(&mml\ Uttivmltg p 
 
 ibatg 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 EROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 FUND 
 
 1891 
 
 ■/-"■-/- 
 
 A..^/:.^j.z^. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 1919.H274M3 
 
 Martin Luther =''",l|Ste||H|Mi|ffl|M 
 3 1924 022 004 620 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022004620 
 
MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 BY 
 
 F* H.'^liiDGE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF REASON IN RELIGION, PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION, 
 
 WAYS OF THE SPIRIT, ATHEISM IN PHILOSOPHY, HOURS WITH 
 
 GERMAN CLASSICS, ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1888. 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambkidsb. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PASS 
 
 Martin Luther 1 
 
 Count Zinzbndokp and the Moravians .... 38 
 
 Christianity in Conflict with Hellenism . . 64 
 
 Feudal Society 99 
 
 Conservatism and Reform 129 
 
 Eev. William E. Channing, D.D 164 
 
 Science and Faith 173 
 
 Classic and Romantic ." ,184 
 
 The Steps of Beauty 206 
 
 Ethical Systems 225 
 
 Ghost-Seeing 250 
 
 Personality 278 
 
 The Theism of Reason and the Theism of Faith 306 
 
ESSAYS. 
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 
 
 l^From the Atlantic Monthly of December, 1883.1 
 
 " I ^HE power which presides over human destiny 
 and shapes the processes of history is wont 
 to conceal its ulterior purpose from the agents it 
 employs, who, while pursuing their special aims 
 and fulfilling their appointed tasks, are, unknown 
 to themselves, initiating a new era, founding a new 
 world. 
 
 Such significance attaches to the name of Luther, 
 one of that select band of providential men who 
 stand conspicuous among their contemporaries as 
 makers of history. For the Protestant Reforma- 
 tion which he inaugurated is very imperfectly ap- 
 prehended if construed solely as a schism in the 
 Church, a new departure in religion. In a larger 
 view, it was our modern world, with its social 
 developments, its liberties, its science, its new 
 conditions of being, evolving itself from the old. 
 
 1 
 
2 LUTHER. 
 
 It would be claiming too much to assume that 
 all of good which distinguishes these latter cen- 
 turies from mediaeval time is wholly due to that 
 one event, that humanity would have made no 
 progress in science and the arts of life but for 
 Luther and his work. Other contemporary agen- 
 cies, independent of the rupture with Rome, — the 
 printing-press, the revival of letters, the discovery 
 of a new continent, and other geographical and 
 astronomical findings, — have had their share in 
 the regeneration of secular life. 
 
 But this we may safely assert : that the dearest 
 goods of our estate — civil independence, spiritual 
 emancipation, individual scope, the large room, the 
 unbound thought, the free pen, whatever is most 
 characteristic of this New England of our inherit- 
 ance — we owe to the Saxon reformer. 
 
 A compatriot of Luther, the critic-poet Lessing, 
 has made us familiar with the idea of an Education 
 of the Human Race. Vico had previously affirmed 
 a law of historic development, and inferred from 
 that law a progressive improvement of man's es- 
 tate. Lessing supplemented the New Science of 
 Vico with a more distinct recognition of divine 
 agency and an educating purpose in the method 
 of history. But Lessing confined his view of 
 divine education to the truths of religion. For 
 these the school is the Church. But religion is 
 
ESSAYS. 3 
 
 only one side of human nature. Man as a denizen 
 of this earthly world has secular interests and a 
 secular calling which may, in some future synthe- 
 sis, be found to be the necessary complement of 
 the spiritual, the other pole of the same social 
 whole, but meanwhile require for their right 
 development and full satisfaction another school, 
 co-ordinate with but independent of the Church. 
 That school is the nation. 
 
 Now, the nation, in the ages following the decline 
 of Eome, had had no proper status in Christian his- 
 tory. There were peoples — Italian, French, Eng- 
 lish, German — distributed in territorial groups, 
 but no nation, no polity conterminous with the 
 territorial limits of each country, compacted and 
 confined by those limits, having its own inde- 
 pendent sovereign head. Prance, Germany, Eng- 
 land, were mere geographical expressions. The 
 peoples inhabiting these countries had a common 
 head in the. Bishop of Rome, whose power might 
 be checked by the rival German Empire when the 
 Emperor was a man of force, a veritable ruler of 
 men, and the papal incumbent an imbecile, but 
 who, on the whole, was acknowledged supreme. 
 Europe was ecclesiastically one ; and the ecclesi- 
 astical overruled, absorbed, the civil. 
 
 But already, before the birth of Luther, from the 
 dawn of the fourteenth century, the civil power had 
 
4 LUTHER. 
 
 begun to disengage itself from the spiritual. The 
 peoples here and there had consolidated into na- 
 tions. Philip of France had defied the Pope of his 
 day and hurled him from his throne. The Golden 
 Bull had made the German Empire Independent of 
 papal dictation in the choice of its incumbents. 
 Meanwhile the Babylonish Captivity and subse- 
 quent dyarchy in the pontificate had sapped the 
 prestige of the Roman See. As we enter the fif- 
 teenth century we find the principle of national- 
 ity formally recognized by the Church. At the 
 Council of Constance the assembly decided to 
 vote by nations instead of dioceses, each nation 
 having a distinct voice. Then it appeared that 
 the nation had become a reality and a power in 
 Christendom. 
 
 Another century was needed to break the chain 
 which bound in ecclesiastical dependence on Rome 
 the nations especially charged with the conduct of 
 mankind. And a man was needed who had known 
 from personal experience the stress of that chain, 
 and whose moral convictions were too exigent to 
 allow of compliance and complicity with manifest 
 falsehood and deadly wrong. To ecclesiastical sev- 
 erance succeeded political. To Martin Luther, above 
 all men, we Anglo-Americans are indebted for na- 
 tional independence and mental freedom. 
 
 It is from this point of view, and not as a teacher 
 
ESSAYS. 5 
 
 of religious truth, that he claims our interest. As 
 a theologian, as a thinker, he has taught us little. 
 Men of inferior note have contributed vastly more 
 to theological enlightenment and the science of 
 religion. Intellectually narrow, theologically bound 
 and seeking to bind, his work was larger than his 
 vision and better than his aim. The value of his 
 thought is inconsiderable; the value of his deed 
 as a providential liberator of thought is beyond 
 computation. 
 
 The world has no prevision of its heroes. Nature 
 gives no warning when a great man is born. Had 
 any soothsayer undertaken to point out, among the 
 children cast upon the world in electoral Saxony 
 on the 10th of November, 1483, the one who would 
 shake Christendom to its centre, this peasant babe, 
 just arrived in the cottage of Hans Luther at Bisle- 
 ben, might have been the last on whom his prophecy 
 would have fallen. The great man is unpredictable ; 
 but reflection finds in the birth of Luther a peculiar 
 fitness of place and time. Fitness of place, inas- 
 much as Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, his 
 native prince and patron, was probably the only one 
 among the potentates of that day who, from sym- 
 pathy and force of character, possessed the wiU and 
 the ability to shield the reformer from prelatical 
 wiles and the wrath of Rome. Fitness of time — a 
 generation had scarcely gone by since the newly 
 
6 LUTHER. 
 
 invented printing-press had issued its first Bible; 
 and during the very year of this nativity, in 1483, 
 Christopher Columbus was making his first appeals 
 for royal aid in realizing his dream of a western 
 hemisphere hidden from European ken behind the 
 waves of the Atlantic, where the Protestant prin- 
 ciple, born of Luther, was destined to find its most 
 congenial soil and to yield its consummate fruit. 
 
 More important than fitness of time and place is 
 the adaptation of the man to his appointed work. 
 There is an easy, levelling theory, held by some, 
 that men are the product of their time, great actors 
 the necessary product of extraordinary circum- 
 stances ; that Caesar and Mohammed and Napoleon, 
 had they not lived precisely when they did, would 
 have plodded through life and slipped into their 
 graves without a record; and that, on the other 
 hand, quite ordinary men, if thrown upon the times 
 in which those heroes lived, would have done as 
 they did and accomplished the same results, — 
 would have overthrown the Eoman aristocracy, 
 abolished idolatry, and brought order out of chaotic 
 revolution. 
 
 But man and history are not, I think, to be con- 
 strued so. There is a law which adapts the man to 
 his time. The work to be done is not laid upon a 
 chance individual, the availing of the crisis is not 
 left to one who happens to be on the spot ; but from 
 
ESSAYS. 7 
 
 the foundation of the world the man was selected to 
 stand just there, and to do just that. The oppor- 
 tunity does not make the man, but finds him. He 
 is the providential man ; all the past is in him, all 
 the future is to flow from him. 
 
 What native qualifications did Luther bring to 
 his work ? First of all, his sturdy Saxon nature. 
 The Saxons are Germans of the Germans, and 
 Luther was a Saxon of the Saxons, — reverent, pa- 
 tient, laborious, with quite an exceptional power of 
 work and capacity of endurance ; simple, humble ; 
 no visionary, no dreamer of dreams, but cautious, 
 conservative, incorruptibly honest, true to the heart's 
 core ; above all, courageous, firm, easily led when 
 conscience seconded the leading, impossible to 
 drive when conscience opposed, ecstatically devout, 
 tender, loving: a strange compound of feminine 
 softness and adamantine inflexibility. Contem- 
 porary observers noticed in the eyes of the man, 
 dark, flashing, an expression which they termed 
 " daemonic." It is the expression of one susceptible 
 of supernatural impulsion, — of being seized and 
 borne on by a power which exceeds his conscious 
 volition. 
 
 In this connection I have to speak of one prop- 
 erty in Luther which especially distinguishes spirit- 
 ual heroes, — the gift of faith. The ages which 
 preceded his coming have been called "the ages 
 
8 LUTHER. 
 
 of faith." The term is a misnomer if understood 
 in any other sense than that of blind acquiescence 
 in external authority, unquestioning submission to 
 the dictum of the Church. This is not faith, but 
 the want of it, mental inaction, absence of inde- 
 pendent \dsion. Faith is essentially active, a posi- 
 tive, aggressive force; not a granter of current 
 propositions, but a maker of propositions, of dis- 
 pensations, of new ages. 
 
 Faith is not a constitutional endowment; there 
 is no lot or tumulus assigned to it among the 
 hillocks of the brain. It is not a talent connate 
 with him who has it, and growing with his growth, 
 but a gift of the Spirit, communicated to such as 
 are charged with a providential mission to their 
 fellow-men. It is the seal of their indenture, the 
 test of their calling. In other words, faith is in- 
 spiration ; it is the subjective side of that incalcu 
 lable force of which inspiration is the objective. 
 So much faith, so much inspiration, so much of 
 Deity. 
 
 Inspiration is in no man a constant quantity. 
 In Luther it appears unequal, intermittent; ebb 
 and flood, but always, in the supreme crises of his 
 history, answering to his need ; a master force, an 
 ecstasy of vision and of daring ; lifting him clean 
 out of himself, or rather eliciting, bringing to the 
 surface, and forcing into action the deeper, latent 
 
ESSA YS. 9 
 
 self of the man, against all the monitions not only 
 of prudence, but of conscience as ■well. The voice 
 of worldly prudence is soon silenced by earnest 
 souls intent on noble enterprises of uncertain issue. 
 What reformer of traditional wrongs has not been 
 met by the warning, " That way danger lies " ? 
 But in Luther we have the rarer phenomenon of 
 conscience itself overcome by faith. We have the 
 amazing spectacle of a righteous man defying his 
 own conscience in obedience to a higher duty than 
 conscience knew. For conscience is the pupil of 
 custom, the slave of tradition, bound by prescrip- 
 tion; the safeguard of the weak, but, it may be, an 
 offence to the strong ; wanting initiative ; unable 
 of itself to lift itself to new perceptions and new 
 requirements, whereby "enterprises of great pith 
 and moment " " their currents turn awry, and lose 
 the name of action." Conscience has to be new- 
 born when a new dispensation is given to the 
 world. It was only thus that Christianity through 
 Paul could disengage itself from Judaism, which 
 had the old conscience on its side. 
 
 In Luther faith was stronger than conscience. 
 Had it not been so, we should not be called to 
 celebrate his name. Of all his trials in those 
 years of conflict which issued in final separation 
 from Rome, the struggle with conscience was the 
 sorest. However strong his personal conviction 
 
10 LUTHER. 
 
 that indulgences bought with money could not save 
 from the penalties of sin, that the sale of them was 
 a grievous wrong ; to declare that conviction, to act 
 upon it, was to pit himself against the head of the 
 Church, to whom he owed unconditional allegiance. 
 It was revolt against legitimate authority, a viola- 
 tion of his priestly vows. So conscience pleaded. 
 But Luther's better moments set aside these scru- 
 ples, regarding them, as he did all that contradicted 
 his strong intent, as suggestions of the devil. 
 " How," whispered Satan, " if your doctrine be 
 erroneous, — if all this confusion has been stirred 
 up without just cause ? How dare you preach what 
 no one has ventured for so many centuries ? " 
 
 Over all these intrusive voices admonishing, " You 
 must not," a voice more imperative called to him, 
 " You must ; " and a valor above all martial daring 
 responded, " I will." Here is where a higher power 
 comes in to reinforce the human. When valor in 
 a righteous cause rises to that pitch, it draws 
 Heaven to its side, it engages Omnipotence to 
 back it. 
 
 Our knowledge of Luther's history is derived 
 in great part from his own reminiscences and 
 confessions. 
 
 His boyhood was deeply shadowed by the stern- 
 ness of domestic discipline. Severely and even 
 cruelly chastised by conscientious but misjudging 
 
ESSAYS. 11 
 
 parents, more careful to inspire fear than to cher- 
 ish filial love, he contracted a shyness and timidity 
 which kept back for years the free development 
 of a noble nature. At school it was still worse ; 
 the business of education was then conceived as a 
 species of rhabdomancy, — a divining by means of 
 the rod the hidden treasures of the boyish mind. 
 He cannot forget, in after years, that fifteen times 
 in one day the rod in his case was so applied. 
 " The teachers in those days," he says, " were 
 tyrants and executioners ; the school, a prison and 
 a hell." 
 
 At a more advanced school in Eisenach, where 
 the sons of the poor supported themselves by sing- 
 ing before the doors of wealthy citizens, who re- 
 sponded with the fragments of their abundance, 
 a noble lady. Dame Ursula Cotta, impressed by 
 the fervor and vocal skill of the lad, gave him 
 a daily seat at her table, and with it his first 
 introduction to polite society, — a privilege which 
 went far to compensate the adverse influences of 
 his earlier years. 
 
 At the age of eighteen he entered the University 
 of Erfurt, then the foremost seminary in Germany, 
 the resort of students from all parts of the land. 
 The improved finances of his father sufficed to 
 ^fray the cost of board and books. He elected 
 for himself the department of philosophy, then 
 
12 LUTHER. 
 
 embracing, together with logic, metaphysic, and 
 rhetoric, the study of the classics, which the re- 
 cent revival of letters had brought into vogue. 
 The Latin classics became his familiar friends, 
 and are not imfrequently quoted in his writings. 
 He made good use of the golden years, and re- 
 ceived in due order, with high distinction, the 
 degrees of bachelor and of master of arts. 
 
 With all this rich culture and the new ideas 
 with which it flooded his mind, it does not appear 
 that any doubt had been awakened in him of the 
 truth of the old religion. He was still a devout 
 Catholic ; he still prayed to the saints as the 
 proper helpers in time of need. "When accident- 
 ally wounded by the sword which, according to 
 student fashion, he wore at his side, lying, as he 
 thought, at the point of death, he invoked, not God, 
 but the Virgin, for aid. " Mary, help ! " was his 
 cry. 
 
 He was destined by his father for the legal pro- 
 fession. It was the readiest road to wealth and 
 power. Accordingly, he applied himself with all 
 diligence to the study of law, and had fitted him- 
 self for the exercise of that calling ; when suddenly, 
 in a company of friends assembled for social enter- 
 tainment, he announced his intention to quit the 
 world and embrace the monastic life. They ex- 
 pressed their astonishment at this decision, and 
 
ESSAYS. 13 
 
 endeavored to dissuade him from such a course. 
 In vain they urged him to reconsider his purpose. 
 " Farewell ! " he said ; " we part to meet no more." 
 
 What was it that caused this change in Luther's 
 plan of life ? To account for a turn apparently so 
 abrupt, it must be remembered that his religion 
 hitherto, the fruit of his early training, had been 
 a religion of fear. He had been taught to believe 
 in an angry God, and the innate, deep corruption 
 of human nature. He was conscious of no crime ; 
 no youthful indiscretions, even, could he charge 
 himself with : but morbid self-scrutiny presented 
 him utterly sinful and corrupt. Only a life of 
 good works could atone for that corruption. Such 
 a life the monastic, with its renunciations, its 
 prayers and fastings and self-torture, was then 
 believed to be, — a life well-pleasing in the sight 
 of God, the surest way of escape from final perdi- 
 tion. Exceptional virtue tended in that direction. 
 To be a monk was to flee from wrath and attain 
 to holiness and heaven. 
 
 All this had lain dimly, half-consciously, in 
 Luther's mind, not ripened into purpose. The pur- 
 pose was precipitated by a searching experience. 
 Walking one day in the neighborhood of Erfurt, he 
 was overtaken by a terrific thunder-storm. The 
 lightning struck the ground at his feet. Falling 
 on his knees, he invoked, in his terror, the interces- 
 
14 LUTHER. 
 
 sion of Saint Anna, and vowed, if life were spared, 
 to become a monk. Restored to his senses, he 
 regretted the rash vow. His riper reason in after 
 years convinced him that a vow ejaculated in a 
 moment of terror imposed no moral obligation; 
 but his uninstructed conscience could not then but 
 regard it as binding. In spite of the just and 
 angry remonstrances of his father, who saw with 
 dismay his cherished plan defeated, the hard-earned 
 money spent on his boy's education expended in 
 vain, he sought and gained admission to the broth- 
 erhood and cloisters of St. Augustine at Erfurt. 
 
 His novitiate was burdened with cruel trials. 
 The hardest and most repulsive offices were laid 
 upon the new-comer, whose superiors delighted to 
 mortify the master of arts with disgusting tasks. 
 To the stern routine of cloister discipline he added 
 self-imposed severities, more frequent fastings and 
 watchings, undermining his health, endangering 
 life. Harder to bear than all these were his in- 
 ward conflicts, — fears and fightings, agonizing self- 
 accusations, doubts of salvation, apprehensions of 
 irrevocable doom. He sought to conquer heaven 
 by mortification of the flesh, and despaired of the 
 result. Finally, encouraged by Staupitz, the vicar- 
 general of the Order, and guided by his own study 
 of the new-found Scriptures, he came to perceive 
 that heaven is not to be won in that way. Follow- 
 
ESSAYS. 15 
 
 ing the lead of Saint Paul and Augustine, he reached 
 the conclusion which formed thenceforth the staple 
 of his theology and the point of departure in his 
 controversy with Eome, — the sufficiency of divine 
 grace, and justification by faith. 
 
 In the second year of his monastic life he was 
 ordained priest, and in the year following promoted 
 to the chair of theology in the new University of 
 Wittenberg, where he soon became famous as a 
 preacher. 
 
 In 1511 he was sent on a mission to Rome, in 
 company with a brother monk. When he came 
 within sight of the city he fell upon his knees and 
 saluted it : " Hail, holy Rome, thrice consecrated 
 by the blood of the martyrs ! " Arrived within the 
 walls, the honest German was inexpressibly shocked 
 by what he found in the capital of Christendom, — 
 open infidelity, audacious falsehood, mockery of 
 sacred things, rampant licentiousness, abominations 
 incredible. The Rome of Julius II. was the Roma 
 rediviva of Caligula and Nero, — pagan in spirit, 
 pagan in morals, a sink of iniquity. It was well 
 that Luther had personal experience of all this ; 
 the remembrance of it served to lighten the struggle 
 with conscience when called to contend against 
 papal authority. But then such contest never en- 
 tered his mind ; he was still a loyal son of the 
 Church. He might mourn her corruption, but would 
 
16 LUTHER. 
 
 not question her infallibility. Like other pilgrims 
 zealous of good works, he climbed on his knees 
 the twenty-eight steps of the Santa Scala. While 
 engaged in that penance there flashed on his mind, 
 like a revelation from Heaven, declaring the futility 
 of such observances, the saying of the prophet, 
 "The just shall live by his faith." 
 
 Eeturned to Wittenberg, he was urged by Staupitz 
 to study for the last and highest academic honor, 
 that of doctor of philosophy. The already over- 
 tasked preacher shrank from this new labor. " Herr 
 Staupitz," he said, " it will be the death of me." 
 " All right," answered Staupitz. " Our Lord carries 
 on extensive operations ; he has need of clever men 
 above. If you die you will be one of his councillors 
 in heaven." 
 
 I now come to the turning-point in Luther's life, 
 — the controversy with Rome on the subject of in- 
 dulgences, which ended in the schism known as 
 the Protestant Reformation. 
 
 Leo X., in the year 1516, ostensibly in the in- 
 terest of a new church of St. Peter in Rome, 
 sent forth a Bull according absolution from the 
 penalties of sin to all who should purchase the 
 indulgences offered for sale by his commissioners. 
 Indulgence, according to the- theory of the Church, 
 was dispensation from the penance otherwise re- 
 quired for priestly absolution. It was not pretended 
 
ESSAYS. 17 
 
 that priestly absolution secured divine forgiveness 
 and eternal salvation. It was absolution from tem- 
 poral penalties due to the Church ; but popular 
 superstition identified the one with the other. More- 
 over, it was held that the supererogatory merits 
 of Christ and the saints were available for the use 
 of sinners. They constituted a treasury confided 
 to the Church, whose saving virtue the head of 
 the Church could dispense at discretion. In this 
 case the application of that fund was measured 
 by pecuniary equivalents. Christ had said, " How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter the king- 
 dom of heaven." Leo said in effect, " How easily 
 may they that have riches enter the kingdom of 
 heaven," since they have the quid pro quo. For 
 the poor it was not so easy ; and this was one 
 aspect of the case which stimulated the opposition 
 of Luther. Penitence was nominally required of 
 the sinner; but proofs of penitence were not ex- 
 acted. Practically, the indulgence meant impunity 
 for sin. A more complete travesty of the Gospel — 
 laughable, if not so impious — could hardly be con- 
 ceived. The faithful themselves were shocked by 
 the shameless realism which characterized the pro- 
 clamations of the German commissioner, Tetzel. 
 
 Luther wrote a respectful letter to the Arch- 
 bishop of Mainz, praying him to put a stop to 
 the scandal, — little dreaming that the prelate had 
 
18 LUTHER. 
 
 a pecuniary interest in the business, having bar- 
 gained for half the profits of the sale as the price 
 of his sanction of the same. Other dignitaries to 
 whom he appealed refused to interfere. As a last 
 resource, by way of appeal to the Christian con- 
 science, on the 31st of October, 1517, he nailed 
 his famous ninety-five theses to the door of the 
 church of All Saints. These were not dogmatic 
 assertions, but propositions to be debated by any 
 so inclined. Nevertheless, the practical interpreta- 
 tion put upon them was the author's repudiation of 
 indulgences, and, by implication, his arraignment 
 of the source from which they emanated. 
 
 It is doubtful if Luther apprehended the full 
 significance of the step he had taken. He did not 
 then dream of secession from the Church. He was 
 more astonished than gratified when he learned 
 that his theses and other utterances of like import 
 had, within the space of fourteen days, pervaded 
 Germany, and that he had become the eye-mark 
 of Christendom. More than once before the final 
 irrevocable act he seems to have regretted his 
 initiative; and though he would not retract, he 
 would fain have sunk out of sight. 
 
 But fortunately for the cause, Tetzel, baffled in 
 his designs on Luther's congregation, attacked him 
 with such abusive virulence and extravagant asser- 
 tions of papal authority that Luther was provoked 
 
ESSAYS. 19 
 
 to rejoin with more decisive declarations. The con- 
 troversy reached the ear of the Pope, who inclined 
 at first to regard it as a local quarrel which would 
 soon subside, but was finally persuaded to despatch 
 a summons requiring Luther to appear in Eome 
 within sixty days to be tried for heresy. Eome 
 might summon, but Luther knew too well the prob- 
 able result of such a trial to think of obeying the 
 summons. The spiritual power might issue its 
 mandates, but the temporal power was needed to 
 execute its behests. Would the temporal, in this 
 case, co-operate with the spiritual ? There had 
 been a time when no German potentate would have 
 hesitated to surrender a heretic. But Germany was 
 getting tired of Koman dictation and ultramontane 
 insolence. The German princes were getting im- 
 patient of the constant drain on their exchequer by 
 a foreign power. Irrespective of the right or wrong 
 of his position theologically considered, the ques- 
 tion of Luther's extradition was one of submission 
 to authority long felt to be oppressive. Only per- 
 sonal enemies, like Eck and Emser and Tetzel, 
 would have him sent to Eome. Miltitz, who had 
 been deputed to deal with him, confessed that an 
 army of twenty-five thousand men would not be 
 sufficient to take him across the Alps, so wide- 
 spread and so powerfully embodied was the feeling 
 in his favor. The Eitter class, comprising men 
 
20 LUTHER. 
 
 like Franz von Sickingen and TJlricli von Hutten, 
 were on his side; so were the Humanists, — apostles 
 of the new culture, which opposed itself to the old 
 mediaeval Scholasticism. The Emperor Maximilian 
 would have the case tried on German soil. Con- 
 spicuous above all, his chief defender, was Luther's 
 own sovereign, the Elector of Saxony, Frederick 
 the Wise. Humanly speaking, but for him the 
 Eeformation would have been crushed at the start, 
 and its author with it. Frederick was not at this 
 time a convert to Luther's doctrine, but insisted 
 that his subject should not be condemned until 
 tried by competent judges and refuted on scrip- 
 tural grounds. He occupied the foremost place 
 among the princes of Germany. On the death of 
 Maximilian, 1519, he was regent of the Empire, 
 and had the chief voice in the election of the new 
 Emperor. Without his consent and co-operation it 
 was impossible for Luther's enemies to get posses- 
 sion of his person. For this purpose Leo X., then 
 Pope, wrote a flattering letter, accompanied by the 
 coveted gift of the " golden rose," — supreme token 
 of pontifical good-will. " This rose," wrote Leo, 
 " steeped in a holy chrism, sprinkled with sweet- 
 smelling musk, consecrated by apostolic blessing, 
 symbol of a sublime mystery, — may its heavenly 
 odor penetrate the heart of our beloved son and 
 dispose him to comply with our request." 
 
ESSA YS. 21 
 
 The request was not complied with, but by way 
 of alternative it was proposed that Luther should 
 be tried by a papal commissioner in Germany. So 
 Leo despatched for that purpose the Cardinal de 
 Vio, of Gaeta, his plenipotentiary, commonly known 
 as Cajetan. A conference was held at Augsburg, 
 which, owing to the legate's passionate insistence on 
 unconditional retractation, served but to widen the 
 breach. The efforts of Miltitz, another appointed 
 mediator, met with no better success. 
 
 Meanwhile Luther had advanced with rapid and 
 enormous strides in the line of divergence from the 
 Catholic Church. The study of the Scriptures had 
 convinced him that the primacy of the Roman 
 bishop had no legitimate foundation. The work of 
 Laurentius Valla, exposing the fiction of Constan- 
 tine's pretended donation of temporal sovereignty 
 in Rome, had opened his eyes to other falsehoods. 
 He proclaimed his conclusions, writing and pub- 
 lishing, in Latin and German, with incredible dili- 
 gence. His " Address to the Christian Nobility of 
 the German Nation concerning the Melioration of 
 the Christian State," the most important of his pub- 
 lications, anticipates nearly all the points of the 
 Protestant reform, and many which were not ac- 
 complished in Luther's day. The writing spread 
 and sped through every province of Germany, 
 as if borne on the wings of the wind. An edition 
 
22 LUTHER. 
 
 of four thousand copies was exhausted in a few- 
 days. It was the Magna Charta of a new ecclesias- 
 tical State. 
 
 But now the thunderbolt was launched which, 
 his adversaries trusted, should smite the heretic to 
 death and scatter all his following. On the 16th of 
 June, 1520, Leo issued a Bull condemning Luth- 
 er's writings, commanding that they be publicly 
 burned wherever found, and that their author, un- 
 less within the space of sixty days he recanted his 
 errors, allowing sixty more for the tidings of his 
 recantation to reach Rome, should be seized and 
 delivered up for the punishment due to a refractoiy 
 heretic. All magistrates and all citizens were 
 required, on pain of ecclesiastical penalty, to aid in 
 arresting him and his followers and sending them 
 to Rome. The papal legates, Aleander and Carac- 
 cioli, were appointed bearers of a missive from the 
 Pope to Duke Frederick, commanding him to have 
 the writings of Luther burned, and either to ex- 
 ecute judgment on the heretic himself, or else to 
 deliver him up to the papal tribunal. The Elector 
 replied that he had no part in Luther's movement, 
 but that his writings must be refuted before he 
 would order their burning; that their author had 
 been condemned unheard ; that his case must be 
 tried by impartial judges in some place where it 
 should be safe for him to appear in person. 
 
ESSAYS. 23 
 
 Miltitz persuaded Luther, as a last resource, to 
 write to the Pope a conciliatory letter, disavowing 
 all personal hostility and expressing due reverence 
 for his Holiness. He did write. But such a letter ! 
 An audacious satire, which, under cover of personal 
 respect and good-will, compassionates the Pope as 
 "a sheep among wolves," and characterizes the 
 papal court as " viler than Sodom or Gomorrah." 
 
 When the Bull reached Wittenberg it was treated 
 by Luther and his friends with all the respect which 
 it seemed to them to deserve. On the 10th of 
 December, 1520, a large concourse of students and 
 citizens assembled in the open space before the 
 Elster gate ; a pile was erected and fired by a resi- 
 dent graduate of the university ; and on it Luther, 
 with his own hands, solemnly burned the Bull and 
 the papal decretals, amid applause which, like the 
 " embattled farmers' " shot at Concord in 1775, was 
 " heard round the world." 
 
 So the last tie was severed which bound Luther 
 to Rome. After that contumacious act there was 
 no retreat or possibility of pacification. 
 
 But though Luther had done with Rome, Rome 
 had not yet done with him. When Leo found that 
 he could not wrest the heretic from the guardian- 
 ship of Frederick, he had recourse to imperial aid. 
 The newly elected Emperor, Charles V.,a youth of 
 twenty-one, in whose blood were blended three royal 
 
24 LUTHER. 
 
 lines of devoted friends of the Church, might be ex- 
 pected to render prompt obedience to its head. But 
 Charles was unwilling to break with Frederick, to 
 whom he was chiefly indebted for his election. He 
 would not, if he could, compel him to send Luther 
 a prisoner to Rome. He chose to have him tried 
 in his own court, and only when proved by such 
 trial an irreclaimable heretic to surrender him as 
 such. 
 
 An imperial Diet was about to be held at the city 
 of Worms. Thither Charles desired the Elector to 
 bring the refractory monk. Frederick declined the 
 ofiice ; but Luther declared that if the Emperor 
 summoned him he would obey the summons as the 
 call of God. To his friend Spalatin, who advised 
 his refusal, he wrote that he would go to Worms if 
 there were as many devils opposed to him as there 
 were tiles on the roofs of the houses. 
 
 The summons came, accompanied by an imperial 
 safe-conduct covering the journey to and from the 
 place of trial. Luther complied ; he had no fear 
 that Charles would repeat the treachery of Sigis- 
 mund, which had blasted that name with eternal 
 infamy and incarnadined Bohemia with atoning 
 blood. The journey was one triumphal progress ; 
 in every city ovations, not unmingled with cautions 
 and regrets. He arrived in the morning of the 16th 
 of April, 1521. The warder on the tower an- 
 
ESSAYS. 25 
 
 nounced with the blast of a trumpet his approach. 
 The citizens left their breakfasts to witness the 
 entry. Preceded by the imperial herald and fol- 
 lowed by a long cavalcade, the stranger was 
 escorted to the quarters assigned him. Alighting 
 from his carriage, he looked round upon the multi- 
 tude and said, " God will be with me." It was 
 then that Aleander, the papal legate, remarked the 
 daemonic glance of his eye. People of all classes 
 visited him in his lodgings. 
 
 On the following day he was called to the episco- 
 pal palace, and made his first appearance before the 
 Diet. A pile of books was placed before him. 
 " Are these your writings ? " The titles were 
 called for, and Luther acknowledged them to be 
 his. Would he retract the opinions expressed in 
 them, or did he still maintain them ? He begged 
 time for consideration ; it was a question of faith, 
 of the welfare of souls, of the word of God. A day 
 for deliberation was allowed him, and he was re- 
 manded to his lodgings. On the way the people 
 shouted applause, and a voice exclaimed, " Blessed 
 is the womb that bare thee ! " But the impression 
 made on the court was not favorable. He had not 
 shown the front that was expected of him. He had 
 seemed timid, irresolute. The Emperor remarked, 
 " That man would never make a heretic of me." 
 
 His self-communings in the interim, and his 
 
26 LUTHER. 
 
 prayer, -which has come down to us, show how 
 deeply he felt the import of the crisis ; how " the 
 fire burned," as he mused of its probable issue, 
 knowing that the time was at hand when he might 
 be called to seal his testimony with his blood. 
 
 " Ah, God, thou my God ! stand by me against 
 the reason and the wisdom of all the world ! Thou 
 must do it; it is not my cause, but thine. For 
 my own person I have nothing to do with these 
 great lords of the earth. Gladly would I have 
 quiet days and be unperplexed. But thine is the 
 cause ; it is just and eternal. Stand by me, thou 
 eternal God ! I confide in no man. Hast thou not 
 chosen me for this purpose, I ask thee ? But I 
 know of a surety that thou hast chosen me." 
 
 On the 18th he was summoned for the second 
 time, and the question of the previous day was 
 renewed. He explained at length, first in Latin, 
 then in German, that his writings were of various 
 import: those which treated of moral topics the 
 papists themselves would not condemn ; those 
 which disputed papal authority, and those addressed 
 to private individuals, although the language might 
 be more violent than was seemly, he could not in 
 conscience revoke. Unless he were refuted from 
 the Scriptures, he must abide by his opinions. He 
 was told that the court was not there to discuss his 
 opinions ; they had been already condemned by the 
 
ESSAYS. 27 
 
 Council of Constance. Finally, the question nar- 
 rowed itself to this : Did he believe that Councils 
 could err ? More specifically, Did he believe the 
 Council of Constance had erred ? Luther appreci- 
 ated the import of the question. He knew that his 
 answer would alienate some who had thus far be- 
 friended him ; for however they might doubt the 
 infallibility of the Pope, they all believed Councils 
 to be infallible. But he did not hesitate. " I do so 
 believe." The fatal word was spoken. The Em- 
 peror said : " It is enough ; the hearing is con- 
 cluded." 
 
 The shades of evening had gathered over the 
 assembly. To the friends of Luther they might 
 seem to forebode the impending close of his earthly 
 day. Then suddenly he uttered with a loud voice, 
 in his native idiom, those words which Germany 
 will remember while the city of Worms has one 
 stone left upon another, or the river that laves her 
 shall find its way to the German Ocean : " Hier 
 steh' ich, ich kann nicht anders; Gott hilf mir! 
 Amen ! " 
 
 By the light of blazing torches the culprit was 
 conducted from the council-chamber, the Spanish 
 courtiers hissing as he went, while among the 
 Germans many a heart no doubt beat high in re- 
 sponse to that brave ultimatum of their fellow- 
 countryman. 
 
28 LUTHER. 
 
 With the consent of the Emperor, further negotia- 
 tions were attempted in private, and Luther found 
 it far more difi&cult to resist the kindly solicita- 
 tions of friends and peacemakers than to brave the 
 threats of his enemies. But he did resist; the 
 trial was ended. The great ones of the earth had 
 assailed a poor monk, now with menace, now with 
 entreaty, and found him inflexible. 
 
 " The tide of pomp 
 That beats upon the high shore of this world " 
 
 had broken powerless against the stern resolve of a 
 single breast. 
 
 The curtain falls ; when next it rises we are in 
 the Wartburg, the ancestral castle of the counts of 
 Thiiringen, where Saint Elizabeth, the fairest figure 
 in the Roman calendar, dispensed the benefactions 
 and bore the heavy burden of her tragic life. The 
 Emperor, true to his promise, had arranged for the 
 safe return of Luther to "Wittenberg ; declaring, how- 
 ever, that, once returned, he should deal with him 
 as a heretic. At the instigation, perhaps, of Fred- 
 erick, the protecting escort was assailed on the 
 way, and put to flight by an armed troop. Luther 
 was taken captive and borne in secret to the Wart- 
 burg, where, disguised as a knight, he might elude 
 the pursuit of his enemies. While there he occu- 
 pied himself with writing, and among other labors 
 prepared his best and priceless gift to his country, 
 
ESSAYS. 29 
 
 — his translation of the New Testament, afterward, 
 supplemented by his version of the Old. 
 
 A word here respecting the merits of Luther as 
 a writer. His compatriots have claimed for him 
 the inestimable service of founder of the German 
 language. He gave by his writings to the New 
 High German, then competing with other dialects, 
 a currency which has made it ever since, with 
 slight changes, the language of German literature, 
 — the language in which Kant reasoned and Goethe 
 sang. His style is not elegant, but charged with a 
 rugged force, a robust simplicity, which makes for 
 itself a straight path to the soul of the reader. His 
 words were said to be " half battles ; " call them 
 rather whole victories, for they conquered Ger- 
 many. The first condition of national unity is 
 unity of speech. In this sense Luther did more 
 for the unification of Germany than any of her 
 sons, from Henry the Fowler to Bismarck. " We 
 conceded, " says Gervinus, " to no metropolis, to no 
 learned society, the honor of fixing our language, 
 but to the man who better than any other could hit 
 the hearty, healthy tone of the people. No diction- 
 ary of an academy was to be the canon of our 
 tongue, but that book by which modern humanity 
 is schooled and formed, and which in Germany, 
 through Luther, has become, as nowhere else, a 
 people's book." 
 
30 LUTHER. 
 
 Returning to Wittenberg when change of cir- 
 cumstance permitted him to do so with safety, he 
 applied himself with boundless energy to the work 
 of constructing a new, reformed church to replace 
 the old; preaching daily in one or another city, 
 writing and publishing incessantly, instituting pub- 
 lic schools, arranging a new service in German as 
 substitute for the Latin Mass, compiling a cate- 
 chism (a model in its kind), a hymnal, and other 
 appurtenances of worship. And, like the Israelites 
 on their return from Babylon, while building 
 the new temple with one hand, he fought with the 
 other, contending against Miinzer, Carlstadt, the 
 Mystics, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists ; often, it 
 must be confessed, with unreasonable, intolerant 
 wrath, spurning all that would not square with his 
 theology, — as when he rejected the fellowship of 
 the Swiss, who denied the Real Presence in the Eu- 
 charist. When the fury of the Peasants' War was 
 desolating Germany, he wielded a martial pen 
 against both parties, — arraigning the nobles for 
 their cruel oppressions, reproving the peasants for 
 attempting to overcome evil with greater evil. 
 
 His reform embraced, along with other departures 
 from the old rSgime, the abolition of enforced celi- 
 bacy of the priesthood. He believed the family life 
 to be the true life for cleric as well as lay. He 
 advised the reformed clergy to take to themselves 
 
ESSAYS. 31 
 
 wives, and in 1525, in the forty-third year of his 
 age, he encouraged the practice by his example. 
 He married Catherine von Bora, an escaped nun, 
 for whom he had previously endeavored to find 
 another husband. She was one of the many who 
 had been placed in convents against their will, and 
 forced to take the veil. It was no romantic attach- 
 ment which induced Luther to take this step, but 
 partly the feeling that the preacher's practice should 
 square with his teaching, and partly an earnest de- 
 sire to gratify his father, whose will he had so 
 cruelly traversed in becoming a monk. To marry was 
 to violate his monastic vow ; but he had long since 
 convinced himself that a vow made in ignorance, 
 under extreme pressure, was not morally binding. 
 
 Pleasing pictures of Luther's domestic life are 
 given us by contemporary witnesses and the re- 
 ports of his table-talk. In the bosom of his family 
 he found an asylum from the wearing labors and 
 never-ending conflicts of his riper years. There he 
 shows himself the tender father, the trusting and 
 devoted husband, the open-handed, gay, and enter- 
 taining host. His Katchen proved in every respect 
 an all-sufl5cient helpmeet. And it needed her skilful 
 economy and creative thrift to counterbalance his 
 inconsiderate and boundless generosity. For never 
 was one more indifferent to the things of this world, 
 more sublimely careless of the morrow. 
 
32 LUTHER. 
 
 The remaining years of Luther's life were deeply 
 involved in the fortunes of the Reformation, its 
 struggles and its triumphs, its still advancing steps, 
 in spite of opposition from without and dissensions 
 within. They developed no new features, while 
 they added intensity to some of the old, notably to 
 his old impatience of falsehood and contradiction. 
 They exhibit him still toiling and teeming, praying, 
 agonizing, stimulating, instructing, encouraging; 
 often prostrate with bodily disease and intense 
 suffering ; and still, amid all disappointments, 
 tribulations, and tortures, breasting and buffeting 
 with high-hearted valor the adverse tide which 
 often threatened to overwhelm him. 
 
 Thus laboring, loving, suffering, exulting, he 
 reached his sixty-fourth year, and died on the 18th 
 of February, 1546. The last words he uttered ex- 
 pressed unshaken confidence in his doctrine, trium- 
 phant faith in his cause. 
 
 By a fit coincidence death overtook him in Eis- 
 leben, the place of his birth, where he had been 
 tarrying on a journey connected with affairs of 
 the Church. 
 
 The Count Mansfeld, who with his noble wife had 
 ministered to Luther in his last illness, desired that 
 his mortal remains should be interred in his do- 
 main ; but the Elector, now John Frederick, claimed 
 them for the city of Wittenberg, and sent a depu- 
 
ESSAYS. 33 
 
 tation to take them in charge. In Halle, on the 
 way, memorial services were held, in which the 
 miiversity and the magnates of the city took part. 
 In all the towns through which the procession 
 passed, the hells were rung, and the inhabitants 
 thronged to pay their respects to the great deceased. 
 In Wittenberg a military cortege accompanied the 
 procession to the church of the Electoral palace, 
 where the obsequies were celebrated with imposing 
 demonstrations, and a mourning city sent forth its 
 population to escort the body to the grave. 
 
 In the year following, the Emperor Charles, hav- 
 ing taken the Elector prisoner, stood as victor beside 
 that grave. The Duke of Alva urged that the bones 
 of the heretic should be exhumed and publicly 
 burned ; but Charles refused. " Let him rest ; he 
 has found his judge. I war not with the dead." 
 
 I have presented our hero in his character of 
 reformer, I could wish, if time permitted, to ex- 
 hibit him in other aspects of biographical interest. 
 I would like to speak of him as a poet, author of 
 hymns, into which he threw the fervor and swing 
 of his impetuous soul ; as a musical composer, ren- 
 dering in that capacity effective aid to the choral 
 service of his Church. I would like to speak of him 
 as a humorist and satirist, exhibiting the playful- 
 ness and pungency of Erasmus without his cynicism ; 
 as a lover of nature, anticipating our own age in his 
 
 3 
 
34 LUTHER. 
 
 admiring sympathy with the beauties of earth and 
 sky ; as the first naturalist of his day, a close ob- 
 server of the habits of vegetable and animal life ; 
 as a leader in the way of tenderness for the brute 
 creation. I would like also, in the spirit of im- 
 partial justice, to speak of his faults and infirmities, 
 in which Leasing rejoiced, as showing him not 
 too far removed from the level of our common 
 humanity. 
 
 But these are points on which I am not per- 
 mitted to dwell. That phase of his life which 
 gives to the name of Luther its world-historic sig- 
 nificance is comprised in the period extending from 
 the year 1517 to the year 1529, — from the posting 
 of the ninety-five theses, to the Diet of Spires, 
 from whose decisions German princes, dissenting, 
 received the name of Protestants, and which, fol- 
 lowed by the league of Smalcald, assured the suc- 
 cess of his cause. 
 
 And now, in brief, what was that cause ? The 
 Protestant Reformation, I have said, is not to be 
 regarded as a mere theological or ecclesiastical 
 movement, however Luther may have meant it as 
 such. In a larger view it was secular emancipa- 
 tion, deliverance of the nations that embraced it 
 from an irresponsible theocracy, whose main in- 
 terest was the consolidation and perpetuation of 
 its own dominion. 
 
ESSAYS. 35 
 
 A true theocracy must always be the ideal of 
 society ; that is, a social order in which God as 
 revealed in the moral law shall be practically recog- 
 nized, inspiring and shaping the polity of nations. 
 All the Utopias, from Plato down, are schemes for 
 the realization of that ideal. But the attempt 
 to ground theocracy on sacerdotalism has always 
 proved, and must always prove, a failure. The 
 tendency of sacerdotalism is to separate sanctity 
 from righteousness. It invests an order of men 
 with a power irrespective of character, — a power 
 whose strength lies in the ignorance of those on 
 whom it is exercised ; a power which may be, and 
 often, no doubt, is, exercised for good, but which, 
 in the nature of man and of things, is liable to 
 such abuses as that against which Luther con- 
 tended when priestly absolution was affirmed to 
 be indispensable to salvation, and absolution was 
 venal, when impunity for sin was offered for sale, 
 when the alternative of heaven or hell was a question 
 of money. 
 
 It is not my purpose to impugn the Church of 
 Rome as at present administered, subject to the 
 checks of modern enlightenment and the criticism 
 of dissenting communions. But I cannot doubt 
 that if Rome could recover the hegemony which 
 Luther overthrew, could once regain the entire 
 control of the nations, the same iniquities, the same 
 
36 LUTHER. 
 
 abominations, which characterized the ancient rule 
 ■vrould reappear. The theory of the Church of 
 Eome is fatally adverse to the best interests of 
 hunaanity, light, liberty, progress. That theory 
 makes a human individual the rightful lord of the 
 earth, all potentates and powers beside his rightful 
 subjects. 
 
 Infallible the latest council has declared him. 
 Infallible ! The assertion is an insult to reason. 
 Nay, more, it is blasphemy, when we think of the 
 attribute of Deity vested in a Boniface VIII., an 
 Alexander VI., a John XXIII, Infallible ? No ! 
 Forever no ! Fallible, as human nature must 
 always be. 
 
 Honor and everlasting thanks to the man who 
 broke for us the spell of papal autocracy, who 
 rescued a portion, at least, of the Christian world 
 from the paralyzing grasp of a power more to be 
 dreaded than any temporal despotism, — a power 
 which rules by seducing the will, by capturing the 
 conscience of its subjects : the bondage of the 
 soul ! Luther -alone of all the men whom history 
 names, by faith and courage, by all his endow- 
 ments, — ay, and by all his limitations, — was fitted 
 to accomplish that saving work, a work whose 
 full import he could not know, whose far-reaching 
 consequences he had not divined. They shape our 
 life. Modern civilization, liberty, science, social 
 
ESSAYS. 37 
 
 progress, attest the world-wide scope of the Prot- 
 estant reform, whose principles are independent 
 thought, freedom from ecclesiastical thrall, defiance 
 of consecrated wrong. Of him it may be said, in 
 a truer sense than the poet claims for the architects 
 of mediseval minsters, " He builded better than he 
 knew." Our age still obeys the law of that move- 
 ment whose van he led, and the latest age will 
 bear its impress. Here, amid the phantasms that _ 
 crowd the stage of human history, was a grave 
 reality, a piece of solid nature, a man whom it is 
 impossible to imagine not to have been ; to strike 
 whose name and function from the record of his 
 time would be to despoil the centuries following 
 of gains that enrich the annals of mankind. 
 
 Honor to the man whose timely revolt checked 
 the progress of triumphant wrong, who wrested the 
 heritage of God from sacerdotal hands, defying the 
 traditions of immemorial time ! He taught us lit- 
 tle in the way of theological lore ; Vhat we prize 
 in him is not tlie teacher, but the doer, the man. 
 His theology is outgrown, — a thing of the past ; 
 but the spirit in which he wrought is immortal: 
 that spirit is evermore the renewer and savior of 
 the world. 
 
COUNT ZINZENDORF AND THE 
 MORAVIANS. 
 
 WHEN the late Dr. Greenwood, the beloved 
 pastor of King's Chapel, Boston, published, 
 in 1830, the collection of " Psalms and Hymns for 
 Christian Worship " still used by that church, he 
 made us acquainted with certain hymns, before un- 
 known to most of us, bearing the title Moravian. 
 Their deep inwardness, their trustful, undogmatic 
 piety, made them at once the favorites of our wor- 
 shipping assemblies. I need but cite their initial 
 verses : — 
 
 " Thou hidden love of God, whose height, 
 
 Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows." 
 
 " Oh draw me. Father, after Thee ! 
 So shall I run, and never tire." 
 
 " O Thou to whose all-searching sight 
 The darkness shineth as the light." 
 
 " Give to the winds thy fears, 
 Hope, and be undismayed." 
 
 " My soul before Thee prostrate lies; 
 To Thee, her source, my spirit flies." 
 
ESSAYS. 89 
 
 . We welcomed these pieces as precious contri- 
 butions to our stock of devotional poetry. We 
 accepted the title " Moravian " with no adequate 
 understanding, I think, of the import of that term. 
 The geographical appellation taught us nothing as 
 to the tenets, the principles, and discipline of the 
 people so named. Of this sect and their leader, 
 Count Zinzendorf, I now purpose to speak. 
 
 The religionists whom we call Moravian are 
 known among themselves as the "United Breth- 
 ren," Unitas Fratrum. Such a fraternity had ex- 
 isted in Bohemia from the days of John Huss, in 
 the early part of the fifteenth century, until 1627, 
 when, amid the desolations of the Tliirty Years' 
 War, in common with all non-Catholic churches 
 it was, as an organization, forcibly abolished, 
 though single families here and there still cherished 
 in secret the old tradition. 
 
 The Moravian Brotherhood proper had an inde- 
 pendent origin in the ministry of Christian David, 
 a zealous evangelist, seceder from the Roman to 
 the Lutheran Church. This man gathered a band 
 of followers in Lusatia, and initiated in 1722 a 
 settlement on one of the estates of Count Zinzen- 
 dorf, then absent in Dresden, assigned to them by 
 his steward with his written consent. The place 
 was situated at the foot of the Hutberg, and was 
 named Herrnhut, LorcCs-care. When the existence 
 
40 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 of this asylum became known, it attracted not only- 
 Protestant converts from Moravia who were sub- 
 ject to persecution at home, but also the scattered 
 remnants of the old Bohemian fellowship, and thus 
 became the historic successor and continuator of 
 that ancient Brotherhood, witness of a foiled refor- 
 mation of the Church which antedated that of 
 Luther by a hundred years. 
 
 Herrnhut was planted ; but the further develop- 
 ments and triumphs of Moravian Christianity de- 
 manded and found a leader who added to the piety 
 and zeal of Christian David quite other and peculiar 
 endowments. 
 
 Among the heroes of the eighteenth century 
 there are three who are specially distinguished 
 as leaders in religion, — Emanuel Swedenborg, 
 Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, and John 
 Wesley. Swedenborg, intellectually far superior 
 to the other two, was not the intentional founder 
 of a sect. The sect which has based itself on his 
 doctrine was not of his ordering. He was no 
 organizer. It was not his design that the New 
 Church which he proclaimed should pose as a sep- 
 arate body; rather, it was to act as a leavening 
 and transforming element in existing communions. 
 The other two possessed in an eminent degree the 
 gift of practical leadership. 
 
 Zinzendorf, our present subject, was born in 
 
ESSAYS. 41 
 
 Dresden on the 26th of May in the year 1700, —r by 
 twelve years the junior of Swedenborg, by three 
 years the senior of Wesley. His father, a noble- 
 man of ancient lineage who held the high position 
 of prime minister at the court of the Elector of 
 Saxony, died sis weeks after the birth of his son. 
 The mother, Charlotta Justina, Baroness of Gers- 
 dorf, married a second husband ; and young Zinzen- 
 dorf , at the age of four, was committed to the care 
 of his maternal grandmother in Hennersdorf, in 
 Upper Lusatia. This lady, a friend of the famous 
 Pietist, Philip Spener, who had officiated as god- 
 father at Zinzendorf's baptism, made it her chief 
 end to awaken and foster religious sensibility in 
 her charge. In particular she endeavored to im- 
 press upon him what to her was the ground truth 
 of Christianity, — that the everlasting God, Author 
 and Ruler of the universe, had suffered and died for 
 our sake, and therefore claimed his uttermost grati- 
 tude and devotion. The impression thus stamped 
 upon the soul of the child became the ruling idea 
 of the man, — the master-motive of all his doing and 
 striving. Through life he knew no God but Christ. 
 As a preacher he instructed his hearers that " God, 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not our father 
 proper ; to think so is one of the chief errors cur- 
 rent in Christendom." " The Father of our Lord 
 is to us what in the world is called a grandfather 
 
42 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 or father-in-law." " They who preach God the 
 Father are professors of Satan." 
 
