1
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2d72c752b835ffdada2ce818a75532ad
PDF Text
Text
& Bibliographer.
251
full and consecutive account that has yet been published of the restoration
and remodelling of the Benedictine Order in England, abridged from the
two folio volumes of Weldon’s original “ Memoirs,” which were finished
in 1709, it is to be hoped that the wants hitherto felt have, in some
measure, been supplied. The editor has appended to his introductory
remarks a full and interesting biographical sketch of Bennet Weldon, the
pious and learned author of these “ Notes.”
Travels in South Kensington, with Notes on Decorative Art ana
Architecture in England. By MONCURE D. Conway. Triibner &
Co. 1882.
In this handsomely-illustrated volume, the author of “ Sacred Anthology,”
&c., tells in an amusing, and at the same time instructive manner, a great
deal that is worth knowing concerning the rise and progress of the South
Kensington Museum, from its establishment in 1857 down to the present
time, and discourses at length
on its collection of objects,
its educational or art training
method and character, and
on what is to be learnt that
may be useful in architecture
and decoration by a study of
its contents. “ The little six
penny guidebook sold at the
door,” as our author tells us,
“ is necessarily provisional ;
the historical and descriptive
volume which such an institu
tion requires must remain a
desideratum so long as the
Museum itself is changing
and growing daily before our
eyes.” In the volume under
notice, Mr. Conway has at
tempted to do no more than
convey his impression of the
value of the collection as a
whole, as a medium of edu
cation. He has illustrated
his remarks with engravings
of several interesting objects,
including a Chasse, or reli
IVORY TANKARD (AUGSBURG, I7TH CENT.)
quary (13th century), pastoral
staves (14th century), an ancient Persian incense-burner, an Italian salt
cellar (15th century), and the Cellini sardonyx ewer, mounted in enam
elled gold, and set with gems (Italian, 16th century). This last-named
engraving, and also that of an ivory tankard (Augsburg, 17th century), we
are enabled, by the kindness of the publishers, to reproduce as examples
of the illustrations.
The second half of Mr. Conway’s book, dealing with “ decorative art
and architecture in England,” embraces a wide range of subjects, from the
railway-bridge at Charing-cross and the Albert Memorial in Hyde
Park, to the decoration of Penkiln Castle in Ayrshire, and of Sir Walter
Trevelyan’s house at Wallington, in Northumberland.
�252
The Antiquarian Magazine
Mr. Conway concludes his work with a short and graphic account of
that “ Utopia in brick and paint in the suburbs of London,” called Bedford
Park, in the neighbourhood of Turnham-green,—a little red-brick town,
made up of the quaintest of “ Oueen Anne” houses.
Kelly's Directory of the Six Home Cotinties. o. vols. Edited by E. R.
Kelly, M.A., F.S.S. London : Kelly & Co. 1882.
A quarter of a century ago Kelly’s Post Office Directory for the Six
Home Counties was a modest volume of less than 1,500 pages ; but such
has been the increase of population in the suburbs of London of late
years, that it has been found necessary to divide the work into two parts,
each forming a volume, and embracing the home counties north and
south of the Thames respectively. The first volume, dealing with Essex,
Herts, and Middlesex, extends to over 1,500 pages, the corresponding
portion of the same book in 1845 having been comprehended in rather
less than 300 pages ; whilst in the second volume the County of Surrey
alone claims 915 out of a total of 2,474 pages. In contrasting the present
edition with those of earlier years, one cannot fail to be struck with the
great improvement which has taken place in the historical portion of the
work, and consequently, the antiquarian and archaeologist may now find
plenty of food to suit his taste in the notices of the several parishes, for
not only is mention made of the foundation of its church, schools, and
other institutions, but short descriptions are added of its ancient castles,
fortifications, ho^telries, and manor-houses, where such are to be found.
Exception must be taken, perhaps, in some instances to the editor’s state
ments with respect to the styles of ecclesiastical architecture ; but in such
matters there is ample room for differences of opinion, for it must be
remembered that until a very recent date nearly every Norman building
was set down as “ Saxon.” However, it may be safely stated that in by
far the majority of instances Messrs. Kelly’s descriptions are thoroughly
correct.
Les Melanges Poetiques d’Hildebert de Lavardin. Par B. HAUREAU,
Membre de l’Institut. 8vo. Paris : Pedone-Lauriel.
The works of Hildebert de Lavardin, Archbishop of Tours, were pub
lished in 1708 by the Benedictine monk Beaugendre, in one folio volume ;
they comprise, as most scholars are aware, not only metaphysical treatises,
but a considerable number of poems, which procured for their author,
among his contemporaries, the reputation of an elegant writer and of an
enthusiastic admirer of classical antiquity. We might easily fill pages
with quotations testifying to the popularity enjoyed in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries by him who was universally designated as the “ egregius versificator,” but want of space prevents us from doing so, and we
shall merely transcribe, by way of specimen, the following elegiac couplets
of Laurentius, Abbot of Westminster:—
‘ ‘ Inclytus et prosa, versuque per omnia primus,
Hildebertus olet prorsus ubique rosam.
Diversum studium fidei subservit eidem ;
Multa camcena quidem tendit ad illud idem.”
Students of mediaeval literature are, of course, anxious to know whether
Hildebert de Lavardin deserves all the praise which has been lavished
upon him, and they would naturally turn either turn to Beaugendre’s
edition or to the reprint given in the Abbe Migne’s collection, and by the
Abbe Bourasse. Unfortunately, the learned Benedictine, who was nearly
eighty years old when he undertook to publish the Archbishop’s works,
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Travels in South Kensington
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 251-252 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review by an unknown reviewer of Moncure Conway's work 'Travels in South Kensington' from 'The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer', May 1883.
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[s.n.]
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[1883]
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G5610
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Book reviews
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[Unknown]
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Travels in South Kensington), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Kensington (West London)
Moncure Conway
South Kensington Museum
-
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306c6bfae49d2eae2fdcaee88420279a
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Text
THREE NOTICES
OF THE
SPEAKER’S COMMENTARY,
FROM THE DUTCH OF DR A. KUENEN,
rROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN.
Revised bij the $uthoty
AND TRANSLATED BY J. MUIR, Esq., D.C.L.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�Mottoes
of the
Conservative Theologian.
nX'zjp ye 8'r/ Un ovk aKpi^jj e^eraaT^v xP>r! etvai t&v vir8p rou
Pelov etc iraXaiov fiep-vOevfiivoiv. ra yap roi Ka.Ta to elute %vvri68vn ov TruTTa, 67rei3oir to Belov tis 7rpoa9rj Tip Xbyip, ov irdvry
&ti<tto, (palveTat.—Arrian, Anabasis, v. 1, 2.
“ But only, one should not scrutinize too rigorously the
stories which have been handed down from ancient times
regarding what is divine. For things which, judged by the
test of probability, are not credible, appear to be not alto
gether incredible when their divine element is taken intoaccount.”
ov88v ffo<f>t£o/J.ea6a rolai Salfioffi.
irarplovs irapaboxte, cis 6’ opi'qXiKas xpovip
KeKT"qp.ed', ovSeis airra KaTaflaXel Xoyos,
ov8’ el <5i’ &Kpuv to aocpov evpyrai ippevwv.
Euripides, Bacchse, w. 200ff.
“We never rationalize about the gods. No reasoning can
overthrow the hereditary traditions which we hold, and which
are as old as time itself,—not even although the ingeniousarguments have been discovered by the subtlest wits.”
Replies
of the
ovk
Unbiassed Searcher after Truth.
aih<f>povos 8’ d7ri<TTlas
tenv ovoev xPrl<r'-P-d>Tepov flporois.
Euripides, Helena, w. 1617ff.
“ Nothing is more profitable to mortals than a prudent
distrust.”
irdvTa 88 doKipcd^ere, t8 KaXov Kanye^e.
1 Thess. 5. 21.
“ But prove all things : hold fast that which is good.”
aXKd p.ot \p8v86s re
£uyxw/’Wat
Ka^ dXyOes atyavlaai ov8ap.lte Oep.is.
Plato, Thesetetus, p. 151.
“ But for me,” said Socrates, “it is by no means lawful to
admit falsehood and suppress truth.”
�THREE NOTICES OF THE “SPEAKER’S
COMMENTARY. ”
HE three volumes of the “ Speaker’s Commentary,’
(of which the proper title is “The Holy Bible,
according to the authorized version, with an explanatory
and critical commentary, by Bishops and other clergy
of the Anglican Church; edited by F. C. Cook, Canon
of Exeter.” London : Murray,) form the subject of
three notices from the pen of the eminent Hebrew
scholar and critic, Professor A. Kuenen, of Leyden,
in Holland, which have appeared in the Dutch theo
logical journal (Theologisch Tijdschrift) in January
1872, and May and September 1873. The essential
parts of these articles, as translated from the original,
with the sanction of the author, are as follows.
*
T
Volume I.
The circumstances which led to the composition and
publication of this work are well known. The minds
of many persons were disquieted by the “ Essays and
Reviews,” and by the critical investigations of Bishop
Colenso. The idea occurred to the Speaker of the
House of Commons that the difficulties which had been
raised in regard to the Bible, should be answered by
* Professor Kuenen wishes it to be understood that his
notices were contributed to a scientific journal, and written
principally for theologians. Had they been composed for the
perusal of the general public in England, they would pro
bably have been somewhat fuller, and more popular in their
■character.
�6
Three Notices oj
the Church in a sufficient manner. He entered into
consultation with the Bishops, and received from them
the desired support. A commission was formed, which
divided the entire Bible into eight sections, and for
each section chose the scholars who were most
competent to handle it. The editorship of the whole
work was entrusted to the Rev. Mr Cook, who, as often
as he deems it necessary, is assisted by the Archbishop
of York, and the Regius Professors of Theology at
Oxford and Cambridge. The first portion has now
been published in two parts, which embrace the entire
Pentateuch. The contributors to this are, Dr Harold
Browne, Bishop of Ely, (General Introduction, Intro
duction to, and Commentary on, Genesis); the editor,
Canon Cook, (Introduction to Exodus; Explanation of
Exodus i-xix.; Excursuses on the march to Sinai, on the
Pentateuch and Egyptian History, on Egyptian words
in the Pentateuch); the Rev. Mr Clark, (Explanation
of Exodus xx-xl., and Leviticus, besides an Introduction
to this book); the Rev. Mr Espin, (Introduction to,
and Explanation of, Numbers and Deuteronomy). The
arrangement of the work is this : under the text of the
common translation are printed the notes, in which
also the improvements in the translation are introduced;
whilst the more extensive notes on disputed or im
portant points are placed at the end of the chapters to
which they belong, and are separately referred to in
the index. The whole work has a princely appearance ;
paper and print are excellent; the two parts, making in
all 928 pages, form two handsome volumes : illustrative
woodcuts, too, are not wanting.
Much, indeed very much, is to be learned from
this book, especially by laymen, for whose benefit it
was written. Most of the composers of it are learned
men, well up to the level of their task. The editor,
Mr Cook, possesses great knowledge of Egyptian
matters, and is perfectly familiar with the most recent
geographical researches in the Peninsula of Sinai.
�the “ Speaker s Commentary.'”
7
Messrs Clark and Espin have, in general, shown a
"broad and able apprehension of the work they had to
do. But they lack one thing, and that vitiates the
whole. They are not free. The apologetic aim of the
work is never lost sight of; and constantly operates
to disturb the course of the enquiry. It is, in one
word, science such as serves a purpose that is here
put before us. The writers place themselves in opposi
tion to the critics of the Pentateuch, depreciate their
arguments, make sport, in the well-known childish
manner, of their mutual differences, and try to refute
them with proofs and reasonings which they themselves,
in any other case, would reject as utterly insufficient,
or regard as unworthy of notice. None of them sins in
this respect so naively and so grossly (sterft) as Dr
Harold Browne, the Bishop of Ely. Indeed, it was
no easy task which he had undertaken, the Intro
duction to the entire Pentateuch and to Genesis,
and the explanation of that book.
But they are
miserable demonstrations and farfetched and unna
tural suppositions to which he treats us.
*
As ex
amples, I note his reasoning (pp. 4-15) to prove that
the history of the post-Mosaic period presupposes the
existence of the Pentateuch; his observations (pp.
24-29) on the names of God in Genesis; his notes on
the days of the creation (p. 36), on the genealogies
in the fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis (p. 64),
on the chronology of Jacob’s life (pp. 177 ff.) In this
last note Dr Browne does not hesitate to cook up again
an almost forgotten conjecture of Kennicot’s, and dis
tinguish the twenty years in Genesis xxxi. 41, from
those inverse 38, and thus to lengthen Jacob’s sojourn
in Haran to that extent! This one instance shows
better than a long demonstration how greatly dogmatical
considerations have clouded soundness of understanding
and exegetical perception in the case of this apologist.
On fitting occasions his fellow-labourers do not fall short
* See the note in p. 28.
�8
Three Notices of
of him in this respect. Thus, for example, the excursus
of Mr Clark on the Tabernacle (pp. 474-79), based, on
the investigations of Mr Ferguson, is an almost amusing
proof how the apologetic art, with the best intentions
and brilliant results, does violence to the text of
Scripture j here, in fact, a very handsome edifice is
constructed, and. delineated, which, however, alas ! does
not at all correspond with the description in Exodus
xxvi. And yet the notes of the same writer, on Exodus
xx. (pp. 335 ff.), and on Exodus xxviii. 30, on the
Urim and Thummim, prove that he is a man with a
clear head, to whom only one thing is wanting, viz.,
that he dare not overpass certain fixed limits—at least
entirely—for he really sets one foot across them. Or
can the position he maintains, that in Exodus xx. and
Deuteronomy v., we have before us not the original
Decalogue, but two expansions of one original, be con
sistent with the ecclesiastical doctrine of inspiration ?
But I must not expatiate further, partly because it
is not my object to take this opportunity of vindicating
anew the rights of modern criticism, and. partly because
I wish to draw attention to the English reviewers of
the ‘ Speaker's Commentary.’ Most of the reviewing
periodicals have already pronounced their opinions upon
it. They are, as was to be expected, more or less
favourable. But even the most favourable notices are
not composed in the tone of triumph which should
have been employed if the ‘ adverse critics ’ had indeed
been defeated. If I am not deceived, this Commentary,
entirely against the intentions of those who planned it,
will before all things have this result, that the intelligent
public will begin to look upon critical questions as open
questions, in the discussion of which the learned will
still have a good deal to do. The maxim nil scire tutissima fides is applicable to this case also. The ‘ believer ’
feels himself strong so long as he thinks that Satan
and his satellites are fighting against his belief. But
when he observes that it is assailed and defended, and
�the lt Speaker s Commentary.”
9
even very badly defended, with human arguments, he
becomes less at ease. I should be very much surprised
if, after the lapse of some years, it did not appear that
the ‘ Speaker’s Commentary ’ had powerfully co-operated
to make criticism indigenous in England.
First of all, this work already exercises influence in
this direction through the reply which it has called
forth. Dr Colenso has recently given to the world the
first part of his work, 1 The New Bible Commentary—
critically examined.’ It is occupied with the portion
contributed by Dr Harold Browne to the new Com
mentary, and adduces formidable objections against it.
Colenso follows the Bishop of Ely step by step, and
exposes the weakness and incorrectness of his criticism
and exegesis pitilessly and often strikingly.
This
examination is not exactly an entertaining piece of
reading. One would have asked any other writer why
he did not rather omit many details, and show, by
some clear proofs, the wrongness of Dr Browne’s
method. Such an essay would certainly have been
more instructive for the general public. But Dr Colenso
has evidently, and not without reason, thought that
he was not at liberty to pass over a single note, and
that he must avoid even the appearance of failing in
any instance to supply the necessary answer. The
succeeding parts of his reply I propose to take up along
with the sixth part of his work on the Pentateuch,
which is soon to appear.”—(Theologiscli Tijdsclvrift
for January 1872).
Volume II.
The second volume contains the explanation of the
books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel,
and first Kings. Of the contributors to vol. I., we
meet here only with Mr Espin, who has charged him
self with the treatment of Joshua. The following four
books are explained by Lord Hervey, Bishop of Bath
B
�io
Three Notices oj
and Wells; and first and second Kings are entrusted
to Professor G. Rawlinson, the well-known editor of
Herodotus, and author of “ The Five Great Monarchies
of the Ancient Eastern World?’
When, after reading the introductions to the several
books, and the notes on the most important passages, I
reflect how much time, labour, and money, have been
expended on the writing and printing of this work, I
receive a painful impression. Here learned theologians,
and such, too, as are high dignitaries, come forward to
instruct the educated participators in their religious
belief; and all that these learn from them they must
afterwards unlearn. It is a matter of course that in this
commentary many faults in the ‘authorised version’
are amended, and many points of an archseological and
geographical nature are correctly illustrated. But that
is not the question, when we are judging a work like
this. The point of importance here is, whether the
contributors to the work make their learning subservient
to the diffusion of a sound method of regarding and
estimating the Bible. The reverse is the fact. Filled
with reverence for “ God’s Holy Word,” afraid of every
thing that appears to do it injustice, apprehensive of
the consequences which in their opinion every deviation
from tradition must draw after it, they regard it as a
sacred duty to maintain that which appears to them to
be the sound view, and to reject all more reasonable
conceptions as “ unbelieving” and “ sacrilegious.” Now
and then the truth is too powerful for them, and they
have found themselves forced to give up the correctness
of the Biblical narrative or the complete harmony of
its parts. But when they communicate this to their
readers, the thing is done in such a way that the belief
in the infallibility of the Word of God is weakened as
little as possible, or not at all. The deviations which
they allow themselves, even those of the most con
sequence, are described as unimportant, so that the
reader receives the impression that really everything
�the il Speaker’s Commentary’’
11
'continues on the old footing. The concessions, how
ever, form the exception. As a rule, the traditional
view is in fact maintained, even in cases where it may
be said to be absolutely untenable: and then the
difficulties are either passed over in silence, or are not
recognized in their real force, or are answered with
childish arguments. Of course, no one who has once
obtained an insight into the actual state of the questions
at issue, will for a moment be shaken in his convictions
by anything that is thus urged. But the portion of the
public which is conservatively disposed is fortified in
its prejudices by such guides as these. The hindrance
which they occasion by their struggles can, it is true, only
be temporary. It will one day become manifest to every
one that the free, the strictly critical, treatment of the
Old Testament is the only true one, and at the same
■time the only one which renders full justice to the reli
gion of Israel, and either entirely removes, or confines
.within their proper limits, the difficulties which are
alleged against it. That which the “adverse critics”
now already know, must one day become clear to all,
that fearless criticism, and this alone, opens up an
access to Israel’s sanctuaries. Magna est veritas et prcevalebit. But, nevertheless, it is much to be lamented
that the dignitaries of the Anglican Church should
make use of their influence to oppose the general recog
nition of this truth, and waste their powers in throwing
up obstacles which, for the present generation at least,
will prove insurmountable.
But even the appearance of boasting must be avoided.
And therefore I must not omit in some measure to
justify my judgment. For this purpose some specimens,
a few handfuls out of an ample store, will more than
suffice.
The extermination of the Canaanites is discussed in
section seventh of the introduction to Joshua (pp. 13-16).
Mr Espin here proceeds upon the supposition that this
“destruction” is a fact. Are, then, the numerous
�Three Notices of
12
proofs of the contrary unknown to him ? No; lie
allows them a certain weight. 11 Ewald’s idea,” as he
writes in p. 12, “that the early campaigns of Joshua
were in the nature of sudden raids, overpowering for
the moment all opposition, hut not effectually subduing
the country, has probably much truth in it.” Never
theless, we do not perceive how this is to be reconciled
with the recognition of the credibility of Joshua x.
26-43, xi. 10-23, where just the contrary is taught.
The concession to Ewald stands there as the simplest
and most innocent thing in the world, and has then no
further consequences. In section seven, it is Joshua
who destroys the Canaanites. And this procedure,
now, is defended as worthy of God! It can be fully
justified, in its relation both to the Canaanites and to
Israel, and to the rest of mankind. Eor the Canaanites
are described as incarnate devils, who wilfully persevered
in idolatry and immorality, in spite of God’s warnings in
the deluge, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra,
in spite of the examples set them by the patriarchs.
As regards the Israelites, must not God’s command to
*
* [The Old Testament writers who ascribe these commands
to the Almighty, even although they knew that, at the time
when they wrote, these injunctions could no longer be carried
into effect, can hardly escape the charge of inhumanity, and
of conceiving their Creator to be “ altogether such an one as
themselves ” (Ps. L. 21); and to them may be applied the
words in which Iphigeneia charges the Taurians with imput
ing their own bloodthirsty disposition to the goddess Diana,
to whom they sacrificed all the foreigners who landed in their
country :—
p.ev oZv
Oeoiaiv e<mdp.aTa
diriara Kplvw, irat.88s •padriva.t. flopa,
toiis 8’ evOaS’, avroiis tovras av0pwiroKTOVOVS,
is t8v 0e8v to cpavKov avatfripew 8okG>.
oi/oeva yap olp.ai 3atp,6v<i>v etfai kok6v.
—Euripides, Iph. in Tauris,
ra TarrdXou
vv. 386 ff.
“I indeed regard the Tantalean banquet offered to the gods
as incredible—that they should be pleased with feasting upon
�the “ Speaker’s Commentary.”
ij
•exterminate the inhabitants of Canaan have had the
effect of rendering them cruel and bloodthirsty ? 0 no !
■“ No body of men ever acquired, or would be likely to
acquire, a relish for human slaughter, by being con
strained to put to the sword, in cold blood, all the
inhabitants of a country, city after city, even when, as
must many times have been the case in Joshua’s cam
paigns, no resistance had been, or could be, attempted.”
Mr Espin, truly, speaks—and here I have quoted
literally, since otherwise I might easily have been
■charged with exaggeration,—as if any thing were known
to him of the influence which such murdering in cold
blood would exercise!
He adds, that the war of
■extermination against the Canaanites was absolutely
necessary to inspire the people of Israel with aversion
to the sins of these races. But did Israel, then, learn
this aversion by its supposed work of butchery ? What
becomes of the accounts in the book of Judges of this
people’s repeated falling away from Jehovah? The
•entire reasoning of Mr Espin is out and out unreal.
But on another account, also, it makes a painful im
pression. However well meant, it tends in reality to
the recommendation of a morality above which Chris
tians, Mr Espin himself not excepted, are happily far
elevated. And this morality it ascribes to God,, to Him
whom Jesus has preached to us as the Father of the
whole of mankind. In truth, we are fully justified in
protesting, in the name of religion, against dogmatic
principles which lead to such consequences.
But how much soever Mr Espin can digest, the miracle
■of the sun and moon standing still (Joshua x. 12-15,)
is too strong for him. Some years ago, M. Baumgarten
wrote, that since Joshua’s bold prayer was sealed by
a boy. But I think that the men of this country, being them
selves homicidal, have imputed the same wickedness to the god
dess ; for I do not conceive that any of the deities is evil.”
Compare the Bishop of Natal’s Lectures on the Pentateuch,
p. 217.—J. M.]
�14
Three Notices of
Jehovah’s act and word, nothing remained for us butsimply to believe that such an event had actually
happened (“ so ist es an uns dasz solches geschehen
einfach zu glauben).” * This belief is all too huge for
the English expositor, and there is none of us who will
deal hardly with him on that account. But, the credi
bility of Joshua must not be endangered ! The reader is,
therefore, informed (p. 57, f.) that the interpretation of
Joshua x. 12, 13,a as a poetical hyperbole is maintained
not only by Maurer, Ewald, and Von Lengerke, but
also “ what is more important,” is regarded as admis
sible by such men as Hengstenberg, Keil, and Kurtz,
“ theologians whose orthodoxy upon the plenary
inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture is wellknown and undoubted.” So much, preliminarily, by
way of tranquillizing the reader’s mind ! After this
the pruning-knife is taken in hand, and the entire
paragraph,—verses 12-15,—is lopped off as an inter
polation. It is “a fragment of unknown date and
uncertain authorship, interpolated in the text of the
narrative, the continuity of which is broken by the
intrusion.” (p. 56).t Now everything is in order. We
are freed’ from the miracle,—which, nevertheless, would
very well admit of being vindicated—and have placed
the writer of Joshua in safety; he could not, in truth,
prevent another person from interpolating his narrative !
We have just spoken of the conquest of the whole
of Canaan, and the extermination of all the inhabitants
* Herzog’s Heal Encyclopsedie, vol. vii. 40.
f [It is but proper to add, however, that in Bunsen’s Bibelwerk, which is by no means an orthodox book, these verses are
spoken of as “forming an inserted (eingelegte) passage, with
a fragment from a collection of songs called ‘The Book of
the Righteous,’ and which is only once again quoted in 2
Samuel i. 18. Probably the national heroes in particular were
there celebrated. The original sense of our passage can thus
be poetically understood ; and so all the lies and dreams built
upon it, together with the persecution of honest science based
thereon, fall away of themselves.”—J. M.J
�the “ Speaker s Commentary
15
by, or in. the time of, Joshua. It appeared that Mr
Espin, does not understand too rigorously the very
positive declarations on that subject, in the book of
Joshua, and so can, in some degree at least, do justice
to the conflicting accounts both in Joshua itself and in
Judges. In passing, he recognizes, in reference thereto,
that in Judges, first chapter, events belonging to the
period after Joshua’s death are related. The Bishop of
Bath and Wells could, however, have instructed him
better on that point. From him, we learn (pp. 123-125)
that it was in Joshua’s lifetime that the tribes made
the conquests which are there ascribed to them. Rarely
has a statement fallen under my observation in which
things were represented in so distorted a shape, or
brought into relation with each other in a more wond
erful manner. The matter is otherwise simple enough.
The compiler of Judges himself takes up the story at
chap. ii. 6, connects his narrative with Joshua xxiv.,
and shows the reader the point of view from which he
should regard the history of the period of the Judges.
Or, to express the matter otherwise, chapters ii. 6 to iii.
5 form the introduction, from the compiler’s own pen,
to the book of Judges. That which precedes, chapter
i. 1 to ii. 6, is taken by him from some other source,—
perhaps from the same document as chapters xvii. to xxi.,
(compare Lord Hervey himself, pp. 117, 125,)—and
placed there in order that the passage may serve
to illustrate the history of the Judges. What, now,
does Lord Hervey do ? He brings forward a number
of arguments, in which the point in question—the
credibility of the representation in the book of Joshua
■—is assumed as proved. He points to the circumstance
that chapters i. 1 to ii. 5 precede the account of Joshua’s
death in chapter ii. 8. He calculates that from chapter ii.
8 to chapter i. 1, each following verse presupposes the
purport of the preceding; from which it appears as
clear as noon day that the enquiry made of Jehovah, in
chapter i. 1, is chronologically earlier than the rest, and
�i6
Three Notices of
thus also than the death of Joshua. But meanwhile, it
stands distinctly written in chapter i. 1, “It came to pass
after the death of Joshua,” &c. No matter ! The text
is without doubt corrupt: the mode of emendation
alone is uncertain. Perhaps it should stand, “ It came
to pass after the death of Moses,” &c. All difficulty
disappears at once. Or, let chapter i. la be connected
with chapter iii. 7, and chapters i. lb to iii. 6 be regarded
as a passage wrongly interpolated here.
Prom such wanton mutilation of the text we, negative
and unbelieving critics, shrink. But the apologists
look upon every thing as permitted, if thereby the
difficulties are only removed. In the introduction to
the book of Judges, from which my last specimen was
borrowed, the figures are treated with equal freedom.
The duration of the period of the Judges is reckoned at
150 or 160 years; the accuracy of Judges xi. 26, and
1 Kings vi. 1, is simply denied; the mention made
of the duration of the oppressions, and of the years
during which the individual Judges ruled, is regarded
comme non avenue. How any one who professes to
maintain the credibility of Judges can venture upon
such things, almost surpasses our comprehension. But
the finest thing is that, at the conclusion, a plaster is
applied to the wound. The table composed by Keil—
with the help of the well-known synchronisms—•
furnishes the proof that all the numbers in Judges,
chap. xi. 26, and 1 Kings vi. 1, included, are perfectly
in order. The reader may thus in any case be at ease,
whether the Egyptian chronology is confirmed by
further research, (in which case he throws the Old
Testament figures quam simplicissime overboard), or
whether it is not (because then he has in these figures
all that he can desire).
[Professor Kuenen has, at my request, given a fuller
explanation of the commentator’s procedure in refer
ence to the point just referred to, which I insert
here. Bishop Hervey, he writes, holds the num
�the li Speaker’s Commentary ”
*7
bers in 1 Kings vi. 1, Judges xi. 26, and elsewhere
in that book, to be corrupt, and thus to be rejected.
But after having said, and supported, this, he lays
before his readers the table composed by Keil (which
is to be found in his “Commentary on Judges,” p.
289, English translation). This table is intended to
show that the figures in 1 Kings vi. 1 and Judges xi.
26, are accurate, and harmonize with the numbers in
the book of Judges. With this view, Keil assumes
that in that book the periods described are not always
consecutive, but sometimes the same period is twice
presented, namely, when the writer first narrates the
history of the Transjordanic tribes, and then that of
Israel to the west of that river. Thus Judges x.-xii.
run parallel with Judges xiii.-xvi. (fie., the events
described in these two sets of chapters respectively, are
contemporaneous). This is an arbitrary, purely harmonistic supposition (as is shown more in detail in my
“ Historical and Critical Enquiry,” &c., vol. i. p. 219 f).
*
* [From this work I quote the following details : ‘ ‘ Start
ing from the 480 years which, according to 1 Kings
vi. 1, elapsed between the exodus from Egypt and the
commencement of the building of the temple, some have
endeavoured to reduce the data regarding the duration of
the period of the Judges by supposing that some of these
rulers were contemporary with each other. It is true that
the book of Judges itself gives some support to this sup
position ; but (1) it does not appear where and how it
ought to be applied; and (2) the uncertainty of the round
numbers (40 and 80) is not thereby removed. Besides, the
justness of the calculation which forms the basis of 1 Kings
vi. 1 is itself subject to doubt; above all, because it cannot be
made to harmonize with the genealogies which extend over
this period. An impartial investigation thus leads to the
conclusion that the chronology of the Hebrew history down to
Eli and Samuel, and even to the disruption of the kingdom
after Solomon’s death, is uncertain, except in so far as its
correctness is guaranteed by the history of the nations who
came into contact with Israel (the Egyptians and Assyrians.)”
In a note the author gives some account of the attempts made
to abridge the period of the Judges, by the supposition that
some of these governors were contemporaries. “Thus Keil
�18
Three Notices of
Now, Bishop Hervey takes over Keil’s table without
approving of it; but evidently in order to be, as it
were, safe in all eventualities; or to quiet the reader
who might have a difficulty in rejecting the biblical
figures. This is what I have, in the text, disapproved.
