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+Project Gutenberg's Recent Developments in European Thought, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Recent Developments in European Thought
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2005 [EBook #15084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Garrett Alley, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNITY SERIES
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT
+
+_ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED_
+
+BY
+
+F.S. MARVIN
+
+AUTHOR OF 'THE LIVING PAST', ETC.
+
+    'To hope till Hope creates
+    From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.'
+
+    _Prometheus Unbound._
+
+HUMPHREY MILFORD
+
+OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY
+
+1920
+
+PRINTED IN ENGLAND
+
+AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume, like its two predecessors, arises from a course of lectures
+delivered at a Summer School at Woodbrooke, near Birmingham, in August,
+1919. The first, in 1915, dealt with 'The Unity of Western Civilization'
+generally, the second, in 1916, with 'Progress'. In this book an attempt
+has been made to trace the same ideas in the last period of European
+history, broadly speaking since 1870.
+
+It was felt at the conclusion of the course that the point of view was
+so enlightening and offered so many opportunities of useful further
+study that it should, if possible, be resumed in future years. A large
+number of subjects were suggested--'The Relations of East and West,'
+'The Duty of Advanced to Backward Peoples,' 'The Rôle of Science in
+Civilization,' &c.--all containing the same elements of 'progress in
+unity' which have inspired the previous volumes. It was thought that
+possibly for the next session 'World Reconstructions Past and Present'
+might be most appropriate.
+
+If any reader feels moved by interest or sympathy with the general idea
+to send suggestions, either as to possible places of meeting, or topics
+for treatment or any other kindred matter, they would be welcomed either
+by the Editor or by Edwin Gilbert, Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, Birmingham.
+
+F.S.M.
+
+BERKHAMSTED, _December, 1919._
+
+
+[** Transcriber's Note: This text contains a single instance of a
+    character with a diacritical mark. The character is a lower-case
+    'r' with a caron (v-shaped symbol) above it. In the text, that
+    character is depicted thusly: [vr] **]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                      PAGE
+
+   I. GENERAL SURVEY                                     7
+      By F.S. MARVIN.
+
+  II. PHILOSOPHY                                        25
+      By Professor A.E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews.
+
+ III. RELIGION                                          65
+      By Dr. F.B. JEVONS, Hatfield Hall, Durham.
+
+  IV. POETRY                                            91
+      By Professor C.H. HERFORD, Manchester.
+
+   V. HISTORY                                          140
+      By G.P. GOOCH.
+
+  VI. POLITICAL THEORY                                 164
+      By A.D. LINDSAY, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+ VII. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT                             181
+      1. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842                    181
+      2. MINING OPERATIONS                             195
+      3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION                     209
+         By C.R. FAY, Christ's College, Cambridge.
+
+VIII. ATOMIC THEORIES                                  216
+      By Professor W.H. BRAGG, F.R.S.
+
+  IX. BIOLOGY SINCE DARWIN                             229
+      By Professor LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.
+
+   X. ART                                              247
+      By A. CLUTTON BROCK.
+
+  XI. A GENERATION OF MUSIC                            262
+      By Dr. ERNEST WALKER, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+ XII. THE MODERN RENASCENCE                            293
+      By F. MELIAN STAWELL.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+GENERAL SURVEY
+
+F.S. MARVIN
+
+
+We are trying in this book to give some impression of the principal
+changes and developments of Western thought in what might roughly be
+called 'the last generation', though this limit of time has been, as it
+must be, treated liberally. From the political point of view the two
+most impressive milestones, events which will always mark for the
+consciousness of the West the beginning and the end of a period, are no
+doubt the war of 1870 and the Great War which has just ended. From 1870
+to 1914 would therefore be the most obvious delimitation of our study;
+and it is a striking illustration of human paradox, that a great stage
+in the growth of unity should be marked by two international tragedies
+and crowned by the most terrible of all.
+
+Nearly coincident with the political divisions there are important
+landmarks in the history of thought. During the 'sixties, while the
+power of Prussia was rising to its culmination in the Franco-Prussian
+War, the Darwinian theory of development was gaining command in biology.
+To many thinkers there has appeared a clear connexion between that
+biological doctrine and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was
+so marked a feature of the time. In any case 'post-Darwinian' might well
+describe the scientific thought of the age we have in view.
+
+Industrially the epoch is as clearly defined as it is in politics and
+science. For in 1871, the year of the Treaty of Frankfort, an act was
+passed after a long working-class agitation, assisted by certain eminent
+members of the middle class, legalizing strikes and Trade Unions. And
+now at the end of the war, all over the world, society is faced by the
+problem of reconciling the full rights, and in some cases the extreme
+demands, of 'labour', with democratic government and the prosperity and
+social union of the whole community. This is the situation discussed in
+our seventh and eighth chapters.
+
+In philosophy and literature a similar dividing line appears. In the
+'sixties Herbert Spencer was publishing the capital works of his system.
+The _Principles of Psychology_ was published in 1872. This 'Synthetic
+Philosophy' has proved up to the present the last attempt of its kind,
+and with the vast increase of knowledge since Spencer's day it might
+well prove the last of all such syntheses carried out by a single mind.
+Specialism and criticism have gained the upper hand, and the fresh turn
+to harmony, which we shall notice later on, is rather a harmony of
+spirit than an encyclopaedic unity such as the great masters of system
+from Descartes to Comte and Spencer had attempted before.
+
+In literature also the dates agree. Dickens, most typical of all early
+Victorians, died in 1870. George Eliot's last great novel, _Daniel
+Deronda_, was published in 1876. Victor Hugo's greatest poem, _La
+Légende des Siècles_, the imaginative synthesis of all the ages,
+appeared in the 'seventies. There have been many writers since, with
+Tolstoi perhaps at their head, in whom the fire of moral enthusiasm has
+burnt as keenly, nor have the borders of human sympathy been narrowed.
+Yet one cannot fail to note a less pervading and ready confidence in
+human nature, a less fervent belief that the good must prevail if good
+men will only follow their better leading.
+
+Here then is our period, marked in public affairs by a progress from
+one conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations
+of the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole
+world into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion
+and depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and
+imagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters.
+No wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the
+'bankruptcy of science'.
+
+But it must be noted at once that these obvious landmarks, though
+striking, are in themselves superficial. They require explanation rather
+than give it, and in some cases an explanation, much less tragic than
+the symptom, is suggested by the symptom itself. We may at least fairly
+treat them at starting simply as beacon-hills to mark out the country we
+are traversing. We have to go deeper to find out the nature of the soil,
+and travel to the end to study the vista beyond.
+
+In making this fuller analysis of man's recent achievement, especially
+in the West, the first, and perhaps ultimately the weightiest, element
+we have to note is the continued and unexampled growth of science. Was
+there ever a more fertile period than the generation which succeeded
+Darwin's achievement in biology and Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's with the
+spectroscope? Both have created revolutions, one in our view of living
+things, the other in our view of matter. In physics the whole realm of
+radio-activity has come into our ken within these years, and during the
+same time chemistry, both organic and inorganic, has been equally
+enlarged. All branches of science in fact show a similar expansion, and
+a new school of mathematicians claim that they have recast the
+foundations of the fundamental science and assimilated it to the
+simplest laws of all thinking. Some discussion of this will be found in
+the chapter on philosophy.
+
+It may serve as tonic--an antidote to that depression of spirits of
+which we have spoken--to consider that such an output of mental energy,
+rewarded by such a harvest of truth, is without precedent in man's
+evolution. No single generation before ever learnt so much not only of
+the world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For
+since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for
+historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down
+in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset sky at
+least is glorious.
+
+And there is tonic in another thought which rises from the very nature
+of this recent blossoming of knowledge. It marks the growing
+co-operative activity of mankind. The fact that science and research of
+every kind have advanced so rapidly is not only, or even primarily, a
+proof of the continued vigour of the human intellect, but of the
+stability of society, the coherence of social classes and nations, the
+readiness of the bulk of men to allow their more immediately productive
+work to be used for the support of those whose labours are in a more
+remote and ideal sphere. Science did not begin until the ancient
+priesthoods were enabled to pursue disinterested inquiries without the
+need of earning their daily bread. Civilization, we may be assured, is
+not threatened in its most vital part so long as the general will
+permits the application of the general resources to the promotion of
+learning and research without a claim for immediate marketable results.
+Our last generation has not only permitted but has encouraged this in
+all Western countries, and in other countries, such as China and Japan,
+influenced by the West. The money thus spent is vastly greater than in
+any equal period before, and the United States, the land of the fullest
+democratic claims, is also the land of the amplest generosity for
+scientific and educational purposes.
+
+The growth of knowledge is a symptom not only of the collective capacity
+of living man but also of the continuity of the present age with those
+which had laid the earlier foundations. One school of vigorous action,
+and still more vigorous talk, advises our generation to be done with the
+past and make a fresh start on more ideal lines. This is not the voice
+of science, which, just in proportion to its growth, has shown more and
+more care for its origins and its past: and this is true at every stage
+in the history of thought. The Greeks, fighting for freedom and
+establishing in the city-state a new form of political organization for
+the world, were yet in their scientific evolution true and grateful
+successors of the priests who first compiled the observations necessary
+for the scientific study of the heavens and founded the art of medicine.
+The men of the Renascence, who were burnt and imprisoned for doubting
+the verbal inspiration of Aristotle and the Bible, were in fact going
+back to an earlier impulse than that of the scholastic philosophy. The
+mathematics of Pappus and the mechanics of Archimedes had to be carried
+further before the new sciences of which Aristotle had given the first
+sketch could be securely founded. The pioneers of the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries built therefore on the past, although accused of
+impiety and revolution; and it must be so with any intellectual
+construction which is to hold its own and form the future. So far from
+there being any opposition in nature between history and science, the
+two are but different aspects of one continuous enlargement of the human
+spirit, which sees and lives more fully at each great moment of its
+progress, and, so far as it is alive, is always informed by the real
+achievements of the past. We illustrate this advance in the marvellous
+record of our fifth chapter, and its spirit is summed up in the great
+saying of Benedetto Croce that 'all history is contemporary history'.
+
+But the reader may here begin not unnaturally to feel some impatience
+with the argument, and to think that he is being carried into a region
+of ideal imaginings quite out of touch with the realities of blood and
+hatred and starvation with which we have been actually surrounded at the
+end of our period. It is well to be thus sharply reminded of the
+contrariety of facts, when we are sailing smoothly along on the current
+of any theory, whether of education or politics, religion or art. To get
+right with our objector, to set our sail so that the rocks in the stream
+may not completely wreck us, we will go back to the point where we were
+insisting on the obvious truth that the collective resources and
+capacity of mankind have of late enormously increased.
+
+The material fruits of science are among our most familiar wonders--the
+motor-car, the aeroplane, wireless telegraphy. But it is not
+sufficiently realized how all these things and the like are dependent
+upon the co-operation of a multitude of minds, the collective rather
+than the individual capacity of man. Men had dreamt for ages of flying,
+but it was not until the invention of the internal combustion engine
+that bird-like wings and the mechanical skill of man could be brought
+together and made effective. It is Humanity that flies, and not the
+individual man alone. The German Daimler, the French Levassor, are the
+two names which stand out most prominently in this later development of
+engineering as our own Watt and Stephenson stand in the history of the
+steam-engine. Wireless telegraphy offers a similar story. Faraday,
+Maxwell, Hertz, Lodge, Marconi; the names are international. In 1913,
+before ever the League of Nations had been planned, Lord Bryce was
+telling an International Congress in London that 'the world is becoming
+one in an altogether new sense.... More than four centuries ago the
+discovery of America marked the first step in the process by which the
+European races have gained dominion over nearly the whole earth. As the
+earth has been narrowed through the new forces science has placed at our
+disposal, the movements of politics, of economics, and of thought, in
+each of its regions, become more closely interwoven. Whatever happens in
+any part of the globe has now a significance for every other part. World
+History is tending to become one History.'
+
+The war, tragically as it has shaken this growing oneness of mankind,
+has not destroyed it. In some ways it has even stimulated growth.
+Against a background of blood and fire the League of Nations has been
+forced into actual being, and the long isolation alike of the ancient
+East and the youthful West has been broken down at last. Within the
+State, again, even allowing for all setbacks, the efforts at social
+solidarity have on the whole been strengthened, not weakened. This war
+his been an accelerator of, not, as the Napoleonic, a brake upon,
+reform. Many reforms, especially in England, which had been long
+discussed and partly attempted before the war, were carried out with
+dispatch at its close. This was the case with education, with the
+franchise and with measures affecting the health, the housing, and the
+industrial conditions of the people. And there is now a greater and
+stronger demand among us for a further advance, above all for making
+every citizen not merely or even primarily a voting unit, but a
+consciously active, consciously co-operative, member of the community.
