emotion, of the human spirit,
teeming with a life peculiar to itself, which
were personified. In such personification,
or picture-thinking, the spiritual history of
our race began, and for the reason that the
mind could utter its deeper import to itself
in no other way. The process continues
long, and its results are with us as tradi
tions at the present time. As an immediate
ly productive process, however, it is now dis
continued ; and its traditional deposit has
to all men largely, to many wholly, become
recognizable as imaginary.
In this lies an intellectual revolution and
a moral crisis. Mr. Conway is conscious of
the change, and is among those who most
participate in it. But instead of turning
with light scorn away from that past, whose
imaginations have become incredible to him,
819
he is drawn toward it by a new and irresist
ible interest. Because he cannot believe with
it, he must find in its belief the human mo
tive, the touch of nature that makes all men
kin. His is not a shallow nature, which
could complacently feel itself sliced off, as
it were, from the past life of mankind, even
though separated by superiority. Rather,
he shares the best spirit of this age, the
roots of whose conscious being run deep,
and which therefore would feel itself wound
ed by a mere “solution of continuity” in
history. Besides, he is aware that the mod
ern world, hastening forward under changed
mental conditions to new and unknown des
tinies, will be the better prepared for its
future the tnore intelligently and effectual
ly it is able to interrogate its past. Thus
honorably impelled, he has selected the very
darkest chapter in what we have called the
picture-thinking of the earlier world, with a
purpose to find the human principles in
what may seem the most inhuman imagina
tions, and to recover for the understanding
that which, happily, can never be restored
as belief. A hard task, it has been said;
but the reader will see that it is worthy of
the powers he has brought to it, of the in
dustry he has lavished upon it, and of the
absorbing interest which begot his labor.
In such an enterprise it must be the first
work to search out and assemble the partic
ular facts; and it will be the voice of all
readers that in this respect the writer has
rather surpassed than fallen below the meas
ure of a reasonable expectation. From the
four quarters of the world ; from places high
and low, sacred and profane; from times so
primitive that history, properly so called,
does not extend to them; and from times so
recent that history has hardly as yet come
up with them, he has drawn together, in
enormous aggregate, the monstrous forms,
with which the fearful sense of dependence,
imperfection, or guilt, in union with the
sense of all-enveloping, infinite mystery, has
seemingly peopled earth and air, — places
real and places as imaginary as the beings
supposed to inhabit them. He has indeed
quite uncommon qualifications for this labor.
A diligent explorer of libraries, a rapid and
tireless reader of books, he also finds books
in living men, and a library wherever hu
man beings, learned or unlearned, are to be
met with. Nature has endowed him with a
singular faculty of putting himself in com
munication with others, and with others of
all degrees. Scholars and peasants, archae
ologists and old wiyes, — he is at home with
�820
Recent Literature.
them all, and with all can give and take.
He has the art of squeezing information for
himself out of those who, one would say,
have none for themselves. The fool, it has
been said, will learn nothing from the phi
losopher, but the philosopher may chance to
learn much from the fool; and Mr. Con
way, with his eager and alert intelligence,
his wide observation and his power to open
communication with men of all sorts, has
often got instruction from those who them
selves could neither teach nor learn. And
he has been restrained in his researches by
no sentiment, whether of contempt or awe.
The silliest modern superstition is fish for
his net, and he takes it out with no grin,
but with serious inquisitiveness and satis
faction upon his countenance. Into every
traditional holy of holies, on the other hand,
he thrusts the same inevitable face of in
quiry, neither more reverent nor more ir
reverent than an interrogation point. The
result of all is that he has got together a
wonderful menagerie, not to be seen without
astonishment by such as are in a measure
new to this department of natural history.
And even those more familiar with it will
scarcely escape a surprise when, in the midst
of the strange collection, they come upon
representatives of species which might be
supposed to have become extinct many ages
since, or, at the utmost, to lurk now only in
the wild and waste places of the earth, but
which this inevitable trapper has caught
running in the most cultivated lands of civ
ilization. Who could imagine the hunger
demon extant here in America ? But with
in the decade it has been captured in Chica
go and in Rhode Island. True, the creat
ure is in somewhat reduced circumstances ;
it has not here the luxuriant development
which it attains in cannibal imaginations;
but the identity of species is quite clear.
The quality, however, of a writer is more
shown in his use of material than in its ac
cumulation. It is true, indeed, that in a
work like the one before us the collection
of examples sufficient in number and varie
ty to represent fairly the whole productive
activity of the human mind in that direction
must be a labor of high relative importance.
Just in proportion to its success, however, it
calls for another labor, still more arduous.
The seemingly heterogeneous mass of im
aginations would be little more than a be
wildering curiosity, were it not simplified
by some orderly arrangement. Nor would
it by any means suffice for Mr. Conway’s
purposes to arrange his facts in such an out
||June,
ward order as should render them conven
iently presentable. He desires that they
should be not only presentable, but intelligi
ble. His aim is to classify them according»
to their interior, producing principles, so that
in every group we may see at once the tie’
of relationship which makes its unity, and
the root in human nature from which the
whole has grown. Thus, the classification
will be itself an elucidation, the facts ex
plaining themselves as they come before the
eye; and he will be spared the necessity of
a continuous explanation in detail, which
would be tedious to himself, and might prob
ably become so to the reader. The design
was excellently conceived, and has been
ably carried out. Of course, room remains
for doubt with regard to some particulars
amid such a multitude. The tracing of
genealogies, if pushed much beyond the
nearest relationships, is commonly a puz
zling business, and if continued for enough
ends at last in sheer obscurity. The gene
alogy of demons and devils is certainly not
to be determined with less difficulty than
that of human beings. There are in depen dent productions of the same conception,
where the relationship is natural without
being historical. On the other hand, imaginations which have the same historical lin
eage migrate in different directions, and ac
quire diversities of feature that disguise
their relationship almost or quite beyond
recognition. In such a case, a student who
has a fine aptitude for his work will obtain
real identifications from hints so slight as to
seem quite insufficient to one less skilled in
such labor, or endowed with a scent less
keen; while at the same time no caution
will secure him against apparent identifica
tions, which, however, are apparent only.
Mr. Conway gives us the impression of an
intelligence rather daring and penetrating
than circumspect and discreet, and we are
sometimes distanced by his swift flights; but
it cannot be doubted that his boldness is
both intelligent and conscientious, nor that
he has, on the whole, really executed his de
sign.
Birst of all, he distinguishes broadly be
tween demons and devils. The demon seeks
only the satisfaction of its natural appetites,
but is so constituted that it must satisfy
them at the expense of the human race. It
is monstrous and afflictive, but not, in the
strict sense, malevolent. In the devil, on
the contrary, pure malignity appears. It
loves evil with disinterested affection, and
does evil not only with delight, but with a
�1W1]
Recent Literature.
821
kind of religious devotion. The former has hesitate to assert. Perhaps the proper
its occasion in the physical, the latter in the statement would be that he now and then
seems a trifle too much its master, and sub
moral, experience of mankind. The more
revolting conception belongs, therefore, to jects it to a certain compulsion. His pro
the higher stage of development. This may cedure is utterly frank and guileless; the
surprise, but it is quite in the natural order. facts are in no slightest degree “doctored,”
Evolution, so far from being simple, linear but interpretations occur that seem not to
advance, is a highly complex movement. come easily from the facts, but suggest an
Roman Christianity in the eighth century effect of mood. We have particularly in
was a much higher form of religion than the mind his new and peculiar construction of
old Norse faith ; but, as Mr. Kemble has re the Abrahamic legend and the chapter upon
marked, the Scandinavian Loki was an al The Holy Ghost. The latter is, moreover,
most admirable figure compared with the disfigured by a quotation of some length
hideous and disgusting devil of the Chris from Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, who has been
tianized Anglo-Saxons. The Roman Church at pains to tell in writing of a fine thing
first began to make a business of murder said by him one day. He was asked, What
ing heresy, not in the “ dark ages,” but at is the Holy Ghost ? ” and he answered
the most advanced stage of mediaeval ci'vil- that it is a pigeon, and that Christianity is
ization. The witchcraft craze, in which it pigeon worship; adding that pigeons are
held sacred in St. Petersburg, and following
may be seen that, though there were no
witches, whole nations and ages were never this observation with a trivial anecdote.
theless but too truly bewitched, was in like Now, it is conceivable that to a serious, fullmanner a late product. With the higher minded man like Mr. Conway, this delicate
and better comes the lower and worse ; and sally might suggest the question, really an
there would be forever an equal develop interesting one, how the dove became the
ment upward and downward, were it not in accepted symbol of the spirit or breath of
the nature of the better to extinguish at last God. So the barking of a dog might chance
its odious concomitant. Mr. Conway’s dis to suggest an important question concern
tinction, therefore, between demonic and di- ing the origin of language; in which case
abological representations, with their rela it would not be necessary to fill one page of
tive position, is sound and necessary, while a consequent chapter upon language with
it Signifies his recognition of a complexity bow-wows. But if our author may for once
in the process of historical growth of which be “ left ” to borrow an impertinence from
evolutionists have been too little apt to take another, he has none of his own; if his
notice ; and whether or not his terms have interpretations are at times doubtful, he
commonly been used in the sense he assigns leaves, even in that case, a pregnant question
them, they may be so with propriety and with the reader; and, as Bacon said, though
we forget his words, he that can ask a right
with advantage.
Placing the dragons as an intermediate question is already half-way advanced on
class between the two principal ones, he be the road to knowledge. Meantime, in the
gins with the most elementary, and arranges intellectual and moral courage which
it in groups, each of which has a motive pe breathes, like fresh morning air, through
culiar to itself. For example, hunger, heat, the book; in the vast extent of the field
cold, tempest, and flood have severally be traversed at every point with the step of a
gotten in human imagination a family of strong man; in the broad light cast upon
preternatural figures. The groups are well many dark regions; in the exhibition of
made out, the generating motive clearly definite results elicited from scattered and
traced, the examples abundant, striking, and obscure indications; in the not infrequent
often surprising. When, however, diabolic examples of searching and productive criti
al representatives are reached in the second cism ; and in the influences of a quickening
volume, the treatment becomes still more spirit, whose every touch provokes thought
difficult, and1 it may at times be seen that or begets inquiry, — in these and kindred
the writer works with less ease. Here the features, and more than all, in the ensemble
begetting motive is no longer outward ; only of the book, the whole thought and design
in the soul itself are the hunger and heat, out of which it sprang and with which,
the tempest and sickness, that awaken its through all details and speculations, suc
fears and give them apparent forms. For cesses and short-comings it is still luminous,
the most part, however, he is master of his it has qualities to reward richly the atten
material; that he is always so we should tion it is likely to attract.
�822
Recent Literature.
But its general character would not be
indicated, even in the very slight way here
proposed, without noticing the depth and
intensity of that practical interest by which
it is pervaded. In the first volume, where
demons and dragons are treated of, the
purely scientific interest is clearly dominant,
though there are keen glances at existing
conditions which show that the writer is
far from being unmindful of them; but in
the second volume, whose sub-title is The
Devil, there is a marked change of tone.
Mr. Conway bears in his heart a heavy
charge against the establishments of the
present day, whether within Christendom or
without it. He sees in the present time
two great evils. The first is a profitless ex
penditure of spiritual force. There are
quite real hells here on earth, calling loudly
for a mighty labor of purification. There
are demons and devils, neither supernatural
nor personal, but real influences neverthe
less, and not haunting disreputable places
only. There is a work of reconstruction
and regeneration to be done, and already
too long delayed ; seeds of death to be de
stroyed, seeds of life to be sown, and time
pressing. The moral force, that should up
root and plant, is not altogether wanting,
but, as he thinks, is too largely wasted upon
spectres. The eye wanders : instead of in
terrogating fact, it dwells upon dreams;
what is before it, full of promise, of menace,
of blessed and boding possibilities, it does
not see, or but half sees, for it is looking
elsewhere. Men bring sacrifices to dead
gods, and are deaf to the living, eternal
spirit. Worship walks in its sleep, and is
the more idle the more busy. Many teach,
few instruct: —
[June,
As has been remarked, Mr. Conway says
little to such effect, and that little is spoken
with quiet gravity; but a sense of it, not
only deep but impassioned, is ever present
with him; and, however widely one may
differ from his judgment, it is impossible to
be angry with a man whose opinion has to
such a degree the dignity of moral convic
tion. But the higher forces of the human
soul are not only wasted; in his judgment,
they are also very insufficiently developed,
for the reason that the methods of moral
culture are adapted to psychological condi-
tions which are not those of our time. He
is profoundly persuaded that noble, effect
ual duty can no longer be got out of each
man’s hope and fear for himself, — hope of
reward or fear of punishment hereafter.
With large classes, those motives are dead,
— dead utterly; with others they survive,
but without moral virility; intrepid and in
telligent duty they no longer beget. “ It is
very difficult,” says Mr. Conway, “ to know
how far simple human nature, acting its
best, is capable of heroic endurance for
truth and of pure passion for the right. . . .
But if noble lives cannot be so lived, we
may be sure that the career of the human
race will be downhill henceforth. Bor any
unbiased mind can judge whether the tend
ency of thought and power lies toward or
away from the old hopes and fears on which
the regime of the past was founded.” See
ing clearly, then, that in every age the spir
itual or ideal forces are the saving ones, he
believes that the great agencies through
which that priceless power once operated
serve now, very largely, to divert it from
real to unreal objects; and, meantime, it
seems clear to him that the power itself, no
longer nourished by its ancient diet, and
sparely fed with another, wants the vigor of
health, and without a change of system is
likely to want it more. Even the question
whether, under the new intellectual condi
tions, this earth of ours can afford it the
needed sustenance, — even this question he
cannot answer with undoubting confidence.
Such is the burden that lies upon his breast ;
and out of his book, even where it relates
immediately to very remote matters, there
issue, in another dialect, the summons of
that spirit which of old might cry, “ Come
up to the help of the Lord against the
mighty.”
— Mr. James’s new book1 is a remark
able outpouring of profound philosophical
thought and statement, in that peculiar vein
which characterizes all the work of this
deep and earnest writer. Those who have
read the author’s former works, — his Chris
tianity the Logic of Creation, his Substance
and Shadow, and his Secret of Swedenborg,
— and have succeeded in getting a definite
idea of their purpose, will find this last book
of his to be in several respects his most ma
ture and satisfactory as well as his most
explicit and lively work. The form of it
being in a series of letters to a friend helps
to make it what some persons call an ex-
1 Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the
Earnest of God's Omnipotence in Human Nature.
Affirmed in Letters to a Friend. By Henry James
Boston : Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1879.
“ The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed;
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they
draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Demonology and devil-lore
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 818-822 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in double columns. A review in an unknown journal of Moncure Conway's work' Demonology and Devil-lore'. Volume citation: vol. 43, no. 260, 1879. Reviewer's name unknown.
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[s.n.]
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[1879]
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Book reviews
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway
-
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Text
IV.
A FRIEND OF LORD BYRON *
Mr. Hodgson has written his father’s life upon a very unusual
plan, for which he makes apologies in his preface. The apologies,
however, were not strictly necessary, for the book is an interesting
one, more so, perhaps, than if it had been composed in the manner
usually followed in such cases. The late Archdeacon Hodgson
was a genial and accomplished scholar, a man of the world, and an
indefatigable versifier ; but he was not a brilliant writer, and our
loss is not great, in the fact that his letters have for the most part
not been preserved. His son and biographer lays before us, in de
fault of any specimens of his own share in his correspondence, a
selection from the letters that he received from his friends. These
were numerous, for Francis Hodgson had the good fortune to in
spire a great deal of affection and confidence. His chief claim to
the attention of posterity resides in the fact that he was an early
and much-trusted intimate of Lord Byron. A good many of By
ron’s letters to him were printed by Moore, to whom, however,
Hodgson surrendered but a portion of this correspondence. His
son here publishes a number of new letters, together with a great
many communications from Mrs. Leigh, the poet’s sister, and two
or three from Lady Byron. All this portion of these volumes is
extremely interesting, and constitutes, indeed, their principal value.
It throws a clearer, though by no means a perfectly clear, light
upon the much-discussed episode of the separation between Byron
and his wife, and upon the character of his devoted sister. The book
contains, besides, a series of letters from Hodgson’s Eton and Cam
bridge friends, and in its latter portion a variety of extracts from
* Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson, B. D., with Numerous Letters from Lord
Byron and Others. By his Son, the Rev. T. P. Hodgson, M. A. London: Macmillan,
1879.
�A FRIEND OF LORD BYRON.
389
his correspondence with such people as Lord Denman (Chief Justice
of England, who presided at the trial of Queen Caroline, and in
curred the bitter animosity of George IV.), James Montgomery, the
late Herman Merivale, the late Duke of Devonshire, and the charm
ing Mrs. Robert Arkwright, who figures in the lately published
memoirs of Fanny Kemble. The picture of Hodgson’s youth and
early manhood, with his numerous friendships, his passion for lit
erature, his extraordinary and unparalleled fecundity in the produc
tion of poetical epistles, his good spirits, good sense, and great
industry, is an extremely pleasant one, and gives an agreeable idea
of the tone of serious young Englishmen, sixty or seventy years
ago, who were also good fellows. Hodgson’s first intention on
leaving Cambridge had been to study for the bar ; but after some
struggles the literary passion carried the day, and he became an
ardent “ reviewer.” He worked a great deal for the critical peri
odicals of the early years of the century, notably for the “ Edin
burgh Review,” and he produced (besides executing a translation
of Juvenal) a large amount of satirical or wTould - be satirical
verse. His biographer gives a great many examples of his poetical
powers, which, however, chiefly illustrate his passion for turning
couplets d propos of everything and of nothing. The facility of
these effusions is more noticeable than their point. In 1815 Hodg
son went into the Church, and in 1836, after having spent many
years at Bakewell, in Derbyshire, in a living which he held from
the Duke of Devonshire, he was appointed Archdeacon of Derby.
In 1840 he was made Provost of Eton College, a capacity in which
he instituted various salutary reforms (he abolished the old custom
of the “ Montem,” which had become a very demoralizing influence).
Archdeacon Hodgson died in 1852.
Mrs. Leigh wrote to him at the time of Byron’s marriage, in
which she felt great happiness, that her brother had “ said that in
all the years that he had been acquainted with you he never had
had a moment’s disagreement with you : ‘ I have quarreled with
Hobham, with everybody but Hodgson,’ were his own words.” By
ron’s letters and allusions to his friend quite bear out this dec
laration, and they present his irritable and passionate nature in the
most favorable light. He had a great esteem for Hodgson’s judg
ment, both in literature and in life, and he defers to it with a do
cility w'hich is touching in a spoiled young nobleman who, on occa
sion, can make a striking display of temper. Mr. Hodgson gives
no definite account of the origin of his father’s acquaintance with
�390
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.
Byron—he simply says that their intimacy, which in 1808 had
become complete, had “ doubtless been formed previously, during
Hodgson’s visits to London and Cambridge and to the Drurys at
Harrow.” In 1808 Hodgson was appointed tutor in moral philoso
phy at King’s College, Cambridge, and in this year “ Byron came
to Cambridge for the purpose of availing himself of his privilege
as a nobleman, and taking his M. A. degree, although he had only
matriculated in 1805. . . . From this time until early in 1816 the
friends constantly met, and when absent as constantly correspond
ed.” Hodgson was completely under the charm of Byron’s richlyendowed nature ; but his affection, warm as it was (and its warmth
is attested by the numerous copies of verse which he addressed to
his noble friend, and which, though they exhibit little poetical in
spiration, show great tenderness of feeling), was of that pure kind
which leaves the judgment unbribed. Byron’s letters have always
a great charm, and those quoted by Mr. Hodgson, whether pub
lished for the first time, or anticipated by Moore, are full of youth
ful wit and spontaneity. In 1811, while the second canto of “ Childe
Harold ” (Hodgson was helping to revise it) was going through the
press, the poet’s affectionate Mentor had, by letter, a religious dis
cussion with him. Hodgson’s side of the controversy has disap
peared, but Byron’s skeptical rejoinders are full of wit, levity, and
a cynicism which (like his cynicism through life) was half natural
and half affected. “ As to your immortality, if people are to live,
why die ? And any carcasses, which are to rise again, are they worth
raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs
than I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, as I shall be
sadly behind in the squeeze into paradise.” The letters which
throw light upon Byron’s unhappy marriage are all, as we have
said, of great interest. Hodgson’s correspondence with Mrs. Leigh,
which became an intimate one, began in 1814 and lasted for forty
years. Staying with Byron at Newstead in the autumn of that
year, she first writes to him as a substitute for her brother, who,
“ being very lazy,” has begged her to take his pen. It was at this
moment that he became engaged to Miss Milbanke, and one of the
few extracts from his father’s own letters, given by Mr. Hodgson,
is a very sympathetic account of a meeting with Byron in Cam
bridge while the latter was in the glow of just having completed
his arrangements for marrying “ one of the most divine beings on
earth.” There are several letters of Mrs. Leigh’s during 1815, after
the marriage had taken place, going on into the winter of 1816,
�A FRIEND OF LORD BYRON.