 At the age of eleven he was put to school at the 
 psedagogium in Halle, of which the pious Francke 
 was then director, and in 1716 was sent to the 
 University of Wittenberg to study law. A profi- 
 cient in the customary branches of polite learning, 
 especially in the languages, of which he wrote and 
 spoke Latin with great fluency, his chief distinction 
 even then, in those academic years, was that of a 
 religious zealot. He held prayer-meetings in his 
 chambers, organized clubs for mutual edification, 
 strove to convert, and sometimes succeeded in con- 
 verting, loose associates who would tempt him to 
 vicious indulgence. At the same time his high 
 breeding, his frank, easy manners, and freedom 
 from all that savors of sanctimoniousness precluded 
 the aversion, not to say contempt, which college 
 youth are apt to entertain for fellow-students of the 
 pious type. 
 
 After leaving the university, in accordance with 
 the fashion of the young nobility of that day, he 
 spent two years in travel. In the course of his 
 journeying his piety received at Diisseldorf on the 
 Khine a fresh impulse from the contemplation of 
 Correggio's picture of the Suffering Christ. He 
 read the inscription: "Thus have I suffered for 
 thee : what hast thou done for me ? " and then and 
 
ESSAYS. 43 
 
 there renewed his vows of a life devoted to the 
 service of Christ. 
 
 In Paris he made the acquaintance of Cardinal 
 Noailles, with whom he afterward corresponded. 
 Evangelical as he was, and unproselytable, he gained 
 the affection of the Romish prelate by virtue of 
 that universalism of the heart which is independent 
 of forms and creeds. His rank procured for him 
 a favorable reception at the court of Philip of 
 Orleans ; but the dissolute manners of the Regency 
 repelled the unspotted youth. He found his best 
 entertainment at the riding-school, where he won 
 admiration by his superior horsemanship. 
 
 On attaining his majority, in compliance with the 
 wishes of his uncle and guardian, who had destined 
 him for civil service, he accepted the post of Coun- 
 cillor of Justice in Dresden. But his heart was not 
 in it, and after five years' trial he resigned his 
 office, resolved to devote himself to what he regarded 
 as his true calling, — that of Christian evangelist. 
 He had no desire to separate himself from the 
 Lutheran Church. His purpose was to form within 
 that Church communities of such as desired to lead 
 a more strictly religious life. But finding a com- 
 munity with similar views already established on 
 his own domain, after careful study of their disci- 
 pline and aims he was finally induced to make 
 Herrnhut the basis of his operations, and in 1727 
 
44 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 accepted the office of spiritual superintendent of 
 the colony of which he was already the legal magi- 
 strate and liege lord. He had previously taken to 
 wife Countess Brdmuth von Eeuss, sister of Count 
 Reuss, his lifelong friend. 
 
 Here we have the rare, if not a solitary, example 
 of a youth of noble birth, endowed with wealth and 
 personal graces, high cultured, with all that the 
 world can give at his command, devoting himself 
 in the morning of life, with all his havings and all 
 his being, to the service of Christ, to the building 
 up of the kingdom of Christ on earth. We have 
 precisely the realization of what the young man in 
 the Gospel, whom Jesus loved, failed to realize, 
 turning away sorrowful, "for he had great pos- 
 sessions." The Pietists at Halle, followers of 
 Spener, looked with jealous eye on this great sac- 
 rifice, not made distinctively on their basis and 
 in their service. They questioned its value, dis- 
 credited its influence. " Master, we saw one cast- 
 ing out devils in thy name ; and we forbade him 
 because he followed not us." They insisted that 
 the Count had not been converted; he had not 
 passed through the regular stages of penitential 
 struggle and ecstatic new birth; he might be a 
 servant of God, but was not as yet an adopted 
 child of God. Zinzendorf , far from resenting this 
 allegation, took the matter to heart, and made it 
 
ESSAYS. 45 
 
 the occasion of rigorous self-examination. The 
 result of his reflection was that Halle had no 
 right to impose her methods as a universal test 
 and condition of godliness ; that one might right- 
 fully attain to be a child of God independently of 
 Halle. 
 
 He soon discovered that in order to labor with 
 the best effect in the mission he had chosen, it 
 would be necessary for him to enter the ministry. 
 Accordingly, after some preparatory study he pre- 
 sented himself, under a feigned name, or rather 
 one which really belonged to him, but which he 
 had not been accustomed to use, as a candidate for 
 orders, and obtained the desired license, in virtue 
 of which he preached whenever he deemed it expe- 
 dient to exercise that function. The step gave 
 great offence to the Saxon nobility, as tending to 
 abolish social distinctions and threatening the sta- 
 bility of their order. A noble in the pulpit was a 
 dangerous innovation, a public scandal. In conse- 
 quence of which, on some frivolous charge trumped 
 up by his enemies, he was sent into banishment, a 
 royal rescript requiring him to part with his estates 
 and to quit his native Saxony. The sentence was 
 afterward rescinded. Meanwhile the harm result- 
 ing from it was less than might have been expected. 
 He made over his estates to his wife, and thanks 
 to her wise administration, suffered no pecuniary 
 
46 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 loss. The conununity at Herrnliut was too well 
 organized to need his personal supervision, while 
 the cause of the Moravian Brotherhood could only 
 gain from the missionary labors he now undertook 
 on their behalf. 
 
 I have said that Zinzendorf did not intend sepa- 
 ration from the Lutheran Church. He accepted 
 without dissent the Augsburg Confession, the creed 
 of that Church, and only desired a revival of prac- 
 tical religion by means of voluntary associations 
 within that Confession. Nevertheless it was found 
 desirable — in view, especially, of Moravian colo- 
 nies abroad — to have an independent ecclesiastical 
 organization. For this the old Bohemian episco- 
 pate, the original constitution of the Unitas Fra- 
 trum, offered a convenient basis. During a visit 
 to Berlin the Count was urged by the King of Prus- 
 sia, Frederic William I., who was strongly attracted 
 to our hero and interested in his doings, to revive 
 that Constitution, and obtain for himself episcopal 
 investiture. Daniel Ernst Jablonsky, the leading 
 German divine of that day, seconded the royal 
 counsel, and referred the Count for further advice 
 to his friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. Zin- 
 zendorf went to England and had an interview 
 with Canterbury, who advised him by all means to 
 resume and continue the episcopal succession of 
 the old Bohemian Church. Accordingly, having 
 
ESSAYS. 47 
 
 previously submitted himself for examination and 
 approval to a committee of the clergy of Berlin, on 
 the 20th of May, 1737, Zinzendorf was ordained 
 by Jablonsky bishop of the Moravian Church. 
 The King immediately addressed a congratulatory 
 letter to the new Bishop, Ludovicus, as follows : 
 
 Dearly beloved Lord Count, — It was with satis- 
 faction that I learned that, according to your desire, you 
 have been consecrated bishop of the Moravian Brethren. 
 . . . That this transaction may redound to the glory of 
 Almightj' God and the salvation of many souls, is my 
 heart's desire. I am always your very affectionate, 
 
 Frederic "William. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury, in an elegant 
 Latin epistle, cordially extended to him the right 
 hand of fellowship, acknowledging in him a eoepis- 
 copus and ecclesiastical peer. 
 
 Thus royally and prelatically auspicated and au- 
 thorized, our Count proceeded to labor with added 
 zeal in the service of a Church which, having now 
 disengaged itself from the Lutheran (though still 
 Lutheran in doctrine), and become a distinct and 
 independent communion, might claim, in virtue of 
 its Bohemian antecedents, to be the eldest of the 
 Protestant Churches. 
 
 His life thenceforth is a history of administra- 
 tive work and missionary operations conducted on 
 a large scale in many lands. He visited England, 
 
48 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Switzerland, 
 the Danish West Indies, and in 1741 came to this 
 country, having previously, in view of so long an 
 absence, at a synod held in London resigned his 
 office of superintendent of the Brotherhood in Ger- 
 many, causing it to be transferred to an assembly 
 called the General Conference. After landing in 
 New York he proceeded to Pennsylvania, where 
 he spent the better part of two years, residing 
 chiefly in Philadelphia. At a meeting held in the 
 house of the Governor of the province, — where, 
 among others, Benjamin Franklin was present, — 
 he stated that he wished, while travelling in this 
 country, to drop his title, and to be known only as 
 Brother Louis. A large portion of the population 
 of the province were Germans. To those in Phila- 
 delphia and in Germantown, Zinzendorf preached 
 in their native language, and was cordially invited 
 to be their pastor. He accepted the office provis- 
 ionally, until a permanent preacher from Germany 
 could be obtained for their service. He aimed not 
 so much to establish local Moravian churches as to 
 kindle spiritual interest in other communions and 
 to band together such as desired to lead a dis- 
 tinctively religious life. Some, however, he did 
 establish. The Moravian Brotherhood in Bethle- 
 hem, Penn., remains to this day a witness of 
 Zinzendorf's American mission. 
 
ESSAYS. 49 
 
 In 1742 his romantic genius impelled him to 
 undertake, in company with his fellow-laborers 
 Bohler, Conrad, and Anna Nitschmann, who after- 
 ward became his second wife, a missionary tour 
 among the Indians, chiefly Iroquois and Delawares. 
 We have entries in his Journal which give us his 
 impressions of savage life. Some of these Indians 
 had been already converted. Concerning these he 
 exclaims : " Oh, how ashamed we feel in the pres- 
 ence of these brethren, who must help themselves 
 in the Saviour's work with a language which is 
 hardly better than the cackling of geese, while we, 
 possessed of a language like that of the gods, can 
 hardly express our hearts' emotions ! " Any lan- 
 guage which conveys no meaning to the hearer will 
 be apt to have an irrational sound. The Count was 
 not aware that his own godlike German was com- 
 pared by the Emperor Julian to the cawing of 
 crows. The faces of the Indians, he says, wear 
 a dull, unhappy expression. " They have only one 
 pleasant look, that is when they contemplate the 
 wounds of the Lamb. . . . They are the most deter- 
 mined enemies of labor; they will sooner suffer 
 the most pinching want than engage in any work. 
 If an Indian puts his hand to anything, it is either 
 because he has become a child of God or because 
 from association with the whites he has acquired the 
 spirit of covetousness, which is the root of all evil." 
 
60 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 He met in this tour a Frenchwoman, Madame 
 de Montoux, widow of an Indian chief who had 
 been killed in battle. " On seeing us she wept 
 bitterly. I spoke of our affairs, and remarked that 
 we had named our town Bethlehem. ' That,' she 
 exclaimed, 'is the name of the town in France 
 where Jesus and the Holy Family lived.' I in- 
 ferred from this that what is reported of French 
 missionaries is true. They teach that Christ was 
 a Frenchman, and that the English were his 
 crucifiers." 
 
 His stay in America was cut short by tidings of 
 what he regarded as a misdirection on the part of 
 the Brethren at home. The authoritifis intrusted 
 with the management of the churches in Germany 
 had adopted measures which tended to give the 
 Brotherhood a more sectarian and separatistic po- 
 sition than accorded with his views. He was Lu- 
 theran before he was Moravian, and more Lutheran 
 than Moravian still. Although for convenience of 
 ecclesiastical functions he had accepted the office 
 of bishop, it was not his design to cut loose from 
 his native communion. In its civil relations the 
 Brotherhood was still to be reckoned a branch of 
 the Lutheran Church. But in his absence the 
 Conference had taken steps which traversed this 
 intent. He had resigned his authority so far as 
 the Church in Germany was concerned, and had 
 
ESSAYS. 51 
 
 no longer any right to act as their bishop ; but he 
 now, without consent of any Council, resumed his 
 episcopal function, and with autocratic inhibition 
 reversed so far as possible the action taken in his 
 absence. It is a proof of the astounding overweight 
 of Zinzendorfs personality and of the deep respect 
 with which he was regarded by the Brethren, as 
 well as their humble and peaceable temper, that 
 such dictation was submitted to on their part with- 
 out remonstrance. With all his piety and genuine 
 devotion to the cause, he could not forget that he 
 was a count, a feudal noble. As such he seems 
 to have expected the same submission in things 
 spiritual which people of his class were accustomed 
 to exact in things temporal. Theoretically meek, 
 as became a disciple of Christ, condescendingly 
 gracious to his inferiors, professing himself their 
 servant for Christ's sake, he nevertheless preferred 
 to serve by ruling. And he ruled in the main, it 
 must be confessed, with consummate ability. The 
 genius of leadership he certainly possessed, — the 
 power to inspire in his followers unlimited confi- 
 dence in his judgment. There had been in his ab- 
 sence an outburst of fanaticism among the Brethren 
 in Germany, which assumed an antinomian charac- 
 ter and threatened to make the name Moravian a 
 synonym for lawless indulgence. This danger he 
 averted by the timely interposition of his authority, 
 
52 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 exposing the error in which it originated, remind- 
 ing the Brethren of the high moral standard of 
 former years, and teaching them that the freedom 
 in Christ which they boasted was not to be under- 
 stood as emancipation from the moral law, but as 
 free obedience. 
 
 Zinzendorf did not recross the Atlantic, but 
 while an exile from his paternal estates led an 
 itinerant life, visiting various countries in the ser- 
 vice of the cause he had espoused. He spent four 
 years in England for the more convenient super- 
 vision of the churches there established, and be- 
 cause England was the natural entrepdt between 
 the mother-church in Germany and her missionary 
 stations in heathen lands. Here, in England, a new 
 trial befell the Brotherhood, — a pressing finan- 
 cial embarrassment, due to the want of worldly 
 prudence on the part of the Count himself. He had 
 authorized, through his deacons, liberal expendi- 
 tures for missionary and congregational purposes, 
 without sufficiently calculating the means at their 
 command. The deacons, unknown to him, had 
 supplemented their means by borrowing. A heavy 
 debt had been incurred. This could not last ; 
 credit failed. There came a crisis, hearing of 
 which the Count, though not legally liable, stood in 
 the gap. He assumed the debt, which he pledged 
 himself to liquidate by instalments. The majority 
 
ESSAYS. 63 
 
 of the creditors accepted the terms ; but some, who 
 were bitterly anti-Moravian, insisted on* immediate 
 payment, and were minded to send the Count to 
 jail for debt. To prevent this step, which would 
 have been ruin to the Brotherhood in England, the 
 other creditors, friends, and well-wishers of the 
 cause came forward and satisfied the claims of its 
 enemies. 
 
 In addition to his other labors, arduous and un- 
 ceasing, imposed upon him by the daily care of the 
 churches, Zinzendorf was an indefatigable writer. 
 As many as a hundred volumes, still extant in dif- 
 ferent collections, are ascribed to him. They have 
 never been published in a uniform edition, and — 
 dealing, as they mostly do, with local and epheme- 
 ral topics — would have no interest now, except as 
 characteristic of the writer. 
 
 He composed, it is said, five hundred or more 
 hymns for the use of the Church. Many of these 
 are still preserved in Moravian collections. Some 
 of them were eliminated on account of the offensive 
 imagery employed in treating the mutual love of 
 Christ and his Church as a sexual relation. Others 
 were rejected as trivial and beneath the dignity of 
 the man and the cause. In the conduct of public 
 worship he sometimes ventured to improvise 
 hymns, which he gave out, verse by verse, to be 
 sung by the congregation after the manner of the 
 
54 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 so-called deaconing of the hymn in Puritan New 
 England. It sometimes happened that when a 
 verse had been given out and sung, an appropriate 
 rhyming word for the next was not forthcoming. 
 In that case he supplied the defect by a meaning- 
 less sound, which met the vocal exigency if it did 
 not satisfy the intellectual requirements of that 
 part of the service. The devout congregation knew 
 that though the Count might not always succeed 
 with his rhymes, he always meant well; and so 
 they obeyed the direction of the Chorus in " Henry 
 
 v." : — 
 
 " Still be kind, 
 And eke out our performance with your mind! " 
 
 His preaching is said to have been marvellously 
 effective, especially in pathetic appeals. From a 
 slight acquaintance, I should say it was often ex- 
 travagant, and somewhat coarse. Here is an extract 
 from a homily on his favorite topic, the wounds of 
 Christ : — 
 
 "There is no more formidable law — the law of 
 Moses and Moses himself was a mere poltroon com- 
 pared with it — no law more formidable than the thun- 
 der-word of the Gospel, the soul-piercing sword of the 
 wounds of Jesus. Well did the women of Jerusalem 
 know it. O word of wounds! thou thunder-word, 
 thou soul-transfixing sword ! To think that Jesus was 
 pierced and bored and mangled for aU that we behold. 
 
ESSAYS. 65 
 
 for the ground-stuff of time and humanity, for all the 
 horrors that pass before our eyes, and for those that do 
 not pass before our eyes, but within our knowledge, 
 and that fill this earth-ball and desecrate and defile it ! 
 And for us, with our wretched hearts, for us who are so 
 vile, whom he has to drag and carry, and must look 
 through an astonishing magnifying-glass in order to see 
 any reality in us ! He has to make his own heart, his 
 bridegroom's heart, a microscope, that beneath it our 
 little mite of gratitude, our sun-mote of love, ma}'' seem 
 to be all, so that he shall see nothing and care for 
 nothing but that." 
 
 The last years of Zinzendorf's life were spent on 
 his own estates and in the neighborhood of Herrn- 
 hut, the edict of banishment having been revoked. 
 There, toiling faithfully to the end in the service 
 of the Brotherhood, he died In May, 1760, in the 
 sixtieth year of his age. His obsequies were cele- 
 brated with the pomp befitting the grandeur and 
 priceless blessing of such a life. A procession of 
 twenty-one hundred mourners, consisting of kin- 
 dred, friends, admirers, the principal dignitaries of 
 the Church from far and near, escorted by a mili- 
 tary company of Imperial grenadiers, and witnessed 
 by two thousand spectators, accompanied his re- 
 mains to their grave in the beautiful cemetery at 
 Herrnhut, where they still repose beneath the 
 marble slab which records his name. It was noted 
 
66 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 as a happy coincidence that the scriptural watch- 
 word for the day was the text : " He shall come 
 with rejoicing, bearing his sheayes with him." 
 
 Herder, in the " Adrastsea," says of him, " He 
 left the world as a conqueror, like whom there have 
 been few in the world's history, and none in his 
 own century." A conqueror, indeed, whose con- 
 quests, attested by Moravian exploits, have dotted 
 the globe with oases of holiness ; missionary con- 
 quests extending in literal verity from " Green- 
 land's icy mountains " to " India's coral strand," 
 from the Cape of Good Hope to the shores of the 
 White Sea, from Tranquebar to Surinam, from St. 
 Thomas to Labrador, and gladdening our own land, 
 in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, with 
 its gardens of peace. Methodism, the strong and 
 many-membered body of the Methodists, may be 
 reckoned one of his conquests. For did not John 
 Wesley kindle his far-flaming torch at the altar of 
 Herrnhut, making the long journey to Lusatia to 
 verify with his own eyes the report which had come 
 to him of the Brotherhood, and writing to them 
 afterward, " We are endeavoring here also, accord- 
 ing to the grace that is given us, to be followers of 
 you, as you are of Christ " ? 
 
 Zinzendorf was twice married, — first to Countess 
 Brdmuth of Ebersdorf, a lady of his own rank ; and 
 after her death to Anna Nitschmann, who, in her 
 
SSSAYS. 57 
 
 character of deaconess to the Moravian sisterhood, 
 had already proved an efficient helpmate. Three 
 children were born to him from his first wife, — two 
 daughters, and a son of great promise who died in 
 early life. 
 
 As to person, the Count's commanding figure 
 drew the admiring gaze of passers-by as he walked 
 the streets of London. His face in picture wears 
 a look of imperturbable calm, with a hint of self- 
 satisfaction in the eyes. 
 
 A conqueror, but no seer, no revealer, like 
 Swedenborg, of original truth. Never did a spirit 
 so intense inhabit intellectually so narrow a world. 
 The sinfulness of man, and the wounds of Christ, 
 were the two foci of the little orbit in which his 
 being revolved. All beyond that was barren and 
 void. The majestic volume of the Universe with 
 its sacred scriptures, older than Hebrew or Greek, 
 was unrolled to him in vain. Unknown to him the 
 " sense sublime of something far more deeply inter- 
 fused " than any lore of Palestine. Not through 
 Nature, I think, not consciously through Nature, did 
 God speak to him, but only through Christ. And 
 the Christ whom he worshipped was not the divine 
 teacher, not the high model of a heavenly life, but 
 only the sufferer, the victim, — 
 
 " The Master's marred and wounded mien, 
 His hands, his feet, his side." 
 
68 COUNT ZmZENDORF. 
 
 And yet, with astonishing self-ignorance, this man 
 could say, " I am not one of those who are satisfied 
 with feeling; I belong to the class of thinkers." 
 He entertained the pleasant conceit of a private 
 correspondence with the Saviour, who brought him 
 temporal aid as well as spiritual blessing. Once at 
 sea, off the ScUly Islands, a violent tempest threat- 
 ened to drive the vessel on the rocks. Shipwreck 
 seemed imminent. The captain in despair had 
 resigned himself to his fate ; but the Count assured 
 him that within two hours the tempest would abate, 
 which it actually did. The vessel was saved. 
 " How could you know," asked the captain, " that 
 the storm would pass so soon?" "The Saviour 
 told me," was the reply. 
 
 The Moravians have a custom, much insisted on 
 by Zinzendorf, knoT\Ti as the " watchword." Texts 
 are selected from the Bible and assigned in ad- 
 vance, at a venture, one for each day in the year. 
 Out of three hundred and sixty-five days it would 
 not be strange if occasionally the events of some 
 particular day should fit the text set down for it. 
 Thus, on the day when the Count met his followers 
 in Bethlehem, Penn., to inaugurate the church in 
 that place, the watchword for the day was found to 
 be, " This is the day which the Lord hath made : 
 let us rejoice and be glad therein." Such coinci- 
 dences were believed to be divinely predetermined. 
 
ESSAYS. 59 
 
 Another custom is the use of the lot to decide dif- 
 ficult questions, — such as the choice of a chief elder 
 out of two or three esteemed equally competent, the 
 adoption or non-adoption of some doubtful policy or 
 proposed undertaking. I suppose many of us have 
 had recourse to lot in some perplexing alternative. 
 The doing so is a practical confession of the inabil- 
 ity of the will to act without a preponderating 
 motive. "We refer the matter, as it were, to a 
 foreign agent, which some call " chance," and others 
 accept as the oracle of God. The Moravians, like 
 the first disciples, use it always in the latter sense. 
 But when we consider that the position of the slip 
 on which the choice is inscribed, and the direction 
 of the fingers which select it, if the act is honest, 
 are determined by natural laws and depend on the 
 action of forces, present and past, reaching back 
 through all time, so that the drawing of that slip is 
 a necessary result of the original constitution of 
 things; when we think that the world in all its 
 parts, through all its periods, must have been other 
 than it was and is, had not that slip, but another, 
 been drawn, — when we consider this, the supposi- 
 tion of a special Providence willing that result is a 
 heavy strain on one's faith. But faith is always 
 beautiful, and criticism is cheap. 
 
 I have said that the Moravians are the oldest 
 Protestant Church. I will add thg,t, above all 
 
60 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 others, they most resemble the Church of the first 
 disciples. More than any other, they have repro- 
 duced the original unity, the pristine brotherhood, 
 of the followers of Christ. "No brotherhood, no 
 Christianity," was Zinzendorf's motto. He did not 
 care to found a sect ; his aim was to gather into 
 one, from all the churches, souls attracted to each 
 other by common faith in the saving efficacy of the 
 blood of Christ, and conscious of salvation through 
 that faith. He regretted the tendency to separat- 
 ism in the Brotherhood ; but separatism was a 
 necessary result of the hostility toward them of 
 other communions. 
 
 As a separate fold they still survive and still 
 retain the stamp of Herrnhut in their discipline 
 and way of life. Undogmatic, with no enforced 
 creed, no test of fellowship but their common faith 
 in atonement by the blood of Christ, — secure in 
 that, they cultivate a religion of trust, less passion- 
 ate than Methodism, less formal than Quakerism, 
 less sulphurous and grim than Calvinism. Heaven, 
 not hell, is the staple of their preaching ; love, not 
 fear, the soul of their religion. The rant of the 
 conventicle is not heard in their borders. They 
 rejoice in skilled music and love-feasts ; and if, on 
 the one hand, they traverse nature by rigid separa- 
 tion of the sexes, they overcome, on the other hand, 
 the weakness of nature by vanquishing the fear of 
 
ESSAYS. 61 
 
 death, treating it as a joyful return, a Heimgang^ 
 celebrated with triumphal music from the church 
 tower, and symbolized by the beauty of their burial- 
 places, which they denominate " Courts of Peace." 
 
 A religion of peace. Some of the finest spirits 
 of Germany are among its witnesses. Schleier- 
 macher and Novalis were reared in its fold. 
 Goethe, in the " Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," 
 reflects its sweetness. Prince Bismarck, thanks 
 to his Moravian wife, has been touched with its 
 influence. 
 
 They survive, but they do not increase. The 
 number of Moravians in Europe and the United 
 States is estimated at twenty thousand souls. But 
 mark, as proof of the expansive force, the spiritual 
 reach, of Moravian Christianity, that this compara- 
 tively small body maintains, scattered among all the 
 remote corners of the earth, eighty-two missionary 
 stations, in which collectively the number of na- 
 tive converts amounts to more than seventy-seven 
 thousand. 
 
 Their success with savage nations surpasses all 
 other missionary triumphs. Whom none could in- 
 fluence, they have persuaded; whom none could 
 enlighten, they have made to see. The Hottentot 
 of the Cape, in answer to their patient appeal, cast 
 aside the beast that he was, came forth a man, and 
 entered the kingdom prepared for him too from 
 
62 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 
 
 the foundation of the world. The ice-bound Green- 
 lander opened his tardy bosom to their solicitation 
 as the arctic flora, starting from its long sleep, 
 opens at last to the July sun. 
 
 Moravian communities have ceased to multiply. 
 That tidal-wave of spiritual life which swept over 
 Christendom during the first half of the eighteenth 
 century has left its traces in churches that still 
 survive and that mark the height of the swelling 
 flood ; but the flood ebbed, and no longer suffices 
 for new creations. Nor is there, perhaps, any need 
 of such. The principle of segregation, of local 
 seclusion, which gave birth to the old rraternities, 
 as in mediaeval time it had given birth to countless 
 monastic institutions, has done its work. It is not 
 needful, it is not well, that the spiritually minded 
 should dwell by themselves in separate folds. Bet- 
 ter they should be dispersed, should mix with the 
 world, and act as a leavening principle in secular 
 life. The secular life must absorb the spiritual, 
 must be permeated by it, transformed by it ; else 
 would the spiritual have no business in earthly 
 places, and the human world would miss the true 
 purpose of its being, dishonoring Him who willed 
 it to be. The world is not doomed to be a godless 
 world ; it is to be the abode of redeemed and per- 
 fected man, tlie realization of all the ideals. Relig- 
 ion is one of those ideals, but not the only one, the 
 
ESSAYS. 63 
 
 chief, but not the only agency in transforming the 
 world. There is a greater word than even religion, 
 a word of farther reach, of more momentous import, 
 including religion with how much else ! That word 
 is Humanity. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CONFLICT WITH 
 HELLENISM. 
 
 [^Fromthe Unitarian Review.^ 
 
 THE saddest passage of the world's annals, and 
 also the grandest, according as we fix our 
 regards on its losses and decays, or on the new 
 creations which it witnessed, is the period embraced 
 in the first four centuries of the Christian era. 
 The lover of classic antiquity — Christian though 
 he be in heart and creed — contemplates with a 
 sigh ^ the downfall of ancient temples and the ruin 
 of rites and beliefs involved in the death of Hellen- 
 ism. On the other hand, the most fervent admirer 
 of those vanished splendors, " the fair humanities 
 of old religion," contrasting, on its social side, 
 what perished with what replaced it in the order of 
 time, must confess that the world was well rid of 
 polytheistic uses, and humanity abundantly com- 
 pensated for all aesthetic and poetic losses by 
 the spiritual life which streamed from the new 
 dispensation. 
 
 1 The sigh which breathes so pathetically from Schiller's " Gods 
 of Greece." 
 
ESSAYS. 65 
 
 The histories which treat of this period have 
 heen ■written, for the most part, from an ecclesias- 
 tical point of view, and inspired by dogmatic or 
 pragmatical interests. That of Gibbon, ■written in 
 a spirit of historic indifference, with no apologetic 
 or polemic bias, will always maintain its place, and, 
 so far as it covers the ground, approve itself as a 
 faithful report, of the facts of the time. But in 
 Gibbon also I miss the faculty of historic di-vina- 
 tion, the sense which discerns the deeper meaning 
 of the facts recorded, which interprets historic 
 results in the light of their bearing on the whole of 
 human destiny. We have no history of the origins 
 of the Christian Church from a humanitarian or, 
 if I may use so pedantic a phrase, from an anthro- 
 pocosmic point of ■view ; no history inspired by the 
 questions. What is humanity's debt to the Church ; 
 what is Christianity's place in the education of 
 humankind ? The time and the man for such a 
 history have not yet arrived. Meanwhile, the his- 
 tories we have will be found most instructive when 
 studied in that sense. 
 
 The Christian Church and the Roman Empire 
 were contemporary, or nearly contemporary, births. 
 The latter came armed from the throes of a naval 
 conflict on the waters of the Ambracian Gulf ; the 
 former sprang to life, a babbling babe, in a garret 
 
 5 
 
66 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 of an inland city shut in by inhospitable hills. 
 What shall be the fortunes respectively of these 
 new-comers on the stage of history ? The one is 
 backed and omened by a pedigree of heroes and 
 seven centuries of victory ; the other, by the hum- 
 ble if saintly life and tragic death of one who had 
 recently perished as a malefactor. To balance 
 this inequality, the latter is inspired by a faith in 
 its own future, immeasurable, indomitable ; the 
 other derives its sole guarantee from favoring 
 circumstance. 
 
 Could not the two unite in one dominion ? There 
 was a moment when such a coalition seemed possi- 
 ble. The Emperor Tiberius is said to have pro- 
 posed to the Roman Senate the admission of Christ 
 to a place in the Pantheon, and his consequent 
 solemn recognition as one of the gods of the State. 
 It is a curious question what would have been the 
 effect of such recognition had that proposition been 
 accepted, had Christianity enjoyed at the start the 
 sanction of imperial power. Its spread might have 
 been more rapid, but the strength that was in it, its 
 latent moral force, would never have asserted itself. 
 It needed the hardening by fire to which the wan- 
 tonness of Imperial cruelty subjected it in its in- 
 fancy, in order to become the world-subduing power 
 it was destined to be. It could not accept as a gift 
 what it felt itself entitled to by divine right. It 
 
ESSAYS. 67 
 
 could not " borrow leave to be," but must conquer 
 for itself — not with sword, like armed Islam in a 
 later age, but by miracles of patience, by suffering 
 and dying — an unprecarious throne. Constitution- 
 ally exclusive, it must put all things under it. It 
 must reign supreme, it must reign alone. 
 
 Such a consummation seemed, from a worldly 
 point of view, an impossibility; for though the 
 dominant religion was inwardly dead, though poly- 
 theism as a faith, as personal conviction, had lost 
 its hold of educated minds, it was still politically 
 seized of the Eoman State, and not to be evicted 
 but with mortal agony and throes that upheaved 
 the world. Theodor Keim ^ calls attention to the 
 fact that the Eoman religion, unhke all others, 
 originated, not with priest or prophet, but with the 
 secular power. It was therefore from the first 
 indissolubly linked with the State. Conceive, then, 
 a government powerful as none ever was before or 
 since in all the elements of civil strength, and jeal- 
 ous as it was powerful, impatient of opposition, 
 prompt to crush whatever opposed ; a government 
 whose sleepless vigilance and omnipresent police 
 not a thing that occurred in any corner of its wide 
 dominion could escape ; a government whose head 
 was also the head of the national religion, himself 
 an object of worship, to refuse which worship was 
 ^ In his Rom und Christenthum. 
 
68 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 treason to the State, — to such a government comes 
 this vagabond from the East, from a land univer- 
 sally despised, and seeks to establish itself in the 
 capital of the Empire. Ignominiously repulsed, it 
 continues to advance; smitten and cast out, it 
 steadily prevails ; and having entered as an outlaw, 
 ends as sovereign of the world. Its triumph is the 
 supreme miracle of history. 
 
 The fierce rebuff which Christianity encountered, 
 at the point where it first emerges into secular his- 
 tory, revealed, on the part of the Christians, a power 
 of endurance which should have taught the secular 
 authorities that the " pestilent " novelty was not to 
 be disposed of in that fashion. Meanwhile, by the 
 light of those cruel fires in the gardens of Nero, 
 the " disciples " might see how wide was the chasm 
 which then divided their Church from the State. 
 Three centuries were required to bridge that gulf ; 
 and this the Church accomplished by casting into 
 it the children of her bosom, over whose mangled 
 bodies humanity made the dire passage from the 
 old world to the new. 
 
 An inscription at the entrance of the Catacombs 
 of St. Sebastian in Rome tells of one hundred and 
 seventy-four thousand martyrs who there repose in 
 peace. It is not necessary to suppose that all these 
 were the immediate victims of civil persecution. 
 But, in any view, this record of a single city sug- 
 
ESS A YS. 69 
 
 gests an estimate very different from that which 
 Gibbon would have us accept as the number of 
 those who suffered martyrdom throughout the vast 
 extent of the Empire.^ The precise number does 
 not concern us, nor even the approximate number ; 
 enough that torture and death were the frequent 
 penalty of the Christian confession in those centu- 
 ries, — torture and death the most excruciating 
 that human ingenuity could devise, — and that these 
 were voluntarily incurred and unflinchingly borne 
 by the victims. It was not their belief that the 
 government quarrelled with, it was not their doc- 
 trine that was punished, but their insubordination 
 in refusing to sacrifice. In the view of the govern- 
 ment the Christians were a political party, insur- 
 gents against the State, whose head they refused to 
 honor in the way prescribed. It was not a question 
 of opinion, but one of obedience. Will you or will 
 you not sacrifice to the Emperor ? Will you " swear 
 by the genius," that is, acknowledge the divinity, of 
 Caesar ? To the government official it was simply 
 a token of submission to rightful authority ; but to 
 the Christian it meant something else, — it meant 
 that Caesar was before Christ, that Caesar was God. 
 With that understanding, young and old, delicate 
 women, nursing mothers, suffered their flesh to be 
 
 " " Somewhat less than two thousand persons." Ses Mil- 
 man's Gibbon, i. 599. 
 
70 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 torn with red-hot pincers, and would not commit 
 the saving act. 
 
 Martyrdom is no proof of the truth of a religion, 
 that is, of the truth of the opinions held by its 
 votaries. Quite opposite opinions have had their 
 martyrs. What it does prote, when it reaches the 
 scope and strain of the Christian martyrologies, is 
 — Spirit, — the action of a spirit which transcends 
 the ordinary limits and capabilities of human na- 
 ture, takes captive the will, and makes it at once 
 an invincible bar and an all-conquering force. 
 The political success of Christianity was the work 
 of that spirit. The secondary causes by which 
 Gibbon attempts to explain that success are well 
 put ; but Gibbon does not perceive that those 
 causes themselves require to be explained. Com- 
 pact organization. What compacted it ? Austere 
 morals, intolerant zeal, belief in immortality. Yes ; 
 but whence derived, the morals, the zeal, the be- 
 lief ? How came they at that particular crisis to 
 develop such exceptional potency ? They point to 
 another factor, — inspiration. It is the fashion of 
 the current philosophy to derive new births from 
 old antecedents by way of evolution. But there 
 are births which this philosophy does not explain. 
 Christianity had no such genesis. It cannot be 
 said, in any proper sense, to be an evolution of 
 Judaism, any more than Islam was an evolution of 
 
ESSAYS. 71 
 
 Christianity. Judaism was its matrix, but not its 
 sire. If in any sense " evolved " from given 
 antecedents, it was as the whirlwind is evolved 
 from atmospheric heat. This great world-force, 
 which came with " a sound as of a rushing, 
 mighty wind" and went cy cloning through the 
 lands, was surely no product of Mosaic tradition, 
 but the immediate offspring of a Spirit which con- 
 ducts the education of the human race and from 
 time to time interpolates the course of events with 
 new motives adjusted to a pre-ordained ascending 
 scale of spiritual life. I say " interpolates," for is 
 not all inspiration interpolation, — a lift that breaks 
 the dead, mechanical sequence of things ? 
 
 It is not to be supposed that all who joined the 
 Christian confession partook of this spirit. Many 
 were drawn to it by quite earthly motives, — by 
 the hope of a social revolution, the coming of a 
 new kingdom in which, having nothing to lose, 
 they might reasonably hope to gain ; by the charm 
 of equality ; by the communism which secured them 
 against want, as we learn from Lucian, — an un- 
 intentional witness of the charity of the early 
 Church. And there were lapses in times of per- 
 secution. The Church could afford them; the 
 Church could afford to take back the lapsed when 
 persecution ceased. It was not the aim of the 
 Spirit to have a faultless Church, a Church com- 
 
72 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 posed entirely of the " Katharoi." A mixture of 
 tares with the wheat was not fatal to the Church, 
 did not prevent its being a true Church, as Cyprian, 
 earliest exponent of the Catholic idea, maintained, 
 in opposition to Novatian purists. 
 
 Nor did the Spirit care to have a constituency 
 of such as are called in worldly phrase " respect- 
 able " people. Socially and intellectually they 
 seem to have been, with few exceptions, a low 
 class, — " not many wise after the flesh, not many 
 mighty, not many noble." Paul, the high-hearted 
 Roman citizen, who bravely cast in his lot with 
 these people, could see with prophetic vision how 
 God was going to put to shame the wise and the 
 strong by means of the weak and foolish and the 
 low. But how would it strike an outsider ? Is it 
 surprising that men of culture and good position, 
 men like Tacitus and Suetonius, should have looked 
 with contempt on the Christian Church when they 
 saw what sort of people it drew to its communion, 
 — restless spirits ; malecontents ; radicals of every 
 stripe; occasionally slaves, as we infer from the 
 allusion to " those of Caesar's household ; " now and 
 then an adventurer like Peregrinus Proteus ? Not 
 the kind of people that a self-respecting citizen 
 would care to consort with. And I suppose that 
 few of us, had we lived in those days, and had not 
 caught, or been caught by, the Spirit, would have 
 
ESSAYS. 73 
 
 cared to be found in such company. And when 
 I see Christian zealots, proud of their orthodoxy, 
 ■with conscious holiness looking down upon heretics 
 and flouting new departures in theology, I amuse 
 myself with thinking how heartily, had they been 
 contemporaries of Paul, these respectables would 
 have spurned the writers of the New Testament 
 and all that guild. 
 
 In the second century Christianity assumed a 
 new phase. It had developed an intellectual life. 
 It had its men of letters, its learned essayists, its 
 eloquent apologists. It had also developed heresies 
 and schisms. Eival systems had sprung up. Gnos- 
 ticism asserted its claims, assuming to teach a pro- 
 founder doctrine than the Gospel. The Church 
 was called to contend with intellectual adversaries 
 as well as civil authority. The latter half of this 
 century witnessed the culmination and incipient 
 decline of the Upper Empire. Marcus Aurelius, 
 standing midway between the first appearance of 
 Christianity and its civil enfranchisement, repre- 
 sents the high-water mark of Roman greatness, 
 as he does the height of Imperial virtue in the 
 annals of mankind. Allen, in his valuable mono- 
 graph, " The Mind of Paganism," says : " We may 
 have to come down as far as Louis IX. of Prance 
 to find his parallel." But neither in Saint Louis 
 nor in English Alfred, to whom Merivale compares 
 
71 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 him, do I find the serene piety, the moral sublimity, 
 which I admire in the Roman sovereign. The 
 piety of Louis was reinforced by the stimulus of 
 Christian memories, of a Christian ideal, in an 
 age of unquestioning faith. Marcus had no such 
 support. He dwelt amid decaying altars ; he flour- 
 ished in a dying world. I contrast in the two the 
 lunar virtue with the solar. He is accused of weak- 
 ness in his lenient treatment of Faustina. The 
 justice of the charge depends on the truth of the 
 alleged infidelity of Faustina, which is somewhat 
 doubtful. He is blamed for bequeathing the Em- 
 pire to Commodus ; but the choice of the natural 
 heir, who might outgrow his youthful follies, seemed 
 less dangerous than the inevitable conflict between 
 rival claimants of the throne. 
 
 The character of the man is revealed in his self- 
 communings, which have come down to us, an im- 
 perishable volume, the so-called " Meditations of 
 the Emperor Antoninus." Better preaching I have 
 not found, nor thoughts more edifying, in any 
 Christian writer of that time. A sombre spirit, 
 but how sweet, how grand ! No soul was ever 
 more impressed with the vanity of earthly things. 
 As from under the shadow of impending doom, 
 he urges upon himself the pursuit of the one thing 
 needful. " What is immortal fame ? Vanity and 
 an empty sound. What is there, then, to which 
 
ESSAYS. 75 
 
 we may reasonably apply ourselves ? This one 
 thing alone, — that our thoughts and intentions be 
 just, our actions directed to the public good, our 
 words inspired by truth, our whole disposition acqui- 
 escence in whatsoever may happen, as flowing from 
 such a Fountain, the original of all things." 
 
 That Marcus authorized the persecution of the 
 Christians, is justly reckoned, from the Christian 
 point of view, a blot on his fame. One could wish, 
 indeed, that he had understood Christianity, that 
 he had been in a position to judge it fairly. All 
 he knew of it was that the Christians, in the 
 Roman sense, were atheists, — they neglected sac- 
 rifice, they denied the gods. His father, Antoninus 
 Pius, had checked the persecution in Asia, had even 
 written to the authorities at Ephesus to punish 
 the informers, and to let the accused, though Chris- 
 tians, go free. But the son had fallen on other 
 times. A season of national prosperity, unbroken 
 since the reign of Nerva, had come to a close. 
 There was trouble on the German frontiers; the 
 legions had been routed on the Danube, the Mar- 
 comanni were pouring down from the Carpa- 
 thians. Worst of all, at home a raging pestilence, 
 imported from the East, was decimating the people. 
 An inundation which destroyed the public granaries 
 had brought famine and desolation on the land. 
 The horizon was dark all round ; the public mind 
 
76 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 was agitated with strange fears. In this agony 
 the religious sentiment, long dormant, was sud- 
 denly aroused. It was no longer social antipathy, 
 but returning piety, that demanded the extermi- 
 nation of the Christians. For were not they the 
 true cause of all this misery ? They are atheists, 
 they have denied the gods ; and the gods in their 
 wrath have sent these woes. The only way to 
 appease the gods and bring back the averted eye 
 of their blessing, is utterly to destroy the Chris- 
 tians. How far the Emperor shared these views, 
 it is impossible to say ; enough he yielded to the 
 popular cry : persecution was renewed, and the 
 Church grew strong and stronger thereby. 
 
 In the third century the elemental forces are the 
 same, but their relative position and prospects have 
 changed. The new religion has gained immensely 
 in extent and repute. It no longer hides itself in 
 the bowels of the earth, but moves freely in the 
 face of day. It had grown to be a recognized and 
 powerful member, or rather rival, of the State ; no 
 longer a doubtful adventure, but an accomplished 
 fact. In every province, in every city of note, 
 churches were established, — compact bodies bound 
 together by laws of their own and a common aim. 
 They constituted a state by themselves, an impe- 
 rium in imperio, a vast confederation extending 
 from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus. Men of all 
 
ESSAYS. Tt 
 
 conditions had embraced the confession. There 
 were Christians in the army, in the senate, and 
 around the throne. Their doctrine could no longer 
 be ignored ; it challenged the attention of Gentile 
 scholars, and could match an Arrian and a Oelsus 
 with a Clement, a TertuUian, and an Origen. 
 
 But Hellenism also presented a new front. It 
 had grown devout ; it had " got religion." The 
 religious enthusiasm of the Christians had exerted 
 an influence beyond their ranks. The public mind 
 had sobered as the State declined. A moribund 
 world in its sick dotage craved supports which cus- 
 tom could not furnish, satisfactions which sense 
 could not supply. Sated with the gorgeous specta- 
 cles of the circus, on which the treasures of an 
 empire had been lavished, and the world ransacked 
 to furnish some new prodigy, surfeited with earthly 
 splendor, the heart sickened with intolerable weari- 
 ness of life. From this disease there were only 
 two ways of escape. With the more refined, the 
 selfish and despairing, suicide became the fashion 
 and passion of the time ; parties of pleasure were 
 formed to witness, perhaps to unite in, voluntary 
 death. On the other hand, those who still clung to 
 life and hope sought in religion a refuge from the 
 loathing and disgust of their lot. The religion 
 which thus competed with the Christian was not a 
 revival of the old cult; it was not the religion 
 
78 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 which instituted the Salian priesthood and the rites 
 of Mars Gradivus. That was outgrown and irre- 
 coverable. Mithraism, with its fascinations, its 
 mysteries, and its horrors, had succeeded to the 
 vacant place. This and Neo-Platonic mysticism 
 might soothe the spiritual hunger they could not 
 satisfy. They might resist the attraction of the 
 Gospel, they might even infect the strain of Chris- 
 tian doctrine ; but they possessed no binding force, 
 they were powerless against the organic solidarity 
 of the Church. 
 
 With the advent of another century the strength 
 of that organism was to be arrayed in a final con- 
 flict with the State. In the winter of 303, in the 
 imperial palace of Nicomedia, the question was 
 debated between the Emperor Diocletian and his 
 associate Cassar, What shall be done with Chris- 
 tianity ? The vacillating policy of former years, 
 now rigorous, now lax, was no longer practicable. 
 It must be settled once for all which is the stronger. 
 Home, or Christianity. And so the bolt was 
 launched. The anniversary of the god Terminus 
 was to be the beginning of the end to the Christians, 
 — demolition of the Christian churches, ejection of 
 Christians from civil and military office, suppression 
 on pain of death of Christian worship, ending with 
 authority of the local magistrates to ferret out, to 
 torture, anfl put to death refractory believers. 
 
ESSAYS. 79 
 
 We have no means of knowing how extensively 
 and how exactly in all parts of the Empire during 
 the eight years of -its operation this edict was 
 obeyed. Its execution must have depended some- 
 what on the local authorities, whose sympathy 
 would sometimes be with the Christians. Mean- 
 while Diocletian had set the first example on 
 record of an Emperor voluntarily divesting himself 
 of the purple, — an example followed a thousand 
 years later by his Western successor of the allied 
 houses of Hapsburg and Castile, on occasion of 
 another great revolution in religion. In distant 
 Dalmatia, in that famed palace which covered ten 
 acres with its courts and its peristyles, as tidings 
 reached him of the troubled East and Christianity 
 still unsubdued, he had leisure to reflect on the 
 impotence of Imperial edicts to quench the light of 
 the world. 
 
 Galerius, now sole in command, urged on the 
 war, resolved to prosecute it to the bitter end. 
 The end came soon to the baffled sovereign writh- 
 ing in the agonies of a loathsome and incurable 
 disease, — confession of defeat, acknowledged im- 
 potence, revocation of the hostile edict, and a pite- 
 ous cry for aid from the Christian God, since 
 other gods had proved powerless and other aid 
 unavailing. 
 
 The contest is ended; Christianity has passed 
 
80 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 the supreme test. A new principle of social life 
 is thenceforth and forever established in the world. 
 To the Church a new era has come. The heroic 
 age, the martyr age, has passed; an age of dog- 
 matism, of definitions, of hair-splitting controver- 
 sies, under secular rule, succeeds. The Church has 
 now won Caesar to her cause, and rejoices in im- 
 perial patronage. But what she gains by court 
 favor, in the way of temporal prosperity, she loses 
 in spiritual freedom. Her princely benefactor 
 proves unwittingly her worst enemy. This from 
 a moral point of view. But the moral view does 
 not always coincide with the providential order. 
 It was necessary in the counsels of the Spirit that 
 Christendom should have possession of the throne, 
 and the Spirit can bear with temporary evil, and 
 profit by it in the compassing of its ends. 
 
 What shall we say of Constantine, the first of 
 the so-called Christian Emperors? As a man of 
 action, in war and peace, he emphatically merits 
 the epithet Great which attaches to his name. 
 Superbly endowed in body and mind, able alike 
 as captain and as statesman, fitted by nature to be 
 a ruler of men, successful in conflict with potent 
 rivals, concentrating and consolidating under one 
 head the vast extent of the Roman Empire, founder 
 of a city which for four centuries was the capital 
 of Christendom, and has been for four centuries 
 
ESS A YS. 81 
 
 the capital of Islam, — he must be accounted one 
 of the few great sovereigns on the roll of history. 
 But in what sense can we speak of him as a Chris- 
 tian? Morally lawless, shrinking from no crime, 
 guilty of the worst, how could the Church receive 
 him as such? Toward the close of his life he 
 received Christian baptism. We may hope that 
 something of conviction accompanied the rite ; as 
 much, perhaps, as was possible to a nature like his. 
 But previous to that, on the simple ground of his 
 patronage, how could Christians consent to submit 
 to the arbitration of the homicide, the filicide, the 
 conjugicide, questions of Christian doctrine and 
 discipline ? Their doing so is proof of spiritual 
 degeneracy consequent on temporal success. Con- 
 stantino had the sagacity to see the necessity of 
 conciliating the Christian interest, destined to be 
 the most influential element in his dominion. 
 Whatever may be the truth concerning the al- 
 leged vision of the cross, there can be no doubt 
 of his hearty belief in the toutw vlku. 
 
 Before grappling with Maxentius he had his 
 battle-flag stamped with the monogram of Christ. 
 After the victory of the Milvian Bridge he issued, 
 in conjunction with Licinius, an edict which not 
 only permitted the Christians to rebuild their 
 churches, but restored to them the property in 
 houses and lands which under Diocletian had been 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 confiscated for the use of the State. He ordained 
 a tax on land for the support of Christian worship, 
 he exempted the Christian clerus from military 
 service, and forbade labor, excepting agricultural, 
 on Sundays. And when Licinius, abandoning his 
 former position and ranging himself frankly on the 
 side of the old religion, had been overcome and 
 slain in battle, Constantine, then sole Emperor, 
 formally espoused the Christian cause and di- 
 verted the funds of some of the Gentile temples 
 to the use of the Christian. But that these demon- 
 strations were acts of State policy, and not of 
 religious conviction, must have been sufficiently 
 evident to all his subjects. His aim was to equalize 
 and, if possible, to harmonize the different confes- 
 sions. He had no intention, at first, of breaking 
 with polytheism. He still retained the title of 
 pontifex maximus. In the New Rome which he 
 founded on the Bosphorus, moved thereto by Sibyl- 
 line and other prophecies (that of the " Apocalypse " 
 among the rest), which predicted the fall of Rome 
 on the Tiber, he caused to be erected, along with 
 several Christian churches, a temple to Castor and 
 Pollux, one to Rhea, the mother of the gods, and 
 one to the Tyche, the Fortune of the city. An im- 
 age of this Tyche occupied the centre of the cross 
 upheld by the united hands of the colossal statues 
 of the Emperor and his mother, Helena. 
 
ESSAYS. 83 
 
 So far from renouncing the honor of the apothe- 
 osis bestowed on his predecessors, he made special 
 provision for it by ordaining that annually, in all 
 coming time, a golden statue of himself should be 
 borne in procession through the city, and that the 
 Emperor for the time being should prostrate himself 
 before it. On the top of a monolith of porphyry 
 he had placed a statue of Apollo, re-dedicated to 
 himself, with a halo of rays formed, it was said, 
 of nails taken from the cross which Helena had 
 brought from Jerusalem. Between the nails the 
 inscription : " To Constantine shining like the sun, 
 presiding over his city, an image of the new-risen 
 Sun of Righteousness." This column, we are told, 
 was long an object of formal worship to the Chris- 
 tians of Constantinople. 
 