+
+Comte, who died in 1857 just before our period, was perhaps the clearest
+voice in Europe to herald both movements: the advance to international
+unity, and social reform within the State. It was he who, under the
+title of _Western Republic_, proclaimed the existence of a real unity of
+nations, whose business it was to strengthen themselves as a moral
+force, to act as trustees for the weaker people and lead the world. It
+was he who, in the phrase 'incorporation of the proletariate', summed up
+all those social reforms in which we are immersed, which aim at making
+every citizen a full member of his nation. Like all ideals it was far
+easier to conceive and to respect than to foresee or to secure the
+necessary means to put it into effect. Perhaps the perfect symmetry of
+the plan, the over-sanguine hopes of the man who framed it, have even
+proved some hindrance to its rapid spread. It has seemed, like Dante's
+polity in the _De Monarchia_, to take its place rather among the utopias
+than the practical schemes of reform, and when men saw the infinite
+complexity of the problems and met the living lions in the path, they
+suffered the comparative depression which we have noticed as a feature
+of the age.
+
+Here indeed it would appear that we have reached one of the most serious
+cross-currents in recent European thought. In science, in philosophy, in
+politics, and in social economics, though we see the goal at least in
+outline, we are in some danger of being overwhelmed by the difficulties
+of the pursuit. Our vision is somewhat clouded and our steps hampered by
+the entangling details of the country between. It is substantially the
+same problem which faces us both in the philosophical and the practical
+sphere, and the analogy between the two is instructive. Spencer's
+synthesis, which we instanced as the last encyclopaedic attempt to
+present all knowledge--at least all scientific knowledge--in one system,
+has been riddled fore and aft by hostile shot, though in the end more
+of it may be found to have survived than is seen at present above water.
+The philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue
+most comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt
+some of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out
+to construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that
+he is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers,
+that he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is
+interesting to note in general terms what that point of view is, as we
+shall have occasion later on to revert to it. It rests on a new
+interpretation of the nature and growth of conscious life. He is in
+short a _semeur d'idées-force_ rather than an encyclopaedist or a
+system-maker. The difference is characteristic of the age and might be
+traced in the other contemporary schools, the pragmatists, the new
+realists, and the rest. The new Descartes is looked for but not
+announced. Perhaps when he arrives he will prove to be a whole army and
+not a single man. But if an army, it will need a better co-ordination, a
+more clearly defined common spirit, than is at present apparent in the
+philosophic hosts.
+
+A similar perplexity in the practical sphere has a similar cause but a
+graver urgency. The multiplicity and contrariety of the facts are upon
+us as we face in practice the ideals which we have accepted from the
+earlier thinkers, from the century of hope. In science and philosophy we
+feel that the cause of unity may with some safety be left to look after
+itself. If the new Descartes does not appear in person, we may have
+confidence that plenty of inferior substitutes will be found, who, if
+they work together, will keep alive the great task of unifying thought.
+For in this region the nature of things assists our efforts and will
+sooner or later get the work done. The stars in their courses are
+fighting for us and for unity. But in the world of wills the task is
+tenfold more difficult and the dangers imminent. The poor and labouring
+millions, the oppressed and dissatisfied nations, are forcing the door,
+and though there is fair agreement in theory as to how they should live
+and work together in peace, yet the realization is by no means
+automatic, and the difficulties thicken as we come nearer to them.
+
+But even here, perhaps most of all here, it is the first word of wisdom
+to take stock of the favourable symptoms, to see clearly the forces on
+which we can rely in our forward march. And they are not far to seek in
+all classes and in every Western land. Read any account of an English
+community in the early nineteenth century, say George Eliot's 'Milby' in
+the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. How far more humane, more enlightened,
+and happier is the state of the succeeding community, the Nuneaton or
+Coventry of the present day! No question but the novelist would have
+welcomed as a convincing proof of her 'meliorist' doctrine the progress
+made in her own homeland in the century since her birth. We know by
+personal experience the general kindliness and cheerfulness of our
+fellow citizens, their tolerance, their readiness to hope, their
+prevalent orderliness and self-restraint. We are thinking perhaps of a
+certain tendency to slackness, a dangerous falling-off in the output of
+work. If that be so, we need only look at the activities of any
+playground, or of a class-room in a well-ordered school, to be sure of
+the future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as
+exhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all
+for vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult community, the trustees
+of the child, who are to blame if his maturity fails of the eager
+questioning and the untiring labours of his unspoilt youth.
+
+But we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than
+with the actual life of the times. Theories affecting the organization
+of work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society
+have had much to do with our present difficulties. They have arisen from
+the conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the
+political revolution which began about the same time, and they have
+reacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the
+mass of Western men. They are discussed in our eighth chapter. It may be
+said broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and
+_simpliste_ doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of
+extinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken
+their place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due
+mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the
+present--or recent--capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned
+upside down in the interests of manual labour--this is no longer
+dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate
+battle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist
+system, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St.
+Simon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.
+The spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized
+employer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find
+rather in a reconstituted and moralized State. We all share this hope in
+our degree, _The Times_ as well as the _Daily News_, and we do not
+expect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and
+private capacity and initiative of individuals. The joint stock company
+has settled that.
+
+What we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of
+a benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many
+mansions and, like the monks of old, follow many rules of life. In this
+region our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of
+thought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.
+
+And here it is interesting to note that one of the most telling books on
+social reconstruction published since the war is by an international
+writer. This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose
+ideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael[1].
+He fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double
+attitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision
+of the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing
+groups, 'Social Guilds' or 'professional syndicates' in which both
+employers and workmen would be included with representatives of the
+Government; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must
+proceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at
+increasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.
+
+Our book has no special chapter on the League of Nations itself. The
+idea pervades the whole, and the subject was treated in detail in the
+first volume of this series (_The Unity of Western Civilization_, 1915).
+The history behind the League offers a striking analogy to the other
+struggles for unity of which we have spoken. There is the same advance
+from the idea of a unity dictated and controlled by one mind to a unity
+of spirit arising from the free co-operation of many diverse elements
+all aiming at the same general good. Down even to yesterday it seemed to
+many minds a necessary condition that one man, gathering in his hands
+the resources of one great State, should from that centre dominate the
+world. And in the dawn of human history it was no doubt often true, the
+only way in which the world could then advance. This was true for
+Alexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true,
+conspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up
+of the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading
+all who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the
+time of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and
+reactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and
+nations too various and deeply rooted. Meanwhile a real unity, stronger
+than before, had been forming beneath the surface and needed fresh
+institutions to body it forth. This movement for unity has been, as we
+have seen, precipitated by the war into visible and decisive action. It
+had been simmering for three hundred years in 'Great Designs', 'Projects
+of Peace', Treaties of Arbitration, and Hague Conventions.
+
+Among much that is doubtful in the future of the League, one thing
+stands out as a capital certainty. Without losing the very spirit of its
+being it can never become a satellite system, revolving round one
+dominant Power or even a dominant clique. It was formed to contradict
+and destroy an oppressive imperialism: it can only thrive by the free
+co-operation of the partners, finding their proper end in a prosperity
+shared by all.
+
+Such is a short summary of some of the leading topics treated here,
+those perhaps in which public interest has been most keenly aroused. But
+nothing has been said in this introduction of Art or Music, and of
+Religion only a little by implication. It may be well in conclusion to
+attempt a still more summary impression of the main drift of the period
+on the spiritual side. We may in such a wider view see some common
+tendency in all these activities, some inspiration of religion, some
+link with art, some impulse to live strongly and to hope.
+
+The present writer would find this leading thread in the increasing
+stress laid by recent European thought on the spiritual, or
+psychological, side of every problem, in the growing desire to
+understand the character of man's own nature and to develop all the
+powers of his soul.
+
+One of the latest authorities[2] on anthropology has told us that 'to
+develop soul is progress', and he has followed the clue through the
+meagre relics of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man. So does the last
+science of the nineteenth century throw light on the dim recesses of the
+past. For unquestionably psychology is the characteristic science added
+to the hierarchy in our period; it has crowned biology and is exercising
+a profound influence on philosophy, literature, and even politics. If
+Aristotle was its founder, if it was Descartes who first showed its
+profound connexion with philosophy, it is to workers in our own day that
+we must look for those methods of accurate observation, comparison, and
+the study of causes without which it could not advance farther. And
+modern psychology has advanced far enough to see that we must include in
+its purview the 'soul' of a minnow as well as of a man. Descartes had
+stopped too short, for to him animal life, as distinct from human,
+showed only the movements of automata. But now, just as the biologist
+conceives man as part of one infinite order of living things, so the
+psychologist believes that the facts of his consciousness, the crown of
+life, must find their place somewhere related to the simplest movements
+of the amoeba. Hence the whole of animate evolution, and not only that
+part of which Dr. Marett spoke, may be thought of as the growth of soul.
+
+But, the objector will inquire, does this imply the enlargement of every
+individual or even of the average or the typical personality? And if
+not, what becomes of a 'growth of the soul'?
+
+To this we must admit the impossibility of any complete, or even
+approximate, answer with our present knowledge. We can only note one or
+two points of certainty or of confident belief. The first, that there
+have been individual men, an Aristotle or a Shakespeare, in the past,
+with whom later ages never have, and perhaps never may, compare. The
+second, that there are good grounds for thinking that the average man
+has improved in goodness and in knowledge since we first knew him dimly
+in the dawn of history. But more important and more certain is the fact
+that the collective soul of man has grown, and all the extensions of
+knowledge and of power of which our volume speaks bear witness to it.
+They are essentially social in origin and outlook, and rest on a
+foundation of common thought immeasurably wider than any in the more
+distant past.
+
+The man of science, the statesman, even the poet, now speaks for a
+multitude, and out of a multitudinous consciousness, which had not
+gathered to support, to inspire, or to weigh down, an Aristotle, a
+Pericles, a Cromwell. This is a dominating fact from which it is well to
+take our start. Assuredly the soul of mankind has been collectively
+enlarged and enriched. How far the individual can share in this
+enlargement is still one of the problems of the future. The West has
+committed itself to a general policy of education which aims at making
+every citizen a full partaker in the advance of the race. But it cannot
+be said that this policy has yet been really tried. It is the
+acknowledged ideal to which in all Western countries partial steps have
+been taken, and the democracy, through their most enlightened leaders,
+will continue to press for its fulfilment. As this approaches, the
+individual may become more and more in his degree the microcosm which
+philosophers have proclaimed him, and the enlargement of the soul, which
+we know to be a fact for humanity, will become a fact for every man.
+Need we doubt that with the general raising in the level new eminences
+will appear? Do not great mountains sometimes rise from the sea and
+sometimes from the high plateau? We are now in the very midst of a
+struggle for settlement and incorporation, which, as it is accomplished,
+should prepare the way for new excellences of every kind. What may not
+be hoped of men if once they learn to live with their fellows? And they
+can only so learn by studying them. This is felt by all contemporary
+writers from Bergson in philosophy to Graham Wallas in politics. Poets
+and novelists, above all, have turned more and more to problems of the
+inner life.
+
+The novelists who ushered in our age are significant of this, and none
+more so than George Eliot, whose work, though somewhat out of fashion
+for the moment, is yet marked by the transition from Victorian
+complacency to modern unrest and modern hopes. Full of love and
+appreciation for the old order in England--the contentment and humours
+of the country-side, the difference of classes, the respect for
+religion--she was carried by the evolutionary philosophy of her time
+into thoughts of an eternal and world-wide order, the growth of
+humanity, the kinship of man with the universe, the social nature of
+duty. Her contribution was essentially psychological; she enlarged our
+knowledge of the soul. She showed us, not certainly more living types
+than Scott or Dickens, but more play of motives, more varied interests
+in life, more mental crises. The soul, above all the woman's soul, had
+widened its horizon between Flora Macdonald and Dorothea Brooke.
+
+Every reader will think of famous novelists who have followed the same
+broadening path, and their work is often really great as well as famous.
+The history of thought has in fact throughout the last century been a
+commentary on those words of Keats to which many of us have turned of
+late for comfort and inspiration: 'The world is not a vale of tears, but
+a vale of soul-making.' Tears there are in abundance, as the tears of
+children. But sorrow is not the leading note of children, nor should it
+be of humanity in growth. Soul-making--the practice and the theory--has
+become more and more clearly and consciously the object of human thought
+and endeavour. We need the greater mind to see the links in the
+overwhelming mass of science, in the mazes of human action and history.
+We need it still more to grasp and to preserve the unity of our social
+life. Most of all for the healing of the world is the greater soul
+needed, with a world-consciousness, some knowledge, some sympathy, some
+hope for all mankind. Without this, a league of nations would be dead
+before its birth.
+
+The recent development of psychology, social as well as individual, its
+pursuit on scientific lines, and its alliance with biology, suggest one
+thought which applies generally to an age of science and may be found to
+throw some illumination even on the future. Which of all types of modern
+men is the most habitually hopeful, the man of letters, the politician,
+the business man, or the man of science? There can be no question of the
+answer. The typical man of science is sure of the greatness and solidity
+of the work he shares, and confident that the future will extend and
+make still more beneficial its results. His forward glance is more
+assured because the backward reveals a course of growing strength and
+continuous ascent. The physicist foresees unmeasured sources of energy,
+still untapped. He warns us of our dangers, but has no doubt that, with
+due foresight, we may overcome them, and make the reign of man upon the
+planet wider and firmer than before. The doctor knows no disease which
+may not in time yield to scientific treatment. The agricultural expert
+foresees, and can produce, new types of grain and fruit which will
+surpass the best yet known. And the trainer of youth, the man to whom
+the new science of psychology stands most in stead, is the most hopeful
+of them all. Dealing with human nature in its growth he puts no limits
+to its powers of goodness and activity. He deplores the want of wise
+methods in the past, and if he errs at all it is in an excess of
+optimism, in believing that with new methods we may make a new man.