391
when they assume a highly dramatic interest. It is interesting, in
view of the extraordinary theory which in the later years of her
life Lady Byron was known to hold on the subject of the relations
between her husband and his sister, and which were given to the
world in so regrettable a manner not long after her death, to observe
that Mrs. Leigh’s letters afford the most striking intrinsic evidence
of the purely phantasmal character of the famous accusation, and
place the author’s character in a highly honorable and touching
light. This is the view taken, in the strongest manner, by the edi
tor of these volumes, who regards Mrs. Leigh as the most devoted
and disinterested of sisters—as the good genius, the better angel,
of the perverse and intractable poet. She appears to have been a
very sympathetic and conscientious woman, not very witty or very
clever, but addicted to writing rather expansive, confidential, lady
like letters, and much concerned about the moral tone and religious
views of her brother, whose genius and poetic fame inspire her with
a quite secondary interest. She appeals to Hodgson, as her brother’s
nearest and most trusted friend, to come up to town and intercede
with either party to prevent the separation. Hodgson obeyed her
summons, and did his best in the matter, but his efforts were una
vailing. His son quotes a remarkable letter which he wrote to Lady
Byron, urging her to the exercise of patience and forbearance ; and
he quotes as well Lady Byron’s reply, which on the whole does less
credit to her clemency than his appeal had done to his tact and wis
dom. There is an element of mystery in the whole matter of her
rupture with her husband which these letters still leave unsolved ;
but, putting this aside, they leave little doubt as to her ladyship’s
rigidity of nature.
“ I believe the nature of Lord B.’s mind to be most benevo
lent,” she says in answer to Hodgson’s appeal. “ But there may
have been circumstances (I would hope the consequences, not the
causes of mental disorder) which would render an original tender
ness of conscience the motive of desperation, even of guilt, when
self-esteem had been forfeited too far” And in reply to Hodg
son’s request, made on Byron’s behalf, that she would specify those
acts of his which she holds to have made a reconciliation impos
sible, she says, “ He does know, too well, what he affects to in
quire.” Mrs. Leigh says to Hodgson, in writing of her brother : “ If
I may give you mine [my opinion], it is that in his own mind there
were and are recollections fatal to his peace, and which would have
prevented his being happy with any woman whose excellence
�392
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.
equaled or approached that of Lady B., from the. consciousness of
being unworthy of it. Nothing,” she adds, “ could or can remedy
this fatal cause but the consolation to be derived from religion, of
which, alas ! dear Mr. H., our beloved B. is, I fear, destitute.” In
such allusions as these some people will always read the evidence
of some dark and definite wrong-doing on the part of one who de
lighted in the appearance of criminality, and who, possibly, simply
by overacting his part, in the desire to mystify, rather viciously, a
woman of literal mind, in whom the sense of humor was not
strong, and the imagination was uncorrected by it, succeeded too
well and got caught in his own trap.
Even if the inference we speak of were valid, it would be very
profitless to inquire further as regards Byron’s unforgivable sin; we
are convinced that, if it were ascertained, it would be, to ingenuous
minds, a great disappointment. The reader of these volumes will
readily assent to Mr. Hodgson’s declaration that they offer a com
plete, virtual exoneration of Mrs. Leigh. The simple, touching,
pious letters addressed to her brother’s friend at the time of Byron’s
death and of the arrival of his remains in England, strongly contribute to this effect; as does also the tone in which she speaks
of Lady Byron’s estrangement from her, which took place very
suddemy some years after the separation. The tone is that of a
person a good deal mystified and even wounded.
IIeney James, Jr.
�
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A friend of Lord Byron
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James, Henry
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 388-392 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From North American Review 128 (April 1879). Review of "a memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson with numerous letters from Lord Byron and others. By his son, the Rev. T.F. Hodgson"..London: Macmillan, 1879.
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Book Reviews
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Francis Hodgson
George Gordon Byron
Lord Byron
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175
CT 52/
Art. VII.—Lamarck.
]. Philosophie Zoologique. 2 vols. Paris: 1809.
2. Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres.
Paris: 1816—1822.
7 vols.
rpHE reception which Lamarck’s writings have met with in
[
this country has been somewhat peculiar. The views con
tained in his work, the “ Philosophie Zoologique,” were strongly
opposed to the opinions on theology and philosophy generally
prevailing here at the time of its publication, and the work was
in consequence for some fifty years attacked or ridiculed by
nearly every author who noticed it. After the publication of
Mr. Darwin’s work on the Origin of Species, theories of evolution,
from being denounced as irreligious, or ridiculed as fantastic,
came into favour with a large and influential number of scientific
men ; some who had been loudest in condemning Lamarck being
as forward in supporting Darwin. Lamarck’s position was, how
ever, little improved by the change. The opponents of Dar
winism often directed their blows against Lamarck, but its adhe
rents seldom cared to defend him, but rather passed over his
speculations as unimportant or erroneous. They naturally did
not wish to have their own views confounded with those of one
who had been so frequently attacked. It is true that Lamarck
can have no claim to be considered as even foreshadowing Mr.
Darwin’s theories on Natural Selection, atavism (the recur
rence to the form of a remote ancestor), cross-breeding, or many
other principles adduced to explain the origin of the animals
now existing. Yet, on the other hand, Lamarck must be con
sidered as the first great naturalist who believed and endeavoured
to prove that all animals now living are descended from those
previously existing, however different the forms of the two may
be. While Cuvier and most of the naturalists and geologists of
his times were continually inventing cataclysms, convulsions,
and separate creations, to account for the actual condition of the
globe and the races which inhabit it, Lamarck steadfastly refused
to believe in any such general catastrophe, and ascribed the for
mation both of modern species and the features presented by the
earth’s crust to the continuous and slow operation of the natural
agents which he saw still working. By slight modifications, and in
conformity with a regular law of progress, highly organized beings
had, he declared, been moulded and developed out of the simplest
forms. The laws which Lamarck laid down, the causes to which
he referred these changes and modifications, were real and active ;
�176
Lamarck.
and, although he may have exaggerated their importance and
power of producing the results he attributed to them, yet this is
an error which he shares with nearly every great discoverer.
Not only is every one tempted to overrate the importance and
sphere of operation of a principle first discovered by himself, but
unless principles were overrated there would be but little chance
of the real importance of many of them being recognised. It is
frequently only by endeavouring to explain every phenomenon
by a single cause that phenomena not to be so explained are
investigated, and that the existence of other causes becomes ap
parent ; so that errors in our conception of the nature of the
cause first known are detected.
But Lamarck’s merit is not confined to his early perception of
the uniformity and gradual upward progress of nature. He first
arranged the animal kingdom in two great branches, one com
prising annulate animals, or those whose bodies are divided
into segments, such as insects, worms, prawns, and the like; and
the other branch comprising polyps, mollusks, and vertebrate
animals, which last he believed to be derived from the mollusks.
With proper allowance for the great advance of our knowledge of
the lower forms of animals made since the days of Lamarck,
this arrangement is substantially the same as that adopted by
Professor Huxley, in his treatises on “ Comparative Anatomy,”
London: 1864; and “Classification,” ibid. 1869; with, how
ever, some important exceptions. In these works the ver
tebrates stand by themselves, instead of being placed in the
molluscous branch. The theory that vertebrates are descended
from mollusks had, however, even before the publication
of the last work, been advanced by Haeckel, in Germany, in
consequence of the researches of the Russian naturalist,
Kowalevsky, which showed a great resemblance to exist between
vertebrates and ascidians in the early stages of their develop
ment. These last are a family of animals' of low organization,
which were at first classed with polyps, but afterwards placed by
Lamarck in a class intermediate between the latter and the
mollusks with bivalve shells.
Lamarck himself, however,
looked for forms intermediate between mollusks and vertebrates
in.a much more highly organized order, the naked-gilled sea
slugs.
In geology, although Lamarck’s views are often extremely
speculative, yet he always insisted on the continuous nature of
geological changes, and attributed the present forms of hill and
valley to the continual wearing action of rain and atmospheric
changes, a theory which, in a modified form, finds advocates
among many of the ablest living geologists. Physics and
meteorology were treated by him with even greater boldness
�Lamarck.
177
and industry, although but little success. He seems to have
believed in an atomic theory, but to have been led by the old
doctrines of phlogiston and caloric to indulge in many rash
speculations on the nature and effects of those imponderable fluids,
by the action of which he, like most physicists and chemists
of that time, endeavoured to explain the phenomena presented
by heat, electricity, and the other natural forces. He built on
the theories of chemistry in vogue when he began his scientific
studies, and persistently refused to recognise the merit of the
admirable reasoning and researches of Lavoisier and his followers.
In Botany, Lamarck’s works are numerous, and were, when
published, of considerable value. The first scientific work he
published was the “ Flore Française
in it he altogether
abandoned the prevailing system of Linnæus, and established
another equally artificial, but which, by the principle of dual or
dichotomous division, led more quickly to the determination of
the species and genus of any particular plant. This system,
which is said to have been created in six months, was in its turn
abandoned by its author, who afterwards adopted the views of
Jussieu, the founder of the Natural System of botany, by whom
the later additions of the “ Flore Française” were brought out,
either alone or in conjunction with Lamarck. The other
botanical works of Lamarck consist chiefly in descriptions of
genera and species. (See the “Dictionnaire de Botanique,” and
the “ Illustration des Genres,” both parts of the “ Encyclopédie
Méthodique”), in which he seems to have displayed some of the
ability he afterwards showed in the “Histoire Naturelle des
Animaux sans Vertèbres.”
It is this last work, and that on the fossil shells found in the
beds round Paris, that have chiefly kept alive the reputation of
Lamarck. His great contemporary, Cuvier, considers the de
termination of the genera and species in these works as his
great and peculiar merit, and affects to pity him for being led
to the conclusion that, after all, these genera and species were
but artificial creations useful to systematists, but not existing
in nature. (Eloges iii. 199.) It is certainly impossible not to
admire Lamarck when we consider that the publication of
this great and laborious work was only begun when he had
already reached his seventieth year; and that he was in his
fiftieth year when he began the study of the invertebrata,
which he undertook, not because he was particularly attracted
by it, but because, as the last appointed in the Cabinet du
Roi, he had, on its reconstruction, to content himself with
the subject least pleasing to his colleagues. When once he
had entered upon it he pursued it with unflagging energy
in spite of old age and failing sight.
Always ready to
[Vol. CII. No. CCI.]—New Series, Vol. XLVI. No. I.
N
�178
Lamarck.
improve and modify his theories and classifications, he con
tinued, year after year, to introduce such new groups and
divisions as were suggested by the researches of Cuvier, or other
anatomists, while he laboured by studying the forms preserved
on the various museums to subdivide these groups into natural
families and genera ; and at the same time he constantly struck
out more distinct and bolder theories on the general nature of
living beings. The same indomitable resolution and calm
courage which made him, at seventeen, abandon his prospects
in the church, and set out to join the French army ; which made
him, immediately after his arrival (when the death of all the
officers around him had placed him in command), refuse to re
treat from the post assigned to him on the battle-field until he had
received the order from his general ; which afterwards led him
a second time to abandon his career, and endeavour, in a humble
position to gain the means for a medical education, sustained
him in the penury and blindness which were the lot of his old
age. If the same qualities have sometimes led him to too
daring flights of imagination, or too great confidence in the cor
rectness of his own views, or if they7 have given an air almost of
arrogance to his statements, we must remember that without
them Lamarck would never have accomplished his splendid
achievements in science.
It is but a small part of his voluminous writings that we now
propose to examine. The discussion of the details of the cha
racters of families and genera which he founded is unsuited for
these pages. His divisions and distributions have lost much of
their value. It is of the essence of such arrangements that they
should, by increasing our knowledge of the forms comprised in
them, serve as a foundation on which to build yet better distri
butions, by which after a time they are superseded. The enormous
number of new forms which have been recognised, and the great
advance in our knowledge of anatomy made in consequence of
the improved microscopes and means of observation at our dis
posal, have rendered Lamarck’s divisions inadequate to represent
the animals and plants of which he treated as we now know them ;
and a critical examination of his system would be interesting
only to persons studying the forms described in Lamarck’s writ
ings. On biology, however, Lamarck has written much which
must always be interesting to students of the history of science
as a part of human progress, and is perhaps particularly so at
present. He was one of the first to recognise the importance of
studying biology as a whole, which he speaks of in his “ Histoire
Naturelle” (vol. i. p. 49), as “une science particulière qui n’est
encore fondée, qui n’a pas même de nom, dont j’ai proposé
quelques bases dans ma Philosophie Zoologique, et à laquelle je
�Lamarck.
179
donnerai le nom de Biologie.” His views on this subject were
first published in two volumes—one published in 1797, under
the title of “ Mémoires de Physique et ¿’Histoire Naturelle;”
and the other published in 1802, under the title of “ Recherches
sur ^Organisation des Corps Vivans." They were afterwards
much expanded and developed in his £i Philosophie Zoologique,”
published in 1809, which he refers to as a new edition of the
££ Recherches,” and in the introduction, forming the greatest
portion of the first volume of the ££ Histoire Naturelle des Ani
maux sans Vertèbres,” published in 1815. It is to these two last
works that we shall refer.
Like other evolutionists Lamarck considers that living beings
for several series, the different individuals composing which, vary
insensibly one from another, so that all divisions—such as
classes, orders, and genera, and even species—are products not
of nature, but of art. The best of such divisions have artificial
limits, and none are really isolated, although from our ignorance
of the connecting forms they may appear so to us ; but if all races
of living beings were known to us, all our present classes, orders,
and genera would be merely families of different sizes, and it would
be very difficult to assign limits to these divisions. So far there
fore art is an essential element in the construction even of a
natural system. But besides this necessary use of convention,
many systematic distributions (such as the systems of Linnæus in
Botany, of Fabricius in Entomology, and the distribution of
Birds and Fishes in Lamarck’s own time), are entirely arti
ficial, and not in conformity with nature, whose order is single,
unique, and essentially without division in each organic
kingdom.
Lamarck might have mentioned his own classification of plants
as one of the most striking instances of an artificial distribution.
He does not define an artificial distribution, nor does he explain
what he means by conformity to nature. Several of his expressions
convey the idea that he inclined to the views of Bonnet and the
Greek philosophers, who believed in a single, uninterrupted chain
of beings. These views, however, he in the ££ Histoire Naturelle”
(vol. i. p. 129), when pressed by Cuvier, distinctly disavows. In
fact, he does not seem to have considered what principles ought
to govern a natural distribution. Most systematists since
Lamarck have adopted one of the three principles following :—•
(1) Conformity to a general type or plan of organization ; (2
relationship or descent ; (3) complexity of structure. Agassiz,
in his “ Essay on Classification” (ch. ii.), discusses the subject
at some length. He lays down, that conformity to type is the
principle which should determine the division of the animal
kingdom into primary branches or sub-regna ; while the division
N 2
�180
Lamarck.
into classes ought to be regulated by the different ways in which
the type of each branch is worked out in the animals composing
it; and the further subdivision into orders should depend on the
complexity of organization in each class. He thus considers that
there are three different kinds of large divisions of animals proper
to be made, and differing from each other in essence, and not
merely in the extent or number of species comprised in them.
Lamarck, on the other hand, considers all divisions larger than
genera to be merely families of greater or less extent, and agrees
with Agassiz only in considering that external form should be the
criterion of specific difference.
Cuvier, Oken, Von Baer, and Owen, all endeavour, more or
less, to arrange animals according to type; while Huxley,
Haeckel, and most of the zoologists who have adopted the views
of Darwin, found their systems on a different principle—that of
relationship, or nearness in descent; and they generally assume
that uniformity of type, even in small details, can only exist in
closely-related animals. This certainly cannot be considered as
proved, and is opposed to the views of Owen, Mivart, and Bas
tian. Lamarck himself gives two tables of relationship accord
ing to descent—one at the end of his “ Philosophie Zoologique,”
and. the other in the supplement to the introduction to his
“Histoire Naturelie” (vol. i. p. 457). They differ considerably
from each other, but altogether from the classification he adopted;
and, as this classification was sketched out by him in his courses
of lectures long before the publication of either of these works,
and was retained in them, it is clear that he did not consider
genealogy to be the true principle on which to found a natural
system. While absolutely rejecting, at least in the “ Histoire
Naturelle,” the theory of a single uninterrupted chain of beings,
he still appears to found his system on it. He nowhere recog
nises anything like a type or plan of organization, and is gene
rally guided merely by the principle of complexity of organiza
tion.. Agassiz (“ Essay on Classification/’ p. 134), well observes
of his system, that it combines abstract conceptions with struc
tural considerations, and an artificial endeavour to arrange all
animals in a continuous series. He himself seems to have felt
the artificial nature of his method, and to have become some
what dissatisfied with the results. (See the supplement to the
introduction to his Hist. Nat., vol. i. p. 451.)
Lamarck considers all classifications formed by reasoning from
a single organ to be unsatisfactory, and that the variations of the
most important organs ought to carry the greatest weight in de
termining the relationship of animals. Thus the organs of .sen
sation and respiration are better guides than those of circulation ;
and the organs of sensation, which give rise to the most eminent
�Lamarck.
181
■faculties, are to be preferred to those of respiration. He criti
cises Aristotle’s division of animals into those with blood and
those without blood ; and while approving of the division, thinks
the characters ill chosen. In his doctrine as to the importance
in classification of the organs of feeling, he agrees with Dr. Grant
and Professor Owen, who also found their divisions of the Animal
Kingdom on the characters of the nervous system. Lamarck’s
division into Apathetic, Sentient, and Rational animals, is really
founded, however, not on the organs of sensation themselves, but
on their functions or faculties.
In the Hist. Nat. i. 324, Lamarck gives further explanations
of his views of the art of making fit divisions of animals. The
principles he lays down are, first, that animals must be grouped
according to some system which is not an arbitrary one, that
the series must then be divided, and the proper rank of each divi
sion determined; secondly, that in performing these operations,
attention must be paid to the following relationships:—(1) The
relations between individuals of the same species. These are the
closest, and consist in peculiarities of form. (2) The relations
between animals of the same group. These must be determined
by considering, not the external form only, but also the whole
interior organization in every part. (3) The relations between
the groups themselves, which must be arranged in order accord
ing as they differ more or less from man. (4) The relations be
tween unmodified organs. The commonest organs are the most
important for fixing the rank of the division. Of two different
plans of the same organ, the one most analogous to the plan of
the organ in a superior group entitles its professor to a rank
superior to that of the possessor of the organ formed with less
analogy to such plan. Thus, as gills have a greater analogy
to lungs than the branching air tubes or tracheae by which
insects breathe, it follows that animals breathing by gills
have a higher rank than those breathing by tracheae, but a
lower rank than those breathing by true lungs. (5) The rela
tions between organs modified by use or circumstance, so that
the plan of nature is disguised. Everything done by nature has
a higher value than what has been effected by external circum
stances. The distinction here drawn between nature and cir
cumstances is one that Lamarck continually dwells on; and we
shall recur to it hereafter. The third principle is that we ought
to begin with the lowest organism, with the object of making the
order of our distribution conformable to that of Nature, who
works upwards by degrees from the lowest forms.
The artificial nature of these principles clearly appears, and
has to a considerable extent influenced Lamarck’s arrangement.
However, like all persons who have laid down principles for clas
�Lamarck.
182
sifying animals, he does not attempt to follow out strictly his
own theories. He appears inclined to adopt a genealogical
arrangement, but to have been beguiled by a wish to carry out
his principles, and also by vague ideas of the tendency and
designs of Nature.
The following is the arrangement given by Lamarck, both in
the “ Philosophie Zoologique” and the first volume of the “ Histoire Naturelie.”
APATHETIC ANIMALS.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Infusoria.
Polyps.
Kadiaria.
Worms.
(Epizoa.)
/
Invertebrate Animals.
I
{
-rr j. i z a • i
Vertebrate Animals.
'
SENTIENT ANIMALS.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Insects.
Araehnida.
Crustacea.
Annelids.
Cirrhipods.
Mollusks.
INTELLIGENT ANIMALS.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Fish.
Reptiles.
Birds.
Mammals.
I
J
The true principles on which a natural system should be
founded must of course depend on the connexion between the
beings to be classified. If Lamarck be correct in his doctrine
that animals form a series on a number of branching series, each
consisting of broadly distinguishable forms, it is difficult to see
how any other principle than that of relationship or descent can
be applied; and the lower limits at least of the divisions insti
tuted must, in such a case as Lamarck has pointed out, be arbi
trary. The higher limits, however, of many divisions would be
strictly marked out conformably to nature by the extent to which
development has advanced. Man would still mark out one of
the boundaries of the class Mammalia, although, if all connecting
forms were known, it might be impossible to draw any but a con
ventional boundary between reptiles and mammals. If, however,
Mr. Mivart's view of the nature of the Animal Kingdom be the
more correct one, type must be a leading principle in natural
systems, though even in this case it might be difficult to assign
�Lamarck.
183
due limits to the divisions. It might be found that many forms
partook of more than one type, and could only be arranged in one
class rather than another, according to which type appeared to
preponderate. In order to judge of Lamarck’s classification we
must, therefore, examine his theory of living beings.
Species and varieties, he considers, are like other divisions of
animals, arbitrary and not natural. All forms have their origin
in the simplest organized bodies which Nature is continually pro
ducing by spontaneous generation, and are derived from them
by insensible alterations, so that animals make a branching
series, which is continuous, except where forms are lost. The
organs of an animal are modified by time and favourable cir
cumstances. New species arise when the surroundings are
changed, as when a plant, orginally a native of a moist plain,
comes.to grow on a dry hill-side. They may also, in some cases,
be derived from hybrids. These changes of circumstances are
not, however, the only cause of the formation of new species, for
Lamarck in many places attributes to nature a continual power
or tendency to develop new and more highly organized bodies.
Thus he says (Phil. Zool. p. 221) :—
“ Il sera en effet évident que l’état où nous voyons tous les animaux
est d’une part le produit de la composition croissante de l’organisation,
qui tend à former une gradation régulière ; et de l’autre part qu’il est
celui des influences d’une multitude de circonstances très différentes,
qui tendent continuellement à détruire la régularité de la composition
de l’organisation.”
Some passages might even lead one to suppose that Lamarck
looked on nature as working by insensible gradations to a pre
appointed end, and as being hindered, and the symmetry of her
plan impaired, by circumstances.. Thus he explains the absence
of a hard external skeleton in mollusks by the supposition that
Nature in them is preparing to form the internal skeleton of
vertebrates ; and therefore lays aside the hard shell provided for
insects and crustaceans (Phil. Zool. p. 316 ; Hist. Nat. i. 147).