 All this was polytheism over again. And these 
 measures, conceived in the spirit of the old religion, 
 were subsequent to the Council of Nicsea, at which 
 the Emperor had presided with hands yet red from 
 the recent murder of Crispus. 
 
 Constantine was no worse than many a Christian 
 ruler of later time. Our resentment against him is 
 not on- account of his crimes as such, but as viewed 
 in the light of the praises bestowed upon him by 
 Christian ecclesiastical historians. Eusebius, the 
 cringing courtier, characterizes him as one " adorned 
 with every virtue of religion." Ecclesiastical policy 
 
84 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 forbade the censure of his crimes. The credit of 
 the Church was more to the historian than the 
 cause of truth. There is not a more hateful crea- 
 ture in human guise than your typical ecclesiastic. 
 " Will ye speak wickedly for God ? will ye talk de- 
 ceitfully for him ? " Job asks of his friends. Talk- 
 ing deceitfully for God, and, where the temper of 
 the time permitted, killing and laying waste for 
 God, has been the practice of ecclesiastical policy 
 in every age. The Christian ecclesiastics of the 
 new-born Church are no exception. " Lying," says 
 Maurice, in his Lectures on Church History, " is the 
 first crime we hear of after the descent of the Holy 
 Spirit. It is of this that we shall have to hear at 
 every step as we proceed in the history. ... I shall 
 have to tell you of lies uttered by bad men and 
 by good men. . . . The Church testifies of God as 
 much through its falsehoods and its sins as through 
 its truth and its virtues." 
 
 The Church of the fourth century could boast 
 a few choice spirits, — a Gregory Nazianzen, an 
 Athanasius, a Basil, a Theodore of Mopsuestia; 
 but take them in the mass, as they figure in his- 
 tory, the ecclesiastics of that day were a disrep- 
 utable lot, — conspicuous among them a brutal 
 George of Cappadocia and a Lucifer of Cagliari. 
 In the fifth century we have a murderous Cyril, a 
 Dioscurus, and the incredible atrocities of the two 
 
ESSAYS. 85 
 
 successive Councils of Ephesus. How they wran- 
 gled ! Scarce escaped persecution themselves, how 
 they persecuted one another, staking the integrity 
 of the Church on a vocable, an iota, contemptu- 
 ously indifferent to questions of morality, demand- 
 ing only correctness of doctrine ! A bishop is 
 charged with unchastity. " What do we care about 
 his chastity ? Is he orthodox ? That is the ques- 
 tion." "Worse than a Sodomite is he who will 
 not call Mary the Mother of God ! May fire from 
 heaven consume him ! May the earth open and 
 swallow him ! " 
 
 If Christianity were simply Christ-likeness, a life 
 conformed to the precepts of the Gospel, it had 
 well-nigh died out with the triumph of the Church 
 over civil despotism. If the only fruits of the 
 Spirit were those which Paul emphasizes, — love, 
 joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, meek- 
 ness, — then the Spirit might seem, in those years, 
 to have fled up to heaven, like the starry goddess of 
 the Golden Age, and left the Church to her own 
 devices. But the Spirit had not departed; the 
 Spirit has other business besides the cultivation of 
 these moral graces so commended by the Apostle. 
 Through all the turmoil of those angry years, 
 through all the clamor of clashing tongues and 
 crazy Councils, through all the wrangling, the 
 wrath, and the wrong, the Spirit was at work 
 
86 CHRTSTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 developing in Christian consciousness and assisting 
 to formulate a new conception of Godhead, — of 
 Godhead in its human relations. This conception, 
 partly by instinctive perception and partly by prov- 
 idential conjunction, got itself formulated in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity as enunciated in the Creeds 
 of Nicaea and Constantinople and supplemented by 
 that of Chalcedon, — a doctrine of immense signifi- 
 cance, combining what is true in Judaism with 
 what is true in Hellenism, and if not a complete 
 statement of Deity (inasmuch as it leaves material 
 Nature out of view), if not a finality, yet a great 
 advance on former conceptions, connecting, as it 
 does, the human, through identity of spirit, with the 
 divine.^ 
 
 For thirty years the Church had enjoyed the 
 advantage, such as it was, of Imperial patronage. 
 A generation had passed since Christianity had 
 flourished as the Court religion. But now an un- 
 looked-for reverse. The Throne repudiates Chris- 
 tianity and bestows its patronage on polytheism. 
 Christian historians have treated this reaction as 
 something monstrous, and the term "Apostate," 
 
 1 It may seem incongruous, in a "Unitarian Review," to 
 speak favorably of the doctrine of the Trinity ; but the true 
 meaning of the Mcsean-Constantinopolitan creed is something 
 very different from the Trinitarianism justly repudiated by 
 the Unitarian protest. 
 
ESSAYS. 87 
 
 coupled with the name of Julian, conveys a sen- 
 tence of reprobation to this day. But the backward 
 step, although politically and philosophically a great 
 mistake, was very natural, and, on the whole, cred- 
 itable. Consider the circumstances. Deprived in 
 infancy of a mother who might have won him to 
 the Christian cause and given a Christian direction to 
 his life ; losing at the age of sixteen his father and 
 all his near kindred, with the exception of his half- 
 brother, by an insurrection of the Imperial troops ; 
 placed in confinement and subjected to compulsory 
 Christian instruction, — he learned in early life to 
 judge of Christianity by what he saw of it, which 
 was contemptible, and by what he experienced of 
 it, which was galling ; and, on the other hand, to 
 judge of polytheism by what he gathered from the 
 best literature of the ages in which it flourished. 
 His imagination was impressed by the grand tradi- 
 tions of olden time ; his intellect was fed and fired 
 by the poets and philosophers of Greece. What 
 had the Church to set off against these for a youth 
 whose heart had never been reached by the Gospel, 
 for whom it was a question between the religion of 
 the Court and that of probably the larger portion 
 of the Empire ? All that he knew of the Court 
 religion was petty intrigue and disgraceful broils, 
 quarrels about homoousion and homoiousion. Add 
 to this that the chivalrous spirit of the youth was 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 roused in favor of the oppressed by the persecutions 
 vdth which Constantius harassed the adherents of 
 the old religion. 
 
 When, therefore, in 361, the army which he com- 
 manded in Gaul, impressed by his military genius 
 and his eminent virtues, proclaimed him Emperor, 
 and when the death of Constantius left him free to 
 follow the promptings of his spirit, he openly es- 
 poused the cause of Hellenism, and in all sincerity 
 and with all the zeal of a new convert applied 
 himself to the restoration of the ancient cult. It 
 is curious to consider that precisely the two noblest, 
 the two most religious, in the long line of the 
 Augusti should have been zealous opponents of 
 the Christian cause. Julian ranks next to Aureliua 
 in purity of life and earnestness of soul. His con- 
 temporary and fellow-soldier, Ammianus Marcelli- 
 nus, the sagacious Latin historian of the fourth 
 century, declares that there was in him the material 
 of a hero of the old Greek type ; that in other times 
 he might have been an Achilles or an Alexander, 
 but that the age and circumstances in which he 
 lived made him a Sophist. His native ambition 
 degenerated into vanity and love of popularity : 
 " vulgi plausibus laetus, laudum, etiam in minimis 
 rebus, intemperans adpetitor." Gregory Nazianzen 
 ascribed to him the bearing of a madman. Voltaire, 
 in his epigrammatic fashion, characterizes him as 
 
ESSAYS. 89 
 
 " faithless to the faith and faithful to reason, the 
 scandal of the Church and the model of kings." 
 His writings which have come down to us, com- 
 posed amid the distractions of public life, exhibit a 
 sprightly intellect, more witty than profound. The 
 two satires, " The Caesars " and the " Misopogon," are 
 the most characteristic ; they bear comparison with 
 the writings of Lucian, the wittiest of the ancients. 
 The most important of his productions for the 
 modern Christian reader is the so-called " Defence 
 of Paganism," which in fact is only a criticism of 
 Christianity. The criticism is poor from our point 
 of view, but curious as illustrating the aspect which 
 dogmatic Christianity presented to an outsider of 
 that day. It is noticeable that the author uniformly 
 addresses the Christians as Galileans, and indeed 
 commanded that they should bear that name. 
 
 It is not for a moment to be supposed that Julian 
 expected, by his example and Imperial authority, to 
 roll back the tide of opinion and uproot the plant of 
 three hundred years' growth which overshadowed 
 his realm. The uttermost he hoped to accomplish 
 was to infuse new life into Hellenism, to restore to 
 it somewhat of its ancient splendor, to make it an 
 attractive rival of the Christian Church ; but even 
 this proved to be beyond his power. The thing was 
 too decrepit to be galvanized into any respectable 
 show of life. It is pitiful to read of his disappoint- 
 
90 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 ments in this endeavor. He attempted to rebuild 
 the temple of Jerusalem and to consecrate it to 
 Gentile worship. Immense sums were devoted to 
 the enterprise ; but the workmen were repelled, as 
 Ammianus relates, by bursting fires, and forced to 
 desist from their labors. He undertook to restore 
 the oracle at Delphos, which had long ceased to 
 give answers. "Tell the sovereign," was the re- 
 port made to the commissioner, "that the won- 
 drous structure has sunk into dust. Apollo has 
 not so much as a hut left, no prophetic laurel ; the 
 speaking fountain has gone silent." He went about 
 to celebrate, after long intermission, the annual 
 festival of Apollo in the grove of Daphne, near 
 Antioch. He repaired to the spot in person, in 
 his character of pontifex maximus, expecting to 
 witness the ancient pomp of sacrifice. " But when 
 I arrived," he says, in tlie " Misopogon," " I found 
 neither incense nor wafers nor victim. An old 
 priest had brought the god a goose, but the rich 
 city nothing, neither oil for the lamps nor wine for 
 a drink-offering. . . . And yet [addressing the citi- 
 zens of Antioch] you allow your wives to give 
 everything your house affords to the Galileans, to 
 feed their poor." 
 
 All this while the Christians never doubted the 
 result. "'Tis a cloud," said brave Athanasius, 
 " which will soon blow over." When the prospect 
 
ESSAYS. 91 
 
 looked most encouraging to the Gentiles, Libanius 
 the philosopher is said to have taunted a Christian 
 acquaintance with the question, " How now about 
 your carpenter's son ? " The answer was : " The 
 carpenter's son is making a coffin for him in whom 
 you have placed your hope." 
 
 Julian was too wise, perhaps too merciful, to 
 adopt the severe measures of former Emperors 
 against the Christians. He knew too well what 
 kind of harvest springs from the blood of martyrs. 
 But in a mild way he allowed himself to persecute 
 by invidious discriminations in favor of polytheism, 
 and by exclusion of Christians from many of their 
 former privileges. Ammianus himself, though sid- 
 ing with the Emperor in the main, condemns the 
 edict by which Christian scholars were forbidden 
 to teach the classics, and Christian children to re- 
 ceive instruction in Greek lore, on the ground that 
 they could not do justice to writers whose religion 
 they contemned. The prohibition was keenly felt 
 by the Christians, and, to supply the loss of classic 
 literature, ApoUinarius wrote a heroic poem on the 
 fortunes of the Hebrew people from the creation of 
 the world to the time of Saul, in which, as honest 
 Sozomen assures us, he far surpassed Homer. He 
 also wrote comedies after the manner of Menander, 
 tragedies in imitation of Euripides, odes on the 
 model of Pindar. "I doubt not," says Sozomen, 
 
92 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 with exquisite simplicity, " that if it were not for 
 the prejudice in favor of the old authors, the writ- 
 ings of ApoUinarius would be held in as high 
 estimation as those of the ancients." 
 
 Julian was not so bigoted as not to appreciate 
 the immense superiority of the Christian Church 
 over polytheism as a practical social religion. He 
 saw very clearly where lay the strength of the 
 Gospel, and exhorted his priesthood to imitate 
 the philanthropy of the Galileans by establishing 
 institutions like theirs for the entertainment of 
 strangers, for the care of the poor and the sick, 
 for instruction in the truths of religion ; to intro- 
 duce preaching in their temples, and, generally, to 
 copy Christian manners. It seems never to have 
 occurred to him that the ordering of these things 
 was a virtual acknowledgment of the claims of 
 Christianity. " It is a shame to us," he writes, 
 " that those impious Galileans not only provide for 
 their own poor, but also for ours, whom we neg- 
 lect." He failed to perceive that only a good tree 
 can bring forth good fruit. 
 
 Julian died at the age of thirty-one in an expe- 
 dition against the Persians from which the warn- 
 ings of his friends and even his own forebodings 
 could not deter him. He was killed, it is said, by 
 the treacherous spear of a soldier of his own army. 
 The high-hearted, impetuous youth, "the roman- 
 
ESSA YS. 93 
 
 ticist on the throne of the Caesars," had lived in 
 vain for the cause he had espoused, but not in vain 
 for that which he opposed ; for though his apostasy 
 had occasioned some defections from the Church, 
 some ignominious backslidings, and many bloody 
 conflicts between the polytheists who counted on 
 his patronage and the Christians whom he failed 
 to protect, it served to reveal the weakness and 
 decadence — the utter, hopeless decadence — of the 
 Gentile faith. The experiment in which a Julian 
 had failed would not be tried again. The old re- 
 ligion was irrevocably doomed ; had it only been 
 allowed to die in peace a natural death ; but Chris- 
 tian zeal would not permit. 
 
 The time had come when the Christians were in 
 a position to wreak their vengeance on the Gentiles ; 
 and with the opportunity came the will. They has- 
 tened to persecute the children of those who had 
 persecuted their fathers. In vain the Scriptures 
 read in their churches — the law of their religion — 
 commanded : " Avenge not yourselves, but give 
 place unto wrath ; " " Recompense to no man evil 
 for evil." They perceived another law in their 
 members. Constantine, as we have seen, while 
 siding with the Christians, spared the adherents 
 of the elder faith. It was reserved for a Spaniard, 
 a native of that land which in after years produced 
 a Torquemada and blushed with the fires of the 
 
94 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 Inquisition, to institute the first autos-dorfS for the 
 suppression of Paganism. We pass by an interval 
 of twenty years, from the death of Julian to the 
 reign of Theodosius. The Council of Constan- 
 tinople had just completed the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, when the new Emperor, baptized into that 
 faith, and, in' the language of Gibbon, " still glow- 
 ing with the warm feelings of regeneration," issued 
 an edict which prescribed the religion of his sub- 
 jects. "It is our pleasure that all the nations 
 which are governed by our clemency and moder- 
 ation shall steadfastly adhere to the religion which 
 was taught by Saint Peter to the Romans." " Let us 
 believe in the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and 
 the Holy Spirit, under an equal majesty and a pious 
 trinity." Having thus dictated to his subjects, a 
 large, if not the larger, portion of whom still wor- 
 shipped as polytheists after the manner of their 
 fathers, he proceeded, by successive edicts, to hunt 
 out and to stamp out every vestige of the faith 
 which for so many centuries had intempled and 
 inspired the two great nations which have scored 
 the boldest characters on the scroll of pre-Christian 
 history, and yielded — the one by its letters and 
 arts, the other by its jurisprudence — such impor- 
 tant contributions to the civilization of mankind. 
 
 There were still, we are told, in the city of Rome 
 three hundred temples in which sacrifice was 
 
ESSAYS. 95 
 
 offered.^ These were now to be suppressed. In the 
 year 385 an edict of the government ordained that 
 sacrifices should cease, and forbade on pain of tor- 
 ture and death the function of the haruspex. Then 
 began a systematic crusade, in which the Emperor 
 conspired with the local bishops and monks to put 
 an end to Gentile worship. An Imperial officer 
 was despatched with full powers to close the tem- 
 ples in the capital cities of the Bast. But the clos- 
 ing of the temples did not satisfy the blind fury of 
 Christian zealots. They must not only be closed, 
 but destroyed. The most magnificent structures 
 ever dedicated to the service of religion, the costly 
 marvels of architectural art, — among them the 
 famed Serapeum at Alexandria, — were ruthlessly 
 given to the flames or levelled with the ground, 
 and where resistance was made by the votaries, 
 the carnage of previous centuries was renewed. 
 The new religion availed no more than the old 
 to tame the tiger that has its lair in the human 
 breast. 
 
 The persecutions suffered by Christians under 
 Roman Emperors of the second and third centuries 
 are well known. Writers of Church history have 
 seen to it that they should not pass into oblivion. 
 Not so well known are the persecutions inflicted by 
 Christians in power on their Gentile subjects and 
 1 Lasaulx, Der Untergang des Hellenismus. 
 
96 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 fellow-citizens. Lasaulx, in a monograph devoted 
 to the subject,! ]jas presented them in one view in 
 the order of their succession, — a long story, and 
 profoundly tragic ! If the slaughter was less, the 
 atrocity was greater, as perpetrated by disciples of 
 a religion whose plainest precepts were violated by 
 it. The Christian conscience of the time appears 
 to have been less shocked by these enormities than 
 by the treatment of the orthodox under Arian rule, 
 although Socrates does admit that the murder of 
 Hypatia, the beautiful and learned lecturer of Alex- 
 andria, whose body was stripped and mangled with 
 oyster-shells by Christian fanatics, was discreditable 
 to Cyril and the Alexandrian Church. 
 
 It had taken three centuries to place Christianity 
 on the throne ; two more were required to complete 
 the extinction by fire and sword of the vanquished 
 faith. The final act of the long tragedy was the 
 closing of the schools of Athens by the Emperor 
 Justinian. Already in the same year, 529, the 
 founder of the Benedictine Order at Monte Casino 
 had destroyed the last temple of Apollo and the 
 adjacent grove, in which the pagans still sacrificed 
 to their tutelar god. 
 
 The end had come, the work was accomplished. 
 The old heaven and the old earth had passed away. 
 The Spirit had created " a new heaven and a new 
 ' Der Untergang des Hellenismus. 
 
ESSAYS. 97 
 
 earth." Can we add — could Christian conscious- 
 ness, at that high solstice of the world's history, 
 add — " wherein dwelleth righteousness " ? Alas, 
 no ! The looked-for righteousness was yet in abey- 
 ance, far remote in the depths of time. It is still 
 remote ; although nearer, let us trust, than in those 
 early years of grace. 
 
 What, then, was the aim of the Spirit in the 
 founding of the Christian Church, — a work accom- 
 plished at such fearful cost ? Not primarily good 
 behavior. Had this been the end, there would 
 have been a rapid and marked improvement in 
 the morals of society. But no such improvement 
 appears. Salvian, a Christian presbyter of Aries, 
 writing about the middle of the fifth century, com- 
 plains that " the Church of God itself, which should 
 be pleasing in the sight of God, is but the provoker 
 of God's wrath." " With the exception of the very 
 few who shun evil (^praeter paueissimos quosdam 
 qui mala fugiunf), what is the whole body of 
 Christians but a sink of vices ? " 
 
 A new world the Spirit had builded ; but much 
 of the old material went into the building. Mo- 
 rality was not its primary aim. That will come 
 in due season, when the work is complete. The 
 moral law, by the " Power that makes for righteous- 
 ness," will finally vindicate itself. The aim of the 
 Spirit in the founding of the Christian Church I 
 
 7 
 
98 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 
 
 suppose to have been this : to provide a matrix 
 and nursery for certain ideas, notably for these 
 three, — the idea of a divine humanity embodied in 
 the doctrine of the Trinity; the idea of the soli- 
 darity of the human race ; the idea of a heavenly 
 kingdom in this earthly world. When these ideas 
 have taken full possession of the mind and heart 
 of humanity and have actualized themselves in 
 human life, then Christianity -will have fulfilled 
 its mission ; then the Spirit will cast aside the 
 sheltering hull of ecclesiasticism ; the Church, no 
 longer a separate organism, will be merged in 
 society ; the secular and the spiritual, principially 
 and practically one, will realize at last in their 
 full consummation the " new heaven and new earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 
FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 IN history there is properly no beginning, no 
 record of a time when civil society was abso- 
 lutely and altogether new. Society, like the indi- 
 Tidual, has no knowledge of its own birth. The 
 earliest which history can trace and ascertain is 
 not the earliest that has been, but refers us to 
 something still more remote, unchronicled, inscru- 
 table. Every nation that now exists was the off- 
 spring of another. Every nation known to history 
 was the offspring of another; and the eldest are 
 lost in prehistoric night. Every civil and social 
 institution has elements derived from an unex- 
 plored and dateless time. Nations, institutions, 
 and events are the varying phases of a stream 
 whose source is unknown, and equally unknown 
 its issues. History reports what appears, and 
 leaves to antiquarian surmise at one end, and to 
 philosophic speculation at the other, the conjec- 
 tural beginnings and endings. 
 
 And as there is no beginning, so in history 
 there is no retrocession or decline. The thousand 
 years which intervened between the fall of the 
 
100 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Western Empire in the fifth century and that of 
 the Eastern in the fifteenth are commonly regarded 
 as a period of arrested development, a halt in the 
 march of humanity, or even a retreat. The arrest 
 we may grant, but only in the sense in which the 
 winter that arrests the vegetation of one season 
 guards the germs of the next. The Graeco-Roman 
 civilization was defunct ; but a new civilization was 
 steadily forming beneath the frosts of mediaeval 
 years. History is never retrograde. Nations may 
 degenerate, arts may perish ; but humanity never 
 halts. There is always progress somewhere, in 
 some things. The same nature which produced 
 the Gi'eek and Roman civilities was just as vigor- 
 ous and just as productive in the age of Hildebrand 
 as in that of Pericles or that of Augustus. If it 
 did not produce the same things, it produced others 
 which were quite as needful. The philosophic 
 historian sees nothing retrograde in all those cen- 
 turies, but unbroken progress, the steady germina- 
 tion of seed that was sown while Rome was still 
 in the zenith of her power. He sees no perishing 
 world, but a world in genesis, — an immense future 
 struggling into birth. In every falling leaf of the 
 Graeco-Roman civilization he sees the forward 
 shoot of the Christian, which pushed it from its 
 stem. 
 
 The distinguishing feature of medieval life is 
 
ESSA YS. 101 
 
 Feudalism. To understand feudalism, we must 
 study its origin in the semi-barbarous society of 
 the German tribes antecedent to the Christian era. 
 The ancient Germans, as Tacitus describes them, 
 differed from the Romans, the Greeks, and the 
 Oriental nations in not inhabiting cities, but thinly 
 settled rural districts governed by chiefs, who in 
 turn were subject to the king of the nation or tribe. 
 This circumstance gave to the mediaeval politics 
 their distinguishing character as compared with 
 the ancient States. The basis of the ancient State 
 was the civic corporation ; that of the mediaeval 
 was landed possession, the possessor being bound 
 by feudal tenure to the Crown. The king was elec- 
 tive, but chosen from certain noble families, not 
 from the people at large. The leaders under him 
 were selected for their warlike qualities. Eeges 
 ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt, says Tacitus. 
 Each king had a hundred followers or associates 
 chosen from among the people, called in Latin 
 comites Qienteni singulis ex plehe comites'), from 
 which our English count, county, country. 
 
 In German, the comites were called Gresellen 
 (companions), from which, it is supposed, our 
 English word vassal is derived. Vassal and count 
 are identical terms. Vassalage, etymologically 
 speaking, is not bondage, but fellowship, peerage. 
 The Germans had slaves ; but these were captives 
 
102 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 of war, or such as had lost their freedom in games 
 of chance. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the German tribes was 
 their respect for women, to whom they accorded a 
 much higher rank than was ever assigned to them 
 by Greece or Rome. They were the counsellors 
 of the nation, diligently consulted in all matters 
 of public moment. They followed their husbands 
 and brothers to the wars, stimulated them with 
 their cries, and sometimes decided the battle by 
 their interposition. In accordance with this rev- 
 erence for the " ever womanly," the German, with 
 its cognates, is the only European language in 
 which to this day the sun is feminine and the 
 moon masculine. Guizot makes light of this trait 
 of the German forest, or of Tacitus's testimony 
 regarding it. But I think we have here the proto- 
 type of a very marked feature of medieval civiliza- 
 tion, — the loyalty to woman, exhibited practically 
 in the courtesies of chivalry, and poetically in the 
 lays of the Minnesingers. 
 
 Once more. The German aborigines were pre- 
 eminently a nation of warriors. All barbarous 
 nations are given to fighting ; but the Germans 
 seem more than any other to have exemplified the 
 doctrine of Hobbes, that war is man's natural 
 state. Nihil nisi armati agunt. They carried war 
 into everything. It was their business, their pas- 
 
ESSA YS. 103 
 
 time, their politics, their religion. When there 
 was no foreign enemy to encounter, they made 
 war npon each other ; they invaded neighboring 
 territories, and sought in every possible way to 
 keep themselves in training for the great work of 
 life. In these military expeditions the king was 
 attended by his comites, or counts, between whom 
 and himself there subsisted an intimate and indis- 
 soluble bond. They bound themselves to accom- 
 pany him through life, and to accompany him in 
 death. He bound himself to stand by them in all 
 straits, to find them food and equipment in return 
 for their services, and to give them their share of 
 the plunder. 
 
 We have here the rudiments of the feudal sys- 
 tem, — a system in which independence and loy- 
 alty were singularly blended, "the system," says 
 Heeren, " of people who had a good deal of fight- 
 ing to do, and very little money." Suppose, now, 
 a clan or tribe of these warriors at the end of one 
 of their predatory excursions to settle in some 
 province of the Eoman Empire. Let that tribe 
 be the Franks, with Clovis at their head. Let 
 that province be the western part of Gaul, which 
 took from them the name of France. There it 
 was that the feudal system was soonest developed 
 and most clearly defined. Clovis is a German 
 prince, attended by his duces, or dukes, the lead- 
 
104 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 ers next in command, by his and their comites, or 
 counts, and other warriors of inferior note. They 
 settle in Gaul. Clovis becomes king of France. 
 The ancient inhabitants are dispossessed. Some 
 of them become serfs or slaves. Others, and espe- 
 cially the clergy, by means of superior ability 
 attain to posts of honor around the Throne. Some 
 of them in process of time become vassals of the 
 Crown. 
 
 The land is divided into districts, and over each 
 district is placed one of the counts as magistrate 
 and collector of revenues. Hence the term comptS, 
 " county." A dux, or duke, had charge of sev- 
 eral counties. These offices, held originally during 
 the pleasure of the king, were afterward heredi- 
 tary, and laid the foundation of that power by 
 which the nobles in time became rivals of the 
 Throne. The rest of the warriors received by al- 
 lotment or obtained by pillage portions of land, 
 which they held in their own right, with power of 
 devise, and subject to no condition but the gen- 
 eral burden of public defence. These estates were 
 called allodial, — a word denoting absolute property, 
 in distinction from feudal. The feudal estates were 
 benefices or grants made by the king to his favor- 
 ites QCrasindi, Antrustions, Leudes) out of the 
 reserved fiscal or Crown lands, not as absolute 
 property, but as a temporary loan, to be returned 
 
ESSAYS. 105 
 
 on the death or forfeiture of the occupant, who 
 during possession was bound to render fealty and 
 military service, when required, to the grantor. 
 We see here repeated the same principle which 
 connected the rex, or the dux, in the forests of 
 Germany with his comites, or vassals. The holder 
 of such a benefice was the vassal of the Crown. 
 
 The benefices in time became hereditary; and 
 then commenced another stage in the feudal pro- 
 cess, — subinfeudation. The holders of grants from 
 the Crown made new grants of portions of their es- 
 tates to new beneficiaries, who received them on 
 similar terms, and sustained the same relation to 
 the new grantor which he did to the Crown. They 
 were his vassals ; he was their suzerain, or mesne 
 lord. An estate so held was a feodum, or feud. 
 The holder of a feud was bound to follow his lord 
 to battle, albeit against his own kindred, when re- 
 quired, and against his sovereign. He was bound 
 to ride by his side in the field, to lend him his 
 horse when dismounted, and to go into captivity as 
 a hostage for him when taken prisoner. He was 
 liable to certain pecuniary taxes, called "Reliefs 
 and Aids," on taking possession of an hereditary 
 fief, or when his lord made a pilgrimage to Jerusa- 
 lem or gave his sister or eldest son in marriage, or 
 took a new investiture of his own fief. On the other 
 hand, the suzerain, or feudal lord, was under obli- 
 
106 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 gations equally binding to his vassal. He was his 
 vassal's sworn protector, ally, and friend, the helper 
 of his necessity, the avenger of his wrongs. He 
 was required to make indemnification if the tenant 
 was evicted of his land. In Normandy and in Eng- 
 land he was his tenant's guardian during minority. 
 In this capacity he was authorized to provide his 
 female wards with husbands ; and they, on their 
 part, were bound to accept the husbands, or to pay 
 as much in the way of mulct as the suitor was 
 willing to give for his wife. In the Latin kingdom 
 of Jerusalem, where the feudal system developed 
 some peculiarities, — the result of insulation, — a 
 singular custom prevailed. The lord could compel 
 a female tenant to marry one of three suitors whom 
 he might present to her choice. The candidates 
 must be of equal rank with herself, but one of them 
 she was bound to accept. No avowed disinclina- 
 tion to wedlock in general, no repugnance to the 
 given candidates in particular, could exempt her 
 from this necessity. To females advanced in life, 
 one alternative remained. If the lady would de- 
 clare herself to be sixty years of age, the right 
 to single-blessedness was not denied her. Of this 
 dilemma it does not appear which horn was pre- 
 ferred in any recorded case. 
 
 The feudal system, once established, pervaded 
 the whole structure of society. It embraced the 
 
ESSA YS. 107 
 
 clergy as -well as the laity. The dignitaries of the 
 Church and the abbots of monasteries were the 
 vassals of the sovereign or prince, of whom their 
 lands were held in fief. They had their own vassals, 
 who held of them. They were bound, in return for 
 their possessions, to swear fealty and to render 
 military service, if not by taking arms, by sending 
 their vassals into the field. 
 
 There was one species of feudal tenure which 
 appears in strange contrast with modern ideas of 
 dignity and rank ; that is, the tenure of menial 
 office. Nobles did not disdain to hold such offices 
 about the person or the household of a king or 
 superior, such as cup-bearer, farrier (marSohaV), 
 stabler (constable), bearer of dishes (seneschal). 
 Here, again, a marked trait of the old German life. 
 The German loved independence, it was the breath 
 of his nostrils. But with this love of independence 
 he combined a sentiment which might seem at first 
 incompatible with it, — the sentiment of loyalty, 
 enthusiastic devotion to the person of his chief ; a 
 devotion which to his mind invested even menial 
 offices, rendered to that chief, with glory. In after 
 times the title remained, while the original function 
 was forgotten. France has still her marshal, al- 
 though that functionary has no longer the care of 
 stable or stud. His predecessor in the Merovingian 
 era did not disdain that function; he owed to it 
 
108 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 his title and his estates. The Elector of Saxony 
 was formerly marshal of the German Empire. A 
 symbol of his function long survived in the vessel 
 of oats which the Elector, in person or by deputy, 
 presented to the Emperor at his. coronation, as de- 
 scribed by Goethe, who witnessed when a boy the 
 coronation of Joseph II. The ascendency of the 
 ecclesiastical power in the twelfth century is illus- 
 trated by the fact that the Emperor Frederic Bar- 
 barossa held as a fief from the Bishop of Bamberg 
 the office of seneschal, or bearer of dishes. 
 
 The basis of feudal polity, as I have said, — that 
 by which it is especially distinguished from ancient 
 civilization, — was landed possession. The ancient 
 civilization was municipal. The Greeks and Ro- 
 mans lived in cities and compact settlements. The 
 Germans, as we learn from Tacitus, lived scattered 
 over large districts, each freeman lord of his own 
 territory, — a custom strictly maintained by their 
 posterity in mediaeval Europe, and one which has 
 exercised an immense influence on modern Euro- 
 pean civilization. The ancient noble, however ex- 
 tensive his landed possessions, was still a citizen, 
 the member of a compact civic body. His property 
 bound him more closely to the State, and the State 
 to him. The property of a mediaeval nobleman, on 
 the contrary, tended to seclude him from the rest 
 of the world. The essence of feudalism is insula- 
 
ESSAYS. 109 
 
 tion. The proprietor, instead of connecting him- 
 self with civic organizations, planted himself on his 
 territory, solitary, remote, and became the head 
 and nucleus of a little community of his own which 
 gathered around the feudal castle and subsisted by 
 him and for him. These communities were practi- 
 cally sovereign and independent States. The feu- 
 dal lord possessed the rights and exercised the 
 three most important functions of a monarch, — 
 the right to make war, the right to coin money, and 
 the right of supreme judicature (la haute justice') ; 
 that is, the right to inflict capital punishment with- 
 in his domain. In the exercise of this last-named 
 function antiquarians notice a ludicrous distinction 
 between different orders of nobility. Every man 
 who was entitled to a fortified castle might exercise 
 haute justice, he might hang offenders within his 
 domain. But the rank of the lord was indicated 
 by the number of posts in his gallows. A baron 
 could hang his subjects on a gallows with four 
 posts. A chdtelain, or possessor of a castle who 
 was not a vassal of the Crown, was restricted to 
 three posts. A lord inferior to the chdtelain, the 
 lowest in the scale of nobility, must serve the cause 
 of justice as well as he could with a two-posted 
 gibbet. 
 
 Such independence was of course entirely in- 
 compatible with the existence of a central and con- 
 
110 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 trolling power in the Crown. We read of a king of 
 France, of England, of Germany ; but this title pre- 
 vious to the fourteenth century was little more than 
 nominal. The king was merely one noble among 
 many, with perhaps more numerous vassals and a 
 court, but with no more actual power than many of 
 the barons of his realm. The problem of mediaeval 
 history was to counteract and overcome this sepa- 
 ratism, to develop the nation against the nobles, 
 and to establish the central power of the Crown 
 over feudal independence. This end was soonest 
 and most completely accomplished in that country 
 where feudalism found its earliest and fullest devel- 
 opment, — in France, which differed from Germany 
 in having an hereditary instead of an elective mon- 
 archy, and from England in the earlier resumption 
 of fiefs by the Crown at the expiration of the feu- 
 dal tenure. The French sovereign at the close of 
 the thirteenth century had achieved an ascendency 
 which the English did not attain until after the 
 Wars of the Eoses. 
 
 To this separative tendency of feudalism we owe 
 one of the principal characteristics of modern civil- 
 ization as contrasted with that of the ancients; 
 namely, the preponderance of the country in na- 
 tional polity. The ancient nations were mostly de- 
 pendencies of capital cities, and are called by the 
 names of their capitals, — as Athens, Eome, Sparta, 
 
ESSAYS. Ill 
 
 Carthage. The destructiou of the capital involved 
 that of the nation. Modern nations, on the con- 
 trary, are named after their respective races, — 
 France, England, Germany ; and notwithstanding 
 the disproportionate influence of the capital in some 
 cases, as of Paris in France, they have an existence 
 independent of the capital, and would continue to 
 exist if the capital were destroyed. 
 
 Of later origin than feudalism, but not less widely 
 diffused, was the institution of chivalry, — another 
 marked trait of the Middle Age. It affected pro- 
 foundly the character and tone of mediaeval society, 
 but rather in the way of moral influence than by 
 any organic action on the time. It created no new 
 political Order, but grafted on the class of nobles 
 and freemen an additional social distinction for all 
 who embraced it, as most of the nobles, for lack of 
 other occupation, were fain to do. The title of a 
 knight, or knight-banneret, so long as it repre- 
 sented the reward of valor alone, was the highest 
 distinction known to that period. Kings were 
 proud to add the prefix of Sir to the royal title. 
 It conferred important privileges, among which in 
 some countries was exemption from taxes. But it 
 was not hereditary. It founded no lineage : it ex- 
 pired with the individual on whom it was conferred. 
 It did not modify the organic structure of society. 
 It was bloom and polish, not substance nor form. 
 
112 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Chivalry was eminently a Christian institution. 
 It was the application of Christianity to the busi- 
 ness of arms. It was the use of arms for the 
 redemption of society. With it was associated 
 also the old German reverence for women. It 
 gave lustre and sweetness to an age which else 
 had been one of unmitigated barbarism. Morally 
 it is very significant, as illustrating the remedial 
 power of human nature, — that power by which, 
 when evils become intolerable, society reacts on its 
 own excesses and rights its own wrongs. 
 
 In our own country, in the new communities of 
 the West, when the law is feeble and the consti- 
 tuted tribunals deficient in authority, the savage 
 but needful Lynch law or vigilance committee sup- 
 plies the defect. Chivalry was a modification of 
 the same principle more worthily embodied, and 
 authorized with religious sanctions. The knights 
 were self-constituted judges and avengers of social 
 wrong. The knight-errant was a missionary, a 
 military evangelist, operating with spear and sword 
 instead of the word. He was consecrated to his 
 work with solemn and religious ceremonies, and 
 had something of the priestly character. His 
 moral code was not very extensive. It contained 
 but four articles ; but these were rigorously en- 
 forced. It enjoined truth, hearing Mass, fasting 
 on Friday, and the succoring of dames. 
 
ESSAYS. 113 
 
 " And thus the fourfold discipline was told. 
 Still to the truth direct thy strong desire, 
 And flee the very air where dwells a liar. 
 Fail not the Mass ; there still with reverent feet 
 Each morn be found, nor scant thine offering meet. 
 Each week's sixth day with fast subdue thy mind, 
 For 't was the day of passion for mankind : 
 Else let some pious work, some deed of grace, 
 With substituted worth fulfil the place. 
 Haste thee, in fine, when dames complain of wrong, 
 Maintain their right, and in their cause be strong ; 
 For not a wight there lives, if right I deem. 
 Who holds fair hope of well-deserved esteem. 
 But to the dames by strong devotion bound. 
 Their cause sustains, nor faints for toil or wound. "^ 
 
 The necessity of such an institution is explained 
 by the lawless character of the times, by the social 
 anarchy and predatory violence of a barbarous age. 
 Europe was everywhere infested with robbers, who 
 ravaged the country, made travelling unsafe, and 
 agitated society with perpetual alarms. Peaceably 
 disposed persons were subject to violence when- 
 ever they ventured abroad, and were not always 
 safe in their own homes. The boldness and nu- 
 merical strength of these robber bands may be 
 inferred from the fact that the highest dignitaries 
 in Church and State, and even royal personages 
 travelling with large escorts of armed followers, 
 were attacked by them on the highway, plundered, 
 and sometimes held prisoners until redeemed by a 
 
 1 The Order of Knighthood, — Vay's Fabliaux. 
 8 
 
114 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 ransom. In 1285 the town of Boston in England 
 was assailed and pillaged by a party of these 
 marauders. 
 
 In splendor and pomp, the customs of chivalry 
 far exceed all that modern life can exhibit in the 
 way of spectacle and festive show. If mediaeval 
 Europe was poor in productive industry, she was 
 rich in knightly splendor and festivity. When we 
 call up before us the idea of those ages, we have a 
 picture of nodding plumes, resplendent shields, 
 and gay devices, a lavish display of gold and silver 
 in knightly appointments. We see the compact 
 body of cavaliers drawn up before the baronial 
 castle or pilgriming toward the Holy Land. We 
 see the gallant tournament with its rich capari- 
 sons and pennoned lances, — 
 
 " Where throngs of knights and barons bold 
 In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, 
 With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Bain influence and judge the prize," — 
 
 a spectacle which in gorgeous appearance and stir- 
 ring effect has probably never been surpassed. 
 
 On the whole, the institution of chivalry was a 
 wise and beneficent force, opposed to anarchy and 
 violence, — a splendid vindication of human nature 
 against barbarism and social wrong. 
 
 Its effect on literature is seen in the metrical 
 productions of the twelfth, thirteenth, and four- 
 
ESSAYS. 115 
 
 teenth centuries. The adventures and the manners 
 of chivalry supplied authors of these productions, 
 the Troubadours, Trouveurs, and Makers, with their 
 materials and topics. And so completely was the 
 mind of the time preoccupied with chivalric ideas 
 that all topics were treated in the same fashion. 
 The worthies of ancient history, the heroes of Plu- 
 tarch and Homer, were metamorphosed into Chris- 
 tian knights. Even Biblical characters underwent 
 the same transformation. Adam Davie, a poet of 
 the fourteenth century, represents Pilate as chal- 
 lenging our Lord to single combat. In "Piers 
 Ploughman's Vision" the soldier who pierced the 
 Saviour's side is spoken of as a knight who came 
 forth with his spear and jousted with Jesus. 
 
 Intimately associated with the institution of chiv- 
 alry, and characteristic of the time, was the grave 
 importance attached by the higher orders of society 
 to the sentiment of love. Knighthood, from the 
 first, distinguished itself by devotion to woman,: — 
 a trait derived from the ancient Germans. Every 
 knight had his lady-love, of whom he professed 
 himself the devoted slave, and whose superiority 
 to every other lady in creation he conceived it his 
 duty to assert, if necessary, with spear and sword. 
 According to the received comparison, a knight 
 without a lady was like a sky without a sun. In 
 this there was often more of affectation than of 
 
116 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 true sentiment. The pretended passion was not of 
 that practical character which looks to matrimony 
 as its proper consummation, but an aristocratic 
 fancy, perhaps an assumed one, cherished for its 
 own sake, — an idea which served to stimulate 
 valor, and beguiled the tediousness of unoccupied 
 hours ; a thing to dream of and to break a lance for, 
 but not to be realized in the way of a domestic 
 establishment. 
 
 The most remarkable part of this lady-worship 
 was the mystic importance, the metaphysical sub- 
 tilties, and minute casuistry which the spirit of 
 the time connected with the subject. 
 
 Courts were established for the purpose of ad- 
 justing all questions that might arise between lov- 
 ers or concerning them. Whether they really loved, 
 what were the proofs of affection, what their mu- 
 tual obligations, — all this was determined by a 
 regular code of love, compiled with great care, and 
 considered as binding as the canons of the Cliurch. 
 All differences between lovers and all questions of 
 gallantry were referred to these courts for adjudica- 
 tion. They were presided over by kiags, emperors, 
 and even popes. They had all the usual officers, 
 counsellors, auditors, masters of request. Their de- 
 crees were duly reported, and illustrated by commen- 
 taries pointing out their conformity to the principles 
 of the Roman Law and the Fathers of the Church. 
 
ESS A VS. 117 
 
 It may be doubted if the private, domestic life 
 of women in these ages corresponded with this 
 public devotion. Indeed, the whole system of chiv- 
 alry owes much of its attraction to the medium of 
 tradition and romance through which we view it, 
 and loses its brilliancy on closer inspection, as the- 
 atrical illusions are dispelled by a peep behind the 
 scenes. If we could transport ourselves into those 
 centuries, compare their fashions with ours, observe 
 their daily life, and bring it to the test of modern 
 refinement, we should see that the romance of chiv- 
 alry is partly the effect of distance, which works 
 enchantment in time as well as in space. 
 
 If we could witness the scenes which were then 
 exhibited in the way of theatrical entertainment ; 
 if we could listen to the lays of the minstrels, or 
 even, it is probable, to the language of the hall and 
 bower ; if we could follow lady and knight in all 
 the details of their daily life, and notice every 
 point in the manners of the times, — we should 
 find that the age which, as mirrored in novel and 
 song, shows so courteous and fine, was in fact 
 extremely coarse, indecent, and disgusting. The 
 knight whose costly armor shone so gayly in the 
 lists would not, when stripped of his outer case, 
 have seemed to modern refinement a very fasci- 
 nating object. He often sacrificed to the splendor 
 of helmet and hauberk what might have been more 
 
118 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 profitably spent on a comfortable wardrobe, and 
 was richer in iron than in linen. Civet or other 
 coarse perfume was needed to disguise the effects 
 of hard exercise in woollen garments under iron 
 armor. But mediaeval taste was not curious in 
 such matters. When the knight arrived at a castle 
 where he was to lodge as guest, the ladies of the 
 house came to meet him in the court-yard, divested 
 him of his armor, and clothed him in the loose 
 upper robe which was worn within doors, and of 
 which every family kept a supply for visitors. 
 
 The lady whom the knight elected as the mistress 
 of his heart and life, and for whose charms he was 
 ready to defy the world to mortal combat, could 
 neither read nor write. She possessed none of the 
 accomplishments or resources of a modern lady. 
 Not that the want of intellectual culture was the 
 lot of all the women of that age. Where it did 
 exist, in convents and in some of the cities, it was 
 carried to a greater extent than with us, as we see 
 in the case of H^loise. But these were exceptions. 
 Inability to read and write was the usual condition 
 of the high-born as well as of the lowly. 
 
 It is fearful to think what ennui those high-born 
 dames must have suffered when left to their own 
 devices in the absence of their knights and of out- 
 ■door diversions. They lived in rooms which were 
 bare not only of paint and paper, but also of plaster 
 
ESSAYS. 119 
 
 or other internal architectural finish. The hall, 
 and perhaps the ladies' bower, were hung with 
 tapestry; that is, with pieces of figured canvas 
 suspended upon hooks extending along the sides 
 of the apartment, at a distance of about two feet 
 from the wall. When the family removed, these 
 were taken down and left only the bare stone walls. 
 The floor was usually covered with straw or with 
 rushes, not too often renewed, and harboring frag- 
 ments of food and all manner of impurities. Our 
 fine lady's wardrobe and household appointments, 
 though not wanting in jewels and other splendors 
 for festive seasons, were lamentably deficient in 
 what are now regarded as the necessaries of life. 
 She had no stockings to her feet, most likely no 
 cloths to her table, possibly no sheets to her bed. 
 If she had handkerchiefs, the supply was exceed- 
 ingly limited, consisting of one or two for state 
 occasions, and none for common use. She had no 
 accommodations for sitting in her bower, except, 
 perhaps, a stone seat in the embrasure of the win- 
 dow, and her bed. Chairs were unknown. At 
 meals, the company sat on rude wooden benches 
 around coarse wooden tables. Waiters were abund- 
 ant, but the table furniture was scanty and vile to 
 a degree very shocking to modern sensibility. A 
 few pieces of plate, hereditary or plundered, graced 
 the tables of the wealthy; but the dishes were 
 
120 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 mostly wooden trays, and the plates or trenchers 
 were of the same material. The custom of a plate 
 to each person was a luxury undreamed of. One 
 plate for lyo was the utmost allowance ; and at 
 festive entertainments the gallantry of the age 
 contrived to couple the. sexes, so that each gentle- 
 man should share his plate with a lady. In the 
 novel of " Launcelot du Lac," a lady "frhom her jeal- 
 ous husband had compelled to dine in the kitchen 
 complains that it- is a very long time since any 
 knight has eaten off the same plate with her. Gen- 
 tleman and lady have a plate between them, but no 
 fork. The fork is altogether a modern invention. 
 Knightly and fair fingers came into primary rela- 
 tions with boiled and roast, — a fashion more primi- 
 tive than nice, especially when we add the absence 
 of napkins. 
 
 On the whole, mediaeval life appears more at- 
 tractive in the field than it does within doors ; it 
 shows better at a distance than it does on close 
 inspection; and loses much of the bloom of its 
 romance when we bring it fairly before us in its 
 practical details. 
 
 And yet we see only its best features as it passes 
 before us in the current history of the time. We 
 see knights, nobles, and priests, — that class which 
 in every age is most independent of circumstances, 
 most able to help itself. We see little or nothing 
 
ESSAYS. 121 
 
 of the weaker classes, -which form in every age so 
 large a constituent of society. In mediaeval as in 
 Greek and Roman civilization, the laboring classes, 
 distinctively so called, were mostly slaves. 
 
 The origin of slavery in the Middle Age was 
 various. We find it existing among the German 
 aborigines before their migration. Their slaves 
 were either prisoners of war or criminals, or such 
 as had staked their liberty at the gaming-table, 
 and who probably lost nothing by exchanging 
 bondage to a passion for bondage to an individual. 
 The German tribes, when they migrated, took their 
 slaves with them. They found slavery existing in 
 the territories which they conquered. The Franks 
 found servi and coloni in Roman Gaul, and the 
 Normans found thralls and ceorls in Saxon Eng- 
 land. Thus mediaeval bondage was in part the 
 continuation of a previous institution. Another 
 source of bondage, which seems strange to us, was 
 self-sale. In that terrible period of anarchy, vio- 
 lence, and famine which preceded the age of Hil- 
 debrand, many a poor freeman was induced to sell 
 his liberty for a maintenance, his person for bread. 
 It was a choice of evils, in which, provided the 
 master were humane, the servile alternative to a 
 aungry and peaceably disposed man was the more 
 tolerable. A North American savage would have 
 chosen differently. 
 
122 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Another cause of self-sale, and another source of 
 bondage still more abhorrent to modern ideas, was 
 the piety which induced some to sell themselves to 
 monasteries and religious establishments for the 
 benefit of their prayers. In this case we know not 
 which more to admire, — the price of intercession, 
 or the faith in intercession which was willing to 
 pay that price. 
 
 The condition of the Jews in the Middle Age 
 was a kind of bondage peculiar to that period. 
 The Christian world conceived itself charged with 
 the duty of avenging on this wretched people the 
 sins of their fathers. General massacres, sanc- 
 tioned or connived at by government, from time 
 to time gave vent to this retributory spite. In the 
 absence of these, all kinds of exactions and oppres- 
 sions distinguished the hated race. In the city 
 of Toulouse it was customary for a priest at the 
 Easter festival publicly to smite a Jew on the 
 cheek at the gate of the principal church. Sis- 
 mondi relates that on one occasion a powerful 
 ecclesiastic felled to the earth and killed his vic- 
 tim with this paschal blow. The Jews in each city 
 had a separate quarter assigned to them for their 
 residence, where they were locked up at nightfall. 
 They were forced to wear a yellow patch or horned 
 hat, or other distinguishing badge, which indicated 
 at the first sight the abhorred people. Two re- 
 
ESSA YS. 123 
 
 markable facts illustrate the indomitable vigor and 
 vitality of this wondrous race. One is that, with 
 such inducements to abandon the religion of their 
 fathers, they seldom embraced the Christian faith. 
 The other is that, with all these oppressions and 
 obstructions, they still throve, they grew rich. 
 The commerce of the time was chieiiy in their 
 hands. They supplied the exchequer of kings and 
 nobles, and are said in the time of Philip Augustus 
 to have possessed one half of the city of Paris. 
 
 Such was the state of society in Europe between 
 the ninth and fourteenth centuries. Its distin- 
 guishing feature, as compared with modern life, 
 is rigid separation, seclusion, no central power, no 
 free communication, no social flow, no point of 
 union but the Church. The few cities were sharply 
 defined against the surrounding country by pro- 
 tecting walls. Within those walls the various 
 classes and vocations were jealously screened and 
 confined by traditionary guilds and corporations. 
 In the country, instead of the open villages, ham- 
 lets, and farms of modern civilization, the traveller 
 found here and there the secluded monastery, with 
 its of&ces and patches of cultivation, or the feudal 
 castle perched on the brow of a hill, with its clus- 
 tering huts nestling in anxious dependence around 
 its base, the communicating drawbridge ever up, 
 the warder on the tower forever on the watch to 
 
124 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 detect the distant enemy. The City, the Monas- 
 tery, the Castle, — these were the three enclosures 
 which contained the three forms of mediaeval life. 
 All around and between a blank wilderness ; and 
 each of these settlements, the civic, the ecclesi- 
 astic, and the feudal, self-contained, self-complete, 
 and as separate from the rest of the world as if 
 divided by intervening seas, — no openness, no ex- 
 pansion, no public, no society but the pent-up life 
 contained within the precincts of each particular 
 fold. Feudalism developed individuality, it made 
 marked and strong men; but all its conditions 
 were adverse to civil order. 
 
 There is nothing so difficult in history as to 
 form a correct idea of the private life of past ages. 
 Public life records itself in public monuments and 
 written chronicles. But that which we most de- 
 sire to know is precisely that which history does 
 not reveal. What humanity most desires to know 
 of the past is man, — humanity in its common 
 domestic aspects and functions, the daily ordinary 
 life of ordinary men. Not how monarchs ruled 
 and warriors fought and nobles feasted, but how 
 John and Thomas sped and fared in their daily 
 tasks and fortunes ; what was their programme for 
 the day and for the year ; how they amused them- 
 selves in the intervals of labor ; what clothes they 
 wore, and what was the cost of them, and what 
 
ESSAYS. 125 
 
 they had for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Of 
 battles fought by nations and tribes on public 
 fields the old chronicles have given us abundant 
 details. We accept these with all gratitude ; but 
 we would also know of the daily battle of life, with 
 what conditions and with what success it was 
 fought on the common level by common men. Of 
 this no record has survived ; but we are safe in as- 
 suming that the net result and absolute gain in 
 this warfare was the same to mediaeval man that 
 it is to modern, — that, with all their defects of 
 means and accommodations, they extracted as much 
 of the pure juice of life from their hard condition 
 as we do from ours. 
 