+
+On this enlargement of the soul, enlightened by science, we build the
+future. It is the crowning vision of the modern world, first sketched by
+Descartes, filled out and strengthened by the life and thought of three
+hundred years. In the interval we have lived much and learnt much, both
+of our own nature and of the world in which we live. In our own age a
+powerful stimulus has been given by a transformed biology and a new
+science which shows the soul itself in growth from an immemorial past,
+moulding the future by its own action, surmounting, while assimilating,
+the mechanism which surrounds it. But for this building two things are
+needed. One, that our souls, as builders, shall act as one with all our
+fellows and strive for unity as well as power. The other, that in the
+building the laws of growth shall be followed, which science has already
+revealed in part and will reveal more fully. For the spirit of science
+is the spirit of hope.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _Walther Rathenau. Ses Idées et ses Projets d'Organisation
+Économique_. By Gaston Raphael (Paris: Payot, 4f. 50 c).]
+
+[Footnote 2: R.R. Marett in _Progress and History_ (Oxford University
+Press).]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+PHILOSOPHY
+
+PROFESSOR A.E. TAYLOR
+
+
+Between forty and fifty years ago a great European man of science, Emil
+du Bois-Reymond, delivered before an audience of the leading scientific
+men of Germany a famous discourse on _The Limits of our Knowledge of
+Nature_, which he followed up some years later with a second discourse
+on the _Seven Riddles of the Universe_. His object was to convince the
+materialists of the 'seventies that there were at least seven such
+unsound places in _their_ story of everything. Some of the 'riddles', he
+admitted, might prove to be soluble as science advances, but the most
+important of them will always remain unanswered. Our position as regards
+them will always be _ignoramus et ignorabimus_--we do not know the
+solutions and we never shall know them. I do not ask now whether du
+Bois-Reymond was right in his judgement or not. If he was right, that
+means, of course, that the one tale of everything will never be told by
+human lips to human ears. There will no more ever be a finally true
+Philosophy than there will ever be a finally perfect poem or picture or
+symphony. But there is no reason why we should not, at any rate, try to
+make our story as nearly perfect as we can, to reduce the number of the
+places where we have to break off with 'that is another story', and
+perhaps even to hazard a 'wide solution' in matters where absolute
+certainty is beyond our reach. This is the work of human Philosophy as I
+conceive it, and every man who is disinterestedly trying, without one
+eye on wealth or fame or domination over the minds of others, to make
+any contribution, however humble, to the telling of this one story or
+the removal of loose threads from it, is inspired by the true spirit of
+Philosophy. Whoever is doing anything else, no matter under what name or
+with what profit or renown to himself, is no true philosopher.
+
+This point of view implies, it will be seen, no sharp dividing line
+between Philosophy and Science. The avoidance of this commonly made
+distinction may offend two different sets of students--students of
+metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the
+'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed
+to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and
+definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of
+the conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction
+that the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may
+help to make my peace with both parties if I explain where I take this
+distinction of convenience to come in. If we are ever to construct an
+approximation to the one story of everything, clearly one result will
+consist of a relatively few first principles and a great mass of
+conclusions which can be inferred from them. And clearly again, since
+men differ so widely in their mental aptitudes, some men will be most
+successful in the detection of the principles which underlie all our
+knowledge, and others most successful in the accumulation of facts and
+the detailed working out of the application of the principles to the
+facts. For convenience' sake it will be well that some of us shall be
+engaged on the discovery of principles which are so very ultimate that
+most men take them for granted without reflecting on them at all, and
+others on the work of detail. Further, it will be convenient that,
+within this second group, various students shall give their attention to
+more special masses of detail, according to their several tastes and
+aptitudes, some to the behaviour of moving particles, some to the
+behaviour of living organisms, some again to the structure and
+institutions of human societies, and so on. For convenience we may agree
+to call preoccupation with the great ultimate principles Philosophy and
+preoccupation with the application of the principles to masses of
+special facts Science. If we make the distinction in this way, we shall
+be following pretty closely the lines of historical development along
+which 'special' sciences have gradually been constituted. When we go
+back far enough in the history of human thought, we find that
+originally, among the great Greeks who have taught the world to think,
+there was no distinction at all between Science and Philosophy. Men like
+Plato and Aristotle were busied at once with the discovery of the first
+principles on which all our knowledge depends and with the construction
+of a satisfactory theory of the planetary motions or of the facts of
+growth and reproduction. As the study of special questions was pursued
+further, it became advisable to hand over the treatment of first one and
+then another group of closely interconnected questions to students who
+would pursue them independently of research into ultimate
+presuppositions. This is how Geometry, Astronomy, Biology came, in
+ancient times, to be successively detached from general Philosophy. The
+separation of Psychology--the detailed study of the processes of mental
+life--from Philosophy hardly goes back beyond the days of our fathers,
+and the separation of such studies as 'sociology' from general
+Philosophy may be said to belong quite definitely to our own time. If
+our children have leisure for study at all, no doubt they will see the
+process carried much further. But it is important to bear in mind that
+neither Philosophy in the narrower sense nor Science in the narrower
+sense will be fruitfully prosecuted unless the men who are working at
+each understand that their own labours are only part of a single
+undivided work. Without a genuine grasp of some department of detailed
+facts no man is likely to achieve much in the search for principles, for
+it is by analysis of facts that principles are to be found, and without
+real insight into broad general principles the worker in detail is
+likely to achieve nothing but confusion. The antagonism between
+'philosophers' and 'men of science' so characteristic of the last half
+of the nineteenth century has been productive of nothing but evil. It
+has given us 'philosophers' whose knowledge about the facts with which
+serious thinking has to deal has been hopelessly inaccurate; it has also
+given us 'men of science' who have been 'ageometretes' and have, by
+consequence, when forced to offer some account of first principles,
+taken refuge in the wildest and weirdest improvisation. For really
+fruitful work we need the union in one person of the 'man of science'
+and the 'philosopher', or at least the most intimate co-operation
+between the two. Our theories of first principles require to be
+constantly revised, purified, and quickened by contact with knowledge of
+detailed fact; and our representations of fact call for constant
+restatement in terms of a system of more and more thoroughly thought-out
+postulates or first principles. This is perhaps why the department of
+human knowledge in which the last half-century has seen the most
+remarkable advances is just that in which unremitting scrutiny of
+principles has gone most closely hand-in-hand with the mastery of fresh
+masses of detail, pure mathematics, and again why the present state of
+what is loosely called 'evolutionary' science is so unsatisfactory to
+any one who has a high ideal of what a science ought to be. It exhibits
+at once an enormous mass of detailed information and an apparently
+hopeless vagueness about the meaning of the 'laws' by which all this
+detail is to be co-ordinated, the reasons for thinking these laws true,
+and the precise range of their significance. The work of men like
+Cantor, Dedekind, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, is providing us with an
+almost unexceptional theory of the first principles required for pure
+mathematics. We are already in a position to say with almost complete
+freedom from uncertainty what undefined simple notions and
+undemonstrated postulates we have to employ in the science and to
+express these ultimates without ambiguity. 'Evolutionary science,' rich
+as is its information about the details of the processes going on in the
+organic world, seems still to await its Frege or Russell. It talks, for
+example, much of 'hereditary' and non-hereditary peculiarities, and some
+of us can remember a time when our friends among the biologists seemed
+almost ready to put each other to the sword for differences of opinion
+about the inheritability of certain characteristics; but no one seems to
+trouble himself much with the question a philosopher would think most
+important of all--precisely what is meant by the metaphor of
+'inheritance' when it is applied to the facts of biology. (Indeed, it is
+still quite fashionable to talk not merely as if a 'character' were,
+like a house or an orchard, a _thing_ which can be transferred bodily
+from the possession of a parent to the possession of the offspring, but
+even as though an 'heir' could 'inherit' himself.)
+
+This last remark leads me to a further consideration. Science and
+Philosophy are alike created by the simple determination to be
+_thorough_ in our thinking about the problems which all things and
+events present to us, to use no terms whose meaning is ambiguous, to
+assert no propositions as true until we are satisfied that they are
+either directly apprehended as true, or strictly deducible from other
+propositions which are thus apprehended. But now that the area of facts
+open to our exploration has become far too vast for a modern Francis
+Bacon to 'take all knowledge for his province', and convenience has led
+to the distinction between the philosopher and the man of science, a
+_practical_ distinction between the two makes its appearance. It is
+_convenient_ that our knowledge of detail should be steadily extended by
+considering the consequences which follow from a given set of postulates
+without waiting for the solution of the more strictly philosophical
+questions whether our postulates have been reduced to the simplest and
+most unambiguous expression, whether the list might not be curtailed by
+showing that some of its members which have been accepted on their own
+merits can be deduced from the rest, or again enlarged by the express
+addition of principles which we have all along been using without any
+actual formulation of them. The point may be illustrated by considering
+the set of 'postulates' explicitly made in the geometry of Euclid. We
+cannot be said to have made geometry thoroughly scientific until we know
+whether the traditional list of postulates is complete, whether some of
+the traditional postulates might not be capable of demonstration, and
+whether geometry as a science would be destroyed by the denial of one or
+more of the postulates. But it would be very undesirable to suspend
+examination of the consequences which follow from the Euclidean
+postulates until we have answered all these questions. Even in pure
+mathematics one has, in the first instance, to proceed tentatively, to
+venture on the work of drawing inferences from what seem to be plausible
+postulates before one can pass a verdict on the merits of the postulates
+themselves. The consequence of this tentative character of our
+inquiries is that, so far as there is a difference between Philosophy
+and Science at all, it is a difference in _thoroughness_. The more
+philosophic a man's mind is, the less ready will he be to let an
+assertion pass without examination as obviously true. Thus Euclid makes
+a famous assumption--the 'parallel-postulate'--which amounts to the
+assertion that if three of the angles of a rectilinear quadrilateral are
+right angles, the fourth will be a right angle. The mathematicians of
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, again, generally assumed
+that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A
+comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions
+pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when
+it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask _Why_?'
+Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my
+quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of
+conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from
+contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I
+define a continuous function which is _not_ differentiable? The raising
+of the first question led in fact to the discovery of what is called
+'non-Euclidean' geometry, the raising of the second has banished from
+the text-books of the Calculus the masses of bad reasoning which long
+made that branch of mathematics a scandal to logic and led distinguished
+philosophers--Kant among them--to suspect that there are hopeless
+contradictions in the very foundations of mathematical science.
+
+Now, the effect of such careful scrutiny of first principles is not, of
+course, to upset any conclusions which have been correctly drawn from a
+set of premisses. All that happens is that the conclusion is no longer
+asserted by itself as a truth; what is asserted is that the conclusion
+is true _if_ the premisses are true. Thus we no longer assert the
+'theorem of Pythagoras' as a categorical proposition; what we assert is
+that the theorem follows as a consequence from the assertion of some
+half-dozen ultimate postulates which will be found on analysis to be the
+premisses of Euclid's proof of his forty-seventh proposition.
+
+To come back to the point I wish to illustrate. The peculiarity of the
+philosopher is simply that he still goes on to 'wonder' and ask _Why_
+when other persons are ready to leave off. He is less contented than
+other men to take things for granted. Of course, he knows that, in the
+end, you cannot get away from the necessity of taking something for
+granted, but he is anxious to take for granted as few things as
+possible, and when he has to take something for granted, he is
+exceptionally anxious to know exactly what that something is. De Morgan
+tells a story of a very pertinacious controversialist who, being asked
+whether he would not at least admit that 'the whole is greater than the
+part', retorted, 'Not I, until I see what use you mean to make of the
+admission.' I am not sure whether De Morgan quotes this as an ensample
+for our following or as a warning for our avoidance, but to my own mind
+it is an excellent specimen of the philosophic temper. Until you know
+what use is going to be made of your admission, you do not really know
+what it is you have admitted. It is this superior thoroughness of
+Philosophy which Plato has in mind when he says of his supreme science
+'Dialectic' that its business is to examine and even to 'destroy'
+([Greek: anairein]) the assumptions of all the other sciences. It does
+not let propositions which they have been content to take for granted
+pass without challenge, and it may actually 'destroy' them by showing
+that there is no justification for asserting them. Thus Euclid's
+assumption about parallels ceased to be included among the indispensable
+premisses of geometry, and was 'destroyed' in Plato's sense when
+Lobatchevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann showed that complete bodies of
+self-consistent geometrical theory can be deduced from sets of
+postulates in which Euclid's assumption is explicitly denied. There are
+two further points I should like to put before you in this connexion.
+One of them has been forcibly argued by Mr. Bertrand Russell in his
+admirable little work _The Problems of Philosophy_; the other has not.
+Indeed, it is just in his unwillingness to allow the second of these
+points to be raised at all that Mr. Russell seems to me to fall
+conspicuously and unaccountably short of being what, by his own showing,
+a great philosopher ought to be.