He puts forward similar hypotheses to explain the absence of
articulated limbs among annelids, or red-blooded worms (which,
like Cuvier, he places above insects), and the absence of a double
gangliated cord in mollusks (Phil. Zool. 313, n. 316). In the
Hist. Nat. i. 133, he says :—
‘‘ Le plan des operations de la Nature à l’égard de la production des
animaux, est clairement indiqué par cette cause première et prédominante
qui donne a la vie animale le pouvoir de composer progressivement l’orga
nisation, et de compliquer et perfectionner graduellement, non seule
ment 1 organisation dans son ensemble, mais encore chaque système
d organes particulier, a mesure qu’elle est parvenue à les établir ....
Mais une cause étrangère à celle-ci, cause accidentelle et par conséquent
variable, a traverse ça et là l’exécution de ce plan sans néanmoins le
�184
Lamarck.
détruire, comme je vais le prouver. Cette cause effectivement a donné
lieu, soit aux lacunes, réelles de la série, soit aux ramaux finis qui en
proviènnent dans divers points et en altèrent la simplicité, soit, enfin, aux
anomalies qu’on observe parmi les systèmes d’organes particuliers des
différentes organisations.”
This second cause is found in the very different circumstances
in which the various animals are placed.
On the other hand, an even greater number of passages from
Lamarck’s writings might be adduced to show that both his
primary and his secondary causes are alike due to the effect of
circumstances. The increasing complexity of organism being
perhaps, as in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory, caused by the
residual, and, to borrow an image from astronomy, secular
effects of numerous opposing circumstances. Lamarck’s general
theory of life as dependent on the action of subtle fluids
is given elsewhere, but there is nothing in it to show
anything like an intention in nature to pass from one type to
another, or to explain her disuse of organs already brought to a
high degree of complication. On the contrary, he generally
speaks (Hist. Nat. Introd. Part 3) as if all changes, and con
sequently all advance, were due to the effect of circumstances,
new wants, and the action of his subtle fluids, caloric and elec
tricity. Nor is there anything in his account of nature to
countenance the theory of intelligence or design in her.
Although in other parts of his works he appears to regard her
as a Demiurgus, an intelligent but subordinate and finite being,
fashioning the world, both animate and inanimate, according to
her will ; yet when he comes to treat of nature herself (Hist.
Nat. Intr. Part 6) it appears that she is nothing but motion and
a collection of laws. But a law in physics is really nothing but
a way of grouping or describing, more or less accurately, all the
similar phenomena presented by bodies ; and however general
it may be, and however many apparently different effects it may
explain, still always remains nothing but a statement, that
different bodies behave or move in a similar manner. Lamarck’s
definition of nature, in fact, amounts to saying that she is a col
lection of facts or phenomena presented by bodies.
Life, again, is described by him (l.c. p. 311) as having neither
intention, end nor will, as blind and limited, and existing only by
the will of a superior and infinite Power. Nature is distinct
from the material universe (p. 314), and consists (p. 319), first, of
motion, and, secondly, of all the constant and immutable laws
which regulate the movements and changes of bodies. He
attacks the notion (which he says is that of most persons),
that nature and God are the same, and declares that God is the
all-powerful Creator of nature, while nature is not a being or an
�Lamarck.
185
intelligence, but an order of things everywhere subjected ; and
that design or will is not to be attributed to her, but that the
appearance of it is derived from the operation of fixed laws
originally combined for the purpose or end which her Supreme
Author had in view. This is the case among animals, in whose
formation he refuses to admit the action of Cuvier’s final causes.
He says :—
“En effet dans chaque organisation particulière de ces corps, un
ordre de choses préparé par les causes qui l’ont graduellement établi,
n’a fait qu’amener par des développemens progressifs de parties, régis
par les circonstances, ce qui nous paraît être un but, et ce qui n’est
réellement qu’une nécessité. Les climats, les situations, les milieux
habités, les moyens de vivre et de pourvoir à sa conservation, en un
mot les circonstances particulières dans lesquelles chaque race s’est
rencontrée ont amené les habitudes de cette race ; celles-ci y ont plié
et approprié les organes des individus ; et il en est résulté que l’har
monie que nous remarquons partout entre l’organisation et les habi
tudes des animaux, nous paraît une fin prévue, tandis qu’elle n’est
qu’une fin nécessairement amenée” (p. 324).
It appears on the whole, therefore, that if Lamarck did in any
way, like Mr. Mivart, conceive a vital force working indepen
dently of, and often against circumstances, his views were illdefined and confused. Though he often mentions nature as a
force which gradually perfects the organs of animals, yet he
dwells at greater length and more clearly on the power of cir
cumstances in modifying them. He lays down, that circum
stances create new wants in the intelligent animals, and produce
changes in the nutrition and other vital actions of plants. Thus,
changes in the latter are brought about by differences in the
amount of moisture in meadows, or by cultivation in gardens.
The leaves of the Ranunculus aquatilis, which grow under water,
are of a quite different character to those growing in the air.
In the higher animals new wants are created by changed circum
stances, and produce new actions ; and, as the employment of
an organ strengthens and enlarges it, while the disuse of an organ
makes it deteriorate, the organs become thus altered in an indi
vidual subjected to a different set of external circumstances, and
these alterations are (at least, if both parents be affected in a
similar way) preserved in the offspring. It is therefore, accord
ing to Lamarck, an error to suppose that the nature or condition
of an organ has led to its employment for a particular purpose ;
the real fact being that its employment has modified the organ,
and fitted it better to perform the duty required of it. He gives
(Phil. Zool. vol. i. p. 248), several instances of organs modi
fied by use or disuse. Thus the teeth of whales, the eyes of the
mole, the feet of serpents, have been deteriorated or lost by dis
�186
Lamarck.
use. The head of acephalous mollusks has on the other hand
been lost by a somewhat different cause, the excessive develop
ment of the mouth. The shortening of the intestines of drunkards
he also attributed to disuse. On the other hand, the webs be
tween the toes of water birds, the feet of perchers, the long legs
of waders, the tongue of the woodpecker, the legs and neck of the
giraffe, and the hind legs of the kangaroo, are all instances of organs
augmented and developed by excessive use; while the hoofs of
many quadrupeds, the formation of the sloth, and the peculiar
position of the eyes of the flat fish, are examples of the modifi
cations of organs produced by the peculiar manner in which they
are used.
It is not at first evident how use could furnish webs to the
toes of swimming bir ds or animals, as the immediate effect of the
resistance of the water would rather be to wear away and de
stroy all excrescences or webs on the foot. Perhaps Lamarck
considered their development as an effect of over-nutrition, or as
produced by continual streams of nervous fluid directed to the
toes in swimming, producing a swelling or turgescence of the
tissues, and forming channels, and thus pushing out the tissues
covering the toes.
Lamarck extended his views to men, whom he considered as
descended from the quadrumana. The difference in their struc
ture was caused by men losing their habit of climbing trees, and
being compelled during many generations to walk on their hind
legs. Having obtained the mastery over other races, men took
possession of all the spots which suited them, drove other ani
mals into deserts, and thus arrested their development, while
they multiplied their own wants, and, consequently, their mecha
nical powers (Industrie) and faculties; and thus increased the
distance between themselves and other animals. An erect posi
tion, he says, is sometimes assumed by the chimpanzee, and does
not seem even now altogether natural to man, as is shown by
the unwillingness of a fat, paunchy child to walk or stand. This
is, we believe, the only place where Lamarck shows any percep
tion of the law established by Mr. Darwin—that the young ani
mal seems often not to have acquired the characteristics separat
ing the adult from the neighbouring forms from which it has
been developed.
The argument in favour of the fixity of species drawn from
the fact that the mummies of animals found in Egypt present
the same characters as existing animals, is not, according to La
marck, conclusive. It proves only that species in Egypt have
not varied for the last three or four thousand years, which is not
surprising ; as the climate and external circumstances affecting
the animals in question have remained unaltered, and it is only
�Lamarck.
187
by changes of circumstances and length of time that new species
or varieties are produced. Lamarck thinks that no species have
been actually lost, except some large land animals extirpated by
man. Other species, which seem to have disappeared, have
really left descendants, but they, owing to continual changes of
level and climate in different parts of the earth, have assumed
forms different from those of their ancestors. There is therefore
no evidence of any general catastrophe by which all the species
in existence at one time were destroyed, although there have
been many local catastrophes.
Lamarck gives two tables showing the origin and .descent of
animals. The one in the “ Philosophic Zoologique,” ii. 463, the
other, six years later, in the “Histoire Naturelle,’ i. p. 457. In
the first, Lamarck makes two branches of the animal kingdom,
which are, however, of very different importance. The first
branch comprises the Infusoria, Polyps, and Radiaria (sea urchins,
star fish, jelly fish, &c.) or nearly all the forms classed by Cuvier as
Radiata, with the exception of intestinal worms. These, together
with Planaria, Gordius and Nais, make up Lamarck s class of
worms, which forms the root of his second branch, and from which
he derives all the higher forms of animals.. These .again make two
branches, one composed of insects, spiders, lobsters, and other
segmented animals with jointed limbs, the other of the annelids
or ring-worms, the cirrhipeds or barnacles, and the mollusks.
From the last the vertebrates spring. First fishes, then reptiles,
then birds, and from these the mono-treme mammals, the duck
bill and echidua. The other mammals, however, he derives,.not
from birds, but from reptiles, from which he considers amphibious
mammals, such as the seal and the manatee to have.sprung.;
while they in their turn gave rise to the three remaining divi
sions—the unguiculate or clawed, the ungulate or hoofed, and
the cetacea or whales. It is obvious, therefore, that Lamarck
did not consider the lowest mammals to be necessarily the
earliest developed, since he derived cetaceans by a process of
degradation from amphibious mammals.
The view presented of the probable descent of animals in
Lamarck’s second table is a great improvement on the first. He
still keeps two great series of animals, but they are better con
nected than those of the first table. The first series commences
with Infusoria, from which Lamarck supposes the Polyps, to have
sprung. These give rise to two different classes. First, the
Radiaria; and, secondly, Ascidians, and through them to the
acephalous and other Mollusks. Except that Lamarck includes
Cuvier’s Echinoderms in his Radiaria, instead of giving a posi
tion near the worms, a modern evolutionist could object but little
to this part of the table. The second, or articulate series, is
�188
Lamarck.
not in such close conformity with modern ideas. The worms
give rise to two classes, Annelids (ringed red-blooded worms) and
Epizoa (parasites generally found attached to the eyes or gills of
fish). These Epizoa Lamarck believed to be the source from
which insects and the other Articulates with jointed limbs were
derived. The Cirrhipeds (Barnacles) Lamarck rightly places
with these animals, although Cuvier long after continued to class
them among Mollusks, in consequence of the resemblance of their
shells to those of Bivalves. Lamarck himself so far gives im
portance to this resemblance as to place Cirrhipeds above Crus
taceans, in accordance with his theory of the importance of
organs analogous to those of a superior class. The Vertebrates
are here placed by themselves, unconnected with either series
of invertebrate animals, although from several passages of the
“ Histoire Naturelie” it appears that Lamarck had not aban
doned his theory that they were derived from the Mollusca.
In the first chapter of the second book of his ££ Phil. Zool.”
Lamarck endeavours to define the class of inanimate bodies. He
recurs to the subject of the difference between them and living
beings in the first volume of his ££ Histoire Naturelie des Animaux
sans Vertebres,” where his views are given at greater length, and
in some respects with more precision. In the “ Philosophie Z.oologique” he considers that inorganic substances are distinguished
by having no individuality, by many of them being homogeneous
(wholly solid, liquid or fluid), by their having no need of movement
or nutrition, by their increasing by juxta-position, and not by in
tussusception, and by their not originating from germs or being
subject to death. From this definition it is impossible to know
whether or not Lamarck intended to include substances derived
from living beings, such as wood, wax, &c., in the class he was
defining. All the characters he mentions are mere negations of
characters of living beings, and might be more forcibly and con
cisely expressed by the words “ inorganic” and “ not living.
Homogeneity, while it cannot be predicated of all inorganic sub
stances, is a property (so far as our present knowledge extends)
of some organic beings. An Amoeba has all the appearance of a
particle of animated jelly, and has a better claim to be called
homogeneous than granite or most rocks, and as good a claim, as
wax or butter. In fact, it is evident that Lamarck, at the time
he was writing this definition, had living beings in view, and
would, had he cared to frame a logical work, have defined them
instead of inorganic bodies. It would perhaps .be as easy to
make a satisfactory definition of unelectrified bodies as of . inani
mate or inorganic bodies. Many of the latter are subject, to
forces producing crystallization, but this, though a positive
character, cannot be predicated of colloids such as gum, &c. One
�Lamarck.
189
common character is indeed attributed to all minerals by
Lamarck—that of being derived from dead animals or plants.
Stated broadly, as by him, this is an impossibility. He shows
himself that the material constituents of all living beings were
once inorganic. So that the old problem of the hen and the egg
appears in an insoluble form.
In the second chapter of the Philosophie Zoologique, book ii.,
Lamarck attempts a definition of life, which he represents as pro
ducing various phenomena that yet do not constitute it. Life, he
says (p. 403), in the parts of a body which possesses it, is an order
and state of things which allows organic movements therein;
these movements, which constitute active life, result from the
action of a stimulative cause which excites them. This is not very
clear. He goes on to lay down that active life requires stimuli,
and a state of things which bestows the faculty of obeying them.
This state of things consists in the existence of supple parts formed
of cellular tissue and of liquid parts. The necessary exciting
causes are to be found in the various subtle (imponderable) fluids
which permeate all things, and which are in a continual state of
agitation, produced by the motion of the earth, the varying posi
tions of the heavenly bodies, and the seasons. Of such fluids the
most important, perhaps the only ones concerned in producing
life, are caloric and the electric fluid. To plants and to the lower
animals the fluids in the surrounding media are sufficient to fur
nish the necessary stimuli; but in higher animals a continual
production and renewal of the exciting fluids goes on. Some
change even seems to take place in the nature of the fluids, the
electric fluid being, as it were, animalized and converted into
galvanic and nervous fluids. In plants only the liquid portions
are acted on by the exciting causes, and their movements are pro
bably due to caloric. In animals, however, the caloric produces
swellings and contractions of the soft tissues as well as movements
of the liquid parts. The caloric of higher animals is, according
to Lamarck, derived from arterial blood.
It is to the important part played by heat that Lamarck attri
butes the great development of living beings in summer-time and
in tropical climates. Water, light, and air, in addition to heat,
are essential to the production of living beings. The phenomena
of torpidity and hybernation are due to a loss of caloric; but in
hybernating animals this loss is only partial, as is shown by the
fact that, if the cold be increased, the animal awakes and becomes
very restless. The chief effect of caloric on animated beings is to
produce “ orgasme”—a sort of tension or swelling, perhaps allied
to tonicity. This “ orgasme” exists in the soft parts of animals,
and also, though obscurely, in plants, in which, however, it never
gives rise to irritability, which is a power of moving in answer to
�3 90
Lamarck.
an external stimulus, rapidly and repeatedly, or as often as the
stimulus is applied. The want of irritability is the great mark,
by which plants are to be distinguished from animals, but
they also differ in having no digestive faculty, in their mode
of growth, and in their chemical characters.
In the first volume of the Histoire Naturelle Lamarck again
takes up the subject, and defines vegetables as being (1) unable.to
contract suddenly and repeatedly as often as a stimulus is applied
to them ; (2) unable to displace themselves ; (3) having only their
liquid parts capable of motion ; (4) being without special internal
organs, although possessing a number of vessels and canals; (5)
without digestion, but only elaboration of the fluids which nourish
them; (6) having displacement of fluid, but no circulation; (7)
having two growths, one ascending, the other descending,
from a vital nodus (noeud vital), situated at the origin of the
root; (8) tending to grow perpendicular to the plane of the
horizon ; (9) being generally compound.
The motions of plants he considers to be due to mechanical
causes, such as the action of elastic fluids, of springs (as in the
action of certain plants in discharging their pollen), or to the
action of the sun in drying up or driving away the fluids in par
ticular parts. Some of the motions, like those of Conferva) and
Oscillatorise, are slow, and not altered by external stimuli; while
others, as in the case of the sensitive plant, can only be repeated
after long intervals.
The facts established since the time of Lamarck show the
futility of his theories. It is impossible to distinguish the
movements of the cilise of Zospores, or of the amoebifonn poi
sonous matter of the nettle from those of the cilise of infusoria
or of Amoeba. The second and third of Lamarck’s characters
are incorrect; the fifth and sixth are only verbal. How does
elaboration differ from digestion, or circulation from displace
ment ? The other characters are neither true of all plants, nor
peculiar to them : and even if they were, they are not sufficiently
important to separate plants from animals.
Animals, according to Lamarck, are distinguished by nine
characters, generally corresponding to the characters of plants
already enumerated. The first and second, fifth and eighth, con
sist in the possession of irritability and the power of moving.
The third character is that animals execute no movements
without stimulus, and can repeat such movements as often as the
stimulus is employed; while, according to the fourth character,
the movements show no comprehensible relation to their cause.
The other characters are that animals are nourished by foreign
compound substances, which they generally have the power of
digesting; that they present great disparities in the composition
�Lamarck.
191
of their organization, and that they have no tendency to grow
vertically.
It appears to us that definitions, in order to be useful, should
consist either in a short explanation or description of the essential
characters of the class, or in a description of one or more cha
racters to be found in each member of the class, and serving as a
test whether a given object does or does not belong to the class.
In the second case it is important that the test should be accu
rate, but not that the character chosen should be important. Of
this nature are the characters serving to discriminate between
neighbouring genera in Zoology. In the first case, however, the
characters chosen should be important; and if possible should dis
close the essence, the actual nature and reason for existence of the
class. This can hardly ever be done, except in pure mathematics
and artificial or verbal sciences, such as Grammar, Heraldry, or
Rhetoric. Our definitions share in the imperfections of our
knowledge; and all we can do, when seeking to define a class of
the components of which we know as little as we do of animals,
is to take the characters which seem to be the most important
and most universal, and state them as clearly and concisely as is
possible. So long as the real nature of matter, of space, and of
force is unknown, it is impossible to understand properly or
define adequately life or feeling. The definitions can be but
provisional, and in such it is not absolutely necessary that the
characters chosen should be accurately coextensive with the class.
Judged from this point of view some of Lamarck’s characters
are, for his time, as important and indicative of the real nature
of the class as any that could be chosen. In particular, the
character which attributes to animals the power of executing
movements, not communicated but excited, and bearing no com
prehensible relation to their exciting cause, and the character which
lays stress on the stream of matter continually flowing through
the bodies of living beings, appear to us especially good. It is in
teresting to compare Lamarck’s definition of animals with Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s definitions of Life, which he says (“ Principles of
Biology,” p. 74) consists in “ the definite combination of heteroge
neous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspon
dence with external coexistences and sequences;” or (p. 80) “the
continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.”
These definitions are very ingenious, but do not throw much
light on the nature of life, or of the effects produced by it; nor
do they afford a test by which to decide whether a given sub
stance is or not endued with life. Mr. Spencer himself admits
that the characters are not strictly coextensive with the class;
indeed he holds that no characters can be strictly coextensive
consistently with the doctrine of Evolution.
�192
Lamarck.
Living beings are produced by generation, which Lamarck holds
may be either spontaneous or from parents similar to the off
spring. Director spontaneous generations take place continually
among the simple forms to be found at the beginning of the
animal and vegetable series, and most other animals and plants
are derived from these earliest forms. Being ignorant of the eggs
both of Polyps and Infusoria, he argues in favour of the occurrence
of direct generations from the destruction which, during a rigorous
winter, must overtake all the inhabitants of freshwater pools.
He at one time considered that direct generation occurred only
among the lowest forms, but he was later induced to believe that
intestinal worms, and even external parasites of comparatively
high organization, might be generated directly from corpuscles
formed in the animals infested, and analogous in some degree to
the corpuscles which reproduce the form of the parent. He thus
recognises the two sorts of direct generation which Dr. Bastian
has called respectively Abiogenesis, generation from inorganic
matter ; and Heterogenesis, or generation of a new and distinct
animal or plant from organic matter or living bodies. Dr. Grant
in his “Tabular View of the Animal Kingdom” (London, 1861),
declares it is impossible to draw any definite line of demarcation
between the various cells which build up one of the higher
animals such as blood corpuscles, bone cells, &c., and the lowest
isolated and independent animals. Mr. H. Spencer also pro
pounds a somewhat similar theory, considering higher animals to
be aggregates of the second or even third order, built up out of cells
or aggregates of the first order.
(Principles of Biology, ii.
p. 77-112.) These views, however, are by no means the same as
those of Lamarck, whose parasites spring from germs and not
from cells. According to the observations of Pouchet and Bastian,
a germ-like period of quiescence is the invariable precursor of
every great heterogenetic change in any living body, and the
particles from which the new being will arise are at first aggre
gated together so as to present the appearance of an egg or germ,
which Pouchet calls the spontaneous egg. If the correctness of
these observations were established, it would be a curious corrobo
ration of Lamarck’s surmise.
Lamarck goes on to explain the production of the simplest
organic forms by direct generation. Gelatinous and mucilaginous
bodies are alone fitted to receive life. Into the mass of these the
ambient subtle fluids penetrate, increase the interstices, and
produce a cellular tissue, in which various fluids and liquids can
enter and move. Caloric here plays the most important part.