 With aU the progress humanity has made in 
 other arts and kinds, there has been no progress 
 in the art of life, if the art of life is to fill the 
 twenty-four hours with the greatest number of 
 pleasing sensations or the greatest amount of pro- 
 fitable experience or profitable action. Every fa- 
 cility and every accommodation — mechanical, 
 economical, literary — which advancing civilization 
 brings with it, is compensated by corresponding re- 
 quisitions ; and the labor of life for the individual 
 is nowise superseded by it. The conditions may 
 change, but the problem of life is ever the same. 
 In every age the problem for the individual is how 
 to make the most of a day, — to fill up the given 
 
126 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 mould of existence with an adequate flow of con- 
 scious life. The mould is the same in the nine- 
 teenth century that it was in the ninth ; and the 
 filling up is no easier now than it was then, and no 
 more likely to be satisfactory. 
 
 The question which humanity asks of an age is 
 not how fast it travels, nor with what despatch it 
 gets tidings from abroad, nor how many printed 
 sheets or yards of cloth it can turn out in a given 
 time by steam-press and power-loom ; but what has 
 it added to the sum of human ideas and human well- 
 being, what spiritual growths have been perfected 
 by it. Tried by this test, it is doubtful if steam, 
 gas, and electro-magnetism have done more for 
 man than feudalism and chivalry. They have mul- 
 tiplied the facilities of life without changing in the 
 least its essential quality. They have shortened 
 the distance from point to point in space, but there 
 is no railroad to happiness. No art has yet been 
 discovered to shorten the distance between the 
 ideal and the real, between desire and satisfaction, 
 between here and there. 
 
 Historic progress is not of men, but of man. 
 Individuals are relatively no wiser and no better 
 from age to age ; but humanity advances all the 
 while with sure and steady pace, receiving contri- 
 butions from each successive period, and gaining 
 something vrith every century which it adds to its 
 
ESSAYS. 127 
 
 dateless life. The ages we have been considering 
 have contributed their full share to this millennial 
 growth ; and, dark as they seem compared with 
 our own, they record themselves as real and sub- 
 stantial additions to humanity's increase. The 
 final result of all these contributions — the great 
 human product, the consummate fruit of history — 
 may require for its full maturation and perfection 
 as many ages, perhaps, as were needed to prepare 
 the earth for the first of human kind. Geology 
 traces the steps of that process through all its 
 periods and formations, and shows how each suc- 
 cessive revolution contributed its part, how each age 
 deposited its layer and arranged the materials and 
 adjusted the mixture, until the mountains were 
 brought forth, the valleys scooped, the minerals 
 baked, the loam matured, and the finished planet, 
 with all its earths, ores, granite, slate, coal, iron, 
 gold, was compounded and compacted, clothed with 
 vegetation, and delivered up to its human occupant 
 to subdue, replenish, and enjoy. So period-wise 
 and complex, as witnessed by history, will be the 
 composition and growth of historic man. Stratum 
 upon stratum of knowledges and ideas the centu- 
 ries will deposit in him. Eevolution upon revolu- 
 tion will compact his culture. One civilization 
 after another will be absorbed in his blood. Indian 
 and Egyptian myths, Hebrew faiths, G-reek and 
 
128 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Italian art and song, feudalism, chivalry, mediaeval 
 sanctities, will melt into the heart of him. What- 
 ever of promise and of blessing the travails of 
 humanity have brought forth, whatever of en- 
 during worth the accumulated labors of all gen- 
 erations have compiled, whatever the tempest and 
 the calm of time have proved and perfected, will 
 make up the funded wealth of his complex nature. 
 And, so replenished and matured, he will come in 
 his kingdom, a universal Man, with the wisdom of 
 all time for his intelligence, with the art of all 
 time for his faculty, and the riches of all time for 
 his estate. 
 
CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 AN ORATION DELIVBEBD BEFOKE THE «. B. K. SOCIETY OF 
 HAKVAKD COLLEGE AT THEIR FIRST MEETING AFTER 
 THE CHANGE IN THEIR CONSTITUTION ENLARGING 
 THE TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 Gentlemen of the *• B. K. Society, — 
 
 ■f T 7E are met for the first time under the new 
 ^ " and more liberal aspect which this associa- 
 tion now wears. I congratulate you on the change 
 in our Constitution and on the unanimity with 
 which it has been adopted. If in yielding up 
 something of that exclusiveness which heretofore 
 characterized us we have seemed to compromise 
 our ground-idea, the original import of this insti- 
 tution, that compromise is not a forced capitula- 
 tion to popular prejudice, but a free surrender to 
 the genius of the age, before whose progress old 
 limitations are fast disappearing, as the charmed 
 circle which bounds our dreams dissolves with the 
 morning sun. 
 
 A good spirit prompts these concessions, which 
 forestall by a wise policy the revolutions of time. 
 It is well to greet the sun at his coming, to court 
 the blessing of the morning with early vows. 
 
 9 
 
130 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 There comes a time when the Past must give 
 account of itself to the Present, when existing cus- 
 toms and institutions must judge themselves or be 
 iftdgeji Whatsoever lacks vitality enough to ac- 
 commodate itself to the new ideas that rule the 
 time is judged by those ideas and thrust aside, as 
 the new foliage judges and extrudes the last year's 
 growth. 
 
 Progress is the characteristic of modern Chris- 
 tian civilization, which herein, as Guizot and others 
 have shown us, is chiefly distinguished from the 
 fixed ideas of the Asian mind. Our culture is Ori- 
 ental in its origin ; but who distinguishes the fea- 
 tures of the parent in the fortunes of the child ? 
 We gaze upon the river as it hastens to the sea, 
 city-skirted, traffic-swarming; but who remembers 
 the "mountains old" in whose silent bosom that 
 river had its rise ? 
 
 Eternal movement is the characteristic and des- 
 tiny of the modern mind. Or shall we rather say, 
 the movement is old like the earth's movement in 
 space, and only the discovery of it new ? The 
 earth's movement in space, it is now believed, is 
 not merely the ever-repeated cycle which consti- 
 tutes the solar year, but a portion of some vaster 
 orbit which is carrying us toward unknown firma- 
 ments. Let us believe also that history is not 
 merely periodical, but progressive. But the prog- 
 
ESSAYS. 131 
 
 ress of society is never ■wholly a unanimous move- 
 inentj its judgment is never a unanimous verdict. 
 Our motion in time, like motion in space, is sub- 
 ject to a contrary power. AU^civilization is a con- 
 flict of opposite forces. While Faith instinctively 
 gravitates to the new, Fear, with eyes behind, as 
 instinctively clings to the old. According as one 
 or the other of these elements predominates, the 
 mind is drawn into one or the other of two oppo- 
 site directions, — Conservatism, Reform. These 
 two tendencies at present divide the world, — Con- 
 servatism and Reform ; the old and the new. All 
 forces, opinions, men, and things are enlisted in 
 this conflict, arrange themselves around one or 
 the other of these opposite poles. A word as to 
 the scholar's place and function in this ^warfare 
 has seemed to me the topic most apposite to the 
 present occasion. 
 
 In Germany and France, where letters consti- 
 tute the first interest in the State next to the 
 State itself, the learned are easily drawn to new 
 views, and are usually reformers in their respec- 
 tive spheres. In England, on the contrary, and 
 in this country, where letters are subordinate to 
 business and to property, the conservative influ- 
 ence predominates, and the scholar is seldom quite 
 abreast with his time. The superior ability dis- 
 played in the Tory journals of Great Britain, com- 
 
132 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 pared with those of the Liberal party, shows clearly 
 to which side, in politics, at least, the literary tal- 
 ent of that nation inclines. The same illustration 
 may not hold with us, yet is our own literature 
 too deeply imbued with English influence not to 
 exhibit essentially the same trait. Strong attach- 
 ment to existing forms, and a consequent distrust 
 of all that wants the authority of age and numbers, 
 must be regarded as the characteristic tendency 
 of the educated classes in either country. It is 
 impossible to say how much of this tendency, in 
 our own case, may be owing to near contact with 
 an unlettered democracy which acts repulsively on 
 the scholar, or how much, in either case, may be 
 the natural growth of the English mind, — a form 
 of intellect, in all periods, more conversant with 
 facts than with ideas. 
 
 However this may be, let us honor whatever 13 
 praiseworthy in Conservatism, — its deference to 
 authority, and its veneration for the Past. Let us 
 honor authority. Not that which another imposes, 
 "But that which ourselves create. We must not 
 look upon authority as something incompatible 
 with the rights and freedom of the individual 
 mind, compelling assent to forms of belief which 
 the mind, if left to itself, would never adopt. This 
 view of the subject confounds the effect with the 
 cause. It is not authority that usurps, but the 
 
ESSAYS. 133 
 
 sluggish, slavish mind that concedes such power. 
 It is not the idol that makes the idolater, but the 
 reverse. The power of authority is purely subjec- 
 tive. Its character is our own. On ourselves it 
 depends whether it shall be to us a law of liberty 
 or a law of restraint; a goad or a guide. "With 
 well-regulated minds it is the natural expression 
 of a noble sentiment, the testimony of a reverent 
 and grateful spirit to intellectual or moral power ; 
 the confidence we feel in an individual or a sys- 
 tem, founded on personal experience of their wis- 
 dom and worth, — a conviction that what has 
 approved itself in one particular is trustworthy 
 in all, as the stamp of a well-known manufacturer 
 guarantees the article so marked. 
 
 No doubt this faith may sometimes mislead. 
 We may carry our confidence too far. We may 
 exaggerate the worth of a name, and do injustice 
 to ourselves in our implicit reliance on another's 
 thought. Still, the principle is one on which the 
 majority of mankind have always acted, and will 
 always act. The first glance at society shows us 
 how little men are disposed to rely on themselves, 
 and how, with the greater portion, authority seems 
 to be a necessity of their nature. The common 
 mind instinctively flies to some accredited source 
 in quest of the light which it does not find in 
 itself. The existence of oracles, Christian and 
 
134 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 pagan, from ancient Dodona to modern Eome, 
 attests this fact. Those oracles have ceased or 
 are ceasing; but the faith in oracles is no whit 
 abated. There is no difference here between Rad- 
 ical and Conservative. However they may differ 
 'in the authorities to which they appeal, how- 
 ever the one may build on an ancient church and 
 the other on a modern heresy, the need of author- 
 ity is felt equally by both. Whether this ought 
 so to be, we have not now to decide. Such is the 
 fact; all our civilization is built upon it. All 
 civilization consists in a series of provisions to 
 meet this want. The merit of Conservatism is 
 that it recognizes this want, and gives it its place 
 among the facts of the soul. 
 
 There is another view of this subject. Authority 
 is not only a guide to the blind, but a law to the 
 seeing. It is not only a safe-conduct to those (and 
 they constitute the larger portion of mankind) 
 whose dormant sense has no intuitions of its own, 
 but we have also to consider it as affording the 
 awakened but inconstant mind a security against 
 itself, a centfe of reference in the multitude of its 
 own visions, in the conflict of its own volitions a 
 centre of rest. Unbounded license is equally an 
 evil and equally incompatible with true liberty, 
 in thought as in action. In the one as in the other, 
 liberty must bound and bind itself for its own pres- 
 
ESSAYS. 135 
 
 ervation a nd best eff ect ; it must legalize and 
 d eterm ine ItseH by self -imposed law s. La w and 
 liberty are not adverse, but different sides of one 
 fact. The deeper the law, the greater the liberty ; 
 as organic life is at once more determinate and 
 more free than unorganized matter, a plant than a 
 stone, a bird than a plant. The intellectual life,- 
 like the physical, must bind itself in order that it 
 may become effective and free. It m ust organize 
 itsjilf~by-meana_aLfisfid>.pjiiiciples which_ shall pro- 
 tectit equally against encroachment without and 
 anarehy within. It is in vain^at I have been 
 emancipated from foreign oppression, while I am 
 still the slave of my own wayward moods. We 
 jwant not only liberty^but direction ; not movement 
 only, but method. Our speculations have no abso- 
 lute ground or evidence in themselves, but vary 
 with the moods they reflect. To-day I am occupied 
 with one set of opinions, to-morrow with another. 
 Now my faith is equal to the most attenuated 
 mysticism; anon first axioms will seem doubtful. 
 Every thought justifies itself to the state which pro- 
 duced it ; but thare is none which answers to all 
 states. Who will jnsure me that the clearest con- 
 victions of to-day shall abide the criticism of to- 
 roorrow ? Or where, in this heaving and shoreless 
 chaos, shall I find the system and repose which my 
 spirit craves ? It is precisely here that authority 
 
136 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 comes ipj not as a hostile, but a Yoluntary power, — 
 ajSat of the will lilie that which projected a uni- 
 verse in space, an original determination in the 
 mind itself, a constructive principle around which 
 speculation may gather and grow to an articulate 
 faith, and the blind chaos become an intelligible 
 world. 
 
 Such is the value of authority to the individual 
 in forming his individual faith. But we are to 
 consider, farther, — what should never be forgotten 
 in these inquiries, — that man is not an individual 
 merely. He is not complete in himself; like a 
 single organ, an eye, a leaf, he is perfect only in 
 connection with the system to which he belongs. 
 It was written of old, " It is not good for man to be 
 alone ; " and therefore he was made many, and ap- 
 pears, in the ancient mytJius, to have first become 
 conscious of his own nature when he saw himself 
 reflected in a kindred form. Man is still many, 
 .and Jiot ime. . He is not complete in himselfj^he is^ 
 not intelligible in himself alone. Whether we con- 
 sider him as animal or as spirit, society is the com- 
 plement and solution of his individual nature. His 
 relation to society is twofold. On the side of his 
 earthly nature he belongs to ^the State '^ on the side 
 of his intellectual he belongs^ to the Church. By 
 Church is not meant the particular communions 
 which are usually designated by that name, but the 
 
ESSAYS. 137 
 
 ■whole circle of ideas and influences within which 
 the spiritual culture of an age or people is com- 
 prised, as Islamism, Mosaism, Christianity. And 
 •when I say that man belongs to the Church, I do 
 not mean that the individual may not in some cases 
 feel himself more at home without it ; as in some 
 cases he may please himself by withdrawing from 
 the State and shutting himself out from all com- 
 munion with his kind. But such cases are excep- 
 tions. _The rule_ is that the individual finds in 
 ^hurch,_as in State, his most congenial sphere. 
 "Within this sphere, in the Church as in the State, 
 authority is the regulative and even constitutive 
 principle, without which no society could exist. 
 But here, too, authority is not to be conceived as a 
 hostile, compulsory force, but as a necessary re- 
 ference in the uncertainty of clashing views and 
 minds, as an appeal of the Spirit from itself to 
 itself, from its lower instances to its higher, from 
 its morbid states and wild wanderings, its incon- 
 sistencies, doubts, and errors, to the standing mon- 
 uments of its own inspiration, — old Tradition, 
 and the written Word of those prophetic souls 
 whom the Church reveres as " foremost of her true 
 servants," 
 
 " Among the enthroned Gods on sainted seats." 
 
 This I take to have been the idea intended in the 
 Catholic Church when that Church asserted its own 
 
138 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 infallibility. It could not have meant to assert ab- 
 solutely and unconditionally what the very fact of 
 its deliberative councils disproved. The infallibil- 
 ity assumed was only a more emphatic annoimce- 
 ment of that authority by which every society 
 provides for the final arbitrament of litigated ques- 
 tions in its own sphere, and which the Catholic 
 Church could claim, with peculiar propriety, on the 
 allowed supposition of a Divine Spirit copresent to 
 every period and phase of its development. The 
 design was not to subject the mind, but to build it 
 up ; not to enforce a particular scheme of faith, but 
 to offer guidance and repose to darkling and weary 
 souls. The Protestant eye detects the danger to 
 individual liberty which lurks in this pretension, 
 but not its deeper reason in the nature of a Church, 
 nor its justification in the fact that every Protes- 
 tant Church has, in substance, repeated the claim, 
 with no greater modification than the temper of 
 the times required. 
 
 There is another element in Conservatism, inti- 
 mately associated with its deference to authority, 
 and equally entitled to respect. I mean its ven- 
 eration for the Past. Veneration for the Past 
 must not be confounded with that slavish attach- 
 ment to ancient uses, into which, it must be 
 confessed, the conservative spirit too easily degen- 
 erates. Here, as elsewhere, a good principle is dia- 
 
ESSAYS. 139 
 
 honored by excess, and here, as elsewhere, it is 
 common to visit the excess on the principle itself. 
 The true veneration for the Past consists in a vivid 
 sense of what we owe to the Past, — a devout 
 acknowledgment of the good amassed by the ages 
 which jpreceded iis, and the influence which they 
 have on our own well being and doing,. This ac- 
 knowledgment is particularly incumbent on the 
 scholar, for he, above all men, is most indebted to 
 the Past. Him all the ages have conspired to 
 mould and to train. His education comprises the 
 flower of all time. How many mind s ha ve gone to 
 gducate^that one ! What wealth of genius and of 
 toil has been spent in rearing the harvest which he 
 reaps ! The legacies of nations compose his li- 
 brary. The whole of civilization is condensed in 
 his text-books. For him Athenian art and Roman 
 virtue. For him the victors at Corinth and Olym- 
 pia won their crowns. For him ancient Tragedy 
 composed her fables. For him Herodotus observed, 
 and Plato mused, and Csesar commented, and Cicero 
 plead. His culture, — which who of us does not 
 feel to be our better part, the life of our life, 
 the whole astounding difference between the ripe 
 scholar and the naked savage ? — what is it but the 
 concentration in one individual of unnumbered 
 minds ? 
 
 And not the scholar only, but the individual in 
 
140 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 every walk of life, is the product of all that has 
 transpired before his day. His ancestry comprise 
 the whole family of man. All ages and men unite 
 in every influence which goes to form his character 
 and to shape his destiny. He is born into certain 
 relations, traditions, opinions, institutions, all of 
 which, if we trace their growth through all preced- 
 ing generations, will be found to involve the larger 
 portion of the world's history in their formation 
 and descent. To select one instance out of this 
 complex mass, let us look at language, which 
 affects so powerfully the character and life of civil- 
 ized man. The individual is born to the use of a 
 certain language, we will say the English. That 
 language is compounded of how many races and 
 climes ! It comes to us through how many chan- 
 nels of Roman, Saxon, Norman history ! All the 
 nations whose dialects have emptied into this vo- 
 cabulary have imparted to it some peculiar trait. 
 Had there never been a Hengist or a Caesar, there 
 never could have been an English tongue. "We 
 cannot open our mouths without commemorating, 
 in the very sounds we utter, events and names of 
 distant renown. The household words which first 
 strike our ear are echoes of another age and a 
 pagan world. 
 
 But this is not all. What more particularly 
 concerns us in this connection is the fact that Ian- 
 
ESSAYS. 141 
 
 guage is thought, fixed and crystallized in signs 
 and sounds, conditioned by all the peculiarities, 
 historical and organic, of the nation which uses it. 
 The mind of a people imprints itself in its speech, 
 as the light in a picture of Daguerre. The Eng- 
 lish language is the English mind. We who use^ 
 the language partake of this mind. Our individ- 
 ual genius, be it never so individual, is informed by 
 it, and can never wholly divest itself of its influ- 
 ejice. It may be doubted if the most abstract and 
 original thinker, in his attempts to construct an 
 absolute system of philosophy, can so abstract 
 himself in his speculations, can reason so abso- 
 lutely, but that the genius of his language shall ap- 
 pear as a constituent element in his system. For 
 the words he employs are not algebraic signs 
 which every new speculator may employ at pleas- 
 ure to express ever new relations. They are con- 
 stant quantities ; they have a fixed value imparted 
 to them by other minds, which he who employs 
 them must accept, and which will go far to modify 
 the results of his speculations. Hence the diffi- 
 culty of expressing the poetry or the metaphysics 
 of one nation in the language of another. The 
 most successful efforts in this kind are but a com- 
 promise between the native and the foreign mind. 
 
 Again, the individual is born into some particu- 
 lar church or form of faith, which, whether he 
 
142 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 accepts it or not in after life, must needs exert a 
 very important influence in the formation of his 
 mind. He is born, for example, into Christianity, 
 
 — into a Protestant Christian Church. Here, too, 
 we notice the same confluence of relations extend- 
 ing through all regions and times. Besides the 
 doctrine and the life of Jesus, how many systems 
 and traditions, creeds and facts, have gone to make 
 or modify that Church ! Jewish theology, pagan 
 philosophy, Romish councils, GhibbeUine factions, 
 and Protestant reforms, — these influences again 
 are connected with others, and still others, and so 
 on through a^oundless complexity of cause and 
 effect, reaching back to the Flood. 
 
 Such is the individual ; so compounded and con- 
 ,,ditioned, he comes into life. He is the product of^ 
 all the Past, ^owever he may renounce the con- 
 nection, he Js_alway8^ the child of his time. He^ 
 can never entii-ely shake off that relation. All 
 the efforts made to outstrip, time, to anticipate the 
 natural growth of man by a violent disruption of 
 old ties and a total separation from the Past, have 
 hitherto proved useless, or useful, if at all, in the 
 way of caution rather than of fruit. The experi- 
 ment has often been tried. Men of ardent temper 
 and lively imagination, impatient of existing evils, 
 
 — from which no period is exempt, — have re- 
 nounced society, broken loose from all their moor- 
 
ESSAYS. 143 
 
 ings in the actual, and sought in the boundless sea 
 of Dissent the promised land of Eeform. They 
 found what they carried, they carried what they 
 were, they were what we all are, — the offspring of 
 their time. 
 
 The aeronaut who spurns the earth in his puffed 
 balloon is still indebted to it for his impetus and 
 his wings ; and still with his utmost efforts he 
 cannot escape the sure attraction of the parent 
 sphere. His floating island is a part of her main. 
 He revolves with her orbit, he is sped by her 
 winds. We who stand below and watch his mo- 
 tions know that he is one of us. He may dally 
 with the clouds awhile, but his home is not there. 
 Earth he is, and to earth he must return. 
 
 The most air-blown reformer cannot overcome 
 the moral gravitation which connects him with his 
 time. He owes to existing institutions the whole 
 philosophy of his dissent, and draws from Church 
 and State the very ideas by which he would fight 
 against them or rise above them. The individual 
 may withdraw from society, he may spurn at all 
 the uses of civilized life, dasli the golden cup of 
 tradition from his lips, and flee to the wilderness 
 "where the wild asses quench their thirst." He 
 may find others who wUl accompany him in his 
 flight; but let him not fancy that the course of 
 reform will foUow him there, that any permanent 
 
144 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 organization. can be based on dissentj that society 
 ! will relinquish the hard conquests of so many 
 { years, and return again to original nature, wipe 
 ! out the old civilization, and with rasa tabula begin 
 I the world anew. 
 
 Man's progress is a natural, not a voluntary 
 growth. A divine education is evolving in eternal 
 procession the divine soul. Tlie pupil of the ages, 
 he proceeds in the fore-written order of events to 
 recover his faded image and his lost estate. The 
 true reformers are they who accept this divine 
 order and humbly co-operate withjt, instead of 
 seeking to originate one of their own; who sow, 
 like Jesus, the kingdom of God in the midst of the 
 kingdoms of the world, and trust to 
 
 " Blossoming time, 
 'Which from seedness the bare fallow brings 
 To teeming foison." 
 
 There is no stand-point out of society from which 
 
 I society can be reformed^ " Give me where to stand," 
 
 was the ancient postulate. " Find where to stand," 
 
 ; says modem Dissent. " Stand where you are," said 
 
 ' iaoethe, " and move the world." 
 
 In this defence of GonservatismLit has been my 
 aim to discriminate, in the general confusion of 
 false and true which accompanies that tendency, 
 the two principles on which it may fairly ground 
 
ESSAYS. 145 
 
 a claim to the sympathy and support of educated 
 men. I have endeavored to do full justice to a 
 cause, whose real significance, there is reason to 
 fear, is as little appreciated by the mass of those 
 who espouse it as by those who oppose. But let 
 _Cqnservatism, on the other hand, do justice to 
 Reform. 
 
 In approaching this part of my subject I feel 
 bound to confess that the actual Conservatism 
 of the present day is in the great majority of 
 cases based on no such ground as that which I 
 have indicated. It is with most men a mere preju- 
 dice, which does not care to justify itself in its own 
 eyes. Its advocates, so far from recognizing the 
 ideas expressed in the various reformatory move- 
 ments which are going on around them, will not 
 even recognize those on which their own cause de- 
 pends. Ideas of all_kinds are jtotastef ul to them. 
 Their ritual palate abhors these Gentile meats. 
 They relish no arguments but appeals to custom 
 and to fear. Approach them with philosophical 
 explanations of their own views, and their sour 
 looks confess how much they loathe the bitter drug : 
 et ora tristia tentantium sensu torquebit amaror; 
 all philosophy is to them suspect, and has a 
 guilty, revolutionary look. They see a traitor be- 
 neath the stole. You are not for a moment to 
 admit that their cause can require such support, as 
 
146 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 if tradition were not sufficient for itself. You are 
 expected to assume the whole burden of the Past on 
 the simple credit of th¥ Past Take no counsel 
 of modern discoveries. OnceL.admit-an^ argument 
 based on the soul, and you betray the cause. It 
 is only substituting a ruse for an onset, sap for 
 storm. All such weapons are forged by the ad- 
 versary. "We are not ignorant of his devices." 
 The only safety is in planting yourself immovably 
 on the letter, and availing yourself of such protec- 
 tion as property and numbers, popular prejudice 
 and the fear of change, the anathemas of the 
 Church and the terrors of the law, have thrown 
 around you. But beware how you parley with 
 Reason. You must not tamper with ideas. To 
 speculate is to surrender, to reason is to capitu- 
 late, to examine is to yield. 
 
 However practicable this methods of. maintaining- 
 orthodoxy may once have been, it is not practicable^ 
 now. The age of menace and high-toned defiance 
 in matters of faith has set, never to rise again on 
 this quarter of the globe. The order of the old 
 world is reversed. Inquisition has gone over to 
 the side of Freedom. Reason ^s the grand inquis- 
 itor in these latter days. Her high court of last 
 appeal is holding a long assize on all human things. 
 Every opinion must come to that bar. The only 
 policy for an enlightened Conservatism, in this day 
 
ESSAYS. 147 
 
 of judgment, is to confront Reason with Reason, — 
 to show the philosopher that his philosophy is com- 
 prehended and seen through by a philosophy older 
 than his, and that beneath those inquiries which 
 he deems so profound, deeper than Schelling 
 sounded or Hegel drew, below the storm and the 
 strife of the schools, there lies a region of perpet- 
 ual calm, where rest the rock-foundations of Church 
 and State, and where gushes in secret the ever- 
 lasting fountain which he who drinketh shall thirst 
 no more. 
 
 Let the conservative do justice to Reform, and 
 while he guards with priestly care the ancient 
 sanctities of heart and life, let him cheerfully con- 
 cede whatever of falsehood and corruption and 
 obsolete value has „gathfirjed around them, where- 
 by Truth, in the language of Lord Bolingbroke, is 
 made to resemble "those artificial beauties who 
 hide their defects under dress and paint." Pars 
 minima est ipsa puella sui. To deny the existence 
 of errors jtndLthe need of reform in Government 
 and Religion, is only to repeat the folly and renew 
 the evils of past centuries; it is only to provoke 
 a violent disruption where timely concessions might 
 heal the breach. Consider, too, what manner of j 
 men they are who engage in the work of Reform./ 
 Some of them, doubtless, men of depraved ambi-| 
 tion, whose only aim is to ride into power on the ^ 
 
148 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 top of some excitement into which they have lashed 
 the puhlic mind. But there are others of a differ- 
 ent spirit, — men of rare virtue and austere lives, 
 
 " Who by due steps aspire 
 To lay their just hands on the golden key 
 That opes the palace of eternity; " 
 
 men who resist not evil,^but encounter force with 
 meekness, and oppose the breastplate of an indom- 
 itable patience to gibes and sneers ; men who have 
 learned to subdue and deny themselves, simple 
 Irvers, who know neither flesh nor wine, and taste 
 " no pleasant bread," but nourish their great souls 
 with earnest faith and living hope. 
 
 Think how vain, in dealing with such, are men- 
 ace and persecution and aU power but truth. Men 
 who can live on roots and ideas are not easily 
 daimted or overcome. They may be counted upon 
 as sure to effect something, provided they keep 
 themselves sane. It is related of Benjamin Frank- 
 lin that when opposed in some literary enterprise, 
 he invited his opponents to supper, and setting 
 before them his usual coarse fare, bade them take 
 notice that the man who could subsist on such diet 
 was not to be put down. Such are the resources 
 and qualifications which these reformers bring to 
 their task. Grounded in principles and armed with 
 ideas, by idea8~arid principles only can they be 
 
ESSAYS. 149 
 
 overcome. Concede to them what is just, that you 
 may the better resist their unjust demands, and 
 imit'afe the conservative policy of physical science 
 by guiding the heaven-born fire which you cannot j 
 quench. The wild forces of Nature yield only toj 
 Nature's laws. 1 
 
 Avoiding particular applications of this piolicy to ' 
 the controverted questions of the day, let me speak 
 of it generally, as it relates to men and to ideas. 
 
 First, as it relates to men. There is no one 
 point in which the moral difference between the 
 Past and the Present is so conspicuous as it is in 
 the growing respect f pr Humanity, now manifest 
 wherever the spirit of modern civilization is dis- 
 tinctly heard. Every authentic movement of that 
 spirit asserts, in ever more emphatic terms, the 
 divine idea of human brotiierhood, the„-vs:Qxth of the 
 individualTThe identity of our common naturejn 
 all its ^isegi and the .fundamental equality whicj^ . 
 exists under all the adventitious distinctions ,pf 
 social liffiv It is chiefly as the largest and most 
 adequate expression yet given to these ideas that 
 the form of government under which we live is 
 entitled to our regard. It is_as the champion of 
 these ideas that the democratic elenient has ac- 
 quired such jrpminencp. among us, and is even 
 made attractive to spmejwhpse, early ^asspjciations 
 point in a different direction. 
 
150 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 Seldom does it happen, howeyer, that this at- 
 traction is felt to any considerable extent by the 
 scholar, or that the ideas in question obtain, with 
 j the educated men of our country, thalLEractifiaLac. 
 knowlfidgaaeBt which they deserve. The scholar is 
 apt to stand aloof from the people, as if, in cul- 
 /tivatin^ the "_humamtie^'^ he had laid his own^ 
 humanity aside ; not considering that the popular 
 interest is made his peculiar trust by those very 
 advantages on which his exclusiveness is based. 
 
 It is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that the 
 scholar should become a demagogue, that he 
 should " give up to party what was meant for man- 
 kind," that he should " so completely vanquish 
 all the mean superstitions of the heart " as to sully 
 himself with the vile details of electioneering cam- 
 paigns ; least of all that they who have been called 
 to be " fishers of men," in the high, apostolic sense 
 of that calling, should quit their proper sphere to 
 cast secular nets in the muddy waters of political 
 intrigue. Vain were our colleges if such the des- 
 tination of those whom they train. It needs no 
 learned institutions to institute men in arts like 
 these, where the graduate of the bar-room shall 
 render ridiculous the diplomas of Harvard or Yale. 
 
 But it is necessary to his own growth and influ- 
 ence that the scholar should honor Humanity, and 
 greet it frankly in whatsoever guise; that he 
 
ESSA YS. 161 
 
 should respect his own likeness in the common 
 mind, and in every debasement of conventional 
 life meet his brother man without reserve, in the 
 name of that common image and the sympathy of 
 that one blood which binds and equals all. It 
 is desirable that the American scholar should 
 practically acknowledge those ideas and institu- 
 tions whose contemporary and subject it is his 
 privilege to be; that he should not falsify his 
 nativity by affecting to despise the peculiar bless- 
 ings it confers. He must not coquet, in imagina- 
 tion, with the dowered and titled institutions of 
 the Old "World, and feel it a mischance which has 
 matched him with a portionless Eepublic. Let 
 him rather esteem it a privilege to be so con- 
 nected, and glory in the popular character of his 
 own Government as a genuine fruit of human 
 progress, and the nearest approximation yet made 
 to that divine right which all Governments claim. 
 Let him not think it shame to be with and of the 
 people in every genuine impulse of the popular 
 mind, not suffering the scholar to extinguish the 
 citizen, but remenibering that the citizen isjbefore 
 the scholaxj. the elder and higher category of the 
 two. He shall find himself to have gained .intel- 
 lectually, as^welL as socially, ,bj_ free and frequent 
 intercourse with the people, whos e instinc tai._in- 
 many things, anticipatehis. reflecMie,. wisdom, and 
 
152 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 in whose unconscious movements a fact is often 
 forefelt before it is seen Jbj_ reason j as the physi- 
 cal changes of our globe are felt by the lower 
 animals before they appear to man. Let the 
 scholar of every profession think that he does 
 injustice to that profession, and still greater injus- 
 tice to his own manhood, whenever he cherishes 
 any habit of thought or feeling which tends to 
 seclude him from the people, when he relucts to 
 mingle with them on equal terms as man with 
 man, or when, in any division between the moneyed 
 and the popular interest, he attaches himself ex- 
 clusively to the former. However he may avoid 
 them, they will not avoid him. He may shun their 
 fellowship, but he cannot escape their control. 
 As a citizen he is their equal, as a functionary 
 he is their servant. On all sides he is amenable 
 to their judgment. On all sides they exercise a 
 jurisdiction over him which it is vain to resist and 
 impossible to escape. The only way to secure a 
 favorable verdict is to form one of the council. 
 It is the worst of all policies to cherish exclusive 
 feelings where it is impossible to lead an exclusive 
 life. The odi profanum vulgus, always an un- 
 worthy sentiment, becomes ridiculous where the 
 aroeo is impracticable. 
 
 The same liberality which an enlightened policy 
 demands of the scholar in relation to men, let him 
 
ESSAYS. 153 
 
 exhibit also in relation to ideas and the progress of 
 inquiry on all topics connected with the spiritual 
 nature and destination of man. A certain reserve 
 in relation to new views may be justly expected of 
 him in proportion as his own views are based on 
 personal investigation. The pains bestowed on his 
 inquiries have made him tenacious of their results, 
 as men love money the more, the greater the labor 
 expended in its acquisition. It is only when this re- 
 serve degenerates into peevish intolerance or fierce 
 denunciation, when it assumes to decide ques- 
 tions of a purely speculative character on practical 
 grounds, that it ceases to be philosophical or par- 
 donable or safe. Nothing is more natural than 
 that men who have contributed something in their 
 day to illustrate or extend the path of discovery in 
 any direction should cling with avidity to those 
 conclusions which they have established for them- 
 selves, and which represent the natural boundaries 
 of their own mind, — " the butt and sea-mark of 
 its utmost sail ; " nothing more natural than that 
 they, for their part, should feel a disinclination 
 to farther inquiry. But it ill becomes them to deny 
 the possibility of farther discovery, to maintain 
 that they have found the bottom of the well where 
 Truth lies hid because they have reached the limits 
 of their own specific gravity. One sees at once 
 that in some branches of inquiry this position is 
 
154 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 not only untenable, but the very enunciation of it 
 absurd. It would require something more than the 
 authority of Herschel to make us believe that crea- 
 tion stops with the limits of his forty-feet reflector. 
 Nor would the assertion of Sir Humphry Davy be 
 Bufl&cient to convince us that all the properties of 
 matter have been catalogued in his report. By 
 what statute of limitations are we forbidden to in- 
 dulge the same hope of indefinite progress in every 
 other direction, which remains to us in these? 
 
 Besides, our opposition to new views must not 
 overlook that the course of human thought, on the 
 controverted subjects of philosophy and religion, is 
 not a voluntary movement. The prevalence of 
 certain views at certain periods does not depend 
 on the caprice of those who adopt them. Ideas 
 are not maggots of the brain generated at pleas- 
 ure, nor must we suppose that a system of philos- 
 ophy gains currency in the world because certain 
 individuals who choose to think thus, have set it in 
 motion. These things are ordered by a higher 
 Power. Ideas do not spring from the ground. 
 They are not manufactured, but given. Man is 
 not their author, but their organ. No one who 
 traces with philosophic eye the progress of opin- 
 ions through successive ages can fail to perceive a 
 causal relation between each epoch and the opin- 
 ions it represents. He will see the presence of 
 
ESSAYS. 155 
 
 law in the intellectual creation as in the material. 
 The history of the human mind, like all the pro- 
 cesses of planetary life, has its appointed method, 
 and is from beginning to end a series of evolu- 
 tions, in which every phase is connected by neces- 
 sary sequence with every other phase, and the 
 first movement contains the last. 
 
 " Omnia certo tramite vadunt 
 Primusque dies dedit extremum." 
 
 It does not follow, however, that because certain 
 opinions characterize certain epochs, the individual 
 has no choice of opinions, but must necessarily 
 accept those which belong to his time. The 
 general movement does not preclude individual 
 liberty, but includes it, as all the motions on the 
 earth's surface are included in the earth's orbit. 
 Nor are we justified in supposing that a system of 
 philosophy is necessarily true because a divine 
 order in human affairs has connected the ideas 
 embodied in it with the period in which they ap- 
 pear. The inference is rather that no philosophy 
 is absolutely true, and none entirely false. They 
 are all but so many factors in that process by 
 which truth is continually approximated, and never 
 reached. They alternate one with another, now 
 the sensual, and now the spiritual, as one or the 
 other element in our complex nature requires. 
 
156 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 For the intellectual man, like the physical, can ad- 
 vance only by putting one foot before the other. 
 
 It is from this point of view that we are to judge 
 of the transcendental philosophy (so called), on 
 which the mind of this century divides, and which, 
 though very different views are included in that 
 name, may in some sort be regarded as one system. 
 Regarding it in this light, we shall find it to be 
 neither so glorious nor so vile an apparition as one 
 side and the other would make it. It is not the 
 " pure spirit of health" which its advocates suppose, 
 nor yet the "goblin damned" with the dread of 
 which its adversaries have so needlessly afflicted 
 their souls. It is not destined to supersede other 
 systems, but it is destined to take an equal rank by 
 their side. Setting aside its method and its critique, 
 which constitute its real merit, it has produced 
 nothing as yet which after ages can quote as dis- 
 covery ; but these may be regarded as an actual ad- 
 vance on ages past. As a science of the Absolute it 
 has failed to redeem its high promise, and to place 
 itself on a footing of equality, in point of demon- 
 stration, with the exact sciences. In the enun- 
 ciation of its doctrines, its disciples are liable to 
 the charge of not having sufficiently regarded the 
 wholesome precept of the ancient rhetorician, tan- 
 quam scopulum vites insolens verbum. But with 
 all its faults it will be found, in the final judgment. 
 
ESSA YS. 157 
 
 to have answered, in its degree, the true purpose 
 of metaphysical inquiry, in furnishing a new im- 
 pulse to thought, and enlarging, somewhat, the 
 horizon of life. If Utility object that its sphere 
 lies too remote from earth, let Utility consider it 
 as an observation of the heavens by which the 
 wanderer here below is enabled to shape more 
 correctly his terrestrial course. 
 
 The real or supposed hostility between the prom- 
 inent conceptions of this philosophy and the Chris- 
 tian religion has given it an interest in the minds 
 of some which its own merits would not have pro- 
 cured for it. It is on this ground that war is 
 waged against new views by conservative minds. 
 Were it possible, in the nature of man, that re- 
 ligion could ever cease from the earth, or that any 
 particular form of it could cease, so long as it 
 satisfies a real want of the soul, then the posture 
 of philosophy at this time, as in all time, and 
 not more than in all time, might seem to justify 
 the apprehensions it has caused. We may derive 
 great encouragement, however, from the fact that 
 these fears and fightings are not new. All phi- 
 losophies have encountered the same. When Mr. 
 Locke published his " Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing," which the more cautious among us 
 are now disposed to regard as the only safe phi- 
 losophy, it was impugned, on precisely the same 
 
158 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 ground, by the wise and pious men of that day ; 
 and we are told that the Heads of the several 
 Houses in the University of Oxford, at a special 
 meeting called for that purpose, resolved, if possi- 
 ble, to prevent its being read in their respective 
 colleges. All philosophy which does not assume 
 revelation for its basis will be deemed hostile to 
 revelation by some. Meanwhile Keligion and Phi- 
 losophy have each their separate path, and the 
 gradual progress of human culture can alone me- 
 diate between the two. May we not suppose a 
 threefold development of religion, corresponding 
 with three successive stages of the individual 
 mind, — sense, sentiment, and reason ? A religion 
 addressed to sense we have in the forms and 
 ceremonies of the Catholic Church. A rehgion 
 addressed to sentiment we have in the vehement 
 emotions of the Protestant sects. May we not 
 expect, as the complement of these two, a third 
 epoch, — a religion addressed to Reason, a relig- 
 ion of ideas ? Assuredly Christianity contains 
 within itself the elements of such a church. 
 
 On the whole, we may leave these sacred con- 
 cerns where they have been left by their Guardian 
 and ours. We may trust to Heaven to protect its 
 own, without laying our rash hands upon the ark. 
 
 Nor need the educated dread, on account of 
 others, a tendency which they feel to be innoxious 
 
ESSA YS. 159 
 
 as it respects themselves. Tliere is too much of 
 this groundless apprehension, this superfluous and 
 officious concern in behalf of the popular faith, 
 and too little confidence in the native instincts and 
 clear judgment of the common mind. There is a 
 class of men among us who seem to possess an 
 organic alacrity ta. scenting out what is noxious in 
 the opinions of their neighbors, and in raising the 
 alarm whenever anything is uttered that does not 
 square with the old standards, — as if, in emula- 
 tion of those conservative birds in Roman history 
 which once saved the Capitol, they supposed the 
 welfare of the Church to depend on their timely 
 cackling. Neither the views in question nor the 
 apprehensions respecting them, neither the heresy 
 on the one side nor the consternation on the 
 other, are shared to any considerable extent by the 
 people at large, who for the most part are too 
 much occupied with their own practical concerns 
 to trouble themselves with either. " Because half 
 a dozen grasshoppers under a fern," said Burke 
 in relation to certain contemporary speculations, 
 " because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern 
 make the field ring with their importunate chink, 
 while thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath 
 the shade, chew the cud and are silent, do not im- 
 agine that those who make the noise are the only 
 inhabitants of the field, that they are of course 
 
160 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 many in number, or that after all they are other 
 than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though 
 loud and troublesome, insects of the hour." 
 
 Let this too have its weight, that no system or 
 tendency or speculation is rightly discerned or 
 fairly judged when seen in conflict with opposite 
 views. Every philosophy which springs up in an 
 earnest soul, which is born of faith and uttered in 
 love, will be found instructive to those who view it 
 in its own light, and innoxious when received in 
 its own spirit. But when, urged with harsh con- 
 tradiction, it is thrown into a hostile attitude and 
 becomes polemic, its whole character is changed. 
 Every good trait is suppressed, every doubtful trait 
 is more pronounced. What was radical, becomes 
 blasphemous; what was mystical, absurd. Every 
 man's word should be stated without reference to 
 opposite views, and heard without contradiction, in 
 order to produce its full effect. 
 
 " The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
 . . . being stopped, impatiently doth rage ; 
 But when his fair course is not hindered, 
 He makes sweet music with the enamel'd stones, 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage. 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays 
 With willing sport to the wild ocean." 
 
 Whatever conclusions speculative philosophy, in 
 the ebb and flow of its own unstable element, may 
 
ESSAYS. 161 
 
 advance or overthrow, on the terra firma of prac- 
 tical wisdom there is one conclusion which will 
 always stand fast, one fact which all reason and 
 all experience conspire to enforce; that is, the 
 inexpediency of opposing the tendency of thought, 
 in an individual or a nation, with visible antago- 
 nism and direct contradiction. As far as the 
 individual is concerned, such opposition is as un- 
 reasonable in point of justice as it is inexpedient in 
 point of policy. If a man is earnest in his think- 
 ing, if he is serious in his convictions, his thoughts 
 — aye, and the expression of them — are as much 
 a part of him as the form or features of his physical 
 man. You might as well quarrel with your neighbor's 
 nose and expect him to suppress it for your sake, 
 as expect him to change or disguise his opinions 
 because they are an offence in your eyes. 
 
 But is there then no appeal from noxious senti- 
 ments? Is there no remedy against dangerous 
 heresies ? The remedy and the appeal lie in stat- 
 ing your own convictions, with all the ability you 
 can command, whenever and wherever you can find 
 voice and ear. But state them without reference 
 to others. Publish your opinions, but not your 
 dissent ; and take no notice of opposite views, but 
 simply and steadily ignore them. Controversy on 
 any subject is seldom productive of much profit; 
 but to controvert abstractions, to oppose speculative 
 
 11 
 
162 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 
 
 philosophy on practical grounds, is to outdo the 
 hero of La Mancha, — it is tilting, not with wind- 
 mills, but with the wind. 
 
 It was a principle with Goethe, and one among 
 the many proofs which that great genius gave of 
 his practical wisdom, to avoid contradiction, to 
 deal as little as possible in negations, to state his 
 view as if the opposite had never been stated, to 
 work out his own problems in his own way, and let 
 the world take its course. In the midst of con- 
 flicts, civil and religious, which agitated his time, 
 with the din of battle always in his ear, he main- 
 tained a strict neutrality, and held in silence his 
 steady course, well knowing that these controver- 
 sies would decide themselves, and that for him to 
 take part in the fray was only to postpone their 
 decision. He felt that to produce somewhat of his 
 own was better than to quarrel with the work of 
 others ; that to plant for the future was better 
 than to war with the past. So he trode the fierce 
 battle-field of his age with the implements of peace 
 in his hands, and sowed philosophy and art in the 
 upturned sod. 
 
 Peace, and not controversy, is the true and 
 genial element of the scholar's life. The Goddess 
 of Wisdom was sometimes represented with the 
 aegis and the lance ; but the olive was the emblem 
 assigned her by her favored votaries in later times. 
 
ESSAYS. lt)3 
 
 In the conflict between the old and the new which 
 is raging around him, let the scholar attach him- 
 self wherever instinct may draw or conscience 
 drive, happy if he can find a point of reconciliation 
 common to both, and minister as mediator between 
 the two. Having found his own position, let him 
 gladly concede to others the like freedom, and 
 rejoice that there is wisdom enough on both sides 
 to do justice to both. However the controverted 
 question may divide itself to the intellect, let no 
 division be recognized by the heart. Let no tech- 
 nicalities stand between us and our brother's soul. 
 Let no mean prejudice, no paltry apprehension 
 baffle our serene intuition or mar the full and free 
 enjoyment of whatever is quickening in our broth- 
 er's word. Wherever in the many-mansioned 
 house of philosophy or religion the understanding 
 may lodge, let the affections be everywhere at 
 home. The understanding is essentially protes- 
 tant, — always defining, dividing, exclusive; but 
 Love should be catholic as Nature and Life. 
 
REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D., 
 
 ON OCCASION OP THE CELEBRATION OP THE TWENTT-FIPTH ANNI- 
 VERSARY OP HIS DEATH. 
 
 "f T TE are following the usage of the ancients in 
 ' " commemorating the anniversary of our pro- 
 phet's death. The modern custom has been to cele- 
 brate the birthdays of distinguished men, but the 
 ancients celebrated their death; and what is re- 
 markable, considering the imperfect views of a fu- 
 ture existence which we ascribe to them, they called 
 the death-day the birth-day, — dies natalis; for they 
 held that it was the birth of the soul into nobler 
 fellowships and a freer life. And certainly, if to 
 any who have passed away within our remembrance 
 decease from this earthly world has been a heavenly 
 birth, in commemorating the death of Chaiming we 
 are celebrating a great nativity. Who in our re- 
 membrance needed less of transformation in order 
 to translation ? He had as little to put off, in put- 
 ting on immortality, as any of the old pillar-saints 
 or mediaeval devotees who tried to wean themselves 
 into glory by refusing the breast of Mother Earth, 
 — the homely nurse, who, as Wordsworth says, 
 does all she can — 
 
ESSAYS. 165 
 
 " To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 
 Forget the glories he hath known. 
 And that imperial palace whence he came." 
 
 Not that there was in him anything of the ascetic, 
 anything of that morbid spirit which looks upon 
 the body as a house of penance, and embraces, in 
 one trinity of damnation, "the world, the flesh, and 
 the devil." His view of life was healthy, genial; 
 his habit cheerful, joyous even, so far as physical 
 debility permitted joyousness. He differed from 
 the rest of us not so much in severity of practice 
 as in spirituality of mind. In that, he had no equal 
 among all the men whom I have known. And that 
 I conceive to be the characteristic thing in Chan- 
 ning, — spirituality ; living in the contemplation 
 and pursuit of the highest ; the habit of viewing 
 all things in reference to the supreme good. All 
 questions, movements, institutions, enterprises, all 
 discoveries and inventions, he judged by this stan- 
 dard. Their spiritual bearing was the measure of 
 the interest he felt in them. Even matters of 
 science — and he loved to read and hear of science 
 — interested him only as they served to illustrate 
 the goodness of God, or as he saw in them an open- 
 ing into a better life for man. His intellectual 
 orbit had two foci, around which it forever re- 
 volved, — the goodness of God, and the dignity 
 of man. How to make the true nature of God 
 
166 REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. 
 
 believed against the distortions of a false theology ; 
 how make men conscious of their divine image and 
 calling, and anxious to realize it, — this was the 
 one perpetual quest of that steady-burning, never- 
 flaring, always-flaming, adoring spirit. In this 
 spirituality lay the secret of his strength, and 
 especially of that overwhelming personality which 
 pervades all his speech, so that you can nowhere 
 separate between the word and the man. By virtue 
 of this he spoke to us, and we listened to him as 
 one having authority. And curious it was How this 
 man — without learning, without research, not a 
 scholar, not a critic, without imagination or fancy, 
 not a poet, not a word-painter, without humor or 
 wit, without profundity of thought, without grace 
 of elocution — could, from the spiritual height on 
 which he stood, by mere dint of gravity (coming 
 from such an elevation), send his word into the 
 soul with more searching force than all the orators 
 of his time. I said, "by mere dint of gravity ;" but 
 his speech had another quality which made it ef- 
 fective. That was a singular perspicuity, the re- 
 sult of a rare combination of calm and intense. 
 Nothing is so eloquent, addressed to the intellect, 
 as luminous statement ; nothing addressed to the 
 sentiments so eloquent as intense conviction. 
 Channing had both, by reason of that singleness of 
 mind which begets both. "When the thought, which 
 
ESSAYS. 167 
 
 is the eye, is single, the -whole speech, which is the 
 body, is full of light. In conversing with the writ- 
 ings of Channing, we move in a world of exceeding 
 day. There are no dark corners in his thought, no 
 cloud-shadows on his discourse, no chiaroscuro, no 
 twilight mysteries; it is all clear sky, and broad, 
 effulgent noon, — owing in part, it must be con- 
 fessed, to the singular want, in so distinguished an 
 intellect, of all speculative proclivity, and conse- 
 quently of all metaphysical scruples. He saw no 
 difficulties, or none of the deeper difficulties, which 
 perplex metaphysical minds. The imaginary objec- 
 tions which he considers, the imaginary opponents 
 against whom he argues in his essays, are all of 
 the most superficial kind. His lofty Theism, which 
 lies at the basis of all his teaching, was assumed 
 apparently without question. His Christology, his 
 doctrine of Christ, so edifying on the moral side, is 
 loose on the critical. A scientific theologian he 
 certainly was not, not a profound thinker; but, 
 what is vastly more important, a very clear thinker 
 and a wonderfully luminous writer. The critic 
 and metaphysician may be disappointed in his 
 writings, but they find an unfailing response and 
 abundant justification in the common-sense of 
 mankind. 
 