+
+To take first the point with which Mr. Russell has dealt. There is one
+very important branch of inquiry, if we ought not rather to say that
+there are two, which appear to belong wholly to general Philosophy and
+not to any of the 'sciences'. We cannot so much as ask the simplest
+question without making the implication that there is an ultimate
+distinction between true assertions and false ones, and certain definite
+principles by which we can infer true conclusions from true premisses.
+It is thus a very important part of the true 'story of everything' to
+state the principles upon which valid reasoning depends, and to
+enunciate the ultimate postulates which have to be taken for granted
+whenever we try to reason validly about anything. This is the inquiry
+known by the name of logic. We cannot expect men whose time is fully
+taken up with the task of reaching true conclusions about some special
+class of facts, those which concern the history of living organisms, or
+the production and distribution of 'wealth', or the stability of various
+forms of government, to burden themselves with this inquiry in addition
+to their other tasks. They may fairly be allowed to leave the
+construction of logic to others. But the man who makes it the business
+of his life to get back to ultimate first principles must plainly be a
+logician, though he need not be a specialist in biology or economics or
+'sociology'. One great advantage which our children should have over
+their parents as students of Philosophy is that the last half-century
+has been one of unprecedented advance in the study of logic. In the
+'logic of relations', founded by De Morgan, carried out further in the
+third volume of Ernst Schröder's _Algebra der Logik_, and made still
+more precise in the earliest sections of the _Principia Mathematica_ of
+Whitehead and Russell, we now possess the most potent weapon of
+intellectual analysis ever yet devised by man.
+
+We must further remark that the serious pursuit of any kind of science
+implies not only that there _are_ truths, but that some of them, at
+least, can be _known_ by man. Hence there arises a problem which is not
+quite the same as that of logic. What _is_ the relation we mean to speak
+of when we talk of 'knowing' something, and what conditions must be
+fulfilled in order that a proposition may not only be true but be known
+by us to be true? The very generality of this problem marks it out as
+one which belongs to what I have been all along calling Philosophy. (We
+must be careful to note that the problem does not belong to the 'special
+science' of psychology. Psychology aims at telling us how particular
+thoughts and trains of thought arise in an individual mind, but it has
+nothing to say on the question which of our thoughts give us 'knowledge'
+and which do not. The 'possibility of knowledge' has to be presupposed
+by the psychologist as a pre-condition of his particular investigations
+exactly as it is presupposed by the physicist, the botanist, or the
+economist.) The study of the problem 'what are the conditions which must
+be satisfied whenever anything at all is known' is precisely what Kant
+meant by _Criticism_, though the raising of the problem in this
+definite form is not due to Kant but goes back to Plato, who made it the
+subject of one of his greatest dialogues, the _Theaetetus_. The simplest
+way to make the nature and importance of the problem clear is perhaps
+the way Mr. Russell adopts in the _Problems of Philosophy_--to give a
+very rough statement of Kant's famous solution.
+
+Kant held that careful analysis shows us that any piece of knowledge has
+two constituents of very diverse origin. It has a _matter_ or material
+constituent consisting, as Kant held, of certain crude data supplied by
+sensation, colours, tones of varying pitch and loudness, odours,
+savours, and the like. It has also a _form_ or formal constituent. Our
+data, when we know anything at all, are arranged on some definite
+principle of order. When we recognize an object by the eye or a tune by
+the ear, we do not apprehend simply so much colour or sound, but colours
+spread out and forming a pattern or notes following one another in a
+fixed order. (If you reverse the movement of a gramophone, you get the
+same notes as before, but you do not get the same tune.) Further, Kant
+thought it could be shown that the data of our knowledge are a
+disorderly medley and come to us from without, being supplied by things
+which exist and are what they are equally whether any one perceives them
+or not, but the element of form, pattern, or order is put into them by
+our own minds in the act of knowing them. Our minds are so constructed
+that we _can_ only perceive things or think of them as connected by
+certain definite principles of orderly arrangement. This, he thought,
+explains the indubitable fact that we can sometimes know universal
+propositions to be true without needing to examine all the individual
+instances. I can know for certain that in every triangle the greater
+angle is subtended by the greater side, or that every event has a
+definite cause among earlier events, though I cannot examine all
+triangles or all events one by one. This is because the postulates of
+geometry and the law of causality are types of order which my mind
+_puts_ into the data of its knowledge in the very act of attending to
+them, and it is therefore certain that I shall never perceive or think
+anything which does not conform to these types.
+
+I give Kant's answer to the problem of Criticism not because I believe
+it to be the correct one, but to show what important consequences follow
+from our acceptance of a solution of this problem. If it is true that
+one of the constituent elements of every piece of knowledge is a lump of
+crude sensation, it follows that we can have no knowledge about our own
+minds or souls, and still less about God, since, if there are such
+beings as my soul and God, at any rate neither furnishes me with
+sense-data. Hence a great part of Kant's famous _Critique of Pure
+Reason_ is taken up by an elaborate attempt to show that psychology and
+theology contain no real knowledge. We cannot even know whether there is
+any probability for or against the existence of the soul or of God,
+though Kant was very anxious to show that it is our duty on moral
+grounds to _believe_ very firmly in both. Now if Kant is right about
+this, his result is tremendously important. If psychology and theology
+are wholly devoid of scientific value, it is most desirable that we
+should know this, not only that we may not waste time in studying them,
+but because it may reasonably make a very great difference to the
+practical ordering of our lives. If Kant can be proved wrong, it is
+equally important to be convinced that he is wrong. We may have been led
+by belief in his teaching to neglect the acquisition of a great deal of
+knowledge of high intrinsic interest, and may even have been betrayed
+into basing the conduct of life on wrong principles. If, for example, we
+can really know something about the soul, it _may_ be possible to know
+whether it is immortal or not, and it is not unreasonable to hold that
+certain knowledge, or even probable belief, on such a point ought to
+make a great difference to our choice between rival aims in life. There
+is clearly much less to be said for the recommendation to 'eat and drink
+for to-morrow we die' if we have reason to believe our souls immortal
+than if we have not, and some of us do not share Mr. Russell's view that
+Philosophy is called upon to abdicate what the Greeks thought her
+sovereign function, the regulation of life. It is true that Kant
+convinced himself that it is a moral duty to act as if we knew the truth
+of doctrines for or against which we cannot detect the slightest balance
+of probability. But the logically sound inference from Kant's premisses
+would be that, to use Pascal's famous metaphor, a prudent man will do
+well to bet neither for nor against immortality. Unfortunately, as
+Pascal said, you can't _help_ betting; _il faut parier_. If it makes any
+difference to the relative values of different goods whether the soul
+dies with the body or not, one _must_ take sides in the matter. In
+making one's choices one must prefer either the things it is reasonable
+to regard as good for a creature whose days are threescore years and ten
+or those which it is reasonable to regard as best for a being who is to
+live for ever. The only way to escape having to bet is not to be born.
+
+I come to the second problem, the one which, as I think, Mr. Russell
+arbitrarily ignores. A human being is not a mere knowledge-machine. The
+relation of knower to known is not the only relation in which he stands
+to himself and to other things. The 'world' is not merely something at
+which he can look on, it is also an instrument for achieving what he
+regards as good and for creating what he judges to be beautiful. To do
+good and to make beautiful things are just as much man's business as to
+discover truth. A knowledge of the world would be very incomplete if it
+did not include knowledge of what ought to be, whether because it is
+morally best or because it is beautiful, as well as knowledge of what is
+actually there. And it is not immediately evident how the two, knowledge
+of what ought to be and knowledge of what merely is, are connected.
+
+There is, to be sure, one way in which it is pretty plain that they are
+_not_ related. You cannot learn what ought to be--what is beautiful or
+morally good--merely by first finding out what has been or what is
+likely to be. This simple consideration of itself deprives many of the
+big volumes which have been written about the 'evolution' of art and
+morals of most of their value. They may have interest if they are
+treated only as contributions to the history of opinion about art and
+morals. But unhappily their authors often assume that we can find out
+what really _is_ right or beautiful by merely discovering what men have
+thought right and beautiful in the remote past or guessing what they
+will think right or beautiful in the distant future. The fallacy
+underlying this procedure has been happily exposed by Mr. Russell
+himself in an occasional essay where he remarks that it is antecedently
+just as likely that evolution is going from bad to worse as that it is
+going from good to better. _Unless_ it is going from bad to worse it is
+obviously absurd to suppose that you can find out what _is_ good by
+discovering what our distant ancestors _thought_ good. And _if_ (as may
+be the case) it is going from bad to worse, no amount of knowledge about
+what our posterity will think good can throw any light on the question
+what is good. There is, in fact, no ground whatever for believing that
+'evolution' need be the same thing as progress, and this is enough to
+knock the bottom out of 'evolutionary ethics'.
+
+On the other hand, it is quite certain that when we call an act right
+or a picture beautiful we do not mean to be expressing a mere personal
+liking of our own, any more than when we make a statement about the
+composition of sulphuric acid or the product of 9 and 7. As Dr. Rashdall
+has put it, when we say that a given act is right, we do not pretend to
+be infallible. We know that we may fall into mistakes about right and
+wrong just as we may make mistakes in working a multiplication sum. But
+we do mean to say that _if_ our own verdict 'that act is right' is a
+true one, then the verdict of any one who retorts 'that act is wrong' is
+false, just as when we state the result of our multiplication we mean to
+assert that _if_ we have done the sum correctly any one else who brings
+out a different answer has worked it wrongly. Indeed, we might convince
+ourselves that these verdicts are not meant to be expressions of private
+and personal liking in a still simpler way. All of us must be aware that
+the line of action we pronounce 'right' is not always what we like nor
+the conduct we call 'wrong' what we dislike. We often like doing what we
+fully believe to be wrong and dislike doing what we believe right,
+without being in the least confused in our moral verdicts by this
+collision of liking and conviction. So again it is a common thing to
+like one poem or picture better than another, and yet to be fully
+persuaded that the work we like the less is the better work of art.
+Indeed, the whole process of moral and aesthetic education may be said
+to exist just in learning to like most what is really best.
+
+All this, put into so many words, may seem too simple to call for
+statement, but it makes nonsense of a great deal that has been written
+about ethics of late years. It disposes once for all of the theory that
+moral and aesthetic verdicts are 'subjective', that is, that they mean
+no more than that the persons who make them have certain personal likes
+and dislikes of which these verdicts are a record. Of course, it might
+be urged that all of us do indeed mean to express truths which are
+independent of our personal likings when we make moral and aesthetic
+judgements, but that we never succeed in doing so. A man might
+conceivably hold that there is no real distinction between right and
+wrong or between beautiful and ugly, but that it is a universal illusion
+of mankind to suppose that there are such distinctions. Or he might hold
+that the distinctions are real, but that we do not know where to draw
+them. He might suggest that some ways of acting are really right and
+others really wrong, but that we do not know which are the right acts
+and so regularly confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right.
+Mr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of
+this sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as
+reasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions
+are only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers
+and astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths
+and falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do
+not know which the true propositions are. That there is a real
+distinction between true and false propositions and that, with pains and
+care, we can discover some truths are assumptions we must make if we are
+to recognize the possibility of pursuing knowledge at all, and there is
+no reason to suppose that these assumptions do not hold as good in
+matters of art and morals as elsewhere. No doubt, in practice men are
+prone to mistake what they like for what is right or beautiful, but this
+danger, such as it is, is not confined to art and morals. Men do often
+call acts right merely because they like doing them or pictures
+beautiful merely because they get pleasure from them. But it is also
+notorious that many men are prone to believe that a thing is likely to
+happen merely because they wish it to happen, or that it is unlikely to
+happen merely because they wish it not to happen. Yet no one seriously
+makes the reality of these tendencies a ground for denying the
+possibility of 'inferring the future from the past'. We must then, I
+hold, regard it as an integral part of the whole story of everything to
+find an answer to the questions What is good? and What is beautiful? as
+well as to the question What is fact? By the side of the so-called
+'positive sciences', which deal with the third question, we must
+recognize as having an equal right to exist the so-called 'sciences of
+value', which deal with the first and the second.