The lower animals are entirely formed of this cellular tissue. In
the higher animals and plants this tissue is modified. Vessels
are wrought in it by the motion of fluids ; membranes, such as
�193
Lamarck.
bark and skin, are formed by its compression; and all other
organs are derived from and developed by it. Lamarck in
forming his theory seems to have confounded the areolar or
fibrous tissue enveloping the muscles and other organs with the
primordial cells from which many organs originate.
New combinations of matter are being continually formed by
living bodies, by means of their organic movements, with the aid
of the affinities or relations of matter, and the tendency which
all compound bodies have to self-destruction, a tendency which
arises from some of the combined principles in such bodies
requiring to be fixed by the restraint of an external force. Hence
come secretions and assimilations. In youth the parts of the body
are soft; nutrition is consequently more than sufficient to supply
the waste of the tissues, and the animal increases in size. As
time goes on, the softer portions of the tissues are more easily lost
or dissipated in the continual flux of matter than the harder
portions; while in the repairs effected by nutrition, the harder
portions are comparatively more numerous. Thus the tissues
gradually harden, and further growth becomes impossible. At
first the surplus nutriment collected by every part of the body
serves the reproductive faculty, and goes to form a small but
similar body. As the hardness still increases, nutrition is carried
on with greater difficulty, and at length ceases to be sufficient to
maintain the body in a state in which vital movements can be
carried on, and the animal dies. This view, which accounts for
the resemblance between parents and their offspring by supposing
that organs in the latter are formed out of particles derived from,
the corresponding organ in the former, was probably suggested
to Lamarck by Buffon’s theory of organic molecules. It is re
produced, although with many improvements and additions, in
Mr. Darwin’s theory of Pangenesis, but is much older than any
of these authors. Lucretius (Bk. iv. 1. 1212), reproducing the
atomic theory of the Greeks, says :—
Bit quoque, ut intendum similes existere avorum
Possint, et referant proavorum ssepe figuras,
Propterea, quia multa modis primordia multis
Mista suo celant in corpore ssepe parentes,
Quae patribus patres tradunt a stirpe profecta;
Inde Venus varia produeit sorte figuras,
Majorumque refert voltus, vocesque, comasque.
The theories all seem to rest on some materialistic idea, that a
particular force can be transmitted from one body to another by
a transmission of some of the actual particles impressed with or
moving in obedience to such force.
[Vol. CII. No. CCI.]—New Series, Vol. XLVL No. I.
0
�194
Lamarck.
After giving this account of the general effect of life, Lamarck
proceeds to discuss the principal faculties peculiar to different
animals. He commences with his usual serene conviction of the
truth of his own theories, and all facts to be deduced therefrom,
by inveighing against the folly of expecting to find organs in
animals lower in the scale of life than those in which rudimen
tary organs appear. As circulation is first sketched out in the
class of insects, it is useless to seek for anything of the sort in
Radiaria. It is equally absurd to attribute anything like respi
ratory functions to the leaves of plants. After this rather unfor
tunate beginning, he examines seven of the chief faculties. He
defines—1. Digestion, as consisting in the destruction of the
state of aggregation of the particles of aliment, and in a change
of state and quality fitting the aliment, to form chyle and to
repair the essential fluid : and 2. Respiration, as the process by
which the essential fluid is repaired, after sudden alterations of
it, where nutrition is too slow a process. The alterations intended
are those arising from the supposed sudden dissipation of caloric,
electricity, and nervous or other subtle fluids necessary for pro
ducing motion and other vital functions. Lamarck, however,
while he recognises oxygen as the most important principle of
this reparation, makes no allusion to any development of heat
from the combination of such oxygen. He divides the special
systems of respiratory organs into four sorts, which are Lungs
and Trachese, fitted for breathing air; and Branchiae and Aqui
ferous Tracheae, adopted for breathing water: the last being
found in Radiaria (echinoderms and jelly-fish). In animals
not having a definite circulation, respiration is effected in
organs diffused over the whole body,' the respired fluid carry
ing its influence to every part, and the essential fluid not
travelling further than the respired fluid. In animals having a
circulation, on the other hand, the respired fluid is admitted into
a special organ, and there is a special circulation of the essential
fluid, either complete or incomplete, within such organ. A very
slow movement of the essential fluid takes place among the
infusoria, and probably a more rapid one among the polyps.
In higher animals a separate system of organs is required to
carry on the definite circulation which these obtain. This
system is first sketched out in the Arachnida (spiders, mites, &c.),
and formed in the Crustacea. The theory—that respiration is in
tended to effect changes in the circulating fluid—seems open to
some question. The ultimate object is to provide the organs
of the body with the oxygen necessary to enable them to carry
on the vital functions, and the alteration which undoubtedly
takes place in the blood seems generally to be but a means of
carrying the oxygen to these organs. The other functions
�Lamarck.
195
Lamarck mentions are those of the muscles, of sensation, of sex,
of circulation and intelligence.
In the third part of his Phil. Zool. Lamarck develops at some
length his theory of sensation, instinct, thought and will, as
dependent on the motions of a subtle fluid, which he considers to
be probably an animalized form of electricity. He believes that
the fluids to which he attributed irritability and motion in
animals may, like their blood, become more complex and retain
able—“ contenable”—in the higher animals, although still re
maining invisible. A special fluid traverses the nerves, and
being used and lost in them, is continually being separated from
the blood of the arteries to make up the loss. The blood itself,
as we have seen, is restored by means of respiration to its former
state. The great separation of this fluid from the blood takes
place in the grey matter of the brain, and other nervous centres,
which is in a great measure composed of small arteries.
The nervous system always consists of two parts. (1) A
central mass, from which, the fluid necessary to excite the muscles
to contract, starts, and to which, the fluid conveying sensation
comes. In vertebrata this centre is probably the ring (Pons
Varolii?) of nervous matter round the continuation of the
spinal cord into the brain, the medulla oblongata, or the
medulla oblongata itself. In insects, the first bilobed ganglion
is also a centre; but these animals may have several centres.
The centres are the parts first formed, and though other parts
may be larger and more developed, this is only the effect of the
general law that exercise promotes growth. (2.) The nerves
are the second portion. They consist of a medullary pulp,
covered by a sheath, which retains the subtle fluid continually
traversing them. They are, however, open at their extremities
to enable the fluid to communicate with the various parts of the
body. The pulp is secreted from the blood, or essential fluid of
the animal. A special sheath covers every nerve-fibre, in addi
tion to the fibrous envelope of the whole. The nerves were
produced after the formation of the various centres by the move
ments of the special subtle fluid, working out channels and
passages by which more easily to arrive at the place where it
was required.
This view of the origin of nerves is not unlike the one given
by Mr. Herbert Spencer (Biology. Section 302).
Movements, when effected by irritability in the lowest animals,
are, as has been seen, due entirely to external stimuli; but Lamarck
repeatedly lays down that muscular action is always accompanied
by nervous action, of which it is the earliest and commonest
effect. In higher animals sensation or feeling is also produced
in the nervous system, and in higher animals still, which have a
o 2
�196
Zamarck.
special organ (the hemispheres of the brain or hyper-cephalon,
as Lamarck terms it)—consciousness, thought, moral feeling, and
will, also result. The precise action of the nervous system in
those animals, in which it subserves muscular action only, is not
laid down with any accuracy by Lamarck. He states that such
action may be produced in three ways—(1) by external action;
(2) by the internal feeling not regulated by the will; and (3) by
such feeling regulated to a greater or less extent by the will.
In all animals in which a nervous system exists, he considers it
probable that the internal feeling exists. Its action, however,
will be best understood by first taking the phenomena of
feeling.
The soft character of the nerves, and especially of their medul
lary pulp, renders it impossible to adopt Hartley’s view, and to
consider them as vibrating cords, or transmitting impressions by
vibrations of their component matter. They, however, all con
tain a portion of the subtle nervous fluid, which, by its move'
ments or compressions and the shocks it receives, gives rise both
to sensation and the emotions of the internal feeling. Every
impression given to any particular part produces a shock to the
whole amount of nervous fluid contained in the nervous system.
This shock is propagated along the nerve to the centre, and
thence to every part of the system, and afterwards produces a
reaction, which comes from every part of the system except the
particular nerve first affected, and is consequently propagated
along such nerve, the only one not reacting. This causes the sen
sation to be referred to the extremity of this nerve, in the part
originally impressed. On the other hand, the internal feeling is
due to a general shaking of the nervous fluid, not accompanied by
any reaction. The continual small impressions such fluid receives
give rise to the feeling of personal identity, “ le moi,” while the
more violent impressions produce actions and thoughts by send
ing portions of the nervous fluid to the brain, or directly to the
muscles. By this automatic or involuntary actions are produced,
as when a man starts at a loud sound, or flings down a hot iron.
Consciousness only arises when a part of the nervous fluid tra
verses the special organ (the hyper-cephalon), in which its move
ments leave traces of its currents. These traces produce altera
tions in the currents which afterwards traverse the same part,
and by these means feelings and moral sensibilities are produced,
which by such alteration or modification of the movements of the
nervous fluid give rise to corresponding actions. Habits in man
and the higher animals, and instincts in the lower ones, (espe
cially remarkable in insects,) are actions produced by the nervous
fluid moving along courses which have been worn out by repeated
currents flowing in the same or similar directions. The internal
�Lamarck.
197
feeling has thus a threefold faculty. First, to give notice of
sensations whereby physical sensibility is produced ; secondly, to
give consciousness of ideas and thoughts by sending portions of
the nervous fluid to move in the channels or courses already
worn in the hyper-cephalon, whereby moral sensibility is pro
duced, as hereafter mentioned; and, thirdly, to make the
animal act instinctively or involuntarily. Only a small part
of the nervous fluid is at the disposition and will of the animal,
and this part is speedily used up in continual movements or
intellectual operations, and requires to be reproduced before
the animal can go on acting or thinking. It is thus that
the sense of fatigue arises, the muscles not Jbeing themselves
altered.
Conscious will and ideas arise from the motion of the nervous
fluid in the organs of intelligence, the cerebral lobes or hypercephalon. This organ does not react on the nervous fluid. It
is composed of innumerable cavities, to which the nerve fibres
lead. The act of attention is necessary to prepare the organ to
be impressed ; without such act, an impression will be perceived,
but not felt; but when attention has prepared the channel, the
agitation of the nervous fluid originally produced by an external
object is communicated to nervous fluid which traverses the
hyper-cephalon, and engraves traces of its course on that organ.
A simple idea is thus produced, which can be recalled by the
nervous fluid being directed on the traces of the original sensa
tion, and with the aid of attention bringing back the features of
such traces to the notice of the internal consciousness. Lamarck
denies the existence of any innate ideas, though they would
almost seem to be a necessary consequence of his theories. If
the offspring bears the close resemblance to the parent which he
attributes to it, and ideas are the results of channels actually
sculptured in the brain, it would appear at least highly probable
that the child would be born with the power of reproducing all
the ideas of its parent. Lamarck considers dreams and mad
ness caused by disturbed currents of the nervous fluid traversing
various parts of the hyper-cephalon, and the traces of many
ideas uncontrolled by the internal feeling.
In forming judgments, a stream of fluid isdivided and directed by
the internal feeling on to different traces of ideas already engraved
in the brain, after tracing which, the different portions acquire as
many modifications of their original motions as there are traces
of simple ideas, and then reuniting, these different motions are
combined into one complex movement which produces the judg
ment ; complex ideas are derived from judgments, and complex
ideas and judgments of the second order are obtained from
complex ideas of the first order, in a manner similar to that in
�198
Lamarck.
which the complex ideas of the first order are derived from
simple ideas.
Will is a determination by thought, and always the effect of
a judgment. It is not really free, but the necessary result of
the previous operation, as the quotient is in an arithmetical
process. The appearance of irregularity in the workings of the
will and the enormous variations in the results obtained from
different people and at different times, arise from differences in
the organ, produced by disposition, age, health, and other
elements, all of which take part in the formation of the judg
ment. Attention is an act of the internal feeling acted on by
a want or desire which directs a part of the nervous fluid which
is at the disposition of the individual, on to the organ of intelli
gence. Preoccupation prevents this act, and then ideas or
feelings do not engrave themselves on this organ.
The first thing that strikes one after reading Lamarck’s
attempted explanation of the processes of feeling, thought, and
other acts of intelligence, is that even if it were true, it would
explain nothing. There is the same difficulty, neither diminished
nor increased, in the mind being conscious of a stream of nervous
fluid in the hyper-cephalon, as in its being conscious of the
pressure of a solid substance on the finger. It is possible, or at
least conceivable, that such a stream may be an essential link in
the chain connecting external phenomena with consciousness. It
is certain that some operation in the lobes of the brain is such
a fink, but it is highly improbable that Lamarck’s fanciful sketch
represents what really takes place, and if it did, it would throw
no light soever on the problem of consciousness. Lamarck has
described a sort of hydraulic calculating machine which requires
both to be originally set in motion and also to have its final
results read off and interpreted by an intelligent mind. .Such a
mind he seems sometimes to attribute to what he calls the internal
feeling, which, however, he often treats as only a sort of valve.
In one respect he is particularly unfortunate. He has based all
his explanations of life and intellect on theories of imponderable
fluids, like the caloric invented by Black, and the various electric
fluids. These theories had, even before Lamarck .wrote his
Philosophic, been assailed by Count Rumford. (Phil. Trans.,
A.D. 1798, and Sir Humphry Davy, Chemical Philosophy, 1812.)
They were not, however, really overthrown till Joole and Mayer,
respectively, published their viewsand experiments on the nature
of heat, about 1842-3. Lamarck was so fond of imponderable
fluids that he even considered sound to be propagated not by
air, but by a peculiar imponderable fluid, which he elsewhere
represents as a modified form of caloric. He based his theory
on the discrepancy between the observed velocity of sound and
�Lamarck.
199
that calculated for it by Newton, and refused to admit the ex
planation of Lagrange and Laplace, who showed Newton’s calcu
lations to be defective in not taking account of the action of
heat in increasing the elasticity of the air. These physical
theories of Lamarck now impart to his biological speculations a
much greater air of falseness and fancifulness than they really
deserve. In order properly to do justice to them when com
paring them with modern speculations on the same subject, they
should be as it were translated out of the language of subtle
fluids into that of transmutable forces. Lamarck has in several
eases anticipated theories which have since been advocated with
great ingenuity, but he has in such cases often disguised them
in phraseology borrowed partly from ideas now exploded, and
partly from his own imagination. His views of life generally
agree with those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. H. Spencer in so far as
they all endeavour to explain the phenomena of life by the action
of ordinary physical forces, and refuse to recognise any special
vital force or fluid. On the other hand, he held the doctrine of
the daily recurrence of spontaneous generation, which doctrine
is at the present day advanced chiefly by the advocates of the
principle that some special form of force is necessary to produce
vital phenomena. In mental philosophy, as we have seen,
Lamarck altogether rejected the doctrine of the freedom of the
will, while in religion his views seem to have been a curious
mixture of Pantheism and Deism.
�
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Lamarck
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: p. 175-199 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Review of "Philosophie Zoologique" and "Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebres" by Jean Baptiste Lamarck. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 46 (July 1874).
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Natural history
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Text
Reprinted {for wide and gratuitous distribution) from
“ The Scotsman" of Tuesday, November 28, 1871.
The Holy Bible : with an Explanatory and
Critical Commentary. By Bishops and other
Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F.
C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. I. The
Pentateuch. London : John Murray.
This is the first instalment of a work which, under
the name of the Speaker’s Bible, has been expected by
the public for the last seven years. The idea of it
originated during the excitement created in religious
circles by the appearance of “ Essays and Reviews ” and
the critical performances of such writers as Bishop
Colenso and Dr Samuel Davidson. The principles
maintained in such productions were calculated to shake
the popular faith in those ideas of Inspiration and
Biblical Infallibility which, however much questioned
or even denied on the Continent, had long held undis
puted sway in the average English mind. By many
persons of the highest respectability the prospect of a
change in this respect was viewed with disapprobation
�2
and apprehension, and many pamphlets and treatises
appeared, intended to guard the public mind against
what were believed to be the dangerous doctrines of the
innovating critics. Among others, the present Speaker
of the House of Commons interested himself in the
maintenance of the traditional views, and suggested to
the Archbishop of York the advantages that would
accrue to orthodox opinions by the publication of a
comprehensive Commentary on the Scriptures, in which
the latest results of Biblical learning should be pre
sented in such a manner that a layman of ordinary
education might have no difficulty in seeing the ground
lessness of the objections raised against the opinions in
which he had been reared. The Archbishop adopted
the suggestion, and got together a number of coadjutors,
expressly confined to the clergy of th e Church of Eng
land, the first-fruits of whose labours, after various
delays and the cogitations of several years, are now
before the public.
In judging of such a work, it is only fair to bear in
mind to whom it is addressed, by whom it is executed,
and what object it has in view. It is intended for the
laity, is meant to reconcile them to the ordinary evan
gelical view of the authority of Scripture, and is the
production of persons who regard themselves bound in
honour to maintain that view. In such circumstances
we cannot expect the exhibition of scholarly processes,
or much in the way of bold or even independent re
search or speculation. It would not have been too
much, however, to expect that so extensive and wealthy
a corporation as the Church of England might have
given proof of the possession of a fair amount of ripe
Old Testament learning, and of skill and decision in
the defence of whatever critical positions were assumed.
This expectation, however, is to a large extent disap
pointed. The Commentary, so far as it has gone, does
not exhibit great or original Hebrew scholarship, or
mature acquaintance with criticism. It is tiie work of
�3
men who are intelligent rather than learned in the
subject with which they deal. It would be unfair to
deny that a very great deal of information, historical
and exegetical, has been collected and judiciously
arranged for the purpose of a popular elucidation of the
text; but it is mainly a transference from Continental
sources, and the one or two authorities whom we have
at home. The lay reader will be saved the drudgery
of hunting through Smith and Kitto for the explana
tions suitable to different passages and subjects, but
that is really about the most that can be said of by far
the larger portion of the notes and excursuses. This
is no doubt a very useful work to have done, but it is
work of a decidedly humble order. Perhaps the most
original contribution to the volume is an Egyptological
essay by Canon Cook, which is well done both as a
rtsumt of existing materials and as an independent
criticism of their import. But even of this production,
meritorious though it be of its kind, it must be observed
that it is very doubtful how far it is likely to impress
the mind of an ordinary reader with the views which
the Commentary was designed and executed to promote.
Its main object is to confirm and illustrate the narra
tive of the Pentateuch from the Egyptian monuments,
and from these sources it is undoubted that strong evi
dence is adduced in support of the authenticity of many
statements in the Sacred Record. But it will not
escape the notice of a vigilant reader of this kind
of evidence (and Canon Cook’s essay is only one of
many such), that it fails to authenticate that class of
statements for which authentication is most needed.
It produces confirmation of the ordinary and natural
events of history, but none whatever of those super
natural events which are the main or only stumblingblock to many readers, and the great object of modern
scepticism. It is interesting to find side-light thrown
in from the monuments upon the history of Abraham
and Joseph, Pharaoh and Moses, and to see that the
�4
current of ordinary events there narrated is in harmony
with the actual conditions of Egyptian history and
society at the period; hut it is very remarkable that
no similar corroboration can be produced from those
monuments of any of the miraculous and more extra
ordinary narratives which are the real sources of religious
perplexity in connection with the Biblical record. On
such events as the messages'from Heaven to Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and others, the predictions of Joseph, the
swallowing up of Moses’ and Aaron’s rods by those of
the magicians, the plagues, the dividing of the Red
Sea, and the like, the monuments are dumb. In
matters where there are no difficulties of faith, this
kind of apologetic is profuse in confirmation ; it begins
to fail only at the point where faith needs to be
assisted. It may well be questioned whether such a
system of defence as this does any good to the cause
which it is designed to support. Canon Cook’s essay,
moreover, illustrates another mistake which is not
seldom committed by apologetic writers in the excess
of their eagerness to maintain what they believe to be
important positions. They often seek to defend their
position too well, and in their zeal, use means of pro
tection which have the effect of throwing open to
attack, or even surrendering other parts of the general
scheme which it may be equally essential to their pur
pose to maintain. For instance, Canon Cook, in his
anxiety to establish an early authorship for the Penta
teuch, makes it extremely difficult to establish a
similar early authorship for the Book of Judges.
He finds it necessary for his argument to show that
during the time of the Judges, Judea was con
tinually traversed or occupied by the Egyptian or
Assyrian hosts in their strategical movements in search
of each other. Had the Book of Judges been a con
temporary record, it is not conceivable that it should
have contained no reference to such transactions, any
more than it is possible to imagine a history of Belgium
�5
■written without an allusion to the battle of Waterloo
or those inarchings, counter-marchings, and conflicts
which made it the cockpit of Europe. Of course, if
the Book of Judges is made out or conceded to be
comparatively modern, the case is to that extent
strengthened for those who contend for a later author
ship of the whole Old Testament Scriptures.
If the Anglican clergy could not have produced, or
were not, in terms of their undertaking, hound to pro
duce, a great work of original scholarship and criticism,
they might at least have been expected to perform with
dexterity and resolution the special task which they
avowedly took in hand—the reconciliation of the
average popular mind to the traditional views. It
cannot, however, be said that they have been very suc
cessful here. The people on whom the book will tell
most powerfully in the interests of orthodoxy are those
who, for want of intelligent interest in critical ques
tions, will never read it. The fact of the book, and its
size, will produce a favourable impression on them. It
will set them at rest to know that the Bishops have
demolished Colenso and Davidson, for is not here the
confutation in a dozen volumes to be triumphantly
pointed to 1 Must not the Bishops be right when
they have so much to say for themselves 1 People,
however, who will read the book with a desire pos
sibly to have apprehensions allayed, and who will
moreover read it, not with open mouth, but with some
little degree of discrimination, are likely to experience
considerable disappointment. In not a few instances
they may find themselves constrained to ask in un
pleasant surprise, as they notice the forced character of
many of the arguments employed, “ Is this all that the
clergy have to say for themselves 1” And the general
impression left upon their minds seems likely enough
to be that, while Colenso and Davidson, and what is
vaguely called the Rationalising school, may be assail
able on various points of detail, there is more to be
�6
said for many of their positions than they had imagined
possible. They will he dissatisfied and staggered by
the haziness and hesitation with which many important
topics are treated in the Commentary, and, instead of
the simple, well-defined, thorough-going views of Scrip
ture in which they had been trained, and which they
may have expected to find vindicated out-and-out, they
will find themselves introduced to concessions and
compromises, and to a degree of uncertainty and in
definiteness of view, which is in effect a kind of help
less scepticism.