 Side by side with the spirituality so characteristic 
 of Channing I place his scarcely less characteristic 
 
168 EEV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. 
 
 honesty. The action of this quality in private 
 made conversation with him, to a young man espe- 
 cially, somewhat embarrassing. You missed those 
 smooth insincerities which hide or soften milder 
 disagreements and facilitate colloquial intercourse. 
 You made your statement : if he accepted it, it was 
 well ; he was sure to furnish, from the riches of his 
 mental experience, some apt comment, illusti'ation, 
 or application. If he rejected it, it was equally 
 well; there was then opportunity and scope for 
 friendly debate. But the chances were that he 
 would neither accept nor reject, but receive it with 
 dumb gravity, turning upon you that calm, clear eye, 
 and annoying you with an awkward sense of frus- 
 tration, — as when one offers to shake hands, and 
 no hand is given him in return. But, as speaker 
 and writer, this honesty established for Channing a 
 peculiar claim, through the confidence it inspired, 
 that the unadulterated sense of the man was in his 
 speech. He might not see very far in some direc- 
 tions; but he saw with unclouded eye, and reported 
 only what he saw. His judgment took no bribes. 
 That is what can be said of very few of the writers 
 or speakers of our time, I fear, or of any time. In 
 theology, at least, I know very few whose judgment 
 does not seem to be vitiated, corrupted, by one or 
 another influence, from within or from without, by 
 position or passion. Some are warped by sectarian 
 
ESSAYS. 169 
 
 bias, some by worldly interest, some by fear of 
 public opinion or of loosing the bands of authority ; 
 and a great many more by lust of distinction, by 
 jealousy of ecclesiastical domination, by impatience 
 of traditional beliefs which they want the power to 
 comprehend. Conservatives are bribed by the love 
 of stability ; radicals are bribed by the lure of 
 novelty and the charm of defiance. Ohanning was 
 unbribable. He had no interest to serve, aside of 
 the truth ; no crotchet of the brain to pamper or 
 defend. He was neither conservative nor radical, 
 but a simple child of the light, bringing to the truth 
 no prism, but a mirror, and giving back, without 
 color or shade, the illumination he received. This 
 honesty declares itself in his style. What a re- 
 markable style it was ! No purer English has 
 been written in our day. So colorless, and yet so 
 impressive, so natural, yet so exact. He never 
 courted attention by the turn of a sentence or trick 
 of words ; he used no flavors ; he practised no dis- 
 tortions to make truisms pass for more than they 
 were worth. If his thought was commonplace, he 
 said it in a commonplace way. He never tried to 
 disguise it by a pert and perky way of putting 
 it, by smart phraseology or inverted syntax ; if his 
 thought was weighty, its simple weight sufficed, 
 and a perfectly colorless style sufficed for its pres- 
 entation. He never aims to be smart, he never 
 
170 EEV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. 
 
 aims to be quaint, but just walks through his pages 
 with a sober, steady, dignified gait, and never capers 
 and never struts. 
 
 His faith in humanity was another characteristic 
 trait. He cherished an immense hope for the race. 
 He believed in liberty ; he glowed for it ; if need 
 were, I think he would have died for it. A charac- 
 teristic anecdote was told of him, that in the year 
 1830, when the tidings came of the revolution in 
 Paris which dethroned Charles the Tenth, he hur- 
 ried from Newport to Boston to exchange congratu- 
 lations with his friends on the subject, but found 
 them unexpectedly cold and unsympathiziug. He 
 could not understand it. Meeting one of them, he 
 said, " Are you, too, so old and so wise as to feel 
 no enthusiasm for the heroes of the Polytechnic 
 School ? " " Ah ! " replied his friend, " you are 
 the youngest man I have met with." "Yes," said 
 Channing, " always young for liberty." 
 
 What — now that twenty-five years have rolled 
 over his grave — what is the present and what is 
 to be the final significance of Channing ? In the 
 world of letters, in the world of scientific theology, 
 not so great as that of many of his contemporaries ; 
 in the world of ideas and ideal characters, a most 
 weighty name and a sempiternal power. Of all the 
 men of modern time, he stands for spiritual free- 
 dom. Although not an iconoclast, not a denier, 
 
ESSAYS. ITl 
 
 but eminently an affirmative spirit, he represents 
 the emancipation of the mind from all unrighteous 
 thrall. His theology was never popular, and I sup- 
 pose it never will be. What Renan says of it is 
 probably true : " It demands too great intellectual 
 sacrifices for the critic, and too little for those with 
 whom it is a necessity to believe." But the final 
 judgment of posterity will know how to separate 
 between the creed and the man, as it does in the 
 case of Saint Augustine and of P^nelon. The creed 
 is costume, the spirit is the man. No man by acci- 
 dent wins enduring fame. Circumstances, popular 
 illusion, may confer a transient and local repute ; 
 but the heroes who outlive the applause of their 
 day, the heroes whom posterity accepts, whom the 
 wise of other lands install in their Valhalla, have a 
 right to their pedestals. Hear the judgment of one 
 of the most learned, acute, and Christian scholars 
 of this century concerning Channing, pronounced 
 many years after his* death. The late Baron Bun- 
 sen, in a work entitled " God in History," selects 
 from the Protestant Church five worthies who 
 stand pre-eminent, in his judgment, as represen- 
 tatives of the Divine presence in man, — Luther, 
 Calvin, Jacob Bohme, Schleiermacher, Channing. 
 And this is what he says of Channing: "In human- 
 ity a Greek, in citizenship a Roman, in Christianity 
 an apostle. ... If such a man, whose way of life, 
 
172 REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. 
 
 in the face of his fellow-citizens, corresponded to 
 the Christian earnestness of his words and presents 
 a blameless record, — if such a one is not a Chris- 
 tian apostle of the presence of God in man, I know 
 of none." 
 
SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 OF THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 
 
 "ly/TR. PRESIDENT, — The fiftieth anniyersary 
 of this Association suggests, perforce, a 
 comparison of the ecclesiastical outlook of to-day 
 with the aspects and auspices of fifty years ago. 
 And here the thing which first strikes me is a 
 change in the topics and points of view which 
 occupy the leading minds not only of our own 
 but of other communions. The questions which 
 interested our fathers in 1825 have lost, in a great 
 measure, their interest for us. The topics then 
 debated with so much heart and heat, Triunity 
 of the Godhead, Vicarious Atonement, Original 
 Sin, Eternal Damnation, have almost dropped out 
 of sight. The lines of theological separation be- 
 tween ourselves and other Protestant sects, once 
 so rigidly maintained, are getting lax, are wa- 
 vering, fading, vanishing. The Protestant sects 
 are less concerned to define their position one 
 toward another than to vindicate their common 
 Christian heritage against a common enemy. Pro- 
 testant Christendom itself is assailed, and that on 
 
1T4 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 botli sides, behind and before. Protestant Chris- 
 tendom finds itself wedged between two hostile 
 powers, of which our fathers made little account, 
 but which in our day have acquired a portentous 
 significance, — the Church of Rome on the one 
 hand, and scientific scepticism on the other. The 
 most pressing question between us and the Church 
 of Rome is not a theological one, but a question 
 of liberty or bondage, of progress or stagnation, of 
 intellectual life or death. The question between 
 us and science is one of religion or no religion ; 
 of possible commerce with the unseen, or confine- 
 ment within the bounds of sensible experience, — 
 spiritual life or death. The little I hare to say 
 connects itself with the latter question, — the re- 
 lation between faith and science. 
 
 The half century whose expiration we commem- 
 orate has been, as you all know, a period of un- 
 exampled progress in scientific discoveries and 
 inventions. Pour of the most memorable of these 
 are comprised in its limits, — communication by 
 electric telegraph (which my friend who has just 
 taken his seat so eloquently characterized), pho- 
 tography, anaesthetic surgery, and spectral anal- 
 ysis, assuring the physical unity of creation. In 
 consequence partly of these splendid achievements, 
 and partly from other causes. Science in our day 
 has assumed toward Theology a tone of conscious 
 
ESSAYS. 175 
 
 superiority, as if she were the world's leader, the 
 light of life, the mainstay of civilization, and The- 
 ology an anachronism, a ghost of other days, at 
 best an off-interest, belonging, as Mr. Tyndall says, 
 to the region of the emotions, outside of the do- 
 main of knowledge, and entitled to no voice in the 
 forum of the understanding. Well, it must be con- 
 ceded that Theology no longer occupies the place 
 she did in ages past, when she gave the law to 
 secular beliefs as well as spiritual. Science has 
 overruled her dictum on many questions of space 
 and time. Astronomy has opened a world above, 
 and geology a world below, before whose revela- 
 tions Biblical statements of cosmogony and chro- 
 nology have fled like dreams of the night. But the 
 realm of Theology, although restricted by Science 
 in certain directions, is not dissolved. Within 
 her own realm she is still supreme ; and when 
 Science invades that realm with her theories, she 
 proves herself as incompetent, as much out of 
 place, as Theology does when she dogmatizes 
 about the order of creation and the genesis of 
 brute and plant. 
 
 What, on the whole, are the grounds on which 
 Science vaunts, as against Theology, her superior 
 claims ? Mainly, I think, these two, — greater cer- 
 tainty, and greater utility. Will they stand the 
 test of ultimate reason ? Science boasts, in com- 
 
176 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 parison with Theology, the advantage of greater 
 certainty, as dealing with realities ; while Theology, 
 in her judgment, gropes in the dark, and is " mov- 
 ing about in worlds not realized." Now, the truth 
 of that claim must depend on our definition of 
 " certainty." Consult your dictionaries, and you 
 will find that " certainty " means, for one thing, 
 " freedom from doubt." If we accept that defini- 
 tion, the claim is void ; for, not to speak of the un- 
 certainties, the notorious uncertainties, of Science, 
 the moment she ventures beyond the region of 
 sight and touch, not to speak of the wavering 
 views of scientific men on grave questions, such 
 as the nebular hypothesis, the atomic theory, the 
 origin of species, — not to speak of these, the 
 assurance of faith in the religionist is just as 
 strong as the assurance of demonstration in the 
 scientist. The devout Roman Catholic whom I 
 met in Cologne was just as sure that certain 
 bones preserved in the "Dom" of that city were 
 the bones of the three wise men of the Bast, — 
 Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, • — as the chemist 
 is that water is composed of two parts hydrogen 
 to one part oxygen. My friend the ghost-seer is 
 just as sure that he has interviewed the shade of 
 his deceased wife as the mathematician is that a 
 body acted upon by two forces at right angles 
 with each other will describe a diagonal between 
 
ESSAYS. 177 
 
 the two. Now, it avails not to say that in the 
 one case we have facts, established facts, and in 
 the other only beliefs. To the common man, the 
 unlearned, who cannot verify the facts, they are 
 but beliefs after all, received on authority, resting 
 on human testimony ; while to the believer, on 
 the other hand, his beliefs are facts. The cer- 
 tainty in either case is the same. I do not say 
 there is no difference in the kind of certainty, but 
 I do say there is no difference in the degree ; and 
 I say, moreover, that the faith of the religionist 
 furnishes as sure a ground to build upon in spirit- 
 ual things as the knowledge of the scientist does 
 in material things. Science no more than religion 
 can claim to build on reality. For what is reality ? 
 Who will define it ? Who will prove it ? Do not 
 all proofs refer us at last to subjective tests? 
 
 Sensible experience is no more a proof of reality 
 than spiritual experience. The scientist builds on 
 sensible experience. He claims for that experi- 
 ence an answering reality ; he supposes a world 
 external to himself, corresponding to his sen- 
 sations. But the existence of such a world is 
 a mere hypothesis. Profoundest thinkers have 
 called it a vulgar prejudice, — a prejudice with 
 which I confess I am somewhat infected. But 
 when we come to demonstration, there is abso- 
 lutely none. A convenient working theory for 
 
 12 
 
178 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 scientific and daily use : that is the best we can 
 say of it. The religionist builds on spiritual 
 experience. He claims for that experience an 
 answering reality; he supposes a God external to 
 himself, as well as internal, — an intelligent Will 
 over all, corresponding with the voice in his soul. 
 Such a being is not demonstrable in a scientific 
 sense. There is no mathematical demonstration 
 of it ; but surely we can say of it, and the least 
 we can say of it is, that it is a good working 
 theory for spiritual uses, — those uses without 
 which man, with all his endowments, is little bet- 
 ter than the brute. The being of God is inca- 
 pable of demonstration, — but the existence of an 
 external world is equally so. Nay, I think more 
 so; I would sooner undertake to demonstrate the 
 former than the latter. So far from inferring the 
 being of God from an external world, as theolo- 
 gians have attempted to do, I need the belief in a 
 God to assure the existence of things without. 
 
 I come now to the second of those grounds on 
 which Science bases her supreme claim, — greater 
 utility, a more needful service. The world is not 
 likely to forget the debt it owes to Science. That 
 is a daily and hourly obligation for most of the 
 comforts and conveniences of life. I have no de- 
 sire to make light of that debt. But I see that 
 the grandest things the world contains are not 
 
ESSAYS. 179 
 
 the products of Science, but of Faith. Science 
 could have had no beginning had not Religion 
 first lifted man out of the dust and tamed his 
 fierce passions, and given him an interest in life 
 which made it worth his while to study the secrets 
 of Nature, and to learn the reason and constitution 
 of things. And not only so, not only the world's 
 emancipation from brutal ignorance and savage 
 enslavement to animal life, but those material 
 products which are justly esteemed the ornaments 
 of earth ; those works of the hand, those wonders 
 of art which draw the curious across the globe, — 
 temples, pyramids, statues, paintings, things which 
 travellers compass sea and land to behold, — are 
 due to the same source ; they owe to religion the 
 impulse which gave them birth. Of these the poet 
 could say (what may not be said of the railway 
 or the telegraph) that — 
 
 " Nature gladly gave them place, 
 Adopted them into her race, 
 And granted them an equal date 
 With Andes and with Ararat." 
 
 And even those discoveries and inventions of which 
 Science claims the credit could never have been ac- 
 complished by Science alone without the aid of 
 Faith ; for Science can only see, not do. She is the 
 ghost, rather than theology. " Star-eyed Science " 
 has speculation in her eyes, indeed, but no force 
 
180 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 in her hand, no blood in her veins. Not one of 
 those improvements by which man becomes civi- 
 lized, and more civilized from age to age, could 
 ever have been achieved without the aid of Faith. 
 It was Faith that first ventured out of sight of 
 land in a ship, trusting to a bit of quivering iron 
 and the stars. It was Faith that first thrust a steel 
 lancet into the eye to remove a cataract. It was 
 Faith that first introduced poison into human veins 
 to forestall a greater evil by a less. Geographers 
 in the fifteenth century had divined the existence 
 of another earth beyond the Atlantic waste ; but it 
 needed the faith of Columbus to follow the setting 
 sun across the deep, and unlock the gates of the 
 West. The philosophers of the eighteenth century 
 had conjectured the identity of lightning with what 
 was then called "the electric fluid," but it needed 
 the faith of Franklin to send up the kite which 
 brought confirmation of that conjecture from the 
 skies. Dr. Jackson, in our own day, had discov- 
 ered the anaesthetic properties of ether; but it 
 needed the faith of Morton first to administer the 
 drug which disarms the surgeon's knife of its 
 terrors. 
 
 Faith and Science, Religion and Science, together 
 have built up the world in which we live, — this 
 social, civil, intellectual, ecclesiastical world of 
 mankind. Both were needed to make the world 
 
ESSAYS. 181 
 
 what it is, — a fit abode for rational beings. It 
 would be hard to say which in time past has been 
 the more needful, the more indispensable agent of 
 the two. But if it be asked which now of the two 
 could best be spared, it seems to me that the ques- 
 tion is not difficult. If now and henceforth the 
 alternative for man were the end and arrest of 
 scientific progress, or the death of Faith, the shut- 
 ting up of our churches, the choking forever of 
 the voice of prayer, the derubrication of the cal- 
 endar, the equalization of the week, the utter sec- 
 ularization of life, then I say that the arrest of 
 Science would be the lesser evil of the two. For 
 society can exist without more knowledge; but 
 take away Faith, and you snap the mainspring in 
 the clock-work of life. You take away that with- 
 out which "star-eyed Science" herself would soon 
 become blind. You spread darkness over all the 
 face of the earth, and make universal shipwreck 
 of man's estate. For this human world, I main- 
 tain, with never so much Science at the helm, can- 
 not be sailed by " dead-reckoning " alone. There 
 must be somewhere an observation of the heavens, 
 or the ship which bears us all will founder. 
 
 One thing more, and I have done. There has 
 been much talk of a conflict between Religion and 
 Science ; a learned savant of our own country has 
 written a work on the subject. I take it upon me 
 
182 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 
 
 to say that there never has been, and never can be, 
 any such conflict, any conflict, between Religion and 
 Science. In the loose way of speaking which the 
 use of abstract terms is apt to engender, other 
 conflicts have taken that name. Conflicts there 
 are between the speculations of scientific men 
 and the convictions of religious men. There are 
 conflicts between scientific facts, if you will, and 
 religious prejudices ; conflicts between discoveries 
 and traditions; conflicts between certain Biblical 
 statements and the testimony of the rocks : but 
 between Religion proper and Science proper, each 
 on its own legitimate beat, there never has been 
 nor can be any conflict, no more than there can 
 be a conflict between Kepler's Third Law and the 
 first verse of the Fourth Gospel. When, thirty 
 years ago, Leverrier, with his mathematical divin- 
 ing-rod, discovered the latent planet, now a known 
 constituent of our solar system, Religion thanked 
 God who had given such power unto man, and 
 congratulated Science on the triumph of her great 
 detective. When Mr. Tyndall published his expo- 
 sition of the laws of Light and Heat, the pulpit 
 had no fault to find with his teaching. But when 
 this same Tyndall proposed to test the value of 
 prayer by statistics, then Religion indignantly re- 
 buked the man for meddling with a matter of 
 which, to borrow a comparison from the late 
 
ESSAYS. 183 
 
 Father Taylor, he knew as little as Balaam's ass did 
 of Hebrew. That was not a conflict of Religion 
 with Science, but a conflict with Nescience. 
 
 Let Science pursue the path marked out for her 
 by her own great leaders, — the path, not of vague 
 speculation, but of firm and patient induction, and 
 Religion will rejoice with her in all her discover- 
 ies, will thank her, and thank God, for every fact 
 which she adds to the sum of human knowledge ; 
 and when belated theologians bring up their He- 
 braisms and pit them against her assured conclu- 
 sions. Religion will join her in every rebuke which 
 shall teach Theology to know her place. 
 
CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 [From the Atlantic MontMy.] 
 
 * I ""GWARD the close of the eighteenth century 
 -L there appeared in Germany, under the lead 
 of Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegels, a class of 
 writers and of writings known as the Romantic 
 School. 
 
 The appellation gave rise to wide discussion of 
 what precisely is meant by that phrase, and what 
 distinguishes " romantic " from " classic," to which 
 it is opposed. Goethe characterized the differ- 
 ence as equivalent to healthy and morbid. SchiUer 
 proposed "nafve and sentimental." The greater 
 part regarded it as identical with the difference 
 between ancient and modern, — which was partly 
 true, but explained nothing. None of the defini- 
 tions given could be accepted as quite satisfactory. 
 What do we mean by " romantic " ? The word, as 
 we know, is derived from the old Romanic, or Ro- 
 mance, languages, which formed in mediaeval times 
 the transition from the Latin to the dialects of mod- 
 ern Southern Europe. The invaders of Italy found 
 a patois called Homana rustiea, thus distinguished 
 
ESSAYS. 185 
 
 from the pure Latin of the cultivated Roman. Ro- 
 mance is a fusion of this Romana rustica with the 
 native speech of barbarous tribes. It attained its 
 most perfect development in Southern Prance in 
 the country of Provence, where it became the 
 langue d'oc ; that is, the language in which " yes " 
 is oc (German aucK), while in the Romance of 
 Northern Prance " yes " is oil, in modern Prench 
 oui. 
 
 Poems and tales in the Romance language took 
 the name Rom^n, — in English, " romance " or 
 " romaunt." 
 
 Originally, then, " romantic " meant simply writ- 
 ings in the Romance language, as distinguished' 
 from writings in the Latin tongue, the better sort 
 of which were called classic, from dassiei; that is, 
 " fir^t-class." 
 
 But the difference was not one of language 
 merely. There was manifest in those Romance 
 compositions — as compared with the classic — a 
 difference of tone, of spirit, and even of subject- 
 matter, which has given to the term " romantic " 
 a far wider significance than that of literary classi- 
 fication. We speak of romantic characters, roman- 
 tic situations, romantic scenery. What do we 
 mean by this expression ? Something very subtle, 
 undefinable, but felt by all. If we analyze the feel- 
 ing, we shall find, I think, that it has its origin in 
 
186 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 •wonder and mystery. It is the sense of something 
 hidden, of imperfect revelation. The woody dell, 
 the leafy glen, the forest path which leads one 
 knows not whither, are romantic ; the public high- 
 way is not. Moonlight is romantic as contrasted 
 with daylight. The winding, secret brook, " old as 
 the hills that feed it from afar," is romantic as 
 compared with the broad river rolling through level 
 banks. 
 
 The essence of romance is mystery. But now a 
 further question. What caused the Romance writ- 
 ings more than the classic to take on this charm of 
 mystery ? Something, perhaps, is due to the influ- 
 ence on the writers of sylvan surroundings, of wild 
 Nature, as contrasted with the civic life which 
 seems to have been the lot of the Latin classic 
 authors. But mainly it was the influence of the 
 Christian religion, which deepened immensely the 
 mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and 
 behind the world of sense. 
 
 The word " classic " is more commonly employed 
 in the sense of style. It denotes the manner of 
 treatment, irrespective of the topic. The peculiar- 
 ity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression 
 of the writer. The romantic is self-reflecting. In 
 the one the writer stands aloof from his theme, in 
 the other he pervades it. The classic treatment 
 draws attention to the matter in hand, the roman- 
 
ESSAYS. 187 
 
 tic to the hand in the matter. The classic is pas- 
 sionless presentation, the romantic is impassioned 
 demonstration. The classic narrator tells his storyi 
 without comment ; the romantic colors it with hiqi 
 reflections, and criticises while he narrates. 
 
 "Homer," says Landor, "is subject to none of 
 the passions, but he sends them all forth on 
 their errands with as much precision as Apollo his 
 golden arrows. The hostile gods, the very Pates, 
 must have wept with Priam before the tent of 
 Achilles ; Homer stands unmoved." 
 
 Schiller draws a parallel between Homer and 
 Ariosto in their treatment of the same subject, — 
 an agreement between two enemies. In the Iliad, 
 Glaucus and Diomed, — a Trojan and a Greek, — 
 encountering each other in battle, and discovering 
 that they are mutually related by the binding law 
 of hospitality, agree to avoid each other in the 
 fight, and, in token thereof, exchange with each 
 other their suits of armor. Glaucus, without hesi- 
 tation, gives his gold suit, worth a hundred oxen, for 
 Diomed's steel suit, worth nine. Schiller thinks 
 that a modern poet would have expatiated on the 
 moral beauty of such an act; but Homer simply 
 states it, without note or comment. Ariosto, on the 
 other hand, having related how two knights who 
 were rivals, — a Christian and a Saracen, — after 
 mauling each other in a hand-to-hand combat, make 
 
188 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 peace and mount the same steed to pursue the fugi- 
 tive Angelica, in whom both are interested, breaks 
 forth in admiring praise of the magnanimity of 
 ancient knighthood: — 
 
 " Oh, noble minds by knights of old possessed I 
 
 Two faiths they knew, one love their hearts professed. 
 While still their limbs the smarting anguish feel 
 Of strokes inflicted by the hostile steel, 
 Through winding paths and lonely woods they go, 
 Yet no suspicion their brave bosoms know." 
 
 There is no better illustration of the reserve, the 
 passionless transparency and naivete, of the classic 
 style of narrative than that which is given us in 
 the Acts of the Apostles, — not the work of a rec- 
 ognized classic author, but beautifully classic in its 
 pure objectivity, its absence of personal coloring. 
 In that wonderful narrative of Paul's shipwreck 
 the narrator closes his account of an anxious night 
 with these words : " Then fearing lest they should 
 have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out 
 of the stern, and wished for the day." Fancy a 
 modern writer dealing with such a theme ! How 
 he would enlarge on the racking suspense, the tor- 
 tures of expectation, endured by the storm-tossed 
 company through the weary hours of a night which 
 threatened instant destruction ! How he would 
 dwell on the momentary dread of the shock which 
 should shatter the frail bark and engulf the de- 
 
ESSAYS. 189 
 
 voted crew, the angry billows hungering for their 
 prey, eyes strained to catch the first glimmer of re- 
 turning light, etc.! All which the writer of the 
 Acts conveys in the single phrase, "And wished 
 for the day." 
 
 / Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of 
 the subject, whether fact or fiction, whether done 
 in prose or Terse, is the prominent feature of the 
 classic style. The modern writer gives you not so i 
 much the things themselves as his impression of 
 them. You are compelled to see them through his 
 eyes ; that is, through his feelings and reflections. 
 The ancients present them in their own light, with- 
 out coloring. They would seem to have possessed 
 other powers of seeing than the modern, who, as 
 Jean Paul says, stands with an intellectual spy-glass 
 behind his own eyes. Certainly they possessed the 
 art of so placing their object as not to have their 
 own shadow fall upon it. 
 
 The difference is especially noticeable in poetry, 
 where each style unfolds itself more fully, and both 
 are perfected in their several kinds. Ancient po- 
 etry is characterized by sharp delineations of indi- 
 vidual objects, modern poetry by the color it gives to 
 things, and the sentiments it associates with them. 
 
 The healthy nature of the ancients cared little\ 
 for anything beyond the visible world in which 
 they moved. The finer their organization, the 
 
190 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 clearer the impressions which they received from 
 surrounding objects. The modern, esti-anged from 
 Nature, is thrown back upon himself ; the finer his 
 organization, the more feelingly he is affected by 
 his environment. The ancient lived more in phey 
 nomena, the modern lives more in thought. Hence, 
 as Schiller says, classic poetr^ affects us through 
 the medium of facts, romantic through the medium 
 of ideas. 
 
 In the thought of the ancients — I speak partic- 
 ularly of the Greeks — soul and body, spiritual and 
 material, were not divided, but blended, fused in 
 one consciousness, one nature, one man. This 
 identity of matter and mind which they realized in 
 their life is expressed in all the creations of Gre- 
 cian art. 
 
 For us moderns this harmony is lost. The 
 beautiful equilibrium of matter and spirit is de- 
 stroyed. We are divided within ourselves, our 
 nature is rent in twain. We have discovered that 
 we exist. We are become aware of spirit, and, 
 like children of a larger growth, would pick the 
 world to pieces to find where it hides. To the 
 Greeks the world was a fact ; to us it is a problem. 
 Where they accepted, we analyze; where they 
 rested, we challenge and dispute ; where they lost 
 themselves in contemplation, we seek ourselves in 
 reflection ; where they dreamed, we dream that we 
 
ESSAYS. 191 
 
 dream. They enjoyed the ideal in the actual ; we 
 seek it apart from the actual, in the vague inane. 
 
 It must not, however, he supposed that ancient 
 and classic on one side, and modern and romantic 
 on the other, are inseparably one, so that nothing 
 approaching to romantic shall be found in any 
 Greek or Eoman author, nor any classic page in 
 the literature of modern Europe. What has been 
 said is to be understood as indicating only the pre- 
 vailing characteristics respectively of the earlier 
 and the latter ages. 
 
 Moreover., the word " ancient " is not intended 
 to include all writers of Greek and Latin. The 
 literary line of demarcation is not identical with 
 the chronological one which divides the old world 
 from mediseval time. On the contrary, the pagan 
 writers of the post-Augustan age of Latin literature 
 have much in common with the modern. The 
 story of Cupid and Psyche in the " Golden Ass " of 
 Apuleius. is as much a romance as any composition 
 of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The 
 Letters of the younger Pliny and the " Attic Nights " 
 of Aulus Gellius have very little of the savor of 
 antiquity. The exquisite poem of the last-named 
 writer, which gives the psychology of a kiss, begin- 
 ning with, — 
 
 " Dum semihnloo suavio 
 Meum puellum suavior," 
 
192 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 is intensely modern. Even Tacitus, as a historiog- 
 rapher, is reflective, and so far modern, as com- 
 pared with Livy. Of Greek writers, also, Lucian 
 and Plutarch, — especially the former, — if classic 
 in style, are modern in spirit. 
 
 On the other hand, Dante and Milton are classic 
 in their objective particularity of presentment. 
 Dante in his vision of Malebolge, where public 
 peculators are punished by being plunged in a lake 
 of boiling pitch, gives a Homeric description of the 
 Venetian dock-yard where boiling pitch was used 
 for the repair of vessels. 
 
 Milton is not satisfied with comparing a war- 
 rior's shield to the full moon, as other poets have 
 done, but, Homer-like, adds : — 
 
 " Whose orb 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 At evening from the top of Fiesole, 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe." 
 
 Ancient and modern are not more sharply con- 
 trasted than are Gibbon and Carlyle as historiogra- 
 phers. Mark the calm, impersonal style in which 
 Gibbon recounts the horrible slaughter of the fam- 
 ily of the Emperor Maurice by the decree and in 
 the presence of the usurper Phocas : " The minis- 
 ters of death were despatched to Chalcedon ; they 
 dragged the emperor from his sanctuary, and the 
 
ESSAYS. 193 
 
 five sons of Maurice were successively murdered 
 before tlie eyes of their agonizing parent. At each 
 stroke which he felt in his heart he found streng-th 
 to rehearse a pious ejaculation. . . . The tragic 
 scene was finally closed by the execution of the 
 emperor himself in the twentieth year of his reign 
 and the sixty-third of his age." Compare this with 
 Carlyle's account of the slaughter of Princess Lam- 
 balle : " She too is led to the hell-gate, a manifest 
 Queen's friend. She shivers back at the sight of 
 the bloody sabres, but there is no return. On- 
 wards ! That fair hind-head is cleft with the axe, 
 the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in frag- 
 ments. . . . She was beautiful, she was good ; she 
 had known no happiness. Young hearts, genera- 
 tion after generation, will think with themselves : 
 ' worthy of worship, thou king-descended, God- 
 descended, and poor sister woman ! Why was not 
 I there, and some sword Balmung or Thor's ham- 
 mer in my hand ? ' " 
 
 Modern English poets, from Cowper on, with] 
 few exceptions, are strictly romantic, compared 
 with their immediate predecessors. Most roman- 
 tic of all, Scott in his themes and Byron in his 
 mood. 
 
 Among prose-writers romanticism has reached 
 its climax in recent novelists, as shown in their 
 attempted descriptions of scenery, particularly sky 
 
 13 
 
194 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 scenery. The elder novelists, from Richardson to 
 Scott, attempted nothing of the sort. They de- 
 scribe persons and scenes, but not scenery in the 
 commonly received sense of the word. Though 
 Scott indulges in descriptions of landscapes, he 
 abstains altogether from skyscapes, if I may be 
 allowed the phrase, — I mean such pictures as Black 
 undertakes in " The Strange Adventures of a Phae- 
 ton," and the author of " The Wreck of the ' Gros- 
 venor,' " in his maritime tales. In one of the most 
 popular of living novelists I find, among others, 
 this extravaganza : " In the whole crystalline hol- 
 low, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting 
 for more, the Psyche was the only life-bearing 
 thing, the one cloudy germ-spot afloat in the bosom 
 of the great roc-egg of the sea and sky, whose 
 sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of 
 flame." What classic writer would have perpe- 
 trated this amazing bombast? 
 
 The choicest examples of the classic style in 
 modern English literature, I should say, are Swift, 
 Defoe, Goldsmith, and more recently Landor, the 
 last of the classicists. 
 
 If in these comments I have seemed to disparage 
 the romantic style in comparison with the classic, 
 I desire to correct that impression. The two are 
 very different, but neither can be said, in the ab- 
 stract and on universal grounds, to be better than 
 
ESSA YS. 195 
 
 the other, — better in and for every province of 
 literature. For history one may prefer the cold 
 reserve and colorless simplicity of the classic style, 
 ■where the medium is lost in the object, as the light 
 which makes all things visible is itself unseen. In 
 poetry, on the other hand, the inwardness, the sen- 
 timental intensity, the subjective coloring, of the 
 romantic style constitute a peculiar charm which 
 is wanting in the classic. This charm in Childe 
 Harold, for example, abundantly compensates the 
 absence of pure objective painting which one might 
 expect in a descriptive poem. 
 
 Eomantic relates to classic somewhat as music 
 relates to plastic art. How is it that painting and 
 sculpture affect us ? They arrest contemplation 
 and occupy the mind with one defined whole. In 
 that contemplation our whole being is for the time 
 bound up. Consciousness excludes all else. Past 
 and future are merged in the now, real and ideal 
 are blended in one. Music, on the contrary, not 
 only presents no definite object of contemplation, 
 but just so far as it takes possession of us pre- 
 cludes contemplation ; it allows no pause. Instead 
 of arresting attention by something fixed, it carries 
 attention away with it on its own irresistible cur- 
 rent. It presents no finished ideal, but suggests 
 ideals beyond the capacity of canvas or stone.] 
 Plastic art acts on the intellect, music on the feel- 
 
196 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 ings; the one affects us by -what it presents, the, 
 other by what it suggests. ^ 
 
 This, it seems to me, is essentially the difference 
 between classic and romantic poetry. I need but 
 name Homer and Milton as examples of the one, 
 and Scott or Shelley as representative of the other. 
 Instead of occupying the mind with well-defined 
 images, romantic poetry crosses it with "thick- 
 coming" fancies. 
 
 Rhyme, a characteristic property of modern po- 
 etry, favors this tendency, hindering clearness and 
 fixedness of impression, perpetually breaking the 
 images it presents, as the ripples which chase each 
 other on the surface of a lake, though beautiful in 
 themselves, prevent clear reflections of sky and 
 shore. The classic poet is satisfied if his language 
 exactly coveij the idea ; the romantic would give 
 his words, in addition to their logical and etymo- 
 logical import, a suggestive interest: they must 
 not only indicate the things intended, but must be 
 the keynotes to certain associations which he him- 
 self connects with them. The first couplet of the 
 " Corsair," — 
 
 " O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, 
 Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free," — 
 
 is not so much intended to paint the ocean as to 
 convey the feeling which that element inspired in 
 
ESSAYS. 197 
 
 the poet. Of the same character are those lines in 
 Scott's " Rokeby " : — 
 
 "Far in the chambers of the West 
 The gale had sighed itself to rest." 
 
 In his " Mazeppa," Byron puts into the hero's mouth 
 the following experience of sunrise : — 
 
 " Some streaks announced the coming sun: 
 
 How slow, alas, he came! 
 Methought that mist of dawning gray 
 Would never dapple into day. 
 How heavily it rolled away 
 
 Before the eastern flame 
 Rose crimson and deposed the stars. 
 And called the radiance from their cars, 
 And filled the earth from his deep throne 
 With lonely lustre all his own 1 " 
 
 We have here no distinct image of sunrise, such 
 as a classic poet would present, but we have, what 
 is better, the sensations with which the phenom- 
 enon is watched by the unfortunate victim. It is 
 not the vision, but the heart's response to it, which 
 the lines convey. 
 
 The analogy with music is aptly illustrated by 
 the larger function which sound performs in ro- 
 mantic verse. The best passages of Paradise Lost 
 would lose little if rendered in prose; but what 
 would become of Scott, Moore, and Byron if 
 stripped of prosody and rhyme ? All poetry by its 
 
198 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 rhythmical form addresses itself to the ear; but 
 romantic poetry depends so much on the co-opera- 
 tion of that organ — on sound if read aloud, or the 
 representation of sound if read silently — for its 
 true appreciation that a deaf and dumb reader 
 would lose the better part of the enjoyment we 
 derive from such pieces as the " Burial of Sir John 
 Moore " and Campbell's lyrics. To deny that this 
 musical charm of romantic poetry is an excellence, 
 is to contradict the sesthetic consciousness of the 
 greater part of the reading world, and to pass con- 
 demnation on some of the most cherished produc- 
 tions of literary art. By how much music is more 
 potent than painting, by so much romantic poetry 
 will exercise an influence surpassing that of the 
 classic on the popular mind. 
 
 Goethe in his " Helena " — an episode which con- 
 stitutes the third act of the Second Part of " Faust " 
 — has attempted a reconciliation of the controversy 
 then raging between the classicists and romanticists 
 as to the comparative merits of either style, by show- 
 ing that love of the beautiful and interest in life 
 are common to both, and that what distinguishes 
 them is merely formal and accidental. Helena 
 represents classic beauty, Faust modern culture; 
 Lynceus, the ancient pilot of the Argonauts, offici- 
 ates as mediator between the two. Dialogue and 
 chorus proceed, after classic fashion, in unrhymed 
 
ESSAYS. 199 
 
 verse until Lynceus appears on the stage. He an- 
 nounces the advent of the romantic by discoursing 
 in rhyme. Helena declares herself pleased with 
 that new style of verse, where sound matches sound, 
 and the verses " kiss each other." She asks how 
 she may learn to discourse in such pleasant wise. 
 Faust answers, it is very easy ; it is the natural 
 language of the heart. He begins, — 
 
 " And when your breast with longing overflows, 
 You look around and ask," 
 
 (Pause. Helena breaks in) 
 
 " Who shares my throes ? " 
 
 So they play crambo until Helena has caught the 
 trick. 
 
 Goethe seems to have meant by this that the 
 beauty of ancient poetic art, so extolled by the 
 classicists, can take on a modern form without loss 
 of what is most essential in it ; and on the other 
 hand, that the deeper feeling which characterizes 
 the romantic — the language of the heart — may 
 ally itself with classic elegance, and add a new 
 charm to antique beauty. 
 
 Much of the symbolism of this strange poem 
 (for the " Helena " is a poem, complete in itself) is 
 obscure, and some of it misleading. In strict con- 
 sistency, Euphorion, the offspring of Helena and 
 Faust, ought to represent the fusion of the classic 
 
200 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 and romantic in one. And such appears to have 
 been Goethe's meaning. But Euphorion confess- 
 edly stands for Byron ; and Byron is simply and 
 wholly romantic, with no tincture of classicism in 
 his nature or works. 
 
 Not Byron, but Goethe himself, above all modern 
 poets, combines the two under one imperial name. 
 What is most characteristic in each kind may be 
 found in unsurpassed perfection in the ample treas- 
 ury of his works, — nay, in a single work ; for is 
 not the First Part of "Faust" the very essence 
 of romance, and is not the larger portion of the 
 Second Part a reproduction of the classic Muse ? 
 
 The " Iphigenie auf Tauris " was called an echo 
 of Greek song ; but a still purer classicism meets us 
 in the Elegies, in the " Pandora," and in the " Alexis 
 and Dora." What a gulf divides these compositions 
 from the " Sorrows of Werther " ! There Goethe 
 anticipates by a quarter of a century the rise of the 
 Romantic School in Germany, which was nearly 
 contemporaneous with the same fashion in Eng- 
 land : inaugurated in the latter country by Scott, 
 in the former by Novalis and Tieck. The birth- 
 years respectively of these three poets, Scott, No- 
 valis, and Tieck, are 71, 72, 73 of the eighteenth 
 century. The " Sorrows of Werther" first appeared, 
 I think, in 1772. 
 
 When I say that Scott inaugurated romanticism 
 
ESSA YS. 201 
 
 in England, and Novalis and Tieck in Germany, I 
 do not mean that the new turn which poetry took 
 in those countries was due to them alone. The 
 movement had a deeper origin than personal ca- 
 price or the efforts of a clique. The revolution in 
 literature was the outcome of a revolution in the 
 spirit of the age, of which these writers were the 
 unconscious exponents. Literature and life are 
 never far asunder. Every age enacts itself twice, — 
 first in its acts and events, then in its writings. 
 The struggles and aspirations which agitated Eu- 
 rope at the close of the eighteenth century elicited 
 an echo in the breasts of her poets. The French 
 Revolution, following our own, electrified the na- 
 tions, causing them to thrill and heave as never 
 before since the Protestant Reformation. It star- 
 tled England out of her placid acquiescence in the 
 pompous pedantry of Johnson and the boasted 
 supremacy of Addison and Pope. In Germany it 
 roused a protest against the shallow Aufklarung 
 of the Universal German Library. Its effect in 
 England was conspicuous in a richer diction, recov- 
 ering somewhat of the opulence of the Elizabethan 
 age. In Germany it made itself manifest in a 
 more believing spirit and a deeper tone of thought. 
 
 Other influences conspired to this end. The 
 publication of the "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," by 
 Bishop Percy, in 1765, presented, in the strains of 
 
202 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 the old romantic time, a refreshing contrast with 
 the polished tameness of contemporary verse. A 
 similar service was rendered in Germany (Lessing 
 having broken the spell of French classicism) by 
 Herder's publication of the "Cid," his "Volker- 
 stimmen," his " Andenken an einige altere deutsche 
 Dichter;" by Clemens Brentano and Achim von 
 Arnim's publication of " Des Knaben Wunder- 
 horn ; " by Wieland's " Oberon ; " and by the re- 
 editing of the " Nibelungenlied." 
 
 Another power on the side of romanticism, not 
 commonly recognized, was " Ossian." The poems 
 bearing this name were given to the public a short 
 time previous to Percy's " Reliques," in 1763, and 
 made a great sensation, partly on account of their 
 novelty, and partly because of their reputed source. 
 The ardor with which they were welcomed in Eng- 
 land was soon damped, it is true, by doubts con- 
 cerning their authenticity. The English people 
 are constitutionally afraid of being " gulled," and 
 when Samuel Johnson, the literary dictator of the 
 day, pronounced them spurious, they were indig- 
 nantly cast aside, — as if the authorship, and not the 
 character, of the poetry determined its value ! The 
 question of genuineness does not concern us in this 
 connection; all I have to say about it is that if 
 Macpherson wrote " Ossian," he had a good deal 
 more poetic feeling than most of the poets of his 
 
ESSAYS. 203 
 
 time, — certainly a good deal more than Dr. John- 
 son had. In spite of all objectors, Wordsworth 
 included, who condemns the poems on technical 
 grounds, they have the effect of poetry on most 
 readers. If they do not satisfy the critical sense, 
 they breathe a poetic aura, and awaken poetic feel- 
 ing in the breast. Nothing else can explain the en- 
 thusiasm with which at first they were everywhere 
 received. On the Continent especially, where no 
 question of authorship interfered, they charmed 
 unprejudiced minds. But what particularly con- 
 cerns us here is the romantic tone of these com- 
 positions. Whether uttered by an ancient Celtic 
 bard, or composed by a modern antiquary, they 
 were thoroughly romantic, and confirmed the ro- 
 mantic tendency of the time. Napoleon, in whose 
 rocky nature a wild flower of romance had found 
 some cleft to blossom in, carried them with him in 
 his expeditions, as Alexander did their literary 
 antipodes, the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 
 A marked feature of modern romanticism is love 
 of the past, — that passionate regret for by-gone 
 fashions which prompts the attempt to patch the 
 new garment of to-day with the old cloth of former 
 wear. The feeling which, early ig. this century, 
 found inspiration in mediaeval lore, and loved to 
 present the old chivalries in novel and song, is the 
 same which inspires the practical anachronisms of 
 
204 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 
 
 recent time, which in England seeks to reproduce 
 the old ecclesiastical sanctities, which astonishes 
 American cities with a mimicry of Gothic archi- 
 tecture ; the same which forty years ago restored 
 the long-disused beard, which now ransacks second- 
 hand furniture-stores and remote farmhouses for 
 claw-footed tables and brass-handled bureaus, which 
 drags from the lumber-room the obsolete spinning- 
 wheel, which rejoices in many-cornered dwelling- 
 houses with diminutive window-panes, — the more 
 unshapely the better, because the more picturesque. 
 A mania innocent enough in these manifestations, 
 but in its essence identical with that which inspired 
 the knight of La Mancha, — the typical example for 
 all generations of romanticism gone wild. 
 
 It would be unjust, however, to maintain that 
 the reaching back after old things is the sum of 
 romanticism, as if what we so name were mere 
 conservatism or reactionism. Tliis worship of the 
 past is only an accidental manifestation of a prin- 
 ciple whose most comprehensive term is aspiration, 
 — a noble discontent and disdain of the present, 
 which in the absence of creative genius, of power 
 to originate new forms, seeks relief in the past 
 from the wearji commonplace of the day. 
 
 The essence of romanticism is aspiration. 
 'Whether it look backward or forward, thera is in 
 it a spirit of adventure, — as much of it in the 
 
ESS A YS. 205 
 
 Crusaders who sought a sepulchre in the East, as in 
 the Spanish navigators who sought an Eldorado in 
 the West ; as much in the arctic explorers who 
 would force a way through eternal frost, as in the 
 Knights of the Holy Grail ; as much in the nine- 
 teenth century as in the twelfth, in Garibaldi and 
 Gordon as in Godfrey and Tancred. 
 
 The romantic schools of German and English 
 literature were transient phases already outgrown ; 
 but the principle of romanticism in literature is 
 immortal, — it is the spirit asserting itself through 
 the form. Classicism gives us perfection of form,,^ 
 romanticism fulness of spirit. Both are essential, 
 seldom found united ; but both must combine to 
 constitute a masterpiece of literary art. 
 
THE STEPS OP BEAUTY. 
 (From the Unitarian Beview.) 
 
 BEAUTY is that quality in the objects of our 
 contemplation which pleases irrespectively 
 of use or any profit to ourselves resulting there- 
 from. Esthetic philosophy does not, as usually 
 received, embrace in its view of the beautiful the 
 satisfactions of the palate ; yet, strange to say, it 
 borrows from the palate the name of the faculty 
 which regulates and constitutes esthetic enjoyment 
 in all its kinds, — the word " taste." Kant ascribes 
 this to the idiosyncrasy and seeming wilfulness of 
 aesthetic judgments, where, as in the matter of 
 food, individual preference plays so important a 
 part. " You cannot," he says, " make me like a 
 dish by reasoning about it and showing why I 
 ought to like it ; I judge it with my tongue, and 
 from that judgment there is no appeal. So, in the 
 realm of art, no rules established by critics, and no 
 majority of voices, can force my delight in any ob- 
 ject in spite of myself." There is this analogy, 
 but it does not, in my view, satisfactorily explain 
 
ESSAYS. 207 
 
 the use of the word " taste " in its application to 
 beauty. A simpler explanation is that taste, in 
 the physical sense, being the most active and posi- 
 tive of our sensations, by a natural symbolism fur- 
 nishes a convenient metaphor for those of a more 
 ethereal kind. 
 
 For the purpose of this essay I include in the 
 ■word " beauty " whatever gratifies taste, in the 
 metaphorical sense of the term. 
 
 But tastes differ; what one condemns, another 
 approves. Is beauty, then, a merely subjective ex- 
 perience, with no ground or reason in the object ? 
 Is one man's taste as good as another's ? Is there 
 no absolute beauty ? Season protests against such 
 a conclusion. The alleged divergency of taste is, 
 after all, superficial, very confined in its range, and 
 overbalanced by a general uniformity of taste in 
 things essential. We may differ in our preference 
 of this or that style of architecture or dress; but 
 there are forms which all will agree in pronouncing 
 beautiful, if only comparatively so, and there are 
 monstrosities which all will condemn. No one 
 will say that a satyr is as beautiful as the Belvidere 
 Apollo, or a crab as comely as a gazelle. "We 
 speak of deformity : deformity implies a model, it 
 presupposes normal forms of universal acceptance. 
 We say ridiculous : our sense of the ridiculous is 
 proof of a law of beauty or propriety to which all 
 
208 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 that we term ridiculous is consciously or uncon- 
 sciously referred. When we pronounce a thing 
 ridiculous, we affirm an ideal, the departure from 
 which makes it ridiculous. And when the aberra- 
 tion from ideal beauty exceeds certain limits, we 
 resent the incongruity as a moral offence; the 
 author is judged to have sinned against a law in 
 his mind as well as ours, and passes into like con- 
 demnation with the work of his hands. 
 
 A noted sinner in this kind was Prince Palla- 
 gonia, a Sicilian nobleman of the last century, who 
 made his palace a museum of all sorts of monstros- 
 ities, exhausting his ingenuity in ugly inventions, 
 and gaining as much celebrity by his systematic 
 warfare against taste as others have achieved in its 
 service. The lodge, as you entered the grounds, 
 presented four huge giants, with modern gaiters 
 buttoned over the ankle, supporting a cornice on 
 which was depicted the Holy Trinity. The walls 
 leading from the lodge to the castle were disgraced 
 with every imaginable deformity, — beggars, men 
 and women in tattered garments, dwarfs, clowns, 
 gods and goddesses in French costume, mythology 
 caricatured ; Punch and Judy cheek by jowl with 
 Achilles and Chiron ; horses with human hands, 
 horses' heads on men's shoulders, dragons, ser- 
 pents, misshapen monkeys, all sorts of paws on all 
 sorts of figures, with duplicates of single members, 
 
ESSAYS. 209 
 
 and heads that did not belong to them. In the 
 court-yard and castle, new enormities, — the walls 
 not straight, but inclining to this side and that side, 
 affronting one's sense of the horizontal and the 
 perpendicular ; statues lying on their noses, rooms 
 finished with bits of picture-frames with every va- 
 riety of pattern. In the chapel, swinging from the 
 ceiling by a chain fastened to a nail in the head, 
 was a kneeling figure in the attitude of prayer.^ 
 
 What shocks us in these enormities is not the 
 strangeness, which would only surprise, but the 
 violation of a standard, an ideal of beauty which 
 we have in our minds, and with which we uncon- 
 sciously compare them. The more that idealis 
 developed, the more sensible we are of beauties and 
 defects. Thus, Nature reveals beauties to the pain- 
 ter which are missed by the uninformed eye. And 
 this explains the fact that a painted landscape 
 seems often more beautiful than the original, and 
 promises to one who sees it first more than the 
 original fulfils. In the painting the beauty is dis- 
 engaged, so to speak, from the substance, and 
 made more apparent. For the beauty resides not 
 in the material objects, the woods and the water, 
 hill and vale, as such, that make the landscape, it 
 is the reflection of something in ourselves, an idea 
 which we bring to its contemplation. The more 
 
 1 The description ib from Goethe's Italienische Beise. 
 14 
 
210 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 refined that idea, the more beautiful the landscape 
 to our eye. The painter, carrying into Nature his 
 own quick sense, has seized her deeper meaning ; 
 he sees the pure form of things abstract from the 
 substance, and gives it on the canvas. He enables 
 us to see the landscape as he sees it, he brings us 
 into communion with his and its idea. 
 
 Kant maintains that the Beautiful interests us 
 only in society, that a man left alone on a desert 
 island would neither adorn his hut nor himself.^ I 
 hold, on the contrary, that the love of beauty be- 
 longs to man as man, and in no human being can 
 be utterly wanting or wholly inactive. Let the in- 
 dividual be entirely secluded from his kind ; let 
 him dwell in a desert shut out from the world, so 
 that no influence from without shall disturb the 
 pure spontaneity of his action : if you could look 
 in upon him so situated, you would find in his ar- 
 rangements, I fancy, some slight sacrifice to the 
 eye, some faint regard for order and form. The 
 sense of beauty is wanting in none, but no faculty 
 is less perfect by nature. The germ only is given ; 
 the rest is discipline. 
 
 We may distinguish five grades or modes of 
 beauty, — color, form, expression, thought, action. 
 
 The perception of the beautiful begins with color. 
 The eye rejoices in brilliant hues, — scarlet, purple, 
 1 Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Analytik d. Erhabenen. 
 
ESSAYS. 211 
 
 green, and gold. It needs no culture to appreciate 
 these ; they are patent to the child and the saTage. 
 But when we come to combinations of color, and a 
 right selection in order to the best effect, the child 
 and the savage are at fault. A degree of cultiva- 
 tion is needed to select the purest tints, and so to 
 arrange them as to produce a harmonious whole. 
 A happy choice of colors in the making-up of a 
 costume, in the garniture of a drawing-room, or the 
 composition of a bouquet, betokens always a mea- 
 sure of aesthetic refinement. 
 
 To the gratifications of color succeeds the more 
 intellectual enjoyment of form. The pleasure de- 
 rived from color, at least from single colors, is 
 purely sensuous, passive, the action of refracted 
 light on the nerves through tlie medium of the eye, 
 the least sensual of the senses. The relish of 
 beautiful forms presupposes something more than 
 sense. Mental co-operation is here required. The 
 mind must construe the form to itself, and reflect 
 upon it so as to seize its idea. It is true we are 
 not conscious of any such process in ordinary 
 cases ; but a careful analysis of our impressions of 
 formal beauty as distinct from grandeur — which 
 yields a merely passive delight, the mind contribu- 
 ting only the sentiment of wonder — will show 
 them to be intellectual products. 
 