+
+I want now to take a further step in which disciples of Mr. Russell
+would perhaps decline to follow me. We have already seen what is meant
+by the co-ordination of the sciences into a single body of deductions
+from definite ultimate postulates, though in what we have said about the
+task we were content to speak provisionally as if the sciences of 'what
+is' were all the sciences to be co-ordinated. We talked, in fact, as if
+the work of Philosophy were merely to work into a coherent story all
+that can be known of 'objects that present themselves to the
+contemplation' of a knower. But, of course, if Philosophy is ever to
+attack its final problem, we must take into account two things which we
+have so far ignored. The 'whole story of everything' includes the
+knowing intelligence itself as well as the 'objects' which present
+themselves to its gaze. Indeed, it is not even accurate to speak as if
+'objects' 'presented themselves' to a merely passive intelligence; to be
+apprehended, they have to be actively attended to. If we would see them,
+we have to be on the look-out for them. And the knowing intelligence is
+not aware merely of these objects. It is also aware of itself, though
+it is certainly never a 'presented object'. Also, it is not only a
+knower but a doer and a maker. Intelligence is shown as much in the
+ordering of life by a rule based on a right valuation of goods and in
+the making of things of beauty as in the discovery of propositions about
+what is. Hence, we can hardly be content to leave the 'positive'
+sciences and the 'sciences of values' simply standing over against one
+another. There is that which 'is', and there is that which 'ought to
+be', and, at first sight at any rate, the two seem very different. Much
+that is--ignorance, sin, misery, ugliness--ought not to be, and much
+that ought to be is very far from being fact. We are accustomed to
+regard this as a matter of course, but, closely considered, it is
+perhaps the supreme wonder of all the wonders. We creatures of
+circumstance, as we call ourselves, can take stock of the sum of things
+to which we belong, and judge it. It is not simply that we can, and
+often do, _wish_ that it were different in various ways; we can judge
+that it _ought_ to be different, and you may find a man of science like
+Huxley, after a life spent in trying to understand the laws which
+prevail in the world, deliberately making it his last word to his
+fellows that their duty is to set themselves to reverse the 'cosmic
+process', to select for preservation just the human types which, if the
+much-abused metaphor may be tolerated, Nature, left to herself, selects
+for destruction.
+
+We might, of course, regard this apparently unreconcilable conflict
+between the arrangements which do prevail; as is commonly supposed, in
+the world, and those which ought to prevail, as a mystery which we must
+despair of ever understanding. But, to say the least of it, it is hardly
+consistent with the philosophic temper to treat any question as an
+insoluble riddle until one has tried all ways of solution and found them
+_culs-de-sac_. If we are to be thoroughly loyal to the spirit which
+prompts all intelligent inquiry, we are bound at least to ask whether
+it is, after all, beyond the power of human intelligence to think of the
+world as a system in which somehow, in the end, what ought to be
+prescribes what is. It is true that, for reasons already mentioned, we
+cannot, like Spinoza or the Sufis, reconcile facts and values by the
+simple assumption that what is is shown, by the fact that it is, to be
+what ought to be, and that our common conviction that sin and ugliness
+are painfully real is only an illusion due to spiritual short sight. We
+have just as much reason to believe that some pleasures are good, that
+pain which is not a means to good is evil, that justice and purity are
+good, lewdness and cruelty bad, that some colours are lovely and others
+odious, as we have to believe that between any two points there is
+always a third, or that, if _B_ and _C_ are two points there is always a
+point _D_ on the straight line _BC_ such that _C_ is between _B_ and
+_D_, and a point _A_ on _CB_ such that _B_ is between _C_ and _A_.
+Indeed, the most fanatical champion of what Mr. Russell in his
+anti-ethical mood calls 'ethical neutrality' cannot well avoid
+recognizing the truth of at least one proposition in ethics, the
+proposition that knowledge of scientific truth is _better_ than
+ignorance of it. The admission of this single truth of value is enough
+to raise all the time-honoured problems of ethics and theodicy. If
+knowledge of truth is better than ignorance of it, the actual present
+state of the world, in which so much truth is yet to seek, is by no
+means wholly good, and there really is at least one way in which it is
+our duty to make it more like what it ought to be.
+
+If then we cannot get rid of the apparent conflict between Is and Ought
+by saying that Ought is an illusion, can we get rid of it, in the only
+other possible way, by holding that what ought to be is the lasting and
+primary reality and that the 'facts' which are so far from being what
+they ought to be are by comparison only half-real, much what shadows are
+to the solid things which throw them? This was the doctrine of Plato,
+who makes Socrates say in the _Phaedo_ that it is the 'Good' which holds
+the Universe together, and that in the end the true reason for each
+particular arrangement in the world, whether we can see it or not, is
+that it is 'best' that this arrangement, and no other, should exist. It
+is also the foundation of Kant's well-known contention that, however
+barren speculative theology and psychology may be, the reality of the
+moral order and the unconditionality of moral obligation compel us to
+make the existence of God, the immortality of our souls, and the moral
+government of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More
+generally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and
+explanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all
+philosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of
+course, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for
+instance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes
+to be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say _how_
+any particular thing comes to be other than it ought to be, nor _how_ in
+the end good is 'brought out of evil'. But if we are to have a right to
+hold a view of the Platonic or Theistic type, we must be able, not
+indeed to say how evil comes about or how it is to be finally got rid
+of, but to say, in a general way, what it is 'good for'. Thus, if there
+are certain goods of the highest value which could not exist at all
+except on the condition of the existence of less important evils, this
+consideration will remove, so far as _those_ goods and evils are
+concerned, the time-honoured puzzle how evil can exist at all if God is.
+To take a specific example. To many of us it appears directly certain
+that such qualities of character as fortitude, patience, superiority to
+carnal lusts, magnanimity, are goods of the highest value. We think also
+that we see that these qualities are not primitive psychological
+endowments but require for their development the experience of struggle
+and discipline in a world where there is real suffering, real
+disappointment, real temptation. To us, therefore, there seems to be no
+contradiction between the existence of God and the presence in a world
+made by God of the evils needed for the development of these virtues.
+And this will include some of the worst of all the evils we know of. Few
+things are more ghastly than some of the cruelties which have been
+practised in the late War and are still being practised in the
+distracted country of Russia. Yet we know how revulsion from these
+horrors has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or
+carnality into a Bayard or a Galahad. It may well be that this moral
+re-birth would never have been effected if the evils which provoked it
+had been less monstrous. Here, then, we seem to discern a principle
+which _may_ be adequate to explain what all the ills of human life are
+'good for'.
+
+I must not deny that all such explanation, in my judgement, involves the
+postulate that the ennoblement of character and deepening of insight
+brought about by suffering are permanent--in fact, that it requires the
+postulates of the existence of God and the reality of everlasting life.
+Mr. Russell, I imagine, would regard this as a confession that I am sunk
+in what he airily dismisses as 'theological superstitions'. I should
+reply that the 'superstition' is on his side; to dismiss God and the
+eternal soul, without serious inquiry, as 'superstitions' is just the
+most superficial of all the superstitions. It is, of course, incumbent
+on anyone who holds the Platonic view to show that its postulates are
+not inconsistent with any known truth, and I would add that he ought
+also to show that there are at any rate known facts which seem to demand
+just this kind of explanation. Both these points, as I hold, can be
+established, but I do not in the least wish to suggest that any
+philosopher will ever find it an easy task to 'justify the ways of God
+to man'. As Timaeus says in Plato, 'to find the father and fashioner of
+the Universe is _not_ easy', and I want rather to lay stress on the
+magnitude of the task than to extenuate it. But I am concerned to urge
+that the doctrine which accounts for what is by what ought to be is the
+_only_ philosophical theory on which it ceases to be an unintelligible
+mystery that we should have--as I maintain we certainly have--the same
+kind of assurance about values that we have about facts. The chief
+complaint I have to make about the mental attitude of Mr. Russell and
+some of his friends is that, in their zeal for the unification of
+science, they seem inclined to assume that the larger problem of the
+co-ordination of Science with Life does not exist, or, at any rate, need
+not occupy our minds. This is what I should call mere atheistic
+superstition. On this point they might, I believe, learn much which it
+imports them to know from the works of some of the notable living
+philosophers of Italy, in particular from Professor Varisco of Rome and
+Professor Aliotta of Padua, whose labours have been specially directed
+to the co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the
+sciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all,
+those who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical
+work of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought
+in their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it
+in the schools of Rome or Padua.
+
+You will readily see that I am suggesting in effect that if Philosophy
+is ever to execute her supreme task, she will need to take into much
+more serious account than it has been the fashion to do, not only the
+work of the exact sciences but the teachings of the great masters of
+life who have founded the religions of the world, and the theologies
+which give reasoned expression to what in the great masters is immediate
+intuition. For us this means more particularly that it is high time
+philosophers ceased to treat the great Christian theologians as
+credulous persons whose convictions need not be taken seriously and the
+Gospel history as a fable to which the 'enlightened' can no longer pay
+any respect. They must be prepared to reckon with the possibility that
+the facts recorded in the Gospel happened and that Catholic theology is,
+in substance, true. If we are to be philosophers in earnest we cannot
+afford to have any path which may lead to the heart of life's mystery
+blocked for us by placards bearing the labels 'reactionary', 'unmodern,'
+and their likes. That what is most modern must be best is a superstition
+which it is strange to find in a really educated man--especially after
+the events of the last five years. A philosopher, at any rate, should be
+able to endure the charge of being 'unmodern' with fortitude. It is at
+least a tenable thesis that many of the qualities which we Western men
+have been losing in our craze for industrialism and commercialistic
+'Imperialism' are just those which are most necessary to the seeker
+after speculative truth. Abelard and St. Thomas would very likely have
+failed as advertising agents, company promoters, or editors of
+sensational daily papers. But it may well be that both of them were much
+better fitted than Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Bottomley, or Mr. A.G. Gardiner
+to tell us whether God is and what God is. In fact, one would hardly
+suppose habitual and successful composition of effective 'posters' or
+alluring prospectuses to be wholly compatible with that candour and
+scrupulous veracity which are required of the philosopher. As for
+'reaction', no one but a writer in a 'revolutionary' journal would be
+fool enough to use the word as, in itself, an epithet of reproach. Most
+persons who have a bowing acquaintance with Mechanics know that you
+cannot have an engine in which there is all action and no reaction, and
+most sane men can see that before you pronounce a given 'reaction' good
+or bad you need to know what it is reacting against. If a man who wants
+to go east discovers that he is walking west, he is usually reactionary
+enough to go back on his steps.
+
+In short, if we mean to be philosophical, our main concern will be that
+our beliefs should be true; we shall care very little whether they
+happen to be popular or unpopular with the intellectual 'proletarians'
+of the moment, and if we can get at a truth, we shall not mind having to
+go back a long way for it. Indeed, when one wants to get on the track of
+the most ultimate and important truths of all, there is usually a great
+positive advantage in going back a very long way for them. The questions
+which deal with first principles, being the simplest--though the
+hardest--of all, are mostly raised very simply and directly by Plato and
+Aristotle, who were the very first writers to raise them. In the
+discussions of later times, the great simple questions about principles
+have so often been overlaid by mainly irrelevant accretions of secondary
+details that it is usually very hard indeed 'to see the wood for the
+trees'. This is the chief reason why one who, like myself, finds it his
+main business in life to introduce younger men and women to the study of
+Philosophy must think indifference to Greek literature about the worst
+misfortune which could happen to our intellectual civilization.
+
+I have tried in what I have said so far to explain what I understand by
+the philosophical spirit and what I regard as the primary problems with
+which Philosophy has to wrestle. If what I have said is not wholly wide
+of the mark, it should be clear what is the deadliest enemy of the true
+spirit of Philosophy. It is the temper which is too indolent to think
+out a question for itself and consequently prefers to accept traditional
+ready-made answers to the problems of Science and Life. Traditionalism,
+wherever it is found, is the enemy, because Traditionalism is only
+another name for indolence. Observe that I say Traditionalism, not
+Tradition. Nowhere in life, and least of all in Philosophy, is the
+solitary likely to work to much purpose unless he has behind him that
+body of organized sound sense which we call Tradition. And I do not mean
+that true philosophers are necessarily 'heretics', or that 'orthodoxy'
+is less philosophical than 'heterodoxy'. I mean that however true an
+'orthodox' proposition may be, it is no living truth for me unless I
+have made it my own, as its first discoverer did, by personal labour of
+the spirit. The truth is something which each generation must rediscover
+for itself. True traditions may be quite as injurious, if they have
+become mere traditions, as false ones. It was not so much because the
+Aristotelian doctrines were false that the unquestioning acceptance of
+Aristotelian formulae all but strangled human thought in the later days
+of Scholasticism. Some of these doctrines were false, but many of them
+were much truer than anything the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+had to put in their place, and the rediscovery of their real meaning is
+perhaps the chief service of the Hegelian school to Philosophy. The
+trouble was that mechanical repetition of Aristotle's formulae as
+matters of course inevitably led to loss of real insight into the
+meaning the formulae had borne for Aristotle.
+
+We may say, generally, that because Traditionalism is the death of sound
+thinking, the ages in which the prospects of advance in Philosophy are
+brightest are just those in which a powerful historical tradition has
+broken down and men feel themselves compelled to go back on their steps
+and raise once more the fundamental questions which their fathers had
+supposed to be disposed of once for all by a formula. This has happened
+twice since the downfall of the degenerate Scholasticism, Protestant and
+Roman, of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the result
+was the great movement in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics, of which
+Descartes and Galileo are the principal figures. Towards the end of the
+eighteenth century, when the doctrines of Descartes had themselves been
+traditionalized, the same thing happened again, the leading actors in
+the drama being David Hume and Immanuel Kant; the result was first the
+revival of the 'critical' problem by Kant, and then the great, if
+over-hasty, attempt at a positive interpretation of the Universe which
+culminated in the philosophical system of Hegel. In our own age, it is
+mainly Kant and Hegel who have been traditionalized, and we seem to be
+living through the last stages of the discrediting of this third
+tradition with every prospect of a great advance if our own time can
+only find its Descartes. In what I am going on to say I must naturally
+speak of the disintegrating influences chiefly as we have seen them at
+work in our own country; but I should like, before I do so, to remark
+that on the Continent splendid work has been done in the requickening of
+genuine philosophical thought by an influence which has, so far, not
+made itself widely felt among ourselves. I mean the revival of Thomism
+so earnestly promoted in the academies of the Roman Church by Pope Leo
+XIII. Neo-Thomism, I am convinced, if its representatives will only
+maintain it at the high level characteristic, for example, of the
+Italian _Rivista Neo-Scolastica_, has a very great contribution to make
+to the Philosophy of the future, and is much more deserving of the
+serious attention of students in our own country than the
+much-advertised 'impressionism' of Pragmatists and Bergsonians. Indeed,
+I hardly know how much we may not hope from the movement if it should
+please Providence to send into the world a Neo-Thomist who is also a
+really qualified mathematician.