One of two things is plain. Either (1), Keil’s method
and table are good: in that case they should also
(Einl. § 49) makes the Judges follow each other up to Jair
inclusive (x. 3-5), and then regards the periods of the oppres
sion by the Ammonites (x. 8), and of the Judges Jepthah
(xii. 7), Ebzan (xii. 9), Elon (xii. 11), Abdon (xii. 14), as con
temporaneous with that of the forty years’ oppression by the
Philistines (xiii. 1), within which the twenty years of Samson’s
rule (xv. 20 ; xvi. 31) are also made to fall. This calculation
rests on a misunderstanding of the evident intention of the
writer, who, although (x. 6-18) he speaks also of the Philis
tines, yet certainly does not mean the forty years (xiii. 1) to
begin to be reckoned from Jair’s death. (See above, sect. 31,
note 2.) Others hold the data from Othniel to Ehud to be
consecutive, and refer the figures which follow partly to the
northern, partly to the transjordanic, and partly to the
southern tribes, thereby supposing that it was only under
Samuel that the entire nation was again united; Far better
founded is the hypothesis of Hoekstra (Chronology of the 480
years; Godg. Bijdr., 1856, 1-24). He assumes properly only
two sets of contemporaneous periods, 1st, that of Jabin and
Barak (Judges iv., v.) as contemporary with the rest following
on the deliverance by Ehud; and this on the ground of Judges
iv. 1, where mention is made, not of the end of that rest, but
of Ehud’s death. But according to v. 14, Benjamin also took
part in the contest against Jabin; from this tribe was Ehud
sprung: must not therefore the rest of eighty years under
Ehud’s rule have been at an end when Barak came forward ?
The second instance is that of Samson (Eli and Samuel), with
the forty years mentioned in xiii. 1. But in ch. xiii. 5, where
Samson’s approaching birth is foretold, the fact of Israel being
ruled by the Philistines is not announced, but supposed.
According to the intention of the writer Samson did not fill
the office of Judge during, much less at the beginning of, the
forty years of oppression, but only after its close. Let it not
be objected that according to all these calculations the most
perfect harmony is brought about between the chronology of
the book of Judges and 1 Kings vi. 1. Their great mutual
difference, while the result is the same, shews that Bertheau
(p. xviii.) has rightly disapproved the entire method.”—J.M.]
�the “ Speaker s Commentary.”
ig
be unreservedly followed; or, (2), they are of no
value: and then they can be of no service, in case
Bishop Hervey’s own explanation is judged to be
inadmissible. The Bishop himself certainly reasoned
otherwise, and in the following way, as regards the
accounts in the Bible (not as concerns the readings, but
the accounts themselves): every thing is in any case
correct: if this is not made manifest by the one pro
cess, it will be so by the other : if my view is not just,
then Keil’s will be the true one].
Professor Rawlinson, too, has convinced himself that
the numbers in the Old Testament offer no difficulty :
how readily may errors have crept into them! See
“Introduction to the two books of Kings,” p. 475 f.
They can, also, very well be later additions, e.g., the
troublesome synchronisms of the kings of Israel and.
Judah. In the explanation of 2 Kings which is to
follow afterwards, a formidable use is made, as is wellknown, especially in ch. xviii.-xx., of the freedom to
deal with figures at pleasure. And this by a writer who
otherwise holds strongly enough to whatever the text of
the Holy Scripture tells him, and—-to name one small
matter—ventures to deduce from 1 Kings xvii. 18, that
the title “man of God” was in use in Phoenicia also.
But I must be brief, and therefore will only add a
couple of remarks on 1 and 2 Samuel, and the Intro
duction to these books. Here, we immediately come
upon the following bold assertion : “ There are no con
tradictions or disagreement of any kind (N.B.) in the
statements of the books of Samuel, as compared with
each other, or (N.B.) with the books of Chronicles.
The only appearance of two different accounts of the
same event being given is to be found in 1 Sam. xxiv.
compared with xxvi., where see notes. The other
instances given by de Wette have no real existence.
See notes on 1 Sam. xvi. 21, xxvii. 2,” &c. After
reading this, one naturally begins with consulting the
notes on 1 Sam. xxiv. and xxvi. That on 1 Sam. xxvi.
�20
Three Notices of
1, specifies no less than thirteen points of coincidence
between the two narratives, and concludes that they
most probably represent the same fact. Excellent.
We expect now to see the points of difference pointed
out, or, if these are supposed to present themselves to
view with sufficient distinctness, then to learn the
result,. which naturally cannot be favourable to the
-credibility, either of both the accounts, or of one of the
two. .Nothing of all this. It seems as if Lord Hervey
has failed to remark that the two accounts, in spite of
the thirteen points, differ toto coelo, and therefore
regards all apology or further explanation as superfluous.
Only he offers us some proposals for a modified inter
pretation of this or that particular, the one as improbable
as the other, ending with the last refuge of harmom’stics : “ If we further suppose that one narrative relates
fully some incidents on which the other is silent, there
will remain no discrepancy of any importance ” (p. 351).
In this one case the premisses of the newer criticism
are recognized as true—and the inevitable conclusions
avoided. In every other case, Lord Hervey sees a
-chance of denying the premisses themselves. Some
times he does not esteem this to be necessary, and
passes by the difficulty in silence, for example, in the
notes to 1 Sam. xiii. 11-14, and xv. 23 ff; in those on
1 Sam. viii.; x. 17-27, compared with 1 Sam. ix. 1 to x.
16. Elsewhere we find him employing the well-known,
and repeatedly refuted, attempts at explanation. So, for
example, the connection between 1 Sam. x. 8 and xiii.
8-13, is denied in opposition to the evidence; the conflict
between 1 Sam. vii. 13, and ix. 16, is acknowledged,
and afterwards disguised with well chosen words; the
appointment of David to be Saul’s armour-bearer, in 1
Sam., xvi. 22, is placed after the combat with Goliath,
and in this way the discrepancy between 1 Sam. xvi.
51, 22, and xvii. 55-58, is explained away. “The
theory”—so it is said in p. 317—“ of two conflicting
traditions being followed here and in chap, xvii., is
�the “ Speaker's Commentary.”
z1
very unsatisfactory in every point of view.” Why ? I
pray. Unsatisfactory for dogmatic prejudice, but in
every other respect perfectly natural, and in harmony
with all the phenomena.
Where Lord Hervey takes his own course, he treats
us to singular hypotheses. In the introduction to
Samuel we are assured that the writer, after having
related Saul’s coronation (1 Sam xi. 14, 15) and stated
the age of the new king (xiii. 1) leaps over twenty
or thirty years of his reign, and communicates to us an
event belonging to its last quarter. We open chapter
xiii. , and find no trace of so remarkable a hiatus between
verses 1 and 2. What is more; at the conclusion of
the narrative which begins chap. xiii. 2, we read (chap.
xiv. 47): “ So Saul took the kingdom over Israel,”—
which thus, according to Lord Hervey, will have
occurred twenty or thirty years after his coronation 1
In the notes we learn that during all this time, he was
only nominally king, in consequence of the supremacy
of the Philistines. “ There is not the slightest indica
tion from the words whether this ‘taking of the
kingdom ’ occurred soon, or many years, after Saul’s
anointing at Gilgal” (p. 309). Indeed, “ not the slightest
indication.” Only it is here left out of sight that there
are some things which are self-evident. What it
was that led the commentator to this most singular
view, he tells us himself. Saul is called in chap. ix. 2, a
youth, and appears in chapters xiii., xiv., as the father of
a full grown son : therefore, between 1 Sam. ix. and xiii.,
many years have elapsed. Throughout, we find assumed
the thing that was to be proved—but at the same time
cannot be proved—that the narratives proceed from one
hand, or at least, are all without exception deserving of
credit.
As regards the text of the books of Samuel, the intro
duction expresses a comparatively favourable judgment.
“There are,” we read in p. 246, “a few manifest
corruptions of the text, such as the falling out of the
�22
Three Notices of
numerals in 1 Sam. xiii. 1; the numerals in 1 Sam.
vi. 19; 2 Sam. xv. 7 ; the putting Michal instead of
Merab, 2 Sam. xxi. 8; the corruption of the names
of Jasobeam, 2 Sam. xxiii. 8 ; and of some of the other
mighty men in the same list, the names Isbi-benob and
Jaare-oregim, in 2 Sam. xxi. 16-19 ; and perhaps
some others.”
I do not deny that these words
strongly raised my expectations: could Lord Hervey
see a chance of explaining satisfactorily the masoretic text of Samuel, except in these few passages?
Great disappointment awaited me. The deviations
from the Masora which in his notes he either esteems
to be absolutely necessary, or strongly recommends,
are very numerous. (See, for example, 1 Sam. i. 24,
ii. 10; 29 ; vi. 4, 18, 19, &c., &c.) Still yet they are not
numerous enough. In the case of 1 Sam. xiv. 18, the
writer might safely have been decided, instead of offer
ing a choice between the true reading and that of the
text; in 1 Sam. xiv. 41, he should have consulted and
followed the LXX, &c., &c. But why, then,—in the
words of the introduction quoted above—is the state of
things described in general terms as far more favourable
than, on investigation of particulars, proves to be
correct ? We have here, in reality, the same fault into
which the apologetic commentators are always falling
anew. Their judgment regarding the whole is not the
combined outcome of what the study of the particulars
has presented. It (their judgment) has been deter
mined beforehand. It controls the study, or remains
unchanged, in spite of the results which this study
offers. It is, in short, a prejudice, a foregone conclusion.
Who can free them from it 1—{fheologisch Tijdschrift
for May 1873.)
Volume III.
Since the first difficulties connected with the issue
of the “ Speaker’s Commentary ” have been overcome,
the work goes prosperously forward. The third volume
�the “ Speaker s Commentary”
23
now lies before us. The whole of it is written by
Professor G. Rawlinson, of Oxford, and embraces the
books of 2 Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Esther. What sort of exegesis is here offered, what
kind of criticism is here practised, what description of
apologetics is here carried out, is known to the reader
from our previous notices (“ Theologisch Tijdschrift”
for January 1872, and May 1873). In order to
characterize this volume in particular, it will suffice to
touch upon a few points.
The stand-point occupied by the expositor of the
Old Testament, can at once, and safely, be made out
from the manner in which he judges of the books of
Chronicles. The author of these books is an individual
with sharply defined outlines of character. His con
ceptions of persons and things can throughout be
compared with those of earlier writers. The difficulties
which this comparison reveals are palpable, and have,
besides, been repeatedly presented to view. If any one
shows that he has no eye to detect the unhistorical
element in the Chronicles, we may, without exaggera
*
tion, affirm that such a person is stone-blind on Biblical
ground. Now, Professor Rawlinson cannot escape this
judgment.
He has not, it is true, made himself
acquainted with K. H. Graf’s dissertation, “ The Book
of Chronicles as an historical source,” (‘ Historical
books of the Old Testament,’pp. 114-247,) i.e., with
the most thorough and excellent discussion of this
subject,—but he has read de Wette’s Introduction, and
Theodore Parker’s additions to that work. He has
not, therefore, lacked guidance. Yet, in spite of this,
he maintains—with the single exception which will
be referred to further on—the complete credibility of
the writer of the Chronicles. How is this possible ?
This question puzzles us, until we have learned the
* [Compare the Bishop of Natal’s recently published “ Lec
tures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone,” Lecture
xxiv., “The fictions of the Chronicler.”—J. M.J
*
�24
Three Notices of
method which Rawlinson pursues. Then we are puzzled
no more, because the method explains the thing at once.
In the introduction to the Chronicles (Vol. iii., pp. 155
ff.) the ordinary questions regarding the title, the
object, the author, the sources, of these books, and their
relation to the other books of the Old Testament, are
handled. We there already find one and another thing
that justly creates astonishment, especially in section 5,
on the Sources. Bertheau’s investigation of this subject
(Chronicles, pp. xxxii. ff; and my own Historical
Critical Enquiry, i. 306 f.) appears entirely to have
escaped Rawlinson’s attention: at least, he neither
adopts nor controverts it. But we leave these and
other particulars, and turn to section 10, ‘Authenticity
of the history.’ After some introductory remarks, the
writer ranges the charges brought against the writer of
Chronicles in three groups. He is said, 1st, to con
tradict himself; 2d, to give accounts which conflict
with other books of the Old Testament; and 3rd, to
commit errors arising from ignorance or misapprehension
of his predecessors. This is the first application of
the maxim divide et impera. The second consists in
this, that the doubts which belong to one of these
groups are one after another taken in hand, and—
refuted?
No, not that, but answered by some
hypothesis excogitated in favour of the writer of
Chronicles, which may, in a certain degree, claim to
be listened to, so long as it is kept isolated, but which
at once appears to be inadmissible when we observe
that time after time such a supposition must be
called in and employed, in order to the acquittal, taliter
qualiter, of the Chronicle writer. The result is that
the four inconsistencies, the eighteen or nineteen in
stances of contradiction, and the six errors, are one
after another set aside, with a very few exceptions,
which are too unimportant to prejudice the historian in
the eyes of his readers, and on the other hand, place
the impartiality of the commentator in a clear light.
�the 11 Speaker’s Commentary''
25
Often, too, the exceptions are merely apparent, because
the fault is ascribable not to the author, but to his
copyists. In this way, Professor Rawlinson gives an
account of the discrepance between the figures in 1
Chronicles xxi. 5, and 2 Samuel xxiv. 9; in 1
Chronicles xxi. 25, and 2 Samuel xxiv. 24. In this
manner, he thinks, that he has fulfilled his task as
a critic. ... Is it not clear as noon-day that in this
way truth cannot be found ? That so the peculiarities
of the Chronicle-writer must be obliterated ?
But, let us stop a little to consider the so-called
corruptions of the text, which are sometimes caught at
as the last means of extrication from a difficulty. The
possibility of errors of transcription, particularly in the
figures, cannot of course, in the abstract, be denied. But
the manner in which Professor Rawlinson makes use of
it for his purpose, is, in the highest degree, arbitrary and
uncritical. The study of the Books of Chronicles in
their totality shows, namely, that their author through
out presents us with large figures, not only when he
determines the strength of the Israelitish armies and the
number of the slain in battle, but also when he com
municates the amount of sums of money. We have
thus to do not with a single phenomenon standing by
itself, but with a strongly pronounced peculiarity of
this Jewish historian.
See only my “ Historical
Critical Enquiry,” &c., i. 323 f. What now, does
Professor Rawlinson do ? When there is a possibility
of maintaining the exaggerated data, he maintains
them : if not, then the text is declared to be corrupt.
This last course is followed, for example, in 2 Chron.
xvii. 14-18; 1 Chron. xxii. 4; xxix. 4.
Every
where else, by the help of reasonings, which may not
see the light, the author of Chronicles is acquitted.
Can such procedure be vindicated 1 Does not the
dogmatic prejudice which leads to such a misconcep
tion of the requirements of the true method of criticism,
stand condemned before the tribunal of science ?
The value of the harmonizing process which is
�i6
Three Notiees oj
applied in the notes to Chronicles, does not require to
he illustrated by examples. The simple fact, that in
no passage is any disagreement acknowledged to exist
between this book and those of Samuel and Kings,
speaks with sufficient distinctness. Here and there
the difficulty is not solved even in appearance, but
simply passed over in silence. The difficulties con
nected with the narrative in 1 Chron. xvi. 7 ft. are
well-known, and, one would say, of sufficient importance
to be at least mentioned, and judged of. For Professor
Rawlinson they seem to have no existence. With the
greatest possible naivety he calls the hymn which is
there communicated “ apparently a thanksgiving service
composed for the occasion out of psalms previously
existing.” Indeed, it is no doubt of subordinate im
portance that those psalms, if not all, yet nearly all, are
post-exilic !
But where should I end if I should seek to char
acterize completely the critical work of Professor
Rawlinson? Any one who desires more, has only
to open the book. Let him not omit, then, to consult
the notes on 2 Kings xviii. to xx., where, on one
hand, the truth of the Assyrian accounts, and on the
other, that of the Biblical narrative, is maintained—•
of course, again at the expense of the copyists, who,
in 2 Kings xviii. 13, have put the 14th for the 29th
year of Hezekiah; and further, by the supposition
that 2 Kings xx., is chronologically prior to 2 Kings
xviii. and xix., and that this was not unknown to the
author himself.
*
Let him, then, also consider the
* I avail myself of this opportunity to draw attention to a
dissertation of A. H. Sayce, on 2 Kings xviii. to xx., in the
Theological Review for 1873, pp. 15-31. The writer judges
that the expeditions of Sargon and Sanherib are confounded
and mixed up with one another by the author of Kings, but
that at the same time his sources, in which these expeditions
were duly distinguished, may still be distinctly pointed out
in his narrative. The same scholar treats in the same journal,
pp. 364-377, the Chaldean account of the deluge discovered by
G. Smith.
�the li Speaker’s Commentaryip
introductions to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and the
notes on the most important passages of these books.
They made upon me a peculiarly painful impression,
e.y., the notes on Ezra iv., where Ahasuerus is identified
with Cambyses, and Artasahsta with the PseudoSmerdis. But why adduce individual examples ? The
whole method is utterly defective. Rawlinson repeatedly
requests attention to the circumstance that the negative
critics bring no objections against the credibility of
Ezra and Nehemiah, because in these books no miracles
are related. This is, in point of fact, incorrectagainst
more than one particular in Ezra i., ii. f., vii. 12 £,
Nehemiah viii. £, just objections are alleged, among
which some are of great importance. Rawlinson, never
theless, was not aware of them, and had, consequently,
full freedom to slumber. For when the “rationalists”
are not under arms and in the vicinity, the “ believers”
need not mount guard. They have nothing more to'
do than to repel assaults. That there is any thing to
investigate in reference to the Biblical narratives; that,
for instance, the chapters which have just been referred
to, on careful study present to the expositor all sorts of
problems—this cannot once occur to their minds. The
credibility of the books stands fast a priori: so long as
it continues uncontested, or, at least, so long as they
have no cognizance of its being contested—they have,
as critics, no further duty to perform. They may confine
themselves to the illustration of the text of the narrative.
This, then, is done in the notes to Ezra and Nehemiali.
But what does this avail to the reader ? In what
respect does all this learning, regarding Persian words,
for example, bring him any further ? It is, indeed, in
the highest degree saddening, as I expressed myself on
a former occasion, that so exceptionally fine an oppor
tunity to instruct the public as the “ Speaker’s Com
mentary ” offers, should be so badly used, or rather, sogreatly misused. Inspired by the best intentions, but
governed by their system, the writers dispute that
�28
The “ Speaker's Commentary f
which they ought to complete and to improve, and they
shut out from the sight of their readers the light by
means of which it would be possible for them to value
and love the Old Testament. Would that they could
at length learn to perceive that they have disowned
their true friends, and against their own will have
become the antagonists of truth and piety !—(Theologisch Tijdsclirift for Sept. 1873).
Note on p. 'I, line
21.
[a.7rXous 6
p.vf)os rrjs dX-rjOelas &j>v,
Koi ttoikLXuv Sei ravSif epp.7pvevp.aTwv'
fyei yap avrct, Katpov o S’ ttSi/cos Xoyos
voawv ’ v atrip (papp.dKwv Serai iroipwv.
e
Euripides, Phoenissae,
469 ff.
“ The language of truth is simple ; and a just cause requires
no subtle expositions, for it has an inherent propriety. But
an unjust claim, being in itself infirm, stands in need of arti
ficial supports, applied with skill.”
“ The words of truth will ever simple be ;
And justice, strong, scorns aid from subtlety.
But wrongful claims, by nature sick and weak,
The help of far-sought strengthening drugs must seek ”
J. M.]
TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Three notices of the "speaker's commentary", from the Dutch of Dr. A. Kuenen
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Edition: Rev ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 28 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway, Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Reviews from Theological Tidschrift (January 1872, May and September 1873) of vols 1-3 of The Holy Bible edited by F.C. Cook. Revised by the author. Date of publication from KVK.
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Thomas Scott
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[1873]
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Muir, J. (John) (tr)
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Bible
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33
Art
III.—The Stoics.
Die Philosophic der Griechen. Von Dr. Edward Zeller.
Dritter Theil, Erste Abtheilung. Leipzig : 1880.
HE systems of Plato and Aristotle were splendid digressions
from the main line of ancient speculation rather than stages
in its regular development. The philosophers who came after
them went back to an earlier tradition, and the influence of the
two greatest Hellenic masters, when it was felt at all, acted almost
entirely as a disturbing or deflecting force. The extraordinary
reach of their principles could not, in truth, be appreciated until
the organized experience of mankind had accumulated to an
extent requiring the application of new rules for its comprehen
sion and utilization; and to make such an accumulation possible
nothing less was needed than the combined efforts of the whole
western world. Such religious, educational, social, and political
reforms as those contemplated in Plato’s Republic, though
originally designed for a single city community, could not be
realized, even approximately, within a narrower field than that
offered by the mediaeval church and the feudal state. The ideal
theory first gained practical significance in connection with the
metaphysics of Christian theology. The place given by Plato
to mathematics has only been fully justified by the development
of modern science. So also Aristotle’s criticism became of
practical importance only when the dreams against which it was
directed had embodied themselves in a fabric of oppressive
superstition. Only the vast extension of reasoned knowledge
has enabled us to disentangle the vitally important elements of
Aristotle’s logic from the mass of useless refinements in which
they are embedded; his fourfold division of causes could not be
estimated rightly even by Bacon, Descartes, or Spinoza; while
his arrangement of the sciences, his remarks on classification, and
his contributions to comparative biology bring us up to the very
verge of theories whose first promulgation is still fresh in the
memories of men.
Again, the spiritualism taught by Plato and Aristotle alike—
by the disciple, indeed, with even more distinctness than by the
master—was so entirely inconsistent with the common belief of
antiquity as to remain a dead letter for nearly six centuries—that
is, until the time of Plotinus. The difference between body and
mind was recognized by every school, but only as the difference
between solid and gaseous matter is recognized by us ; while the
antithesis between conscious and unconscious existence, with all
T
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXL]—New Series, Vol. LXI. No. I.
C
�34
The Stoics.
its momentous consequences, was recognized by none. The ola
hypothesis had to be thoroughly thought out before its insuffi
ciency could be completely and irrevocably confessed.
Nor was this the only reason why the spiritualists lost touch
of their age. If in some respects they were far in advance of early
Greek thought, in other respects they were far behind it. Their
systems were pervaded by an unphilosophical dualism which
tended to undo much that had been achieved by their less pre
judiced predecessors. For this we have partly to blame their
environment. The opposition of God and the world, heaven
and earth, mind and matter, necessity and free-will, considered
as co-ordinate forces working within the same sphere, was a con
cession—though of course an unconscious concession—to the
stupid bigotry of Athens. Yet at the same time they had failed
to solve those psychological problems which had most interest
for an Athenian public. Instead of following up the attempt
made by the Sophists and Socrates to place morality on a
scientific foundation, they busied themselves with the construc
tion of a new machinery for diminishing the efficacy of tempta
tion or for strengthening the efficacy of law. To the question
What is the highest good ? Plato gave an answer which nobody
could understand, and Aristotle an answer which was almost
absolutely useless to anybody but himself. The other great
problem, What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge ? was left
in an equally unsatisfactory state. Plato never answered it at all;
Aristotle merely pointed out the negative conditions which must
be fulfilled by its solution.
It is not, then, surprising that the Academic and Peripetatic
schools utterly failed to carry on the great movement inaugurated
by their respective founders. The successors of Plato first lost
themselves in a labyrinth of Pythagorean mysticism, and then
sank into the position of mere moral instructors. It is outside
our present purpose to relate the history of that remarkable
revolution by which the Academy regained a foremost place in
Greek thought; but we may observe that this was done by
taking up and presenting in its original purity a tradition of
older date than Platonism, though presented under a new aspect
and mixed with other elements by Plato. The heirs of Aristotle,
after staggering on a few paces under the immense burden of
his encyclopaedic bequest, came to a dead halt, and contented
themselves with keeping the treasure safe until the time should
arrive for its appropriation and reinvestment by a stronger specu
lative race.
No sooner did the two imperial systems lose their ascendency
than the germs which they had temporarily overshadowed sprang
up into vigorous vitality, and fox' more than five centuries domi
�35
The Stoics.
nated the whole course not only of Greek but of European
thought. Of these by far the most important was the naturalistic
idea, the belief that physical science might be substituted for
religious superstitions and local conventions as an impregnable
basis of conduct. On a former occasion we endeavoured to
*
show that, while there are traces of this idea in the philo
sophy of Heracleitus, and while its roots stretch far back
into the literature and popular faith of Greece, it was formu
lated for the first time by the two great Sophists, Prodicus and
Hippias, who, in the momentous division between Nature and
Law, placed themselves—Hippias more particularly—on the side
of Nature. Two causes led to the temporary discredit of their
teaching. One was the perversion by which natural right became
the watchword of those who, like Plato’s Callicles, held that
nothing should stand between the strong man and the gratifi
cation of his desire for pleasure or for power. The other was the
keen criticism of the Humanists, the friends of social convention,
who held with Protagoras that Nature was unknowable, or with
Gorgias that she did not exist, or with Socrates that her laws
were the secret of the gods. It was in particular the over
whelming personal influence of Socrates which triumphed. He
drew away from the Sophists their strongest disciple, Antisthenes,
and convinced him that philosophy was valuable only in so far
as it became a life-renovating power, and that, viewed in this
light, it had no relation to anything outside ourselves. But just
as Socrates had discarded the physical speculations of former
teachers, so also did Antisthenes discard the dialectic which
Socrates had substituted for them, even to the extent of denying
that definition was possible. Yet he seems to have kept a firm
hold on the two great ideas that were the net result of all previous
philosophy, the idea. of a Cosmos, the common citizenship of
■which made all men potentially equal, and the idea of reason as
the essential prerogative of man.
Antisthenes pushed to its extreme consequences a movement
begun by the naturalistic Sophists. His doctrine was what would
now be called anarchic collectivism. The State, marriage, private
property, and the then accepted forms of religion, were to be
abolished, and all mankind were to herd promiscuously together.
Either he or his followers, alone among the ancients, declared
that slavery was wrong, and like Socrates, he held that the
virtue of men and women was the same. But what he meant
by this broad human virtue, which according to him was identical
with happiness, is not clear. We only know that he dissociated
* Westminster Review for April, 1880: Art. “The Greek Humanists :
Mature and Law.”
C2
�36
The Stoics.
it in the strongest manner from pleasure. “ I had rather be mad
than delighted/’ is one of his characteristic sayings. It would
appear, however, that what he really objected to was self-in
dulgence—the pursuit of sensual gratification for its own sake-—
and that he was ready to welcome the enjoyments naturally
accompanying the healthy discharge of vital function.
Antisthenes and his school, of which Diogenes is the most
popular and characteristic type, were afterwards known as
Cynics; but the name is never mentioned by Plato and Aristotle,
nor do they allude to the scurrility and systematic indecency
afterwards associated with it. The anecdotes relating to this
unsavoury subject should be received with extreme suspicion.
There has always been a tendency to believe that philosophers
carry out in practice what are vulgarly believed to be the logical
consequences of their theories. Thus it is related of Pyrrho the
Sceptic that when out walking he never turned aside to avoid any
obstacle or danger, and was only saved from destruction by the
vigilance of his friends. This is of course a silly fable ; and we
have Aristotle’s word for it that the Sceptics took as good care
of their lives as other people. In like manner we may conjecture
that the Cynics, advocating as they did a return to Nature and
defiance of prejudice, were falsely credited with what was falsely
supposed to be the practical exemplification of their precepts.
It is at any rate remarkable that Epictetus, a man not disposed
to undervalue the obligations of decorum, constantly refers to
Diogenes as a kind of philosophic saint, and that he describes
the ideal Cynic in words which would apply without alteration to
the character of a Christian apostle.
Cynicism, if we understand it rightly, was only the mutilated
form of an oldei' philosophy having for its object to set morality
free from convention, and to found it anew on a scientific know
ledge of natural law. The need of such a system was not felt
so long as Plato and Aristotle were unfolding their wonderful
schemes for a reorganization of action and belief. With the
temporary collapse of these schemes it came once more to the
front. The result was a new school which so thoroughly satisfied
the demands of the age, that for five centuries the noblest spirits
of Greece and Rome, with few exceptions, adhered to its doc
trines ; that in dying it bequeathed some of their most vital
■elements to the metaphysics and the theology by which it was
succeeded ; that with their decay it reappeared as an important
factor in modern thought; and that its name has become imperishably associated in our own language with the proud
endurance of suffering, the self-sufficiency of conscious rectitude,
and the renunciation of all sympathy, except what may be
derived from contemplation of the immortal dead, whose heroism
�The Stoics.
37
is recorded in history, or of the eternal cosmic forces working
out their glorious tasks with unimpassioned energy and imper
turbable repose.
One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short
lean swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped
limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian
bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name
was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in
Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated
with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some
accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual
activity to study, according to others for the sale of Tyrian
purple. At any rate the volume which he held in his hand
decided his vocation. It was the second book of Xenophon’s
Memoirs of Socrates. Zeno eagerly asked where such men as
he whose sayings stood recorded there were to be found. At
that moment the Cynic Crates happened to pass by. “ There
is one of them,” said the bookseller, “ follow him.”
The history of this Crates was distinguished by the one solitary
romance of Greek philosophy. A young lady of noble family,
named Hipparchia, fell desperately in love with him, refuse! 1
several most eligible suitors, and threatened to kill herself unless
she was given to him in marriage. Her parents in despair sent
for Crates. Marriage, for a philosopher, was against the prin
ciples of his sect, and he at first joined them in endeavouring to
dissuade her. Finding his remonstrances unavailing, he at last
flung at her feet the staff and wallet which constituted his whole
worldly possessions, exclaiming, “ Here is the bridegroom, and
that is the dower. Think of this matter well, for you cannot be
my partner unless you follow the same calling with me.” Hip
parchia consented, and thenceforth, heedless of taunts, conformed
her life in every respect to the Cynic pattern.
Zeno had more delicacy or less fortitude than Hipparchia; and
the very meagre intellectual fare provided by Crates must have
left his inquisitive mind unsatisfied. Accordingly we find him
leaving this rather disappointing substitute for Socrates to study
philosophy under Stilpo the Megarian dialectician and Polemo
the head of the Academy ; while we know that he must have
gone back to Heracleitus for the physical basis from which con
temporary speculation had by this time cut itself completely
free. At length, about the beginning of the third century B.C.,
Zeno, after having been a learner for twenty years, opened a
school on his own account. As if to mark the practical bearing
of his doctrine he chose one of the most frequented resorts in
the city for its promulgation. There was at Athens a portico
called the Poecile Stoa, adorned with frescoes by Polygnotus the
�38 •
The Stoics.
greatest painter of the Cimonian period. It was among the
monuments of that wonderful city, at once what the Loggia dei
Lanzi is to Florence, and what Raphael’s Stanze are to Rome;
while, like the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it was darkened
by the terrible associations of a revolutionary epoch. A century
before Zeno’s time fourteen hundred Athenian citizens had been
slaughtered under its colonnades by order of the Thirty. “ I
will purify the Stoa,” said the Cypriote stranger; and the feel
ings still associated with the word Stoicism prove how nobly his
promise was fulfilled.
How much of the complete system known in later times under
this name was due to Zeno himself, we do not know ; for nothing
but a few fragments of his and of his immediate successors’
writings is left. The idea of combining Antisthenes with Heracleitus, and both with Socrates, probably belongs to the founder
of the school. His successor, Cleanthes, a man of character
rather than of intellect, was content to hand on what the
master had taught. Then came another Cypriote, Chrysippus,
of whom we are told that without him the Stoa would not
have existed, so thoroughly did he work out the system in
all its details, and so strongly did he fortify its positions against
hostile criticism by a framework of elaborate dialectic. “ Give
me the propositions, and I will find the proofs 1” he used to say
to Cleanthes. After him, nothing of importance was added to
the doctrines of the school, although the spirit by which they
were animated seems to have undergone profound modifications,
in the lapse of ages.