To take one or two examples. It is not unusual for
the commentators to assume that the divergencies
among critics opposed to themselves are a sufficient
proof of the unreasonableness of their opposition to the
view which they themselves uphold. For instance, in
dealing with the authorship of the Book of Leviticus,
we are told that “ the theories which are counter to its
Mosaic origin are so much at variance with each other
—no two of them being in anything like substantial
agreement—that it does not seem worth while to notice
them in this place.” Accordingly, there is no special
argument of any kind advanced in support of the
Mosaic authorship of this book. This can hardly but
be unsatisfactory to a reader of average discernment.
He will not fail to notice, that however much the anti
Mosaic theorists may differ in their positive opinions,
there is “substantial agreement” among them in the
negative opinion that, whoever wrote the book, Moses
did not; and he will scarcely be able to avoid feeling
that it would have been well to explain how so many
people who have learnedly investigated the matter,
have unanimously gone astray, and that the matter is
not properly disposed of by a mere assertion that the
opinions of such persons are of no consequence.
It appears to be considered a matter of great im
portance to show that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
No doubt this is part of the traditional faith, but if it
�7
be an essential part of it, the readers of this Com
mentary are not likely to be greatly reassured upon the
point. The writers seem to be affected with consideraable diffidence as to the power of their arguments, and.
when all is done, to be prepared for making indefinite
deductions from the breadth of their conclusion. Two
kinds of arguments are used. The first is, that Christ
has recognised Moses as the author of the Pentateuch.
To doubt the Mosaic authorship is accordingly repre
sented as “ impeaching the perfection and sinlessness
of Christ’s nature, and seeming thus to gainsay the
first principles of Christianity.” If such an argument
be good at all, it requires no confirmation. But the
commentators proceed to fortify the impregnable, by
endeavouring to show from historical and internal
testimony that Moses might have written the Pen
tateuch, and that he probably did so. It will be diffi
cult for a reader of ordinary shrewdness to avoid ask
ing why, if Christ’s word on the matter is so con
clusive as it is alleged to be, it should be necessary to
back it up by what must be at the best delicate and
questionable inference. If the iron bridge is safe, why
should it be buttressed with pasteboard ? And then,
wrhen all is done, it is found that the Mosaic author
ship is only asserted in a modified manner. It is
admitted that Moses may have incorporated into his
work documents by other hands, and that in later
generations, particularly after the Babylonish captivity,
ten or eleven centuries subsequent to Moses, there was
probably a recension, comprising various unknown re
arrangements, explanations, and assertions ; so that
the view with which the reader is left is, that perhaps
Moses wrote a great deal of the Pentateuch, but which
parts are his, and which are his predecessors’ or editors’,
we have not now the means of determining. If the
Mosaic authorship is of the religious importance which
seems to be ascribed to it, surely this is not a satisfac
tory position in which to leave the subject.
�8
This perplexity is apt to be increased by the way in
which it is proposed to reconcile the existing Biblical
text with various parts of the testimony of modern
science. The commentators admit the difficulty that
is presented by the very great antiquity which they
concede to the origin of man in view of the limited
duration of human history as given in the genealogies
which occupy the early chapters of Genesis, even with
the extraordinary length of life there ascribed to the
Patriarchs. In explanation, they resort to the supposi
tion that the genealogies are not complete ; and in
answer to the objection, that they present every ap
pearance of completeness, they tell us that we must
“ consider all that may have happened in the trans
mission of the text from Moses to Ezra, and from Ezra
to the destruction of Jerusalem.” But if the text
could be tampered with in the way here indicated in
one important matter, why not in many others 1 and
what criterion have we by which to single out what is
really original and what has been interpolated, or alto
gether transformed, between the dates of Moses and
Ezra, or Ezra and the destruction of Jerusalem ? And
it is not only the text which grows uncertain in the
hands of the commentators; the interpretation of it
appears to become equally precarious. It is certainly
the popular and traditional view, that whatever the
Bible says is true, and that it says what the natural
meaning of its language conveys. The commentators,
however, introduce two principles which appear fitted
to create very great confusion in the minds of persons
who have been accustomed to read the Scriptures with
the old simple theory respecting their authority and
significance. They affirm it to be “ plain that a
miraculous revelation of scientific truths was never de
signed by God for man,” and leave us to understand
that we are to look for revealed guidance only to those
parts of the Scriptures which contain their “ testimony
to Divine and spiritual truth.” They do not, however,
�9
furnish any directions for drawing the line between
what is “ scientific truth ” and what is “ Divine truth.”
There are various historical statements and metaphysi
cal doctrines contained in the Scriptures, and it may
easily be conceived that the plain reader, having got
over his first surprise of learning, that he must not take
Scripture as his rule of faith in everything, should be
anxious to know whether and when seeming affirma
tions on such matters are to be accepted as revelation.
This anxiety cannot fail to be increased by the second
principle laid down by the commentators, which is,
that although the Bible does not give revelations upon
scientific matters, yet anything it does say upon such
things must be true, and therefore wherever the appa
rent meaning of Scripture is contradicted by undoubted
science, we must conclude that the apparent meaning
of Scripture is not the real meaning, and must be con
tent to believe that the real meaning of Scripture would
be recognised as true, if we could only know what the
real meaning is.
A good illustration of the working of this method of
interpretation is afforded by the mode in which the
commentators treat the history of creation in the first
chapter of Genesis, which they appear to regard as
dealing with 11 scientific ” as distinguished from “ divine
and spiritual” truth. The traditional interpretation
of this passage, as is well known is, that the universe
was made in six days, and in the manner and order
which are suggested by the natural meaning of the
words. The commentators, it need hardly be said,
allow that this interpretation cannot stand in the pre
sent day, but hold that, nevertheless, the conclusion
must not be drawn that the narrative is mythical, or in
any way erroneous. It is quite correct, only we do not
know fully what it means; but in so far as we do
know, we see that it accords with science. We fear,
however, that the difficulties against which this con
clusion is pressed will leave a disconcerting impression
�10
on the mind of the reader who has been accustomed to
the old and thoroughly unhesitating view of Biblical
infallibility. To show that, so far as understood, the
narrative in Genesis is in agreement with science, the
commentator, leaving aside minute discrepancies, alleges
that the order in which organised beings have succes
sively appeared on the earth is represented in Scripture
in substantially the same manner as by science.”
“ The chief difference,” it is said, “ if any, of the two
witnesses would seem to be, that the rocks speak of
(1) marine plants, (2) marine animals, (3) land plants,
(4) land animals ; whereas Moses speaks of (1) plants
[it should be land plants], (2) marine animals, ( 3) land
animals; a difference not amounting to divergence.
As physiology must have been nearly, and geology
wholly, unknown to the Semitic nations of antiquity,
such a general correspondence of sacred history, with
modern science, is surely more striking and important
than any difference in details.” But surely there is
an amount of begging the question here that is quite
impermissible. Even supposing it were of no conse
quence that the Mosaic account omits the “ marine
plants ” altogether, and that other differences in
“ details ” could be fairly left out of the account, is
it to be said that where the order is restricted to three
things—marine animals, land plants, land animals—
there is no discrepancy worth mentioning between the
history which places the marine animals before the
land plants, and that which places the land plants
before the marine animals ? If this is not a substantial
difference on the question of order, what is likely to be
held as a difference ? Manifestly, if the scientific order
is adhered to, it is necessary to fall back upon the pre
sent unintelligibility of Genesis, as is done with the
rest of the narrative in question. Perhaps the word
unintelligibility does not best describe the view of the
commentators in this matter. They seem not so much
to hold that the words mean nothing, as that they
�11
may mean anything, and that the Hebrew language in
such places as this has no ascertainable fixed signifi
cance. Thus they maintain that the word “ created,”
as applied to the “heavens and the earth,” means
“ formed out of nothingbut that same word
“ created,” as applied to the marine animals, they
affirm to mean merely “ made ” out of pre-existing
materials. But this word “ made,” applied in the sense
just mentioned to the land animals, has, in their view,
a totally different meaning from what it has when
applied to the sun, moon, and stars, which are appa
rently represented as formed after the creation of light.
In this case, to “ make ” the sun, moon, and stars,
means merely to “make them appear ” by rolling away
the clouds and vapours which had previously concealed
them. It will certainly alarm not a few of the laity to
learn that Hebrew lexicography is in so very uncertain
a condition.
There are various other cases in which the tradi
tional and apparent sense of the Biblical narrative is
departed from, not for any assigned lexical or gram
matical reasons, but because otherwise it appears difficult
to face modern scientific habits of thought. The his
tory of the Ball is substantially given up as an alle
gory, although the confusion of tongues at the Tower
of Babel is taken as simple history in tlie„. apparent
sense of the words. The Deluge, however, is treated
with more effort. It is explained as only partial,
confined to the district of Mesopotamia, where the
hills are very low, and beyond which- the human race,
notwithstanding the long antiquity already conceded
to it, and the powers of rapid multiplication claimed
for it in the commentary on Exodus in connection
with the Israelites, is not supposed to have spread.
The height of the water, apparently alleged in Scrip
ture to be fifteen cubits above the highest mountains in
the world, is thus to be calculated in relation to nothing
loftier than the elevations of Babylonia. “ The in
�12
habitants of the ark,” it is said, “ probably tried the
depth of the Deluge by a plumb-line, an invention
surely not unknown to those who had acquired the
arts of working in brass and iron, and they found a
depth of fifteen cubits.” The ark is rested “ perhaps to
the south of Armenia, perhaps in the north of Pales
tine, perhaps somewhere in Persia, or in India, or
elsewhere.” It appears to be forgotten, that extend
ing the area of the Deluge to India, not to speak of
“ elsewhere,” interferes with its proposed limitation to
Mesopotamia, and that the proximity to India of the
Himalayan range, rather tends to take from the em
ployment of heaving the lead, somewhat grotesquely
ascribed to Noah and his family, any air of proba
bility which it may be supposed to possess.
The endeavour to tone down the miraculous cha
racter of certain of the narratives from their apparent
meaning, which is illustrated in the instance now
quoted, is also shown otherwise. The plagues of
Egypt are laboriously described as mainly a mere in- ,
tensification of the natural calamities and distresses
of the country. Balaam and his ass are treated as
follows: — “ God may have brought it about that
sounds uttered by the creature after its kind became
to the prophet’s intelligence as though it addressed
him in rational speech. Indeed, to an augur, priding
himslf on his skill in interpreting the cries and move
ments of animals, no more startling warning could be
given than one so real as this, yet conveyed through
the medium of his own art; and to a seer pretending
to superhuman wisdom, no more humiliating rebuke
can be imagined than to teach him by the mouth of
his own ass. The opinion that the ass actually uttered
with the mouth articulate words of human speech, or
even that the utterance of the ass was so formed in
the air as to fall with the accents of man’s voice on
Balaam’s ears, seems irreconcilable with Balaam’s be
haviour.” We shall give but one other instance in
�13
which popular surprise will probably be created vv
the departure of the commentators from the apparent
and traditionally accepted interpretation of the text.
The seeming discrepancy between the Exodus and the
Deuteronomy versions of the Fourth Commandment,
in respect of the conflicting reasons assigned for its
enactment, is well known. The commentary, however,
explains that these “ reasons annexed ” formed no part
of the command as issued, however much the narra
tives appear to assert it, and that the First Table of
the Decalogue, as originally given, probably ran thus :
—1. Thou shalt have no other God before me. 2.
Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image. 3.
Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in
vain. 4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath-day to
keep it holy. 5. Thou shalt honour thy father and
thy mother. This abbreviated Decalogue, we should
suppose, will be exceedingly welcome to schoolboys.
The parts omitted are accounted for as expositions and
comments dictated oil separate occasions from the
issuing of the original decrees. Still, with all the
deductions, it will be observed that “ Remember the
Sabbath ” of Exodus, and “ keep the Sabbath ’’ of
Deuteronomy, remain unreconciled, and the question
between an original command or the resuscitation of
an ancient one is left undecided.
From such illustrations, which might have been
multiplied, it will be plain that in the view of the com
mentators the Bible may very clearly seem to mean a
certain thing, and yet may mean something very
different; nay, its apparent meaning may look as if it
were unmistakeably distinct and indisputable, and yet
its real meaning may be undiscoverable by human
sagacity. The effect of such teaching, so utterly op
posed to thejjerspicuzYus claimed for Scripture by the
Reformers, must be to produce great perplexity in the
minds of those for the re-establishment of whose faith
this Commentary is professedly constructed. They will
be irresistibly urged to ask, “ What part of Scripture
�14
can we ever be sure that we really understand ? Here
are certain parts of it which we and the generations
before us thought were as clear as noonday, and on
the strength of that conviction were endeavouring most
dutifully to believe, and even condemning or persecut
ing other people for disbelieving ; and yet it turns
out that they mean something totally different, or that
their meaning is absolutely undiscoverable. Where is
this to stop ? If the account of creation does not
mean what it seems to mean, how can we be sure
that the account of Justification means what it seems
to mean ? It is true the commentators wish it to be
understood that this dubiety attaches only to “scientific’
statements, and not to those that affect “ divine or
spiritual truth ? ” But who is to tell which is which ?
On the whole, we cannot grant that the aim of the
Commentary seems likely to be much advanced by its
publication. People who have no difficulties, and want
to have none, may be helped by its appearance to
hector the perplexed, if possible, a little more loudly.
But waverers, if we may use the expression, are in
danger of being confirmed in their wavering. Yet we
would not like to say that it is a useless, or that it is
not a respectable work. It will form a good intro
duction to the subject for those who want to get a
compendious glimpse of the latest state of the questions.
We are bound also to say that it is free from acrimony
and abusiveness, and if not written always with scientific
impartiality, is invariably pervaded by a gentlemanly
tone. It promises to be the most notable work pro
duced by the conjoint labours of English divines since
the Thirty-nine Articles and the Westminster Confes
sion, and the future Church historian will probably
point to it as an important landmark in the history of
British theology, as showing how many important
positions had come, since the formation of those
memorable documents, to be regarded as very uncertain,
or even untenable, towards the last quarter of the
nineteenth century.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The Holy Bible: with an explanatory and critical commentary
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Reprinted (for wide and gratuitous circulation) from 'The Scotsman' of Tuesday November 28 1871". From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A critique of 'The Holy Bible' by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F.C. Cook.... Vol. 1: The Pentateuch. London: John Murray. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
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[Thomas Scott]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5476
Subject
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Bible
Creator
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[Unknown]
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Holy Bible: with an explanatory and critical commentary), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-Commentaries
Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
-
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30b4899f46e2beee000586c2b158ac0e
PDF Text
Text
History and Biography.
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269
Thucydides, against the modern “ temptation to read into an inscrip
tion more, than is really to be found in it.”
Mr. Moncure Conway, following up his invaluable elucidations of
Folk-lore, discusses in his new book the significance and the teaching of
the legend of the Wandering Jew.9 It is scarcely necessary to remark
that the book is full of interest. The main feature in the argument
is that this legend of the Wandering Jew is a notable example of that
“ sacerdotal sorcery which, for the lover of enemies, substituted a
curser of enemies in the earliest Christian theology.” We are told,
first of all, how the legend is recorded in Roger de Wendover’s “ Ilistoria Major,” and how the Wandering Jew himself appeared in Ger
many in 1547, and in various other European countries, with a clever
and wonderful knowledge of previous history, and so forth. From
this we are led on to a most instructive account of the more general
legend of “ the Undying Ones” and. of Curses. The ramifications and
amplifications of the Wandering Jew legend are portrayed with most
entertaining and instructive detail. And the story is carried through
the ages of popular ignorance and vivid beliefs to the more recent
renovation of the Ahasueres as a poetic ideal. The Eternal Jew
becomes the favourite “ subject” of great German poets from Schubert
to Goethe.
Edgar Quinet, Eugene Sue, and Grenier follow the
same lead in France. And we have an admirable account of the in
fluence of the legend on the English drama and on English poetry. But
underlying the whole, and gradually working its way in the end to
prominence, comes a powerful vindication of the Jewish race, and a
powerful exposition of the hoped-for approach of better times for
humanity at large.
The growing prosperity of India and its consequently increasing
importance to Englishmen of all classes ensure a welcome for Mr.
Talboy Wheeler’s “Tales from Indian History.”10 The author himself
had some misgivings concerning this title, and it is matter for regret
he did not allow these misgivings more influence; for the title fails
to convey to the ordinary mind an adequate idea of the character and
value of the book. It is, in short, an epitomized account of most things
Indian ; and he who has read it will have no bad idea of nearly every
point that Indian affairs present to English notice. The author in
this volume manages to communicate to the reader his own firm hope
in a great future for India—closer bound to the British empire by
representative and business connections; and his belief that the
English, having instituted law and order in India, are now offering
most favourable opportunities for the great native races to work out
their own advancement by assimilating the educational and science
achievements of Western civilization.
Yet another national history11 is put before the public, and it may
9 “The Wandering Jew.” By Moncure Conway. London: Chatto & Windus
1881.
10 “Tales from Indian History.” By J. Talboy Wheeler. London: W.
Thacker & Co. 1881.
11 “A History of the British Empire.” By Edgar Sanderson. London:
Blackie & Son. 1881.
�270
Contemporary Literature.
well be asked how it comes about that such a uever-ending issue can
“pay.” It will be observed that the title, “History of the British
Empire,” might lead us to expect more account than is usually given
of the oversea realms the nation has ruled from time to time. But
beyond a short chapter devoted to the history of the Indian Empire,
and three pages devoted to the growth of our Colonial Empire, the
book is merely a new version of the oft-told tale of the successions of
sovereigns and the wars of the English nation, rigidly confined to the
British Islands. Of its kind the work is good, and it has a very
complete accompaniment of tables, maps, plans, illustrations, and
index.
It would be well if the numerous class of reformers would carefully
study an admirable outline of the history of the English Constitution
now published by Messrs. Longman.* They would thus understand
12
the true story of the development in English history of self-govern
ment, and learn that kings and nobles, as well as the commons, have
each in turn assisted’ in the good work. The politician of to-day is
too apt to forget that the future will be worked out of the past. Our
land reformers will do well to bear in mind the result worked out in
the book, “All ownership in theory is tenancy; in practice all tenancy
is ownership.” And in regard to Ireland it is interesting to trace the
obstruction Celtic influence has always opposed to the spread of repre
sentative self-government. In Scotland the same influence delayed
this for some three hundred years after its introduction into England;
and in Ireland local Parliamentary government, inaugurated in 1300,
could only take root “within the pale” when English descent and
custom came to prevail. As a whole this little work is admirably
written. We would, however, point out that in its opening chapters
the Norse element in our population is altogether ignored, though
it is now proved to have largely modified our institutions and our
national character. Again, on the last page there is a very partial
account of the main principle of free-trade. It is described as
merely prescribing that ho import duty should be levied on necessary
food, and so securing the people “ from being overcharged for the
necessaries of life.” The utter inadequacy of such a description of
free-trade should be remedied in the future editions to which the
work is sure to run.
It has been termed a natural function of Women to provide for the
education of children ; and the compiling of schoolbooks for the special
use of children is a task by no means neglected by women. “A French
History for English Children” is a full, clearly-written account of historica^France suited to schoolroom capacities.13 It has no pretensions to
advanced erudition, and is a plain matter-of-fact account of persons and
events that young people are expected to be familiar with. The book
13 “ Historical Outline of the English Constitution, for Beginners.” By D. W.
Itannie. London : Longmans. 1881.
13 “French History for English Children.” By Sarah Brook. London: Mac
millan. 1881.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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[The Wandering Jew]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 270 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's 'The Wandering Jew' by an unknown reviewer in an unidentified journal. Includes bibliographical references.
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[s.n.]
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[188-]
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G5604
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Book reviews
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([The Wandering Jew]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Folklore
Judaism
Moncure Conway
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b6efdcd8a409e985794ecc7331448a1f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=IZvJdcH2M5j-eSz1WDrkRViZmzX7JMK%7E56nuFTFKpWQZCL98sxv8BRfgz8c8WVbEx67ZpASQ32%7ErpssmyRgGJZSuvytyI9kSA9ZkDp3vxD1f3%7El4dBLWo8b6b%7ERsIQc1-h3FCFA5BFW82yNayg3zyhfy3HLPyu8QUtr8pJO7LEX0zXl2o5sTMMgPK5fVZIAu34c%7EN2WcGlb%7Ep5glecJbSgLkD%7E4IcHbriU-mwoqyY1TTOe1nVTWyu0K8LAub2Y%7EP4Pfj59nMC35TlIpzr6gSEoEkzak7Rr1hswPG779RmfzXApUa40cX2K4T3QtyStqu5PmvT5GkldhoJyPyjd4eFA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c7cfb4ff88d55caee826c58e02230b03
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Text
THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
BY
T. L. STRANGE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO.
11,
THE TERRACE,
FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�j-
h
i
I
�THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
N my article for this series on. “ The Portraiture ana
Mission of Jesus ” I dealt with Prebendary Row’s
book, issued at the instance of the Christian Evidence
Society, and designed to be a reply to the first portion
of the anonymous publication entitled, “ Supernatural
Religion,” which treats of the asserted Christian
miracles. I now take up the work of the Rev. W.