+
+Of the state of thought in our own country we may fairly say that a
+generation ago opinion on the ultimate questions was, in the main,
+fairly divided into two camps. There were the professional
+metaphysicians, mainly living on a tradition derived from Kant and
+Hegel, and there were the men of science whose 'philosophy', such as it
+was, is perhaps best represented by two well-known and most instructive
+books, Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Karl Pearson's _Grammar of
+Science_. The men of the Kant-Hegel tradition, whatever their family
+dissensions, were generally united by the common view that--as William
+James accused them of teaching--the function of sensation in
+contributing to knowledge, whatever it is, is something 'contemptible'.
+Kant himself, as we have seen, had thought very differently, but he was
+supposed to have been 'corrected' on this, as on so many points, by
+Hegel. The most distinguished of my own Oxford teachers seemed agreed to
+believe that our thought builds up the fabric of knowledge entirely from
+within by what Hegel called an 'immanent dialectic'. A rough idea of
+what this means may be given in the following way. You take any
+experience you please and try to put what you experience into a
+proposition. The proposition may, to begin with, be as vague as, e.g. 'I
+am now feeling something,' 'I am now aware of something.' On reflection
+you find that the statement does not do justice to the experience. You
+feel the need to say more precisely _what_ you are feeling or are aware
+of, how it is related to what you experience on other occasions, and
+what the 'I' is which is said to 'have' the experience. Until you have
+done this your thought is a miserable reproduction of your experience,
+and if you could ever do it completely, it would turn out that a really
+adequate account of the most trivial experience would involve complete
+knowledge of the structure and working of everything. Thus, if you once
+begin to think about your experience at all, you are irresistibly driven
+on to endless further reflection. If you try to stop short anywhere in
+the process, the results of your reflection are found to contain
+unexplained contradictions, just because you have not yet fitted on the
+fact on which you are reflecting to everything else there is to know.
+All the assumptions of every-day 'common sense' and all the more
+recondite assumptions of the sciences are saturated with these
+contradictions, because both 'common sense' and the sciences leave so
+much of the whole 'story of everything' untouched. If the whole story
+were told, all things would be found to be just one thing, which these
+philosophers call the 'Absolute', and the only perfectly true statement
+we can make would be a statement about this Absolute in which we
+asserted of it all that it is. Since no science ever attempts to say
+anything at all about this one sole thing, far less to get all there
+might be to be said about it into a single statement, no scientific
+proposition can be more than 'partially' true, and unhappily _we_ do not
+know what alterations would be required to make our 'partial' truths
+quite true. Naturally enough Kant's allegation that mathematical first
+principles are so self-contradictory that you can rigidly demonstrate
+mathematical propositions which contradict each other was grist to the
+Hegelian mill. That our notions of space, time, the infinitely great,
+the infinitely little, are all a jumble of contradictions was steadily
+repeated by the Hegelian philosophers, and indeed the mathematicians
+were accustomed to state their own principles so loosely and confusedly
+that there was a great deal of excuse for the suspicion that the fault
+lay with Mathematics and not with the mathematicians.
+
+It is clear that such a philosophy ought to end in unqualified
+Agnosticism. The Hegelians, to be sure, made merry over the Unknowable
+of Mr. Spencer, but their own Absolute is really just the Unknowable in
+its 'Sunday best'. Nothing that we can say about anything which is not
+the Absolute is really true, because there really _is_ nothing but the
+Absolute to speak about, and nothing that we can say about the Absolute
+is quite true either, because we can never succeed in saying itself of
+it. Mr. Bradley, far the most eminent of the philosophers of the
+Absolute, has made persistent and brilliant attempts to show that, in
+spite of this, we do know enough to be sure that our own mind is more
+like the Absolute than a cray-fish, and a cray-fish more like it than a
+crystal. But when all is said, though I owe more to Mr. Bradley than I
+can ever acknowledge adequately, I cannot help feeling that there are
+two men in Mr. Bradley, a great constructive thinker and a subtle
+destructive critic, and that the destructive Hyde is perpetually pulling
+to pieces all that the constructive Jekyll has built up. Of course it is
+obvious that the truth of mathematics, if mathematics are true, is a
+fatal stone of stumbling for this type of philosophy. Mathematics never
+attempts to say anything about the 'Absolute'--the only 'Absolute' of
+which it knows is only a 'degraded conic'--yet it claims that its
+statements, if once they have been correctly expressed, are not
+'partial' but complete.
+
+Over against the Hegelianizing philosophers, we had, of course, the men
+of science. No one could wish to speak of the scientific men of the
+days of Huxley without deep respect for their success in adding to our
+positive knowledge of facts. But it may perhaps be said at this distance
+of time that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most
+prominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly
+be said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest,
+undertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement
+was little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that
+the whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived',
+and quite missed Kant's point that their empiricism left the formal
+constituent in knowledge, the type of order by which data are organized
+into an intelligible pattern, wholly out of account. Even when they
+deigned to read Kant, they read him without any inkling of the character
+of the 'critical' problem. Hence they taught dogmatically as true a
+theory of scientific method which Hume himself had elaborately proved
+impossible. It was just because Hume had seen so clearly that no
+universal scientific truths can be derived from premisses which merely
+record particular facts that he professed himself a follower of the
+'academic' or 'sceptical' philosophy. He recognized the impossibility of
+constructing scientific knowledge out of its material constituent alone,
+but did not see where the formal constituent could come from, and so
+resigned himself to regarding the actual successes of science as a kind
+of standing miracle.
+
+The men of the 'seventies were, after all, in many cases more anxious to
+damage theology than to build up Philosophy. They read Hume without any
+delicate sense for his urbane ironies, and believed in good faith that
+he and John Stuart Mill between them had shown that by a mysterious
+process called 'induction' it is possible to prove rigorously universal
+conclusions in science without universal premisses. A scientific law,
+according to them, is only a convenient short-hand notation in which to
+register the 'routine of our perceptions'. Thus we have known of a great
+many men who have died, and have never known of any man who lived to
+much over a hundred without dying. The universal proposition 'all men
+are mortal' is a short expression for this information, and it is
+nothing more. It ought to have been obvious that, if this is a true
+account of science, all scientific 'generalizations' are infinitely
+improbable. The number of men of whom we _know_ that they have died is
+insignificant by comparison with the multitude of those who have lived,
+are living, or will live, and we have no guarantee that this
+insignificant number is a fair average sample. So again, unless there
+are true universal propositions which are not 'short-hand' for any
+plurality of observed facts whatever, we cannot with any confidence,
+however faint, infer that a 'regular sequence' or 'routine' which has
+been observed from the dawn of recorded time up to, say, midnight,
+August 4, 1919, will continue to be observed on August 5, 1919. How,
+except by relying on the truth of some principle which does not depend
+itself on the validity of 'generalization', can we tell that it is even
+slightly probable that the nature of things will not change suddenly at
+the moment of midnight between August 4 and August 5, 1919? What is
+called 'inductive' science certainly has 'pulled off' remarkable
+successes in the past, but we can have no confidence that these
+successes will be repeated unless there are much better reasons for
+believing in its methods and initial assumptions than any which the
+scientific man who is an amateur 'empiricist' in his philosophy can
+offer us. We may note, in particular, that this empiricism, which has
+been expounded most carefully by Pearson and Mach, coincides with
+Hegelian Absolutism in leading to the denial of the truth of
+mathematics. It would be a superfluous task to argue at length that,
+e.g., De Moivre's theorem or Taylor's theorem is not a short-hand
+formula for recording the 'routine of our perceptions'.
+
+The general state of things at the time of which I am speaking was thus
+that relations were decidedly strained between a body of philosophers
+and a body of scientific men who ought at least to have met on the
+common ground of a complete Agnosticism. The philosophers were, in
+general, shy of Science, mainly, no doubt, because they were modest men
+who knew their own limitations, but they had a way of being
+condescending to Science, which naturally annoyed the scientific men.
+These latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the
+philosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was
+always ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be
+getting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere in
+particular.
+
+The conditions for mutual understanding have now greatly improved,
+thanks mainly to the labour of mathematicians with philosophical minds
+on the principles of their own science. If we admit that mathematics is
+true--and it seems quite impossible to avoid the admission--we can now
+see that neither the traditional Kant-Hegel doctrine nor the traditional
+sensationalistic empiricism can be sound. Not to speak of inquiries
+which have been actually created within our own life-time, it may fairly
+be said that the whole of pure mathematics has been shown, or is on the
+verge of being shown, to form a body of conclusions rigidly deduced from
+a few unproved postulates which are of a purely logical character.
+Descartes has proved to be right in his view that the exceptional
+certainty men have always ascribed to mathematical knowledge is not due
+to the supposed restriction of the science to relation of number and
+magnitude--there is a good deal of pure mathematics which deals with
+neither--but to the simplicity of its undefined notions and the high
+plausibility of its unproved postulates. Bit by bit the bad logic has
+been purged out of the Calculus and the Theory of Functions and these
+branches of study have been made into patterns of accurate reasoning on
+exactly stated premisses. It has appeared in the process that the
+alleged contradictions in mathematics upon which the followers of Kant
+and Hegel laid stress do not really exist at all, and only seemed to
+exist because mathematicians in the past expressed their meaning so
+awkwardly. Further, it has been established that the most fundamental
+idea of all in mathematics is not that of number or magnitude but that
+of _order_ in a series and that the whole doctrine of series is only a
+branch of the logic of Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial
+order we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and
+from this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and
+the arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the
+logical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as
+well as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the
+Theory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction
+or breach of logic. The puzzles about the infinitely great and
+infinitely small, which used to throw a cloud of mystery over the
+'higher' branches of Mathematics, have been finally dissipated by the
+discovery that the 'infinite' is readily definable in purely ordinal
+terms and that the 'infinitesimal' does not really enter into the
+misnamed 'Infinitesimal Calculus' at all. Arithmetic and the theory of
+serial order have been shown to be the sufficient basis of the whole
+science which, as Plato long ago remarked, is 'very inappropriately
+called geometry'. A résumé of the work which has been thus done may be
+found in the stately volumes of the _Principia Mathematica_ of Whitehead
+and Russell, or--to a large extent--in the _Formulario Matematico_ of
+Professor Peano. Of other works dealing with the subject, the finest
+from the strictly philosophical point of view is probably that of
+Professor G. Frege on _The Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic_. The general
+result of the whole development is that we are now at last definitely
+freed from the haunting fear that there is some hidden contradiction in
+the principles of the exact sciences which would vitiate all our
+knowledge of universal truths. This removes the chief, if not the only
+ground for the view that all the truths of Science are only 'partial'.
+At the same time, the proof that pure mathematics is a strictly logical
+development and that all its conclusions are of the hypothetical form,
+'if _a b c_ ..., then _x_' definitely disproves the popular Kantian
+doctrine that _sense_-data are a necessary constituent of scientific
+knowledge. And with this dogma falls the _main_ ground for the denial
+that knowledge about the soul and God is attainable. The recovery of a
+sounder philosophical method has, as Mr. Russell himself says, disposed
+of what was yesterday the accepted view that the function of Philosophy
+is to narrow down the range of possible interpretations of facts until
+only one is left. Philosophy rather opens doors than shuts them. It
+multiplies the number of logically possible sets of premisses from which
+consequences agreeing with empirical facts may be inferred. Mr.
+Russell's unreasoned anti-theism seems to me to make him curiously blind
+to an obvious application of this principle. On the other side, the
+revived attention to the logical methods of the sciences is killing the
+crude sensationalism of the days which saw the first publication of
+Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Pearson's _Grammar of Science_. The
+claims of 'induction' to be a method of establishing truths may be
+fairly said to have been completely exposed. It is clearer now than it
+was when Kant made the observation that each of the 'sciences' contains
+just so much science as it contains mathematics, and that the Critical
+Philosophy was fully justified in insisting that all science implies
+universal _à priori_ postulates, though it went wrong in thinking that
+these postulates are laws of the working of the human mind or are 'put
+into' things by the human mind. How far Science has moved away from
+crude sensationalistic empiricism may be estimated by a comparison of
+the successive editions of the _Grammar of Science_. It must always have
+been apparent to an attentive reader that the chapters of that
+fascinating book which deal directly with the leading principles of
+Physics and Biology are of very different quality from the earlier
+chapters which expound, with many self-contradictions and much wrath
+against metaphysicians and theologians whom the writer seems never to
+have tried to understand, the fantastic 'metaphysics of the
+telephone-exchange'. But the difference of quality is more marked in the
+second edition than in the first, and in the (alas!) unfinished third
+edition than in the second. So far, then, as the problem of the
+unification of the sciences is concerned, the old prejudices which
+divided the rationalist philosopher from the sensationalist scientific
+man seem to have been, in the main, dissipated. We can see now that what
+used to be called Philosophy and what used to be called Science are both
+parts of one task, that they have a common method and presuppose a
+common body of principles.