In reality Stoicism was not, like the older Greek philosophers,
a creation of individual genius. It bears the character of a
compilation both on its first exposition and on its final
completion. Polemo, who had been a fine gentleman^before he
became a philosopher, taunted Zeno with filching his opinions
from every quarter, like the cunning little Phoenician trader that
he was. And it was said that the seven hundred treatises
of Chrysippus would be reduced to a blank if everything
that he had borrowed from others were to be erased. He seems
indeed, to have been the father of review-writers, and to have
used the reviewer’s right of transcription with more than
modern license. Nearly a whole tragedy of Euripides reappeared
in one of his “ articles,” and a wit on being asked what he was
reading, replied, the Medea of Chrysippus.”
In this respect, Stoicism betrays its descent from the encyclo
paedic .lectures of the earlier Sophists, particularly Hippias.
While professedly subordinating every other study to the art
of virtuous living, its professors seem to have either put a very
wide interpretation on virtue, or else to have raised its founda
�The Stoics.
39
tion to a most unnecessary height. They protested against
Aristotle’s glorification of knowledge as the supreme end, and
declared its exclusive pursuit to be merely a more refined form of
self-indulgence ; but, being Greeks, they shared the speculative
passion with him, and seized on any pretext that enabled them to
gratify it. And this inquisitiveness was apparently much
stronger in Asiatic Hellas, whence the Stoics were almost
entirely recruited, than in the old country where centuries
of intellectual activity had issued in a scepticism from which
their fresher minds revolted.
*
It is mentioned by Zeller as a
proof of exhaustion and comparative indifference to such
inquiries, that the Stoics should have fallen back upon their
physics on the Heracleitean philosophy. But all the ideas
respecting the constitution of Nature that were then possible had
already been put forward. The Greek capacity for discovery
was perhaps greater in the third century that at any former time ;
but from the very progress of science it was necessarily confined
to specialists such as Aristarchus of Samos, or Archimedes.
Anil if the Stoics made no original contributions to physical
science, they at least accepted what seemed at that time to be its
established results; here, as in other respects, offering a marked
contrast to the Epicurean school. If a Cleanthes assailed the
heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus on religious grounds, he
was treading in the footsteps of Aristotle. It was far more im
portant that he or his successors should have taught the true
theory of the earth’s shape, of the moon’s phases, of eclipses, and
of the relative size and distance of the heavenly bodies. On
this last subject, indeed, one of the later Stoics, Posidonius,
arrived at or accepted conclusions which, although falling far
short of the reality, approximated to it in a very remarkable
manner, when we consider what imperfect means of measurement
the Greek astronomers had at their disposition.!
In returning to one of the older cosmologies, the Stoics placed
themselves in opposition to the system of Aristotle as a whole,
although on questions of detail they frequently adopted his
conclusions. The object of Heracleitus, as against the Pythago
reans, had been to dissolve away every antithesis in a pervading
* It is significant that the only Stoic who fell back on pure Cynicism should
have been Aristo of Chios, a genuine Greek, while the only one who, like
Aristotle, identified good with knowledge was Herillus, a Carthaginian.
f Posidonius estimated the sun’s distance from the earth at 500,000,000 r
stades, and the moon’s distance at 2,000,000 stades, which, counting the stade
at 200 yards, gives about 57,000,000 and 227,000 miles respectively. The
sun’s diameter he reckoned, according to one account, at 410,000 miles, about
half the real amount; according to another account at a quarter less. Zeller,
Th. d. Gr., iii. 1, p. 190, Note 2.
�40
The Stoics.
unity of contradictories, and, as against the Eleatics, to substitute
an eternal series of transformations for the changeless unity of
absolute existence. The Stoics now applied the same method on
a scale proportional to the subsequent development of thought.
Aristotle had carefully distinguished God from the world,
even to the extent of isolating him from all share in its creation,
and interest in its affairs. The Stoics declared that God and the
world were one. So far, it is allowable to call them pantheists.
Yet their pantheism was very different from what we are accus
tomed to denote by that name, from the system of Spinoza, for
example. Their strong faith in final causes and in Providence—
a faith in which they closely followed Socrates—would be hardly
consistent with the denial of a consciousness to the Supreme Being,
quite distinct from the human consciousness with which it is
identified by some modern philosophers. Their God was some
times described as the soul of the world, the fiery element
surrounding and penetrating every other kind of matter. What
remained was the body of God ; but it was a body which he had
originally created out of his own substance, and would, in the
fulness of time, absorb into that substance again. Thus they keep
the future conflagration foretold by Heracleitus, but gave it a more
religious colouring. The process of creation was then to begin
over again, and all things were to run the same course as
before down to the minutest particulars, human history repeating
itself, and the same persons returning to live the same lives once
more. Such a belief of course involved the most rigid fatalism :
and here again their doctrine offers a pointed contrast to that of
Aristotle. The Stagirite, differing, as it would seem in this
respect from all the older physicists, maintained that there was an
element of chance and spontaneity in the sublunary sphere;
and without going very deeply into the mechanism of motives or
the theory of moral responsibility, he had claimed a similar
indeterminateness for the human will. Stoicism would hear of
neither ; with it, as with modern science, the chain of causation
is unbroken from first to last, and extends to all phenomena
alike. The old theological notion of an omnipotent divine will,
or of a destiny superior even to that will, was at once confirmed
and continued by the new theory of natural law, just as the
predestination of the Reformers reappeared in the metaphysical
rationalism of Spinoza.
*
* The Stoic necessarianism gave occasion to a repartee which has remained
classical even since, although its original authorship is known to few. A slave
of Zeno’s having been detected in some offence, tried to excuse himself by
quoting his master’s principle that he was fated to commit it. “ And I was
fated to chastise you,” calmly replied the philosopher, immediately suiting the
action to the words.
�The Stoics.
41
This dogma of universal determinism was combined in the
Stoical system with an equally outspoken materialism. The
capacity for either acting or being acted on was, according to
Plato, the one convincing evidence of real existence ; and he had
endeavoured to prove that there is such a thing as mind apart
from matter by its possession of this characteristic mark. The
Stoics simply reversed his argument. Whatever acts or is
acted on, they said, must be corporeal; therefore the soul is a
kind of body. Here they only followed the common opinion
of all philosophers who believed in an external world, except
Plato and Aristotle, while to a certain extent anticipating the
scientific automatism first taught in modern times by Spinoza,
and simultaneously revived by various thinkers in our own day.
To a certain extent only; for they did not recognize the inde
pendent reality of a consciousness in which the mechanical
processes are either reflected, or represented under a different
aspect. And they further gave their theory a somewhat
grotesque expression by interpreting those qualities and attri
butes of things, which other materialists have been content to
consider as belonging to matter, as themselves actual bodies.
For instance, the virtues and vices were, according to them, somany gaseous currents by which the soul is penetrated and
shaped—a materialistic rendering of Plato’s theory that qualities
are distinct and independent substances.
We must mention as an additional point of contrast between
the Stoics and the subsequent schools which they most resembled,
that while these look on the soul as inseparable from the body,
and sharing its fortunes from first to last, although perfectly
distinct from it in idea, they emphasized the antithesis between
the two just as strongly as Plato, giving the soul an absolutely in
finite power of self-assertion during our mortal life, and allowing
it a continued, though not an immortal, existence after death.
What has been said of the human soul applies equally to God,
who is the soul of the world. He also is conceived under the
form of a material, but very subtle and all-penetrating, element
to which our souls are much more closely akin than to the coarse
clay with which they are temporarily associated. And it was
natural that the heavenly bodies, in whose composition the
ethereal element seemed so visibly to predominate, should pass
with the Stoics, as with Plato and Aristotle, for conscious beings
inferior only in sacredness and majesty to the Supreme Ruler of
all. Thus, the philosophy which we are studying helps to prove
the strength and endurance of the religious reaction to which
Socrates first gave an argumentative expression, and by which
he was ultimately hurried to his doom. We may even trace
its increasing ascendency through the successive stages of the
�42
The Stoics.
Naturalistic school. Prodicus simply identified the gods of poly
theism with unconscious physical forces ; Antisthenes, while dis
*
carding local worship, believed, like Rousseau, in the existence
of a single deity ; Zeno, or his successors, revived the whole
pantheon, but associated it with a pure morality, and explained
away its more offensive features by an elaborate system of alle
gorical interpretation.
It was not, however, by its legendary beliefs that the living
power of ancient religion was displayed, but by the study and
practice of divination. This was to the Greeks and Romans
what priestly direction is to a Catholic, or the interpretation of
scripture texts to a Protestant believer. And the Stoics, in their
anxiety to uphold religion as a bulwark of morality, went
entirely along with the popular superstition; while at the same
time they endeavoured to reconcile it with the universality of
natural law by the same clumsily rationalistic methods that have
found favour with some modern scientific defenders of the mira
culous. The signs by which we are enabled to predict an event
entered, they said, equally with the event itself into the order of
Nature, being either connected with it by direct causation, as is
the configuration of the heavenly bodies at a man’s birth with
his after fortunes, or determined from the beginning of the
world to precede it according to an invariable rule, as with the
indications derived from inspecting the entrails of sacrificial
victims. And when sceptics asked of what use was the pre
monitory sign when everything was predestined, they replied
that our behaviour in view of the warning wras predestined as well.
To us the religion of the Stoics is interesting chiefly as a part
of the machinery by which they attempted to make good the
connection between natural and moral law, assumed rather than
proved by their Sophistic and Cynic precursors. But before
proceeding to this branch of the subject we must glance at their
mode of conceiving another side of the fundamental relationship
between man and the universe. This is logic in its widest sense,
so understood as to include an account of the process by which
we get our knowledge and the ultimate evidence of its reality
no less than the laws of formal ratiocination.
In their theory of cognition the Stoics chiefly followed Aristotle;
only with them the doctrine of empiricism is enunciated so dis
tinctly as to be placed beyond the reach of misinterpretation.
The mind is at first a tabula rasa and all our ideas are derived
exclusively from the senses. But while knowledge as a whole
rests on sense, the validity of each particular sense-perception
must be determined by an appeal to reason, in other words, to
* Sextus Empiricus, p. 5b2, 18. F.
�The Stoics.
43
the totality of our acquired experience. So also the first
principles of reasoning are not to be postulated, with Aristotle,
as immediately and unconditionally certain ; they are to be
assumed as hypothetically true and gradually tested by the
consequences deducible from them. Both principles well illus
trate the synthetic method of the Stoics—their habit of bringing
into close connection whatever Aristotle had studiously held
apart. And we must maintain, in opposition to the German
critics, that their method marks a real advance on his. It
ought at any rate to find more favour with the experiential
school of modern science, with those who hold that the highest
mathematical and physical laws are proved, not by the im
possibility of conceiving their contradictories, but by their close
agreement with all the facts accessible to our observation.
It was a consequence of the principle just stated that in formal
logic the Stoics should give precedence to the hypothetical over
the categorical syllogism. From one point of view their prefer
ence for this mode of stating an argument was an advance on
the method of Aristotle, whose reasonings, if explicitly set out,
would have assumed the form of disjunctive syllogisms. From
another point of view it was a return to the older dialectics of
Socrates and Plato, who always looked on their major premises
as possessing only a conditional validity—conditional, that is to
say, on the consent of their interlocutor. We have further to
note that both the disjunctive and the hypothetical syllogism
were first recognised as such by the Stoics; a discovery connected
with the feature which most profoundly distinguishes their logic
from Aristotle’s logic. We showed, in dealing with the latter, that
it is based on an analysis of the concept, and that all its imper
fections are due to that single circumstance. It was the Stoics
who first brought judgment, so fatally neglected by the author
of the Analytics, into proper prominence. Having once grasped
propositions as the beginning and end of reasoning, they naturally
and under' the guidance of common language, passed from simple
to complex assertions, and immediately detected the arguments
to which these latter serve as a foundation. And if we proceed
to ask why they were more interested in judgment than in con
ception, we shall probably find the explanation to be that their
philosophy had its root in the ethical and practical interests
which involve a continual process of injunction and belief, that
is to say, a continual association of such disparate notions as an
impression and an action; while the Aristotelian philosophy,
being ultimately derived from early Greek thought, had for its
leading principle the circumscription of external objects and
their reproduction under the form of an abstract classification.
Thus the naturalistic system, starting with the application of
�44
The Stoics.
scientific ideas to human life, ultimately carried back into science
the vital idea of Law, that is, of fixed relations subsisting between
disparate phenomena, and of knowledge as the subsumption of
less general under more general relations.
Under the guidance of a somewhat similar principle the Stoic
logicians attempted a reform of Aristotle’s categories. These
they reduced to four : Substance, Quality, Disposition, and Rela
tion (to V7rOKEt/LL£VOV, TO 7TOIOV, TO 7TMC ^X0VJ an(l ™ 7TjOdf Tl 7TWC
e\ov* ; and the change was an improvement in so far as it intro
)
duced a certain method and subordination where none existed
before ; for each category implies, and is contained in, its pre
decessor ; whereas the only order traceable in Aristotle’s cate
gories refers to the comparative frequency of the questions to
which they correspond.
With the idea of subsumption and subordination to law, we
pass at once to the Stoic ethics. For Zeno, the end of life was
self-consistency; for Cleanthes, consistency with Nature; for
Chrysippus, both the one and the other. The still surviving
individualism of the Cynics is represented in the first of these
principles; the religious inspiration of the Stoa in the second;
and the comprehensiveness of its great systematizing intellect
in the last On the other hand there is a vagueness about the
idea of self-consistency which seems to date from a time when
Stoicism was less a new and exclusive school than an endeavour
to appropriate whatever was best in the older schools. For to
be consistent is the common ideal of all philosophy, and is just
what distinguishes it from the uncalculating impulsiveness of
ordinary life, the chance inspirations of ordinary thought. But
the Peripatetic who chose knowledge as his highest good differed
widely from the Hedonist who made pleasure or painlessness his
end; and even if they agreed in thinking that the highest
pleasure is yielded by knowledge, the Stoic himself would assert
that the object of their common pursuit was with both alike
essentially unmoral. He would, no doubt, maintain that the
self-consistency of any theory but his own was a delusion, and
that all false moralities would, if consistently acted out, inevitably
land their professors in a contradiction.^ Yet the absence of
contradiction, although a valuable verification, is too negative a
mark to serve for the solo test of rightness ; and thus we are
led on to the more specific standard of conformability to Nature,
whether our own or that of the universe as a whole. Here again
* Zeller, p. 93.
4 “ Quid est sapientia ? Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. Licet illam
exceptiunculam non adjicias ut rectum sit quod velis. Non potest cuiquam
semper idem placere nisi rectum.” Seneca: T^nX.xx. 4.
�The Stoics.
45
a difficulty presentsitself. The idea of Nature had taken such a
powerful hold on the Greek mind that it was employed by every
school in turn,—except perhaps by the extreme sceptics, still
faithful to the traditions of Protagoras and Gorgias,—and was
confidently appealed to in support of the most divergent ethical
systems. We find it occupying a prominent place both in Plato’s
Laws and in Aristotle’s Politics; while the maxim, Follow
Nature, was borrowed by Zeno himself from Polemo the head
of the Academy, or perhaps from Polemo’s predecessor,
Xenocrates. And Epicurus, the great opponent of Stoicism,
maintained, not without plausibility, that every animal is led
by nature to pursue its own pleasure in preference to any other
end. Thus, when Cleanthes declared that pleasure was un
natural, he and the Epicureans could not have been talking
about the same thing. They must have meant something
different by pleasure or by nature or by both.
The last alternative seems the most probable. Nature
with the Stoics was a fixed objective order whereby all things
work together as co-operant parts of a single system. Each has
a certain office to perform, and the perfect performance of it is
the creature’s virtue, or reason, or highest good ; these three ex
pressions being always used as strictly synonymous terms. Here
we have the teleology, the dialectics, and the utilitarianism of
Socrates so worked out and assimilated, that they differ only as
various aspects of a single truth. The three lines of Socratic
teaching had also been drawn to a single point by Plato; but
his idealism had necessitated the creation of a new world for
their development and concentration. The idea of Nature as it
had grown up under the hands of Heracleitus, the Sophists, and
Antisthenes, supplied Zeno with a ready-made mould into which
his reforming aspirations could be run. The true Republic was
not a pattern laid up in heaven, nor was it restricted to the
narrow dimensions of a single Hellenic state. It was the whole
real universe in every part of which except in the works of
wicked men a divine law was recognized and obeyed. Nay,
according to Cleanthes, God’s law is obeyed even by the wicked,
and the essence of morality consists only in its voluntary fulfil
ment. As others very vividly put it, we are like a dog tied
under a cart, if we do not choose to run we shall be dragged
*
along.
It will now be better understood whence arose the hostility of
the Stoics to pleasure, and how they could speak of it in what
seems to us such a paradoxical style. It was subjective feeling
as opposed to objective law ; it was relative, particular, and
* Zeller, p. 168, note 2.
�46
The Stoics.
individual, as opposed to their formal standard of right ; and it
was continually drawing men away from their true nature by
*
acting as a temptation to vice. Thus, probably for the last
reason, Cleanthes could speak of pleasure as contrary to Nature^
while less rigorous authorities regarded it as absolutely in
different, being a consequence of natural actions, not an essential
element in their performance. And when their opponents pointed
to the universal desire for pleasure as a proof that it was the
natural end of animated beings, the Stoics answered that what
Nature had in view was not pleasure at all, but the preservation
of life itself.
*
Such an interpretation of instinct introduces us to a new prin
ciple—self-interest ; and this was, in fact, recognized on all hands
as the foundation of right conduct; it was about the question, What
is our interest ? that the ancient moralists were disagreed. The
Cynics apparently held that, for every being, simple existence is
the only good, and therefore with them virtue meant limiting
oneself to the bare necessaries of life ; while by following Nature
they meant reducing existence to its lowest terms, and assimi
lating our actions so far as possible to those of the lower animals,
plants, or even stones, all of which require no more than to main
tain the integrity of their proper nature.
Where the Cynics left off the Stoics began. Recognizing
simple self-preservation as the earliest interest and duty of man,
they held that his ultimate and highest good was complete self
realization, the development of that rational, social, and beneficent
nature which distinguishes him from the lower animals. Here
their teleological religion came in as a valuable sanction for their
ethics. Epictetus, probably following older authorities, argues
that self-love has purposely been made identical with sociability.
“ The nature of an animal is to do all things for its own sake.
Accordingly God has so ordered the nature of the rational animal
that it cannot obtain any particular good without at the same
time contributing to the common good. Because it is self
seeking it is not therefore unsocial.”! But if our happiness de
pends on external goods, then we shall begin to fight with one
another for their possession ;! friends, father, country, the gods
themselves, everything will, with good reason, be sacrificed to
their attainment. And, regarding this as a self-evident absurdity,
Epictetus concludes that our happiness must consist solely in a
righteous will, which we know to have been the doctrine of
his whole school.
We have now reached the great point on which the Stoic
ethics differed from that of Plato and Aristotle. The two latter,
while upholding virtue as the highest good, allowed external
* Diogenes Laertius, vii. 85.
f Dissert. I. xix. 11.
J Ibid. xxii. 9, ff.
�The Stoics.
47
advantages like pleasure and exemption from pain to enter into
their definition of perfect happiness; nor yet did they demand
the entire suppression of passion, but, on the contrary, assigned
to it a certain part in the formation of character. We must add,
although it was not a point insisted on by the ancient critics,
that they did not bring out the socially beneficent character of
virtue with anything like the distinctness of their successors.
The Stoics, on the other hand, refused to admit that there was
any good but a virtuous will, or that any useful purpose could be
served by irrational feeling. If the passions agree with virtue
they are superfluous, if they are opposed to it they are mis
chievous ; and once we give them the rein they are more likely
to disagree with than to obey it. The severer school had more
reason on their side than is commonly admitted. Either there
is no such thing as duty at all, or duty must be paramount over
every other motive—that is to say, a perfect man will discharge
his obligations at the sacrifice of every personal advantage.
There is no pleasure that he will not renounce, no pain that he
will not endure, rather than leave them unfulfilled. But to
assume this supremacy over his will, duty must be incommen
surable with any other motive; if it is a good at all, it must be
the only good. To identify virtue with happiness seems to
us absurd, because we are accustomed to associate it exclu
sively with those dispositions which are the cause of happiness
in others, or altruism; and happiness itself with pleasure
or the absence of pain, which are states of feeling necessarily,
conceived as egoistic. But neither the Stoics nor any other ancient
moralists recognized such a distinction ; all agreed that public
and private interest must somehow be identical, the only question
being should one be merged in the other, and if so, which ? or
should there be an illogical compromise between the two. The
alternative chosen by Zeno was incomparably nobler than the
system of Epicurus, while it was more consistent than those of
Plato and Aristotle. He regarded right conduct exclusively in
the light of those universal interests with which alone it is
properly concerned ; and if he appealed to the motives supplied
by personal happiness, this was a confusion of phraseology rather
than of thought.
The treatment of the passions by the Stoic school presents
greater difficulties, due partly to their own vacillation, partly to
the very indefinite nature of the feelings in question. It will be
admitted that here also the claims of duty are supreme. To
follow the promptings of fear or of anger, of pity or of love,
without considering the ulterior consequences of our action, is,
of course, wrong. For even if, in any particular instance, no
harm comes of the concession, we cannot be sure that such will
always be the case, and meanwhile the passion is strengthened
�48
The Stoics.
by indulgence. And we have also to consider the bad effect
produced on the character of those who, finding themselves the
object of passion, learn to address themselves to it instead of to
reason. Difficulties arise when we begin to consider how far
education should aim at the systematic discouragement of strong
emotion. Here the Stoics seem to have taken up a position not
very consistent either with their appeals to Nature or with their
teleological assumptions. Nothing strikes one as more unnatural
than the complete absence of human feeling ; and a believer in
design might plausibly maintain that every emotion conduced to
the preservation either of the individual or of the race. We find,
however, that the Stoics, here as elsewhere reversing the Aris
totelian method, would not admit the existence of a psychological
distinction between reason and passion. According to their
analysis, the emotions are so many different forms of judgment.
Joy and sorrow are false opinions respecting good and evil in the
present: desire and fear, false opinions respecting good and evil
in the future. But, granting a righteous will to be the only good,
and its absence the only evil, there can be no room for any of
these feelings in the mind of a truly virtuous man, since his
opinions on the subject of good are correct, and its possession
depends entirely on himself. Everything else arises from an
external necessity, to strive with which would be useless because
it is inevitable, and impious because it is supremely wise.
It will be seen that the Stoics condemned passion not as the
cause of immoral actions but as instrinsically vicious in itself.
Hence their censure extended to the rapturous delight and
passionate grief which seem entirely out of relation to conduct
properly so called. This was equivalent to saying that the will
has complete control over emotion; a doctrine which our philoso
phers did not shrink from maintaining. It might have been
supposed that a position which the most extreme supporters of
free-will would hardly accept, would find still less favour with an
avowedly necessarian school. And to regard the emotions as
either themselves beliefs, or as inevitably caused by beliefs, would
seeni to remove them even farther from the sphere of moral
responsibility. The Stoics, however, having arrived at the per
fectly true doctrine that judgment is a form of volition, seem to
have immediately invested it with the old associations of free
choice which they were at the same time busily engaged in
stripping off from its other forms. They took up the Socratic
paradox that virtue is knowledge; but they would not agree
with Socrates that it could be instilled by force of argument. To
them vice was not so much ignorance as the obstinate refusal to
be convinced.
*
* Zeller, p. 229.
�49
The Stoics.
The Stoic arguments are, indeed, when we come to analyse
them, appeals to authority rather than to the logical understand
ing. We are told again and again that the common objects of
desire and dread cannot really be good or evil, because they
are not altogether under our control. And if we ask why this
necessarily excludes them from the class of things to be pursued
or avoided, the answer is that man, having been created for
perfect happiness, must also have been created with the power
to secure it by his own unaided exertions. But, even granting
the very doubtful thesis that there is any ascertainable purpose
in creation at all, it is hard to see how the Stoics could have
answered any one who chose to maintain that man is created for
enjoyment; since, judging by experience, he has secured a larger
share of it than of virtue, and is just as capable of gaining it by a
mere exercise of volition. For the professors of the Porch fully
admitted that their ideal sage had never been realized, which,
with their opinions about their indivisibility of virtue, was equiva
lent to saying that there never had been such a thing as a good
man at all. Or, putting the same paradox into other words,
since the two classes of wise and foolish divide humanity between
them, and since the former class has only an ideal existence, they
were obliged to admit that mankind are not merely most of
them fools, but all fools. And this, as Plutarch has pointed out
in his very clever attack on Stoicism, is equivalent to saying
that the scheme of creation is a complete failure.
*
The inconsistencies of a great philosophical system are best
explained by examining its historical antecedents. We have
already attempted to disentangle the roots from which Stoicism
was nourished, but one of them has not yet been taken into
account. This was the still continued influence of Parmenides,
derived, if not from his original teaching, then from some
one or more of the altered shapes through which it had passed.
It has been shown how Zeno used the Heracleitean method
to break down all the demarcations laboriously built up by
Plato and Aristotle. Spirit was identified with matter; ideas
with aerial currents ; God with the world; rational with sensible
evidence; volition with judgment; and emotion with thought.
But the idea of a fundamental antithesis, expelled from every
other department of inquiry, took hold with all the more energy
on what, to Stoicism, was the most vital of all distinctions—that
between right and wrong. Once grasp this transformation of a
metaphysical into a moral principle, and every paradox of the
system will be seen to follow from it with logical necessity.
What the supreme Idea had been to Plato and self-thinking
* Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis, cap. xxxiii. p. 1076 B.
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXI.]—New Series, Vol. LX1. No. I.
D
�50
The Stoics.
thought to Aristotle, that virtue became to the new school
*
simple, unchangeable, and self-sufficient. It must not only be
independent of pleasure and pain, but absolutely incommensurable
■with them; therefore there can be no happiness but what it
gives. As an indivisible unity, it must be possessed entirely or
not at all; and, being eternal, once possessed it can never be
lost. Further, since the same action may be either right or
wrong, according to the motive of its performance, virtue is
nothing external, but a subjective disposition, a state of the will
and the affections; or, if these are to be considered as judgments,
a state of the reason. Finally, since the universe is organized
reason, virtue must be natural, and especially consonant to the
nature of man as a rational animal; while, at the same time, its
existence in absolute purity being inconsistent with experience,
it must remain an unattainable ideal.
It has been shown in former studies how Greek philosophy,
after straining an antithesis to the utmost, was driven by the
very law of its being to close or bridge over the chasm by a series
of accommodations and transitions. To this rule Stoicism was
no exception; and perhaps its extraordinary vitality may have
been partly due to the necessity imposed on its professors of
continually reviewing their positions, with a view to softening
down its most repellent features. We proceed to sketch in
rapid outline the chief artifices employed for that purpose.
The doctrine, in its very earliest form, had left a large neutral
ground between good and evil, comprehending almost all the
common objects of desire and avoidance. These the Stoics
now proceeded to divide according to a similar principle of
arrangement. Whatever, without being morally good in the
strictest sense, was either conducive to morality, or conformable
to human nature, or both, they called preferable. Under this
head came personal advantages, such as mental accomplishments,
beauty, health, strength, and life itself; together with external
advantages, such as wealth, honour, and high connections. The
opposite to preferable things they called objectionable; and
what lay between the two, such as the particular coin selected to
make a payment with, absolutely indifferent.
*
The thorough-going condemnation of passion was explained
away to a certain extent by allowing the sage himself to feel a
slight touch of the feelings which fail to shake his determination,
like a scar remaining after the wound is healed; and by
admitting the desirability of sundry emotions, which, though
carefully distinguished from the passions, seem to have differed
from them in degree rather than in kind.t
In like manner, the peremptory alternative between consum
* Zeller, pp. 260-1.
+ Ibid. pp. 267-8.
�51
The Stoics.
mate wisdom and utter folly was softened down by admitting
the possibility of a gradual progress from one to the other, itself
subdivided into a number of more or less advanced grades,
recalling Aristotle's idea of motion as a link between Privation
and Form.
*
It was not, however, in any of these concessions that the Stoics
found from first to last their,most efficient solution for the diffi
culties of practical experience, but in the countenance they ex
tended to an act which, more than any other, might have seemed
fatally inconsistent both in spirit and in letter with their whole
system, whether we, choose to call it a defiance of divine law, a
reversal of natural instinct, a selfish abandonment of duty, or a
cowardly shrinking from pain. We allude, of course, to their
habitual recommendation of suicide. “ If you are not satisfied with
life," they said, “ you have only got to rise and depart; the door is
always open." Various circumstances were specified in which the
sage would exercise the privilege of “ taking himself off/’ as they
euphemistically expressed it. Severe pain, mutilation, incurable
disease, advanced old age, the hopelessness of escaping from ty
ranny, and in general any hindrance to leading a “natural” life
were held to be a sufficient justification for such a step. The first
founders of the school set an example afterwards frequently fol
lowed. Zeno is said to have hanged himself for no better reason
than that he fell and broke his finger through the weakness of old
age; and Cleanthes, having been ordered to abstain temporarily
from food,' resolved, as he expressed it, not to turn back after
going half way to death. This side of the Stoic doctrine found
particular favour in Rome, and the voluntary death of Cato was
always spoken of as his chief title to fame. Many noble spirits
were sustained in their defiance of the imperial despotism by
the thought that there was one last liberty of which not even
Caesar could deprive them. Objections were silenced by the
argument that, life not being an absolute good, its loss might
fairly be preferred to some relatively greater inconvenience.
But why the sage should renounce an existence where perfect
happiness depends entirely on his own will neither was, nor could
be, explained.
If now, abandoning all technicalities, we endeavour to estimate
the significance and value of the most general ideas contributed
by Stoicism to ethical speculation, we shall find that they may be
most conveniently considered under the following heads. First
of all, the Stoics made morality completely inward. They
declared that the intention was equivalent to the deed, and that
the wish was equivalent to the intention—a view which has been
* Zeller, p. 270.
D 2
�52
The Stoics.
made familiar to all by the teaching of the Gospel, but whose
origin in Greek philosophy has been strangely ignored even by
rationalistic writers.
*
From the inaccessibility of motives and
feelings to direct external observation, it follows that each man
must be, in the last resort, his own judge. Hence the notion of
conscience is equally a Stoic creation. That we have a mystical
intuition informing us, prior to experience, of the difference
between right and wrong, was, indeed, a theory quite alien to
their empirical derivation of knowledge. But that the educated
wrongdoer carries in his bosom a perpetual witness and avenger
of his guilt, they most distinctly asserted.f The difference
between ancient and modern tragedy is alone sufficient to
prove the novelty and power of this idea; for that the Eumenides do not represent even the germ of a conscience, it would
now be waste of words to show. On the other hand, the falli
bility of conscience and the extent to which it may be sophisti
cated were topics not embraced within the limits of Stoicism,
and perhaps never adequately illustrated by any writer, even in
modern times, except the great English novelist whose loss we
still deplore.