Sanday, also put forth in behalf of the said Society,
and offered to meet the latter portion of “ Supernatural
Religion,” which discusses the integrity of the received
gospels so far as this depends upon the supports of the
•early Christian writers.
The author of “ Supernatural Religion ” does not
advance beyond the school Fof German critics, who
make concessions in respect of the early history of
Christianity which I, for one, am not prepared to
subscribe to ; but he has done the cause of free thought
the inestimable service of putting forth his views in so
masterly and comprehensive a form as to have engaged
public attention, and thus has forced the advocates of
Christianity to leave their shelter of silence and come
forward to answer, as best they can, the representations
of an enlightened and modern adversary. Mr Sanday’s
volume is thus to be hailed by us with satisfaction,
and it occupies even a more important sphere con
nected with current pending questions, than does that
of Prebendary Row, which we have already welcomed.
Mr Sanday allows, as all must do, that there is ££ a
manifest gap between the reality and the story of”
I
�6
The Christian Evidences.
Christianity (8).* The matter to be solved, as nearly
as we can, is the extent of this gap. He also raises
the question “ What is Revelation ” ? but only to show
that this is still an unsettled term (9, 10). We have
consequently to follow him in a bare line of critical
examination, to ascertain, as far as we possibly may
at this date, of what value the Christian statements can
be held to be in the light of history, the acceptability
of Christianity turning mainly on this issue.
And here I am prepared to admit, what is not the
line taken by the author of “ Supernatural Religion,”
or the generality of adverse critics, that where any
early Christian writer may show a knowledge of the
facts and doctrines belonging to Christianity, that
circumstance serves to fill up the “gap” respecting
which our investigation is to be maintained, even when
it is not exactly apparent that such writer is making
use of the canonical scriptures. But it is obvious that
to be of value for the purpose in view, it is absolutely
necessary that the era of such writer should be satis
factorily ascertained. And just in respect of this
vital question, Mr Sanday leaves us without materials,
saving the martialling of sundry names current in
critical circles of those who can only be said to have
made guesses on this subject; whereby it becomes
apparent that tangible facts, on which we may be
permitted to exercise judgment for ourselves on these
points, cannot be readily put before us. He says, “ To
go at all thoroughly into all the questions that may
be raised as to the date and character of the Christian
writings, in the early part of the second century, would
need a series of somewhat elaborate monographs, and,
important as it is that the data should be fixed with
the utmost precision, the scaffolding thus raised would,
in a work like the present, be out of proportion to the
superstructure erected upon it. These are matters that
* Here, and elsewhere, when figures are thus introduced, they
refer to pages in Mr Sanday’s work.
�The Christian Evidences.
must be decided by the authority of those who have
made the provinces to which they belong a subject of
special study : all we can do will be to test the value
of the several authorities in passing ” (58).
Thus on two very serious considerations involved in
the discussion of Christianity, we are left by this
advocate, when meeting a formidable adversary, un
aided by information ; namely as to the precise times
of the earliest writers who show a knowledge of
Christianity, and the value of the accepted scriptures,
whenever it was that we got them, as being based
upon that divine authority which is currently alleged
for them.
Mr Sanday sets out with an appeal to certain of the
Pauline epistles as the “undoubted writings of St
Paul,” here making use of the unguarded and un
warrantable admission by the German critics of four of
these epistles, and from this source he naturally holds
that there is early “historical attestation” for the
Christian miracles, and especially for the great miracle
of the Resurrection, in respect of which “ external
evidence, in the legal sense,” he observes with satisfac
tion, that “ it is probably the best that can be produced,
and it has been entirely untouched so far” (11, 12).
But if it can be shown that there is no evidence for
the existence of Christianity during the first century,
or for far on in the second; that there has been no
such age as the asserted apostolic age; and that these
Pauline epistles have the characteristics of forgeries,
put together at some unknown times, by Gentile hands,
this source of support disappears, and we have to look
elsewhere for the first traces of Christianity.*
Before occupying ourselves with those who are com
monly considered to be the earliest Christian writers,
* See The. Twelve Apostles ; Our First Century ; Primitive Church
History; The Pauline Epistles; The Portraiture and Mission of
Jesus, all in this series; and The Sources and Development of
Christianity (Triibner & Co.).
�8
The Christian Evidences.
it will be well to examine the pretensions of those on
whom dependence is placed for the existence and
times of the supposed primitive writers.
The first who claims attention is necessarily the
ecclesiastical historian Eusebius. In his day, it is
apparent, Christianity was an established circumstance,
and our task, consequently, is to endeavour to discern
its earliest traces in the period anterior to him. Writ
ing about the year a.d. 315, Eusebius admits that in
prosecuting his investigations, he was “ the first ” who
had engaged in such an attempt, and that he had
entered upon his researches on “ a kind of trackless
and unbeaten path,” “ totally unable to find even the
bare vestiges of those who may have travelled the way
before him,” unless “ in certain partial narratives,” and
with a dubious light to guide him as that of “ torches
at a distance.” The result is, with these imperfect
means, he presents us with a volume, purporting to be
an exhibition of multitudinous facts, but at the same
time shows himself to be one not qualified to act as a
pioneer whom we may safely follow in the difficult
field before him.
The age he had to deal with, was one abounding in
literary forgeries, especially on the part of Christian
writers, who justified themselves, by supposing that
the importance of the cause they sought to promote,
warranted the means they took to advance it. Euse
bius has vouched for, and given currency to, such
forgeries, not having detected them; he was personally
credulous ; and he has been guilty of historical incon
sistencies and uncritical representations.* Dr Donald
son says of him, “ Like all the rest of his age, he was
utterly uncritical in his estimate of evidence, and
where he, as it were, translates the language of others
into his own, not giving their words but his own idea
of their meaning, he is almost invariably wrong.
Every statement therefore which he makes himself, is
* The Sources and Development of Christianity, pp. 2-16.
�The Christian Evidences.
9
to be received with caution”; and yet the learned
doctor, in endeavouring to place Christianity on an
historical basis, has to add, il my first, my best, and
almost my only authority is Eusebius. ... All
subsequent writers have simply repeated his statements,
sometimes indeed misrepresenting them, Eusebius
therefore stands as my first and almost only authority
(“ Hist, of Christ. Lit.” I. 13, 14). For whatever relates
to the first two centuries of the alleged Christian era,
in respect of its facts and dates, we have to look to this
writer, and no impartial mind can rest satisfied with
the statements of one circumstanced as he was, and
shown to be what he is, unless these may be found
reasonably supported with such corroborative materials
as should naturally belong to them.
The next name of importance to the Christian cause
is that of Irenaeus, an authority constantly cited by
Eusebius, and to whom is traceable the first notice we
have that the received gospels are four in number. In
treating of this supposed person, I am under d.eep
obligations to an article in this series entitled “ Primi
tive Church History,” and a forthcoming one by the
same learned writer on “ Irenaeus,” which I have been
privileged to see in the manuscript.
Beyond being frequently cited by Eusebius, Irenaeus
is mentioned by Tertullian, but no others of the
alleged early writers, not even Hippolytus who
is said to have been his pupil, show any knowledge of
him. There is a treatise “ Against Heresies ” bearing
his name of which some fragments in the original
Greek remain, and a version in barbarous Latin.
There is no certainty as to the date of his birth ; he is
said by some to have been of Greece, by others of
Smyrna or elsewhere in Asia Minor; Mr Sanday
speaks of “his well-known visit to Home in 178 a.d.”
(199), not however citing his authority, who is probably
Eusebius; Tertullian is reported to say that he was
made bishop of Gaul, it is supposed about a.d. 180 ;
�io
The Christian Evidences.
otherwise we have no particulars of his life. We hear
of his martyrdom in a.d. 202 from Eusebius, but
there being no other authority for the circumstance,
we may consider the date of his death to be as un
certain as that of his birth.
Mr Sanday holds that the treatise “ Against Heresies ”
must have been written between the years a.d. 180
and 190 (326). This production shows an acquaint
ance with the various branches of Gnostic heretics, and
the writer assumes an ascendancy over them as belong
ing to the orthodox party in the church, denouncing
all 44unauthorized meetings” as opposed to apostolic
traditions and the “ pre-eminent authority ” of “ the
very ancient ” church of Home. To have lived at a
time when orthodoxy had raised itself above surrounding
heresies, and when supremacy and a lengthened
measure of antiquity could be ascribed to the church at
Rome, necessarily places the writer at a period much
nearer the time of Eusebius than is supposed, unless,
indeed, his writings have been tampered with at a later
day. That he belongs to an era not so remote as is
assigned to him, appears also from other indications.
He speaks of “ good and ancient copies ” of the book
of Revelation (329), and of the existence of many
ancient copies of the “ Shepherd ” of Hermas (“ Against
Heresies” v., c. 30); moreover Saturninus, writing it is
thought in the beginning of the fourth century, says,
“ scattered churches of a few Christians arose in some
cities of Gaul in the 3rd century,” from which we
may judge that no bishopric could have been erected
there in the second century.
Tertullian is quite as questionable an authority as
Eusebius, and the collateral and internal evidence
certainly points to the time of the writer of the treatise
in question, being of a considerably later date than is
assigned to him. But we may even doubt whether
the name of Irenaeus, which figures so prominently
in the ecclesiastical history, attaches to a real person
�The Christian Evidences.
11
age. The word
va/og, as observed by Eusebius,
and dwelt upon by the learned writer I have before
referred to, signifies “peaceful,” and affixed to a
treatise designed to put down heresies and induce
concord of religious sentiment, it may very well
have been adopted by the writer as a designation
appropriate to the purpose of his work, so that we
may be entitled to end our examination with the
supposition that it is quite possible we have nothing
before us, under the heading of Irenaeus, but an
anonymous production, written when or by whom we
know not, saving that it came out at some time ante
cedent to Tertullian and Eusebius.
Tertullian is known of from Eusebius and the
writings he has left behind him. He is said to have
been of about the period of the supposed Irenaeus,
but we can only say that he preceded Eusebius.
He is described to have been a bishop of Carthage,
but we have no incidents of his life or death. He
wrote against Valentinus, Marcion, and other “heretics,”
which places him beyond the earliest times of Chris
tianity. He was of an age when the sacred text had
become extensively corrupted by various readings,
and had his part therein. Mr Sanday is engaged
with this subject in connection with Tertullian from
page 332 to 343. He says, “The phenomena that
have to be accounted for are not, be it remembered,
such as might be caused by the carelessness of a
single scribe. They are spread over whole groups of
MSS. together. We can trace the gradual accessions of
corruption at each step as we advance in the history
of the text. A certain false reading comes in at such
a point and spreads over all the manuscripts that
start from that; another comes in at a further
stage, and vitiates succeeding copies there ; until at
last a process of correction and revision sets in ; re
course is had to the best standard manuscripts, and a
purer text is recovered by comparison with these. It
�12
The Christian Evidences.
is precisely such a text that is presented by the Old
Latin Codex F. which we find accordingly shows a max
imum difference from Tertullian ! ” Then assuming
that we have the real time of Tertullian, he observes,
“ To bring the text into the state in which it is
found in the writings of Tertullian, a century is not
at all too long a period to allow. In fact I doubt
whether any subsequent century saw changes so
great, though we should naturally suppose that cor
ruption would proceed at an advancing rate for every
fresh copy that was made.”
Now it is apparent that the argument can be turned
quite another way. If nothing is known of the
appearance of the received scriptures till a late time,
say the latter part of the second century, as a large
class of critics maintain, then the condition of the
text and Tertullianus part in it, according to this
reasoning, would place him a century later, or far
on in the third century. The fact is, throughout
this investigation we are left to the operation of
the merest guesses. We know not when the text
came out, or when it was interfered with by Ter
tullian and others. The end is that of the actual
time of Tertullian we remain ignorant, but see that
there may be grounds for placing it considerably
nearer that of Eusebius than has been currently
asserted.
Whatever was the period filled by Tertullian, as an
authority to be appealed to he proves himself to be
utterly unreliable. In the first place he was very
credulous. He recognized in certain osseous remains
the bones of the giants. He believed in the agency of
good and evil angels, and that most people had a
demon attached to them, who could rule their des
tinies. He says, “ There is hardly a human being who
is unattended by a demon; and it is well known
to many that premature and violent deaths, which
men ascribe to accidents, are in fact brought about
�Ehe Christian Evidences.
13
by ’demons.” He makes use of the fable of the
Phoenix as an actuality illustrating the resurrection.
He says, as if coming within his personal knowledge.
“ I am acquainted, with the case of a woman, the
daughter of Christian parents, who in the very flower
of her age and. beauty slept peaceably (in Jesus), after
a singularly happy though brief married life. Before
they laid her in her grave, and when the priest began
the appointed office, at the first breath of his prayer
she withdrew her hands from her sides, placed them
in an attitude of devotion, and after the holy service
was concluded, restored them to their lateral position.
Then again, there is that well known story among
our own people, that a body voluntarily made way
in a certain cemetery, to afford room for another
body to be placed near it ” (“ On the Resurrection of
the Flesh,” c. xlii. ; “On the Soul,” c. xxxix., li.,
lvii.). . If we are reading Tertullian, and not introduced
monkish fables, the writer is shown to be positively
untruthful, as well as possessed of an inordinate love
of the marvellous.
That Tertullian in his aim to support the Chris
tian cause was little restrained by scruples in making
his statements, is very apparent. He is Eusebius’
warrant for the fact that Pontius Pilate transmitted
to the emperor Tiberius an account of the miracles
of Jesus, and of his resurrection from the dead, re
presenting that the mass of the people believed him
to be a god, on which Tiberius proposed to admit
Jesus into the Roman pantheon; so that knowledge
from Rome reaches Carthage, of a character to establish
the incidents of Christianity, after a lapse of say
nearly two centuries, which had escaped the notice of
all others occupying the intervening space and time.
In respect of the tale of the Thundering Legion, when
in a time of extremity the Christian soldiers in the
ranks of Marcus Aurelius are said to have called down
rain by their prayers, and so saved the army from
�14
The Christian Evidences.
perishing of thirst, Eusebius likewise received the state
ment Tertullian has had the assurance to make, that
there were letters by the emperor still extant recounting
the occurrence, Carthage again standing alone in supply
ing us with information from Rome. And in his tract
“Against the Jews,” he boasts, with little attention
to truth, of the vast spread of the Christian faith,
saying-—In whom but the Christ now come have all
nations believed ? For in whom do all other nations
(except the Jews) confide ? Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia,
Cappadocia, and inhabitants of Pontus, and Asia,
and Pamphylia; the dwellers in Egypt, and inhabitants
of the region beyond Cyrene ; Romans and strangers ;
and in Jerusalem, both Jews and Proselytes; so
that the various tribes of the Getuli and the num
erous hordes of the' Moors, all the Spanish clans,
and the different nations of Gaul, and those regions
of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans, but sub
ject to Christ, and of the Sarmatians, and the
Dacians, and Germans, and Scythians, and many
unexplored nations and provinces, and islands un
known to us, and which we cannot enumerate: in
all which places the name of Christ, who has already
come, now reigns.” This wonderful observer was
not only able, in the behalf of Christianity, to draw
upon records in the archives of Rome unseen by
any other eye, but, as Mosheim points out, he can
give us intelligence of “ what was done in unex
plored regions and unknown islands and provinces ; ”
and, as observed upon by the author of “ Primitive
Church History,” from whom I have the passage,
he can people Jerusalem with Jews at a time when
under the ban of Hadrian not one of that race could
revisit the land without incurring death.
Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus are the
next authorities relied on by Mr Sanday, as by Chris
tian advocates in general. They are mentioned by
�The Christian Evidences.
*5
Eusebius, and having left writings behind them, it
may be conceded that there were such persons, but
the notice of them by Eusebius is too meagre to afford
satisfaction. They are said to have been about the
time of Tertullian, but the end is that we know no
more of their true age than we do of his.
The last of those who are now in question as
authorities cited by Mr Sanday, is Origen. Eusebius
says that this writer suffered persecution in the reign
of Decius (a.d. 249-251). Niebuhr, while con
sidering the earlier alleged persecutions to have been
highly exaggerated, accepts that by Decius as the first
“ vehement ” one suffered by the Christians, because
mentioned by Pagan as well as Christian writers, the
Pagan authorities being the “ Historia Augusta ” and
Zosimus (“Prim. Ch. Hist.,” 67). We may thus with
apparent safety admit Origen as of the period attributed
to him, namely, as having lived somewhere towards the
middle of the third century.
We have now to consider the circumstances of the
earlier Christians, standing as it thought nearest to the
time alleged for Christianity, in view of judging what
testimony is to be had from this source. I take the
names in the order in which Mr Sanday has arranged them.
Clement of Rome (58-70). Mr Sanday says that
the learned place this individual at from a.d. 95-100,
but that some put him back to a.d. 70. The dates
depend upon purely ideal considerations. There are
many writings attributed to this Clement, the whole of
which are rejected by Eusebius and the modern crit
ics, with the exception of an epistle addressed to the
Corinthians. Mr Sanday cannot satisfy himself that
this epistle makes use of the canonical gospels which
is the point of his inquiries.
The state of the case is this. Eusebius considers
Clement to have been the third bishop of Rome on the
word of the doubtful Irenaeus, who says that “ the
blessed Apostles Peter and Paul ” founded this church
�16
The Christian Evidences.
and appointed Linus to be the first bishop, that after
him came Anencletus, and then Clement. According
to the epistle to the Romans, the church of Rome was
flourishing before Paul had visited it. He consequently,
pursuant to Christian authority, was not instrumental
in founding this church. Peter, according to the
epistle to the Galatians, was to confine his labours to
the Jews, and the Protestants universally disallow that
he set up the church at Rome. There is even room to
doubt that there were Christians in Rome, during the
so-called apostolic days, it appearing, notwithstanding
what is said of the world-wide fame of this church in the
epistle to the Romans, that when Paul is represented
to have gone to Rome, his inquiring Jewish brethren
there'knew nothing of the circumstances of the Christian
faith (Acts xxviii. 22). Josephus, moreover, who was at
Rome from a.d. 70 to 93, whenhe wrote his “Antiquities,”
makes no mention of Christianity prevailing there or
elsewhere. Wrong as to the foundations of this church,
the so-called Irenaeus may be equally wrong as to its
third successional bishop. Tertullian has it that
Clement was the first bishop of Rome, so that such
statements as have been made on the subject are con
tradictory. Of the epistle attributed to this Clement,
on which his existence may be considered to depend,
we have really no evidence. In 1628 the Patriarch of
Constantinople presented our Charles I. with an ancient
MS. as derived from Alexandria, and therefore styled
the Alexandrine Codex, but its further history is un
known. Attached thereto is an epistle to the Corin
thians, the writer of which is unnamed. Hence it be
comes a bold statement, after alleging with Eusebius, on
the very questionable grounds before him, that there
was a Clement bishop of Rome, to declare this epistle
to be his work.
Barnabas (71-76). The time of this person is given
as a.d. 130. For this conclusion Mr Sanday has nothing
to'offer, but that he has arrived at it by “arguing
AL
7
�The Christian Evidences.
17
entirely from authority.” He allows that there is no
certainty that the epistle attributed to this individual
has any citation from the received scriptures, though he
thinks it probable that such has been the case. All
therefore connected with this name rests upon the
merest surmise.
An epistle by Barnabas is first mentioned by Clement
of Alexandria. Eusebius knew of such a production
but considered it spurious. The Sinaitic Codex, itself
a document of doubtful origin, has an epistle appended
to it which it is supposed may be the work of this
Barnabas, but as it does not bear its author’s name, or
show to whom it is addressed, or from whence it was
written, it requires the utmost hardihood to accept such
a production as evidence for Barnabas.
Ignatius (76-82). To this person many spurious
writings have been attributed. Mr Sanday relies on the
criticisms of Dr Lightfoot for such of his ascribed works
as may be genuine. Dr Lightfoot does not appear to
acknowledge the seven epistles in the shorter Greek
recension as from the pen of Ignatius, but says they
may be “accepted as valid testimony at all events for
the middle of the second century,” the grounds for which
conclusion are not stated. The three Syriac epistles
Dr Lightfoot looks upon as “the work of the genuine
Ignatius,” while Mr Sanday cautiously observes that
they may “probably” be such. There are two dates
for the martrydom of Ignatius, namely a.d. 107 and
115, to one or other of which Mr Sanday supposes
these Syriac epistles may be attached, but as respects
any testimony to be derived therefrom, in support of
the canonical scriptures, he is unable to come to a
satisfactory conclusion.
Of fifteen epistles ascribed to Ignatius, eight, being
unmentioned by Eusebius and Jerome, are universally
disallowed. There are two Greek editions of the seven
others, a longer and a shorter one, but the learned have
been divided as to which to accept. The tendency has
B
�18
The Christian Evidences.
been to relinquish the longer edition, which Mr Sanday
has not deemed it necessary even to notice. Dr Cureton
has brought to light three epistles in Syriac to which
critics now preferably lean, thus abandoning the Greek
versions altogether. According to Eusebius Ignatius
wrote his alleged seven epistles when he was on his way
to suffer martyrdom, but as he describes himself as then
bound to ten men guarding him on the way, of such
ferocity as to be referred to as ££ wild beasts ” and
“ leopards,” opportunity for such effusions is not pro
perly conceivable. Not only the date but the place of
the asserted martyrdom is uncertain, some saying it
occurred at Rome, and some at Antioch. This Ignatius
is spoken of by the dubious Irenaeus, whose testimony
meets us at every turn, and by Polycarp whose person
ality is also most questionable. The statement offered
in the name of Polycarp is also weakened by its
acknowledging the whole of the fifteen epistles
attributed to Ignatius, when, according to Eusebius,
there were but seven.