 What constitutes beauty of form ? Why are 
 
212 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 sphere and oval, and even cube, more satisfactory 
 than shapeless masses ; the full moon . and the cres- 
 cent moon more pleasing than the gibbous ; a 
 vaulted roof than the flat ceiling of an ordinary 
 dwelling ? The answer is given in the word " pro- 
 portion." Proportion — in compound forms, sym- 
 metry — is such a relation of part to part in a 
 given body as shall produce in the beholder the 
 feeling of equipoise. It answers to harmony in 
 music. Schelling calls architecture " a music in 
 space, ... as it were a frozen music." We might 
 call it an arrested dance. Some feeling of this 
 sort may have given rise to the Greek myth which 
 presents Amphion building the city of Thebes by 
 making the stones dance into place to the sound of 
 his lyre. Sand strown upon a plate may be made 
 to arrange itself in symmetrical figures by means 
 of musical vibrations, — a fact which shows that 
 the relation of form to music, the connection be- 
 tween symmetry and harmony, is not a mere fancy, 
 but is founded in the nature of things. 
 
 The beauty of symmetrical forms may be figured 
 as the result of a double movement, the balance of 
 two opposite tendencies, — centrifugal and centri- 
 petal, expansion and concentration. First, motion 
 outward in different directions from a common 
 centre. This motion itself we contemplate with 
 pleasure, — the pleasure experienced in beholding a 
 
ESSAYS. 213 
 
 cloud dispart and disperse into delicate lichens and 
 gauze-like films, which grow more and more filmy 
 as we watch them until they vanish in the far 
 blue ; or the similar enjoyment of seeing a volume 
 of smoke on a still, bright day unroll itself with a 
 lazy, cumbrous grace, and stretch contentedly away 
 into invisibility. But this enjoyment is partial, 
 and soon wearies. Motion outward does not long 
 satisfy. The mind is not content to lose itself in 
 endless departure, it tires of evolutions which 
 come to nothing. It is forced back upon itself, it 
 craves a result. This craving is met by a counter- 
 motion from the circumference toward the centre. 
 The first essays of that return movement give us 
 Hogarth's line of beauty, — the wavy motion of a 
 streamer in the wind. Its completion gives us the 
 beautiful form. 
 
 We have here the ground-plan of formal beauty 
 as an object of visual and mental contemplation, — 
 radiation in all directions to form an outline, and 
 reference of all points in that outline to a common 
 centre, the mind unconsciously going forth and re- 
 turning to that centre in its contemplation. In 
 the balance of these two tendencies or move- 
 ments consists the feeling of proportion. All 
 forms which yield this mental equipoise we pro- 
 nounce well-proportioned, beautiful. What consti- 
 tutes deformity in any object is the disturbance of 
 
214 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 this harmonious relation between the perimeter and 
 the centre.^ 
 
 The next grade in the scale of beauty is expres- 
 sion. Here, beauty assumes a decidedly intellect- 
 ual character. Form pleases by affording the 
 mind an agreeable pause, by throwing us back on 
 ourselves in a state of tranquil contemplation. Ex- 
 pression tempts us forth from ourselves into com- 
 munion with what we contemplate. Expression 
 constitutes the compound beauty of natural scenery 
 as distinguished from that of single objects. The 
 sky, earth, and water which compose a landscape 
 interest us not as individual phenomena, but by 
 their grouping, their blending together in one ex- 
 pression, one face, — as it were the face of a spirit 
 akin to our own, and answering our gaze with recip- 
 rocal greeting. The beauty of expression reaches 
 its acme in the human countenance, which in its 
 perfection is the fairest of material creations, the 
 last link in the chain which connects the visible 
 
 1 If beauty of form, as exemplified in symmetrical structure, is 
 rightly termed visible music, then, conversely, music may be said 
 to be audible symmetry. The enjoyment derived from it through 
 the practised ear is resolvable into a fine sense of proportion. 
 Beauty as predicated of music I venture to class under the head 
 of form. It is not the ear in its primary function, but, as De 
 Quincey, following Sir Thomas Browne, remarks, the reaction of 
 the mind on the notices furnished by the ear, that gives the enjoy- 
 ment of music. But is not the same true of the enjoyment of 
 beauty through the medium of the eye? 
 
ESSAYS. 215 
 
 with the invisible. Heaven and earth meet in the 
 face of a beautiful woman, where the beauty is of 
 that supreme type which plastic Nature alone can- 
 not fashion, mould she never so cunningly ; where 
 a spiritual grace supervenes, and native intelli- 
 gence, high culture, sweetness, and moral majesty 
 transfigure fleshly tints and lines. 
 
 Feminine beauty, it is true, is not all of this su- 
 preme type. There is an animal beauty in which 
 spirit has no part, where physical perfection of tint 
 and feature, grace of form and movement, lack the 
 crowning grace of moral inspiration. And this 
 carnal beauty, it must be confessed, has exercised 
 a more potent sway in human affairs than the spir- 
 itual. Such must have been the beauty of Grecian 
 Helen, of Thespian Phryne, of Cleopatra, of Hero- 
 dias' daughter, of Waldrada, of Eosamond, of Agnes 
 of Meran, of Nell Gwynn, and Pompadour, — 
 
 " Quick and skilful to inspire 
 Sweet, extravagant desire." 
 
 What a power it has been in the history of nations, 
 — a spell of fate turning the heads of men or 
 dancing them off their shoulders, enslaving mon- 
 archs, impoverishing States ! Yet see on what 
 trifles the mere physical merit of facial beauty 
 depends. How infinitesimally small the difference 
 in lines and angles which divides beauty from ugli- 
 ness ! Lavater has demonstrated the distance be- 
 
216 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 tween the face of a frog and the normal human 
 countenance by a scale of but twelve types, in which 
 any member of the series differs by a scarcely per- 
 ceptible change from that which preceded and that 
 which follows. If only twelve stages intervene be- 
 tween the frog countenance and the human, judge 
 how slight must be the measurable difference of 
 contour between the human ugly and the fair. It 
 is not the physical conformation of the face, the 
 curve of the eyebrow, the curl of the lip, the length 
 of the chin, the angle of the nose, the setting of the 
 eyes and their color, the moulding of cheek and 
 forehead; it is not the features in and of them- 
 selves, minute varieties of a common pattern, quaint 
 freaks of the flesh, — it is not these, but something 
 behind which lights and inspires them, that gives 
 those exquisite phases of expression which painting 
 and sculpture reach after, but never quite compass : 
 the maiden's rapt devotion, the beam of divinity 
 in the eye of maternal love, the hero's triumph, the 
 seer's ecstasy. 
 
 The fugitive expression of a beautiful soul in a 
 human countenance transcends the scope of chisel 
 or brush. 
 
 The beauty of expression is the highest beauty 
 which matter takes on. To rise above this, we 
 must leave the material and enter the realm of 
 thought, specifically of literary art. 
 
ESSAYS. 217 
 
 But literary sesthetic is a special topic, foreign to 
 the plan of this essay. I pass at once to the last 
 and crowning beauty of humanity, — beauty in 
 action. 
 
 By beauty in action I mean conformity with the 
 moral ideal, a beauty identical with goodness in 
 the more restricted use of that word. Goodness 
 expresses the relation to the actor, beauty the rela- 
 tion to the mind that contemplates the act. Good- 
 ness denotes the substance, beauty the form. It is 
 not, however, to all good actions in the ratio of their 
 goodness that we accord indiscriminately the praise 
 of beauty. We bestow that title more especially on 
 those in which disregard of self and absence of cal- 
 culation are most conspicuous. Actions prompted 
 by the instinct of natural affection please us more 
 than those in which the affections are sacrificed to 
 duty. When the magistrate in the Eastern tale 
 condemns the guilty father to be scourged in his 
 presence, we are disgusted with the act while com- 
 mending its justice. But our disgust is turned to 
 admiration when, after the infliction, the son de- 
 scends from the dignity of his office, lays aside his 
 magisterial robe, dresses his father's wounds with 
 his own hands, and bathes them with his tears. 
 We recognize a fearful beauty in the lofty defiance 
 of wrong with which the Roman father seizes a 
 knife from the shambles and slays his daughter to 
 
218 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 save her from outrage worse than death ; we admire 
 the unflinching justice with which another Roman 
 condemns to death his guilty sons : but, in either 
 case, we are shocked by the act. If in these and 
 similar instances the beautiful and the good appear 
 to conflict, there are others which combine the two, 
 and satisfy at once the utmost delicacy of feeling 
 and the utmost rigor of the law, and which neither 
 on the side of nature nor on the side of reason leave 
 anything to wish. When Scipio Africanus dismisses 
 unharmed 
 
 " In his prime youth the fair Iberian maid; " 
 
 when Caius Marcius at the gates of Rome yields to 
 the entreaties of his mother and his wife and the 
 tears of his fellow-citizens, renounces his vengeance 
 and spares the city ; when Regulus dissuades his 
 countrymen from accepting the treaty which offered 
 salvation to himself, but compromised the safety of 
 the State, and then, true to his plighted faith, re- 
 turns to Carthage to meet the cruel death which 
 awaits him there ; when Pompeius refuses to tarry 
 the storm, and against the advice of his friends, at 
 the risk of his life, ships for Africa in quest of corn, 
 saying, " It is not necessary that Pompeius should 
 live, but it is necessary that Rome, if possible, 
 should be saved from famine," — we feel, regarding 
 these acts as phenomena merely, a satisfaction akin 
 to that which we experience in contemplating a 
 
ESSA YS. 219 
 
 perfect work of art, -where it vrould be impossible 
 to add anything or to take away anything without 
 impairing their complete beauty. Our better soul 
 sees itself reflected in their perfect fitness. We 
 feel that here is truth drawn from our common 
 nature. This lay in us too, could we but have 
 uttered it. This is what we believe and feel and 
 are. 
 
 But while the feeling derived from beauty in 
 action has something in common with the satisfac- 
 tions of art, it has also something higher and better 
 than art can give. We feel that this beauty is not 
 like the beauty of art, phenomenal merely, but real 
 and essential. It is not a charm residing in the 
 soul of the spectator, but something inherent in 
 the nature of the thing. In art, it is merely the 
 form that pleases ; but here the form and the sub- 
 stance are one. Moral beauty possesses the pecu- 
 liar attribute of necessity. Through the freedom 
 of the actor we revere the obligation of the law. 
 Our sense of beauty in other things can afford to 
 lie in abeyance and be often disappointed ; but the 
 moral sense is imperative, and must not be gain- 
 said. Truth in art we welcome gladly when it 
 appears ; still, it is but a luxury, a thing that may 
 be or may not be, without affecting materially the 
 issues of life. But truth in action we cannot spare; 
 it is the salt of the world : life would rot without 
 
220 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 it. Moral beauty can stand by itself ; it needs no 
 background, it aska no embellishment from any 
 other source to set it off. When Phocion declines 
 the hundred talents sent him by Alexander, and 
 being urged to name some favor which he would 
 accept as reward for his services, asks that some 
 slaves who were confined in the citadel of Sardis 
 should be set free, we care not to know what man- 
 ner of man this was in his outward appearance, 
 whether comely or deformed, whether elegant or 
 rude ; we are satisfied with the act. But where, 
 on the other hand, this grace is wanting, or where 
 it is violated and set at naught, all other grace and 
 beauty and splendor vanish like the prismatic 
 colors of the spectrum when a cloud comes over 
 the sun. You visit a fine house, splendidly fur- 
 nished and appointed, with all kinds of costly em- 
 bellishment, and, while admiring these things, it is 
 whispered in your ear that the owner has obtained 
 them by unjust means, by peculation or extortion, 
 or that the tradesmen or artisans who supplied 
 them remain unpaid, and that they and their 
 families are pining for want of the necessities of 
 life. Would not these costly ornaments then lose 
 their lustre? Would not your admiration be 
 turned to disgust ? Would you not sicken at the 
 splendor which covered such wrong? In human 
 life we cannot separate the phenomenal from the 
 
ESSAYS. 221 
 
 real, the show from the man. I defined beauty as 
 that which gives pleasure irrespective of use ; but 
 here, in its highest phase, we see that beauty, as 
 being identical with good, is one with use. 
 
 Beauty is the great mediator between the flesh 
 and the spirit. Its function is co-ordinate with 
 that of religion: the office of both is to win man- 
 kind to the love of the true and the good. It was 
 doubtless a feeling of this relation which suggested 
 the use of the arts in religious worship. 
 
 Well may beauty minister in temples made with 
 hands ; for see how constant its ministry in the un- 
 walled temple of the universe, and how it clothes 
 creation as a garment ! No one can think lightly 
 of its value in the economy of life who marks the 
 place it occupies in the economy of Nature. If 
 utility object to art that it offers but a world of 
 shows, let utility observe that the universe itself is 
 a show. All creation addresses itself to the eye. It 
 is but the smallest part that the other senses can 
 appropriate of external objects, and that small por- 
 tion is lessened by exclusion or exhausted by use. 
 But the eye has the entire universe for its fee- 
 simple. Sun, moon, and stars, and earth and sea, 
 are articled in its boundless fief. No use can ex- 
 haust its sumless income. To it all things are 
 tributary. For it the sun paints, the sky curves, 
 the clouds roll, the landscape glows. Day by day 
 
222 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the morning's crimson process, the evening's fu- 
 neral pomp, and all the wealth of chaliced flowers 
 and plumed birds and insect dyes, and all that the 
 ocean reveals of its pearly secrets, are tributes to 
 the eye. From the diamond star in the deep above 
 to its diamond image in the deep below, from the 
 rainbow cloud to the rainbow shell, all vision glit- 
 ters and blooms and waves with thousand-fold un- 
 speakable beauty. 
 
 The lesson which Nature teaches, shall it not 
 inspire our philosophy of life ? What a world it 
 would be from which that lesson were banished! 
 Imagine a State in which life should exhibit no 
 love of beauty, no aesthetic aspiration. The sup- 
 position implies the rudest aspect of savage life. 
 It recalls the forest and the cave, from which men 
 would never have emerged but for the humanizing 
 influence of taste. To that we owe all our civiliza- 
 tion. From the savage wigwam to the thronged 
 city, the race has been guided by the hand of 
 beauty. The first thing which the wild man does 
 when he has filled his belly is to paint his skin. 
 The next is to shape his garment ; and the earliest 
 office of the garment is not protection, but orna- 
 ment. And so painting and shaping, he grows in 
 all the dimensions of art to the perfect stature of 
 civilized man. His wigwam becomes architecture ; 
 his feathered girdle, elaborate costume ; his hollow 
 
ESSA YS. 223 
 
 log, a ship. And what he gains hy this process is 
 not so much comfort as decorum. An instinct of 
 our nature demands that we add decency to com- 
 fort, and grace to necessity, and fling the drapery 
 of art around the meanest of our enjoyments and 
 the commonest uses of life. Food snatched from 
 the hearth where it is cooked, and devoured with- 
 out ceremony, would nourish the body as well as 
 when accompanied with those formalities which 
 civilization has appended to the sensual act. But 
 those formalities have converted the animal neces- 
 sity to a social institution, which entertains the mind 
 while it nourishes the flesh. 
 
 Farther still, and upward ever, it is the oiHce of 
 Beauty to lead her votaries. Not only from savage 
 uses to polished civility, from wigwam and kraal to 
 palace and towered city, from the rudest earthly to 
 the most refined, but higher yet, from the earthly 
 to the heavenly. The worship of a beauty above 
 earthly shows is the highest homage of a true re- 
 ligion. It is not the custom of public worship to 
 apply to God the epithet "beautiful." We call 
 him almighty, and magnify his power ; but is not 
 beauty as true a manifestation of Deity as power ? 
 And is not our sense of beauty as near divine as 
 the wonder and awe which infinite power inspires ? 
 
 Whatever the nominal object of our worship, 
 there are two things which all men everywhere 
 
224 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 instinctively adore, — strength and beauty : the 
 former embracing all possible demonstrations of 
 creative and ruling energy ; the other including all 
 the attributes of love and goodness which stamp 
 that energy divine. 
 
 The Cliristian Church has no traditional likeness 
 of Jesus ; but a pious instinct taught the old 
 painters to give him a face of beauty, so close the 
 connection which their art divined between the 
 holy and the fair. 
 
 Michel Angelo pronounced beauty to be " the 
 frail and weary weed " which Truth in this world 
 puts on, in pity for human weakness. But can we 
 conceive of any state in the infinite future, of any 
 date in the eternal ages, when Truth will not 
 clothe itself with beauty? For is not all beauty 
 resolvable into truth ? Aspire how we will, we can 
 never transcend the union of the two. Higher 
 than beauty thought cannot mount. 
 
ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 [^From the North American Review.] 
 
 ETHIC is the science of right behavior, — its 
 ground in human nature, and its application 
 to conduct. The subject presents two topics, — 
 first, the reason of right behavior, or the ground of 
 moral obligation; second, the criterion of right 
 behavior, or rectitude in action. 
 
 What do we mean by " moral obligation " ? Why 
 ought I to act in a certain way, to do this or that, 
 and not to do otherwise ? The answers to this 
 question are mainly three, and characterize three 
 different systems of ethic. We may call them the 
 selfish, the politic, the ideal. The first finds the 
 ground of moral obligation in self-love ; the second 
 in social relations; the third, theologically speak- 
 ing, in the will of God, or, — what is the same 
 thing philosophically expressed, — in the moral 
 nature of man. 
 
 The selfish system is essentially that of the Epi- 
 curean philosophy, — each one's happiness the su- 
 preme good. This principle recurs with different 
 modifications in some later systems, and notably in 
 
 15 
 
226 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 that of Paley, whose " Moral Philosophy " was once 
 an approved text-book for the use of students. To 
 the question, Why am I bound to act in a certaia 
 way ? — e. g., to keep my word, — Paley answers, 
 Because if I do, I shall be rewarded for it in an- 
 other life ; if I do not, I shall be punished for it in 
 another life. We distinguish, he says, between an 
 act of prudence and an act of duty. Wherein does 
 the difference consist ? " The only difference is this, 
 that in the one case we consider what we shall gain 
 or lose in the present world ; in the other case we 
 consider also what we shall gain or lose in the 
 world to come." According to this view there 
 would be no duty ; moral obligation would not exist 
 for one who should be so imfortunate as not to be- 
 lieve in a future life. Paley, then, is an epicurean, 
 differing from the sage of Athens only in seeking 
 satisfaction in another world instead of securing it 
 in this. 
 
 The system of Hobbes, who preceded Paley by a 
 century or more, partakes partly of the poUtic and 
 partly of the selfish. It is politic inasmuch as it 
 identifies right with civil authority, and denies any 
 higher law. It is selfish inasmuch as it identifies 
 moral obligation with the good to be gained by obe- 
 dience to civil rule. 
 
 The politic systems, distinctively so called, are 
 those in which the sole ground of moral obligar 
 
ESSAYS. 227 
 
 tion ia the good of society, which measure duty by 
 utility. The best representative of these is Jeremy 
 Bentham, a stalwart intellect, a Sbbbes redivivus ; 
 in my judgment superior, in all that concerns social 
 science, to modern Positivists. Bentham assumes 
 utility to be the fundamental principle of morals. 
 "By the principle of utility is meant," he says, 
 "that principle which approves or disapproves 
 every action whatsoever, according to the tendency 
 which it appears to have to augment or diminish 
 the happiness of the party whose interest is in 
 question." 
 
 " If the principle of utility be a right principle to be 
 governed by, and that in all cases, it follows that what- 
 ever principle differs from it in any case nlust be a wrong 
 one. To prove any principle a wrong one, there needs 
 no more than just to show it to be what it is, — a prin- 
 ciple of which the dictates are in some point or other 
 different from those of the principle of utility." 
 
 "Of such principles there are several; but they all 
 agree in not accepting utility as the ultimate standard 
 of right. 
 
 " One man says he has a thing made on purpose to 
 tell him what is right and what is wrong, and that it is 
 called a moral sense. And then he goes to work at his 
 ease and says. Such a thing is right, and such a thing is 
 wrong. Why ? Because my moral sense tells me it is. 
 Another man comes and alters the phrase, leaving out 
 moral, and putting in common. He then tells you that 
 his common sense teUs him what is right and what is 
 
228 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 wrong as surely as the other man's moral sense did; 
 meaning by common sense a sense of some kind or 
 other which he says is possessed by all mankind, — the 
 sense of those whose sense is not the same as the au- 
 thor's being struck out of the account as not worth tak- 
 ing. This contrivance does better than the other ; for 
 a moral sense being a new thing, a man may feel about 
 him a good while without being able to find it out ; but 
 common sense is as old as creation, and there is no man 
 but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as 
 much of it as his neighbors. Another man comes and 
 says that as to a moral sense, indeed, he cannot find 
 that he has any such thing, but he has an understand- 
 ing, which will do quite as well. This understanding, 
 he says, is the standard of right and wrong ; it tells him 
 so and so. All wise and good men understand as he 
 does ; if other men's understandings diS'er in any point 
 from his, so much the worse for them, — it is a sure 
 sign that they are either defective or corrupt. Another 
 saj's that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right ; 
 that the rule of right dictates so and so ; and then he 
 begins giving j'ou his sentiments upon anything that 
 comes uppermost, and these sentiments you are to 
 take for granted are so many branches of the eternal 
 rule of right." 
 
 These extracts indicate the spirit and intent of 
 the utilitarian system of ethics as represented by 
 Bentham, — a system in which there is no recogni- 
 tion of any other source of moral obligation than 
 the comfort of society, of any other right than that 
 
ESSAYS. 229 
 
 which consists in augmenting the pleasures and 
 diminishing the pains of our fellow-men. 
 
 The latest form of utilitarian ethics is the out- 
 come of that system of philosophy known as Posi- 
 tivism. Here, as in Paley and Bentham, there is 
 no recognition of absolute right and an aboriginal 
 sense of right in moral agents. Instead of that, 
 we have a modification of the brain resulting from 
 hereditary experience of utility accompanying cer- 
 tain modes of action. 
 
 " Moral institutions," says Herbert Spencer, " are 
 the results of accumulated experiences of utility. Gradu- 
 ally organized and inherited, they have come to be 
 quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the 
 same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed 
 by any living individual to have arisen from organized 
 and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individ- 
 uals who bequeathed to him their slowly developed ner- 
 vous organization ; just as I believe that this intuition, 
 requiring only to be made definite and complete by 
 personal experiences, has practically become a form of 
 thought, apparently quite independent of experience, — 
 so do I believe that the experiences of utility, organized 
 and consolidated through all past generations of the 
 human race, have been producing corresponding ner- 
 vous organizations which, by continued transmission 
 and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties 
 of moral intuition, certain emotions corresponding to 
 right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis 
 in individual experiences of utility." 
 
230 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 The view presented in this statement I regard as 
 a curious example of the extravagances into which 
 a strong mind may be driven by pursuing to its 
 ultimate one line of thought, by the despotism of 
 a system. The analogue chosen by way of illustra- 
 tion — the hereditary origin of our sense of space — 
 suggests the question how primitive man came by 
 his space-perceptions, which, one would say, must 
 have been rather essential to him in the operations 
 by which he won his subsistence and got himself 
 lived, after a fashion, in those dim years ; and fur- 
 ther (since heredity is cumulative), whether your 
 and my sense of space is any more perfect than that 
 of Pythagoras when he discoursed of the direipop two 
 thousand five hundred years ago. As to the physi- 
 ology of this hypothesis, it seems to me that if our 
 moral perceptions are nervous modifications derived 
 from inheritance, the sons and grandsons of upright 
 ancestors should be pre-eminently gifted in that kind. 
 But we have proof that the moral sense in such 
 subjects is no finer than in persons of less honor- 
 able descent, in spite of the noblesse oblige of the 
 French aristocrat. Conduct, I know, may be de- 
 termined by other influences than that of moral 
 intuition ; but surely it might be expected to bear 
 some appreciable relation to such intuition. 
 
 There is, however, a truth, a very important 
 truth, involved in Spencer's theory. That truth is 
 
ESSAYS. 231 
 
 the fact of an accumulation of moral capital in 
 civil society, — a capital handed down from one 
 generation to another, and to which each genera- 
 tion contributes its own experience in works and 
 lives. The growth of this capital is coeval with 
 history ; it is vested in historic records, in biogra- 
 phy, in literature, in churches and other institu- 
 tions for the education and edification of human 
 kind, but not, I think, in the intracranial ganglia 
 of the human animal. It acts for the good of 
 society, not as a physically plastic force, but as 
 moral attraction, repulsion, incentive, guidance. 
 
 One investment of this capital is custom. Under 
 this head I will name an instance in which social 
 influence acts with almost physical force, and 
 comes near to verifying Spencer's doctrine of ner- 
 vous modification. It relates to the intercourse of 
 the sexes. In the earliest stage of human society, 
 when polyandry prevailed, brothers of one family 
 did not shun to mix with a sister in wedlock ac- 
 cording to such form as was known to that rude 
 time. The custom was found to be attended with 
 evil' consequences ; it became obsolete ; the moral 
 sense was enlisted against it, and that so effectu- 
 ally that now it is regarded as one of the blackest 
 of crimes, and what may be called an instinctive 
 aversion has made it one of the rarest. Here is a 
 strong case — a solitary one, unless parricide be 
 
232 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 another — of an hereditary sentiment ripening into 
 a moral conviction, or, if you please, a moral in- 
 tuition, whether through connate cerehral forma- 
 tion, as Spencer claims, or, as I prefer to believe, 
 through overpowering social influence affecting 
 domestic education. 
 
 But Spencer's doctrine teaches that man has 
 originally no moral perceptions, no sense of right, 
 — in effect, no moral nature ; not differing in this 
 from the brute. If this be allowed, it follows, I 
 think, that man has no moral nature now. For 
 civilized man differs from primitive man, not in 
 the ground-elements of his constitution, but in 
 training, development, habit. He acquires by he- 
 redity the habit of acting, the disposition and im- 
 pulse to act, in conformity with social well-being. 
 But where does he get the feeling that he ought so 
 to act, that such action is right, that he is bound 
 to it, however adverse to his own inclination, how- 
 ever it may seem to conflict with his own advan- 
 tage? "Whence does he derive the idea of duty? 
 The mere perception that a given line of action is 
 conducive to social well-being will not compel a 
 man so to act if he sees no benefit, but, on the con- 
 trary, injury accruing to himself from such action. 
 That perception will never induce him to sacrifice 
 himself for the common good, unless reinforced by 
 a strong sense of moral obligation. What do I 
 
ESSASY. 283 
 
 care for the common good ? My own gain is more 
 to me than any benefit the public may reap from 
 my action. Or suppose I feel some interest in the 
 common weal, some public sympathy : there is in 
 that sympathy no force sufficient to counteract my 
 selfish inclination, no categorical imperative. But 
 Duty comes in and says, " You must." A voice 
 in my conscience, which I feel to be the voice 
 of God, commands, and woe to me if I disobey. 
 Herein precisely consists the difference between 
 moral and political : the former finds its law with- 
 in ; the latter, without. 
 
 There is a radical distinction which we all feel be- 
 tween " right " and " expedient." That distinction 
 the utilitarian ethic overlooks. The terms " right " 
 and " wrong " have no true place in that system ; they 
 are borrowed from a higher plane of human experi- 
 ence, and surreptitiously grafted on the stock of utili- 
 tarianism. Take, for example, the virtue of honesty. 
 The moral sense enjoins honesty as a form of right 
 irrespective of use. According to Mr. Spencer the 
 duty of honesty results from the experience of 
 many generations that honesty, as the proverb 
 goes, is the best policy. The saying is not true in 
 the unqualified universality in which the proverb 
 affirms it. Cases may be supposed in which, so far 
 as the temporal prosperity of the individual is con- 
 cerned, rigid honesty is not the best policy. But 
 
234 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 let that pass; grant the truth of the proverb. 
 How was it first discovered that honesty is the 
 best policy ? How came it ever to be tried ? The 
 carnal instinct is against it. When in early ages 
 the carnal man saw an advantage to be gained by 
 deception, and that deception not likely to be de- 
 tected, and thereby to injure him in the end, he 
 would be sure to deceive, unless a principle, other 
 and higher than policy, restrained him. The first 
 man who resisted the strong temptation to deceive 
 was certainly not moved to such resistance by the 
 accumulated experience of ages that honesty is 
 the best policy wrought into his nervous structure, 
 otherwise he would not have been the first honest 
 man. He must have obeyed an imperative voice 
 within, which said to him, " You must not deceive, 
 you must speak and act the truth ; " and doubtless 
 he experienced a sharp conflict with himself in 
 obeying that mandate, as the conscientious man 
 does now when honesty and seeming advantage 
 collide. If it were always as distinctly seen, as 
 clearly understood, as firmly believed, that honesty 
 is the best policy, as it is that fire burns and water 
 drowns, honesty would cease to be a virtue, and an 
 honest act could not with any propriety be termed 
 a moral act. In the words of Sir John Lubbock, 
 "It is precisely because honesty is sometimes as- 
 sociated with unhappy consequences that it is 
 
ESS A YS. 235 
 
 regarded as a virtue. If it had always been directly 
 advantageous to all parties, it would have been 
 classed as useful, but not as right." 
 
 I think we have abundant evidence of an aborigi- 
 nal sense of moral obligation, a feeling of the dif- 
 ference between right and wrong, as old as the 
 eldest and rudest form of society, older than the 
 State, as old as the tribe, — very imperfect, indeed, 
 very crude, limited to very few topics, but not 
 wholly dormant, not utterly inactive. There was 
 never, I guess, a state of society so rude in which 
 a man could wrong a friend or betray confidence 
 ■without suffering remorse for so doing. 
 
 I oppose, then, to the utilitarian view of the 
 origin of moral obligation the doctrine of a moral 
 sense proper to man as man, and constituting a 
 part of the original dower of human nature. The 
 feeling of remorse which follows wrong-doing can 
 be accounted for in no other way. An injury 
 done to an individual or society would not awaken 
 that feeling except the moral sense had pro- 
 nounced such injury a sin against one's self. 
 And, on the iitilitarian principle, remorse should 
 never arise where no such injury has been perpe- 
 trated. Dr. Darwin, referring to the case of the 
 dog which, while suffering vivisection, licked the 
 hand of the operator, remarks that " the man, 
 unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt 
 
236 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 remorse to the last day of his life." But why 
 remorse, if the utilitarian doctrine is true ? The 
 man was contributing, or intending to contribute, 
 to the uses of science, which are the uses of soci- 
 ety. Satisfaction, not remorse, should follow such 
 action. 
 
 I shall not undertake to proTC to those who 
 deny it the existence of an innate sense of right ; 
 but let me recall to the reader's memory a beauti- 
 ful illustration of it from Grecian history. The- 
 mistocles had announced to the people of Athens 
 that he had in his mind a project which, if put in 
 execution, would be of great use to the State, but 
 that the thing was of such a nature that it could 
 not, before the execution, be made public. The 
 assembly deputed Aristides to be the recipient of 
 Themistocles's confidence, and, if he approved, to 
 have it done. The project was to burn the Spartan 
 fleet, then massed at Gythium, and thus to secure 
 to Athens the supremacy on the seas. Aristides 
 reported to the agora that what Themistocles pro- 
 posed would be eminently useful, but would not be 
 right. Whereupon the Athenians concluded that 
 what was not right was not expedient, and rejected 
 without a hearing the proposal of their greatest 
 general. Says Emerson : " As much justice as we 
 can see and practise is useful to men and impera- 
 tive, whether we can see it to be useful or not." 
 
ESSAYS. 237 
 
 Let us pass to the third, the ideal theory of 
 moral obligation. The ideal theory is that which 
 finds the ground of moral obligation in the simple 
 idea of right. Plato, and after him the Stoics, 
 are its chief representatives among the ancients. 
 Plato's philosophic system is based on the assump- 
 tion of eternal ideas, — ideas which are not percep- 
 tions or states of the human mind, but which have 
 an existence entirely independent of the human 
 mind. Of these ideas the first category consists of 
 the Beautiful, the Just, the Good. These are dif- 
 ferent aspects of one and the same fundamental 
 reality. And man's vocation, according to Plato, 
 is to realize and embody these ideas in his life. 
 This Is duty, this is virtue. Hence, so far from 
 basing morals on polity, Plato's system, on the 
 contrary, bases polity on morals. 
 
 The philosophy which during the days of its 
 prevalence exercised unquestionably the greatest 
 practical influence on its votaries is that of the 
 Stoics. The atmosphere of that school, after 
 converse with utilitarian and eudsemonistic theo- 
 ries, comes bracing to the soul as a nor'-wester in 
 dog-days braces the nerves. The sublimest ideas 
 have sprung from its theory, the grandest souls 
 have been ripened by its training. We find them 
 at the opposite poles of the social scale. Epicte- 
 tus the slave, Aurelius the sovereign lord of the 
 
238 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 world, — milk-brothers, suckled by the same high- 
 hearted nurse who freed her foster-children with a 
 freedom which bondage could not bind, and bound 
 them with bonds from which tlirones could not 
 free. 
 
 The first principle of the Stoic philosophy was 
 that virtue is'the supreme good, the only real good. 
 Virtue for its own sake, not for any fruits which 
 its exercise may yield. Be true to yourself; be 
 not disobedient to the heavenly vision, to the high- 
 est vision your mind has sight of. Mespue quod 
 non es, said Persius, the pure-souled poet of the 
 sect. Ne te qucesiveris extra. Seek the ground of 
 your action in yourself. 
 
 Among moderns the foremost champion of ideal 
 ethic is also the foremost philosopher of modern 
 time. That title, I think, the vote of experts will 
 assign to Kant. Kant proposes the autonomy of 
 the wUl as the supreme principle in morals. 
 
 " Autonomy of the will is that quality of the will by 
 which, irrespective of the character of all particular ob- 
 jects of its willing, it is a law to itself. The principle 
 of autonomy, accoixiingly, is to act in such a way that 
 the maxims which govern our choice shall be included 
 in our willing as universal law. . . . When the will 
 seeks the law that shaU determine it elsewhere than in 
 the fitness of its maxims to serve for universal legisla- 
 tion ; when, going beyond itself, it seeks its law in the 
 quality of its objects, — we have heteronomy. The will 
 
ESSAYS. 239 
 
 in that case does not give the law to itself, but takes it 
 from its object through the relation which such object 
 bears to its volition. This relation, whether based on 
 inclination or on ideas of reason, admits only of hypo- 
 thetical imperatives ; I am to do this because I desire 
 that ; whereas the moral, that is, the categorical, impera- 
 tive says : ' I must act so or so, whether I desire the 
 object of the action or do not desire it.' . . . 
 
 " For example, I must seek to promote others' happi- 
 ness, not because I care for it, whether in the way of 
 direct inclination or on account of the complacency 
 which Reason may find in it, but because the maxim 
 which should exclude it cannot be included in one and 
 the same willing, as law for aU. . . . Love," he remarks, 
 " is a matter of feeling, not of willing. I cannot love 
 because I will, still less because I ought. Conse- 
 quently, to speak of "the duty of loving is nonsense. 
 But beneficence, as action, may be subject to the law of 
 duty. . . . 
 
 "To do good to others according to our ability is 
 duty, whether we love them or not. And this duty 
 loses nothing of its obligatoriness although the sad ob- 
 servation should force itself upon us that our species, 
 alas ! is not of such a character that on nearer acquaint- 
 ance we find them particularly lovable." 
 
 Montesquieu says of the Stoic philosophy that it 
 is the only one which has produced great men and 
 great rulers. I would add that it has given us in 
 our own day, in our own country, the most thought- 
 ful essayist and the most commanding moralist of 
 recent time. When we read Emerson's essay on 
 
240 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 Heroism, we feel ourselves lifted into a higher at- 
 mosphere, "we breathe the pure oxygen of the 
 Porch. The spirit of Antoninus found in him, 
 after many generations, a kindred soul. It in- 
 spires his poetry as well as his prose, and has 
 given us such choice morsels as we find in some of 
 his quatrains : — 
 
 •' Though love repine, and reason chafe, 
 There came a voice without reply: 
 'T is man's perdition to be safe 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 And this happy versification of Kant's sublime 
 maxim, " Duty the measure of ability, not ability 
 the measure of duty : " — 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' 
 The youth replies, ' I can.' " 
 
 I find no valid ground of moral obligation but 
 the inborn sense of right. To the question. Why 
 am I bound to act in a certain way ? the final an- 
 swer is, Because it is right. Prove an act or a 
 course of action right, and you prove it binding. 
 There is nothing more to be said about it. To dis- 
 pute that authority is like disputing the claim to 
 our preference of beauty over ugliness. Why must 
 I prefer the bird-of-paradise to the crab? Why 
 must I prefer the form of the crescent moon to the 
 
ESSAYS. 241 
 
 gibbous, the face of Apollo to that of a satyr ? Be- 
 cause the sense of beauty in me requires it. 
 
 But now comes the question, What constitutes 
 right ? Here the utilitarian ethic has the merit of 
 supplying most of the tests and the most universal 
 rule of right-doing. Although utility is not the 
 source of moral obligation, it is in most cases the 
 end. When in any case the question how to act 
 presents itself to the conscientious mind, the meas- 
 urable utility of my action must, in the absence of 
 other tests, decide the question. And in most 
 cases, perhaps, other tests will be wanting. It is 
 always right, and therefore my duty, to act in such 
 a way as to benefit my fellow-men. Bentham's 
 rule, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 
 is well taken, provided I know what in the long 
 run will be for the greatest happiness of the great- 
 est number. Still, we cannot say categorically 
 that utility is the measure of right; whereas we 
 can say, on the contrary, that right, as discerned 
 by the scrupulous and enlightened conscience, is 
 the measure of utility. There are cases in which 
 the right and the useful appear to conflict. In a 
 presidential or gubernatorial election, we will sup- 
 pose that the nominee of the party whose general 
 principles and policy, as compared with its op- 
 posite, I approve, and which I wish to prevail, is a 
 
 16 
 
242 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 bad man. He is reckoned available on account of 
 certain popular qualities, and is nominated accord- 
 ingly. But I know him to be unprincipled, profli- 
 gate, bad. On the ground of utility I might be 
 tempted to vote for him as helping to defeat the 
 party whose policy I mistrust, whose success I be- 
 lieve would involve much evil to the common weal. 
 But on the ground of right I cannot vote for him, 
 for in so doing I should say by my act that such 
 nominations are justifiable, and that moral quali- 
 ties are not essential in the head of the nation or 
 the State. In short, I should say : " Do evil that 
 good may come." 
 
 And this, it seems to me, is one of the dangers 
 to which utilitarian ethic is liable, — that of doing 
 evil that good may come. It is vain to say that 
 cannot be evil from which good shall spring ; that 
 the only test of an act is its use ; that the tree 
 must be judged by its fruits. I accept the rule, 
 but with a different application. The tree must be 
 judged by its fruits. But who can foresee all the 
 fruit that shall spring from a given act ? Behind 
 the immediate good, who shall say what evil may 
 lurk, slowly ripening to its harvest of death? 
 That act must be evil and a fountain of evil which 
 the unperverted moral instinct condemns. But the 
 moral instinct may be blinded by interest; it may 
 be gagged by casuistry till the oracle turns dumb, 
 
ESSAYS. 243 
 
 and right seems wrong, and -wrong right. I fear 
 that without something in us deeper and surer 
 than all calculations of utility, our ethic would 
 prompt infanticide and putting to death with some 
 mild quietus the idiots, the misshapen, the hope- 
 lessly diseased, the useless members of society. 
 We know how in time past utility prompted tyran- 
 nicide, and we know what came of such action. 
 Brutus thought to do a useful thing by assassina- 
 ting Caesar, — he hoped to restore the republic ; but 
 he hastened its final extinction on the field of Phi- 
 lippi. Charlotte Corday, the beautiful enthusiast, 
 thought to do a useful thing by killing Marat, — she 
 would free her country from oppression; but she 
 caused it to fall into the hands of Robespierre. 
 
 Who can measure consequences ? Who, intent 
 only on use, and knowing no other test, can be sure 
 of the final balance of good and ill, can cast the 
 limit of blessing or harm in acts that, prior to all 
 calculation, have a character impressed upon them 
 by the deep, prophetic soul, outreaching calculation, 
 and ordaining, irrespective of seeming use, Thou 
 shalt, and Thou shalt not ? But this we know : that 
 the virtues not born of use give birth to uses which 
 compensate many of the evils that vex the utili- 
 tarian mind. Say, rather, they are uses in them- 
 selves. Patience is a use ; piety, fortitude are uses. 
 Of these uses, and the duties we owe to ourselves, 
 
244 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 utilitarian ethic makes small account. These it 
 does not especially tend to promote. 
 
 But if utilitarianism in morals incurs the danger 
 of doing evil that good may come, the ideal ethic, on 
 the other hand, is liable, when incontinently urged, to 
 the opposite danger of ruthless absolutism. Kant 
 himself, I think, offends in this sort when, in stern 
 consistency with his lofty yiew of duty, he main- 
 tains that no conceivable crisis in human life can 
 excuse the utterance of a falsehood. You must not 
 lie, is the first commandment in his code. You 
 must not lie to spare the nerves of the dying and 
 secure a euthanasia which the truth would defeat ; 
 you must not lie to avert the career of a madman ; 
 you must not lie to save a nation from ruin. I 
 cannot consent, nor will humanity bend, to this 
 anxious interpretation of the moral law. It seems 
 to me based on a narrow view of truth. Truth is 
 not a question of words alone, not a function of 
 tongue and throat, but of the heart and the life. 
 " Doth not Nature teach you ? " Nature is truth 
 on the cosmic and secular scale ; but how Nature 
 will lie, to human perception, with false appear- 
 ances which deceive even the elect ! Do you say 
 truth is an agreement between word and fact ? 
 Granted ; but truth is a thing of degrees, and the 
 higher may hold the lower in suspense, as one force 
 in Nature suspends another, as the law of gravita- 
 
ESSAYS. 245 
 
 tion is suspended by the flight of the lark. Truth 
 is agreement of word with fact ; but truth is also 
 fitness of means to ends. Let there be truth in the 
 heart and truth in the will, as accordant with mercy 
 and right, and the speech must conform thereto. 
 But is not this precisely a case of doing evil that 
 good may come ? And do I not contradict myself, 
 having ^id that what the moral instinct condemns 
 must needs be evil ? I answer that my moral in- 
 stinct does not, in such cases, condemn the verbal 
 falsehood. My moral instinct does not require me 
 to sacrifice sacred interests to a form of speech. 
 My moral instinct commands me to save life, and 
 not to destroy it. 
 
 Fiat justitia, yuat ccelum (let justice be done, 
 though the sky fall), is a favorite maxim of ideal 
 ethic. It is one of those sounding plausibilities 
 which, in some of its applications, the wiser mind 
 will not approve. It depends on what the particu- 
 lar justice is that would get itself done, and what 
 is the sky that is going to fall. The greater must 
 not be sacrificed to the less. The particular justice 
 may mean the cause of a class ; the threatened sky 
 may mean the cause of a nation. But the truth is, 
 there can be no real conflict of moral interests, and 
 no real conflict of a moral interest with the com- 
 mon weal. Let justice be done to a class, and the 
 nation will reap the benefit in the end ; and, viee 
 
246 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 versa, injustice to a class imperils the welfare of 
 the whole. The truer maxim, therefore, would be, 
 Fiat justitia ne mat caelum. 
 
 It would seem that no one principle of practical 
 ethic can claim unconditional acceptance or admit 
 of universal application. Even the so-called gold- 
 en rule, " Do unto others as you would that others 
 should do unto you," has its limits. The judge on 
 the bench, the jury in the box, are not doing by 
 the criminal at the bar as they would be done by 
 in like circumstances when they find him guilty 
 and pronounce on him sentence of death. A more 
 comprehensive maxim is that of Kant, " Act accord- 
 ing to the rule you would wish to be the universal 
 rule of action." 
 
 The right and the beautiful in action, though 
 usually coinciding, are not strictly commensurate. 
 An act is not always beautiful in the measure in 
 which it is right, or vice versa. The lie with which 
 Desdemona excuses her murderer is beautiful ; but 
 can we pronounce it right ? An act is not especially 
 beautiful of which the contrary would be base. We 
 bestow that praise only on acts which transcend 
 the bounds of strict obligation and culminate into 
 the heroic. Sydney Smith extols the act of one 
 who, having purchased a lottery-ticket for himself, 
 and another for a friend who was not informed of 
 the number designated for him, when his own num- 
 
ESSAYS. 247 
 
 ber drew a blank and the other a large prize, made 
 over the prize to his friend. He might have changed 
 the destination of the numbers, and no one would 
 hare been the wiser ; therefore he is said to have 
 acted beautifully. But could he have respected 
 himself had he done otherwise ? Would not his 
 conscience have condemned the substitution as false 
 and base ? The act, it seems to me, was simply 
 right; it could claim no special beauty. 
 
 The act of Damon in offering himself as a host- 
 age for his friend was beautiful; the act of Phin- 
 tias in rendering himself at the proper time to 
 redeem his pledge and endure the cross was simply 
 right. The beautiful acts which history has pre- 
 served to us, the doings of such men as Aristides 
 and Leonidas, of Regulus, of Scipio, of Arnold 
 Winkelried, are the beaming light-points in the 
 annals of humanity. More instructive than all 
 our ethics, they reveal the possibilities of human 
 nature, and teach the utilitarian that the best of 
 all uses are heroic souls. And these are ripened 
 in no utilitarian school, but draw their inspiration 
 from a source which philosophy will never sound. 
 The great man teaches, by his doing and his being, 
 more and better than Plato or Kant, reason they 
 never so wisely. It was said of Cato that he was 
 to Rome the thirteenth Table of Laws. And with- 
 out the thirteenth how defective the twelve would 
 have been ! 
 
248 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 The essence of all virtue is disinterestedness, 
 self-abnegation. And of all unbeliefs the most exe- 
 crable is that which denies the reality and capacity 
 of disinterested goodness, — the vile doctrine, not 
 less blasphemous than it is absurd, that every 
 good deed, every generous effort, if rigorously ana- 
 lyzed, will be found to have its source in self-love. 
 The benevolent, it is said, find satisfaction in the 
 exercise of their benevolence ; it is therefore their 
 own satisfaction which they seek, as the sensualist 
 seeks his in sensual pleasures. They have both 
 the same end in view; there is no difference be- 
 tween them, except in the methods they have hit 
 upon for the attainment of that end. The one 
 may be more cunning, but morally he is no better 
 than the other. Martyrs, patriots, philanthropists, 
 are all self-seekers ; self-sacrifice is only selfishness 
 in disguise. May such selfishness abound ! In the 
 words of Dr. Brown : " It is a selfishness which 
 for the sake of others can prefer penury to wealth, 
 which can hang for many sleepless nights over the 
 bed of contagion, which can enter the dungeon a 
 voluntary prisoner, ... or fling itself before the 
 dagger which would pierce another's breast, and 
 rejoice in receiving the stroke. It is the selfish- 
 ness which thinks not of self, the selfishness of all 
 that is most generous and heroic in man, the 
 selfishness which is most divine in God." 
 
ESSAYS. 249 
 
 The conclusion is, that utilitarian ethic, however 
 serviceable in complementing the idea and illu- 
 mining the path of the right, lacks the element of 
 the moral as distinct from the expedient. There 
 is a right and a wrong independent of use. As 
 far as the east is from the west, so far is the right 
 from the wrong, though all the apparent and com- 
 putable utilities gather round the latter, and only 
 its own sanctity envelop the former. 
 
 Well might Kant bow in awe before the sense 
 of right, likening it in grandeur to the starry 
 heaven. For does it not, like that, lay hold on 
 eternity? And is it not precisely the strongest 
 thing in the universe of intelligent being ? Lodged 
 in a feeble human frame which a blast may wither, 
 it shall finally compel into its orbit all the powers 
 that be. 
 
GHOST-SBEING.i 
 
 [From the North American Review.] 
 Wir sind so klug, nnd dennoch spukt's in Tegel Faust. 
 
 IS there within the bounds of Nature, perceptible 
 to mortal sense, the reality of what is intended 
 by the word " ghost " ? Or is all reputed ghost- 
 seeing pure hallucination on the part of the seer ? 
 
 The question, notwithstanding belief in ghosts 
 is as old as human history, stiU awaits an authori- 
 tative answer. It still divides the opinions alike 
 
 1 1. Zauberbibliotliek. 6 Theile. Von Georg Conrad Horst. 
 Mainz. 1821-26. 
 
 2. Artemidori Daldiani et Achmetis Sercimi F. Oaeirocritica. 
 Lutetiae. 1603. 
 
 3. Arthur Schopenhauer. Parerga und Faralipomena. " Geist- 
 ersehen und was damit zusammenhangt." Berlin. 1862. 
 
 4. Hallucinations, etc. By A. Brierre de Boismont. Phila- 
 delphia. 1853. 
 
 5. The Philosophy of Apparitions. By Samuel Hibbert. 
 Edinburgh. 1824. 
 
 6. The Night-side of Nature ; or, Ghosts and Ghost-seers. By 
 Catherine Crowe. New York. 1850. 
 
 7. Visions : A Study of False Sight. By Edward H. Clarke, 
 M.D. Boston. 1878. 
 
 8. Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. By Robert 
 Dale Owen. Philadelphia. 1860. 
 
 9. The Seeress of Prevorst. By Justinus Kerner. From the 
 German. By Mrs. Crowe. New York. 1856. 
 
ESSAYS. 251 
 
 of the thinking and the unthinking, — some afiBrm- 
 ing on the ground of experience or credible testi- 
 mony, others denying on the ground of alleged 
 improbability or impossibility. The one-sided cul- 
 ture of physical science is swift to reject whatever 
 eludes material tests, complacently resolving into 
 temporary suspension of reason the professed ex- 
 perience of witnesses whose mental sanity is other- 
 wise allowed to be unimpeachable. 
 
 The aversion of science to this class of phenom- 
 ena is due to the prevalent assumption of a super- 
 natural origin. Call them " supernatural," and you 
 shut them out from the field of scientific inquiry, 
 whose limits are the bounds of Nature. Let us at 
 once discard this phrase as impertinent and mis- 
 leading. With what there may be outside of Na- 
 ture we have nothing to do in this connection. If 
 Nature means anything, it means the all of finite 
 being. The question is : Are ghosts a part of that 
 all, subject to Nature's method and rule ? Grant 
 the affirmative, and you encounter difficulties which 
 seem to the understanding insurmountable. As- 
 sume the negative, and you are confronted by a 
 mass of testimony which no sane philosophy can 
 afford to despise, — testimony reaching back to re- 
 motest time. When the author of the book of Job 
 makes Eliphaz the Temanite say : " A spirit passed 
 before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up : . . . 
 
252 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 I could not discern the form [that is, the outlines] 
 thereof: an image was before mine eyes," — he voices 
 the experience of countless ghost-seers from that 
 time to this. Pliny the younger, writing more than 
 a thousand years later to his friend Sura, asks his 
 opinion about ghosts, and tells a story of a haunted 
 house at Athens which reads precisely like one of 
 the narratives of Jung Stilling or Mrs. Crowe. 
 
 However the learned may decide the question, 
 ghosts or no ghosts, in foro seientice, ghost-seeinff, 
 explain it as we may, is a fact about which there 
 is no dispute. It is of this, in some of its phases, 
 that I propose to speak. 
 
 I begin with the nearest, the phenomena of 
 dreams. Dreaming is a kind of ghost-seeing, a 
 beholding of phantoms, personal and impersonal, 
 of forms and faces, human or bestial, animate or 
 inanimate. " I saw," people say when relating 
 their dreams. The objects are phantasmal, but 
 the seeing is actual. We call it seeing with " the 
 mind's eye " when the object seen is not materially 
 present. But in fact it is only through the mind 
 that we see at all, in the sense of perceiving. No 
 physiologist can explain the connection between 
 the image on the retina and the act of perception. 
 In waking vision as well as in dreaming, it is the 
 mind that perceives, constructing from notices fur- 
 nished by the eye, in accordance with certain cate- 
 
ESSA YS. 253 
 
 gories of the understanding, the object perceived. 
 What the eye reports is not the object perceiTed 
 by the mind, but only the motive and occasion of 
 the vision. Images may be painted on the retina 
 when nothing corresponding with those images is 
 seen by the mind, because the mind in a fit of ab- 
 straction is seeing something else. " Her eyes are 
 open," says the doctor in " Macbeth." " Ay ! but 
 their sense is shut." 
 