The second Stoic idea to which we would invite attention is
that, in the economy of life, every one has a certain function to
fulfil, a certain part to play, which is marked out for him by
circumstances beyond his control, but in the adequate perform
ance of which his duty and dignity are peculiarly involved. It
is true that this idea finds no assignable place in the teaching of
the earliest Stoics, or rather in the few fragments of their
teaching which alone have been preserved; but it is already
touched upon by Cicero in a work avowedly adapted from
Pansetius, who flourished more than a century B C.; it frequently
recurs in the lectures of Epictetus; and is enunciated with
energetic concision in the solitary meditations of Marcus
Aurelius.I The belief spoken of is, indeed, closely connected
with the Stoic teleology, and only applies to the sphere of free
intelligence a principle like that supposed to regulate the
activity of inanimate or irrational beings. If every mineral,
every plant, and every animal has its special use and office, so
also must we, according to the capacity of our individual and
* “ Omnia scelera, et.iam ante effectum operis, quantum culpae satis est, perfecta sunt.”—Seneca, De Const. Sap. vii. 4.
t “ Prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus est ... . sacer intra nos spiritus
sedet bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos.”—Seneca, Epp.
xli. 1.
f Cicero, De Off. I. 31; Epictetus, Man. 17, ib. 30; Diss. I. ii. 33, xvi.
20, xxix. 39, II. v. 10, ib. 21, x. 4, xiv. 8, xxiii. 38, xxv. 22; Antoninus,
Comm. VI. 39, 43, IX. 29; cf. Seneca,
Ixxxv. 54.
�The Stoics.
53
determinate existence. By accomplishing the work thus im
posed on us, we fulfil the purpose of our vocation, we have done
all that the highest morality demands, and may with a clear
conscience leave the rest to fate. To put the same idea into
somewhat different terms : we are born into certain relationships,
domestic, social, and political, by which the lines of our daily
duties are prescribed with little latitude for personal choice.
The implications of such an ethical standard are, on the whole,
conservative ; it is assumed that social institutions are, taking
them altogether, nearly the best possible at any moment; and
that our truest' wisdom is to make the most of them, instead of
sighing for some other sphere where our grand aspirations or
volcanic passions might find a readier outlet for their feverish
activity. And if the teaching of the first Stoics did not take
the direction here indicated, it was because they, with the com
munistic theories inherited from their Cynic predecessors, began
by condemning all existing social distinctions as irrational. They
wished to abolish local religion, property, the family, and the
State, as a substitute for which the whole human race was to
be united under a single government, without private possessions
or slaves, and with a complete community of women and
children. It must, however, have gradually dawned on them
that such a radical subversion of the present system was hardly
compatible with their belief in the providential origin of all
things ; and that, besides this, the virtues which they made it so
much their object to recommend would be, for the most part,
superfluous in a communistic society. At the same time, the old
motion of Sophrosyne as a virtue which consisted in minding
one’s own business, or, stated more generally, in discerning and
doing whatever work one is best fitted for, would continue to
influence ethical teaching, with the effect of giving more and
more individuality to the definition of duty. And the Stoic
idea of a perfect sage, including as it did the possession of every
accomplishment and an exclusive fitness for discharging every
honourable function, would seem much less chimerical if inter
preted to mean that a noble character, while everywhere in
trinsically the same, might be realized under as many divergen
forms as there are opportunities for continuous usefulness in
*
life.
We can understand, then, why the philosophy which, when
first promulgated, had tended to withdraw its adherents from
participation in public life, should, when transplanted to Roman
* It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law lias
attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—
sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda
and the Spanish Gypsy.
�51
The Stoics.
soil, have become associated with an energetic interest in politics ;
why it was so eagerly embraced by those noble statesmen who
fought to the death in defence of their ancient liberties ; how it
could become the cement of a republican opposition under the
worst Caesars; how it could be the pride and support of Rome's
Prime Minister during that quinquennium JTeronis which was
the one bright episode in more than half a century of shame
and terror ; how, finally, it could mount the throne with Marcus
Aurelius, and prove, through his example, that the world’s work
might be most faithfully performed by one in whose meditations
mere worldly interests occupied the smallest space. Nor can we
agree with Zeller in thinking that it was the nationality, and not
the philosophy, of these disciples which made them such efficient
*
statesmen.
On the contrary, it seems to us that the “ Roman
ism” of these men was inseparable from their philosophy, and that
they were all the more Roman because they were Stoics as well.
The third great idea of Stoicism was its doctrine of humanity.
Men are all children of one Father, and citizens of one State;
the highest moral law is, Follow Nature, and (Nature has made
them to be social and to love one another ; the private interest
of each is, or should be, identified with the universal interest;
we should live for others that we may live for ourselves; even to
our enemies we should show love and not anger; the unnatural
ness of passion is shown by nothing more clearly than by its anti
social and destructive tendencies. Here, also, the three great Stoics
of the Roman empire—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—
rather than the founders of the school, must be our authorities,f
whether it be because their lessons correspond to a more deve
loped state of thought, or simply because they have been more
perfectly preserved. The former explanation is perhaps the
more generally accepted. There seems, however, good reason for
believing that the idea of universal love—the highest of all
philosophical ideas next to that of the universe itself—dates
further back than is commonly supposed. It can hardly be due
* Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on
Stoicism.
t Seneca, De Trd, I. v. 2 ff., II. xxxi. 7, De Clem. I. iii. 2., De Benej.
IV. xxvi. 1, Bpp. xcv. 51 ff. ; Epictetus, Diss. IV. v. 10; Antoninus VII.
13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It
is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beiDgs by the Stoic
philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealized
ideal of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are
described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.
“Erras,” he exclaims, “si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis : hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus
incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas injicit: aut fame
aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: liomini perdere hominem iibet.—”Bpp. ciii. 2.
�The Stoics.
55
to Seneca, who had evidently far more capacity for popularizing
and applying the thoughts of others than for original speculation,
and who on this subject expresses himself with a rhetorical
fluency not usually characterizing the exposition of new dis
coveries. The same remark applies to his illustrious successors,
who, while agreeing with him in tone, do not seem to have drawn
on his writings for their philosophy. It is also clear that the
idea in question springs from two essentially Stoic conceptions :
the objective conception of a unified world, a Cosmos to which
all men belong; and the subjective conception of a rational
nature common to them all. These, again, are rooted in early
Greek thought, and were already emerging into distinctness at
the time of Socrates. Accordingly we find that Plato, having to
compose a characteristic speech for the Sophist Hippias, makes
him say that like-minded men are by nature kinsmen and
friends to one another.
*
Nature, however, soon came to be
viewed under a different aspect, and it was maintained, just as
by some living philosophers, that her true law is the universal
oppression of the weak by the strong. Then the idea of mind
came in as a salutary corrective. It had supplied a basis for the
ethics of Protagoras, and still more for the ethics of Socrates;
it was now combined with its old rival by the Stoics, and from
their union arose the conception of human nature as something
allied with and illustrated by all other forms of animal life, yet
capable, if fully developed, of rising infinitely above them.
Nevertheless, the individual and the universal element were never
quite reconciled in the Stoic ethics. The altruistic quality of
justice was clearly perceived ; but no attempt was made to show
that all virtue is essentially social, and has come to be recognized
as obligatory on the individual mainly because it conduces to the
safety of the whole community. The learner was told to con
quer his passions for his own sake rather than for the sake of
others; and indulgence in violent anger, though more energetic
ally denounced, was, in theory, placed on a par with immoderate
delight or uncontrollable distress. So, also, vices of impurity
were classed' with comparatively harmless forms of sensuality,
and considered in reference, not to the social degradation of their
victims, but to the spiritual defilement of their perpetrators.
Yet, while the Stoics were far from anticipating the methods
■of modern Utilitarianism, they were, in a certain sense, strict
Utilitarians—that is to say, they measured the goodness or bad
ness of actions by their consequences; in other words, by their
bearing on the supposed interest of the individual or of the com
* Plato, Protagoras, 337 I).
�56
The Stoics.
munity. They did not, it is true, identify interest with pleasure
or the absence of pain ; but although, in our time, Hedonism and
Utilitarianism are, for convenience, treated as interchangeable
terms, they need not necessarily be so. If any one choose to re
gard bodily strength, health, wealth, beauty, intellect, knowledge,
or even simple existence, as the highest good and the end con
duciveness to which determines the morality of actions, he is a
Utilitarian; and, even if it could be shown that a maximum of
happiness would be ensured by the attainment of his end, he
does not on that account become a Hedonist. Now it is certain
that the early Stoics at least regarded the preservation of the
human race as an end which rightfully took precedence of every
other consideration ; and, like Charles Austin, they liked to push
their principles to paradoxical or offensive extremes, apparently
for no other purpose than that of affronting the common feelings
of mankind, without remembering that such feelings were likely
*
to represent embodied experiences of utility. Thus—apart from
their communistic theories—they were fond of specifying the
circumstances in which incest would become legitimate; and
they are said not only to have sanctioned cannibalism in cases of
extreme necessity, but even to have recommended its introduction
as a substitute for burial or cremation; although this, we may
hope, was rather a grim illustration of what they meant by moral
indifference than a serious practical suggestion.f Besides the
encouragement which it gave to kind offices between friends and
neighbours, the Stoic doctrine of humanity and mutual love was
honourably exemplified in Seneca’s emphatic condemnation of
the gladiatorial games and of the horrible abuses connected with
domestic slavery in Rome.I But we miss a clear perception that
such abuses' are always and everywhere the consequences of
slavery ; and the outspoken abolitionism of the naturalists
alluded to by Aristotle does not seem to have been imitated by
their successors in later ages.§ The most one can say is that
the fiction of original liberty was imported into Roman juris-*
§
* “ He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most
startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them
which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.”—
Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.
f Zeller, p. 281.
J “ Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur .... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.”—Seneca, Epp. xcv. 33. “ Servi sunt ?
Immo homines. Servi sunt ? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt ? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt ? Immo conservi.”—Ibid, xlvii. 1. Compare the
treatise Ee Ira, passim.
§ Seneca once lets fall the words, “fortuna re quo jure genitos alium alii
donavit.”—Consol, ad Marciam,.^. 2; but this is the only expression of the
kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.
�The Stoics.
57
prudence through the agency of Stoic lawyers, and helped to
familiarize men’s minds with the idea of universal emancipation
before political and economical conditions permitted it to be
made a reality.
It is probable that the philanthropic tendencies of the Stoics
were, to a great extent, neutralized by the extreme individualism
which formed the reverse side of their philosophical character;
and also by what may be called the subjective idealism of their
ethics. According to their principles no one can really do good
to any one else, since what does not depend on my will is not a
good to me. The altruistic virtues are valuable, not as sources
of beneficent action, but as manifestations of benevolent senti
ment. Thus, to set on foot comprehensive schemes for the relief
of human suffering seemed no part of the Stoic’s business.
And the abolition of slavery, even had it been practicable,
would have seemed rather superfluous to one who held that true
freedom is a mental condition within the reach of all who
desire it, while the richest and most powerful may be, and
*
for the most part actually are, without it. Moreover, at the
time when philosophy gained its greatest ascendency, the one
paramount object of practical statesmen must have been to save
civilization from the barbarians, a work to which Marcus Aure
lius devoted his life. Hence we learn without surprise that
the legislative efforts of the imperial Stoic were directed to the
strengthening, rather than to the renovation, of ancient insti
tutions. Certain enactments were, indeed, framed for the pro
tection of those who took part in the public games. It was
provided, with a humanity from which even our own age might
learn something, that performers on the high rope should be en
sured against the consequences of an accidental fall by having
the ground beneath them covered with feather beds; and the
gladiators were only allowed to fight with blunted weapons. It
must, however, be noted that in speaking of the combats with
wild beasts which were still allowed to continue under his reign,
Marcus Aurelius dwells only on the monotonous character which
made them exceedingly wearisome to a cultivated mind; just
as a philosophic sportsman may sometimes be heard to observe
that shooting one grouse is very like shooting another; while
elsewhere he refers with simple contempt to the poor wretches,
who, when already half-devoured by the wild beasts, begged to
be spared for another day’s amusement.
*
Whether he knew the
whole extent of the judicial atrocities practised on his Christian
subjects may well be doubted ; but it may be equally doubted
* Seneca, JEpp. lxxx.
j-Antoninus, Comm. vi. 46; x. 8.
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The Stoics.
whether, had he known it, he would have interfered to save
them. Pain and death were no evils ; but it was an evil that the
law should be defied.
Those manifestations of sympathy which are often so much
more precious than material assistance were also repugnant to
Stoic principles. On this subject, Epictetus expresses himself
with singular harshness. ,£ Do not,” he says, “ let yourself be put
out by the sufferings of your friends. If they are unhappy, it is
their own fault. God made them for happiness ; not for misery.
They are grieved at parting from you, are they? Why, then,
did they set their affections on things outside themselves ? If
they suffer for their folly it serves them right.”*
On the other hand, if Stoicism did not make men pitiful, it
made them infinitely forgiving. Various causes conspired to
bring about this result. If all are sinners, and if all sins are
equal, no one has a right, under pretence of superior virtue, to
cast a stone at his fellows. Such is the point of view insisted on
with especial emphasis by Seneca, who, more perhaps than
other philosophers, had reason to be conscious how far his.
practice fell short of his professions.! But, speaking generally,
pride was the very last fault with which the Stoics could be
charged. Both in ancient and modern times satirists have been
prone to assume that every disciple of the Porch, in describing his
ideal of a wise man, was actually describing himself. No mis
conception could be.more complete. It is like supposing that,
because Christ commanded his followers to be perfect even as
their heavenly Father is perfect, every Christian for that reason
thinks himself equal to God. The wise man of the Stoics had,
by their own acknowledgment, never been realized at all; he
had only been approached by three characters, Socrates, Antis
thenes, and Diogenes. “ May the sage fall in love ?” asked
a young man of Panaetius. “ What the sage may do,” replied
the master, “ is a question to be considered at some future time.
Meanwhile, you and I, who are very far from being sages, had
better be careful how we let ourselves become the slaves of
a degrading passion.”!
In the next place, if it is not in the power of others to injure
us, we have no right to resent anything that they can do to us.
So argues Epictetus, who began to learn philosophy when still a
slave, and was carefully prepared by his instructor, Musonius,
* Epictetus, Diss. III. xxiv.
f Seneca, De Ira, I. xiv. 2; De Clement. I. vi. 2.
J Seneca, Jipp. cxvi. 4. It must be borne in mind that Pansetius was
speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another
man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.
�The Stoics.
59
to bear without repining whatever outrages his master might
choose to inflict on him. Finally, to those who urged that they
might justly blame the evil intentions of their assailants, Marcus
Aurelius could reply that even this was too presumptuous, that
all men did what they thought right, and that the motives of
none could be adequately judged except by himself. And all
the Stoics found a common ground for patience in their optimistic
fatalism, in the doctrine that whatever happens is both necessarily
determined, and determined by absolute goodness combined with
infallible wisdom.
Doctrines like these, if consistently carried out, would have
utterly destroyed so much of morality as depends on the social
sanction ; while, by inculcating the absolute indifference of ex
ternal actions, they might ultimately have paralysed the indi
vidual conscience itself. But the Stoics were not consistent.
Unlike some modern moralists, who are ready to forgive every
injury so long as they are not themselves the victims, our
philosophers were unsparing in their denunciations of wrong
doing ; and it is very largely to their indignant protests that we
are indebted for our knowledge of the corruption prevalent in
Roman society under the Empire. It may even be contended
that, in this respect, our judgment has been unfairly biassed.
The picture drawn by the Stoics, or by writers trained under
their influence, seems to have been too heavily charged with
shadow ; and but for the archaeological evidence we should not
have known how much genuine human affection lay concealed
in those lower social strata where Christianity found a readier
acceptance because it only gave a supernatural sanction to habits
and sentiments already made familiar by the spontaneous ten
dencies of an unwarlike regime.
Before parting with Stoicism we have to say a few words on
the metaphysical foundation of the whole system—the theory
of Nature considered as a moral guide and support. It has
been shown that the ultimate object of this, as of many other
ethical theories, both ancient and modern, was to reconcile the
instincts of individual self-preservation with virtue, which is the
instinct of self-preservation in an entire community. The Stoics
identified both impulses by declaring that virtue is the sole good
of the individual no less than the supreme interest of the whole;
thus involving themselves in an insoluble contradiction. For,
from their nominalistic point of view, the good of the whole can
be nothing but an aggregate of particular goods, or else a means
for their attainment; and in either case the happiness of the
individual has to be accounted for apart from his duty. And
an analysis of the special virtues and vices would equally have
forced them back on the assumption, which they persistently
�60
The Stoics.
repudiated, that individual existence and pleasure are intrin
sically good, and their opposites intrinsically evil. To prove
their fundamental paradox—the non-existence of individual as
distinguished from social interest—the Stoics employed the
analogy of an organized body where the good of the parts
unquestionably subserves the good of the whole; and the
object of their teleology was to show that the universe and,
by implication, the human race, were properly to be viewed
in that light. The acknowledged adaptation of life to its
environment furnished some plausible arguments in support
of their thesis; and the deficiencies were made good by a
revival of the Heracleitean theory in which the unity of nature
was conceived partly as a necessary interdependence of opposing
forces, partly as a perpetual transformation of every substance
into every other. Universal history also tended to confirm the
same principle in ■ its application to the human race. The
Macedonian, and still more the Roman empire brought the
idea of a world-wide community living under the same laws
ever nearer to its realization ; the decay of the old religion
and the old civic patriotism set free a vast fund of energy, some
of which was absorbed by philosophy; while a rank growth of
immorality offered ever new opportunities for an indignant
protest against senseless luxury and inhuman vice. This last
circumstance, however, was not allowed to prejudice the optimism
of the system; for the fertile physics of Heracleitus suggested
a method by which moral evil could be interpreted as a necessary
concomitant of good, a material for the perpetual exercise and
illustration of virtuous deeds.
Yet, if the conception of unity was gaining ground, the con
ceptions of purpose and vitality must have been growing weaker
as the triumph of brute force prolonged itself without limit or
hope of redress. Hence Stoicism in its later forms shows a
tendency to dissociate the dynamism of Heracleitus from the
teleology of Socrates, and to lean on the former rather than on the
latter for support. One symptom of this changed attitude is a
blind worship of power for its own sake. We find.the renuncia
tion of pleasure and the defiance of pain appreciated more
from an eesthetic than from an ethical point of view; they are
exalted almost in the spirit of a Red Indian, not as means to
higher ends, but as manifestations of unconquerable strength;
and sometimes the highest sanction of duty takes the form of a
morbid craving for applause, as if the universe was a Coliseum
and life a gladiatorial game.
The noble spirit of Marcus Aurelius was, indeed, proof against
such temptations; and he had far more to dread than to hope
from the unlightened voice of public opinion; but to him also,
�The Stoics.
61
“ standing between two eternities/’ Nature presented herself
chiefly under the aspect of an overwhelming and absorbing force
Pleasure is not so much dangerous as worthless, weak, and
evanescent. Selfishness, pride, anger, and discontent will soon
be swept into abysmal gulfs of oblivion by the roaring cataract
of change. Universal history is one long monotonous procession
of phantasms passing over the scene into death and utter
night. In one short life we may see all that ever was, or is, or is
to be; the same pageant has already been and shall be repeated
an infinite number of times. Nothing endures but the process
of unending renovation : we must die that the world may be ever
young. Death itself only reunites us with the absolute All whence
we come, in which we move, and whither we return. But the
imperial sage makes no attempt to explain why we should ever
have separated ourselves from it in thought; or why one life
should be better worth living than another in the universal
vanity of things.
The physics of Stoicism were, in truth, the scaffolding, rather
than the foundation, of its ethical superstructure. The real
foundation was the necessity of social existence formulated
under the influence of a logical exclusiveness first introduced by
Parmenides, and inherited from his teaching by every system of
philosophy in turn. Yet there is no doubt that Stoic morality
was considerably strengthened and steadied by the support it
found in conceptions derived from a different order of specula
tions ; so much so that at last it grew to conscious independence
of that support.
Marcus Aurelius, a constant student of Lucretius, seems to
have had occasional misgivings with respect to the certainty of
his own creed ; but they never extended to his practical beliefs.
He was determined that, whatever might be the origin of this
world, his relation to it should be still the same. “Though things
be purposeless, act not thou without a purpose.” “ If the universe
is an ungoverned chaos, be content that in that wild torrent thou
hast a governing reason within thyself.”*
There seems, then, good reason for believing that the law of
* Comm. IX. 28, xii. 14. A modern disciple of Aurelius has expressed
himself to the same purpose in slightly different language :—
“ Long fed on boundless hopes, 0 race of man,
How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!
‘ Christ,’ some one says, ‘ was human as we are.
No judge eyes us from heaven our sin to scan;
We live no more, when we have done our span.’
‘ Well, then, for Christ,’ thou answerest, ‘who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear ?
Live we, like brut es, our life without a plan I ’
�62
The Stoics.
duty, after being divorced from mythology, and seriously
compromised by its association, even among the Stoics them
selves, with our egoistic instincts, gained an entirely new
authority when placed, at least in appearance, under the sanction
of a power whose commands did not even admit of being dis
obeyed. And the question spontaneously presents itself whether
we, after getting rid of the old errors and confusions, may profit
ably employ the same method in defence of the same convictions,
whether the ancient alliance between fact and right can be
reorganized on a basis of scientific proof.
A great reformer of the last generation, finding that the idea
of Nature was constantly put forward to thwart his most cherished
schemes, prepared a mine for its destruction which was only ex
ploded after his death. Seldom has so powerful a charge of
logical dynamite been collected within so small a space as in
Mill’s famous Essay on Nature. But the immediate effect was
less than might have been anticipated, because the attack was
supposed to be directed against religion, whereas it was only
aimed at an abstract metaphysical dogma, not necessarily con
nected with any theological beliefs, and held by many who have
discarded all such beliefs. A stronger impression was perhaps
produced by the nearly simultaneous -declaration of Sir W. Gull
—in reference to the supposed vis meclicatrix natures—that, in
cases of disease, “what Nature wants is to put the man in his
coffin/’’ The new school of political economists have also done
much to show that legislative interference with the “natural
laws” of wealth need by no means be so generally mischievous
as was once supposed. And the doctrine of Evolution, besides
breaking down the old distinctions between Nature and Man,
has represented the former as essentially variable, and therefore,
to that extent, incapable of affording a fixed standard for moral
action. It is, however, from this school that a new attempt to
rehabilitate the old physical ethics has lately proceeded. The
object of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics is, among other
points, to prove that a true morality represents the ultimate
stage of evolution, and reproduces in social life that permanent
equilibration towards which every form of evolution constantly
tends. And Mr. Spencer also shows how evolution is bringing
about a state of things in which the self-regarding shall be finally
So answerest tliou ; but why not rather say :
‘ Hath man no second life ?—Pitch this one high I
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see ?
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey I
Was Christ a man like us ?—Ah ! let us try
If we then, too, can he such men as lie!’ ”
The Better Part, by Mr. Matthew Arnold. The italics are in the original.
�The Stoics.
63
harmonized with the social impulses. Now, it will be readilyadmitted that morality is a product of evolution in this sense
that it is a gradual formation, that it is the product of many con
verging conditions, and that it progresses according to a certain
method. But that the same method is observed through all
orders of evolution seems less evident. For instance, in the
formation, first of the solar system, and then of the earth's crust,
there is a continual loss of force, while in the development of
organic life there is as continual a gain ; and on arriving at sub
jective phenomena we are met by facts which, in the present
state of our knowledge, cannot advantageously be expressed in
teims of force and matter at all. Even if we do not agree with
George Sand in thinking that self-sacrifice is the only virtue, we
must admit that the possibility, at least, of its being some
times demanded is inseparable from the idea of duty;
and without consciousness self-sacrifice cannot be conceived ;
which is equivalent to saying that it involves other than me
chanical notions. Thus we are confronted by the standinodifficulty of all evolutionary theories, and on a point where
that difficulty is peculiarly sensible. Nor is this an objection
to be got rid of by the argument that it applies to all philo
sophical systems alike. To an idealist, the dependence of
morality on consciousness is a practical confirmation of his
professed principles. Holding that the universal forms of ex
perience are the conditions under which an object is apprehended,
rather than modifications imposed by an unknowable object
on an unknowable subject, and that these forms are common to
all intelligent beings, he holds also that the perception of
duty is the widening of our individual selves into that uni
versal self which is the subjective side of all experience.
Again, whatever harmony evolution may introduce into our
conceptions, whatever hopes it may encourage with regard to the
future of our race, one does not see precisely what sanction it
gives to morality at present—that is to say, how it makes self
sacrifice easier than before. Because certain forces have been
unconsciously working towards a certain end through ages past,
why should I consciously work towards the same end ? If the
perfection of humanity is predetermined, my conduct cannot
prevent its consummation; if it in any way depends on me, the
question returns, why should my particular interests be sacrificed
to it ? The man who does not already love his contemporaries
whom he has seen is unlikely to love them the more for the sake
of a remote posterity whom he will never see at all. Finallv, it
must be remembered that evolution is only half the cosmic pro
cess ; it is accompanied at every stage by partial dissolution, to
which in the long run it must entirely give way; and if, as Mr.
�64
The Stoics.
Spencer observes, evolution is the more interesting of the
*
two, this preference is itself due to the lifeward tendency of our
thoughts ; in other words, to those moral sentiments which it is
sought to base on what, abstractedly considered, has all along
been a creation of their own.
The idea of Nature, or of the universe, or of human history,
as a whole—but for its evil associations with fanaticism and
superstition, we should gladly say the belief in God—-is one the
ethical value of which can be more easily felt than analysed.
We do not agree with the most brilliant of the English Positi
vists in restricting its influence to the aesthetic emotions. The
elevating influence of these should be duly recognized, but the
place due to more severely intellectual pursuits in moral training
is greater far. Whatever studies tend to withdraw us from the
petty circle of our personal interests and pleasures are indirectly
favourable to the preponderance of social over selfish impulses ;
and the service thus rendered is amply repaid, since these very
studies necessitate for their continuance a large expenditure of
moral energy. It might even be contended that the influence
of speculation on practice is determined by the previous influence
of practice on speculation. Physical laws act as an armature to
the law of duty, extending and perpetuating its grasp on the
minds of men ; but it was through the magnetism of duty that
their confused currents were first drawn into parallelism’ and
harmony with its attraction. Yet those who base morality on
religion, or give faith precedence over works, have discerned
with a sure, though dim, instinct the dependence of noble and
far-sighted action on some paramount intellectual initiative and
control; in other words, the highest ethical ideals are conditioned
by the highest philosophical generalizations. And what was
once a creative, still continues to work as an educating force.
Our aspirations towards agreement with ourselves and with
humanity as a whole are strengthened by the contemplation of
that supreme unity, which, even if it be but the glorified
reflection of our individual or generic identity, still remains the
idea in and through which those lesser unities were first com
pletely realized—the idea which has originated all man’s most
fruitful faiths, and will at last absorb them all. Meanwhile
our highest devotion can hardly find more fitting utterance
than in the prayer which once rose to a Stoic’s lips :—
“ But Jove all-bounteous ! who in clouds
enwrapt the lightning wieldest;
May’st Thou from baneful Ignorance
the race of men deliver !
* First Principles, § 177.
I
�
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Victorian Blogging
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
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The Stoics
Creator
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Benn, Alfred William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 33-64 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review, 61 (January 1882). A review of Die Philosophie der Griechen by Dr. Edwaed Zeller. Leipzig, 1880.
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[s.n.]
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CT57
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Book reviews
Stoics
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Stoics), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Stoics
-
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b5bcbadd5cddfdc86b0b0a10a161e4cb
PDF Text
Text
SECOND EDITION, NOW READY.
THE
SACRED
ANTHOLOGY
A BOOK OF ETHNICAL SCRIPTURES.
BY
MONCURE
DANIEL
CONWAY.
Triibner & Co^Ludgate Hill.
The second edition of this work contains an Index of Authors,
in addition to the Index of Subjects, List of Authorities, &c.,
and the Chronological Notes have been carefully revised.
The book contains 740 Readings from the Asiatic and Scan
dinavian Sacred Books and ClassicsJarranged according to
subjects in 480 pages royal 8vo, with marginal notes.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
It is certainly instructive to see the essential agreement of so many
venerated religious writings, though for depth of meaning and classicality
of form none of them approaches the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
The idea of the work is an excellent one, and Mr. Conway deserves great
credit for being the first to realise it.— Westminster Review.
It remains for us to point out some of the remarkable coincidences
in the principles of morals and religion which Mr. Conway’s diligence
and tact have brought together. Hillel and Confucius enunciated the
same warning in almost the same words—“ What you do not wish done
to yourself do not to others.” Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes and
green parrots suggest the same lessons as the ravens and lilies of the
field upon the hills of Galilee. A few words sum up with unsurpassed
pathos the parable of the virgins—“A poor man watched a thousand
years before the gate of Paradise ; then, while he snatched one little nap
jt opened and shut.”— Theological Review.
�2
Few more valuable contributions have been made to the popular study
of comparative theology than Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthology,” well
fitted to serve as a volume of devout reading to those who choose without
theological forethought or afterthought to apply it to that use. To the
more speculative student, it curiously illustrates at once the different
genius of the various nations of the world, and the identity of human
nature in its apprehension of the loftiest topics of faith and morals. Few
can read it without feeling their mental horizon enlarged, and without a
deeper sense of the common humanity that lies at the basis of the dif
ferences by which history, climate, and civilisation disguise men and
nations from each other.—Daily News.
The book may fairly be described as a bible of humanity, and as an
ethical text book it might well be adopted in all schools and families
where an attempt is made to instil the highest principles of morality
apart from religious dogma. He has produced a work which a great
number of people have long been desiring to possess, and which is likely
to mark a distinct epoch in the'progress of ethical culture.—Examiner.
The result is most interesting. For the first time, an English reader
may judge for himself of the moral and religious merits of writings which
heretofore have been to him only venerable and shadowy abstractions.
We shall be much surprised if every reader does not lay it down in a
better mental frame than was his when he took it up. It teaches charity
and toleration, and makes men less spiritually arrogant. It is not with
out even greater lessons to those who have ears to hear.—The Echo*
The “ Sacred Anthology ” should find a place on every library shelf.
It is a bible free from bigotry, and were an Universal Church ever estab
lished, might fairly be a lesson book for that church. The labour ex
pended by Mr. Conway in editing, abridging, and selecting, can hardly
be fairly estimated. We can heartily recommend it to Freethought
Societies as a volume in which they may find readings otherwise inaccess
ible to them.—National Reformer.
The principal authorities for the beautiful thoughts and precepts so
skilfully collected by the editor, are given at the close of the volume, to
make his work as complete as possible. Mr. Conway also publishes
chronological notes, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his views
with regard to the dates of our sacred books differ considerably from those
adopted by orthodox divines.— The Pall Mall Gazette.
A very slight examination of the volume will show that it is indeed a
valuable anthology of the scriptures of all races. As complete and
entertaining a volume as one would wish to read. —The Bookseller.
It will be seen that all the sacred books of mankind have their prin
cipal features in common ; that the differences between them are not of
essential nature, but of degrees of manner and style, and that an inspired
spirit variously modified and expressed breathes through all. Mr. M. D.
�Conway has contributed a real service to an enlightened view of this
subject by his “ Sacred Anthology,” a book which we commend to the
attention of all who are accustomed to speak of the bible as the only
word of God.—The Inquirer.