Polycarp (82-87). We hear of him and his epistle
to the Philippians from Irenaeus, which, believing in
this name, Mr Sanday considers to be “ external
evidence ” of unanswerable weight. Polycarp is said
to have been martyred about a.d. 167 or 168, but Mr
Sanday prefers Mr Waddington’s surmise that it was
in a.d. 155 or 156. He considers it not clear that
Polycarp drew from the canonical scriptures.
The statement imputed to Irenaeus is that Polycarp
had held “familiar intercourse with John” and others
“ that had seen the Lord,” and had often recounted
their discourses in his hearing. Judging by the
ordinary limits of human life, these contemporaries of
the Lord may have survived to a.d. 80 or 90. If
Polycarp were martyred in A.D. 155, sixty-five or
seventy-five years had then passed away from their
time; if in a.d. 168, seventy-eight or eighty-eight
years had gone by. We may reasonably ask of what
�The Christian Evidences.
19
age Polycarp could have been when he listened to and
profited by the said discourses'? Assuming that he
lived to be ninety, he was possibly then from two to
twelve years of age, or from fifteen to twenty-five, but
the whole is a matter of uncertainty and depending
upon the seemingly fictitious Irenaeus.
Mr Sanday has not ventured to touch upon the
particulars associated with the martyrdom of Polycarp,
which are of a fabulous order. The saint, it is said,
was taken to the stadium there to be put an end to; a
voice from heaven greeted him ; he was bound to a
stake to be burnt alive, but the flames arched round his
sacred person and refused to invade it; then he was
stabbed to death, and the blood gushing out from his
body extinguished the flames. He was thus dealt with
simply because he was a Christian, and yet a body of
his fellow Christians were allowed to witness the
spectacle themselves unscathed. They are stated to
have written an account of what they had seen, and the
same has been transmitted to us through the neverfailing Irenaeus.
Mr Sanday sums up his examination of the writings
of the above parties with the supposition that they
either employed the accepted gospels, or some other
writings closely resembling them, so that they thereby
establish “ the essential unity and homogeneity of the
evangelical tradition,” a verdict which will ill satisfy
those who are looking for early traces of the inspired
record. And thus ends this little band of “ Apostolic
Fathers,” the imperceptible links to the undiscernible
Apostles.
Justin Martyr (88-137). “Ko one,” observes Mr
Sanday further back (59), “ doubts the Apologies and
the Dialogue with Tryphon” attributed to Justin
Martyr.
“Modern critics,” he says, “seem pretty
generally to place the two Apologies in the years
147-150 a.d. and the Dialogue against Tryphon a little
latter.” Following Mr Hort, Mr Sanday considers that
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these productions were put forth from a.d. 145-147,
and that in the next year Justin died. It appears that
Justin had a substantial knowledge of the Christian
narratives and doctrines, but what text he followed is
a matter of doubt. Mr Sanday’s conclusion is that
“either Justin used our Gospels, or else he used a
document later than our Gospels, and pre-supposing
them” (102). “If Justin did not use our Gospels in
their present shape, as they have come down to us, he
used them in a later shape, not in an earlier.” “ Our
Gospels form a secondary stage in the history of the
text, Justin’s quotations a tertiary.” “This however
does not exclude the possibility that Justin may at times
quote from uncanonical Gospels as well” (128, 129).
He followed a corrupted text, which Mr Sanday argues
“ is a proof of the antiquity of originals so corrupted ”
(13 6), an argument however not helping us to understand
when these Gospels were written and corrupted.
Justin and his works have hitherto been accepted
upon trust, while being clearly open to question. I am
thus more concerned in testing the authenticity of these
works than in judging of the acquaintance they exhibit
with the Christian scriptures.
“ The best part of the information which we have
with regard to Justin Martyr,” says Dr Donaldson, “is
derived from his own writings. The few particulars
which we gather from others relate almost exclusively
to his death.” He is spoken of as having been a
martyr by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and
Eusebius, “ the circumstances of his death, however,
are involved in doubt.” “There is no clue to exact
dates in the history of Justin.” “The ‘Chronicon
Paschale’ places ” his martyrdom in a.d. 165, a probable
date; but there is no reason to suppose that it is any
thing more than a guess.” “ If we cannot trust
Eusebius, our only authority for placing Justin’s
martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we know
nothing in regard to the date of Justin’s death. The
�The Christian Evidences.
21
value of Eusebius’ opinion is not great, but it is infinitely
to be preferred to the utterly uncritical statements of
Epiphanius or Cedrenus,” who suggest that he died in
the reign of Hadrian, or onwards to the year a.d. 148
(“Hist, of Christ. Lit.” II. 62-74, 85). I think it is
apparent that whatever is to be known of Justin, must
be gathered from his imputed works, and should these
prove not genuine, that we shall have to part with this
long cherished name as that of an evidence for early
Christianity.
“ Probably,” says Mr Sanday, “ not one half of the
writings attributed to Justin Martyr are genuine” (59).
This should induce caution as to the remaining works
assigned to the same name. Of the two “ Apologies ”
ascribed to Justin, the second, if not incorporated in
the first, which is a matter of doubt, has been lost.
The “Apology” we possess is addressed to the Emperor
Antoninus Pius, his adopted sons Verissimus and
Lucius, the holy Senate, and the whole people of the
Romans, and its asserted object was to obtain for the
Christians a fair trial, to ascertain in what they might
have offended the laws of the state, in lieu of subjecting
them to death, simply because they were Christians.
On such a subject- an appeal to the Emperor as the
Chief Magistrate, responsible for the due administration
of the laws, would be all that would be required, and
it would be an indignity to him to make it appear that
his authority had to be supported by that of his sons,
the Senate, and the Roman nation at large. The one
referred tosby his familiar cognomen of Verissimus, who
was the heir to the empire, would assuredly in a public
document have been addressed by his proper designa
tion of Marcus JElius Aurelius Verus Caesar. The
other son, Lucius, was at the asserted time a child, and
could not have been thus appealed to. The so-called
“ Apology ” transgresses its required ends in entering
upon the tenets of Christian heretics, discussions which
could have been only irksome to Roman authorities
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The Christian Evidences.
It is also contentious and provocatory, in lieu of being
deferential and conciliatory, as such an appeal, if a
real instrument, would naturally be. The gods of the
Romans are described as sensual and false-hearted
demons who had imitated the circumstances associated
with Christ in the Jewish prophetic scriptures in order
to defeat the mission of Christ when he should come,
and the rulers addressed are adverted to as possibly no
better than robbers. And if Christians suffered death
in the time of Antoninus Pius, merely because known
as such, Justin exposed himself to that fate in openly
putting forth this “ Apology,” and is yet said to have
survived to address a second Apology to Marcus
Aurelius. Melito is represented to have offered an
Apology to this latter Emperor, in which, to urge his
case, he said, “ Eor now the race of the pious is perse
cuted, an event that never took place before” (Donald
son, “Hist, of Christ. Lit.” III. 230), a statement
giving the assurance that no persecution of Christians
occurred under Antoninus Pius, and thus putting an
end to the “ Apology ” of Justin.
The genuineness of the “Dialogue withTryphon” has
been questioned by some, and not without very sufficient
cause. It begins with an apparently fanciful representa
tion after the method of the fictitious dialogues in
Lucian and Plato—“While I was walking in the
morning in the walks of the Xystus, some one, accom
panied by others, met me with the words Hail, Philo
sopher!” and so induced the discussion. Justin
describes the course of his own studies. At first, in
pursuit of the “ knowledge of God,” he “ surrendered
himself to a certain Stoic.” Then, leaving him, he
“ betook himself to another, who was called a Peri
patetic.” After this he “ came to a Pythagorean, very
celebrated—a man who thought much of his own
wisdom,” but was dismissed by him because ignorant
of music, astronomy, and geometry. In his helplessness
“ it occurred to him to have a meeting with the Pla-
�The Christian Evidences.
23
tonists, for their fame was great,” and he fell in with
“ a sagacious man, holding a high position ” in this
school. Finally, when meditating in a “ certain field
not far from the sea,” he was followed by “ a certain
old man, by no means contemptible in appearance, ex
hibiting meek and venerable manners,” who made a
convert of him to Christianity. All is here vague and
unreal. We are not told who were these celebrities—
the Stoic, the Peripatetic, the Pythagorean, the
Platonist, and above all the venerable Christian
teacher who might have been an intimate of those of
the apostolic age. Tryphon, with whom the dialogue
is conducted, is unknown, as is Marcus Pompeius to
whom the production is dedicated. A Jew is
represented as courting discussion on religious subjects
with a Gentile philosopher, whose opinions to him
would be valueless, and with facile complaisance
habitually yields the victory to his opponent; and
every word that passed between them is reported over
a space covering in the translation above a hundred
and eighty pages of the Antenicene Christian Library.
The circumstances have only to be set forth to expose
the true character of this composition.
Hegisippus (138-145). Mr Sanday supposes this
author to have written in the time of the alleged
Irenaeus, or about a.d. 177. He thinks he must have
made use of the canonical Gospels, but this is only
problematical.
We hear of this person from Eusebius who says he
wrote an ecclesiastical history, no part of which is
extant. He is stated to have been of the period of
Hadrian (a.d. 117-138) and to have “lived during the
time of the first succession of the apostles.” Knowing
of him only from Eusebius we can have no assurance
of the age he belonged to, saving that he preceded
Eusebius.
Papias (145-160). This individual Mr Sanday
observes is reported to have suffered as a martyr about
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the same time that Polycarp was martyred. A com
mentary on the Oracles of the Lord is attributed to
him, from which Eusebius presents statements. After
discussing these extracts Mr Sanday says : “ Every
where we meet with difficulties and complexities.
The testimony of Papias remains an enigma that can only
be solved—if ever it is solved—by close and detailed
investigations.” He concludes that as far as he can
see “ the works to which Papias alludes cannot be our
present Gospels in their present form.” We derive
our knowledge of Papias from the so-called Irenaeus,
upon whom no dependence is to be placed.
The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions (161187). “ It is unfortunate,” says Mr Sanday, “ that
there are not sufficient materials for determining the
date of the Clementine Homilies.” “ Whether the
Recognitions or the Homilies came first in order of
time is a question much debated among critics, and the
even way in which the best opinions seem to be.
divided is a proof of the uncertainty of the data.”
These writings Mr Sanday believes draw upon the
Synoptic Gospels.
Clement of Rome purports to be the author of these
productions, but they are universally allowed to be
spurious. The editor of the Antenicene Christian
Library looks upon the “ Recognitions ” as “ a kind of
philosophical and theological romance.”
Basilides (188-196). This person was a Gnostic
who is said to have taught at Alexandria in the reign
of Hadrian (a.d. 117-137). He is spoken of by
Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Origen and Euse
bius, as also by Epiphanius who is said to be of a.d.
367. There is a gospel attributed to him, hut what it
contained appears to be subject of doubt. Mr Sanday
thinks he or his followers may have served themselves
of the first and third accepted gospels.
The authorities cited are too far removed from the
time alleged for Basilides to be satisfactory as to his
�The .Christian Evidences.
date, nor does it appear that the facts or doctrines of
Christianity are properly traceable to him. “Practi
cally,” says Mr Sanday, “the statements in regard to
the Commentary of Basilides lead to nothing.”
Valentinus (196-203). Our knowledge of this
Gnostic teacher is derivable chiefly from the supposed
and ever-ready Irenaeus, but Mr Sanday allows that “ it
cannot be alleged positively that any of the quotations
or allusions,” ascribed to this person, “were really
made” by him, it being possible that they come
from his school.
The acceptance of the four
gospels in this quarter he observes, “ rests upon the
statement of Irenaeus as well as upon that of the less
scrupulous and accurate Tertullian.” A passage asso
ciated with the third gospel is given by Hippolytus,
but “it is not certain that the quotation is made from
the master and not from his scholars.” Mr Sanday
claims for this teacher and his followers a time spread
ing from A.D. 140 to 180, but the dates must be taken
as merely supposititious.
Marcion (204-237). Mr Sanday places this person
at about A.D. 139-142, but allows that in connection
with him “there is some confusion in the chronological
data.” “ The most important evidence is that of
Justin,” but who is to answer for Justin himself?
Mr Sanday also seeks to support himself with the
shadowy and never-failing Irenaeus, the untrustworthy
Tertullian, and Epiphanius, himself an ignorant un
critical man,* and standing too far removed from the
time spoken of to be an authority on that head. “A
certain Gospel ” is attributed to Marcion, but “ the ex
act contents and character of that Gospel are not quite
so clear.” In judging thereof, Mr Sanday points out,
that a critic of “ the nineteenth century should be able
to thread all the mazes in the mind of a Gnostic or an
Ebionite in the second.” The question is did Marcion
mutilate our third Gospel, “ or is it not possible that
* The Sources and Development of Christianity, p. 38.
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The Christian Evidences.
the converse may be true, and that Marcion’s Gospel
was the original and ours an interpolated version?”
At this date of time it is not possible to decide such a
question, though Mr Sanday and others have their
opinions on the subject.
Tatian (238-242). This individual is said to have
been converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr. “ The
death of Justin,” says Mr Sanday, “is clearly the pivot
on which his date will hinge.” “ An address to the
Greeks ” is attributed to Tatian, “ but it contains no
references,” as Mr Sanday allows, “ to the Synoptic
Gospels upon which stress canbelaid.” A “Diatessaron”
is traced to him which the ever-ready Irenaeus
describes as having been a harmony of the accepted
Gospels.
Justin’s era, and even identity or personal existence,
being matters of uncertainty, we are equally in the
dark as to what relates to his alleged disciple Tatian.
“We know nothing of the time of his birth, or of his
parents, or of his early training.” Irenaeus “speaks
as if he knew very little about him.” “Nothing is
known of his death ” (Donaldson, “ Hist, of Christ.
Lit.” III. 4, 8-10, 20).
Dionysius of Corinth (242, 243). The interest in
this person turns upon his use of the phrase “The
Scriptures of the Lord,” which, having “ Irenaeus in
his mind’s eye,” Mr Sanday thinks may probably refer
to the canonical Gospels. We know of him only from
Eusebius whose information relates almost exclusively
to his letters. To his date there seems to be no clue.
Meuto (244, 245). Mr Sanday says nothing as to
this person’s time, and observes that the fragments
imputed to him “ contain nothing especial on the
Gospels.”
He is said to have addressed an Apology to Marcus
Aurelius. “We know nothing of his life,” says Dr
Donaldson, “ except that he went, as he tells us himself,
to the East.” “ Our principal authority in regard to
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the works of Melito is Eusebius ” (“ Hist, of Christ.
Lit.” III. 221-223).
Apollinaris (246-248). He is said to. have
addressed an Apology to Marcus Aurelius, and is thus
placed by Mr Sanday at from a.d. 176-180. There is
a fragment attributed to him connected with the Paschal
controversy by a writer in the “ Paschal Chronicle, but
as this takes us to the seventh century, Mr Sanday does
not insist upon the reliability of the fragment. He
is mentioned by Eusebius who cites one Serapion, but
who he was no one knows.
Athenagoras (248-251). Though not noticed by
either Eusebius or Jerome, Mr Sanday looks upon this
person as “an author of a certain importance.” An
Apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus,
and a treatise on the Resurrection, are ascribed to him.
The Apology, Mr Sanday considers may be dated about
a.d. 177. He cites a passage from this writer having
a close correspondence with one in the first Gospel, but
says that “he cannot, on the whole, be regarded as a very
powerful witness ” for the Synoptic Gospels..
The earliest to mention Athenagoras is Philip of Sida,
a Christian writer of the fifth century, removed by about
two centuries and a half from the alleged time of the
author spoken of, and concerning whom no one appears
to have had knowledge during this long interval. . Dr
Donaldson looks upon Philip of Sida as an unreliable
writer.
The Epistle of Vienne and Lyons (251-253). .The
persecution spoken of in this letter Mr Sanday considers
to have occurred in a.d. 177. He is satisfied that
there is a phrase in the letter taken from the third Gospel.
The extracts we have from this letter come from
Eusebius. In his history he says the persecution, in
question occurred in the seventeenth year of the reign
of Marcus Aurelius, which is the statement Mr Sanday
has followed, but in his “ Chronicon” it is alleged to have
happened ten years earlier. In the letter the allegation
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The Christian Evidences.
is that Christians, on the mere ground that they were
Christians, were fastened into iron chains and burnt to
death, ot thrown before wild beasts and torn to pieces,
acts said to have been sanctioned by the mild, philo
sophic, and law-respecting emperor we have in view.
Dr Donaldson appears to accept the letter as a genuine
production by some unknown writer of the period, but
says, “The style is loose. It abounds in antitheses
and strong expressions. It also mixes up incongruous
figures. Its statements are not, therefore, to be looked
on as cold historical accuracies ” (“ Hist, of Christ. Lit.”
III. 250-274). In treating of Irenaeus I have pointed
out that there is room to question the existence of
churches in Gaul during the second century, and it •will
be seen hereafter that these alleged early persecutions
cannot be said to rest upon any true historical basis.
Ptolemaeus and Heraclion (254-260). These are
Gnostic teachers who are spoken of by Irenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. Mr Sanday
considers that Irenaeus wrote of Ptolemaeus in a.d. 182,
and may have met with him on his visit to Home in a.d.
178 when he had already formed a school. Clement of
Alexandria shows that Heraclion was acquainted with
the third Gospel, and Origen says he wrote a commentaryon the fourth. Epiphanius attributes to him an
epistle to one Flora containing references to the first
Gospel. Heraclion is always coupled with Ptolemaeus,
and is therefore supposed to be of the same standing.
We can derive no certainty of the times of these
Gnostic teachers from Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria,
and Hippolytus, whose own eras are so uncertain.
From the testimony of Origen we may admit their
existence at some period preceding the middle of the
third century.
Celsus (260-263). We know of this writer through
the pages of his opponent Origen, who considered him
to be an Epicurean of the time of Hadrian or later;
“ exact and certain knowledge, however, about Celsus,”
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29
Mr Sanday observes, “ Origen did not possess.”
Towards establishing his period the effort is made
to identify this Epicurean with one bearing the name of
Celsus who was a Neo-platonist, and a friend of Lucian,
whose time is known of, and this identity is maintained
by Keim, whom Mr Sanday considers it safe to follow;
and it is on these hypothetical grounds that Origen, who
wrote at some time during the first half of the third
century, is supposed to have been matching himself with
Celsus of about a.d. 178. Mr Sanday appears, however,
a little uncertain about the position, as he winds up by
saying, “ At whatever date Celsus wrote, it appears to
be sufficiently clear that he knew and used all the four
Canonical Gospels.”
The Canon of Muratori (263-268). A fragment
of this canon alone is extant, beginning with a reference
to the third and fourth Gospels, whence Mr Sanday
fairly enough concludes that in the wanting part of the
document the first and second Gospels were included.
Most of the other writings of the New Testament are
spoken of in the fragment in question. “ The Pastor” of
Hermas is alluded to as a then recent production put
forth in the time of Pius, the brother of the author,
who was bishop of Rome. Pius is said to have occupied
the episcopate from a.d. 142-157, on which grounds Mr
Sanday presumes that the Muratorian Fragment was
put forth from a.d. 170-180.
We have first of all to accept as reliable the statement
which would associate this canon with the asserted
Pius of Rome, and having done this we have to accept
his time ; but we are without any assurance that there
was such a bishop other than the appearance of that
name in the list of bishops of Rome given by Euse
bius for which he has adduced no authority.
Mr Sanday concludes with discussing the evidences
to the recognition of the fourth Gospel, and the
state of the canon in the latter part of the second
century, but as his dependence in respect of these
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matters is on the names we have already discussed, it is
not necessary to go over these grounds with him.
It has not fallen within the scope of Mr Sanday’s
work to introduce possible evidences for Christianity
in the early times from the circle of writers outside
the Christian field, but it is essential to the position
I have to maintain that this branch of the subject
should be understood. I state my conclusions on
this part of the inquiry, but must refer my readers
for the supports thereto to my work on the Sources
and Development of Christianity.
The Jewish writers of the period alleged for the
uprise of Christianity naturally first deserve our atten
tion. The earliest of these is Philo Judaeus, whose
works are fortunately extant, and untampered with.
He wrote upon the Old Testament and other associated
subjects of interest to his people, and being of Alex
andria and of the Neo-platonic school there prevailing,
he embarked in representations of the Logos, or per
sonified Word of God, corresponding closely to what
were afterwards attributed to Christ in the fourth
Gospel. He is seen to have visited the temple at
Jerusalem as every devout Jew was bound to do,
and he also went on a mission to Borne in a.d. 42. The
next to be noticed is Nicolaus of Damascus, a learned
and eloquent Jew, more than once the chosen advocate
of his people, and the friend and defender of Herod
and of his successor Archelaus before the court of
Borne. We hear of him through Josephus. The third
is Justus of Tiberias, that city on the border of the
lake of Gennesareth with which so much of the action
described in the Gospel histories is connected. He
was a contemporary of Josephus and opposed his
measures in Galilee. He was thus of the generation
succeeding that alleged for Christ, and wrote a his
tory of the Jews which is referred to by Josephus,
and has been described by Photius, a well-known
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31
Byzantine writer of the ninth century. The fourth
is Josephus who was born in a.d. 37, and wrote his
account of the Wars of the Jews in a.d. 75, and his
“Antiquities” in a.d. 93. He was of Jerusalem, was
deputed to put down a sedition in Gralilee, was cog
nizant of the circumstances of Antioch and Damas
cus, and lived at Rome from a.d. 70 to the close.of
the century. He was one occupied with Jewish in
terests, and familiar with all the alleged earliest centres
of Christianity in the generations when it is said that
the faith first prevailed and was promulgated.. The
last source to be considered is the Talmud. This vol
uminous collection of writings represents the phases of
Jewish thought, religious, scientific, literary, and his
torical, for about a thousand years calculated from the
return from the Babylonish captivity. The earliest
edition thereof certainly dates after the establish
ment of Christianity, but it is looked upon as a faith
ful record of the more ancient traditions. Now. if
Jesus was what he is declared in matured Christianity
to have been, a god on earth, filling the regions round
about him with the fame of his wondrous works, and
realizing the position of the Jewish Messiah, he must
have been heard of in the quarters occupied by the
writers described, and he himself, and the movement
he is said to have instituted, would have found a
place in their several historical and literary productions;
but not a notice of him or his followers appears there
in, from which silence, on such a subject, by the in
terested Jews, no other conclusion can be fairly drawn
than that the narratives we have of this personage are
not based upon actual occurrences, but are mere fanciful
representations composed in later times for the support
of an ideal and highly artificial faith. So clearly did
it appear to the early Christians that some allusion to
Christ and his people should have occurred in these
Jewish histories, that they have not hesitated to intro
duce in the pages of Josephus passages respecting Christ,
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John the Baptist, and James the just“ the brother of the
Lord,” which, when exposed as forgeries, serve to prove
the barrenness of a cause that has to be thus supported.