 The presence of an external object is not an in- 
 dispensable condition of seeing; the sensation so 
 termed may be induced by the independent, spon- 
 taneous action of the mind. We see in our dreams 
 as truly as in our waking experience, or what we 
 call waking. For, after all, who knows what wak- 
 ing is, except as contrasted with our nightly sleep, 
 or how far we are really awake when we seem to 
 be so? Shakspeare may have written more truly 
 than he knew, or than we interpret him, when he 
 made the old magician say, " We are such stuff as 
 dreams are made of." I can imagine a waking out 
 of this chronic somnambulism of our life which 
 shall show us the reality of what we now see only 
 the symbol and the shadow. 
 
 Dreaming, like waking, is a thing of degrees. 
 Our ordinary dreams are a meaningless play of 
 phantasms for which we see no cause, and care too 
 little to seek one. A confused rabble of incongru- 
 
254 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 ous images drives across the field of our vision like 
 the " -wild hunt " of German folk-lore, and leaves 
 no distinct impression on the mind. Dreams of 
 this sort — and they constitute the larger part of 
 our dreaming — are due to imperfect sleep, sleep 
 in which the state of the body, and the action upon 
 us of the world without, prevent the entire seclu- 
 sion and free action of the soul. The brain is 
 still active, but no longer retains its gubernatorial 
 office ; it lets go the helm, and mental life drifts. 
 In perfect sleep the senses are shut to all external 
 impressions, and the soul, which knows no sleep, 
 disencumbered and freed from the thraldom of 
 sense, inhabits and fashions its own world. The 
 dreams which occur in that state have a staid, 
 consequential character ; they mean something, 
 had we only the key to their right interpretation. 
 Such dreams are not very common ; for although 
 the soul must be supposed to be always active in 
 sleep, yet in order that its action may give us 
 dreams, it must report itself in the brain, and 
 whether, and how distinctly, it shall do so in any 
 case, must depend on the idiosyncrasy of the in- 
 dividual. Then, again, supposing the soul's noc- 
 turnal experience to report itself in the brain, 
 there is still another condition of dreaming ; to wit, 
 that the record present itself to our consciousness 
 on waking. For a dream which we are not aware 
 
ESSAYS. 255 
 
 of having had, is no dream. And that encounter 
 of our consciousness with the niglit record depends 
 on the manner of our waking. If the transition 
 from deep sleep to broad waking is gradual, the 
 passage through that antechamber and limbo of 
 the mind is likely to prove a baptism of oblivion. 
 But let a man be suddenly awakened out of a deep 
 sleep, and always, I believe, he will be aware of 
 having dreamed. He will catch the vanishing 
 trail of a vision if he does not recover the whole. 
 That which wakes him will be apt to mingle in 
 some way with the dream, and constitute one of its 
 moments. For, be it observed, no dream is com- 
 plete, — they are all fragments, episodes to some 
 unknown method and epic of the soul. 
 
 The soul has methods of her own, and converses 
 on her own account with the invisible world, — a 
 converse independent of place and time. She has 
 visions not only of what is, but of what is to be. 
 Hence dreams are sometimes prophetic, either in 
 the way of distinct annunciation, as the elder Afri- 
 canus, in the " Somnium Scipionis," foretells to the 
 younger his coming fortunes ; or in the way of 
 allegory, as Pharaoh's dream of the seven fat kine 
 and the seven lean kine foreshadowed, according 
 to Joseph's interpretation, so many years of plenty 
 and so many of famine. 
 
 An instance of allegorical dreaming is recorded 
 
256 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 by Goethe as happening to his maternal grand- 
 father, Textor, portending his promotion to a seat 
 in the Senate. He saw himself in his customary 
 place in the Common Council, when suddenly one 
 of the aldermen, then in perfect health, rose from 
 his chair on the elevated platform occupied by that 
 board and courteously beckoned to him to take the 
 vacant seat. This man soon after died in a fit of 
 apoplexy ; a successor, as usual, was chosen by lot 
 from the lower board, and the lot fell to Textor. 
 
 A third class of prophetic dreams are those in 
 which coming events are neither foretold in words, 
 nor allegorically foreshadowed, but seen by the 
 dreamer as actually occurring. Such dreams are 
 styled by Artemidorus ^ " theorematic." Mrs. 
 Crowe, in her " Night-side of Nature," records a 
 dream of this sort relating to Major Andr^, of 
 tragic fame. When Andr^, on a visit to friends in 
 Derbyshire, before his embarkation for America, 
 was introduced to a certain Mr. Cummington, that 
 gentleman recognized in him the original of the 
 countenance of a man whom he had seen, in a 
 dream, arrested in the midst of a forest, and after- 
 wards hung on a gallows. 
 
 Schopenhauer relates an instance from his own 
 experience. He had emptied his inkstand by mis- 
 take instead of the sand-box on a freshly written 
 1 Oiieirocritica, lib. i. cap. 2. 
 
ESSAYS. 257 
 
 page. The ink flowed down upon the floor, and 
 the chamber-maid was summoned to wipe it up. 
 While doing so, she remarked that she had dreamed 
 the night before of wiping up ink from the floor of 
 that room. When Schopenhauer questioned her 
 statement, she referred him to the maid who had 
 slept with her, and to whom she had related the 
 dream on awaking. He called the other maid, and 
 before she could communicate with her fellow- 
 servant, asked her, " What did that girl dream of 
 last night ? " "I don't know." " Yes, you do ; 
 she told you her dream in the morning." " Oh, I 
 remember ! She told me she dreamed of wiping up 
 ink in your library." 
 
 Dreams like this, too trivial to he recorded, and 
 seldom remembered, are psychologically valuable, 
 as tending to prove that the soul is essentially 
 clairvoyant. When not impeded and overpowered 
 by the action of the senses and the exigencies of 
 the waking life, it seems to be taken up into union 
 with the universal spirit, to which there is no here 
 nor there, no now nor then, and to have sight not 
 only of what is, but of what has been, and of what 
 is to be. These categories of past, present, and 
 future, which determine the action of the finite 
 mind, have no existence for the infinite. To that 
 all place is here, and all history now. 
 
 This view of prophetic dreaming, familiar to 
 17 
 
258 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 modern psychologists, is by no means new. Soc- 
 rates, in the " Phaedon," declares that true vision 
 comes to the soul when detached from the body. 
 Quintus, in Cicero's " De Divinatione," says : " The 
 soul ^ flourishes in sleep, freed from the senses and 
 all impeding cares, while the body lies supine, as if 
 dead. And because this soul has lived from all 
 eternity, and has been conversant with innumerable 
 souls, it sees all things in Nature." ^ 
 
 And again : " When the soul in sleep is screened 
 from companionship and the contagion of the body, 
 it remembers the past, discerns the present, fore- 
 sees the future. Much more will it do this after 
 death, when it shall have altogether departed from 
 the body. Hence at the approach of death its 
 divining power is greatly increased." ^ " The dying 
 behold the images of the dead." Posidonius of 
 Apamea, he tells us, supposes three ways by which 
 the soul may have prescience of the future : first, 
 by its own nature, as related to Godhead ; second, 
 by reading the truth in other immortal souls, of 
 which the air is full ; third, by direct converse of 
 Deity with the soul in sleep.* 
 
 The soul, when sleep is perfect, has visions inde- 
 
 1 The word is animus, which, though usually rendered " mind," 
 is evidently, in this connection, equivalent to what we call " soul." 
 
 2 De Divinat., lib. i. 51. 
 
 8 lb., lib. i. 80. 4 lb. 
 
ESSAYS. 259 
 
 pendent of time and place, seeing as present what 
 to the waking subject is future. Whether or not 
 the vision shall be transmitted to the brain, and 
 there brought to consciousness, depends on organic 
 conditions which are found in some subjects and 
 not in others. When thus transmitted it takes the 
 form of a dream, — it may. be allegoric, or it may 
 be theorematic. "And such dreams are prophetic, 
 fatidic. When, on the other hand, a vision of im- 
 pending calamity, for want of the requisite condi- 
 tions, fails to formulate itself as dream in the 
 brain, it induces, according to Schopenhauer, that 
 vague, uneasy foreboding of evil which we call 
 " presentiment." A presentiment, then, is an abor- 
 tive vision. 
 
 Nearly related to the class of dreams which I 
 have designated as " theorematic " is the kind of 
 vision which takes the name of " deuteroskopy," or 
 second-sight, and constitutes a more advanced 
 stage of ghost-seeing. 
 
 Second-sight is dreaming without the accompani- 
 ment of sleep. The soul involuntarily passes into 
 the same state of abstraction which it experiences 
 in deep sleep, and has visions which it communi- 
 cates to the brain, whereby the seer beholds, as 
 with his bodily eyes, things distant in space, and it 
 may be in time, as if they were present realities. 
 
260 GHOST-SEEING: 
 
 Dion Cassius and Philostratus both relate that 
 ApoUonius of Tyana beheld at Ephesus, while talk- 
 ing with his disciples, the assassination of the 
 Emperor Domitian, which was then occui-ring in 
 Eome. The life of ApoUonius contains many in- 
 credible things ; but this vision has, for those who 
 are not predetermined against everything of the 
 sort, an air of likelihood from the close resemblance 
 which it bears to modern reputed cases of second- 
 sight. It is hard to believe that all the stories, so 
 widely diffused and so strongly vouched, of similar 
 visions are forgeries. But incredulity in seeking 
 to evade a marvel often embraces a greater. Swe- 
 denborg, conversing with friends at Gottenburg, is 
 said to have been arrested in his speech, precisely 
 as ApoUonius was, by the vision of a fire then 
 raging at Stockholm, — a distance of nearly three 
 hundred miles. No fact in Swedenblirg's life is 
 better attested. Such things do not admit of ab- 
 solute demonstration, and there are minds so con- 
 stituted as to be incapable of receiving anything of 
 which the understanding cannot detect the method 
 and the law. Incredulity in such matters is com- 
 monly regarded as the mark of a strong under- 
 standing. If so, a strong understanding is not the 
 highest type of mind. The fact is, it is oftener the 
 will than the understanding which refuses credit 
 to spiritual marvels. 
 
ESSAYS. 261 
 
 Second-sight, it will be observed, is not vaticina- 
 tion ; it is not a foretelling of the future on the 
 ground of the present, not a reading of probabili- 
 ties, but a vision which happens to the seer, — per- 
 haps is forced upon him when not thinking of the 
 subject, but engaged with something else. Dr. 
 Johnson, in his account of a journey to the He- 
 brides, thus describes it. " The second-sight is an 
 impression made either by the mind upon the eye, 
 or by the eye upon the mind, by which things dis- 
 tant or future are perceived and seen as if they 
 were present. A man on a journey, far from home, 
 falls from his horse ; another, who is perhaps at 
 work about the house, sees him bleeding on the 
 ground, commonly with a landscape of the place 
 where the accident befalls him." 
 
 The deat Doctor reserves his decision as to 
 the authenticity of these phenomena. " There is 
 against it," he says, " the seeming analogy of 
 things confusedly seen and little understood ; and 
 for it the indistinct cry of national persuasion, 
 which, perhaps, may be resolved at last into preju- 
 dice and tradition. I could never advance my 
 curiosity to conviction, but came away at last only 
 willing to believe." 
 
 A case of second-sight not unlike the visions of 
 the Highland seers occurs in Homer's Odyssey, 
 where Theoklymenos, at a feast of Penelope's suit- 
 
262 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 ors, sees them already suffering the vengeance 
 which awaits them, — 
 
 ci5(&\o0V Be v\4ov irpSdvpop irKely} Bh Kol av\'^, 
 UiifV(aii''EpeP6aSe irrh ^6<pov. 
 
 To the same category has been assigned the cele- 
 brated vision of Cazotte regarding the Reign of 
 Terror in France, of which he himself was a victim. 
 If authentic, it is certainly the most astounding ex- 
 ample of prevision on record. We have it on the 
 authority of La Harpe, who, it seems, did not him- 
 self give it to the Press. It was found among his 
 papers, and published after his death. De Bois- 
 mont says it can only be received with hesitation, 
 though vouched by Madame de Genlis and Madame 
 la Comtesse de Beauharnais. For my own part, 
 I incline to believe that Cazotte did utter in La 
 Harpe's presence the substance of the prophecy 
 ascribed to him, but that La Harpe, writing from 
 recollection, after the events predicted, uninten- 
 tionally mingled details of what happened with 
 what he heard. 
 
 We come now to ghost-seeing, in the narrower 
 and commonly received sense of the term, distin- 
 guished from second-sight by greater immediate- 
 ness of vision in the seer, and a more defined 
 personality in the object. In second-sight the 
 
ESSAYS. 263 
 
 objects are seen as in a picture ; but here they 
 are seen as material objects appear to the waking 
 eye. 
 
 Foremost in this class are the hallucinations 
 caused by disease, and universally recognized as 
 such, the phantoms evoked by mania a potu, and 
 the often-cited spectral affliction of the German 
 Nicolai. Poor Nicolai is pilloried by Goethe in the 
 " Walpurgisnacht," where he figures as "Prokto- 
 phantasmist," with a broad allusion to the leech- 
 cure prescribed by his physician. Scarcely he 
 deserved that punishment, already sufficiently pun- 
 ished by the irony of fate, which doomed the great 
 champion of rationalism, the doughty denier of 
 ghosts, to be visited by troops of ghosts in broad 
 day for successive weeks. The case is important 
 as proving that sight is not dependent on ex- 
 ternal impressions. It is false to say, in such 
 cases, that 'the subject " imagines " that he sees. 
 He does see, as truly as I see the paper on which 
 I am writing, though not by images painted on the 
 retina. Through the eye alone we see nothing but 
 color and motion. All perception is an act of the 
 understanding; and in the cases we are consider- 
 ing, it is the understanding that distinguishes be- 
 tween phantom and objective reality. The maniac 
 confuses the one with the other. The visual sen- 
 sation is the same ; the eye perceives no difference. 
 
264 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 The spectre-stricken lady mentioned by Dr. Clarke ^ 
 was obliged to " thrust her fan into the spectre " 
 occupying the chair appointed for her at a dinner- 
 party, to assure herself that a phantom, and not a 
 being of flesh and blood, had usurped her seat. 
 
 Speaking of ghosts at a feast, it seems to me a 
 great mistake, in the representations of "Macbeth" 
 on the stage, to make a real body sit for Banquo's 
 ghost in the royal chair. He enters, treads the 
 stage, and takes his seat like an ordinary living 
 person; no power of make-believe can show him 
 other. A good actor, gazing at vacancy, may 
 easily seem to envisage something invisible to the 
 rest of the company. That something vanishes 
 when the usurper resolutely claims his seat. 
 
 " Why so —being gone, I am a man again." 
 
 We have examples of ghost-hearing, of ghosts 
 that present no visible image, but address them- 
 selves to the ear alone. 
 
 Captain Rogers, commander of a ship called 
 " The Society," bound to Virginia in 1664, while 
 asleep in his cabin dreamed that some one pulled 
 him by the arm, calling to him to get up and look 
 out for the safety of the ship. He was awakened 
 by the dream, but paid no heed to the summons, 
 and went to sleep again, when the warning was 
 1 Visions, p. 24. 
 
ESSA YS. 265 
 
 repeated. This happened several times, till at last, 
 though aware of no danger, he turned out and 
 went on deck. The wind was fair; a sounding 
 taken a' short time previous had shown a hundred 
 fathoms. There seemed to be no ground for alarm, 
 and he was about to turn in again when a voice 
 from an invisible speaker said to him : " Heave the 
 lead ! " It was done, and eleven fathoms reported. 
 " Heave again ! " said the voice. Now it was seven 
 fathoms. The captain immediately gave the order: 
 " 'Bout ship ! " and by the time the order was exe- 
 cuted the sounding was only four fathoms. Evi- 
 dently the ship, on her former tack, would have soon 
 run aground.^ 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen has recorded an amazing story 
 of the rescue of a wrecked vessel off the Banks of 
 Newfoundland by means of a timely apparition.^ 
 In 1828 the mate of a bark in that latitude, sitting 
 in his stateroom and working out his observation 
 for the day, espies in the cabin some one whom he 
 supposes to be the captain, writing on a slate. 
 Going nearer, he discovers that it is not the cap- 
 tain, nor any member of the bark's company. The 
 captain is called, but the stranger has vanished. 
 They examine the slate ; on it is written, " Steer to 
 the nor'west." The wind permitting, curious to 
 
 1 Ennemoser's History of Magic, appendix. Quoted by Mrs. 
 Howitt from a work entitled " Signs before Death." 
 a Footfalls, etc., The Rescue, p. 333. 
 
266 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 know what would come of it, they lay their course 
 in that direction, ordering a sharp lookout from 
 the mast-head. In a short time they come upon a 
 vessel fast bound in ice, threatened with destruc- 
 tion; crew, officers, and passengers nearly fam- 
 ished. These are taken off by the bark, and in 
 one of the passengers is seen the prototype of the 
 writer on the slate, who had been lying in a pro- 
 found sleep at the time when the stranger appeared 
 in the cabin of the bark. This yerifies what Sir 
 John Lubbock says, that in dreaming, the spirit 
 seems to leave the body. 
 
 The peculiarity in this case, supposing the narra- 
 tive authentic, is the want of a previous connec- 
 tion, and attraction arising therefrom, between the 
 ghostly visitor and the mate of the bark. The case 
 is as hard to classify as it is difficult of belief. 
 The strongest argument for its authenticity is pre- 
 cisely its uniqueness in the annals of spectrology. 
 It is simply too strange for fiction. 
 
 A careful study of the records of apparitions will 
 show, I think, that such visitations most often 
 occur in the hours of daylight, and not, according 
 to popular superstition, at dead of night. And — 
 what is very important — the best authenticated 
 cases are those of living persons, or persons in 
 articulo mortis, or recently departed, and not of 
 persons long deceased. 
 
ESSAYS. 267 
 
 Of Swedenborg's professed intercourse with the 
 spirits of the departed I have never been able to 
 satisfy myself how much, or whether aught, can be 
 justly regarded as objective converse, as anything 
 more than the seer's dream. The alleged tests, for 
 example, — the reporting of what passed between 
 the Princess Ulrica of Sweden and her brother at 
 their last interview before the death of the latter, — 
 I cannot accept as complete demonstration. The 
 Princess herself, it seems, was not convinced. " How 
 Herr von Swedenborg obtained his information I 
 cannot guess, but I do not believe that he conversed 
 with my departed brother." 
 
 Apparitions of the living, on temporary leave of 
 absence from their bodies, present, if not a more 
 credible, a more acceptable phenomenon. 
 
 That the soul of a living person possesses this 
 power of disengaging itself for a time from the 
 fleshly body, and appearing at a distance by means 
 of the more ethereal body which is proper to it, 
 and a semblance of apparel with which it invests 
 itself, is confidently assumed by pneumatologists. 
 The theory of these psychical outings explains the 
 supposed fact of spectral apparitions, and was evi- 
 dently framed for "the purpose. Deep mutual sym- 
 pathy between two widely separated individuals 
 may, it is believed, bring this faculty into play 
 when one of the parties in sore distress craves the 
 
268 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 other's presence and aid. Captain Meadows Tay- 
 lor relates a vision which he had in India of a 
 dearly beloved English lady whom he had hoped 
 some time to call his wife : — 
 
 " One evening I was at the village of Dewar Kudea, 
 after a long afternoon and evening march from Muktul. 
 I lay down very weary ; but the barking of village dogs, 
 the baying of jackals, and over-fatigue and heat, pre- 
 vented sleep. I was wide-awake and restless. Sud- 
 denly — for my tent-door was wide open — I saw the face 
 and figure so familiar to me, but looking older, and 
 with a sad and troubled expression. The dress was 
 white, and seemed covered with a profusion of lace, and 
 glistened in the bright moonlight. The arms were 
 stretched out, and a low, plaintive cry, ' Do not let 
 me go ! Do not let me go ! ' reached me. I sprang 
 forward, but the figure receded, growing fainter and 
 fainter, till I could see it no longer ; but the low, sad 
 tones stUl sounded. ... I wrote to my father. I 
 wished to know whether there was any hope for me. 
 He wrote back to me these words : ' Too late, my dear 
 son ; on the very day of the vision you describe to me, 
 was married.' " 
 
 Of this actio in distans, Schopenhauer claims that 
 the intervening space between the agent and the 
 object, whether full or void, has no influence what- 
 ever on the action ; it is all one whether that space 
 be the distance of an inch or of a billion Uranus- 
 orbits. He supposes a nexus of beings which rests 
 
ESSAYS. 269 
 
 on a very different order, — deeper, more original 
 and immediate than that which has the laws of 
 space, time, and causality for its basis ; an order in 
 which the first and most universal, because merely 
 formal, laws of Nature are no longer valid ; in 
 which time and space no longer separate individ- 
 uals, and in which, accordingly, the individualiza- 
 tion and isolation wrought by those forms no longer 
 oppose impassable bounds to the communication of 
 thought and the immediate influence of the will. 
 
 From the ghosts of the living we pass to the 
 ghosts of the dead. If the soul before the cessa- 
 tion of animal life can act on distant objects and 
 present an appearance to distant friends, it would, 
 a fortiori, seem to possess this power when animal 
 life is extinct, or on the eve of extinction. The 
 records of apparitions of persons in artieulo mortis 
 are too numerous and too well vouched to admit of 
 reasonable doubt. Wieland, an inveterate sceptic 
 on all points connected with a future life, admits 
 the possibility of such apparitions, and gives an 
 instance from his own knowledge, which he pro- 
 nounces " indubitable, but incomprehensible and 
 incredible." ^ 
 
 Differing from this in the circumstance that a 
 day had elapsed between the death and the appa- 
 
 1 Euthanasia. Drittes Gesprach. 
 
270 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 rition, is the case related by the afore-named 
 Meadows Taylor among his Indian experiences. A 
 soldier enters his captain's tent and begs that the 
 arrears of his pay may be sent to his mother in 
 England. The captain, busy with his writing, takes 
 down the address and promises to fulfil the re- 
 quest. Shortly after, it occurs to him that the 
 soldier had violated the rules of the service in 
 entering the tent without saluting, and in his 
 hospital dress. He summons his sergeant. " Why 
 
 did you allow to come to me in that irregular 
 
 manner ? " The man was thunderstruck. " Sir," 
 he exclaimed, " do not you remember he died yes- 
 terday in hospital, and was buried this morning ? " 
 Narrations like this, though not to be received 
 without reserve and careful weighing of the evidence 
 on which they rest, are somewhat relieved of their 
 incredibility by the supposition of an interval, 
 greater or less, between the cessation of animal life 
 and the entrance of the soul on its new career. If 
 any living, thinking principle survives the ruin of 
 the flesh, if there be a " soul," in the popular sense, 
 that soul will be likely to retain for a time the 
 sensibilities and to feel the attractions of its old 
 relations. The desire to benefit surviving friends 
 can hardly be denied it. If this can only be done 
 by a personal apparition, the appearing in familiar 
 form will be simply a question of power to appear. 
 
ESSAYS. 271 
 
 I can as easily conceive the sonl to be endowed 
 with that power as I can conceive of psychical ex- 
 istence at all, dissevered from the animal body. 
 But where the aim of the apparition is merely in- 
 formation, — the communication of some important 
 fact, — it is not necessary to suppose an objective 
 presence. The end may be accomplished by sub- 
 jective impressions, by action on the mind of the 
 individual to be informed, — in other words, by a 
 vision. And so I can suppose that the captain in 
 the India service, in the anecdote just related, 
 may have had a vision of the soldier, effected by 
 the will of the latter acting on the mind, and 
 through the mind on the senses, of the former. 
 This explanation, it is evident, will not apply to 
 cases in which the reputed apparition leaves a sen- 
 sible token behind, as in that of the shipwrecked 
 voyager who left his writing on the slate. 
 
 Of a different sort, and more difficult of belief, 
 are objective apparitions of the long deceased. The 
 improbability increases with the lapse of time. It 
 would be unphilosophical to deny apodictically the 
 possibility of such apparitions, but one may be 
 pardoned for reserving assent to what, if true, per- 
 plexes one's view of the future state with added, 
 insoluble difficulties. The reason for greater slow- 
 ness of belief in this case than in that of the re- 
 cently departed is the feeling that souls once 
 
272 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 thoroughly severed from the flesh, new-bodied and 
 new-sphered, cannot quit their new sphere except 
 by the way of new death. Were it not so, — if, con- 
 scious of a former existence and inspirited by its 
 memories, departed friends and departed worthies 
 could " revisit the glimpses of the moon," and make 
 themselves manifest in earthly scenes to earthly 
 sense, — then, assuredly, such visitations would be 
 among the unquestioned and common events of 
 life. But what are the hundreds or the thousands 
 of recorded apparitions to the sumless millions of 
 the dead ? Saint Augustine was confident that the 
 dead could not return, for if they could, his sainted 
 mother would have come to him with instruction 
 and counsel and relief. The argument has weight : 
 if one can return, why not others ; why not all ? 
 If the thing were not impossible, who can doubt 
 that many longing souls would have experienced 
 and established it beyond a question ? Were there 
 any sure path or passage, or way of communion 
 with that dumb realm, who can doubt that human 
 affection would have found it out? If the dead 
 could come to us, how often would they not have 
 been forced to come at the call of love ? What 
 spirit endowed with human sensibilities could re- 
 sist that appeal if the way were open to hear and 
 answer? We must either doubt that "quse cura 
 fuit vivis eadem sequitur tellure repostos," or 
 
ESSAYS. 273 
 
 conclude that the gates of the silent land open but 
 one way. 
 
 Says Wordsworth's Margaret : — 
 
 " I look for ghosts, but none will force 
 Their way to me ; 't is falsely said 
 That there was ever intercourse 
 Between the living and the dead; 
 For surely then I should have sight 
 Of him I wait for day and night 
 With love and longings infinite." 
 
 Modern sorcery, misnamed " spiritualism," pro- 
 fesses to have opened the everlasting gates and to 
 maintain free communication with departed souls, — 
 not with former acquaintance merely, but with any 
 and all of the wise and good who figure in human 
 history. The number of those who agree in this 
 profession amounts to many thousands, its votaries 
 say millions. Science has examined their preten- 
 sions, and pronounced them groundless; and be- 
 cause, here and there, it detected imposture, has 
 rashly concluded that imposture and delusion are 
 the only factors in the business, — that all who en- 
 gage in it are either knaves or fools. 
 
 Whether any of the phenomena of spiritism ne- 
 cessitate the supposition of unknown, intelligent 
 agents, is a question I do not care to discuss. I 
 will only remark that physical science can hardly 
 be regarded as a trustworthy witness or a compe- 
 ls 
 
274 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 tent judge in a matter where the fundamental posi- 
 tions of the parties are antagonistic, where the 
 method of the critic conflicts with the postulate 
 conditions of the advocate, and where a hundred 
 failures or detected impostures are not decisive 
 against the whole class of phenomena in question. 
 But as for pretended communications with defunct 
 worthies, there is, in my judgment, no suflficient 
 proof of anything authentic in this kind. The ex- 
 amples which have hitherto been offered confirm 
 this judgment ; and when the necromancers plead, 
 as excuse for the platitudes of these utterances, that 
 the communication is qualified by the " medium " 
 through which it comes, they fail to perceive that 
 this admission is fatal to their cause. When 
 Wordsworth and Shakspeare are made to drivel, it 
 is obvious that we have the mind of the " medium,!' 
 and not the mind he is supposed to represent. For 
 thirty years and more this sorcery has been in 
 vogue, and not one ray of unquestionable light has 
 been shed on that which it most concerns us to 
 know of the future state. Granting the agency of 
 spirits in some of its manifestations, the grand 
 mistake of spiritism is the taking for granted that 
 disembodied spirits are necessarily wiser and more 
 knowing than spirits in the flesh. The more ra- 
 tional presumption is that the acting spirits in 
 these experiments — spirits that have nothing better 
 
ESSAYS. 275 
 
 to do than to assist at table-tipping and other 
 tricks for the entertainment of gaping marvel- 
 mongers — have lost the little knowledge and the 
 little sense they may have " had when clothed with 
 mortal bodies. Justinus Kerner, the most scientific 
 and conscientious of modern pneumatologists, con- 
 firms this view. He and others who have studied 
 the .subject with serious care agree with Plato that 
 only the souls of the brutal and depraved revisit 
 the earth and approach mortals with objective 
 manifestations. 
 
 The question of ghosts, so far as it relates to the 
 sensible manifestation of translated souls, is one 
 which eludes the grasp of science. The negative 
 is indemonstrable on physical grounds ; and the 
 affirmative can never, by individual testimony, be 
 established in the common conviction of mankind. 
 
 That the spirits of the departed are near us in 
 sympathy and trust, not unconscious of our doings 
 and our fortunes, nor quite unable to help us in 
 our straits with occult influences and unworded 
 suggestions, it is pleasant to believe. That they 
 can be cited and summoned at will, constrained to 
 answer inquiries, brought to the witness-stand in 
 a court of necromancers, cross-questioned by a 
 " medium," pumped to amuse a prurient curiosity, 
 is a notion abhorrent to all my conceptions of a 
 future state, and seems a desecration of the rev- 
 
276 GHOST-SEEING. 
 
 erend sanctities of the spirit-world. For aught I 
 know to the contrary, there may be spirits in " the 
 vasty deep," grovelling, lost creatures, who aid and 
 abet these fooleries ; but, for my part, I wish to 
 have nothing to do with these clowns of the pit. 
 
 There are mental experiences, mysterious, in- 
 definable, which suggest the action upon us of 
 conscious, intelligent powers, — experiences which 
 answer to the beautiful idea of spiritual guardian- 
 ship so rife in ages past. Who has not known 
 them? Who has not experienced at times those 
 sudden intuitions, impulses, new determinations of 
 thought and will, whose advent could not be ex- 
 plained by association of ideas, as links in a chain 
 of mental sequence, where the preceding involves 
 the following, but which burst upon us like mes- 
 sages from the Unknown, interposing with a flash 
 new births of the soul ? Inspirations that shed 
 exceeding day on the mind, — those inexplicable 
 warnings that restrained us on the brink of danger, 
 those swift fulgurations of hope that caught us 
 tottering on the verge of despair, those sweet con- 
 solations welling up from the deep in our agony of 
 grief, — who has not known them ? How natural 
 to suppose in them a spiritual influence streaming 
 in upon us from without ! If spirits may not 
 visit us with those sensible approaches which 
 make us 
 
ESSAYS. 277 
 
 " fools of nature 
 
 So horridly to shake our dispositions 
 
 With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls," 
 
 yet, granting the existence of spirits unfleshed, 
 impalpable, there is nothing in reason that forbids 
 the supposition of their proximity, of their minis- 
 tering presence, of their quickening influence. 
 
 Who can believe that the limits of sense are the 
 bounds of intelligent being ? And out of that un- 
 seen world where science cannot reach, and which 
 enfolds the visible as space encompasses sun and 
 planet, who knows what strengths may come to 
 feed and refresh this mortal life? 
 
PERSONALITY : 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE A CLERICAL CONFERENCE. 
 
 TT fORDS exercise a fatal influence on thought 
 * * and belief. When turned from their orig- 
 inal import and fixed in some perverted use, they 
 breed misconception and propagate endless error. 
 
 The word persona (from which our English 
 " person ") meant originally a mask such as an- 
 cient actors wore upon the stage. In the Greek 
 and Roman drama all the parts were performed 
 in masks. The mask was called in Greek irpo- 
 amirelov, from trpdawKov, " face ; " in Latin, per- 
 sona, from persona, " I sound through." Hence 
 very naturally these words came to signify the 
 part performed, the character represented. We 
 say in English to personate a character ; that is, 
 to wear the mask of that character. 
 
 From the boards of the theatre the phrase was 
 transferred to the scenes of life. Persona was 
 used to denote the character which an individual 
 presented to the world, the part he enacted, in 
 social life. The part might be genuine or feigned, 
 
ESSAYS. 279 
 
 guise or disguise, nature or art. Livy says, perso- 
 nam alienam ferre, " to act a foreign part." Cicero 
 uses the expression, tantam personam sustinet, " he 
 acts so important a part." But the fact is, every 
 man in society acts a part. Conscious or uncon- 
 scious, feigned or true, with or without simulation 
 or dissimulation, every man is an actor; and all 
 that we really know of any man is the part he acts, 
 — his appearance in the eyes of his fellow-men. 
 The real man is never seen, but only his simula- 
 crum. And as that simulacrum is inseparable 
 from the individual, as it represents the individual 
 to his kind, so the word persona came to signify 
 the individual himself. Mea persona, or nostra 
 persona, says Cicero ; that is, " I myself." 
 
 We use "person" in the same sense; we say 
 indifferently " person " or " individual," making no 
 distinction between the two. For ordinary pur- 
 poses we are justified in so doing, since all we can 
 know of individuals is their persons, their mani- 
 festation of themselves to the eye or ear. Only it 
 behooves us to remember that there is something 
 deeper in man than his person, and that though 
 the person is the outbirth of the individual, is con- 
 stituted by the individual, it nevertheless is not 
 the individual, is not identical with the innermost 
 being, but something exterior and distinct. 
 
 What then is that interior something that under- 
 
280 PERSONALITY. 
 
 lies the person, — the ultimate ground of our being ? 
 Most men, I suppose, identify it with the I, the 
 ego, the conscious self. This seems to be the pre- 
 vailing opinion ; it is a very natural one. When 
 we say " I," we seem to express our innermost being, 
 for the obvious reason that consciousness can no 
 farther go ; the ego is the deepest that conscious- 
 ness knows. But the application of scientific an- 
 alysis to the act of consciousness wiE. show that 
 the ego is not the deepest in man, is not the 
 ground of our being. 
 
 Observe that consciousness is not a stated con- 
 dition, but an occasional one. Being is perpetual, 
 consciousness is not. The most inveterate egoist 
 cannot be always aware of himself. Consciousness 
 is the product of occasion; moreover, it has a 
 physical origin, — it is the result of certain specific 
 motions of the brain. In the case of simple con- 
 sciousness, — that is, conscious sensation, — what 
 causes the motion is some impression from with- 
 out. Consciousness is the response of the mind to 
 that impression. The connecting link between 
 the motion in the brain and the consciousness 
 which ensues, is a mystery. That which produces 
 consciousness must of course be antecedent to 
 consciousness, — consequently out of the reach 
 of consciousness. 
 
 Still less in the case of_compound or self-conscious- 
 
ESSAYS. 281 
 
 ness can consciousness detect its own origin. All 
 we know is that on some provocation, represented 
 by a motion in the brain, it is born out of the un- 
 fathomable abyss of the unconscious which lies be- 
 hind it. The nearest approach to an explanation 
 of it is to say that it is the product of two factors, 
 — the imconscious spirit, and a human brain. 
 
 Such is the genesis and natural history of the 
 ego. And I suppose the ego to be peculiar to man. 
 The brute I suppose to have only simple conscious- 
 ness, not the reflected consciousness of self. The 
 brute does not think I. The action of spirit in 
 that sphere of life is too feeble — or, what is the 
 same thing, the brain is of too coarse a fibre — to 
 produce a conscious self. Neither, at the other 
 end of the scale, can I ascribe self-consciousness 
 to God. Self-consciousness is inconceivable with- 
 out a body or some kind of framing. Its prime 
 condition is limitation. Self is made self by self- 
 circumscription. In order to be self-conscious 
 God must part with his infinity ; that is, cease to 
 be God. When the Scriptures represent him as 
 saying " I," the thought imputed to him is as 
 much an anthropomorphism as the imputation of 
 articulate speech. 
 
 From this view of self-consciousness it follows 
 that the human ego, so far from being the real 
 man, our innermost nature, is merely an inciden- 
 
282 PERSONALITY. 
 
 tal phenomenou. It is not a being, but an act, a 
 thought, an occasional reflection, of an unknown 
 being in a human organism. I exist only in the 
 act of self-consciousness. Destroy self-conscious- 
 ness, — and there are lesions of the brain which 
 have that effect, — and I cease to exist. 'T is a 
 fact of vulgar experience that the ego is not, 
 a parte ante, conterminous and coeval with our 
 being. There is a time, varying, I suppose, fi'om 
 the second to the fourth year, when a human 
 individual first says to himself, " I." There was 
 a day, an hour, a minute, of my history when, 
 having for some years existed for others as a 
 person, I was born to myself. Sometimes, but 
 rarely, an individual is able to recall the moment 
 of that nativity. Jean Paul, in his autobiography, 
 boasts that experience. " Never," says he, " shall 
 I forget what as yet I have told to no one, a men- 
 tal transaction whereby I assisted at the birth of 
 my seLf-consciousness, when all at once ' I am an 
 F rushed before me like a flash of lightning from 
 heaven, and since then has remained luminously 
 persistent. Then for the first time my / had seen 
 itself, and forever." What is the psychological 
 import of that experience ? We are apt to regard 
 it as the rising into view of the deepest in man, 
 of the whole man. But observe that the act of 
 consciousness which shows us self does not com- 
 
ESSAYS. 283 
 
 prehend that self, does not fathom it ; it only dis- 
 tinguishes it from other selves and the outside 
 world, our own bodies included. It is a flash 
 which momentarily defines our individuality, — 
 defines it laterally, but not vertically ; it does not 
 reach to the root of our being. In the moment of 
 intensest self-consciousness we bear, not the root, 
 but the root us. 
 
 The question recurs, then. What is the inner- 
 most nature in man ? What is that interior being 
 which underlies the person, and which underlies 
 the conscious self ? To that question the only hon- 
 est answer is a confession of ignorance. " No one," 
 says Von Hartmann, "knows directly the uncon- 
 scious subject of his own consciousness ; he knows 
 of it only as the secret psychical cause of his con- 
 sciousness." Kespecting this unknown being there 
 are two theories to choose between. The one 
 coincides with the common belief of a separate 
 individual soul as the ground and matrix of the 
 individual consciousness; the other, known in 
 philosophy as the " monistic " view, supposes that 
 all individual consciousnesses, all separate egos, 
 have the one universal Being for their common 
 ground. The latter view has found its latest and 
 ablest representative in the author just named. 
 " The resistance to this view," says Von Hartmann 
 again, "is only the old prejudice that conscious- 
 
284 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ness is the soul. So long as that prejudice has 
 not been overcome, and every secret remnant of 
 it completely annihilated, the all-oneness of the 
 Unconscious will be veiled. Only when it is un- 
 derstood that consciousness is not essential, but 
 phenomenal, appertains not to the being, but to the 
 appearance; that, accordingly, the multifoldness 
 of consciousness is but a multifold manifestation 
 of the One, — only then will it be possible to eman- 
 cipate oneself from the dominion of the practical 
 instinct which clamors perpetually, ' I,' ' I,' and 
 to comprehend the beings-unity of all apparent 
 individuals, bodily and spiritual." 
 
 The first theory is best represented in Leibniz's 
 Monadology. According to that great thinker, the 
 human organism is an aggregation of indivisible 
 entities, of which the central or regent entity, be- 
 ing capable of self-consciousness, may be called soul 
 par excellence, to distinguish it from the others, 
 to which he gives the name of "Monads." 
 
 I do not care to undertake the advocacy of 
 either of these views, nor do I feel myself called 
 upon to declare to which of the two I incline. 
 I will only remark, in passing, that if this con- 
 ference is to be — what, as I understand, the 
 planners of it proposed to themselves — a confer- 
 ence of theologians ; if we meet here on scientific 
 ground, and not on the basis of practical religion. 
 
ESSAYS. 285 
 
 — then current beliefs and theological preposses- 
 sions must not be allowed to control our decisions 
 of the subjects discussed. 
 
 We have, then, these three constituents of our 
 humanity: 1. The unknown factor which con- 
 stitutes the ground of our being. 2. The ego, or 
 conscious self. 3. The person. It is the last of 
 these with which I am now especially concerned. 
 The person, I have said, is not the individual 
 proper, but the manifestation of the individual 
 to others, — the image he presents to the world, 
 his character as shown in word and deed, the 
 man as he moves in the scenes of life. Using the 
 word "person" in this sense, what relation does 
 the person bear to the individual ? How much of 
 the individual goes into the person? I answer, 
 all that given conditions (in which term I include 
 native endowment, temperament, organization, 
 education, social relations, fortune, worldly posi- 
 tion) will allow. We cannot say absolutely that 
 the individual is entirely expressed in his person. 
 We feel in some cases that there are capabilities 
 in a man which are not brought out, which find 
 no scope or demonstration in life. But then, the 
 very feeling which such persons inspire in us is a 
 part of their personality. It belongs to them to 
 create in us this impression of reserved power with 
 which we credit them. On the whole, if we can- 
 
286 PERSONALITY. 
 
 not say that the person is all there is in a given 
 individual, we can say it is all there is of him. 
 It is all, at least, that we know of him. It is all 
 that concerns the world. K we would but see it, 
 it is all that really concerns ourselves. 
 
 It is here that I would lay the emphasis of im- 
 mortality. That the soul, the innermost being, is 
 immortal, requires no proof. It belongs to the 
 nature, to the very definition, of an entity to be 
 indestructible. What most concerns us in this 
 connection is the all-important fact of the im- 
 mortality of the person, — of the character we pre- 
 sent, the part we enact in the scenes of life. That 
 is the true manes, — that which remains of us when 
 the fleshly form has vanished out of sight. To live 
 on this earth is not to live while the body lasts, 
 and then no more, it is to live here forever. We 
 are perpetually casting ourselves into our action, 
 and the cast remains ; we leave our duplicate be- 
 hind us when we die. "I am with you always, 
 unto the end of the world," said Jesus to his dis- 
 ciples when about to vanish from their sight. The 
 saying has been verified through all these ages, is 
 still verified in the consciousness of the Christian 
 Church. Christ is still a denizen of earth, — still 
 richly, beneficently, divinely with us in the image 
 of himself which he stamped on the world ; he is 
 with us in the faiths and charities which bear his 
 
ESSA YS. 287 
 
 name, — nearer to us at this moment than he was 
 to those first disciples who sat with him at the 
 same board and drank of the same cup.^ That 
 divine man is but one instance pre-eminent among 
 many. We recognize in his case that persistency 
 of person which is true in all cases. We recognize 
 it in the men of exceptional genius or piety, — 
 the prophets, sages, teachers, singers who have 
 stretched an intellectual firmament over this 
 work-a-day world, and set their beaming thoughts 
 in it for sun and stars to light up our life. We do 
 not recognize it, but nevertheless it is true of all 
 who have lived and labored in earthly places of 
 every kind and degree. All who were once here 
 are still here: their works are they, their words 
 are they; and though word and work be forgot- 
 ten, their influence for good or evil survives, — their 
 person is immortal. In one of the old religions 
 it was taught that the soul of the deceased on its 
 way to heaven or hell must traverse a narrow bridge 
 across a gulf of fire. In that passage it encoun- 
 ters a spectre, which being interrogated, answers, 
 " I am the spirit of thy life." Visible or invisible, 
 recognized or not, in the case of every soul that 
 
 1 The bodily presence of a man is not that which best reveals 
 him, — rather, it is something which intervenes between him and 
 us. Detached from the body, divested of all that is extrinsic and 
 accidental, he is seen in his own light, in all his sides and pro- 
 portions, the immortal person. 
 
288 PERSONALITY. 
 
 has borne the burden of this mortal that spirit sur- 
 vives, — the spirit of the life. Earth teems with 
 such. The world of spirits is all about us, — not 
 in the coarse sense of swarming entities lurking 
 in the air, but in the sense of ideas and influences 
 derived from all the past. 
 
 Grandly George Eliot breathes the wish, — 
 
 " Oh may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In minds made better by their presence, — live 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. 
 
 ... So to live is heaven, — 
 To make undying music in the world. 
 
 . . . May I reach 
 That purest heaven, — be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony. 
 Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 So shall I join the choir invisible 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world." 
 
 The air we breathe is thick with the influences, 
 good and bad, which successive generations have 
 put forth. Every individual in all those genera- 
 tions has contributed something by his character 
 and life to make the world what it is. The hum- 
 blest and most obscure has contributed something. 
 The humblest and most obscure that has ever 
 lived in tliis world lives here forever. This is what 
 I understand by personal immortality. It is the 
 
ESSAYS. 289 
 
 only immortality which a wise man need con- 
 cern himself about; and for him who is careless 
 of this, no other immortality will yield any satis-' 
 fying fruit. 
 
 There is another branch of this subject, " Per- 
 sonality," which perhaps it was expected that I 
 should discuss, — personality as predicated of God. 
 
 In what sense can we speak of God as person ? 
 Kecurring to my fundamental position, that the 
 person is not the being as such, but the being in 
 action, — self-presentment, manifestation, — I an- 
 swer that all we can know of God is his personal- 
 ity : the manifestation of himself in action. Crea- 
 tion, providence, revelation, moral government, — 
 these constitute the personality of God : his theo- 
 phanies are his person. Beyond these we cannot 
 penetrate. We must not confuse the manifested 
 God with the transcendental ground of the mani- 
 festation, — the revealed with the absolute unre- 
 vealable. When asked if I believe in a personal 
 God, I might answer, I believe in no other. 
 But I seem to detect in that question a latent im- 
 pression of a limiting form, — a God existing in 
 spatial separation from the All. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, the English dogmatist, 
 hugs himself with his definition of God, protruded 
 with wearisome iteration, in his " God and the 
 
 19 
 
290 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Bible," " The Eternal, not ourselves, that makes 
 for righteousness," — surely the thinnest film of 
 Godhead that ever pretended to the honors of 
 theism; scant pattern with which to clothe the 
 spirit of devotion! The moral order of the uni- 
 verse which Mr. Arnold, affecting simplicity, has 
 chosen to designate in this roundabout way, is 
 but one of the modes of deity. It cannot in any 
 proper sense be said to constitute deity; for 
 though practically, for hxmian use, the moral order 
 is ultimate, it can never be ultimate to speculative 
 thought, but refers us at once to an ordering Will 
 as its origin and law. Kant, in the " Critique of 
 Practical Reason," has indicated this connection. 
 The moral law, he argues, commands us to seek 
 the best good of society. The possibility of that 
 good is implied in the law which requires us to 
 seek it. But the highest good is possible only 
 through the adaptation of Nature to that result ; 
 that is, through the consent of Nature with the 
 moral law. But the moral law itself affords not 
 the slightest ground for a necessary agreement 
 between well-doing and well-being, between right- 
 eousness and blessedness. The subject of that law 
 is himself a part of Nature, and therefore depend- 
 ent upon it; he cannot force its agreement with 
 the law. " Consequently " (I translate literally), 
 " the existence is postulated of a Cause of universal 
 
ESSAYS. 291 
 
 Nature, distinct from Nature, which shall contain 
 the ground of this connection; to wit, the exact 
 correspondence between blessedness and righteous- 
 ness," — that is, God is the postulate of practical 
 reason. " The highest good for the world," he 
 continues, " is possible only so far as we assume a 
 supreme Nature which exercises a causality com- 
 mensurate with moral sentiment." 
 
 The phrase " not ourselves," " the Eternal, not 
 ourselves," etc., is peculiarly unfortunate, since it 
 is precisely in ourselves and through ourselves that 
 the eternal moral lives and works. If Mr. Arnold 
 means to say simply that we did not make our- 
 selves, he says what no one will dispute, but what 
 hardly deserved such pompous enunciation, or re- 
 quired to be erected into a " rigorous and vigorous " 
 theory. It was written long ago, " Se hath made us, 
 and not we ourselves." This venerable saying, of 
 which the latter clause is a fact of consciousness, in 
 one or another sense is accepted by all. The ques- 
 tion is what we mean by " He," — whether blind 
 Force, or intelligent Will. It is that which fixes 
 the dividing line between theism and atheism. 
 
 Our dogmatist will have no God who thinks and 
 loves. Such a God, he insists, is but " a magnified, 
 non-natural man." " Thinking" and " loving," I 
 admit, are unscientific terms as applied to deity ; 
 they are anthropomorphisms. But I maintain 
 
292 PERSONALITY. 
 
 that they are necessary anthropomorphisms; reli- 
 gion cannot do without them. Mr. Arnold, though 
 writing professedly in the interest of religion, does 
 not, it seems to me, sufficiently appreciate the exi- 
 gencies of religion. He would have everything 
 rationalized ; he would have scientific statements, 
 abstract formulae. But abstract formulae belong 
 not to religion, but to science. Eeligion is not a 
 realm of philosophic perceptions, but of sentiment 
 and imagination ; and the language of religion, 
 derived from the sentiments and imagination, 
 is symbolical. The philosophic mind may be 
 safely trusted to translate such terms as "think- 
 ing" and "loving," applied to God, into their 
 philosophic equivalents ; but religion reduced to 
 such formulae as " the Eternal, not ourselves," and 
 religion metamorphosed into this new gospel ac- 
 cording to Matthew, would become too volatil- 
 ized for purposes of worship. Such a religion 
 could never serve the common need of mankind. 
 Sensible of this, impressed with the exigencies of 
 religion as distinguished from science, I cherish 
 the traditional phrases and ritual language of the 
 Church. Whatever Jesus may be historically, ec- 
 clesiastically he is Christ the Lord. However my 
 philosophy may formulate its concepts of deity, 
 the God whom I worship is a God who sees and 
 hears, and thinks and loves, and pities and ap- 
 
ESSAYS. 293 
 
 proves. Nor do I at all object to the « magnified, 
 non-natural man." On the contrary, it seems to me 
 that this is precisely such a God as religion needs. 
 Not the human form, — although, of course, the 
 vulgar imagination will have that idol, — not the 
 bodily form, but the moral image, the human attri- 
 butes, the attributes of ideal humanity. The God 
 of religion must be an intelligent and moral nature. 
 No being destitute of those attributes can fill that 
 place ; and of those attributes we can form no idea, 
 except as they are manifest in human subjects. Re- 
 ligion supposes them infinitely extended, and in- 
 vests its God with their likeness. The God of our 
 devotion, if devotion is to have a definite object, 
 must be in some sense human, — a " magnified, 
 non-natural man : " non-natural, because nature is 
 birth, and God is unborn. I am well aware of the 
 danger of not distinguishing between the moral 
 image and the human form, — or rather, of the 
 tendency to embody in a human form the human 
 attributes of deity. The very use of the personal 
 pronoun in this connection is misleading. It is 
 unavoidable ; we must say he and Ms if we speak 
 of God at all. But what subtle idolatries lurk in 
 those pronouns ! How strong the tendency to con- 
 ceive of God as not only distinct from creation in 
 idea, but as spatially separated from creation, — as 
 an individual in space ! It is a trick of the imagi- 
 
294 PERSONALITY. 
 
 nation, of the image-making faculty, to figure the 
 divine presence in a human form. Swedenborg, 
 in whom imagination and reason, the visionary and 
 the thinker, were strangely blended, maintains 
 that the human form is that in which God appears 
 to spiritual vision. I shall not dispute his dictum, 
 for I have no experience which enables me to dis- 
 tinguish between spiritual vision, in Swedenborg's 
 sense, and imagination, — indeed, I can conceive 
 of no concrete theophany other than that of the 
 human form. But spiritual vision does not neces- 
 sarily imply an objective reality corresponding there- 
 with. To suppose that God exists objectively in 
 that form, is to suppose him materially and spatially 
 bounded, — which conflicts with my conception of 
 the divine nature. If I am asked what form I would 
 substitute, how I suppose the divine nature in- 
 vested, I answer frankly, I have no substitute. I 
 do not care to idolize God, or to represent him to 
 myself by any mental image. To my conception, 
 nothing less than the material universe can serve 
 us as his embodiment. I follow the analogy of the 
 human microcosm. What the human soul is to 
 the human individual, that I conceive God to be to 
 the universe of things, — its central soul, regent in 
 all and present in all by diffused consciousness, as 
 the soul is present by diffused consciousness in 
 every part of the human organism. The human 
 
ESSA YS. 295 
 
 organism is a world in little, of which the soul is 
 its God ; the world in its entireness is a body, of 
 which God is the soul, — not identical with the 
 body in thought, and not separated from it in 
 space. This is the best conception I can form to 
 myself of deity, — conscious, nevertheless, how 
 inadequate all concepts of deity formed by the 
 understanding must be. 
 
 The old theology — the Christian theology of 
 the fourth and fifth centuries — took precisely the 
 opposite direction. The idea that the world could 
 be in any sense the embodiment of God, would 
 have shocked the theologians of that day scarcely 
 less than flat denial of his being. The Jewish 
 tradition of the entire separation of Jehovah from 
 all contact with material Nature — a tradition 
 which Gentile converts, disgusted with the gross- 
 ness of polytheistic Nature-worship, readily* em- 
 braced, and which was strongly reinforced by 
 Manichean influences — made the world seem ut- 
 terly godless and corrupt, given over to the prince 
 of darkness, whom even Luther in later ages recog- 
 nized as prince of this world. God dwelt, remote 
 from the visible world, in holy seclusion. But 
 " God," says Newton, " is a relative term," — 
 Deus est vox relativa. 
 