Such of our readers as may have studied a remarkable book, India in
Greece, which appeared some twenty years ago, are well aware of the
extent to which Indian rites and customs after having been transported
to Greece, and thence re-exported to Italy, have become permanently
imbedded in the Romish system. Indeed, we believe there is scarce a
Popish notion, emblem, or ceremony that may not be distinctly traced
to a Pagan source. However, if the original have come from thence,
thence also may be derived an anecdote that may somewhat tend to
diminish its ill effects. For among the wise Hindoo aphorisms (as ren
dered in Mr. Moncure Conway’s recent book), we find the following,
which some amongst us might ponder with advantage at the present
time :—“ Sdnyfisis (? Hindu Rits) acquaint themselves with particular
words and vests; they wear a brick-red garb and shaven crowns; in
these they pride themselves ; their heads look very pure, but are their
hearts so ?” “ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs (mark
this ye clergy of St. Alban’s, Holborn) is just a little inferior to the
exercises of the wrestler.” “ In the absence of inward vision boast not
of oral divinity.” We are not sure that Vishnu’s philosophy would not
compare favourably with that of Pio Nono.—The Rock.
Many years ago, Philip Bailey, of E Festus,” announced as forthcoming
a book entitled “ Poetical Divinity,” the object of which was to show by
quotations from the bards of all time, that they all held substantially the
same creed which we presume was held by Festus himself—Pantheism
plus Universal Restoration. This book never has appeared, but Mr
Conway’s is arranged on a somewhat similar plan, and is altogether a
volume of such a unique yet delightfully varied character that it must
commend itself to readers of every sort. We have seen already the eyes
of a rather strictly orthodox person glistening with eager delight over
many of the maxims and beautiful little moral fables with which it abounds.
—The Dundee Advertise-M^
It would be impossible that such a book, even if it were compara
tively carelessly done, could be without interest; but Mr, Conway’s task
has been most conscientiously performed, and it will be found of the
greatest possible value, for it casts a strong light upon many matters
which are frequently in discussion.—The Scotsman.
Mr. Conway has conferred a signal service on the literature of Theism by
publishing for the first time a comprehensive collection of some of the best
passages from the ancient scriptures of different nations. A few years ago
we, in the Brahmo-Somaj, made an humble effort in that direction, which
resulted in the issue of a small book of theistic texts now in use during
service in most of our churches. Mr. Conway’s excellent publication
is on a far grander scale, embraces a wider variety of subjects, and ex
tends its selection through a much larger range of scriptural^ writings
than we could command.—The Indian Mirror.
�4
There is, I suppose, no book in existence quite like it, perhaps none on
the same plan and of equal scope. He who found no higher use for the
book would rejoice in it as a handbook for scriptural quotations not
otherwise readily accessible, as the number of volumes from which they
have been brought together sufficiently proves. There is nothing we
more need mentally than a tinge of Orientalism, something to give a new
bent and scope to minds fed perpetually on the somewhat narrow and
practical literature of the Western races. Mr. Conway, with his eager
poetic instincts, his warm feeling and wide sympathies, is a good guide
to those in search of what is most impressive to the imagination or
stimulating to the sensibilities.—“ G. W. S.,” in the New York Tribune.
A Significant Book.—Significant of what? Of interest in the
religious life of men who are outside the pale of Christianity, of that
“ sympathy of religions ” which has lately found in the missionary lecture
of Max Muller in Westminster Abbey an exhibition which might
well strike terror into High Church dignitaries, of a growing faith that
the attitude of Christianity towards the other great religions of the world
is not wholly that of a teacher, but may be that of a pupil; of this, at
least—we trust of much beside.—-Rev. John W. Chadwick, in the
“ Liberal Christian” New York.
He then read a few sentences from a book called “ Sacred Anthology,”
which work, he said, was a compilation from the religious works of all
nations, some older than our bible : the book he should leave on the desk
as his bequest to the society.—Report of an Address by A. Bronson
Alcott, Esq., at the opening of a new hall in Massachusetts.
“The Anthology” may be obtained through any Bookseller, or
from the Librarian, the Chapel, 11, South Place, Finsbury.
Price, ios. Postage, 9d.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
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Title
A name given to the resource
The sacred anthology: a book of ethnical scriptures [announcement]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: [4] p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The publisher's announcement for the second edition. Includes extracts from press reviews of the first edition. Duplicated between pages 200-201 of Joseph Estlin Carpenter's review also in Conway Tracts 6.
Publisher
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Trubner & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1889?]
Identifier
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G5598
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Sacred Anthology: a book of ethnical scriptures), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
-
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d24eeba91b63de303e0a50db960f485d
PDF Text
Text
Ths IB^iSSEQgER.
WBB
NOTICES OF BOOKS.
.
Life of John Co/criaje Patteson, Missionary
Bishop of the Melanesian Islands. By Charlotte
Mary Yonge. In two volumes. (Macmillan.)—
•Missionary enterprise forms one of the brightest
■and most glorious chapters in the history of the
Christian Church—the one common ground on
which all the sects may stand. It has had its
triumphs and its misfortunes, its victories and its
defeats, its disciples, apostles, and, alas! its mar
tyrs. In the roll-call of the latter, Coleridge
Patteson, first bishop of the Melanesian Islands,
takes a foremost place. Never were there more
enthusiastic, single-minded, devoted servants of
the great cause than Williams, Patteson, and
Livingstone. It is well, therefore, that the story
of their lives and labours should be told—not
only as a record of duty faithfully performed, but
as example and encouragement to others. In
these two volumes the authoress of the “Heir of
Bedclyffe ” shows herself a most capable biogra
pher. There was comparatively little of incident
tn the life of Bishop Patteson ; nothing, indeed,
df an extraordinary character, except his deplorable
assassination at the hands of the fanatical Maories ;
and yet how full of interest is the whole narrative !
Briefly enough may the story of his life be related.
John Coleridge Patteson was the son of the wellknown “ Mr. Justice Patteson,” by his second
wife, Frances Duke Coleridge, sister of his friend
and fellow-barrister, John Taylor Coleridge,
nephew of the poet. Fie was born in Gower
(•Street, Bedford Square, on the 1st of April, 1827.
’Early showing a taste for reading and languages,
he was sent, in bis eleventh year, to Eton, where
he equally distinguished himself in learning and
cricket. He entered as undergraduate at Balliol
College, Oxford, in 1845 5 passed his college
Cpurse with credit; in due time took his degrees ;
made the usual Continental tour, of which he
kept a diary ; took holy orders, and, in 1853, be
came curate of Alfingham, a hamlet of the parish
of Ottery St. Mary. Up to this time his life had
differed little from the lives of other well-educated
and well-conducted young men ; but, upon making
tire acquaintance of Bishop Selwyn, a growing
desire for missionary work, “which,” he says,
tl has for years been striving within me, and ought
no longer to be resisted,” determined his future
Career. The next year, therefore, he received or
dination as a priest at the hands of Bishop Phillpotts, in Exeter Cathedral; and in March, 1855,
departed for New Zealand, greatly to the grief,
though not without the consent, of his father and
friends. The scene of his labours was the group
pf islands in the South Pacific between New Zea
land and New Guinea, marked on the maps
Loyalty Islands, Solomon’s Islands, and the
New Hebrides, but now known as the Melane
sians—a group of some seventy islets, included
in the Bishopric of New Zealand. Here the defi
nite work of his life began, and here it sadly
ended. He landed at Norfolk Island, about
haif-way between the North Cape of New Zealand
apd the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, on the 16th
of May, 1856. He soon accommodated himself
to his new life. He visited all the islands in the
s extensive group; he set up his church in the midst
1 of the savages—every one of whom, he says,
I might, under proper treatment, be a Man Friday;
he learned their language, taught their children,
and for seventeen years made himself a home
among them. He was universally beloved. But
the time came wh.en these poor savage men grew
i , be iealcus of their need Bisope. Trouble
;-. -.
..........
C C? :'4
I
arose; whence no oT^knew^ and none now can
tell. The Maori war broke out; and Coleridge
Patteson, its first Bishop, became the first martyr
of the Melanesian Church. There was a disturb
ance among the natives. He went ashore at the
little island of Nukapa, and was there assassinated
—the victim of a fatal mistake, arising out of the
suspicions of the islanders as to the designs of
the English, then in force in Melanesia. Such
is the story of the good Bishop’s life; but
the story, even as told by Miss Charlotte Yonge,
constitutes but small part of the charm of the
biography.
That will be found in the extensive^
correspondence of Coleridge Patteson. He was an
indefatigable and entertaining letter-writer. As soon
as he got to Eton he began to write to his father, his
sister, his cousins—of whom his biographer was
one, though some degrees removed, on his mother’s
side—and to all his old school and college friends.
Some of his letters are very amusing. He tells
us, for instance, how at the Eton Montem of
1838, when the Queen visited Salt Hill, he was
pressed by the throng against the wheel of the
royal carriage, and was on the point of being
dragged beneath it, when her Majesty, with ready
presence of mind, held out her hand, which the
boy grasped, and was so enabled to regain his feet
in safety; but so great was his fright, that the car
riage passed on before he could show any sign of
gratitude. Again, he tells his father how gleeful
he was at his step from class to class ; and to his
sister he writes informing her of what success the
“Eton fellows ” had in their cricket match against
the “Harrow boys.” “ We began our match by
going in first. We got 261 runs by tremendous
hitting ; Harrow 32, and followed up and got 55 ;
Eton thus winning by 176 runs—the most decided
beating ever known at cricket! ” And so of his
college days, his first impressions of missionary
life; his visits to the show places of France and
Germany ; his first voyage ; his efforts among the
islanders, almost down to the last day of his life,
which ended so miserably, yet so nobly—for was
he not at the post of duty, so often the post of
danger ?—before he attained his forty-fifth year !
It would be easy to show how excellent a corre
spondent and how thoroughly good a missionary he
was ; easy to exhibit his many-sidedness, his affec
tionate nature, his tender care for others, his dis
regard of self; but, says his biographer—“ What
more shall I tell ? Comments on such a life and
such a death are superfluous : and to repeat the
testimonies of friends, outpourings of grief, and
utterances in sermons, is but to weaken the im
pression of reality ! ” We need only add that the
memoir is adorned with two portraits—one show
ing Coleridge Patteson in the fresh beauty of his
youthful manhood ; the other, the grave, bearded
soldier of the Cross, at almost the close of his
career—in addition to a fac-simile of his hand
writing and a map of the Melanesian islands.
Lancashire Worthies. By Francis Espinasse.
(Manchester: Abel Heywood.)—Lancashire holds
a high, and perhaps the highest, place in the
history of British commercial progress. It was
well, therefore, that Mr. Espinasse, well known
for many years as a Manchester journalist, should
give us biographies of its greatest worthies.
Beginning with the first Stanley, Earl of Derby,
he tells us all he knows—and tells it well—of
Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter and founder of
the Manchester Grammar School; John Bradford,
saint and martyr; Jeremiah Horrocks, the Preston
cotton-spinner; Humphrey Chetham, the founder
�. of the library and Hospital; the Great Duke of
thafeit
valuable anthology of the Scrip
; Bridgewater, who made the canal-that unites
tures of all races—a garland of beautiful passages
Manchester to Liverpool; John Kay, James Har ? from the writings of many authors, principally
greaves, and Richard Arkwright—men who will
Oriental. Believing that such a collelfidn would
be honoured through all time. In addition, we
be useful for moral
re, h JfEs
have notices of John Byrom, the poet-laureate
aimed at bringing together the converging teMlI
of the Jacobites ; John Collier, the author of the
monies of ages and races, and separating “the*
famous “Tim Bobbin;” and Booth, the actor.
more universal and enduring treasures, contained
To Byrom, whose witty pen was never idle, and
in ancient scriptures from the rust of superstition
whom Warburton, the irascible, acknowledged as
and the ore of ritual.” Of course ljehal omitted
“certainly a man of genius,” is attributed the
much that seemed local and temporary, but he
celebrated epigram—
has retained also many noble sentences highly
venerated in the lands of their birth and not
“God bless the King I I mean our Faith’s defender;
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender I
generally accessible to European readers. Under
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
such headings as Law, Worship, Wisdom, Charity,
God bless us all, that’s quite another thing ! ”
Nature, Justice, Friendship, and Love, he has
John Collier yas Byrom’s contemporary, and
made large extracts from the Hebrew, Chinese,
shares with him the honour of Lancashire’s con
Persian, Arabian, Scandinavian, and Christian
tributions to English literature in the eighteenth
poets,—not omitting those wide fields of theolo
century._ “ When,” says Mr. Espinasse, “worthy
gical and moral disquisition, the Hindoo and
Dr. Aikin published, some seventy years ago, his
Buddhist scriptures. It is curious to note the
‘ Description of the Country round Manchester,’
likeness or sympathy between many of the say
the literary biography of the region was represented
ings of the early Indian and Hebrew poets: and
by memoirs of Byrom and Collier exclusively, nor
it would almost seem as if some of the latter had
does he seem to have been guilty of any glaring
borrowed from the former. We find, for instance,
oversight. Both were humorists—Collier, how^
in the “ Wisdom of the Brahmins,” many such
ever, more distinctly than Byrom ; both wrote
passages as these:—“Devoutly look, and naught
prose as well as verse, and they were about the
but wonders shall pass by thee; devoutly read,
first authors of any note—Byrom slightly, Collier
and all books shall edify thee ; devoutly speak,
conspicuously—to employ the broad, easy, and
and men shall listen to thee; devoutly act, and
expressive dialect as a literary vehicle. In the
the strength of God acts through thee.” And in
eyes of their contemporaries, Byrom was far the
the Hindoo “Hitopadesa” such as these:—“Si
most celebrated of the two.” The “whirligig of
lence for the remainder of life is better than false
time brings in his revenges, ” Shakspeare tells us,
speaking. Empty are all quarters of the world
and it now happens that, “for one reader of
to an empty mind. Many who read the Scrip
Byrom’s metrical theosophy, there have been, and
tures are grossly ignorant, but he who acts well is'
there are, thousands of Tim Bobbin’s ‘ Tummus
a truly learned man.” And from the Chinese:—
and. Meary.’” Since then Lancashiremen have
“ Words are the key of the heart. A little im
cultivated verse and prose in the vernacular of the
patience causes great trouble. Riches adorn a
County Palatine till now we reckon them, not by
house, but virtue adorns the person. ” And from
twos or threes, but by dozens, with Edwin Waugh,
the Persian :—“ All nations and languages repeat
still living, at their head. This poet has himself
the name of God. Yet cannot His praise be duly
written a memoir of Collier, and corrected some
expressed by mortal till the dumb man shall be
errors in Baines’s Flistory of Lancashire concerning
eloquent, the stocks and stones find a voice ; and,
this worthy. It would, perhaps, have been as
the silent universe rejoices in language.” Might
well had Mr. Espinasse omitted Booth from his
they not have been written by David or Solomon ?
list, and, instead, have included some of the
Side by side with such extracts from ancient
county’s later versifiers. Booth was certainly of
writers we have quotations from the Old and New
Lancashire parentage; but he can hardly be
Testament, so arranged, by simple omission of
esteemed as one of Lancashire’s worthies. Dean
extraneous sentences, as to present a sequence of
Stanley has reminded us that the surname of this
idea and language very easy to follow and under
actor has acquired a fatal celebrity ; but we think
stand. The extracts, though all of a moral cha- i
it has elsewhere been stated that Wilks Booth, the
racter, are, however, by no means confined to the I
assassin of President Lincoln, is not a descendant
religious scriptures of the ancients. Many a quaint
of the Booth who created the part of Cato in
apothegm and amusing fact find their way into this
Addison s now forgotten tragedy. It would be
Anthology. Here is one from the Persian :—
easy to find fault with many of Mr. Espinasse’s
“ The philosophers of India once possessed a book
statements respecting the Arkwrights,the Stanleys,
so large that it required a thousand camels to bear
and others—for nothing is easier than fault-finding
it. A king desired to have it abridged, and it
but we prefer to take his book as it stands, and
was reduced so that it could be carried by a hun
to pronounce it a painstaking, entertaining, and
dred camels. Others demanded that it should be
well-written production ; only too brief in that it
still more diminished, until at last it was reduced
omits the mention of many worthies—the later
to four maxims. The first bade kings to be just;
dialect pdets, the manufacturers, and the merchant
the second prescribed obedience to the people; '
pnnces especially — whom Lancashiremen are
the third recommended men not to eat except
proud to honour and unwilling to forget.
when they were hungry ; and the fourth advised
Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scrip
women to be modest.” Here is another quoted
tures. Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel
from Sir William Jones’s Persian Fables:—“A ,
Conway. (Triibner.)—Prefacing his works by an
raindrop fell into the sea.
‘ I am lost! ’ it
aphorism from Hesiod,—“ The utterances of many
cried; ‘ what am I in such a sea? ’ Into the shell i
peoples do not whollyperish: nay, they are the voice
of a gaping oyster it fell, and there became a j
of God ”—Mr. Conway proceeds to describe the
beauteous pearl. Humility creates the worth it i
purpose of his book as simply moral. There was
underrates.” With the following from the Scan- I
no necessity, however, to quote the Greek poet
dinavian we must close our extracts
“ There j
by way of either justification or apology; for a
was once a giantess who had a daughter ; and this '
very slight examination of the volume will show
child saw a husbandman ploughing in the field. •
�I he Bookseller, L'et. 3>■fs®’ -— r—'———- —- —
undulation; this is very-necessary to be well
She ran and picked him up with her finger and
apprehended, and, when, properly understood| wi 11
thumb, and put hinr and his plough and his oxen
smooth
way fqr much that follows, in the
into her apron, and carried him to her mother.
‘ Mother,’ said she, ‘ what sort of a beetle is this ; lecture on the “ interference of light,” and ‘‘dif
fraction. ” It was Dr. Young who finally placed
I have found wriggling on the land ? ’ But the
mother said, ‘ Child, go put it on the place where . the qndulatory theory of light on a firm and
enduring foundation, notwithstanding, the severe
thou hast found it. We must be gone out of this
strictures passed on his writings by Lord Broug
land, for these little people will dwell in it.’ ”
ham, in the Edinburgh Review of that day. These
The late Prince Jyonsoft happily versified this
criticisms are worth reading, at this time (now
gMttle fable under the title of \
'
that all which Young wrote has been proved
THE TOY OF THE GIANT'S CHILD,
as showing how much the Doctor was in advance:'
BUBl'tle. giant’s daughter once came forth the castle gate
of his time. In his fourth lecture the Professor ex
before,
plains the cause of the beautiful blue of our
.. And played with all a child’s delight before her father’s
door;
summer skies; an observed fact which it had long'
Then sauntering down the precipice, the girl would
puzzled philosophers to account for; and goes on
Mr2 gladly go,
:
.
to show how artificial skies may be produced, and
MToBge, kierehance. how matters went in the little world
their identity with the natural one proved beyond
below.
. AnSi^l^he gazed, in wonder lost, on all the scenes around,
doubt; that is, as regards the blue colour, namelyj
I She saw a peasant at her feet a-tilling of the ground.
the presence of scattered particles in our atmo
‘ O pretty plaything,’ cried the child, ‘ I'll take thee home
sphere, small by comparison with the ether waves.
with me.'
.
Therfivith her infant hand she spread her kerchief on her
To read these lectures, illustrated by diagrams,
■knee,
instead of listening to the Professor himself, illus
And cradling man and horse and plough so gently on her
trating with all his perfect experimental appliances,
' arm,
She lio re them home quite cautiously, afraid to do them . would, perhaps, be dull by comparison; but ii,SdB
harm.
happens, in this case, that there are very few of
‘See, father! dearest father ! what a plaything I have
the experiments recorded in the book that could
found !
not be performed, sufficiently well for the purposes
‘ I never saw so fair a thing on all our mountain ground !’
But the father looked quite seriously, and shaking slow
of study, by an ingenious student, without any ex
ik’
Ulis head,
pensive apparatus: and although a principle may
* jjyfetlhast thou brought me here, my girl? This is no
be well apprehended by the mind, the exacttoy,’ he said.
Q ‘ Go take it to the vale again, and put it down below ;
agreement of experiment with theory always
The peasant is no plaything, child ! how could’st thou
serves to fix more vividly the truth of the law,
think him so ?
and should always be resorted to where possible.
So ga, without a sigh or sob, and do my will,’ he said ;
The student who reads the text of these lectures, I
* For,know, without the peasant, child, we none of us had
Bi bread.
and makes for himself the experiments, will have
’Tis from the peasant’s hardy stock the race of giants are—
a very good knowledge of the nature and proper
The pedant is no plaything, girl; and God forbid he
ties of light.
were'.’ ”
At Nightfall and Midnight: Musings after
The poem, we think, is longer; but we quote
Dark. By Francis Jacox. (Hodder and Stough
from memory enough of it to show how closely
ton.)—Intelligent, earnest, and indefatigable are
Prince Albert followed the original fable. Many
the terms by which we may characterise the
other equally pleasant and instructive Moralities
authorship of Mr. Jacox. He is evidently an in
will be found in Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthodustrious reader and a judicious annotator of his
logyr which, with its index, list of authorities,
literature of the hour. We gather much from the j
explanatory notes, and chronological memoranda,
work. He does not appear to have a very exten
is as complete and entertaining a volume as one
sive acquaintance with what are called out-of-thewould wish to read.
way books, but every volume he reads he reads
Air Lectures on Light, delivered in America,
thoroughly. Hence, when he undertakes to make
1872-1873, by John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S.
a collection of elegant extracts on any special topic,
(Longman and Co.)—Readers who take up this,
we are satisfied that, as in this instance, the work
Dr. Tyndall’s latest volume, will recognize in it the
will be thoroughly and conscientiously performed,
same forcible style, and apt illustration, which
and the result a really interesting and useful comB
was so conspicuous in the same author’s “ Heat
pilation. It is not every reader who has leisure,
as a Mode of Motion.” Beginning with the most
ability, or taste to select for himself choice passages
elementary ideas concerning the properties of light,
from his favourite authors, much less method
these lectures take the student by easy steps
enough to classify and properly arrange them ; but
through all the phenomena presented by beams of
for most readers such a collection, when intelli
mght’under varying conditions ; some of them
gently made, possesses an indescribable charm. In
very complex, and difficult to make clear to the
uninitiated. It seems strange to us, now, that 1 his present volume Mr. Jacox tells us what the
poets and essayists have said about twilight and
such a mind as Newton’s should have failed to
midnight; how they and their friends have mused
hbfn^cia'te the undnlatory theory of light, and
in the sunset and the gloaming, rejoiced in the
^rayganaintained against it the corpuscular, which,
warm cozy room with the shutters closed and. the
although it was competent to account for nearly
curtains drawn ; Sat absorbed and watched the
,,all the phenomena observed, yet required the
faces in the fire ; found food for contemplatioiSn
invention’of some new principle every time that
the shadows on the wall; consolation or terror
teameJnMiv discovered fact presented itself for
explanation. On the other hand, the undulatory
from the dreams of night. Taking a character
from Dickens, Thackeray, or Bulwer, he shows what
theory, pure and simple,leaves nothing unaccounted
such a man or woman might have thought or said
for, and has, even by Theoretical considerations
only, led to the prediction of certain phenomena
or done under peculiar circumstances, and then
not previojjslyftpjjs^fved ; but which, on experi gives a few judiciously-made extracts to show what
they did think, say, or do. In other chapters he
ment,- were found to yield results exactly agreeing
withthos^B^juirM by the theory. The Professor
tells us of the last words and the last looks of the
dying, the thoughts of the sleepless, the nocturnal
has been very careful to explain, with great
feniwmimSM'vmwj should be understood by an
wanderings of the restless, the terrors of the
�imaginative, the studies of the aged, the dead
friends who visit us in the dark, and the night
"tho'^ghts, fears, and fancies ,of poetg and j^gilar *
[writers,'—n^^iy
of bald .and detached pa£sages, but strung together by a graceful thread of
pleasant and'appreciative comment. Mr. Jacox’s
last volume is an agreeable and appropriate com- .
panrontohis previously published, books, and, like
his “Traits of Character ” and “Aspects of Authorship,” will be received with a warm welcome by
all sorts of readers.
Contemporary English Psychology. Translated
from theFrench of Th. Ribot. (Henry S. King and
Co.)—We are not quite satisfied that Psychology
is the right word under which to describe the
writings of Messrs. John Stuart Mill, Herbert
Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and the rest of the
Philosophers named in this volume. Would the
once popular member for Westminster have so
employed it? Did he ever discourse upon the
soul ? Has he not in his Autobiography almost
said that he had no belief in souls ? Are not the
principles professed by Mr. Mill and his followers
just a trifle too hard and practical for any dealings
^with the poetical Psyche? Mental philosophy,
free-will, metaphysics, anything but the soulscience, would seem nearer and more applicable to
Mr. Mill’s philosophy. These questions apart,
however, there is much in M. Ribot’s treatise
that will compel attention. Beginning with an
inquiry into the origin of philosophy, the essayist
Eiscusses the association of ideas, the science of
character, the law of intelligence, the growth of
voluntary power, and other characteristics of
the sensations, the senses, and the will; thence
he proceeds to the history of philosophy and
the theories adopted by the ancients and
moderns, from Plato to Hobbes, and thence to
the present time; discussing, as he goes on, the
science of languages, of morals, and the meta
physical doctrines upheld by Descartes and the
rest; of idealism and realism, motive and resolu
tion, perception and imagination, consciousness
and causality, logic and ethology, the reasoning
powers, the appetites, and the instincts, conclud
ing with the dictum that pyschology can be and
ought to be a distinct science; that the word
“ liberty” must be expunged from it—as an inexact
term, and serving only to create confusion—and
“aptitude” substituted for it, as all voluntary facts
are subject to the universal law of causality.
Though a little too profound for the general reader,
this treatise will fitly take its place in Messrs.
Henry S. King’s “International Scientific Series,”
beside the “ Mind and Body” of Professor Bain.
Toilers- and Spinsters-; and other Essays. By
Miss Thackeray. (Smith and Elder.) — Very
cheerful and pleasant reading are these Essays,
collected from the .Cornhill and the Pall Mall,
where they have been accepted as the opinions of
a really earnest and practical writer.
Miss
Thackeray’s first paper, which gives its name to
the. volume, shows that, contrary to the common
notion, old maids need not be melancholy, pining,
restless women, but that there are for them many
and varied spheres of usefulness, which the
majority of the sisterhood are only too glad and
ready to fulfil. Again, in “ Little Scholars” we
see how poor gutter-children are fed and taught by
energetic and well-meaning ladies—the feeding
generally more efficacious than the teaching. In
like manner we have bright pictures of Country
Sundays, Easter Holidays, and New Flowers, with
gossips about Jane Austen’s tales, Five O’clock I
Teas, Books of Autographs, and the contrasts
between the earlier and later heroines of popular |
fiction—-all charmingly penSM in th" manner,
though not consciously imitated, so familiar to
everybody in “ Pendennis ” and the “ Newcomes. ”
Diamonds and Precious (Stones: A Popular
Account of Gems. Containing their history, their
distinctive properties, ancMal description of the
most famous ; gem-cutting, and engraving, and the
artificial production of real and counterfeit jewels.
From the French of Louis Dieulafait, Professor,
of Physics. Illustrated by 126 Engravings on
Wood. (Blackie and Son. ^-From time imme
morial, diamonds and precious stones have had a
peculiar and wonderful fascination for all sorts of
people. They have a history and literature of
their own. Though nowr used simply as ornaments,
they w’ere formerly supposed to possess medicinal
and spiritual powers of remarkable potency : by
their aid diseases were cured, calamities averted,
and the demons of earth, air, and sea set at
defiance. In the dim half-knowledge of the
ancients, the alliance between religion and science
was close and intimate ; every part of man’s body
was believed to have a corresponding part in the
world of nature, and thus it was that gems came
to be regarded as having a real and abiding influ
ence upon the actions of mankind and the fate of
the soul. These notions, born in the East, travelled
through Egypt to Greece and Rome, and ulti
mately permeated the whole civilized world. So
it might be possible, says Babinet, to follow the
history of gems through that of humanity ; from
the Ephod of Aaron to the Pastoral Cross of the
Archbishop of Paris ; from the offerings of rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, in the temples
of Jupiter, to the riches accumulated in what in
the sixteenth century was called the Treasury of
Christian Churches. Mythology, sculpture, and
ballad history are full of references to precious
stones and their symbolic value ; and in the astro
logical formularies that preceded modern chemistry
we find special virtues attributed to the emerald,
the sapphire, and many other scarce and brilliant
gems. All this, and much more, is related in
Mons. Dieulafait’s interesting little volume. The
origin, history, modes of cleaving, cutting, polish
ing, and setting all kinds of gems are given in
perspicuous detail, together with explanations
respecting the manufacture of artificial jewels and
means of distinguishing the true from the false ;
the whole amply illustrated with carefully engraved
woodcuts, and forming a popular treatise on a sub
ject which has undoubted claims to consideration.
Master-Spirits. By Robert Buchanan. (Henry
S. King and Co.)—Justifying his title by a quotation
from Milton—“ Good books are like the precious
life-blood of master-spirits ”—Mr. Buchanan has
reprinted some of his contributions to the “ Fort
nightly,” the “Contemporary,” and other perio
dicals, and asks the indulgence of the reader for
any verbal blunders they may contain, on the
valid plea that the state of his health “ does not
permit the laborious verification of quotations.”
We greatly regret that, as in the only chapter we
have read—and read, we may add, with consider
able pleasure—on the “Good Genie of Fiction,”
there are several statements that, with the later
knowledge we all possess of Dickens’s works,
might have been advantageously modified. But
this apart, who is there unwilling to read what a
clever writer may say of* Tennyson, Browning,
Victor Hugo, and De Musset—to say nothing of
what he has to tell us of George Heath and other
obscure poets ? Admirers of Mr. Buchanan—
and we presume they are many, despite Mr. Swin
burne—will accept this reprint thankfully. It is
a handsome and acceptable volume.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The Sacred Anthology
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: 92-93 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unnamed reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'The Bookseller', February 3, 1874. Printed in double columns.
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1874
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G5599
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Book reviews
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
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FROM “THE ACADEMY,” OCTOBER 33st, 1874.
B The Sacred Anthology.”
A Book of Ethnical Scriptures, collected and edited by M-. D. Conway.
London : Triibner & Co., 18.74. 12s.
This book shows what may be achieved by enthusiasm and perseverance. Mr. Conway tells us that
he is not an Oriental scholar, but he has given us what no Oriental scholar has yet given to the world,
though for many years the world has been expecting and demanding something like a Sacred Anthology,
viz., Bcollection of the most important passages from the sacred writings of the East, translated into
■EnfLWh. As Oriental scholars shrank from the undertaking, Mr. Conway set to work, collecting all the
translations which he could find ready to hand, and extracting from them whatever seemed to him of real
valuqH
*
*
*
But Mr. Conway was not dismayed by these difficulties. He knew
what he could, and what he could not do, and by limiting the scope of his undertaking, and giving to his
collection a purely practical character, he has certainly succeeded in accomplishing a useful and important
task. 1 ®‘e believed,” as he tells us, “that it would be useful for moral and religious culture if the sympathy of religions could be more generally made known, and the converging testimonies of ages and races
to great principles more widely appreciated.” If we may judge by the rapid succession of editions, Mr.
Conway has certainly roused by his Sacred Anthology a wide interest in a subject hitherto strSigely
neglected, and he will have rendered an important service, if it were only by dispelling some prejudices
most detrimental to a true appreciation of the value of all religions.