When we turn to Pagan sources for any genuine
record of the existence of early Christianity, the
same absolute dearth of evidence and unscrupulous
attempts to 'supply the need, meet us. The writings
of Pliny the younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius, have
been tampered with in a manner similar to that adopted
in the instance of Josephus, in order to make it appear
that Roman writers of note were cognizant of the move
ment ; but, as noticed by the author of “ Primitive
Church History,” the persons so guilty of endeavouring
to practise upon our credulity, in furnishing materials of
evidence for the -first century of the asserted Chris
tian era, have committed the mistake of overlooking
that to keep up the fictitious representation it was re
quisite that similar evidence should have flowed on in
the second century.
A fertile expedient for the exhibition of Chris
tianity in the early days asserted for its existence,
is the statement that Christians in those times
frequently suffered persecution because of the faith
they held. The emperors Nero, Domitian, Trajan,
Hadrian, Antoninus, Aurelius, Severus, and Maximin,
re J said so to have oppressed them at various times
from a.d. 64 to the early part of the third century,
leading to formal apologies, or explanations of the tenets
of Christianity, being presented to avert such per
secutions. Hadrian is stated thus to have been
addressed by Quadratus, and Aristides; Antoninus
Pius and Marcus Aurelius in succession by Justin
Martyr ; and the latter emperor furthermore by Melito,
Apollinarius, and Athenagoras ; and ostensibly to his
reign the epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons
belongs. The persecution by Nero depends on passages
in Tacitus and Suetonius, and that by Trajan on the
alleged letter of Pliny the younger to that emperor,
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33
all of which may be shown to be fabrications ; * and
the testimony of Melito clears all preceding Marcus
Aurelius of the imputation in question.f The remain
ing Apologies, four in number, coupled with the letter
ascribed to the Churches in Gaul, are associated with the
pamp, of Aurelius. The selection made of this emperor
for the support of the Christian allegations is an
unfortunate one, his character being quite other than
would belong to an oppressor and destroyer of harmless
people. He was styled Verissimus because of his
sincerity and love of truth; when Cassius sought
to usurp his throne he mercifully forgave those con
cerned in the conspiracy; he devoted himself to
philosophy and literature; “in jurisprudence especially,
he laboured throughout life with great activity, and
his constitutions are believed to have filled many
volumes ; ” his “ education and pursuits ” “ exercised
the happiest influence upon a temper and disposition
naturally calm and benevolent.” “ He was firm without
being obstinate; he steadily maintained his own prin
ciples without manifesting any overweening contempt
for the opinion of those who differed from himself;
his justice was tempered with gentleness and mercy.”
“ In public life, he sought to demonstrate practically the
truth of the6Platonic maxim, ever on his lips, that those
states only could be truly happy which were governed
by philosophers, or in which the kings and rulers were
guided by the tenets of pure philosophy.” “No
monarch was ever more widely or more deeply be
loved. The people believed that he had been sent
down by the gods, for a time, to bless mankind, and
had now returned to the heaven from which he des
cended” (Smith’s “Diet, of Greek and Roman Bio
graphy”). This was certainly not the man to have in
itiated the violent and cruel persecutions with which the
Christians charge him.
* The Sources and Development of Christianity, pp. 32-36.
t See ante, p. 22.
C
�34
The Christian Evidences.
From such questionable and unsupported accusations
we may turn to something like reliable history.
“ After many years,” says Lactantius, who lived to a.d.
325, “that execrable animal appeared, Decius, who
persecuted the church.” “ Most of the Roman
emperors of this (second) century,” observes Mosheim,
“were of [a mild character.” “But when Decius
Trajan came to the imperial throne (a.d. 249), war, in
all its horrors, burst upon the Christians.” Decius,
says Niebuhr, “was the first who instituted a vehement
persecution of the Christians, for which he is cursed by
the ecclesiastical writers as much as he is praised by
the Pagan historians ” (the latter being the writers of
the “Historia Augusta” and Zosimus). “The
accounts,” Niebuhr continues, “ which we have of
earlier persecutions are highly exaggerated, as fHenry
Dodwell has justly pointed out. The persecution by
Decius, however, was really a very serious one ; it in
terrupted the peace which the Christian church had en
joyed for a long time” (“Prim. Ch. Hist.”, pp. 66,
67).
The learned author of “ Primitive Church History ”
takes his stand upon this event—the persecution of
the Christians by the emperor Decius—as affording the
first date connected with Christianity, historically
demonstratable, that can be put before us, and in this
conclusion I entirely concur. We are not to be in
fluenced by mere authority on such a subject. Credner, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, Baur, Ewald, Keim, and a
host of others of the German school, and Westcott,
Scrivener, Lightfoot, Hort, and M'Clellan of the
English school, depended upon more or less by Mr
Sanday, are not more likely to see the unseen or dis
cover the non-existent than others. What we look for
are facts, and not surmises, however ingeniously arrived
at or learnedly sustained, and if there be a date, resting
on independent grounds, for any event or person con
nected with Christianity, antecedently to a.d. 249, we
4
�The Christian Evidences.
35
are persuaded that it has yet to be brought to light
and put before us.
It is apparent that there were Christians in existence
before the time of Decius, who, meeting with them,
sought to put them down by violent measures; but
it is not necessary to suppose that it occupied any
lengthened period to establish Christianity, even in its
matured form. The various phases of Christianity have
had their antecedent expression of doctrinal belief; the
Gnostics grew out of the Neo-platonists of Alexandria;
the Judaic Christians or Ebionites followed Judaism,
■especially as exhibited by the Essenes and Therapeuts ;
and the Pauline Christians, finally becoming the
orthodox party, are derivable from Grecian Paganism.*
We have seen how readily diversities of religious
persuasions can be built up on what has gone before,
and can suppose for Christianity a like facile origin.
Thus Mahommedanism flourished in the days of
Mahommed; Protestantism in those of Luther; the
Quakers became a considerable body in the time of their
founder George Fox; Wesleyanism was established
on broad foundations in that of John Wesley ; Irvingism in that of Edward Irving; Puseyism, leading on to
Eitualism, in that of Dr Pusey • Brethrenism in that of
John Darby; Mormonism in that of Joseph Smith ; and
New Forest Shakerism in that of Mrs Girling. A genera
tion or two therefore might have sufficed to produce
■the Christianity against which Decius Trajan set his face.
The positive evidence for Christianity in its asserted
•early times having failed us, we become entitled to
weigh the negative evidence affecting the question. The
time of Nicolaus of Damascus covers the period of the
.alleged divine nativity of Jesus and of the slaughter
by Herod of the infants of Bethlehem; that of Philo
Judseus embraces the whole period attributed to Jesus ;
those of Justus of Tiberias and Josephus represent
the generation following Jesus, the time of Josephus as
* The Pauline Epistles.
�36
The Christian Evidences.
an author extending to a.d. 93 ; the times of Pliny the
younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius occupy from a.d. 106
to 110; and the Talmudic traditions comprehend the
age ascribed to Jesus and several centuries preceding him.
These being sources from which evidence for Christian
ity might be reasonably looked for, and none appearing
therein but what has been fabricated, we may conclude
that to inquiring and interested minds of the earliest
periods nothing was known of Christ or his followers
through his asserted life-time and onwards to a.d. 110.
The Synoptic Gospels, in the guise of a prophecy,
show a demolition of the temple at Jerusalem so com
plete that not one stone was left upon another, and in
1 Thess. ii. 16 we hear that the “wrath” of God had
“ come upon ” the Jews “to the uttermost”; circum
stances true of the time of Hadrian rather than of that
of Titus, and advancing us to a.d. 135. The scripture
records containing these material statements we may
presume were not put together till after the year in
question when Hadrian devastated Judea. The Apolo
gists are represented to have lived and written of
persecutions occurring from the era of Hadrian to that
of Marcus Aurelius, or from a.d. 117 to 180; but when
it becomes apparent that these representations are
destitute of foundation, we may be satisfied that they
have been introduced to support Christianity with
proofs of its prevalence at times when there was no
real evidence of its existence to be offered. We arrive
thus at the conclusion that to the year a.d. 180, or for
five generations following the period assigned for the
death of Jesus, there was no such thing known of or
professed as Christianity.
There occur then about seventy years to the time of
Decius, during which we are to presume that Christian
ity had its rise, and prevailed sufficiently to have
attracted the opposition of this persecuting emperor.
The writer of the third Gospel shows us that “ many
had taken in hand ” to describe the life of Christ be-
�The Christian Evidences.
37
fdre the appearance of his effort. These were necessar
ily unauthorized or apocryphal scriptures, as Origen has
recognized to have been the fact, of which we know
that there were upwards of fifty such apocryphal
gospels, whereof seven are still extant. The earliest
Christian writers made use of these unauthorized
scriptures, as for example the reputed Clement of Rome,
Justin Martyr, Papias, and the author of the Clemen
tine Homilies. The heretics, who were a numerous
body, held to these and not to the accepted scriptures.
The so-called Irenaeus, while limiting the gospels to
four in number, cites the “Shepherd” of Hermas and
incidents still found in the gospel according to
Nicodemus as authoritative, and in disregard of
the statements in the canonical scriptures, maintains,
from some other source, that it was necessary that
Christ should pass through the different stages of
human existence, and thus did not end his days till he
was upwards of fifty years of age. Athenasius, in the
fourth century, followed the gospel of Nicodemus in
respect of the descent of Christ to Hades, an event
also indicated, we may assume from the same source,
in the accepted scriptures (Eph. iv. 9 ; 1. Pet. iii. 19 ;
iv. 6), and which has been presented as an object of
belief to the church in what is called the Apostle’s
Creed. At the same period Eusebius informs us that
the gospel according to the Hebrews maintained its
ground with some to his time (“ Ec. Hist.” III. 25).
There are other passages of the received scriptures, as
pointed out by the author of “ Primitive Church
History,” which would seem to be traceable to
apocryphal productions, such as occur in Matt, xxiii.
35; Acts xx. 35; Rom. xv. 19, 24; 1 Cor. xv. 6;
Jude 14.
Mr Sanday’s very candid treatment of the testimony
of Papias affords valuable material in dealing with the
subject now before us. He admits freely that the
Gospel of Mark to which Papias referred is not the one
�8
The Christian Evidences.
admitted into the canonical collection, this latter, accord
ing to the conclusion he is obliged to arrive at, not
being “original but based upon another document
previously existing” (149). “No doubt,” he continues
to observe, “this is an embarrassing result. The
question is easy to ask and difficult to answer—If our'
St Mark does not represent the original form, of the
document, what does represent it”? Papias had
described the Gospel of Mark he knew of as not written
in order, while Mr .Sanday finds that “the second
Gospel is written in order,” and therefore cannot be the
“original document” of which Papias has spoken (151).
The testimony affecting the canonical Gospel according
to Matthew is of an equally fatal nature. This Gospel,
as Papias has shown, should have appeared in Hebrew,
which was the form in which he was acquainted with
it, but ours is in Greek, and as Mr Sanday further
notices it uses the Septuagint and not the, Hebrew
Scriptures, and it has “ turns of language which have
the stamp of an original Greek idiom and could not
have come in through translation.” “ Can it have been,”
he asks, “ an original document at all”? To which his
reply is, “ The work to which Papias referred clearly
was such, but the very same investigation which shows
that our present St Mark was not original, tells with
increased force against St Matthew” (152).
We may next consider the condition in which these
writings have been transmitted to us, and no one could
-more faithfully and unreservedly describe this than has
done Mr Sanday.
The scheme of the New Testament is avowedly based
upon what appears in the Old Testament. Mr Sanday
says, “the whole subject of Old Testament quotations
is highly perplexing. Most of the quotations that we
meet with are taken from the LXX. version: and the
text of that version was at this particular time
especially uncertain and fluctuating” (16, 17). Mr
Sanday is here occupied with the quotations made b\
�The Christian Evidences.
39
the early Christian writers, but the time alleged for
them approaches that asserted for the Canonical Scrip
tures, and Mr Sanday’s observations embrace the latter
description of writings also. He says, for example,
that “in Eph. iv. 8 St Paul quotes Ps. lxxviii. 19, but
with a, marked variation from all the extant texts of the
LXX.” (17). Again he adds, “ Strange to say, in five
other passages which are quoted variantly by St Paul,
Justin also agrees with him” (18). “ In two places at
least Clement agrees, or nearly agrees, with St Paul,
where both differ from the LXX.” (19). “Another
disturbing influence, which will affect especially the
quotations in the Gospels, is the possibility, perhaps
even probability, that many of these are made, not'
directly from either Hebrew or LXX., but through the
Targums. This would seem to be the case especially
with the remarkable applications of prophecy in St
Matthew” (19). Mr Turpie is referred to for the
details he exhibits. Of 275 quotations from the Old
Testament in the New, 37 agree with the LXX., but
not with the Hebrew; 76 differ both from the Hebrew
and the LXX., where the two are together; 99 differ
from them where they diverge; and 3, “though in
troduced with marks of quotation, have no assignable
original in the Old Testament at all” (20, 21). “But
little regard—or what according to our modern habits
would be considered little regard—is paid to the sense
and original context of the passage quoted,” the in
stances given being Matt. viii. 17; xi. 10 ; 2 Cor. vi. 17;
and Heb. i. 7 (24). “ Sometimes the sense of the
original is so far departed from that a seemingly
opposite sense is substituted for it,” the instances
being Matt. ii. 6; Rom. xi. 26; and Eph. iv. 8 (24).
In Matt, xxvii. 9, 10, Jeremiah has been cited in lieu
of Zechariah; in Mark ii. 26, Abiathar has been
named in lieu of Abimelech; and “in Acts vii. 16
there seems to be a confusion between the purchase of
Machpelah near Hebron by Abraham and Jacob’s
�40
The Christian Evidences.
purchase of land from Hamor the father of Shechem”
(25). Matt. ii. 23; John vii. 38, 42; Eph. v. 14, and
the second of the citations in 1. Tim. v. 18, “can he
assigned to no Old Testament original ” (25).
The text of the scripture in the various versions
made thereof became corrupted, of which Origen and
Jerome have seriously complained. Mr Sanday cites
Dr Scrivener who observes, “ now it may be said with
out extravagance that no set of Scriptural records
affords a text less probable in itself, less sustained by
any rational principles of external evidence, than that
of Cod. D. of the latin Codices, and (so far as it accords
with them) of Cureton’s Syriac. Interpolations as
insipid in themselves as unsupported by other
evidence abound in them all .... It is no
less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the
worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever
been subjected originated within a hundred years after
it was composed.” To which Mr Sanday adds, “This
is a point on which text critics of all schools are
substantially agreed. However much they may differ
in other respects, no one of them has ever thought of
taking the text of the Old Syriac and Old Latin tranlations as the basis of an edition. There is no question
that this text belongs to an advanced, though early,
stage of corruption” (135, 136).
“The first two
i chapters [of Matthew] clearly belong to a different stock
of materials from the rest of the Gospel.” “ If Luke had
had before him the first two chapters of Matthew, he
could not have written his own first two chapters as
he has done” (153). “For minor variations the text
of Irenaeus cannot be used satisfactorily, because it is
always doubtful whether the Latin version has correctly
reproduced the original.” The text of Tertullian hav
ing “ been edited in a very exact and careful form,” Mr
Sanday says, “I shall illustrate what has been said
respecting the corruptions introduced in the second
century chiefly from him” (332, 333). Mr Sanday
�The Christian Evidences.
4i
quotes from Dr Scrivener who states, “ Origen’s is the
highest name among the critics and expositors of the
early church; he is perpetually engaged in the discus
sion of various readings of the New Testament, and
employs language in describing the then state of the
text, which would be deemed strong if applied even to
its present condition with the changes which sixteen
more centuries must needs have produced ....
‘ But now,’ saith he, ‘ great in truth has become the
diversity of copies, be it from negligence of certain
scribes, or from the evil daring of some who correct
what is written, or from those who in correcting add or
take away what they think fit ’ ” (328).
In the Pauline epistles, the author constantly refers
to his having written them with his own hand (1 Cor.
xvi. 21; Gal. vi. 11; Col. iv. 18; Philemon 19),this being
“ the token in every epistle” (2 Thess. iii. 17), and when
another hand was employed, he was mentioned by name
(Rom. xvi. 22). The reason for the alleged caution
apparently is that the churches were disturbed by
spurious epistles as coming from the alleged Paul
(2 Thess. ii. 2). Peter is represented as using the like
precaution of naming his scribe (1 Pet. v. 12). If these
autographs were of importance to establish the auth
enticity of the text, it is clear that we should have had
the autographs as well as the text. Tertullian, to whom
it cost little to make an assertion, assured those he
addressed that there were such autographs (327), other
wise they have never been heard of. Speaking of
Origen, Dr Scrivener says, “respecting the sacred
autographs, their fate or their continued existence, he
seems to have had no information, and to have enter
tained no curiosity : they had simply passed by and
were out of his reach,” (328), or, it may be better
concluded, had never existed.
We may now judge of the tale of Christianity by its
proper historical foundations. A divinity is born on earth
�42
The Christian Evidences.
visibly moving among mankind; heavenly voices
announce his advent; when he opens his ministry the
spirit of God alights upon him in visible form, and the
Deity acknowledges his divine origin in audible tones ;
Satan appears in bodily form to subvert him with
temptations, but is defeated ; he turns water into wine
and creates cooked food out of nothing for the support
of thousands; he controls the elements, quelling a
storm and walking on water as on dry land; he heals
the sick with a word or a touch, restoring the lame, the
deaf, and the blind; the devils then infesting mankind
leave their victims and vanish at his command; the
dead rise to life obedient to his word ; the ancient
Hebrew worthies, Moses and Elijah, return to earth to
glorify him; angels come and minister to him; he is
publicly put to an ignominious death, but rises from,
the grave, visits and comforts his followers, and ascends
before them into heaven; from thence he sends forth
the Spirit of God to be for ever with his people, guiding
and instructing them in all things till he should
speedily return and take them to himself.
One would think that the revelation of such a being,
attended by demonstrations designed to attract attention
and fill all minds with wonder and awe, would not fall
dead upon the generation so visited, and that every
word and outward manifestation from the divine
personage so exhibiting himself for the benefit of man
kind, would have had its due and full effect, and have
left its impress upon the favoured witnesses of these
occurrences, and those who immediately succeeded
them. Equally should we expect that the mission of
the Holy Ghost would not be in vain, that the task
committed to him would be duly performed, and that
the divinely taught and guided people would stand out
in open relief as an exemplar to the darkened world
that was to be illuminated by their presence and
benefitted by their instructions. Nor could we antici
pate that the promise of the early return of the divine
�The Christian Evidences.
43
founder would remain, even at a distant day, unre
deemed, as a vain utterance, not to be realized. Such,
however, is the imaginary portraiture, and such the
reverse with which the stern progress of events
indubitably presents us.
The facts offered for acceptance are of a character to
contradict all experience, and involve a series. of
disturbances of the governing laws in nature which
operate around us in unvarying consistency; a fatal
interval of five generations occurs between the facts and
their known acceptance by any one, and we have to
depend for them, not on witnesses, but on records
suspiciously introduced at a later era j nor has the
integrity of these records, though said to have been
divinely inspired, been preserved. The first to avow
belief in the founder of the new faith are those who
are condemned as heretics, and the earliest representa
tions about him are in documents rejected as unauthor
ized and apocryphal. The Holy Ghost abstains from
action for five generations and upwards,. leaving the
field open to the enemy, who occupies it with false
professors and spurious narrations. At length a body
claiming to be orthodox make their appearance and
produce four accounts of the founder for which they
claim divine support. With the aid of a Christian
advocate we may assure ourselves that two of these are
not what they purport to be, but are substitutes for the
original writings which in some unaccountable manner
have disappeared. A third hangs upon these two and
necessarily falls with them. The fourth contradicts all
that has gone before it, is obviously framed for dogmatic
effect, and is so surrounded with difficulties as to its
authenticity as to have become a vehicle for disputations
never to be solved satisfactorily by those who would
uphold it. On the other hand improving knowledge
sets us above the condition of those who in ignorance
have accepted these more than questionable scriptures.
The proved antiquity of the human race makes us bid
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Christian evidences
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 44 p. ; 18 p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The oval portrait on title page is a photo [of the author?] that has been cut out and pasted. A review of the Rev. W. Sanday's work: "The Gospels in the Second Century." Includes bibliographical references. Date of publication from KVK. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[1877]
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G5473
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Book reviews
Christianity
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Christian evidences), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Gospels