 It was perhaps a dim sense of this truth — discon- 
 tent with the idea of the insularity of God — which 
 
296 PERSONALITY. 
 
 gave such importance to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 I have never seen it suggested, but the thought has 
 occurred to me, that a powerful agent in establish- 
 ing the trinitarian theology must have been the 
 church-feeling of a God-forsaken world. Deus est 
 vox relativa. There must be something to which 
 God relates, — an object to that subject, or a sub- 
 ject to that object. If the world be excluded from 
 that relation, what remains but a second God, — 
 the Word, or the Son ? In the Son, God eternally 
 generates himself, sees himself, becomes conscious ; 
 and the Spirit is that in which generator and gen- 
 erated unite, — the ever-proceeding demonstration ; 
 the end and object of that demonstration being, not 
 the world, which was wholly ignored in this sys- 
 tem, but the Christian Church. Being, Action, 
 Process, Product, — Father, Son, Spirit, Church: 
 this was all that theology recognized. Earth and 
 sun and moon and stars, — the infinite universe 
 with all its forces and systems, of which those 
 brooding, wrangling churchmen were the momen- 
 tary products, did not come into their calculation. 
 All that was the Devil's domain, — brute background 
 to the ghostly All. The author of the " Theologia 
 Germanica" says: "The Evil Spirit and Nature are 
 one." The All, as these Fathers interpreted the 
 scheme of God, was complete without Nature. The 
 Mother was left out in the cold, expelled with a 
 
ESSAYS. 297 
 
 «Aree-pronged fork, so great was the reaction 
 against the Nature-worship of the Grseco-Roman 
 world. You know the proverb, Naturam furca. 
 Do you know who it was that emancipated the 
 modern mind from the narrowness, the one-sided- 
 ness, the spiritual thraldom, of trinitarian theology ? 
 You will name to me perhaps the recognized 
 fathers of Unitarianism, — Servetus, Cellarius, 
 the Sozzini, and certain English worthies, who 
 knocked away the Biblical supports of the Trinity 
 and ruled it out of their creed. They did a 
 good work: far be it from me to undervalue 
 their labors. But I greatly doubt if exegesis 
 alone, if improved Biblical criticism, would ever 
 have wrought that deliverance which is now going 
 on in the popular mind, by which, in spite of 
 conventional symbols, of formal confessions, of 
 labored expositions, and agonizing efforts of here 
 and there a disputant to reinforce and rehabilitate 
 the obsolete dogma, is gradually pushing it aside, 
 and, without denying or caring to controvert, is 
 dismissing it from the habitable chambers of con- 
 sciousness to the limbo and chancery of things 
 indifferent ; so that whereas to impugn it once was 
 a monstrous exception, to contend for it now with 
 much earnestness is almost as exceptional. This 
 change is due to Spinoza. He, by his doctrine of 
 the One Substance and the immanence of God in 
 
298 PERSONALITY. 
 
 creation, shifted the balance of divinity from the 
 realm of ghostly abstraction to the visible All. He 
 re-established the sacredness of Nature, — that 
 Nature which the author of the "Theologia Ger- 
 manica " expressly identified with the Evil Spirit ; 
 he restored the natural world to its rightful place 
 in the reverent love of human kind. Natural 
 science succeeded to the vacant chair of scholastic 
 philosophy. Newton and Leibniz and Haller and 
 Harvey succeeded to Saint Thomas and Duns Sco- 
 tus and Occam and Hugh Saint Victoire. They 
 thought it worth the while to study a world which 
 God had set in their hearts, and in studying which 
 they became acquainted with him. Spinoza turned 
 the Devil out of doors of the rerum natura; and 
 with that extrusion the old theologic world recedes 
 more and more into dim and spectral distance and 
 forgottenness. It sounds strange to say that trini- 
 tarian doctrine needs the support of the Devil ; but 
 it is so far true that the fancied domination of the 
 Devil, and the consequent profaneness and ac- 
 cursedness of the sensible world, excluded Nature 
 from that place in the interest and intellect of 
 earnest, studious men which it now occupies, and 
 which trinitarian theology occupied then. 
 
 I use the word " trinitarian " by way of pars pro 
 toto. I have no quarrel with that particular dogma 
 on account of any falsity in it, but only on account 
 
ESSAYS. 299 
 
 of its inadequacy, compared with its claims and the 
 place it has usurped in the scheme of things. The 
 dogma is true enough as far as it goes. Father, 
 Son, and Spirit, — unquestionably these three are 
 in God, and they are one God; but they do not 
 comprise, or do not express, the whole of deity. 
 I can hardly imagine a trinitarian formula that 
 would. In any such statement the categories 
 must either be too comprehensive to serve the 
 purpose of exact classification, — that is, to pre- 
 vent the unlawful confounding of the persons, — 
 or else they must be too rigid to prevent the for- 
 bidden dividing of the substance. My God is not 
 tri-personal, but multi-personal. But out of this 
 multitude of divine personalities I distinguish with 
 special note two persons, not indicated, or very 
 imperfectly indicated, in the ecclesiastical Trinity, 
 — Providence, and Moral Eule. Independently of 
 all ecclesiastical teaching, led by my own observa- 
 tion and reflection, I think I should have recog- 
 nized a divine Providence in human things, shaping, 
 guiding, controlling, and causing all things in the 
 final result to work for good to human subjects. 
 If there be such a Providence, its motive must be 
 benevolent design, — what theologians call "the 
 goodness of God." And yet the so-called goodness 
 of God is precisely the weakest point in natural 
 theology ; it is there that the a posteriori proof of 
 
300 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the being of God — the proof from Nature and life 
 — is most difficult and most assailable ; it is there 
 that pessimism and atheism find their advantage 
 and deal their most telling blows. The goodness 
 of God consists with a great deal of niisery and 
 helplessness and want and distress; it consists 
 with extreme suffering; with the existence of 
 myriads who are born diseased and maimed and 
 crippled, and drag their life through years of pain, 
 without apparently one full draught of the joy of 
 being ; it consists with the perishing of hundreds 
 of thousands by Indian famines in the absence of 
 rain ; it consists with tempest and earthquake and 
 blight ; it consists with the fears and fightings of 
 the animal kingdom, brute preying on brute, and 
 with all the conflicts and agonies of irrational Na- 
 ture which constitutes so large a portion of the 
 life of the world. The answer to all this, so far 
 as man is concerned, is given in the one word, 
 " Progress." Misery abomids ; but life is stronger 
 than all its ills, and statistics show that, taking 
 large periods into view, the human condition, on 
 the whole, improves. The moral forces of the 
 universe, unlike the material, are a constantly 
 increasing quantity; and with increase of moral 
 force the miseries and woes of human life are 
 gradually abating. The reign of reason is slowly, 
 but surely, gaining on the reign of passion, the 
 
ESSAYS. 301 
 
 reign of love on the wrath of man, the dominion 
 of science on brute nature. A better understand- 
 ing of the laws of health, as well in the social 
 as in the physical economy, will more and more 
 triumph over pauperism, intemperance, and dis- 
 ease, — the three main sources of mortal woe. 
 The goodness of God, impugned by the ails and 
 sorrows of life, is vindicated by its vast possibili- 
 ties and the ever-new-blossoming hope ineradicably 
 planted in the human soul. The sufferings of 
 the brute-world present a more difficult problem. 
 Here our theodicy has to assume that existence to 
 every creature is, on the whole, a blessing. If the 
 contrary could be proved, then I confess my theo- 
 dicy would be hopelessly at fault ; for brutes I con- 
 sider have an equal claim with human kind on the 
 author of their being for a balance of joy in the 
 dispensation of life, and a God of whom goodness 
 and omnipotence can be predicated is bound to 
 secure that balance to the meanest of his creatures. 
 But excess of suffering in the brute creation can 
 never be proved or made probable to any but a 
 pessimistic interpreter. 
 
 The other person in the Godhead to be dis- 
 tinguished with special emphasis is the moral 
 governor and judge. There is nothing more de- 
 finitive in deity than the moral jurisdiction which 
 the Ruler of all exercises over rational natures. 
 
302 PERSONALITY. 
 
 The demonstration of this rule is given in each 
 man's consciousness in that principle — inborn, I 
 think we may call it — which distinguishes between 
 right and wrong ; in fact, creates that distinction 
 which commands the right and forbids the wrong, 
 and which punishes disobedience with internal 
 suffering more or less acute, according to moral de- 
 velopment. These three, — moral perception, moral 
 obligation, moral retribution, — which for want of 
 a better designation we call " conscience," con- 
 stitute the Eternal in ourselves that makes for 
 righteousness. They are a part of ourselves, — no 
 other satisfactory account can be given of their 
 origin, — and they are our surest witness and proof 
 of deity. Let no one think to find complete de- 
 monstration of a moral government of th« universe 
 out of the realm of conscience, to find the Eternal 
 that makes, etc., in human society, in the external 
 fortunes of men. Some indications there are of the 
 operation of a moral law in the fortunes of indi- 
 viduals and of states sufficient to illustrate, but 
 not sufficient of themselves to establish, the moral 
 government of God. A close observation of the 
 facts of life reveals but a very imperfect corre- 
 spondence between character and fortune, between 
 destiny and desert. Obviously the best men are 
 not the most prosperous. The virtues that bring 
 the amplest and surest rewards in the way of 
 
ESSAYS. 303 
 
 worldly success are the little virtues, virtues of 
 the lowest class ; the great virtues do not " pay," 
 in the worldly sense. And when we observe in the 
 administration of social justice how the little rogues 
 are caught in the meshes of the law, while the 
 great rogues escape ; how the wretch who commits 
 an act of petty larceny to save his children from 
 starvation is sent to prison, while the financier, 
 who impoverishes thousands by dishonest specula- 
 tions, flourishes in impunity; when we note how 
 the girl who sins through momentary weakness 
 becomes an outcast, while her guilty seducer main- 
 tains his place in society, — there would seem to be 
 as much in the " not ourselves " that makes for un- 
 righteousness as there is that " makes for righteous- 
 ness." It is not there, not,, at least, within the 
 horizon of individual experience, that the moral 
 governor of the universe can be found. In the 
 large historic courses " which the brooding soul 
 surveys," it may be true that the wrongs of life 
 are transmuted into means and motives of moral 
 growth. An atoning Providence will macadamize 
 the stony injustices of passing time into smoother 
 roads for the feet of advancing Humanity; but 
 within the sphere of the visible present these 
 roughnesses are stones of offence to seekers of 
 the right which almost justify the pessimism that 
 swears by them and at them. Tragic enough, if 
 
304 PERSONALITY. 
 
 we look for manifestations of the moral order in 
 earthly fortunes, is the fate of many who have 
 blessed the world with their words and deeds. What 
 reward have they who have given the strength of 
 their days and hours of bloody sweat to lift man- 
 kind a little out of darkness and bondage into 
 liberty and light ? Our imagination perhaps opens 
 for them the gates of heaven, and sees them 
 crowned in the long hereafter with a diadem of 
 praise. But do you think that any divine soul was 
 ever actuated by hope of such a heaven? What 
 reward have they ? An approving conscience ? A 
 doubtful good. An approving conscience implies 
 a consciousness of virtue ; but conscious virtue is 
 tainted with something that is not virtue. To say 
 that virtue is its own reward is false if it means 
 that moral heroes find satisfaction in the contem- 
 plation of their worth. What reward have they ? 
 I know of but one, — they increase in themselves 
 the amount of being; that is, of Godhead. The end 
 of all right doing is to greaten the sum of being. 
 To be heroic and strong and good is the true and 
 only compensation for earthly loss and pain. This 
 is eternal life, which is not a thing to come, but 
 a thin^ that is. In fulness of being we have the 
 unknown quantity in the dark equation of charac- 
 ter and fortune which has puzzled the wit and 
 tried so sorely the faith of mankind. 
 
ESSAYS. 305 
 
 Life has two prizes which it offers to man's 
 choice, — having, and being; having part in the 
 goods of life, and being part of the absolute Good. 
 Both are desirable, but not always compatible the 
 one with the other. Heroic souls, when driven 
 into straits where both will not go, where one 
 or the other must be sacrificed, give up having 
 and the hope of having, and find their reward in 
 new measures of being. Blame not those who 
 believe greatly in having ; it is impossible to deny 
 the advantage of possession, the hold it gives on 
 this mortal world. But "I have overcome the 
 world " was the saying of one who had nothing, 
 and yet had all. Possession is good, but, after all, 
 the best thing is to possess one's self. 
 
THE THEISM OP REASON AND THE 
 THEISM OF FAITH. 
 
 OIR HUMPHRY DAVY, the foremost genius 
 ^ among Englishmen of science in the early 
 part of this century, declared toward the close of 
 his life that he envied no man's talents, wit, or 
 learning; but that if he were to choose what to 
 him would be the most delightful, and he believed 
 the most salutary, it would be a firm religious 
 faith. Such a choice indicates a certain measure 
 of faith already existing. It is the cry of the heart 
 asserting itself against the doubts of the under- 
 standing : " I believe ; Lord, help thou mine un- 
 belief." 
 
 On the other hand, Michael Faraday, pupil and 
 successor of Sir Humphry, and next to him on 
 the honor-roll of science, seems to have experi- 
 enced no such conflict between faith and under- 
 standing ; was troubled apparently with no religious 
 doubts ; as much at home in the conventicle as in 
 the laboratory ; never turning on the deeper ques- 
 tions of the soul — questions of spiritual import — 
 
ESSAYS. 307 
 
 the light which he shed so effectively on chlorine 
 and carbon ; coolly ignoring his identity ; erecting 
 a barrier of non-intercourse between Faraday pro- 
 fessor of chemistry, and Faraday the Sandemanian 
 devotee ; accepting in the one character the invi- 
 tation of the Queen to dinner on a Sunday, and in 
 the other submitting without a murmur to the 
 rigid discipline of the most intolerant of sects for 
 so doing. 
 
 There can hardly be a question as to which of 
 the two positions is the nobler, the more worthy a 
 rational soul, — that of the master, who hesitated 
 before the mystery he could not fathom, or that of 
 the pupil, who shut his eyes and swallowed the 
 creed, ignoring any mystery involved in it ; that 
 of Davy, in whom inquiry bred doubt, or that of 
 Faraday, who obstinately refused to inquire. In 
 all belief there is choice, either active election or 
 passive consent. In the even balance of reasons 
 for and against, if decision is taken it is an act of 
 volition, conscious or unconscious, that turns the 
 scale. But faith which is merely a creature of 
 the will, repelling investigation or predetermining 
 the result, has no enlightening influence and no 
 value as a minister of truth ; it is not inspiration, 
 but arrest, — not a perception, but a grab in the 
 dark. 
 
 A third position as to religion assumed by men 
 
308 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 of science is that of Mr. Tyndall and others, who, 
 without affirmation or denial, simply wash their 
 hands of all that, rule it out of the domain of philo- 
 sophic inquiry, and complacently relegate spiritu-al 
 truths to the region of the emotions. 
 
 From these examples, which are typical, and 
 from other examples of scientific renown, it appears 
 that science, which has so illumined the material 
 world and conquered such vast tracts from the 
 realms of space, which has changed the face of the 
 earth, affords no aid to the soul in her deepest 
 need, and sheds no gleam of light on those inter- 
 ests without which all that science can achieve is 
 just to amuse and to ease this creature life. It is 
 amusing to know that the sun is ninety odd mil- 
 lions of miles distant from our earth, and is made 
 of sodium, calcium, iron, carbon, manganese, and 
 other substances identical with earthly elements. 
 It amuses us to know that four hundred and sixty 
 millions of millions of light-waves hitting the eye in 
 a second make red, and that there are stars so distant 
 that if suddenly struck out of existence, dwellers 
 on the earth would continue to see them for thou- 
 sands of years by the light which they emitted 
 thousands of years ago. Then again it is an easing 
 of our creature life to be able to accomplish in a 
 few hours a journey which formerly required as 
 many days, to get messages in less than no time 
 
ESSAYS. 309 
 
 from the other side of the globe, and have one's 
 leg cut off, when necessary, without a sensation of 
 pain. But I cannot see that man's estate as a 
 moral and immortal being is essentially benefited, 
 or spiritual progress furthered, by these comforts 
 and curiosities. Conquests of time and space have 
 no-wise facilitated the conquest of self. It is 
 nearer to Japan than it was seventy years ago, but 
 as far as ever to the peace of God. The scientist 
 himself, if not a mere fingering and ogling busy- 
 body, must sometimes be visited by questionings 
 to which laboratory and observatory furnish no an- 
 swer. The world which Science occupies with her 
 lenses and crucibles, is ringed and washed by a sea 
 of wonder, navigable only to Faith. The former, 
 science, is the sum of those views which are verifi- 
 able by sense ; the latter is the sum of those views 
 which are not verifiable by sense. Which of the 
 two is the larger domain ? Science has no knowl- 
 edge of the future. If things remain as they are, 
 then such and such things will happen. But will 
 things remain as they are ? Science is dumb. Yet 
 how much of life depends on things remaining as 
 they are! We betake ourselves to nightly rest, 
 not doubting that a morrow will dawn and the old 
 world move in its accustomed grooves, as all our 
 yesterdays have known it to do. For this assurance 
 we are indebted, not to Science, but to Faith. 
 
310 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 Astronomy predicts an eclipse of the sun which, 
 some time hence, shall be visible in certain locali- 
 ties. We entertain no doubt of the accuracy of 
 that prediction. Competent observers of such phe- 
 nomena make their preparations accordingly. The 
 prediction is based on the supposition that sun and 
 earth wUl continue in being until the term as- 
 signed. That supposition rests wholly on Faith. 
 Science furnishes no guarantee that sun and earth 
 may not explode before that term arrives, or that 
 some distant body, unknown to astronomy, some 
 fiery traveller from the confines of being, may not 
 invade our skies and dash our system into chaos. 
 
 Again, Science knows nothing of causes or causa- 
 tion. She knows only certain habits of matter 
 which she dignifies with the name of laws. She 
 can give no account of the origin of things. She 
 finds the beginnings of the solar system in a cloud 
 of fire-mist. Whence that fire-mist she does not 
 say ; for all she knows or cares, it may have ex- 
 isted from eternity. She derives the vegetable and 
 animal world by progressive evolution from certain 
 primordial cells, — what she calls protoplasm, — 
 rejoicing in the thought of a genesis independent 
 of any creative fiat. To the question, how came 
 protoplasm and the life proceeding thence, Science 
 has no answer. She knows only things, and the 
 evolutions of things from things. 
 
ESSAYS. 311 
 
 Intelligent Will and a moral government of the 
 universe, implied in our sense of moral obligation, 
 are the only God that reason knows ; they consti- 
 tute the substance of philosophic theism. But the 
 God of reason is not commensurate with the God 
 of faith, and does not satisfy the demands of re- 
 ligion. Religion leans to anthropomorphism ; it 
 craves a personal God, a being not only ideally 
 distinct, but essentially secerned from the world. 
 God and the world, — religion demands the antithe- 
 sis. Indeed, the world, until a comparatively recent 
 period, was held by Christian theologians to be ut- 
 terly godless. The author of the " Theologia Ger- 
 manica" expressly declares that material Nature 
 and the Devil are one. Christendom — thanks in 
 part to Spinoza, whose fundamental thought has had 
 its influence even with those who repudiate his pan- 
 theism ; and thanks still more to natural science, 
 which has taken the place of the old scholastic phi- 
 losophy. Bacon, Newton, and Leibniz succeeding to 
 Duns Scotus, Occam, and Saint Thomas — Christen- 
 dom no longer entertains the notion of a God-forsaken 
 world. But religion still craves the separate God, — 
 a God who has his dwelling outside the world ; in 
 popular phrase, above the skies.^ Here reason is at 
 fault, and wants to know where and how. 
 
 1 " Infinite lengths beyond the bounds 
 Where stars revolve their little ronnds." 
 
312 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 Swedenborg asserts that the human form is 
 that in which God appears to spiritual vision. 
 Who shall dispute his saying? "Who can practi- 
 cally distinguish between spiritual yision and im- 
 agination ? No doubt, if I am to conceive of God 
 at all as taking a definite shape, it will be the 
 human form, since that is the most perfect that I 
 can conceive. But the mental concept does not 
 necessarily imply a corresponding object. To 
 suppose that God exists thus objectively con- 
 cluded in a human form, is to suppose him spa- 
 tially bounded, — an idea which reason refuses to 
 entertain. Reason is satisfied with nothing less 
 than the universe of being as embodied in the 
 Infinite Presence. 
 
 Essential to religion is belief in prayer, in the 
 hearing and granting of prayer by the Ruler of 
 the universe. The belief is one of the dearest 
 convictions of the human heart. If philosophy 
 condemns it, better, one would say, to let go phi- 
 losophy than be without it. 
 
 Here again reason is at fault. The notion of 
 a sovereign who hears and considers the petition 
 of a subject, and grants or denies as may be most 
 expedient for him, is one whose leading, reason 
 cannot follow. It supposes the All-knowing, the 
 Unerring, to act upon an impulse from without. 
 The finite mind is liable to be so actuated. 
 
ESSAYS. 313 
 
 Moved from without, swayed by foreign impulse, 
 it is forced back upon itself. It considers, ques- 
 tions, deliberates; in a word, reflects. If man| 
 were infallible, all-knowing, there would be no 
 arrest in his mental activity, no reflection. Can 
 we impute reflex action, the result of arrest, to 
 Infinite Intelligence? Can there be in God any 
 arrest of continuous action, any backing of the 
 current, any deliberation, where the will itself is 
 clairvoyant, and seeing and doing are one? To 
 reason such reflex action in deity seems incon- 
 gruous. In the view of reason, the divine mind 
 acts without deliberation, without reflection, — 
 not blindly, of course, but knowingly, infallibly, 
 comprehending the consciousnesses of finite beings 
 in its own super-conscious action. 
 
 Prayer, accordingly, in the view of reason, can- 
 not be a suggestion to the Infinite Mind of some- 
 thing to be considered and granted if expedient. 
 Rather, it is a part of the system of things, a 
 power which takes effect when not overborne by 
 contrary forces, or frustrated by the necessities 
 of Nature. No one claims that prayers, even of 
 devout souls, are always answered in the sense of 
 the suppliant. The theological statement of the 
 cause of the failure. is that God, having heard, for 
 wise though inscrutable reasons sees fit to deny. 
 The philosophic statement, identical in substance, 
 
314 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 is that the force exerted in the prayer collides with 
 contrary forces, or breaks against the necessities of 
 the common weal. Where the prayer is answered 
 
 in the sense of the suppliant, it is not necessary 
 
 as Science assumes, and therefore rejects the theory 
 of prayer — to suppose a change in the order of 
 Nature ; rather, that the prayer itself is a part of 
 the order of Nature, embraced in the great world- 
 scheme of which all the parts and agencies work 
 together as factors, latent or apparent, in every 
 event that occurs. It will naturally be objected 
 to this view that prayer is spontaneous in the 
 consciousness of the suppliant, that the feeling 
 which prompts it originates in the urgency of the 
 moment, that it takes for granted a present hear- 
 ing, and that no one would pray who supposed his 
 prayer to be, as it were, a foregone determination. 
 I might reply to this objection that the word 
 "foregone" misstates the case by attributing to 
 God, with whom there is no before or after, the 
 limitations of human nature, which knows things 
 only in the order of time. But I withhold the 
 reply. I frankly admit the force of the objection, 
 and content myself with saying that this is a case 
 where reason cannot follow, — where reason must 
 yield to faith. Fortunately our ratiocinations do 
 not of necessity influence our conduct. The in- 
 tellectual and the emotional life may pursue 
 
ESSAYS. 315 
 
 their parallels in one and the same subject, never 
 converging in one operation, and never conflicting 
 in their separate courses. A man may theorize 
 freely, and yet, when emotion prompts, pray fer- 
 vently, although the implied expectation of the 
 prayer can find no warrant in his theories. 
 
 So much as to prayers for external good. The 
 question of prayer for internal aid and bless- 
 ing, — prayer whose objects lie within the domain 
 of the moral life, to which it is insisted by some 
 that prayer should be confined, — admits of an 
 easier solution. We may suppose, beyond the 
 limits of the fleshly life, an invisible community of 
 finite, conscious intelligences, whose action is not 
 determined by any world-scheme or natural neces- 
 sity, but free to obey impulsions which come tcr 
 them from kindred spirits, whether in the flesh or 
 out of the flesh, and to club their forces for mor- 
 al ends. Such a community, a society of spirits 
 united by spiritual aifinities, cognizant of human 
 on-goings, and banded together under moral lead- 
 ership for moral ends, may be conceived as one 
 being, a divine man in Swedenborg's sense, the 
 Lord of the moral world. Upon such a being 
 human prayers — so they be prayers of the inner 
 man — would act with compulsory force, engaging 
 all the powers of Heaven to combine in rendering 
 the desired help. I say of the inner man. Prayer 
 
316 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 does not always represent the interior will. It 
 may be sincere so far as the consciousness of the 
 suppliant is concerned. The slave of lawless pas- 
 sion in a fit of remorse may pray with fervor to be 
 delivered from the bondage he loathes. But under- 
 neath the superficial repentance the will may still 
 be held captive and withhold its consent. It is only 
 when the will prays that the prayer is effectual. 
 
 In this hypothesis of a spirit-world distinct from 
 the material, having its own leader and head, I am 
 confronted with a question which reaches to the 
 very foundations of theism. Is the ruler of the 
 moral or spirit world identical with the Power that 
 reigns in the natural, with the Author and Governor 
 of the material universe ? If so, what proof have we 
 of that identity ? I have never been satisfied with 
 the logic of Natural Theology, so called, when from 
 the marks of almighty power and skill apparent 
 in Nature it stretches its argument to prove from 
 Nature the moral attributes of justice, love, and 
 holiness. In the world of sense the clear adaptation 
 of means to ends, the compensations of celestial 
 mechanics, the miracles of vegetable and animal 
 life, declare a superhuman Intelligence; they re- 
 veal the divine artist, the geometrizing God. On 
 the other hand, in the world of spirit, in the con- 
 scious human world, the moral sense and moral 
 experience declare with equal distinctness a moral 
 
ESSAYS. 31T 
 
 government, an authority independent of the hu- 
 man, a supreme order which man did not invent, 
 of which he feels himself the subject, and whose 
 jurisdiction he cannot escape. Here are two dis- 
 tinct powers : are they one and the same God ? 
 The old theology, as we saw, evaded the problem 
 by consigning the material world to the Devil. 
 The tendency of modern science is to resolve the 
 moral world with its law and Lord into a process 
 of nature. The theory of evolution pronounces 
 what we call the moral law and receive as divine 
 authority to be the result of the accumulated ex- 
 perience of the human race, demonstrating, and 
 therefore commanding, what is most conducive to 
 human well-being. The demonstration I grant, 
 but not the command. Perception of expediency 
 does not exhaust the idea of right, nor explain its 
 origin. Cases are conceivable in which expediency, 
 except in the reflex sense of satisfaction of con- 
 science, shall conflict with the right. The very 
 idea of right implies an aboriginal sense of moral 
 obligation entirely independent of expediency, a 
 moral law within, which prescribes in some cases 
 a course of conduct not at all, so far as human 
 foresight can measure, conducive to our own or 
 others' well-being. Nothing can account for this 
 sense of right but the supposition of some authority 
 prior to all experience and independent of the 
 
318 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 fleshly will. Have we any sufficient ground for 
 identifying that authority with the author and 
 governor of the material universe ? 
 
 Kant, as we saw,^ finds a bond of unity between 
 the two ; he reasons from the moral law to a God 
 of nature. The existence of a God, he argues, is a 
 postulate of practical reason, as being the only secu- 
 rity for the realization of that good for which the 
 moral law commands us to strive, the only ground 
 of the supposed connection between goodness and 
 blessedness. A postulate is not a demonstration. 
 But what is the good for which the moral law com- 
 mands us to strive ? Only such as under known 
 conditions we are conscious of a power to promote. 
 And what is the supposed connection between 
 goodness and blessedness ? It is purely moral ; a 
 moral blessedness, goodness is supposed to insure, 
 not a material good. No one claims that virtue is 
 a negotiable draft on Nature for physical satisfac- 
 tions. It is only, then, a God of the moral world, 
 not a God in nature, identical with that moral ruler 
 which Kant's argument goes to prove. It assumes 
 a connection between the natural and the moral, 
 which is the very point in question. The question 
 is still unsolved. 
 
 Is the ruler of the moral world identical with 
 the author of the material? — identical with the 
 1 See the previous Essay, page 290. 
 
ESSA YS. 319 
 
 Power that rounded the suns and flung them into 
 place, that peopled the earth with her various 
 kinds, that in one mood feathered the cockatoo 
 and painted the butterfly's* wing, and in another 
 mood fashioned the milleped and the mud-turtle, 
 and in still another the cobra and the scorpion ? 
 If so, should we not expect to find in the one the 
 antitype of the other, or at least a marked consent 
 between the two ? But in vain do I seek in Na- 
 ture for any confirmation of the moral law, in vain 
 for any intimation, for any faintest recognition, of 
 the sense of right. On the contrary, what most 
 impresses me in Nature is the absence of moral 
 bonds. I see violence, rapacity, cruelty, murderous 
 cunning everywhere rampant, subject to no retri- 
 bution, sure of equal satisfactions with meekness 
 and innocence. The moral law forbids its subjects 
 to harm one another, it bids them do unto others 
 as they would be done by. But the tribes of earth 
 are organized and intended to prey on each other. 
 Universal internecine war is the order of Nature. 
 It is nonsense to say that " all Nature's difference 
 keeps all Nature's peace." What kind of peace is 
 that where one half of the brute creation are per- 
 petually lying in wait for their prey, and the other 
 half living in perpetual dread of their enemies? 
 What the poet really meant was that all Nature's 
 difference keeps all Nature's balance, prevents the 
 
320 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 excess of any one kind. But who will pretend 
 that such excess might not have been prevented, 
 had it pleased creative power, in other less murder- 
 ous ways ? I see in Nature the will to perpetuate 
 her kinds, but not to secure their happiness, except 
 so far as may be necessary for their preservation. 
 I see what seems to be, from a human point of 
 view, a malicious multiplication of noxious vermin, 
 — Colorado-beetles, buffalo-moths, canker-worms, 
 cimex lectularius, pulex irritans, phylloxera, aph- 
 ides, and no end. I suppose these creatures have 
 some satisfaction in being ; some immunities they 
 certainly enjoy, — absence of moral responsibility, 
 exemption from the rancors of ambition and the 
 stings of remorse. But I question if the satisfaction 
 of life to them compensates the annoyance they 
 cause to us. If dowered with reason, these creatures 
 might complain of the existence of man, so detrimen- 
 tal to insect life. But the gift of reason would seem 
 to confer on man a prior right to the ground ; and, 
 reasoning from a human point of view, I must think 
 that the business of parasitic life is overdone. 
 
 Can we exonerate Nature from the charge of 
 moral indifference by any evidence of moral quah- 
 ties in the animal kingdom? Is there anything 
 that can be strictly termed moral in brute Nature ? 
 The love of the brute mother for her offspring, 
 which might seem to partake of this character, 
 
ESSAYS. 321 
 
 admits of another interpretation. These instinctive 
 affections of bird and beast may be viewed as 
 simply the cheapest expedient by which Nature 
 could secure the protection of her several kinds 
 in the dangerous period of their infancy. They 
 accordingly cease when the creature arrives at ma- 
 turity. They are beautiful to witness, but not 
 distinctively moral. The fidelity of the dog to his 
 master is a better instance; but in the case of 
 animals tamed and domesticated by man, the ques- 
 tion is transferred from original Nature to another 
 sphere, where human influence has grafted new 
 qualities on the primitive stock. In the realm of 
 Nature proper, of wild Nature, I find no proofs of 
 moral life, no conscience, no sense of wrong dis- 
 tinct from fear, no just retribution, nor any pity 
 for human woe. On the contrary, I am affronted 
 with the injustices, the cruelties which everywhere 
 prevail, — the animosities, the conflicts, the struggle 
 for existence, the parasitic invasions, the inhospi- 
 talities, the rigors of climate, the ferocity of tem- 
 pests, the unsparing devastations, the rages and 
 the ruin. Unfeeling is Nature ; mortal agony calls 
 upon her in vain in its supreme hour for sympathy 
 or aid. Nations perishing with famine can extort 
 with all their prayers no rain from her skies, and 
 no food from her clods. 
 
 Theologians, seeking in creation the reflection 
 21 
 
322 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 of their own idea, find marks of divine benevolence 
 in the animal kingdom. They point to the large 
 provision made for the satisfaction of animal wants, 
 they praise the manifest joy of living things, the 
 sports of yomig creatures, the merry gambols, the 
 song of birds, the aimless ecstasy of insects waltz- 
 ing in the sun. I am not insensible to these feli- 
 cities ; but here again I discern the same policy of 
 self-preservation which Nature exhibits in all her 
 works. The brute creation could not be denied 
 some modicum of satisfaction if the brute creation 
 is to hold its place in the scheme of things. Some 
 joy of being, some tracts of contentment there 
 must be in order that animal life may endure. If 
 the life were all, and only pain, it would long since 
 have failed from the earth. The question is not 
 whether brutes have pleasure, but whether their 
 pleasures exceed, or even equal, their devastations 
 and their pains. Who knows ? What we do know 
 is that " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
 in pain together until now." 
 
 Unfeeling is Nature, and yet how fair! With 
 how bland a smile the enchantress conceals her 
 atrocities! She lures with the ravishing blue of 
 summer seas, and hides the devil-fish and the 
 shark that lurk in their depths. She charms us 
 with " meadow, grove, and stream," and seems un- 
 conscious of the pests and the poisons which she 
 
ESSAYS. 323 
 
 harbors in her bosom, — the nightshade in the glen, 
 the rattlesnake beneath the rock. Pregnant with 
 mischief, yet serenely fair. That surface-beauty 
 who will deny ? Whom has it not beguiled ? I 
 know it well, — the peace which steals into the 
 soul with the contemplation of the outspread land- 
 scape, the pensiveness, the mysterious witchery, 
 the sense of a near and loving presence which 
 takes us captive when the great Mother spreads 
 her lure in sun and shade and invites us to her 
 breast. I feel the fascination ; it has constituted 
 a large part of my enjoyment of life. But it is 
 not there that I find any logical proof of the God 
 of my faith. That sense of a comforting presence 
 which we feel in our commerce with Nature, is 
 it anything more than the soothing influence 
 which contemplation of natural beauty exercises 
 by drawing away the soul from itself, by hushing 
 for a little the mordant cares, the vain desires 
 and vain regrets, by checking the importunity of 
 the will, and putting self- consciousness to sleep? 
 Perhaps that enjoyment of Nature so character- 
 istic of the modern as contrasted with the ancient 
 world, is due to the fact that modern life is more 
 subjective than the ancient, and finds in objective 
 contemplation its needful complement. 
 
 Many attempts have been made to reconcile the 
 evils of life with the belief in an omnipotent, all- 
 
324 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 wise, and beneficent God. I find no difi&culty in 
 such adjustment so far as the evils arising from 
 the operation of natural and moral laws are con- 
 cerned. Sickness, pestilence, famine, disasters by 
 sea and land, even sin and its consequences, — so- 
 cial disorders, hereditary taint, — all these I see 
 to be liabilities inherent in such a constitution of 
 things as on the whole shall make for good and 
 not for evil. The difficulty arrives when I detect 
 in Nature what seems to be a malicious intent, — 
 a quality in things animate or inanimate which 
 must of necessity cause more pain than pleasure, 
 and the possible good accruing from which I must 
 believe, could have been secured by other, safer 
 means. It is there that my theism wavers, and I 
 see very clearly why Christian theologians have 
 assigned the dominion of Nature to the Devil, and 
 why all the ante-Christian religions have assumed 
 along with their good deities an opposition dyn- 
 asty of evil ones, — it was so natural to believe in 
 an aboriginal Evil from which somehow all sub- 
 sequent evil has sprung. 
 
 Must I then renounce the view without which 
 Nature would cease to charm ? Shall I refuse to 
 see God where Spinoza saw nothing else ? Some- 
 thing in me more persuasive than logic, in spite 
 of the moral blank and in spite of the malignities 
 which affront me in Nature, forces me to believe 
 
ESSAYS. 325 
 
 that one Power reigns in Nature and the soul! 
 There must be some atoning word which recon- 
 ciles the holy and the hateful, the known divine 
 and the seeming undivine, which resolves this 
 dualism of nature and spirit in that deeper unity 
 which piety craves. 
 
 That word is man. The microcosm of the hu- 
 man world comprehends the moral and immoral, 
 the divine and the undivine, the holy and the 
 hateful, in one. In man are the heights and the 
 depths, the horrors and the graces; the cobra 
 and the scorpion are in him along with the lover 
 and the saint. The blessedest and the damnedest, 
 Satan and Christ, heaven and hell, define the 
 scope and measure the compass of his being. 
 But a true philosophy teaches that pure, unqual- 
 ified malignity is not found in him ; that in 
 man, at the vilest, the seed of God is not wholly 
 extinct ; that, as Emerson says, " Love never 
 relaxes its effort ; " that the Spirit will finally 
 prevail. And so we may believe with Paul that 
 the creation itself will yet be " delivered from 
 the bondage of corruption into the glorious lib- 
 erty of the sons of God." And so we may see 
 reflected in that wondrous synthesis, man, the 
 unity of God and Nature pervading the macro- 
 cosm of the universe, the identity of the Holy 
 that inhabits eternity with the Power that works 
 
326 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 
 
 in earth and time. But reason alone does not 
 suffice to establish that identity, does not suffice 
 to prove the God whom religion craves. 
 
 From the nature of the case the existence of 
 such a God must be undemonstrable ; for only 
 that can be demonstrated which can be succinctly 
 defined, and only that can be defined which is 
 finite. Transcending the reach of the under- 
 standing, eluding the grasp of Science, this su- 
 preme truth will be likely, in an age in which 
 Science is more active than Faith, to encounter 
 opposition of the understanding, which distastes 
 what it cannot comprehend. The atheism of 
 Science belongs to the method of Science, and 
 should not discredit the idea of God, which, if 
 held at all, must be held by Faith. And let it 
 be understood that Faith is not the resort of weak- 
 ness, but a master faculty which has its rights in 
 philosophy as well as religion; not the vassal of 
 Tradition, but a peer of the intellectual realm, 
 co-ordinate with Reason, and equally essential to 
 the health and growth of the human mind. 
 
 Faith, it is true, requires the qualifying check of 
 Science, without which she would lapse into mon- 
 strous superstition. But Science requires no less 
 the counterpoise of Faith, without which she would 
 soon deplete the mind of all those aspirations and 
 hopes which sweeten and ennoble the gift of life. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE'S WRITINGS. 
 
 EEASON IN EELIGION. 
 
 Introductory. — Being and Seeing, "Natural and Spiritual." 
 Book First. — Religion within the Bounds of Theism. 
 Book Second. — Rational Christianity. 
 
 Fourth edition. i6mo. Cloth. Price jSi.50. 
 
 THE PEIMEVAL WOELD OF HEBEEW TEIDITION. 
 
 I. The World a Divine Creation; II. Man the Image of Godj 
 III. Man in Paradise; IV. The Brute Creation; V. Paradise 
 Lost ; VI. Cain, or Property and Strife as Agents in Civilization ; 
 
 VII. Nine Hundred and Sixty-Nine Years ; VIII. The Failure of 
 Primeval Society ; IX. The Deluge ; X. Jehovah and Abraham ; 
 XII. The Heritage of the Inner Life. 
 
 Second edition. l6mo. Cloth. Price jSi.50. 
 
 WAYS OF THE SPIEIT, AND OTHEE ESSAYS. 
 
 I. The Way of History; II. The Way of Religion; III. The 
 Way of Historic Christianity ; IV. The Way of Historic Atone- 
 ment; V. The Natural History of Theism; VI. Critique of 
 Proofs of the Being of God; VII. On the Origin of Things; 
 
 VIII. The God of Religion, or the Human God; IX. Dualism 
 and Optimism; X. Pantheism; XI. The Two Religions; XII. 
 The Mythical Element of the New Testament; XIII. Incarna- 
 tion and Transubstantiation ; XIV. The Human Soul. 
 
 Second edition. \(mo. Cloth. Price %\.tp. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 ATHEISM IN PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 By FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE, 
 
 Author of " Reason in Religion," " Primeval World of Hebrew 
 Tradition," " Ways of the Spirit/' &c. 
 
 One Tolnme* 12mo. Cloth. Price $3.00. 
 
 *' By philosophic atheism, Dr. Hedge means speculative denial of a supermun- 
 dane conscious intelligence, — theories of the universe which regard it as blind 
 force or as a self- subsisting, self-governing, independent being. Philosophic 
 atheists differ among themselves ^most as widely as they differ from theists. 
 Dr. Hedge selects as examples an ancient and a modem, representing two oppo- 
 site types, — Epicurus and Schopenhauer. Among the miscellaneous e^ays are 
 ' Life and Character of Augustine,* * Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz,' ' The 
 Monadology of Leibnitz,' 'Immanuel Kant,' 'Irony,' 'The Philosophy of 
 Fetichism,' 'Genius,' 'The Lords of Life.' The author writes from the stand- 
 point of a Christian theist, but with such acquaintance with the subjects treated, 
 with such varied scholarship and breadth of thought, and in a style so clear and 
 fine, that his work is fairly entitled to careful reading by those whom the author 
 calls atheists." — The Index. 
 
 "One of our most solid thinkers is the Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, whose works 
 on philosophical and religious subjects have always had a wide reading. The 
 latest work from his pen, 'Atheism in Philosophy, and other Essays,' just pub- 
 lished by Roberts Brothers, will be found no less original, thoughtful, and 
 scholarly than those which have preceded it. The leading essay in tne book is 
 * Philosophic Atheism,' and in this Dr. Hedge thoroughly displays his knowledge 
 of modem philosophic speculation, its tendency and its importance, his depth 
 of thought, and his brilliancy and convincing solidity of style. He considers 
 and analyzes Epicurus the optimist, Schopenhauer the pessimist, and the pes- 
 simism of Edward von Hartman, conceding that there may be something of truth 
 and in reason in the basis of all these philosophies, but utterly condemnmg them 
 as false in theory and destructive of all that is best in life." — Saturday Evening 
 Gazette. 
 
 " This is a message of faith and hope from a brave and earnest thinker, a 
 sincere seeker afler truth, who has studied atheism and pessimism as they are 
 set forth by their ablest and most conscientious advocates, and whose long and 
 vigorous life has given him a deep and wide knowledge of books and of human 
 life. His gospel is not one of limitation and darkness, but of courage, godliness, 
 and immortality.'* — Worcester Spy. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, by the pub-' 
 lisherSy 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brother^ Publications. 
 
 CHRISTIAN HISTORY 
 
 IN ITS THREE GREAT PERIODS. First Period: 
 Early Christianity. By Joseph Henry Allen, 
 Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard Univer- 
 sity. With Chronological Outline and Index, and an 
 Introduction on the Study of Christian History. i6mo. 
 Cloth. Price, jSi.25. 
 
 Topics: i. The Messiah and the Christ; 2. Saint Paul; 
 3. Christian Thought of the Second Century ; 4. The Mind of 
 Paganism; 5. TheArian Controversy; 6. Saint Augustine ; 7. Leo 
 the Great ; 8. Monasticism as a Moral Force ; 9. Christianity in 
 the East; 10. Conversion of the Barbarians; 11. The Holy Ro- 
 man Empire ; 12. The Christian Schools. 
 
 "In whatever way we regard the origin and early growth of Christianity, 
 whether as special revelation or as historic evolution, the key to it is to be 
 found not in its speculative dogma, not in its ecclesiastical organization, not 
 even in what strictly constitutes its religious life, but in its fundamentally 
 ethical character. In either way of understanding it, it is first of all a gos- 
 pel for the salvation of human life." — Preface. 
 
 " I have read your Fragments of Clu-istiaa History with instruction and delight. 
 You are a miracle of candor and comprehensiveness. . . . You and Dr. Hedge are 
 almost the only men who know thoroughly the whole grand field of Ecclesiastical 
 History. ... I most cordially send you my thanks for such an illuminadon as you 
 have given me, on many obscure points of Christian Histoiy." — E, P. Whipple 
 to the A-uthor. 
 
 " We do not desire to state an unqualified agreement with all the conclusions 
 of Professor Allen, and yet we are free to confess that we know of no work of the 
 same scope which could be put into the hands of a thoughtful young man, in 
 which he could find so much sound philosophy, valuable historical review, and 
 devout apprehension of essential Christianity as he will find in ' Fragments of 
 Christian History.' '* — Chicago Alliance. 
 
 Sold everjrwhere by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
 publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLIOATIONS. 
 
 THE RISING FAITH. By Rev. C. A. Bartol, 
 D.D. One volume, i6mo. Cloth. Price $1.25. 
 
 From. iJie Boston Advertiser* 
 
 The book in its drift is a sequel to the " Radical Problems " published last 
 year; though it deals less with the mysteries of faith and opinion about which 
 thinkers and teachers, earnest and thoughtful like himself, differ widely. . . . With 
 a dash of his pen he strikes at forms of belief and worship which to him are nothing, 
 or worse than nothing, but to many millions of the human race have been a savor 
 of life unto life, and have opened the way of spiritual illumination, the reality of 
 which no man living has the right to question. But after all, the reader, whatever 
 his religious experience may have been, if he reads to the end, will find the reli- 
 gious philosophy of Dr. Bartol resting on the deep and unchangeable foundations 
 of faith in God, — the foundation on which all creeds and all systems must be 
 built to be eternal. 
 
 From, the Liberal Christian. 
 His book may not define the creed of the future, but it does better. It inspires 
 uswith"the rising faith." What a glorious faith it is! Faith in God, in man, 
 in immortality. Faith in reason, in spirit, in character. Faith in the past, in 
 the present, in the future. Faith in law, in order, in beneficence. Faith in hu- 
 man nature, not as a finality, but as "a becoming." Faith in man's environment 
 as adimrably adapted to develop him into " the stature of a man which is that of 
 the angel." Faith in liberty, but not in license. Faith in the pure marriage of 
 coequal hearts and minds. Faith in forbearance and self-sacrifice as better than 
 divorce-made-easy to solve the social riddle of the time. Faith in educated labor 
 as the best solution of the problem of labor. These are a few of the " notes " of 
 "The Rising Faith" which Dr. Bartol blends in his wonderful Fantasia. 
 
 From, the Christian Leader. 
 
 It is the faith that Mr. Bartol has attained to as the result of his studies, 
 observations, reflections for more than sixty years, following the apostolic direc- 
 tion to try all things and hold fast that which is good. And certainly a great part 
 of what he with his constant trying has held fast to will be called good by the 
 large majority of those who are esteemed right-minded and sound-thinking men. 
 . . . But above all things, the writer is true to his own convictions. These he states 
 positively, clearly, unhesitatingly, but with all gentleness. 
 
 He is certainly a Liberal Thinker, but in sweetness, candor, fait^mindednessi 
 love of his fellow-men, patience with their errors and infirmities, shrewd observa- 
 tion of their weaknesses, purity and spirituality, he should be taken as an example 
 by all the Liberal Thinkers of our day. The book has a long life before it, if for 
 nothing else but its literary excellencies. ... It will be cordially welcomed by all 
 the best intellects of our day as a valuable contribution to human thought, and be 
 the text of many an essay for a long time to come. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed^ post-^aid^ on receipt of the price^ by the 
 Pttblishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 HEBREW MEN AND TIMES 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 Patriarc|)£! to ti)e iWessfef)* 
 
 By JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, 
 Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University. 
 New Edition, with an Introduction on the results of recent Old 
 Testament criticism. Chronological Outline and Index. l6mo. 
 Price, $1.50. 
 
 Topics: 1. The Patriarchs; 2. Moses; 3. The Judges; 
 4. David ; 5. Solomon ; 6. The Kings ; 7. The Law ; 8. The 
 Prophets; 9. The Captivity; 10. The Maccabees; 11. The Alex- 
 andrians ; 12. The Messiah. 
 
 Extract from the Preface ;'*... There seemed room and need of a clear, 
 brief sketch, or outline ; one that should spare the details and give the re- 
 sults of scholarship ; that should trace the historical sequences and connec- 
 tions, without being tangled in questions of mere erudition, or literary 
 discussions, or theological polemics ; that should preserve the honest inde- 
 pendence of scholarly thought, along with the temper of Christian faith ; 
 that should not lose from sight the broad perspective of secular history, 
 while it should recognize at each step the hand of ' Providence as manifest 
 in Israel.' Such a want as this the present volume aims to meet." 
 
 Rev. O. B. Frothingham in the Christian Examiner. 
 
 " We shall be satisfied to have excited interest enough in the theme to induce 
 readers to take up Mr. Allen's admirable book and trace through all the richness 
 and variety of his detail the eventful history of this Hebrew thought. His pages, 
 with which we have no fault to find save the very uncommon fault of being too 
 crowded and too few, will throw light on many things which must be utterly dark 
 now to the unlearned mind ; they will also revive the declining respect for a ven- 
 erable people, and for a faith to which we owe much more than some of us suspect. 
 For, however untrammelled Mr. Allen's criticism may be, his thought is always 
 serious and reverential. And the reader of his pages, while confessing that their 
 author has cleared away many obstructions in the way of history, will confess also 
 that he has only made fi'eer the access to the halls of faith. There is no light or 
 loose or unbecoming sentence in the volume. There is no insincere paragraph. 
 There is no heedless line. And this perhaps is one of the greatest charms of the 
 book ; for it is rare indeed that both intellect and heart are satisfied with the 
 same letters." 
 
 Sold everywhere by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
 publishers. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. 
 
 EVERY-DAY LIFE AND 
 
 EVERY-DAY MORALS. 
 
 By GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY. 
 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 
 
 A series of Discourses on the relation of Art, Business, the Stage, the Press, 
 and the Pulpit, to Morals, as exemplified in Every-Day Work and Recreations. 
 
 In this fresh and charming volume, one who is well known and beloved in 
 the churches of Boston sends back to New England a welcome greeting from 
 " The Church of Our Father " in Atlanta. It speaks with the same voice which 
 made the pulpit of HoUis-Street Church a power for practical religion during Mr. 
 Chaney's most valuable ministry in this city, — a mmistry which has left perma- 
 nent results in not a little of the best denominational and philanthropic work 
 which is done here. . . . The reader opens a series of chapters which lead him 
 on through studies which touch all the great influences of modem social life in 
 America. Fearless, frank, keen in their criticism of foibles, shams, and shames, 
 they are lighted up by gleams of humor, and glow with the iridescent beauty of 
 poetical imagination, while full of wise thought and noble motive. — Christian 
 Register. 
 
 There are here eight pulpit discourses or addresses on "Art and Morals," 
 "Juvenile Literature and Juvenile Morals," " Literature and Morals." "Indus- 
 try and Morals," " Business and Morals," " The Stage and Morals," The Press 
 and Morals,'* "The Pulpit and Morals." They are full of strong, manly sense, 
 wise discrimination, and noble- invigorating moral tone, expressed in a vivid and 
 vigorous style that holds the reader from beginning to end. If it be true that the 
 pulpit fails to attract, the fault is certainly not with such preachers as Mr. Chaney; 
 for these discourses have in them intellectual fibre, the healthiest moral pulse, 
 and the ring of downright honesty of speech of man to man, put in attractive 
 form. If it be true that the pulpit deals with abstractions, that charge cannot be 
 laid against these utterances, for the subjects are all of immediate interest, and are 
 treated in a living way. For ourselves we find in Mr. Chaney's judgments little 
 to dissent from. His opinions seem to us to be thoroughly sound, and his pages 
 are studded with excellent and wholesome criticism and advice. The two ad- 
 dresses on "Juvenile Literature and Juvenile Morals" and "Literature and 
 Morals" are wise helps to the young and to teachers of the youngin the selec- 
 tion of their reading. The two lectures on the Stage and on the Press in their 
 moral aspects are marked by balance and discrimination. The whole book is 
 thoroughly breezy and bracing, and contains counsel of a noble, right-minded 
 kind, — The Unitarian Herald. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed^ post-paid, on receipt of 
 price, by the publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.