Those who study the history of the human race in all its various phases, from the lowest savagery to
the highest civilisation, know that neither in the most perfect work of discursive thought, nor in the
grandest achievements of creative art, has the human mind put forth all its powers in greater force or
fulness than in religion. We are, from our very childhood, so familiar with the highest religious concep
tions, that it is difficult for us to appreciate the mental struggles by which they were conquered and
secured for us. We forget that the simplest conception of the Divine requires an almost superhuman
effort, and was therefore among most nations ascribed to a divine revelation. We forget that every name
.of the Deity was the reward of more than one sleepless night at Peniel, and that even in a prayer, such
,as the Gayatri, are hoarded up the scant earnings of the patient labours oi many generations. That
.tribes, even in the lowest scale of civilisation, should address a Being whom they have never seen, as their
Father, that they should never for one moment doubt his existence, should regulate their lives by what
they suppose to be his will, should actually offer to him what they value most on earth, may no longer
strike us as extraordinary, but in itself it is more marvellous than anything else in the whole of human
nature.
And what is more marvellous still, is the striking uniformity with which that power of religion has
manifested itself almost everywhere. There are differences, no”doubt, and profound differences between
.the religions of the world, but the similarities far outweigh these differences. Let readers open Mr.
Conway’s Anthology, without looking at the references, and they will find it by no means easy to say
whether any given extract comes from a Jewish, a Mohammedan, or a Hindu source. Mr. Conway has
arranged his extracts according to subjects. We find passages on Charity, Nature, Man, Humility,
Sorrow and Death placed together, and these passages are taken promiscuously from all the sacred books
of the world. No doubt we at once recognise the extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly
when they are given in the authorised version ; but even these, if translated more literally or more freely,
might often be supposed to be taken from the Buddhist Canon orfrom the Chinese King. The same
sentiments, sometimes in almost the same words, occur again .and again in all the sacred books of the
world. * * *
It is hardly surprising that a perusal of Mr. ConwaySacred Anthology should have left on many
.readers the impression of the great superiority of the Biblical extracts, if compared with the rest. The
fact is, that what we call the beauty or charm of any of the sacred books can be appreciated by those only
whose language has been fashioned, whose very thoughts have been nurtured by them. The words of our
own Bible cause innumerable strings of our hearts to vibrate till-they make a music of memories that
passes all description. The same inaudible music accompanies all sacred books, but it can never be
rendered in any translation. To the Arab there is nothing equal to the cadence of the Koran, to us even
the best translation of Mohammed’s visions sounds often dull and dreary. This cannot be helped, but it
is but fair that it should be borne in mind as a caution againsWeclaring too emphatically that nobody
else’s mother can ever be so fair and dear as our own.
One of the most eminent Oriental scholars expressed the following judgment as to the relative merits
of the Sacred Scriptures of the world :—
“ The collection of tracts, which we call from their excellence the Scriptures, contain, independently
■of a Divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important historv,
and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected, within the same compass, from all
other books that were ever composed in any age, or in any idiom. The two parts of which Scriptures
consist are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance in form or style to any that
can be produced from the stores of Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian learning ; the antiquity of
those compositions no man doubts ; and the unstrained application of them to events long subsequent to
their publication, is a solid ground of belief that they were genuine compositions, and consequently
inspired.”
Would any Oriental scholar endorse this judgment now?
We have intentionally abstained from all critical remarks with regard to.the translation of single
passages. Such remarks might be addressed to the translators, but not to Mr. Conway. He deserves
our hearty thanks for the trouble he has taken in collecting these gems, and stringing them together for
the use of those who have no access to the originals, and we trust that his book will arouse a more general
interest in a long-neglected and even despised branch of literature, the Sacred Books of the East.
MAX MULLER.
Other works by the same Author.
“The Earthward Pilgrimage.” Chatto and Windus. 5s.
“Republican Superstitions.” H. S. King and Co. 2s. fid.
Mr. Conway’s works may be obtained by addressing “ The Librarian, South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
London,” where also may be obtained his Pamphlets on W. J. Fox (3d.); Strauss (3<l.); Mill (2d.) ■
Sterling and Maurice (2d.) ; and Mazzini (Id.).
�
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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 Sacred Anthology
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Muller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 1 leaf unnumbered ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'The Academy', October 31, 1874
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[s.n.]
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[1874]
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G5597
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Sacred Anthology), 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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Book reviews
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Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
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Text
THE
NEW BIBLE COMMENTARY
'
-
z
•
AND THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS.
BY
EDWARD VANSITTART
NEALE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SGOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
,
London, S.E.
Price. Threepence.
��THE NEW BIBLE COMMENTARY.
My Dear Mr Scott,
In compliance with your request, I state the
impression produced on me by an examination of
the ‘ New Bible Commentary,’ so far as it has at
present proceeded. I regret to say that it is by
tio means a favourable one. If the work is to be
continued in the spirit indicated by this beginning,
assuredly it will completely fail in its primary
object, of “ giving to every educated man an expla
nation of any difficulties which his own mind may
suggest, as well as of any new objections urged
against any particular book or passage of the Bible
whether or not it may fulfil its second object, of
“supplying satisfactory answers to objections rest
ing upon misrepresentations of the sacred text
(Advertisement, page 1).” For, as you are well
aware, it is not upon misrepresentations of the text,
but upon the faithful presentation of its simple,
natural sense, that the force of the objections
adduced to its statements depends. The misrepre
sentations are to be found in the rationalising exposi
tions of its,so-called,orthodox defenders; who twist
the natural meaning of its words—for instance, the
six days of Genesis with their “ evenings and
A
�4
The New Bible Commentary.
mornings ”—into non-natural significations, sug
gested, not by a careful study of the sacred text,
but by the desire to bring the statements which
they profess to regard as divine into accordance
with the knowledge which they know to be purely
human.
If any one, at the present day, wishes to learn
the simple, natural sense of the words of the Bible,
undisturbed by-any theory, but ascertained by
careful inquiry, by the patient application of all
the resources at the command of the modern science
of language, much more if he would learn all that
can be known with reasonable probability about
the dates, authors, and general character of the
books comprised in it, it is to the critical, not to
the so-called orthodox, schools of commentators
that he must address himself. For these orthodox
commentators, so far as I know their works, are one
and all tainted with the “ original sin ” of Apology.
They are, I say it with regret, essentially untruthful.
Not that I mean to charge them with consciously
asserting what they believe not to be true. What
I complain of is, that they put themselves into a
mental attitude in which the light of truth is shut
out, as effectually as the natural light is by shutting
our eyes. They apply to the Bible a principle
which, if it is applied by the Mahometan to his
Koran, or the Brahmin to his Vedas, they would be
foremost in denouncing as a false principle-^—namely,
the assumption that its statements must be taken
to be absolutely correct wherever they cannot be
demonstrated to be false, by evidence admitting of
no doubt; and that the duty of its expositors is to
rack their ingenuity to discover hypotheses in
justification of these statements, without troubling
�The New Bible Commentary.
$
themselves to inquire whether there is a particle of
evidence adducible in support of them beyond the
fact that they are “ wanted ” to meet objections to
the statements to be defended.
That the New Commentary, from which so much
might reasonably have been expected, considering
the flourish of trumpets by which it was ushered
into the world, should be deeply infected with this
grievous taint, is to me a subject ©f sincere regret.
It is so, because this leprosy of pious falsehood
is, in my judgment, the fatal disease by whose
ravages the great ideas of the Catholic Faith,
which, as you know, I differ from you in holding
I to be essentially true, while you regard them as
delusions, are deprived of their inherent power
over men’s minds. For, that these ideas are
intimately connected with the history of the
Jewish nation preserved to us in the Bible is
unquestionable. Obviously, therefore, it must be
of the first importance to the spread of the
ideas, that their effects should not be impaired by
their association with any matters of a doubtful
nature associated with that history. The spiritual
element must be presented, unmixed with the
slightest particle of detectable falsehood, or un
doubtedly it will be rejected, and rejected, I think,
with entire justice, by the earnest, laborious, truth
seeking generation of thinkers nurtured, at the
present day, in the schools of natural and historical
science.
But is the New Commentary really open to such
an accusation as I make against it ? I am afraid
the answer admits of no doubt. I could easily fill
a volume, were I to attempt to point out in detail
the many sins of omission and commission by which
A 2
’
�6
The New Bible Commentary,
it is already marked. I can only refer those, and
I hope they may form a large body, who desire to
satisfy themselves upon this matter, to the searching
examination into its statements by the Bishop of
Natal, of which the two first parts are already
published. But, ex pede Herculem: I will take one
instance only, a very important one, both from the
matters treated of and the mode of treatment, the
story of the “ Ten Commandments and the Book of
the Covenant.” I will show the difficulties with
which the account is encumbered, and how they
are met, first by the Bishop of Natal, and then
by the Rev. Canon Cook and Mr S. Clark who have
divided this subject between them, as the representa
tives of the critical and the apologetic schools. A
comparison of the two methods by their results
will, I think, show clearly and conclusively which
method best serves the interests of Truth and
Religion.
If we read carefully the nineteenth chapter of
the Book of Exodus, we shall find a succession of
“ goings up ” and “ comings down ” of Moses,
between “ the people ” and “ Jehovah,” which are
so unintelligible, that, divested of the imposing
accompaniment of lightnings and thunders, and
thick darkness, and terrible voices, they become
absurd. 1st. In ver. 3 Jehovah callsup Moses into
the Mount, and gives him a message relating to the
blessings to be obtained by the Israelites through
the observance of a covenant, of which no mention
has previously been made. 2nd. Moses brings this
message to the people, who reply (v. 7) that they
will do all that Jehovah had spoken, though there
is no record of his having ordered them to do any
thing. 3rd. Moses returns with this answer of
�The New Bible Commentary.
y
the people to Jehovah (y. 8), and receives the reply
that He will come to speak with him in a dark
cloud, so that all the people might hear, and believe
in him for ever; and the command to return to the
people and prepare them for this appearance on the
third day.* 4th. This order Moses fulfils, and
brings out the people on the third day to meet
Jehovah (y. 17), to whom Moses speaks, and God
answers by a voice. 5th. But all that He says is
to call Moses up a third time into the Mount; and
as soon as he gets there, to command him to go
down again, to warn the people against doing
’what the execution of the orders previously given
had made it impossible for them to do, as Moses
takes the liberty of reminding Jehovah (y. 21-23);
and to direct the“ priests,” of whose appointment
not a word has been said, to sanctify themselves,
“ lest Jehovah break forth upon them and after
wards to come up into the Mount with Aaron.
No compliance with this last command is recorded;
but, without waiting for the return of Moses,
Jehovah, as soon as Moses has spoken to the
people, utters the Ten Commandments (Ex. xx.
1-17.)
8th. Then the account mysteriously carries us
back to the descent of Jehovah in chapter xix.
The people, who were so little impressed by the
“ smoke which went up as the smoke of a furnace,
and the trembling of the whole Mount, and the
sound of the trumpet louder and louder,” and the
voice of Elohim (xix. 19), that it needed a summons
* I omit, as apparently an accidental mistake, the statement
(y. 9) that Moses reported the words of the people to Jehovah,
which would imply another going down and coming up on his
part not detailed.
�8
The New Bible Commentary.
from Jehovah to Moses, in order specially to charge
them “ not to break through to Jehovah to gaze,” and
who had then heard the awful sounds change to the
distinct voice in which the Ten Commandments
must be supposed to have been spoken, now, all at
once, are so frightened by the thunderings and the
flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the
mountain smoking, that they shrink back, and stand
afar off, and say to Moses, “ Speak thou with us and
we will hear, but let not Elohim speak with us
lest we die ” (xx. 18,19).
9th. Moses, accordingly, after saying a few
words to quiet their apprehensions, but without the
slightest reference to what they had just heard,
“ draws near to the thick darkness where Jehovah
was ” (y. 20); when he receives, 1st, a mass of laws,
treating of nearly all the subjects comprised in the
Ten Commandments, but in a totally different order,
and mixed up with various regulations concerning
different social or religious matters, which extend
from chapters xx. 22 to xxiii. 18, and are terminated
by promises and threats relating to the future resi
dence of the people in Canaan; 2nd, a command to
bring up Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy
elders of Israel to Jehovah (xxiv. 1).
10th. This command Moses fulfils (xxiv. 9-11) ;
when the elders are said to have seen Elohim, and
eaten and drank in his presence (xxiv. 11), though
not till after Moses had “ written down all the words
of Jehovah in a Book,” and made a solemn covenant
between the people and Jehovah in its words (xxiv.
3-8).
If we now turn to the account of the giving of
the law in the Book of Deuteronomy, this Book of
the Covenant, which plays so important a part in
�The New Bible Commentary.
9
Exodus, disappears. In its place we have, as the
terms of the "covenant made by Jehovah with
Israel,” another version of the Ten Commandments,
differing in several important particulars, especially
the reason given for observing the sabbath, from
that contained in Exodus, but which, nevertheless,
is declared to have been the very words uttered
by Jehovah, neither more nor less, and to have been
written by him on two tables of stone, and given to
Moses (Deut. v. 1-23, ix. 10). Many interesting
observations are made by the Bishop of Natal on
these tables, and those mentioned in the Book of
Exodus, which I have not space to discuss here. I
apply myself to the questions, can any reasonable
explanation be given of the incongruities in the
story in Exodus taken by itself, and of the remark
able differences between it and the story in
Deuteronomy ? The answer given by the Bishop
of Natal to both questions is complete. By an
exhaustive examination of the verbal and gram
matical peculiarities distinguishing different parts
of the Pentateuch, he has shown that the narrative
in Exodus consists of an original story, to which
additions have been made, first by the author of
Deuteronomy, and afterwards by the authors of the
laws which form the Levitical legislation.
The original story narrates one ascent of Moses
only on his arrival at Mount Sinai, when he
receives from Jehovah instructions as to what he
is to do (xix. 3a, 9-13) ; followed by the descent
of Jehovah on the third day (xix. 16-19), the terror
of the people (xx. 18), the approach of Moses to
the “thick darkness where Elohim is” (xx. 21),
the laws contained in the Book of the Covenant,
and the acts by which the covenant is made, on
�io
’The New Bible Commentary.
the basis of these laws. Into this story the
Deuteronomist introduced : 1st. The account of
what now appears as the first going up of Moses
(xix. 8-9) with the answer of the people (v. 8),
very inappropriate where it stands, but quite
intelligible from the pen of one who had lying
before him the laws supposed to be spoken by
Jehovah; “all that Jehovah has spoken we will
do ; ” 2nd. The Ten Commandments, on which alone
he dwells in his own fuller and later composition,
the Book of Deuteronomy ; and 3rd. The warnings
and promises which close chapter xxiii. 24-83, with
matter unfit to be introduced into a covenant as
part of its terms, though very suitable in the mouth
of a prophet, as a statement of its consequences.
Into it also thé later Levitical legislator, in his
desire to magnify Aaron and the priestly order,
introduced the strange passage which now closes
chapter xix., and inadvertently brings the priests
on the scene before any were in existence.
The disjointed, self-conflicting character of the
present narrative is thus fully accounted for, in a
manner which accounts also for the omission of any
notice of the Book of the Covenant in the story of
the Deuteronomist, with whose ideas of Divine
Order, as set forth in Deuteronomy, the laws con
tained in it jarred in many particulars. And the
explanation removes at the same time all conflict
between this story and our present conceptions of
the action of Godin the world. For the reasoning
by which the different parts of the Pentateuch are
distinguished, leads also to the conclusion that this
story was written long after the death of Moses,
probably not before the days of David. Thus the
manifestation of the Divine Being recorded in the
�¥he New Bible Commentary.
11
Book of Exodus, is transferred from that outer world
of natural forces, with which, according to the know
ledge now attained by us, it fits so badly, to that
inner world of imaginative power, where the sort
of action described is quite in place. From an in
coherent account of a series of partial Divine acts,
the story changes into an important link in a
universal process ; it takes a high place among the
efforts of the Divine in man, to present to itself an
adequate picture of that all-upholding Deity whose
presence we dimly feel. When restored to its original
form, the poem of The giving of the Law is not only
freed from the liability to call forth unseemly scoffs,
but becomes for us a magnificent outburst of religious
genius; a vestibule worthy of that Temple of which
the semi-dramatic utterances of the Prophets, and
the logical effusions of the Psalmists form the
abiding materials. The ill-arranged collection of
half-barbarous laws, to ’which it is an introduction,
casts an instructive light upon the state of the
Jewish tribes at the time when they were consoli
dated into a nation under their first kings. While
the interpolations, now marring its original unity,
acquire an interest distinct from their intrinsic
merits, by the insight afforded through them into
the progress of religious thought, between the age
of David and that of Josiah, and the light cast by
them, both upon the action of that great, prophet
to whom we owe the grand Book of Deuter
onomy, and on that later Legislation, which trans
formed the Prophet into the Rabbi.
But what becomes of all this food for intellect and
emotion, .when dished up by our orthodox com
mentators ? Of reasonable explanations, of course
there is not a ¿race. On the strange “goings up ” and
�12
The New Bible Commentary.
“ comings down ” of Moses in chap, xix., Canon Cook
has nothing to say ; he simply ignores the perplexity
attending them. On the equally startling conversa
tion between Moses and Jehovah at the close of that
chapter he has nothing better to suggest than “ the
very probable account of the Rabbinical writers,”
that Jehovah committed a slight blunder, in saying
“ priests who draw near to Jehovah,” when he meant
“the firstborn or heads” of families, whom the
Aaronic priesthood afterwards superseded. Of the
laws forming ‘ The Book of the Covenant,’ which,
according to the tale accepted by Mr Clark as his
torical, were spoken by Jehovah to Moses, as part of a
Divine Legislation, and if so, surely, as the Bishop
of Natal observes, “ might be expected to be divinely
perfect, infallibly just and right,”* Mr Clark says,
“that they cannot be regarded as a strictly sys
tematic whole,” that “ some are probably traditional
rules, handed down from the Patriarchs ; and others,
especially those relating to slavery, seem to have
been modifications of ancient maxims, usages which
may have been associated with notes of such decisions
in cases of difference, as had been up to that time
pronounced by Moses, and the judges whom he had
appointed by the advice of Jethro.” Truly a most
condescending Deity is the Jehovah of Mr Clark,
though a little too much given to theatrical effects ;
who descends in the awful dignity of thunderings
and lightnings, and trumpet-voices on trembling
Sinai, nearly frightening the Israelites into fits,
that he might pour into the ear of Moses a body
of traditional rules and ancient maxims, with
a réchauffée of decisions by Moses himself ; laws,
* ‘New Bible Commentary Critically Examined.’
Page 72.
Part II.
�The New Bible Commentary,
13
too “ in more than one instance,” as the Bishop of
Natal observes, “ iniquitous and inhuman” (Ex. xxi.
4, 7,21); and forming a confused jumble, the more
strange because it follows the orderly classification
of the Ten Commandments into the duty of man to
God, and his duty to other men.
But there is stranger matter behind. “What,”
says Mr Clark, “ were the words of Jehovah that
were engraven on the tables of stone ? We have
two distinct statements of them—one in Ex. xx.
1-17, and one in Deut. v. 1-21, apparently of equal
authority, but differing from each other in several
weighty particulars, each said, with reiterated em
phasis, [and that, according to Mr Clark, by Moses
himself], to contain the words that were actually
spoken by the Lord.” Mr Clark justly rejects, “ as not
fairly reconcilable with the statements in Exodus
and Deuteronomy,” both the supposition “ that the
original document is in Exodus, and that the author
of Deuteronomy wrote from memory / with varia
tions suggested at the time,” and “ that Deuteronomy
must furnish the most correct form, since the tables
must have been in existence when the book was
written.” In their place he adopts a suggestion,
made by Ewald, and, from the point of.view taken
by him, quite appropriate, “ that the original com
mandments were all in the same terse and simple
form of expression as appears (both in Exodus and
Deuteronomy) in the 1st, 6 th, 7th, 8th, and 9 th,
such as would be most suitable for recollection;
and that the passages in each copy in which the
important variations are found were comments added
when the books were written; ” “ slighter variations,
such as keep (or remember) may perhaps be ascribed
to copyists.” That is to say, in the Bishop of Natal s
�14
The New Bible Commentary.
words—“ The New Bible Commentary deliberately
admits that neither version of the commandments,
as they appear in the Bible, gives the genuine Ten
Words uttered by the Almighty on Sinai. Although
in Ex. xx. 1, we read, “ God spake all these words,”
and in Deut. v. 22, These words Jehovah spake. . .
and He added no more ; and He wrote them on two
> tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” And
it further supposes that, in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
and 10th commandments, large interpolations must
subsequently have been made, apparently by Moses
when the books were written, which were thus
added to the words really spoken by Jehovah,
“ unto all the assembly, in the Mount, out of the
midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the darkness,
with a great voice.”* Well may he add, “ This
recognition of the indisputable result of the critical
examination of the Pentateuch strikes at the root
of the whole Pentateuchal story as an historical
narrative. If the Ten Commandments in the Pen
tateuch are not genuine and historical, what is ? ”
Mr Clark, indeed, observes, with touching náiveté,
“ that it is not necessary to unite this theory with
any question as to the authorship, or with any
doubt as to the Commandments being the words of
God given by Moses, as much as the Command
ments, strictly so-called, that were written on the
tables.” He should have said, not expedient: for, if
the facts are as Mr Clark supposes, and Moses
wrote the statements which we find in Exodus and
Deuteronomy, as we read them, there can be no
question at all but that he wrote, in the name of
Jehovah, deliberate lies.
* ‘New Bible Commentary Critically Examined.’
Page 68.
Part. II.
�The New Bible Commentary.
15
Miserable result! and yet just punishment of the
untruthful spirit of apologetic comment, to end by
making that contemptible which it begins by
worshipping. Contrast this issue with the view
sketched above of the place in the history of reli
gion belonging to the Pentateuch, if regarded simply
as the expression of the growth of religious feeling
and thought in the J ewish mind.
Look here upon this picture and on this :
Have you eyes ?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor ?
Surely we may legitimately conclude, with the
Bishop of Natal, “ that it is far more dangerous, far
more fatal to the cultivation of an intelligent and
reverent faith in the Bible, to assert that Moses
wrote the Decalogue, but wrote twice over, each
time in different words, what he knew to be untrue,
than to say that the Decalogue, as critical examina
tion plainly shows, is, in each of its forms, the work
of the Deuteronomist in a far later age.”
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
EDW. VANSITTART NEALE.
Hampstead, October, 1872.
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage sta/mps to Mr Thomas
Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.N.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the
Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
Letter and Spirit. By a Clergyman of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Science and Theology. By Richard Davies Hanson, Esq., Chief Justice of South
Australia. Price 4d.
Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give Answers.
Thoughts on Religion and the Bible. By a Layman and M. A. of Trin. Coll., Dublin 6d.
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss. Price'6d.
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Price Is., free by post.
Against Hero-Making in Religion. By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Ritualism in the Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 7d., post free.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which Attend the Study of the Scriptures.
By the Right Rev. Francis Hare, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. 6d.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation. By a Beneficed
Clergyman of the Church of England. Price Is. Id., post free.
The “ Church and its Reform.” A Reprint. Price Is.
The “ Church of England Catechism Examined.” By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. A Reprint.
Price is.
Original Sin. By Thomas Scott. Price 6d.
Redemption, Imputation, Substitution, Forgiveness of Sins, and Grace. By Thomas
Scott. Price 6d.
Basis of a New Reformation. By Thomas Scott. Price 9d.
Miracles and Prophecies. Price 6d.
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Price 6d.
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism. Price 6d.
The Gospel of the Kingdom. By a Bbneficbd Clergyman of the Church of England. 6d.
“ James and Paul.” A Tract by Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Law and the Creeds. Price 6d.
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory Remarks.
By Ed. Vansittart Neale, M.A. and M.R.I. Price Is.
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy. By Rev. John Oxlee. Price 6d.
The Bigot and the Sceptic. By Emer. Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Church Cursing and Atheism. By the Rev. Thomas P. Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S., &c.,
Rector of Croft, Warrington. Price Is.
Practical Remarks on “The Lord’s Prayer.” By Thomas Scott. With
Annotations by the late Bishop Hinds. Price 6d.
The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil. By a Clergyman
of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Commentators and Hierophants ; or, The Honesty of Christian Commentators.
In Two Parts. Price 6d. each Part.
Free Discussion of Religious Topics. By Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Lord
Bishop of Norwich. Part I., price Is. Part II., price Is. 6d.
The Evangelist and the Divine. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church
of England. Price Is.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense.
By a Country Parson. Parts I., II., III. Price 6d. each Part.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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The new Bible commentary and the ten commandments
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Neale, Edward Vansittart [Neale]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end. A review of Colenso, The New Bible Commentary Critically Examined. Part II.
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Thomas Scott
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[1872]
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G5469
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Bible
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The new Bible commentary and the ten commandments), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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Bible-Commentaries
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Ten Commandments
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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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]
Description
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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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[s.n.]
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[1882]
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CT31
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Life of Richard Cobden), 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
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[
169
J
( ,
Of fife of Cl)nrlc5 Jickrns.
A
biography which represents the many-sidedness of an individual
with any character at all is a performance given to few men to achieve
—a monument seldom erected to any of the great and memorable.
The “ subject ” is to his biographer what he sees him, and there is no
help for the public to whom the biographer tells his tale. It is for
him to choose, among the facts of the subject’s life, which he will put
forward or suppress—which among the feasible impressions of the
subject’s character he will suggest and substantiate. In no branch of
literature are the total failures more numerous—is the average of
imperfection and unsatisfactoriness larger. In certain cases, where
the “ life ” cannot be supposed to possess a widely-extended public
interest—where it is a demand as well as a product of cliqueism—
narrow views and extravagant estimates, foolish exaggerations and
eccentric theories, may be allowed to pass with a smile. They do not
hurt the public, who do not think about them ; they do not injure
their judgment, lower their standard of criticism, or do violence to
their common-sense.
The transports of the Mutual Admiration
Society harm nobody but the persons of talent who have established
it, whether they indulged so as to lead the rational rest of the world
to laugh at the living, or pity the dead. But it is a very different
case when a biography is put forward with such claims to general
importance and public interest as that of Mr. Dickens, written by
his friend Mr. Forster. These claims are more readily and heartily
acknowledged than those of the biographies of many men who were
great in spheres of more elevated influence, work and weight, than
that of any novelist. The interest and curiosity felt about even
such lives are much magnified by their writers, and, at their keenest,
are of brief duration, the books passing rapidly into the category of
mémoires pour servir. But the story of the life of the humourist who
had afforded them so much pleasure by the fanciful creations of his
brain, was eagerly welcomed by the public, coming from the pen of the
friend to whom Mr. Dickens had entrusted the task ; for he had, at a
very early stage of his career, foreseen that he should need a bio
grapher, and had no shrinking from what Mr. Palgrave, pleading the
poet’s right to immunity from it, calls the intrusion of “ biography.”
Regarded from the point of view of that disinterested and impartial
public whose eyes are not shut by the promptings of cliqueism nor
their ears beguiled by its jargon—who know nothing of the fatuous
A
�170
THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
flattery of “ sets,” but who hold literary men amenable to the same moral
and social laws as any other class of men who do their work in the
world and are paid for it—the book could hardly be more damaging
to the memory of its subject if it had been written by an enemy
instead of a friend. Without impeaching Mr. Forster’s sincerity in
any respect or degree—without imputing to him a particle of the
treacherous ingratitude and deadly damaging cunning which made
Leigh Hunt’s ‘ Life of Byron ’ notorious—it may be gravely doubted
whether the little poet dealt the great one’s memory a more cruel
blow than Mr. Forster, in the character of a mourning Mentor out of
work, has dealt the memory of Telemachus Dickens. To all un
prejudiced persons, with just notions of the relations of men with
their fellows, he presents the object of his preposterously inflated
praise in an aspect both painful and surprising. Who is to correct
this impression ? We are forced to believe that Mr. Forster, from his
long and close association with him, is the person who can best paint
Mr. Dickens as he was in reality; we are forced to accept the man
whose writings so charmed and delighted us on the evidence of a close
and long-sustained correspondence with Mr. Forster, to whom he
apparently assigned the foremost place in his literary and private life
as guide, friend, companion, and critic. Mr. Dickens might have had
no other intimate associate than his future biographer throughout the
long term of years during which he was constantly appealing to his
judgment, adopting his corrections, yielding to his advice, and gushing
about walks, rides, dinners, and drinks in his company. There are
no people in the book but these two; the rest are merely names, to
which casual reference is made in records of jovial dinners and meet
ings for purposes of unlimited flattery. Even Jeffrey is only occa
sionally permitted to offer a modest criticism in a foot-note. In one
instance Mr. Forster relates how Mr. Dickens pooh-pooh’d the criti
cism, and referred it to him, that he too might pooh-pooh as heartily
the idea of Jeffrey’s having presumed to pronounce an opinion on
Miss Fox and Major Bagstock while only three numbers of ‘ Dombey
and Son’ had yet been issued to the world. By every device of
omission, as well as by open assertion, Mr. Forster claims to represent
Mr. Dickens as he was—to be the only licensed interpreter of the
great novelist to the world. The world grants his claim, and, judging
his book by it, is surprised by the nature of the information which is
the outcome of so many years of close and unreserved intercourse.
Not only is the one-sidedness common to biographies conspicuous in this
one, but the two large volumes published up to the present time are as
scanty in one sense as they are diffuse in another. Did Mr. Dickens
correspond with no one but Mr. Forster ? Has no one preserved
letters from him to which his biographer might have procured access ?
Were there no side-lights to be had ? The most fantastic of his own
�THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
171
creations is hardly less like a living responsible man than the excited,
restless, hysterical, self-engrossed, quarrelsome, unreasonable egotist
shown to the world as the real Charles Dickens throughout at least
three-fourths of these two volumes; shown, it is true, upon the evi
dence of his own letters — perhaps the most wonderful records of
human vanity which have ever seen the light of print—but shown
also, through the fault of his biographer, in appalling nakedness, by
hisi strict limitation of Mr. Dickens’s “life” to the chronicle of his
relations with Mr. Forster.
It is a property of genius to raise up a high ideal of its possessors
in the minds of men who derive pleasure from its productions: it
seems to be too frequently the main business of its biographers to
pull this ideal down. That Mr. Forster has done so in the case of
Mr, Dickens every reader will admit who is not infected with the
arrogant ideas or carried away by the inflated jargon of the cliqueism
of light literature—an essentially insolent and narrow cliqueism
which, when contemplated from a philosophical or practical stand
point, seems to be the modern rendering of the satirical fable of the
fly upon the wheel. The members of this clique live in an atmosphere
of delusion, in which no sense is preserved of the true proportions
in which various employments of human intellect respectively aid
the development of human progress and social greatness. The people
who form the clique have no notion of the absurd effect they produce
on the big world outside it, which takes account of and puts its trust
in talent and energy of many kinds other than the literary; hence
it is generally a mistake that the life of a man of this kind of letters
should be written at all, and doubly so that it should be written by
one who has done it in the spirit of a clique inside a clique. The
reader’s notions of the life and character of a great humourist, who
was flattered, and who flattered himself, into the belief that he was
also a great moralist, are painfully disconcerted by Mr. Forster, who
leaves the most diverting of jesters, the most strained of sentimentalists,
no loophole of escape, by strongly insisting, in the before-mentioned
jargon, that he lived “ in ” his books and “ with ” his characters.
Thus the reader finds himself obliged to conclude that, if that state
ment be correct, Mr. Dickens was a foolish, and if it be not correct, he
was an affected person. His own letters confirm it; but then all the
letters he ever wrote to everybody were by no means so exclusively
occupied with himself and his sensations as those by which only he
is interpreted to the public, and which, instead of being quite repul
sive, would have been pardonable, and sometimes pleasing, if they had
been episodical—if the reader could believe that their writer had not
unconsciously sat for the portrait, drawn by his own pen, of the
individual who was “ so far down in the school of life, that he was
perpetually making figures of 1 in his copybook, and could not get
�172
THE LIFE OF CHAKLES DICKENS.
any further. A fair test of the effect of such a posthumous picture
of a man who deservedly gained a vast popularity is to imagine its
being drawn and exhibited in the case of any other man who had
achieved a similar reputation by similar means. Let us take, for
instance, the death of Colonel Newcome, the finest piece of pathos in
all Mr. Thackeray s writings, and try to imagine the author writing
to the closest of his friends, while the end was coming in the strain
of Mr. Dickens’s letters about the death of Nelly Trent: “ I went to
bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been
pursued by the old man, and this morning I am unrefreshed and
miserable. I don’t know what to do with myself. I think the close
of the story will bo great. . . . The difficulty has been tremendous,
the anguish unspeakable. I think it will come favourably ; but I am
the wretchedest ol the wretched. It casts the most horrible shadow
upon me, and it is as much as I can do to keep moving at all.” In
the impossible case of Mr. Thackeray’s having written such effusive
rant, he would surely have cautioned his pre-ordained biographer
that it was not intended for publication. It is equally difficult to
imagine Mr. Trollope signing his letters, “ Yours truly, John Eames,”
or “ Ever yours, Phineas Finn.” But Mr. Forster prints letter after
letter in which Mr. Dickens calls himself “the inimitable” (a joke
which really does not bear so much repetition), quotes his own books
in illustration of all such incidents as, seeing that they concern him
self, he thinks worth mentioning, and signs himself “ Pickwick ” and
“Wilkins Micawber.” He is in “Dombeian spirits” or “Chuzzlewit
agonies,” or he is “ devilish sly,” or his wife is thrown from a carriage,
and laid on a sofa, “chock full of groans, like Squeers.” In short, he
is always quoting or suggesting quotations from himself, while his
voluminous letters are remarkable for their silence concerning any
other writer of the day. Then we have an overdone dedication of a
book to Mr. 1< orster, and a letter, accompanying a present of a claret
jug, which for pompousness might have been written in the Augustan
age. It is not wholly inconceivable that humour of this kind may
have had its charm for friends who conducted their relations on the
mutual admiration principle, but it is wholly inconceivable that Mr.
Forster should believe its details to be interesting to the public, and
surprising that he should fail to see that just in proportion as it is
*’ characteristic ” it is injurious to their ideal of Air. Dickens.
Was it also characteristic of Mr. Dickens to act, in all the grave
circumstances of life, with a hard self-assertion, an utter ignoring of
everybody’s rights, feelings, and interests except his own—an assump
tion of the holy and infallible supremacy of his own views’and his
own claims which are direct contradictions of all his finest and most
effusive sentimonts ? If not, then his biographer has to answer for
producing the impression upon the mind of the reader, who looks in
�THR LIFE OF CHABLES DICKENS.
173
vain throughout these volumes for any indication that Mr. Dickens’s
fine writing about human relations has any but a Pecksniffian sense.
In every reference to Mr. Dickens in his filial capacity there is
evident a repulsive hardness, a contemptuous want of feeling. His
parents were poor, in constant difficulties, and their son made capital
of the fact for some of his cleverest and some of his least pleasing
fictions; the Micawbers among the former, the Dorrits among the
latter. Every allusion to his father grates upon the reader’s feel
ings. A very amusing but exaggerated description of the difficulties of
stenography, and of the steam-engine-like strength and perseverance
with which Mr. Dickens worked at the art, is transferred from ‘ David
Copperfield’ to the biography, with such a flourish of trumpets
that readers unversed in the jargon of mutual admiration, might
suppose no man but Mr. Dickens had ever thoroughly mastered such
difficulties, and that he alone had invented and patented the “ golden
rules,” which he promulgates apropos of his becoming a shorthand
writer: “ Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all
my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted
myself to completely. Never to put one hand to anything on which
I could not throw my whole self, and never to affect depreciation of my
work, whatever it was.” Of any inclination to depart from the second
of these “ golden rules,” no reader of Mr. Forster will suspect Mr.
Dickens; but of falling on the other side into an outrageous glorifi
cation of his work, whatever it was, he is convicted in countless
instances by his cruel biographer.
Voltaire’s cynical conceit of the chorus who sang incessant praises
of the poor prince until they made him laughable to all mankind
and loathsome to himself, is reflected in Mr. Forster. Pages are
devoted to the energy with which a young man of nineteen, with
a “ Dora ” in view to stimulate him, engaged in the acquisition of
an art which hundreds of quiet, industrious, well-educated gentle
men practised; but the fact that his father, who was not young,
and who had gone through much toil and care, had conquered
the same stubborn art, and was working hard at it, is mentioned
as “ his father having already taken to it, in those later years, in
aid of the family resourcesand again, as “ the elder Dickens having
gone into the gallery.” When Mr. Dickens writes to his friend that
he has been securing a house for his parents, the tone of the letter is
singularly unpleasant; and people who are not literary or gifted, but
merely simple folks, who hold that the God-formed ties of actual ¡life
should rank above the creations of even the brightest fancy, must
condemn the publication of the letter which Mr. Dickens wrote on the
31st of March, 1851, the very day of his fathers death, in which he
points out that he must not let himself be “ distracted by anything,”
though he has “ left a sad sight!”—(he was present when his father
�174
THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
expired)—from “ the scheme on which so much depends,” and “most
part of the proposed ^Iterations,” which he thinks “ good.” He is
going up to Highgate at two, and hopes Mr. Forster will go with him.
The scheme was the Guild of Literature and Art, and the chief matter
under discussion was Bulwer’s comedy, written in aid of it. Mr.
Forster was going to Knebworth, and the son, just come from the
father’s deathbed, and going to buy his father’s grave, would “ like to
have gone that way, if ‘ Bradshaw ’ gave him any hope of doing it.”
There are men of whom this might be published without conveying
the disappointing, disenchanting effect which it conveys in this instance,
though in itself it is hard and shocking; but in the case of Mr. Dickens
the terrible frankness of it is much to be regretted. Such testimony
as this to the practical want of feeling of the man who described him
self as utterly good for nothing, prostrated with anguish, pursued by
phantasmal misery when Little Nell and Paul Dombey were dying,
whose hysterical sensibility about every fancy of his imagination was
so keen, is overwhelming. Mr. Forster ought to have shown us
one side of the medal only—his friend in fantastic agonies over a
fiction—“ knocked over, utterly dejected,” for instance, by “ the Ham
and Steerforth chapter,” or his friend eminently business-like over one
of the most solemn events possible in a human life. When he exhibits
him in both characters to plain people, he, no doubt unintentionally,
paints the portrait of a charlatan.
In another instance the biographer shocks yet more profoundly the
moral sense of persons who believe that genius is not less, but more,
bound by the common law of duty in feeling and in action. There
is a vast amount of sentiment, there are numerous prettinesses about
mothers and babies, and about motherhood and sonhood in the abstract,
in Mr. Dickens’s works; and in this case also, he, for whom it is so
persistently claimed that he lived in and with his books that he must
needs incur the penalty of this praise, is made by Mr. Foster to
produce the effect of falseness and inconsistency. The slight mention
made of Mr. Dickens’s mother by the biographer is contemptuous,
and his own solitary direct allusion to her is unjust and unfilial.
Could not Mr. Forster recall anything, ever so slight, in all that long
intimacy, so close and constant that it seems to have left no room and
no time in the novelist’s life for any other, to counterbalance that
impression ? The temptation, which no doubt strongly beset the
litterateur, to colour as highly as possible the picture of the “ blacking
bottle period,” has been too strong for the biographer, who has failed
to perceive that in making the episode exceedingly interesting, very
alluring to public curiosity, he has made the subject of it con
temptible. The picture is a paintul one, not altogether and only
from the side on which alone it is contemplated by Mr. Dickens and
Mr, Forster ; it is pervaded by the characteristics of all the pictures
�THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
175
of Mr. Dickens’s earlier years, and of all dealings with everybody on
occasions when they did not turn out to his entire satisfaction.
Neither Mr. Dickens nor his biographer regard this period of the
celebrated novelist’s life justly ; they both look at it from the stand
point of accomplished facts, of mature life, developed genius, and
achieved fame. The truth is, that the poor parents of a large and
helpless family were naturally glad to accept the proposal of a rela
tive who offered to give the means of existence to one of their
children, a boy of weak frame, indifferent health, and odd “ ways,” in
which they were too dull, too troubled, and too busy to suspect arid
look for genius. They were not clever, literary, or fanciful; they
were struggling and common-place. Mrs. Dickens was promised
that the child should be taught something, and given the precedence
of a relative of the master among the boys in the blacking ware
house. Both promises were kept for a time ; when they came to be
disregarded the family turmoil had subsided into the temporary
repose of imprisonment for debt. It is very sad that respectable
decent people should be reduced to being glad to have one child lodged
and fed, ever so meagrely, away from them ; but the man who was that
child, who laid claim afterwards to an exceptional and emotional sym
pathy with poverty, and comprehension of all its straits, could not
sympathise with his parents’ poverty. He could not comprehend that
to them to be spared the lodging and the feeding of one child was an
important boon, and he has been so unfortunate as to find a biographer
who records, as the only utterance of Mr. Dickens concerning his
mother, this, deliberately spoken in his full manhood, when he was
relating how his father and the relative who had given him his
wretched occupation had quarrelled about him : “ My mother set her
self to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day. She brought
home a request for me to return next morning, and a high character
of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I should go
to school, and should go back no more. I do not write resentfully
or angrily, for I know how all these things have worked together to
make me what I am; but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall
forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being
sent back. . . . From that hour until this my father and my mother
have been stricken dumb upon it.”
A great deal of public feeling upon this point has been taken for
granted in perfect good faith by a great many people, for want of plain
matter-of-fact comprehension of the case on its real merits. Mr. and
Mrs. Dickens were in deep poverty. “ All our friends were tired
out ”—these are their son’s own words. His sister Fanny, who was
gifted with musical talent, was a pupil in an academy of music,
as a preparation for earning her own livelihood; and when he was
sent to the employment which he so bitterly resented afterwards he
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THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
describes the family home thus : “ My mother and my brothers and
sisters (excepting Fanny) were still encamped with a young servant
girl from Chatham workhouse in two parlours of the house in Gower
Street. Everything had gone gradually; until at last there was
nothing left but a few chairs, a broken table, and some beds.” The
mother who sent her child to earn seven shillings a week in a
blacking warehouse from such a home—to be exchanged only for
her husband’s prison—was not, we think, quite a monster. What
became of the “brothers and sisters”? Did any one outrage the
family by offering help equally ignoble to another individual in whom
Sam Weller’s “ double million gas-magnifying glasses ” themselves
could hardly then have detected an embryo genius? When Mr. '
Dickens left the prison it was as a bankrupt, and though he imme
diately began the toil which was merely “ praiseworthy industry ” in
him, while it was magnified to heroism m his son, there is nothing
heinous, to our thinking, in the mother’s endeavour to keep those
seven weekly shillings wherewith one child might be fed, and in her
demur to a “ cheap school,” which, however cheap, must be paid for
out of nothing. Stripped of verbiage, this is the literal truth, and
Mr. Forster makes one of his gravest mistakes when he dwells with
would-be pathos upon the effect of this childish expression upon Mr,
Dickens’s mind and manners in after life. The picture, if true, is a
sorry one, for it is full of vanity, self-engrossment, and morbid feeling.
That a man who had achieved such renown, had done such work,
had so employed his God-given genius, should be awkward and ill at
ease in the society of well-bred unpretending people, should go about
under a kind of self-compelled cloud, because, being the child of poor
parents, he had, in his childhood, pursued, for a short time, a lowly
but honest occupation, is, to simple minds, an incomprehensibly foolish
and mean weakness.
If Mr. Dickens were represented as having been proud of the fact
that as a small and feeble child he had worked for his own living
with the approbation of his employers, and thus eased off her shoulders
some of the burthen his 4 mother had to carry, it would be con
sistent with the self-reliance of David Copperfield, the devotion of
Little Nell, the helpfulness of Jenny Wren, in short, with a number
of the virtues of the personages “ with ” and “ in ” whom we are told
his real life was to be found. Mr. Forster looks upon the childhood
and youth of Mr. Dickens with the eyes of his fame and maturity,
and cries out against the ignoring of a prodigy before there had been
anything prodigious about him, just as Mr. Dickens himself complains
of the publishers, to whom he owed the opportunity of making a
reputation, for ill-treating a famous author, and fattening on his
brains. Mr. Foster is emphatic in his blame of every one who was
concerned in the matter-—or indeed who was not, for “ friends ” are
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177
taken to task—that Charles Dickens was not given a good education,
and eloquent about the education which he afterwards gave himself.
Here, again, the besetting temptation of the biographer to invest his
subject with attributes which do not belong to him, as well as to
exaggerate those which do, assails Mr. Forster. There are no facts
in his narrative to prove that Mr. Dickens ever was an educated man,
and all the testimony of his works is against the supposition. No
trait of his genius is more salient than its entire self-dependence ; no
defects of it are more marked than his intolerance of subjects which
he did not understand, and his high-handed dogmatic treatment of
matters which he regarded with the facile contempt of ignorance.
This unfortunate tendency was fostered by the atmosphere of flattery
in which he lived ; a life which, in the truly educational sense, was
singularly narrow; and though he was not entirely to blame for the
extent, it affected his later works very much to their disadvantage.
As a novelist he is distinguished, as a humourist he is unrivalled in
this age; but when he deals with the larger spheres of morals, with
politics, and with the mechanism of state and official life, he is absurd.
He announces truisms and tritenesses with an air of discovery im
possible to a well-read man, and he propounds with an air of convic
tion, hardly provoking, it is so simply foolish, flourishing solutions of
problems, which have long perplexed the gravest and ablest minds in
the higher ranges of thought.
We hear of his extensive and varied reading. Where is the evidence
that he ever read anything beyond fiction, and some of the essayists ?
Certainly not in his books, which might be the only books in the
world, for any indication of study or book-knowledge in them. Not a
little of their charm, not a little of their wide-spread miscellaneous
popularity, is referable to that very thing. Every one can understand
them; they are not for educated people only ; they do not suggest com
parisons, or require explanations, or imply associations; they stand
alone, self-existent, delightful facts. A slight reference to Fielding
and Smollett, a fine rendering of one chapter in English history—
the Gordon riots—very finely done, and a clever adaptation of
Mr. Carlyle’s ‘ Scarecrows ’ to his own stage, in ‘ A Tale of Two
Cities,’ are positively the only traces of books to be found in the long
series of his works. His ‘ Pictures from Italy ’ is specially curious as
an illustration of the possibility of a man’s living so long in a country
with an old and famous history, without discovering that he might
possibly understand the country better if he knew something about
the history. He always caught the sentimental and humourous
elements in everything; the traditional, spiritual, philosophic, or
¿esthetic not at all. His prejudices were the prejudices, not of one
sided opinion and conviction, but of ignorance “ all round.” His mind
held no clue to the character of the peoples of foreign countries, and
vol. xxxviii.
N
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THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
their tastes, arts, and creed were ludicrous mysteries to him. His
vividness of mind, freshness and fun, constitute the chief charm of his
stories, and their entire originality is the ‘ note ’ which pleases most;
but when he writes “ pictures ” of a land of the great past of poetry,
art, and politics, with as much satisfied flippancy as when he describes
the common objects of the London streets (for which he yearned in
the midst of all the mediaeval glories of Italy), he makes it evident
that he had never been educated, and had not educated himself. If
we are to accept Mr. Forster’s version of his friend’s judgment and
intellectual culture, apart from his own art as a novelist, we get a sorry
notion of them from the following sentence, which has many fellows.
At page 82 of the first volume, Mr. Forster writes : “ His (Mr. Dickens’)
observations, during his career in the gallery, had not led him to form
any high opinion of the House of Commons or its heroes; and of the
Pickwickian sense, which so often takes the place of common sense,
in our legislature, he omitted no opportunity of declaring his contempt
at every part of his life.” This is unkind. We do not like to believe
that the famous novelist was so insolent and so arrogant as his
biographer makes him out to have been, and it is only fair to remark
that it is Mr. Forster who represents his ‘ subject’s ’ contempt for
men and matters entirely out of his social and intellectual sphere as
something serious for those men and those matters. That Mr. Dickens
was rather more than less unfortunate than other people when, like
them, he talked of things he did not understand, is abundantly
proved by his £ Hard Times,’ the silly Doodle business in ‘ Bleak
House,’ the ridiculous picture of an M.P. in ‘ Nickleby,’ and the in
variable association of rank with folly and power with incompetence
in all his works. He knew nothing of official life; he had no com
prehension of authority, of discipline, of any kind of hierarchical
system, and his very humour itself is dull, pointless, laboured, and
essentially vulgar, when directed against the larger order of politics;
it becomes mere flippant buzzing, hardly worth notice or rebuke.
It is not only in the education of books that we perceive Mr.
Dickens to have been defective. Mr. Forster’s account of him makes
it evident that he was deficient in that higher education of the mind, by
which men attain to an habitually nice adjustment of the rights of
others in all mutual dealings, and to that strictly-regulated considera
tion which is a large component of self-respect. If this biography is
true and trustworthy; if the public, to whom the author of books
which supplied them with a whole circle of personal friends was an
abstraction, are to accept this portrait of Mr. Dickens as a living
verity, then they are forced to believe that, though a spasmodically
generous, he was not a just man. According to the narrative before
the world, he had a most exacting, even a grinding estimate, of the
sacredness and inviolability of his own rights. To under-estimate his
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claims was the unpardonable stupidity ; to stand against liis interests
was the inexpiable sin. This deplorable tendency was lamentably
encouraged by Mr. Forster—who in 1837 made his appearance on the
scene which thenceforward he occupied so very conspicuously as a party
to Mr. Dickens’s second quarrel in the course of a literary career then
recently commenced. He had already quarrelled with Mr. Macrone,
the publisher of ‘ Sketches by Boz,’ and his subsequent kindness to
that gentleman’s widow by no means blinds a dispassionate observer
to the fact that the strict right—not the fine feeling, not the genius
recognising disinterestedness, but the mere honest right—was, not
with the author, but with the publisher. His second quarrel was
with Mr. Bentley, his second publisher ; his third quarrel was with
Messrs. Chapman and Hall, his third publishers. His fourth quarrel
is recorded in the second volume ; with the proprietors of the Daily
News, after a very brief endurance of the ineffable stupidity, the
intolerable exaction, and the general unbearableness of everybody con
cerned in the management of that journal—qualities which, by an
extraordinary harmony of accident, invariably distinguished all per
sons who came into collision with Mr. Dickens in any situation of
which he was not absolutely the master. We know that there is a
fifth quarrel—that with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans—yet to be re
corded ; and we submit, that to plain people, who do not accord ex
ceptional privileges to men of genius with regard to their dealings
with their fellows, those facts indicate radical injustice and bad temper.
The pages of Temple Bar are not the place in which the merits of
the indictment of Mr. Bentley at the bar of public opinion by Mr.
Forster ought to be discussed. They form matter for fuller dis
closure and more abundant proof ; but the editor must permit us an
allusion to this case so pompously stated by Mr. Forster, because it
differs in kind from the subsequent instances. In 1836 Mr. Dickens
was what his biographer calls “ self-sold into bondage,” i.e. he was
employed by Mr. Bentley to edit the ‘ Miscellany,’ to supply a serial
story, and to write two others, the first at a specified early date, “ the
expressed remuneration in each case being certainly quite inadequate
to the claims of a writer of any marked popularity.” We have only
to refer to the letter written by Mr. George Bentley, and published
in the Times on the 7th of December, 1871, to perceive the absurdity
of this statement, unless Mr. Forster’s estimate of the claims of rising
young littérateurs be of quite unprecedented liberality, in which case
it is to be hoped he may make numerous converts among the pub
lishers ; while the notion that a man so keenly alive to his own value
would have made a bad bargain, is à priori totally inconsistent with
his whole portrait of Mr. Dickens. But Mr. Dickens never seems to
have understood practically at any time of his life that there were two
sides to any contract to which he was a party. The terms of the first
n 2
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THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
agreement which he made, and did not carry out, were as follows:
Mr. Dickens was to write two works of fiction, ‘ Oliver Twist,’ and
another, subsequently entitled ‘ Barnaby Budge,’ for £1000, and toedit the ‘ Miscellany’ for £20 a month; this sum of course not toinclude payment for any of his own contributions. No rational person
can entertain a doubt that these conditions were exceedingly advan
tageous to Mr. Dickens at the then stage of his career. The term»
of the second agreement which he made, and did not carry out, were,
that he should receive £30 a month as editor of the ‘ Miscellany?
The terms of the third agreement which he made, and did not carry
out, were, that he should receive £750 for each of the two novels and
£360 per annum as editor of the ‘ Miscellany.’ The story of the fourth
agreement which he made, and did not carry out, will be told elsewhere.
It suffices here to say that he had his own way in all. Throughout
the whole of this affair, as Mr. Forster relates it, Mr. Dickens was
childishly irritable and ridiculously self-laudatory; and it never seems
to have occurred to either of them that a writer of books, employed
by a publisher, is a man of business executing a commission, by
business rules and under business laws. If Mr. Dickens, writing
‘ Pickwick ’ for Messrs. Chapman and Hall and ‘ Oliver Twist ’ for
Mr. Bentley at the same time, “ was never even a week in advance
with the printer in either,” outsiders will think that neither Messrs?.
Chapman and Hall nor Mr. Bentley were to blame for the circum
stance, that it was no business whatever of theirs, and that it had
nothing to do with Mr. Dickens’s objection to furnish the works he
had contracted to write, at the price for which he had contracted to
write them. The truth is, that Mr. Dickens was not a famous author,,
on whose brains Mr. Bentley designed to fatten, when he made thefirst agreement of that “ network in which he was entangled ” (Mr.
Forster’s astounding description of a series of contracts, each made on
Mr. Dickens’s own terms, and each altered at his own request,) for
he had written nothing but the ‘ Sketches by Boz ’ (‘ Pickwick,’ had
not even been commenced) and he had never edited anything, or
given any indication of the kind of ability requisite in an editor,
while he was evidently not an educated man. In fact, the first bar
gain strikes impartial minds as a rather daring speculation on Mr.
Bentley’s part; and there can be only one opinion that, when the
whole matter was concluded, it was on extraordinarily advantageous
terms to Mr. Dickens. For £2250 Mr. Bentley ceded to him the
copyright of ‘Oliver Twist’ (with the Cruiksliank illustrations,
whose value and importance Mr. Forster vainly endeavours to decry,
but on which public opinion cannot be put down), the stock of an
addition of 1002 copies, and the cancelled agreement for ‘Barnaby
Budge.’ We have the progressive figures which tell us what Mr.
Dickens’ salary as editor of ‘ Bentley’s Miscellany ’ had been. We
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181
have the records of his early experience, and of his exact position when
Mr. Bentley employed him in that capacity. Taking all these things
into account, the discretion of his biographer in recording his poor
joke when he relinquished the editorship, saying, “it has always
been literally Bentley’s miscellany, and never mine,” may be denied
without impertinence.
From a more general point of view than merely that of this bio
graphy and its subject, the story of Mr. Dickens’s frequent quarrels
with everybody with whom he made contracts is lamentable. Mr.
Forster seems seriously and genuinely to regard the persons who
expected Mr. Dickens to keep his engagements, merely because he
had made them, as heinous offenders. In vol. ii. page 42, we find
a story about Messrs. Chapman & Hall’s having ventured to hint
their expectation of his fulfilment of a contract by which, in the event
■of a certain falling off in a certain sale, which falling off actually did
take place, he was to refund a certain sum, and this conduct is de
scribed with a sort of “ bated breath ” condemnation, as though it were
a dreadful departure from honour and decency, which, having been
atoned for, is merely referred to, pityingly, under extreme pressure of
biographical obligation. And all this because one of the contracting
parties is a novelist, whose fame is built upon the very articles which
he has supplied by the contract! Why do publishers employ authors ?
Is it that they may write successful or unsuccessful books ? Fancy a
man undertaking to write a serial novel—which must be a venture for
his publisher, who purchases it unread, unwritten—for a certain sum of
money, writing it well, so that it succeeds, and that his publisher is a
gainer by it—the writer’s gain being of course, in the nature of things,
a foregone conclusion, and the transaction being described as “ an obli
gation incurred in ignorance of the sacrifices implied by it.” What an
absence of commercial morality and of a sense of fair dealing is implied
by the notion! If we could suppose this line of argument to be
transferred to the productions of other orders of genius than the
literary, its uncandidness would come out with startling distinctness.
Supposing an artist were to contract with a picture dealer to paint a
picture for him within a given time and for a stated sum, and that
during the painting of that picture the artist’s reputation were to rise
considerably, in consequence of his excellent execution of another task,
so that not only would the picture be of greater value to the purchaser
than he had had reason to believe it would be at the date of the com
mission, but the artist would be entitled to ask a larger sum for his
next work. What would be thought of the artist, if he denounced
the dealer as everything that was mean and dastardly, because he
proposed to pay him the price agreed upon, and not a larger price ?
What would be thought of the same artist if, an agreement to paint
a second picture on the same terms as the first having Leen changed
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THE LIFE OF CHALLES DICKENS.
at his request and to his advantage, he deliberately instructed a friend
to cancel that agreement also, and bemoaned himself in terms so un
manly and so unbusinesslike as the following: “The consciousness
that I have still the slavery and drudgery of another work on th©
same journeyman terms,” Azs own terms, “ the consciousness that my
work is enriching everybody connected with it but myself, and that i,
with such a popularity as 1 have acquired, am struggling in old toils,
and wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame
in the best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those
who are nearest and dearest to me I can realise little more than a
genteel subsistence; all this puts me out of heart and spirits............
I do most solemnly declare that morally, before God and man, I hold
> myself released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done
so much for those who drove them.” It is impossible to conceive any
great man in the world of art or any other world, which involves
production and purchase, writing in such a style as this, and no
blame can be too severe for the indiscretion which has given to the
public such a picture of mingled vanity and lack of conscience. If
this view of the business relations of author and publisher were to be
accepted as the just view, the success of the author would be the
misfortune of the publisher, and the grand object of the trade would
be to supply Mr. Mudie with a placid flow of mediocrity, by which
they could count on a certain moderate profit without risk; but they
would shun rising geniuses like the plague. We protest against all
the unworthy, unbusinesslike, and untrue jargon in which this story,
and the others like it are set forth, not only because it gives an
impression of the character of Mr. Dickens extremely disappointing
to the admirers of his genius—of whom the present writer is one of the
most fervent—but also for a much more serious and far-reaching reason.
Everything of the kind which is believed and adopted by the public
as true of literary men, is degrading to their status and demoralising
to their class. Why should a business transaction to which a man of
letters is a party, be in any moral or actual sense different from any
other business transaction whatsoever ? The right divine of genius
is to be better, honester, higher minded, than mediocrity, because it
has truer insight, a nobler, loftier outlook and ideal, and greater aims.
At least this is the common notion of the great privileges of genius,
and to controvert or degrade it is to inflict on the public a misfortune
entailing a loss. No man can claim of himself or be held by his friends
to be outside, above, or released from any common moral law, without
a failure of true dignity, a violation of common sense, and an offence
to the great majority of respectable and reasoning people who make
up that public whose word is reputation. Seldom has a more un
fortunate phrase than “ the eccentricities of genius ” been invented.
It has to answer for many a moral declension, which, if the phrase
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183
had not existed, would have been avoided, because toleration would not
have been expected—for many a social impertinence, which would have
been too promptly punished for repetition. The “eccentricities of
genius ” are always its blemishes, frequently its vices, and the suffer
ance of them by society is a mistake, the condonation of them is a
fault, the laudation of them is a treacherous sin.
Next to Mr. Dickens’s indignation that his publishers should
presume to make money by his work, Mr. Forster exposes most
mercilessly his disgust at the possibility of his illustrators getting any
credit in connection with his books. It would be unprofitable to reca
pitulate the controversy between Mr. Cruikshank and Mr. Forster
about the artist’s share in the production of ‘ Oliver Twist,’ but in
connection with the subject it may be observed, that if Mr. Cruikshank’s Bill Sykes and Nance did not realise Mr. Dickens’ wish, every
reader of ‘ Oliver Twist ’ thinks of the housebreaker and his victim as
Mr. Cruikshank drew them, and knows that, in the case of Nance, the
author’s was an impossible picture (a fact which no one, as Mr.
Thackeray ably pointed out, knew better than NIr. Dickens), while the
artist’s was the coarse, terrible truth. On which side the balance of
suggestion was most heavily weighted it is not easy or necessary to
determine, but nothing can be clearer than that Mr. Cruiksliank
followed no lead of Mr. Dickens, in his wonderful pictures, but
saw the villainous components of that partly powerful yet partly
feeble romance of crime with a vision entirely his own. Mr. Halbot
Browne is allowed a little credit; but, though Mr. Forster presides
over the production of each book in succession, and all he suggests
and says is received with effusive respect and gushing gratitude,
though he reads and amends sheets hardly dry, and makes alterations
which require separate foot notes to display their importance, and
italics to describe their acceptation, every hint of counsel from any one
else is treated with offensive disdain. To Mr. Forster the world is
indebted for the Marchioness’s saying about the orange-peel and water,
that it would “ bear more seasoning.” Mr. Dickens had made it
“ flavour,” but the censor considered that word out of place in the
“ little creature’s mouth,” though the little creature was a cook, and
so it was changed. What a pity he did not suggest that Dick
Swiveller might have been quite as delightful, and yet considerably
less drunken I To him the world owes Little Nell’s death, but Mr.
Dickens would probably have acknowledged the obligation on his own
part less warmly if he had foreseen the publication of the absurd
rhapsody in which he announced the event as imminent; declaring
that he trembles “ to approach the place more than Kit; a great deal
more than Mr. Garland; a great deal more than the Single Gentle
man.” Then with ingenuous vanity, and forgetting grammar in
gush, he protests: “ Nobody will miss her like I shall. What the
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THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.
actual doing it will be, God knows. I can’t preach to myself the
schoolmaster’s consolation, though I try.” Only the pachydermatous
insensibility which comes of mutual admiration could have prevented
a biographer’s perception of the inappropriateness of such reve
lations, and of scores of similar ones; only such insensibility can
account for his complacent sacrifice of every one else to the glorifica
tion of that leviathan in whose jaws he could always put a hook.
That Mr. Dickens may be made to praise Mr. Mark Lemon patronisingly, Mr. Forster prints a statement concerning Mrs. Lemon, which
that lady has contradicted in the press; and that Mr. Dickens’s gene
rosity and delicacy may be duly appreciated, Mr. Forster tells how he
deputed Mr. Wills to make Mr. Sala a present of £20. It is neces
sary to keep constantly before one’s mind that it is Mr. Forster who
is speaking for Mr. Dickens, if one would escape from an overwhelm
ing conviction that the great novelist was a very poor creature, and
that it would have been far better for his fame had he been made
known to the public only by his novels. It is especially necessary to
remember this when we find a school of morals imputed to him, when
he is represented as a great teacher who adopted the method of
apologue, and we are gravely assured that “ many an over-suspicious
person will find advantage in remembering what a too liberal applica
tion of Foxey’s principle of suspecting everybody brought Mr. Sampson
Brass to; and many an over-hasty judgment of poor human nature
will unconsciously be checked, when it is remembered that Mr. Chris
topher Nubbles did come back to work out that shilling.”
When we read scores of similar passages, we ask ourselves, Can this
be in earnest ? Can it be possible that this is intended to be serious ?
Or is Mr. Forster, getting occasionally tired of the perpetual swing of
the censor of praise before the image of the friend who, in his lifetime,
never wearied of sniffing the enervating perfume, and swung lustily
for himself, poking ponderous fun at the public ? Even the humour of
the great humourist suffers by the handling of his ardent but undis
criminating worshipper. The rubbish by which the tradition of Mrs.
Gamp is continued, the silly letters in dubious French, which exhibit
Mr. Dickens’s absolute incapacity to comprehend any foreign country,
and the unpardonable nonsense, in which he was encouraged by wiser
men, of his pretended admiration for the Queen, are flagrant examples
of injudiciousness, which heavily punishes the folly it parades. Mr.
Dickens’s letter about her Majesty, written thirty years’ ago, was a
sorry jest. Mr. Forster’s publication of it now is supreme bad taste.
Mr. Dickens’s sentimentalism, always exaggerated and frequently
false, suffers at the hands of his biographer even more severely than
his humour. Mr. Forster as confidant, and Mr. Dickens as Tilburina, in intercommunicated hysterics over the ‘ Christmas Stories,’
‘ Dombey and Son,’ and ‘ David Copperfield,’ become so very weari
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185
some, especially when Mr. Forster solemnly declares his belief that the
* Christmas Carol ’ “ for some may have realised the philosopher’s
famous experience, and by a single fortunate thought revised the whole
manner of a life,” that it is a positive relief when they are parted.
Mr. Dickens’s ‘ Letters from America ’ form the least disappointing
portion of this work ; in them his egotism is less persistently offensive
and his humour is displayed to great advantage. The reverse of this
is the case in his ‘ Letters from Italy.’ In them he is in a perpetual
state of ebullition, fussiness, impatience, effervescent vanity, and self
engrossment. It is amusing to observe that the great humourist was
so little accustomed to recognise humour in others, that it never oc
curred to him he could be quizzed. When a witty consul warned him
not to let his children out of doors, because the Jesuits would be on
the watch to lead their innocent feet into popish places, he swallowed
the warning with the docile credulity of a Vansittart.
It must be acknowledged that Mr. Forster’s advice was very sound
and valuable in many instances. Perhaps his consciousness of that
fact has blinded him to the extent to which his exposure of his friend’s
weaknesses has gone. Was it, for instance, worth while, in order to
record that he rejected the proposition, to let the public know that
Mr. Dickens ever proposed as a title for his projected weekly mis
cellany, “ Charles Dickens : A Weekly Journal, designed for the
instruction and amusement of all classes of readers. Conducted by
Himself ” ?
In one more volume this warmly-welcomed, eagerly-read biography
is to be completed. That volume must necessarily be a more difficult
and responsible task than its predecessors. It is to be hoped that it
will fulfil the expectations of the public more satisfactorily, and that
it will do more justice to Mr. Dickens by doing less injustice to all
with whom he was concerned. It is to be hoped that it will put before
the world a more substantial representation of the great novelist who
was so variously gifted; that it will leave its readers able in some
measure to respect and esteem its subject as a man, for real qualities,
while ceasing to urge an imaginary claim to misplaced consideration,
and especially that it will be free from the faint suggestion which
pervades the present volumes, that, essentially, “ Codlin was the friend,
not Short.”
�[
186
]
£ lluire from tlje pusl),
O ! milii prseteritos ....
High noon, and not a cloud in the sky to break this blinding sun!
Well, I’ve half the day before me still, and most of my journey
done.
There’s little enough of shade to be got, but I’ll take what I can get,
For I’m not as hearty as once I was, although I’m a young man yet.
Young ? Well, yes, I suppose so, as far as the seasons go,
Though there’s many a man far older than I down there in the town
below,—
Older, but men to whom, in the pride of their manhood strong,
The hardest work is never too hard, nor the longest day too long.
But I’ve cut my cake, so I can’t complain; and I’ve only myself to
blame.
Ah ! that was always their tale at home, and here it’s just the same.
Of the seed I’ve sown in pleasure, the harvest I’m reaping in pain.
Could I put my life a few years back would I live that life again ?
Would I? Of course I would ! What glorious days they were !
It sometimes seems but the dream of a dream that life could have been
so fair,
So sweet, but a short time back, while now, if one can call
This life, I almost doubt at times if it’s worth the living at all.
One of these poets—which is it ?—somewhere or another sings
That the crown of a sorrows’ sorrow is the remembering happier
things ;
What the crown of a sorrows’ sorrow may be I know not, but this I
know,
It lightens the years that are now, sometimes to think of the years
ago.
Where are they now, I wonder, with whom those years were passed ?
The pace was a little too good, I fear, for many of them to last;
And there’s always plenty to take their place when the leaders begin
to decline.
Still I wish them well, wherever they are, for the sake of ’auld lang
syne!
�A VOICE FROM THE BUSH.
187
L I Jack Villiers—Galloping Jack—what a beggar he was to ride!—
f I Was shot in a gambling row last year on the Californian side;
LI And Byng, the best of the lot, who was broke in the Derby of fifty
eight,
I ’ Is keeping sheep with Harry Lepell, somewhere on the Biver Plate.
Do they ever think of me at all, and the fun we used to share ?
It gives me a pleasant hour or so—and I’ve none too many to spare.
This dull blood runs as it used to run, and the spent flame flickers up,
As I think on the cheers that rung in my ears when I won the
Garrison Cup!
!
■
'
I. And how the regiment roared to a man, while the voice of the fielders
shook,
! As I swung in my stride, six lengths to the good, hard held over
Brixworth Brook;
Instead of the parrots’ screech, I seem to hear the twang of the horn,
As once again from Barkby Holt I set the pick of the Quorn.
Well, those were harmless pleasures enough; for I hold him worse than
an ass
Who shakes his head at a ‘ neck on the post,’ or a quick thing over
the grass.
Go for yourself, and go to win, and you can’t very well go wrong;—
Gad, if I’d only stuck to that I’d be singing a different song!
7
,
As to the one I’m singing, it’s pretty well known to all;
We knew too much, but not quite enough, and so we went to the wall;
While those who cared not, if their work was done, how dirty their
hands might be,
Went up on our shoulders, and kicked us down, when they got to the
top of the tree.
«
But though it relieves one’s mind at times, there’s little good in a
curse.
) I One comfort is, though it’s not very well, it might be a great deal worse.
A id A roof to my head, and a bite to my mouth, and no one likely
to know
In ‘ Bill the Bushman ’ the dandy who went to the dogs long years
ago-
I
Out there on the station, among the lads, I get along pretty well;
It’s only when I get down into town that I feel this life such a hell.
Booted, and bearded, and burned to a brick, I loaf along the street;
, I watch the ladies tripping by and I bless their dainty feet;
�188
A VOICE FROM THE BUSH.
I watch them here and there, with a bitter feeling of pain.
Ah! what wouldn’t I give to feel a lady’s hand again!
They used to be glad to see me once, they might have been so to-day;
But we never know the worth of a thing until we have thrown it away.
I watch them, but from afar, and I pull my old cap over my eyes,
Partly to hide the tears, that, rude and rough as I am, will rise,
And partly because I cannot bear that such as they should see
The man that I am, when I know, though they don’t, the man that I
ought to be.
Puff! With the last whiff of my pipe I blow these fancies away,
For I must be jogging along if I want to get down into town to-day.
As I know I shall reach my journey’s end though I travel not over
fast,
So the end to my longer journey will come in its own good time at
last.
�
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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 life of Charles Dickens
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Hoey, Frances Sarah Johnston
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 169-188 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Article from Temple Bar magazine, May 1873; attribution from Virginia Clark catalogue. A review of vol. 1-2 of John Forster's biography of Dickens.
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[Bentley]
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[1873]
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Literature
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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 life of Charles Dickens), 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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Book Reviews
Charles Dickens
Conway Tracts
English Literature
Fiction in English
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16
THE INTOLERANCE OF HETERODOXY, AND THE
NARROWNESS OF LATITUDINARIANISM.
A recent article in this Magazine directed attention to the remarkable
mutilations to which many well-known Christian hymns had been subjected,
in order that they might find acceptance with the congregation worshipping
at Bedford Chapel, under the leadership of the Rev. Stopford Brooke.
It must have occasioned surprise and mortification in many quarters,
and especially in quarters where Mr. Brooke was known simply
as a competent critic and able literary man, to follow the pastor of
Bedford Chapel in his crusade of slaughter against the hymnology of
Christendom. We had a right to expect at least that the laws of good
taste would not be violated by a public teacher whose writings bear every
sign of a refined and cultivated mind. If certain hymns were unsuited to
the new requirements of the congregation worshipping at Bedford Chapel,
it surely would have been the fairer course frankly to pass them by in the
compilation of the new collection. Such a hymn-book might possibly have
formed a very thin volume, but it would have had an unity of its own.
The inevitable problem arising from such a circumstance is briefly this:
What can be the nature of that intellectual change whose first result, in
the mere sphere of literature, is that a master of criticism sins flagrantly
against the laws of criticism, and a teacher of the broadest tolerance
publishes a book of hymns which, from one point of view at least, may be
considered as masterly a specimen of intolerance as hymnology possesses?
The publication of a book of Christian Hymns, in which every trace of
Christ is carefully eliminated by a cultured and accomplished critic,
preacher, and biographer, would not however be sufficient in itself to justify
the title that stands at the head of this paper. The circumstance is simply
suggestive of a line of criticism which it may be profitable to follow out,
and the material for that criticism is found in two small volumes, which
bear the title of South-Place Discourses. South Place, Finsbury, is the
locale of the well-known Unitarian chapel with which the eloquent
W. J. Fox was for many years connected. His place is now filled by
Mr. Moncure D. Conway, who, however, does not call himself a Uni
tarian. Mr. Conway, too, is a man of fine literary taste; he is well
known in the literary circles of London; and his congregation, like Mr.
Brooke’s, is eclectic in the extreme. Mr. Brooke, however, is a new convert
to Unitarianism, while Mr. Conway, as becomes the traditions of SouthPlace Chapel, is in the van of the new beliefs, and his congregation is composed
of the Pharisees of the Pharisees in the ‘ advanced school ’ of religious
criticism. The order of service adopted at South Place is printed with the
sermons, and it presents a curious study. Occasionally passages from the
Scriptures are read by way of lesson, but oftener the reading is from
�The, Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
17
purely secular publications. Thus the readings for a single service, are as
follows :
‘Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the motion of the
Earth.’
‘ Personal Experiences of George Coombe.’
‘ Professor Clifford on the Publication of Truth.’
In this instance the English Bible is entirely closed. The place of prayer
appears to be given up to what is styled a meditation on such subjects as
‘ Sociability,’ ‘ Little by Little,’ and ‘ Absolute Relativity.’ The service
of song includes such lines as
‘ I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty,
I woke, and found that Life was Duty.’
'Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, and original hymns by A. T. Ellis, F.R.S.
etc., whose discourses are printed together with Mr. Conway’s, and of whose
genius for hymnology the following is a specimen :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell
When Death flits from each to all,
And Life fails upon our ball,
Where or whither it shall dwell.
L
‘ This the darkness I have past,
Darkness haunted still with dreams,
Dread surmises, doubting screams,
Souls staked madly on a cast.’
By, way of ‘ Dismissal,’ after the singing of this hymn, the congregation is
invited to enter upon a somewhat analytical explanation of its scope and
meaning: and we cannot doubt that it needs it. ‘ Doubting screams’ is in
itself a phrase so daring and original, that it alone might well absorb the
entire time devoted to explanation.
But the nature of this programme of worship provokes more than a
mere sensation of curiosity; we cannot but ask, Is this, after all, any intel
lectual advance upon the ordinary manner of worship among the orthodox?
We have a right to press the question, because the assumption which under
lies each of the five discourses by Mr. Ellis, and the ten by Mr. Conway, is
that of complete contempt for orthodox modes and manners. When we
are rebuked for our fanatical regard for the ancient customs of universal
Christendom; when the prayers of the Litany, for example, are held up
for scornful vivisection j when the intellectual blindness, stubbornness, and
prejudice of believers are made matter for repeated ironical compliment, it
is only natural that we should seek instruction from our critics, and
narrowly observe the methods of our adversaries. Mr. Conway tells us
that ‘ the Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye holding
.the Apocalypse of Man.’ He firmly believes that the party he leads is in
�18
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
the van of true progress, that already it has possessed itself of the ‘ shining
summits ’ of the future, and that the world, as it grows in enlightenment,
must needs follow. Is, then, the manner of service here described the best
that he can offer for the future worshippers ? Mr. Conway’s opinions on
the doctrine of inspiration may be widely divergent from ours, but surely, the
sublimest sacred Book the world possesses, is scarcely treated with common
fairness when, in three services out of five, it is not so much as opened. Interest
ing as the 1 Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the Motion of the
Earth ’ may be, we cannot help thinking that the Sermon on the Mount,
or even certain passages of Old Testament poetry, might afford infinitely
higher intellectual, as well as moral, stimulus and comfort; and the 1 Ex
periences of George Coombe ’ must be poor reading as a substitute for the
experiences of the Apostle Paul. The Litany may be offensive to those
who are freed from the ‘ superstition ’ of prayer, for which ‘ Meditation ’ is
made not the incitement but the substitute; but what sort of substitute is
a quarter of an hour’s ‘ Meditation’ on A bsolute Relativity? The hymns
of Wesley, one of which is quoted by Mr. Conway in support of an even
more than usually unfair and distorted criticism, may have literary demerits
as well as literary merits which are sufficiently well established, and are
fairly open to criticism in common with all hymns; but what shall we say
of such a hymn as that already quoted, with its ‘ doubting screams ? ’
Can a more doleful caricature of the holy cheerfulness of a Christian
Sabbath-day’s service be painted, than the picture of a congregation rising
after a ‘ Meditation ’ on 1 Absolute Relativity,’ to sing such a verse as
this :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell,
How Life burst upon our ball,
Whence, diffused to each through all,
Thought upon the Wanderer fell ? ’
Even when a somewhat more cheerful lyric is announced, whose first
lines run :
‘ “ Go, my child,” thus saith the Highest,
“ Warning, cheering, day by day,” ’
we are carefully informed in a foot-note that ‘ the Highest ’ does not mean
the Most High God; but is meant to signify merely ‘ earthly being.
Humanity, speaking by the mouth, and loving with the heart of the wise
and good, at all times and in all places.’ What can be the reason of this
-evident uneasiness lest the name of God by any accident should slip into a
hymn meant for Divine worship! Is there any other solution of this
strange phenomenon, except the terrible hypothesis that the leaders of what
they choose to term ‘ Rational Religion ’ in South Place, do ‘ not like to retain
God in their knowledge’? Yet Mr. Conway is, avowedly, not an atheist; and
if we may judge of his creed by the ten sermons before us, he is still less a
Positivist. If God be worshipped at South Place, why is it necessary to
explain that one of the titles by which we know God really means nothing
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
19
of the sort, but some vague abstraction of Humanity ? If the minister and
congregation of South Place are really inspired with the sublime belief
that they are in the ‘ foremost files of time; ’ that they are emancipated
from superstitions that hold half the world in night; that they are sure of
victorious recognition by the future generations for whom they are heroic
pioneers,—how is it such exalted sentiment finds expression in no more
hopeful hymnology than such doubtful hymns and anthems as we have
quoted, one of them carefully fenced and purged from all suspicion of
God, and another dreary enough to have been sung in the awful blackdraped cathedral of James Thomson’s ghastly dream, where the preacher
is an atheist, and the text is Suicide ? There is a certain brilliance of
rhetoric and paradox about the utterances of the South-Place pulpit:
but surely, after all, that creed must be cursed with intellectual and
spiritual sterility that has such scanty power of inspiration for sentiment
and emotion.
It is in this and similar matters that we see what we have ventured to
call the intolerance of heterodoxy. The process of heterodoxy is essentially
narrowing. It pretends to extreme 1 breadth; ’ in reality it is extreme
narrowness. The fascination that heterodoxy has for the unwary is that it
offers magnificent promises of emancipation from vulgar prejudices; it
assumes that orthodoxy must needs imply a fettered intellect ; that to live
in the light of the faith of Christendom is really to live in spiritual dark
ness j that, indeed, orthodoxy must needs riiean intellectual imbecility, or
intellectual prostitution: while heterodoxy is the proud stronghold of
gigantic minds who have achieved a great deliverance and entered ona glorious
liberty. All this is absurd assumption, but it serves its purpose. This
is one-half of the programme, and it effectually appeals to human vanity
and pride. The other half describes heterodoxy as the higher spirituality j
as the purer and loftier worship, freed from vain and polluting traditions.
And it is this portion of the programme that seduces some higher natures—
young men of more than common earnestness of thought, through their
very earnestness; devout natures, through their very devoutness; though
never even in these rare cases without some side-appeal to the intellectual
pride that loves to have its own way, even though it must emigrate to a
desert in order to secure it. But where is the breadth and charity of view
that heterodoxy promises ? It passes from its criticism of the Bible to its
degradation. In its effort to avoid the habits of worship sanctioned and
sanctified by centuries of devotion, it closes a Book which even Freethinkers have valued as a source of priceless instruction, or it varies the
words of the ‘ Fourth Gospel ’ with the ‘ Experiences of George Coombe.’
In its fear lest it should approach too nearly to the dangerous phraseology
of orthodox hymnology, it hastens to explain away its hymns, and to assure
us that though the Scripture term for God is used, yet nothing of the kind
is meant. Is this breadth or is it narrowness ? Does it not appear as if the
spirit of denial, once admitted into the temple, closes window after window
c2
�20
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
to the light, until but one outlook is left—the narrow aperture of solitary
dogmatism ? Stripped of the false romance that usually attaches itself to
intellectual adventure, what fascination is there in such a position of
isolated denial ? And whether is the more tolerable, the bondage of this
individual dogmatism which walks in fear of itself, or the wholesome
restraints which are no more than the landmarks of guidance which
experience has set up ?
This process of contraction and distortion in the intellectual outlook is
strikingly illustrated in some portions of the fifteen discourses that con
tain the views of Mr. Conway and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Conway in his fifth
discourse dwells very strikingly upon what he terms the ‘ morality of the
intellect.’ He says that there may be and is such a thing as intellectual
immorality: ‘ To believe a proposition aside from its truth, to believe it
merely because of some advantage, becomes intellectual prostitution. The
purity of the mind is bargained away.’ In this we heartily agree, and we
do not for a moment suppose that Mr. Conway and his followers have
fallen into the sin he so forcefully repudiates. But it seems to us that the
code of intellectual morality includes many things not covered by the
definition of Mr. Conway. It includes fairness of thought, and soberness
and perfect integrity of judgment. It commands that the balances be held
evenly, that judgment shall be in strict accordance with facts, and that the
verdict should be received and recorded, even though it be adverse to the
claim of the most favourite theory. And it seems to us, upon full and
honest examination, that the ‘higher culture’ of the advanced school has
only resulted in the flagrant violation of each of these laws; that its awards
are partial, its views one-sided, and its judgments of others chiefly distin
guished by wilful distortion and misapprehension. And this is all the more
remarkable because it is the work of trained thinkers, of scholars and
gentlemen, from whom we should at least expect that the intellect would be
free from warp, whatever the deranging bias of the creed.
But as mere matter of human experience, it must be noted that the creed
a man holds is really the lever of his actions, and a greater thinker than
Mr. Conway — Goethe — has remarked that ‘everything depends on
what principle a man embraces ; for both his theory and practice will be
found in accordance therewith.’ Probably the critics of South Place would
vehemently dispute this axiom, for the uselessness of creeds is a favourite
subject for derision, and Mr. Conway has announced that Theology—which
is the scientific statement of creed—‘ is the great enemy of Religion.’ But
so many things are disputed, and so wilfully, with so great a lack of intel
lectual conscientiousness, that this passes for a very small matter. Thus
the most striking discourse of Mr. Ellis—The Dyers Hand—contains a con
temptuous attack on Paley’s argument of design, on this ground,—that to
design is not to invent; that the maker of a watch invents nothing; he
discovers natural laws and properties, and in making his chronometer he is.
simply a designer.
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
21
‘So then (says Mr. Ellis) all that man does with his materials is to put them together.
And we say that grand abstraction, “ Nature,” does the rest. Now if we apply this
to God, we see that some other god must have made the materials, and their laws, and
the laws of their connection, and that He merely puts them together. What a degrading
conception ! The great God, the expression of utter boundlessness, a piecer of other
, gods’ goods 1 Shame on man that he ever inculcated such a doctrine. Shame on
those natural theologians who would found our very reason for believing in the
existence of a God on such transparent fallacies, which can be knocked down like
nine-pins by the first bowl of a cunning atheist 1 ’
But we ask, who ever did inculcate such £ a degrading conception ’ ? Who
but Mr. Ellis ever conceived it ? Boes Mr. Ellis suppose that Paley repre
sents God as only £ the piecer of other gods’ goods ’; or does he really
imagine that this conception of the argument of design, upon which he wastes
so much indignation, is one of the stupid follies of orthodox belief ? It
needs no very £ cunning atheist ’ to bowl down such a conception; but any
candid atheist of average ability will see at a glance that the nine-pins he
knocks down so easily are set up by Mr. Ellis himself, and not by Dr.
Paley. We are well aware that one of the meanings of the Latin word
designo, and one of the meanings of the English word design, is : ‘ to mark
out, to trace out; ’ but who does not also know that the Latin word also
means £ to contrive ’; and that language is largely determined by usage, and
very frequently departs more or less in that process from what was originally
its most prominent meaning ? The average mind understands with perfect
clearness what Paley means by the term £ design,’ and the dictionary is clear
enough. The argument to which Mr. Ellis applies the term £ preposterous
nonsense/ is certainly not Paley’s, but Mr. Ellis’s own quibbling caricature
of Paley’s ; and Mr. Ellis’s whole position is occupied by taking an unworthy
advantage of the fact that one word has often more than one meaning, and
by arbitrarily fastening on that word a meaning far different from that
which the great reasoner obviously attached to it, in accordance with
common usage. Mr. Ellis is welcome to his conception; but it is disingenuous
to assume that ‘orthodox Christendom ’ can in any such manner misinterpret
the language of a standard English writer who is also a consummate
reasoner.
The very same strategy is employed by Mr. Conway in his last discourse
on The Ascension of the Criminal, in which Methodism is introduced, in the
garments of her hymnology, as a witness to the immoralities of orthodoxy.
It is a strategy which requires no genius for either its conception or its
execution; it creates a false assumption, accredits it to orthodoxy, and
then exposes orthodoxy to ridicule for what orthodoxy never said or
thought. If it can be made clear that orthodoxy does not hold what her
critics so confidently assume and assert that she does, the whole attack,
delivered with so much vehemence and passion, is merely a sham-fight
contrived for the entertainment of the South-Place congregation.
It is sufficient to quote from this single discourse to prove that the above
statement is fully borne out by the facts of the case. Thus Mr. Conway
�22
The Intolerance of Haterdoxy, and the
starts with the proposition that 1 religion and morality use totally different
weights and measures. The vilest scoundrel to one may be a saint to the
other.’ The religious instruction provided for the masses teaches them,
says he, ‘ that the supreme rewards of existence are attainable without
reference to life and character. The voice most authentic to the masses says
to them,—In the name of God we declare to you that your thefts, murders,
adulteries, cruelties, and general baseness, may be to man of vast import
ance ; but to God the one question is, Do you believe in His Son or not ? ’
Christianity finds its strongest motives of appeal in a judgment day and
an eternal hell. ‘ Now these,’ says Mr. Conway, £ would be very strong if
they were penalties for immorality; but Christianity ’ (sic, not orthodoxy
merely) ‘ repudiates the idea. Hell, it declares, is for those that forget God,
or do not believe in His Son. Consequently the criminal may snap his
fingers at the day of judgment. . . .Those sects that deal with the masses are
pervaded with a contempt for good works. The Wesleyans sing :
“ Let the world their virtue boast,
Their works of righteousness ;
I, a wretch undone and lost,
Am freely saved by grace;
Other title I disclaim ;
This, only this, is all my plea,
I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.” ’
The charge culminates thus, that Christianity positively discourages ‘ the
formation of self-reliant and moral character ’; in the ‘ plan of salvation no
provision is made for morality. Not one item in it refers to morality.
Morality is not made a condition, nor immorality a disqualification for its
full enjoyment’; so that Christianity is a criminal system—‘ it assures the
criminal, converted after he can sin no more, that heaven has the same
place and rewards for the fife of crime and the life of virtue.’ Indeed,
the success of orthodox Christianity is represented as chiefly due to the
fact that it appeals powerfully to the criminal instincts of mankind, that is
to say, to the instincts of the criminal mind, whose creed is to secure all
the advantages of virtue with the weapons of vice.
We have purposely avoided the more offensive sentiments in this remark
able discourse, simply selecting the brief sentences that indicate the course
of thought pursued in it. We can only ask, with something like amaze
ment, Can Mr. Conway bring himself to sincerely believe that this loath
some monstrosity which he paraded before the congregations assembling at
South Place, and the Athenaeum, Camden-Road, on the 2nd of March,
1879, as orthodox Christianity, is the actual Christianity preached in
so many hundreds of pulpits on every side of him, and sung by so
many thousands of worshippers, from Sabbath to Sabbath ? From what
pulpit has he ever heard it announced that ‘ the supreme rewards of exist
ence are attainable without reference to life and character ’ ? Where has
he heard it proclaimed that ‘ the adulteries, cruelties and general baseness ’
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
23
of mankind are of no importance to God, or that the dreadful penalties of
future judgment pass over the immoralities of men, and fall only upon
those who have departed from the faith of orthodoxy, and have denied the
Divine Sonship of the Saviour ? If a life of baseness and immorality bo
not 1 forgetting God,’ what is ? How is it that a man who is capable of
writing able and sympathetic criticism upon secular subjects, can allow
himself to be so unfair as to take a single hymn, which is the lyrical
expression of personal conviction, expressly designed and designated ‘ For
mourners convinced of sin,’ as a complete summary of orthodox belief,
and to infer from the omission of any mention of the deeds of a holy life
in a solitary verse of Wesleyan hymnology, that the Wesleyans have a
‘ contempt for good works.’
A similar process of criticism, confined to garbled utterances and founded
on omission, might be made to prove the grossest calumnies against the
greatest authors. And how can any man who has read the Gospels and
Epistles, and who knows that it is from the Divine ethics of Christianity
that a thousand pulpits are drawing their inspiration and instruction from
Sabbath to Sabbath, dare to stand up and affirm that Christianity is a
criminal system, and makes no provision for morality! If orthodox
Christianity is a criminal system, how is it that it has proved the most
powerful deterrent from vice ? And if Mr. Conway’s scheme of religion is so
much loftier, why is it that it exhibits itself mainly in false paradox and the
intellectual fireworks of an explosive and yet random criticism, instead of
weaving its mightier spell for the exorcising of the foul spirits that defile
and deform society, and which, according to his view of the case, Chris
tianity encourages, but cannot cast out ? We can only suppose, in charity,
that Mr. Conway knows next to nothing of the Christianity which he so
wantonly caricatures. And what can be a preacher’s notion of the Ethics of
Quotation who, having given one verse of a hymn, is careful to keep
back another verse which would at once refute his calumny:
‘ Jesus, Thou for me hast died,
And Thou in me shalt live,
I shall feel Thy death applied,
I shall Thy life receive?
And what a reckless and audacious contempt for recent history, as well as
for conspicuous and admitted contemporary facts, is betrayed by an able
* public teacher—fair-speaking on all other subjects but Christianity—
who can, within a few yards of Moorfields and City Road Chapel, coolly
tell his disciples that the Wesleyans have ‘ a contempt for good works.’
Who does not know that by the self-same tactics John Wesley and the
Wesleyans have been denounced as ‘ merit-mongers ’ and ‘ Pelagians,’ and
Papistical criers up of the desert and absolute necessity of ‘ good works,’ and
the attempt to sustain the charge has been made precisely on the same principle,
or with the same disregard of principle, as is exhibited by Mr. Conway. Only
�24
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
the slightest observation is sufficient to bid back again the spectral de
formity which he has conjured up and misnamed orthodox Christianity.
■The self-styled ‘rational religion’has a strange method of cultivating
and inculcating intellectual morality, when it can deliberately set forth from
both pulpit and press Charles Peace as a representative Christian saint, and
can make his last utterances the typical confession of orthodox piety, in order
to construct a sermon, under the title of The Ascension of the Criminal.
Nor does it shape well with the laws of intellectual morality that it should
be conveniently forgotten in such an attack upon Christianity and Chris
tians, that orthodox Christianity teaches that ‘ faith, if it hath not works, is
dead, being alone ’ (James ii. 17). And surely Mr. Conway’s revolt is not
so much from revelation as from common sense, when he can venture to
quote an obscure Indian myth concerning all animals being once imprisoned
in a monster, and owing their deliverance to co-operation—with the solemn
announcement that this ‘ is a much more moral and scientific genesis of
man than that in the Bible.’
Such, then, is the tolerance of1 heresy. The spirit of denial proves him
self to be no holy iconoclast, who moves onward through the wreck of
crumbling traditions to a larger inheritance of truth. It is simply a
mocking, railing spirit, unable or unheedful to discriminate between good
and evil. We are so often taunted with the bigotry of orthodoxy, the
galling fetters it imposes on the intellect, the fierce anathemas it thunders
forth to all who cast away its shibboleth, that it is time to look our accusers
in the face. It seems to us that the palm of intolerance belongs to hetero
doxy, and its bigotry is all its own. It professes to reject the tyranny of
any standard of faith; but it sets up its own crude standards of faith
nevertheless, in the arrogant egotism of its high priests. It weaves its
boasted ethics from negations; it affirms only to accuse. Of its charity
and tolerance let Mr. Conway’s own discourses bear witness. We are told
that our generation is stricken with the pestilence of doubt, though there
is good reason to believe that large exaggerations are mixed with its
statistics. The infected area is probably much smaller than some think.
However this may be, contemporary literature swarms with smart doubters,
with whom the lack of faith is no longer considered a calamity, but a badge
of intellectual distinction. They invite the novice to the larger air of lib
eral ideas, but the novice soon finds that ‘ free thought ’ has its Inquisition,
and that denial has its dogmas. He flees from orthodoxy because his new
instructors have branded it as narrow and intolerant, to find, when the
awakening comes, and natural revulsion follows fascination, that he has
fallen at the feet of an arrogant heterodoxy, immeasurably narrower and
more intolerant.
D. J. W.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism
Creator
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Dawson, W.J. [Dawson]
Description
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 16-24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review essay by Rev. W.J. Dawson of 'South Place Discourses' from Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, January 1883. The article is signed D.J.W. but is known to be the Rev. W.J. Dawson.
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[s.n.]
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[1883]
Identifier
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G5608
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Book reviews
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism</span>), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Human</a><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">ist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Heterodoxy
Latitudinarianism
Moncure Conway