+
+So far it may be said with truth that Philosophy is becoming more
+faithful than Kant was himself to the leading ideas of 'Criticism', and
+again that it is reverting once more, as it reverted in the days of
+Galileo, to the positions of Plato. I do not mean that the whole
+programme has been completely executed and that there is nothing for a
+successor of Frege or Russell to do. It is instructive to observe that
+at the very end of the great work on arithmetic to which I have referred
+Frege found himself compelled by difficulties which had been overlooked
+until Russell called attention to them to add an appendix confessing
+that there was a single important flaw in his elaborate logical
+construction of the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there
+are certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them,
+the whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there _is_
+any object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical
+researches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved
+that some restatement of the initial assumptions of the theory was
+needed. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and
+others have done something towards the necessary rectification, and the
+resulting 'Theory of Types' is pretty certainly one of the most
+important contributions ever made to logical doctrine, but it may still
+be reasonably doubted whether the 'Theory of Types', as expounded by
+Whitehead and Russell in their _Principia Mathematica_, is the last word
+required. At any rate, it seems clear that it is a great step on the
+right road to the solution of a most difficult problem.
+
+There still remains the greatest problem of all, the harmonization of
+Science and Life. I cannot believe that this problem is an illegitimate
+one, or that we must sit down content to accept the severance of 'fact'
+and 'value' as final for our thought. Even the unification of the
+sciences itself remains imperfect so long as we treat it as merely
+something which 'happens to be the case' that there are many things and
+many kinds of things in the universe and also a number of relations in
+which they 'happen' to stand. It is significant that in his later
+writings Mr. Russell has been driven to abandon the concept of personal
+identity, which is so fundamental for practical life, and to assert that
+each of us is not one man but an infinite series of men of whom each
+only exists for a mathematical instant. I am sure that such a theory
+requires the abandonment of the whole notion of value as an illusion,
+and even more sure that it is ruinous to any practical rule of living,
+and I cannot believe in the 'philosophy' of any man who is satisfied to
+base his practice on what he regards as detected illusion. Hence I find
+myself strongly in sympathy with my eminent Italian colleague Professor
+Varisco, who has devoted his two chief works (_I Massimi Problemi_ and
+_Conosci Te Stesso_) to an exceedingly subtle attempt to show that 'what
+ought to be', in Platonic phrase 'the Good', is in the end the single
+principle from which all things derive their existence as well as their
+value. Mr. Russell's philosophy saves us half Plato, and that is much,
+but I am convinced that it is whole and entire Plato whom a profounder
+philosophy would preserve for us. I believe personally that such a
+philosophy will be led, as Plato was in the end led, to a theistic
+interpretation of life, that it is in the living God Who is over all,
+blessed for ever, that it will find the common source of fact and value.
+And again I believe that it will be led to its result very largely by
+what is, after all, perhaps the profoundest thought of Kant, the
+conviction that the most illuminating fact of all is the _fact_ of the
+absolute and unconditional obligatoriness of the law of right. It is
+precisely here that fact and value most obviously meet. For when we ask
+ourselves what in fact we are, we shall assuredly find no true answer to
+this question about what _is_ if we forget that we are first and
+foremost beings who _ought_ to follow a certain way of life, and to
+follow it for no other reason than that it is good. But I cannot, of
+course, offer reasons here for this conviction, though I am sure that
+adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this
+ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should
+prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The
+alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious,
+bad joke.
+
+_Note_.--It may be thought that something should have been said about
+the revolt against authority and tradition which has styled itself
+variously 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism', and also about the recent vogue
+of Bergsonianism. I may in part excuse my silence by the plea that both
+movements are, in my judgement, already spent forces. If I must say more
+than this, I would only remark about Pragmatism that I could speak of it
+with more confidence if its representatives themselves were more agreed
+as to its precise principles. At present I can discern little agreement
+among them about anything except that they all show a great impatience
+with the business of thinking things quietly and steadily out, and that
+none of them seems to appreciate the importance of the 'critical'
+problem. 'Pragmatism' thus seems to me less a definite way of thinking
+than a collective name for a series of 'guesses at truth'. Some of the
+guesses may be very lucky ones, but I, at least, can hardly take the
+claims of unmethodic guessing to be a philosophy very seriously. To
+'give and receive argument' appears to me to be of the very essence of
+Philosophy. As for M. Bergson, I yield to no one in admiration for his
+brilliancy as a stylist and the happiness of many of his illustrations.
+But I have always found it difficult to grasp his central idea--if he
+really has one--because his whole doctrine has always seemed to me to be
+based upon a couple of elementary blunders which will be found in the
+opening chapter of his _Données Immédiates de la Conscience_. We are
+there called on to reject the intellect in Philosophy on the grounds (1)
+that, being originally developed in the services of practical needs, it
+can at best tell us how to find our way about among the bodies around
+us, and is thus debarred from knowing more than the _outsides_ of
+things; (2) that its typical achievement is therefore geometry, and
+geometry, _because it can measure only straight lines_, necessarily
+misconceives the true character of 'real duration'. Now, as to the first
+point, I should have thought it obvious that the establishment of a
+_modus vivendi_ with one's fellows has always been as much of a
+practical need as the avoidance of stones and pit-falls, and the alleged
+conclusion about the defects of the intellect does not therefore seem to
+me to follow from M. Bergson's premisses, even if we had any reason, as
+I do not see that we have, to accept the premisses. And as to the second
+point, I would ask whether M. Bergson possesses a clock or a watch, and
+if he has, how he supposes time is measured on them? He seems to me to
+have forgotten the elementary fact that angles can be measured as well
+as straight lines. (I might add that he makes the further curious
+assumption that all geometry is metrical.) It may be that something
+would be left of the Bergsonian philosophy if one eliminated the
+consequences of these initial blunders, but I do not know what the
+remainder would be. At any rate, the anti-intellectualism which M.
+Bergson and his disciple, Professor Carr, seem to regard as fundamental
+will have to go, unless different and better grounds can be found for
+it. I must leave it to others to judge of the adequacy of this apology.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Varisco, _The Great Problem_ (Macmillan).
+
+Varisco, _Know Thyself_ (Macmillan).
+
+Aliotta, _The Idealistic Reaction against Science_ (Macmillan).
+
+Bertrand Russell, _Our Knowledge of the External World_ (Open Court
+Publishing Co.).
+
+Bertrand Russell, _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University
+Library).
+
+A.N. Whitehead, _The Principles of Natural Knowledge_ (Cambridge Press).
+
+G.E. Moore, _Ethics_ (H.U.L.).
+
+W. McDougall, _Philosophy_ (H.U.L.).
+
+A.N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (H.U.L.).
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
+
+F.B. JEVONS
+
+
+The living beings that exist or have existed upon the earth are of kinds
+innumerable; and, in the opinion of man, the chief of them all is
+mankind. Man, for the simple reason that he is man, is anthropomorphic
+in all his judgements and not merely in his religious conceptions; he
+holds himself to be the standard and measure in all things. If his right
+so to regard himself were challenged, if he were called upon to justify
+himself for having taken his foot as a unit of measurement, or his
+fingers as the basis of his system of numbers, he might reply that
+anything will serve as a standard for weights and measures, provided
+that it never varies, but is always the same whenever referred to. But
+the reply, valid though it is, does not do full justice to man: it
+leaves room for the suspicion that a standard is something chosen by man
+in a purely arbitrary manner and without reference to the facts of
+nature. If that were really the case, then man's conception of himself
+as superior to the other animals on earth might be but a prejudice of an
+arbitrary kind. When, however, we consider, from the point of view of
+evolution, the place of man among the other animals that occupy or have
+occupied the earth, it is indubitable that the human organism is in
+point of time the latest evolved and the human brain is in point of
+complexity and efficiency the most highly developed. Further, the
+evidence of embryology goes to show that the organism which has
+eventually become human became so only by passing through successive
+stages, each of which has its analogue in some of the existing forms of
+animal life. Those forms of animal life exist side by side; and if we
+conceive them to be represented diagrammatically by vertical lines,
+differing in height according to their degree of evolution, the line
+representing the human organism will be the tallest, and may be
+considered to have become the tallest by successive increments or stages
+corresponding to the height of the various other parallel vertical
+lines.
+
+When the conception of evolution, which had been employed to explain the
+origin of species and the descent of man, and which had been gained by a
+consideration of material organisms, came to be applied to the world of
+man's thoughts, to the non-material and spiritual domain, and to be used
+for the purpose of explaining the growth and the development of
+religion, it was natural that the conception which had proved so
+valuable in the one case should be applied without modification to the
+other--as natural as that the first railway coach should be built on the
+model of the stagecoach. The possibility that the theory of evolution
+might itself evolve, and in evolving change, was one that was not, and
+at that time could hardly be, present to the minds of those who were
+extending the theory and in the process of extending it were developing
+it. Yet the possibility was there, implicit in the very conception of
+evolution, which involves continuous change--change in continuity and
+continuity in change.
+
+Any and every attempt to trace the evolution of religion seems at first
+necessarily to involve the assumption that from the beginning religion
+was there to be evolved. That was the position assumed by Robertson
+Smith in _The Religion of the Semites_, which appeared in 1889. At that
+date the aborigines of Australia were supposed to represent the human
+race in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them,
+therefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion
+in its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to
+its lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least
+belief in a god and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to
+be found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in
+the evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must
+there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the
+Australians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that
+time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion
+that in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was
+conjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or
+plant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was
+held to be both the god and the animal or plant in which the god
+manifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to
+this day, the earliest form of sacrifice--that in which the totem animal
+was itself the totem god to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was
+itself--or rather himself--the sacramental meal furnished to his
+worshippers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of
+acquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them
+into the person of the worshipper. That the totem was eaten
+sacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by
+Robertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared
+that, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here,
+in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to
+us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which
+Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of
+which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'
+
+On the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and
+approved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of
+the evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were
+several totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the
+personality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it
+might, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally
+more of the nature of a spirit than a god, and totemism proper might
+easily pass into polydaemonism, that is a system in which the beings
+worshipped were conceived to possess a personality more clearly defined
+than that attributed to totems but less developed than that assigned to
+deities. From the beginning each tribe had worshipped a plurality of
+totems; it was, therefore, readily intelligible that, as these totems
+came to be credited with more and more definite and developed
+personality, the plurality of totems became not only a polydaemonism,
+but afterwards a plurality of deities, and a system of polytheism came
+to be established. From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites,
+monotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.
+
+On this theory the evolution of religion was, if we may so describe it,
+linear or rectilinear: the process consisted in a series of successive
+stages. In some cases, as for instance among the aborigines of
+Australia, it never rose higher than its starting-point, totemism; in
+others, as for instance in Samoa, it became polytheism without ceasing
+to be totemism; in others again, as for instance amongst the Aryan
+peoples, it became so completely polytheistic that even conjecture can
+discover but few indications or 'survivals' of the totemism from which
+it is supposed to have developed; and the polytheism of the Israelites
+was so completely superseded by monotheism that the very existence of an
+earlier stage of polytheism could be as strenuously denied in their case
+as the pre-existence of totemism could be denied amongst the
+polytheistic Aryans. Nevertheless the theory was that if we represent
+the growth of the various religions of the world diagrammatically by
+vertical lines parallel to one another but of various lengths, one line
+standing for totemism, a longer line for polydaemonism, a still longer
+one for polytheism, and the longest of all for monotheism, we should see
+that the line of growth has been the same in all cases, and that it is
+in their length, or (shall we say?) in their height alone that the
+various lines differ, and that the longest line culminates in monotheism
+only because it has been, so to speak, pulled out in the same way that a
+telescope when closed, may be extended. The evolution of religion on
+this view has been a process literally of 'evolution' or unfolding: the
+idea of a god and of communion with him has been present from the
+beginning; and, much though religion may have changed, it remains to the
+end essentially the same thing. This view of the process of religious
+evolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this
+theory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it,
+and in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained
+pre-formed, though it depended on circumstances whether the seed should
+spring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.
+
+Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a
+form of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties
+as dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the
+theory, if we cut open a seed we should find within it the plant
+pre-formed; if we analyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson
+Smith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly
+succession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages
+pre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a
+miniature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither
+in totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.
+Indeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be
+found to have no such content--that the hope or expectation of finding
+anything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is
+the expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find
+inside it something which produces the sound.
+
+It was, however, not on _a priori_ grounds like these that Sir James
+Frazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the
+heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of
+'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith,
+with the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually
+observed. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.
+Spencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon
+Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith
+had seen, or had thought he saw, amongst the Australians sacramental
+rites and the worship of totem gods. Sir James Frazer is now compelled
+by the evidence of the facts to hold that in what he calls 'pure
+totemism', i.e., in totemism as we find it in Australia, 'there is
+nothing that can properly be described as worship of the totems.
+Sacrifices are not presented to them, nor prayers offered, nor temples
+built, nor priests appointed to minister to them. In a word, totems pure
+and simple are never gods, but merely species of natural objects,
+united by certain intimate and mystic ties to groups of men.' It seems,
+therefore, according to Frazer, that in totemism, when dissected, there
+is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there
+is--nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum
+proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds.
+Whereas _ex nihilo nil fit_: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If,
+however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes.
+Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their
+totems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain intimate and mystic ties'.
+
+What then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer's view,
+something comes? We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the
+'mystic' bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him
+but of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his
+being. To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was
+something not only 'mystic' but potentially religious. And Sir James
+Frazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.
+On the contrary, he maintains that 'the aspect of the totemic system,
+which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious,
+deserves rather to be called magical'. The totem rites which Robertson
+Smith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a
+means of communion with the totem-gods Sir James Frazer regards as
+merely magical: 'totemism,' he says, 'is merely an organized system of
+magic intended to secure a supply of food.'
+
+We may remark, in passing, that if totemism is 'mere' magic, there is
+indeed (as Sir James holds) no worship in totemism, but in that case in
+totemism there can be no such 'intimate and mystic ties' between the
+totem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was. But
+be that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, 'in the heart of
+Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,' we find
+totemism; and totemism on examination proves to be 'merely an organized
+system of magic'. If now we start by assuming these premisses, or by
+granting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed,
+erect on them a theory of the evolution of religion. But if we so start,
+we must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of _The Golden
+Bough_: we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. _En
+route_ it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and
+fundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of
+religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by
+common consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends
+colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic,
+and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are,
+nothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the
+priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were
+at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to
+produce their effects.
+
+If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts
+in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that
+religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft,
+and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have
+been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of
+civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the
+reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic
+is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners
+of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display
+towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is
+now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in
+the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for
+the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is
+that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders
+or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them
+and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which
+feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.
+
+The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another
+name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but
+'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It
+simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as
+containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the
+beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of
+the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have
+religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find
+religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in
+the process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is
+appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of
+_The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion
+evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that
+there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no
+continuity between the magic which came first and the religion which
+came ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a
+fundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of
+thought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into
+two: first, that like produces like; and, second, that things which
+have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each
+other.' These beliefs are due to the association of ideas: if two things
+are more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together
+in our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think
+of the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which
+is thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and
+magic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce
+like, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all
+that he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that
+belief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always
+act. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that
+at work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that
+the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings
+superior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's
+definition, constitutes religion.
+
+The fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he
+can gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he
+turns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to
+man whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.
+
+Whether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and
+religion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic
+and religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least
+appears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, he says, 'it
+must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put
+forward by the magician, as such, is false; not one of them can be
+maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious.' This
+pronouncement makes it easy for us to understand that even the savage
+would eventually find magic an unsatisfactory method of gratifying his
+desires, a deception in fact. On the other hand, Sir James apparently
+contradicts himself, that is to say, he denies that every single
+profession or claim put forward by the magician is false, and says,
+'however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians
+and condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the
+original institution of this class of man has, take it all in all, been
+productive of incalculable good to humanity.' The ground for this second
+pronouncement, so contradictory of the first, is that magicians, Sir
+James tells us, 'were the direct predecessors, not merely of our
+physicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in
+every branch of natural science.' Thus, though he no longer regards
+priests as transmogrified magicians, he does regard magicians as the
+earliest men of science, and does regard science, therefore, as a highly
+developed stage of magic. This view logically follows from the premisses
+from which it starts; and if it is felt to be unacceptable, we shall
+naturally be inclined to scrutinize the premisses once more and more
+carefully. When we do so scrutinize them, we see that the principles of
+thought on which Sir James Frazer assumes magic to be based are in
+effect the principles from which science started: they are the beliefs
+that like produces like--the basis of the law of causation--and that
+things which our experience shows to have gone together in the past tend
+always to go together--which is one way of stating our belief in the
+uniformity of nature. If then these principles of thought are the
+principles on which magic as well as science is based, then science and
+magic are the same thing, and we have only to choose whether we will
+say that magic is not magic but undeveloped science, or that science is
+not science but merely magic transmogrified. Thus, the pre-formation
+theory once more reasserts itself: magic is the seed in which science is
+prefigured or pre-formed.
+
+If we wish to escape from this conclusion, if we wish to maintain the
+validity of science and yet always to remember 'that every single
+profession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false--not
+one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or
+unconscious', we must consider whether Sir James Frazer's account of
+magic, according to which the principles of magic are identical with
+those of science, is the only account that can be given of magic; and
+for that purpose we may contrast it with the view of Wilhelm Wundt. But
+before doing so, since Sir James Frazer holds that there is 'a
+fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic
+and religion', it will be well to try to see not only what he means by
+magic, but also whether his description or definition of religion is
+acceptable.
+
+Whereas Robertson Smith held that religion, reduced to its very lowest
+terms, must imply at least belief in a god and communion with him,
+Frazer considers religion to be the belief that the course of nature and
+of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. By the
+one view stress is laid on the mystic side of religion, on the communion
+which is effected through sacrifice; by the other view stress is laid on
+the power which the gods may be induced by prayer and supplication to
+exercise for the benefit of man. Our first reflection, therefore, is
+that any view of religion, to be comprehensive, cannot confine itself to
+either of these aspects singly, but must find room for both--for both
+prayer and sacrifice. They cannot be mutually exclusive, nor can they
+be simply juxtaposed, as though they were atoms unrelated to one
+another, accidental neighbours in the same district. There must be a
+higher unity, not created by or subsequent to the coalescence of
+elements originally independent of each other, but a higher unity of
+which both prayer and sacrifice are manifestations. This higher unity, I
+venture to suggest, is the first principle of religion; and, if it is
+not explicitly recognized as the first principle of religion either by
+Robertson Smith or by Frazer, that may well be because their attention
+is concentrated on the earlier stages in the evolution of religion, when
+as yet it is not conspicuous and is, therefore, though in fact
+operative, liable to be overlooked. As Ferrier has said, 'first
+principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate
+largely and powerfully long before they come to the surface of human
+thought and are articulately expounded.' What then is the first
+principle of religion which only after long ages of evolution rose to
+the surface of human thought, and which, though it had been operative
+largely and powerfully, came only in the slow course of human evolution
+to be articulately expounded? The first principle of religion is
+love--love of one's neighbour and one's God.
+
+In the light of that first principle it is manifest that prayer and
+sacrifice are not fundamentally unrelated and accidentally juxtaposed: a
+sacrifice accompanied not even by unspoken prayer, prompted by no
+desire, no wish for anything whatever, is a meaningless concept. Equally
+unmeaning and unintelligible is the idea of a prayer which involves no
+sacrifice--whether by sacrifice we understand the offering of gifts or
+the sacrifice of self. But perhaps it may be said that, even though love
+alone can lead to sacrifice of self, still it is undeniable that prayers
+may be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he
+is going to get by doing so; and that that is what Sir James Frazer
+means when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man
+may be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's
+desire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity
+between magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly
+to deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic
+and religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though
+the means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is
+the means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of
+evolution to be continuous--change in continuity and continuity in
+change.
+
+Now it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a
+man for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning
+have been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in
+one of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by
+evolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be
+regarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires
+accomplished--his will done--but as the indispensable condition for
+doing God's will. Prayer then becomes communion with God, and the
+sacrifice of self the living exhibition of love--the first principle of
+religion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in
+sacrifice.
+
+From this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion
+will be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but
+means whereby man has--vainly--sought to satisfy desire. And the
+implication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's
+account of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open
+to criticism. He wavers between two opinions about magic: at one time he
+regards it as all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from
+which science springs, just as at one time he considered magic
+fundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally
+different from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and
+science, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like
+produces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural
+causation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according
+to Wilhelm Wundt in his _Völkerpsychologie_, primitive man has no notion
+whatever of natural causation: primitive man, Wundt says, has only one
+way of accounting for events--if something happens, somebody did it. If
+any one mysteriously falls ill and dies, the question at once presents
+itself to the savage mind, who did it? How any one could contrive to
+make the man fall ill and die is, to the man's relations, thoroughly and
+disquietingly mysterious. The one thing clear to them is that somebody
+possesses and has exercised this mysterious and horrible power. The
+person who, in the opinion not only of the relatives but also of all or
+most of the community, naturally would do this sort of thing differs in
+some way--in his appearance or habits--from the average member of the
+community, and accordingly is credited, or discredited, with this
+mysterious and dreadful power. Such a person, according to Wundt, is a
+magician. Such an event is a marvel: so long as it is supposed to be
+brought about by a man, it is a piece of magic; when it is ascribed (as,
+according to Wundt, it comes in later, though not in primitive times, to
+be ascribed) to a god, it is a miracle.
+
+If science then does not work magic, there must be a fundamental
+distinction between science and magic, an absolute opposition of
+principles. The principles of thought on which magic is based cannot be,
+as Frazer maintains, the same as those which give to science its
+validity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based not on any
+principle of thought, but upon the assumption that, if something
+happens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the
+power to do it.
+
+Wundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at
+one with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age
+of magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have
+been done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a god
+or his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is
+found usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in
+miracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that
+the age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of
+religion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at
+least from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to
+account for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from
+birds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common
+ancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the
+process of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so
+to speak, linear or rectilinear, but--to use M. Bergson's
+word--'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic
+would then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from
+reptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course
+of evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same
+direction, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a
+common starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different
+directions. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it
+runs on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from
+the same point.
+
+If we apply this conception of evolution in general to the evolution of
+religion in particular--and Bergson, I should say, does not--then the
+centre of dispersion, common to all religions, is the heart of man. The
+forms of religion evolving, emanating and radiating from that common
+centre are, let us say, fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. If we
+wish to avoid, in the theory of religious evolution, an error analogous
+to that of supposing birds to be descended from reptiles, we must
+decline to suppose that monotheism is simply polytheism evolved, or that
+polytheism is descended from fetishism. We must consider that each of
+these three forms of religion is terminal, in the sense that no one of
+them leads on to, or passes into, either of the other two. All three
+forms of religious life may, and indeed do, exist side by side with one
+another, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found
+existing side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed
+millions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms
+of physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but
+foraminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that
+fetishism exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with
+monotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we
+must consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing
+another, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into
+the dove.
+
+The common centre and starting-point of fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of
+religion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague
+in the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being
+or object worshipped. In all these three forms of religion there is
+worship, and in all three forms the being worshipped is personal.
+Further, a special tie is felt to exist between the worshipper and the
+personality worshipped: religion is the bond of union between them, and
+it is also a bond which unites the worshippers to one another. It is by
+its very nature a bond of union, a means of communion between persons,
+human and divine. That is the mystic aspect of religion which finds
+expression in the rite of sacrifice and in the sacramental meals which
+are felt somehow to bind together, or rather to reunite and keep
+together, the worshippers and their god. This communion however is not
+merely mystic: it has its practical effects inasmuch as it affects the
+conduct of the worshipper and enables him to do what without it he would
+not have had strength to do.
+
+If fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,
+the heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the
+starting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though
+in different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from
+the common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to
+become total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy
+between them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.
+Categories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,
+which are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,
+Mr. L.T. Hobhouse says, 'every child soon comes to distinguish in
+practice, are for primitive thought interwoven in wild confusion.' Two
+categories, which in primitive thought are thus interwoven in wild
+confusion, are, it may be suggested, religion and magic; and only in the
+dispersive process of evolution do they tend to become discriminated. In
+ancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Brahminism, religion fails to disentangle
+itself from magic; and not even has Christianity always succeeded in
+throwing it off. Different as we may conceive magic and religion to be,
+the fact remains that at first they grow up intertwined together. In the
+lower forms of religion magic is worked not only by magicians but by
+priests as well; spells and prayers are hardly to be distinguished from
+one another. The idea that 'priest' is but 'magician' writ differently,
+that prayers are but spells under another name, is now obsolete. The
+truth may be that religion neither follows on, nor is evolved from
+magic, but that both radiate from a common centre, the heart of man; and
+that at first both are attempts made by man to secure the fulfilment of
+his desires, to do his will, though eventually he finds that the way to
+control nature is to obey her, not to try to command her by working
+magic; and that it is in endeavouring to do God's will, not his own,
+that man finds peace at the last.
+
+In the three forms of religion which thus far we have taken into
+account, fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, religion is felt to be a
+personal relation--a relation between the human personality and some
+personality more than human; and the human heart is reaching out and
+groping after some divine personality, if peradventure it may find Him.
+But there is yet another form of religion proceeding from the human
+heart in which this does not seem to be the case--and that is Buddhism.
+The Buddha definitely renounced the search after God and would not allow
+his disciples to engage in the pursuit. Practically the pursuit was
+useless, according to the Buddha: escape from suffering is all that man
+can want or strive or hope for. Escape from suffering is possible only
+by cessation from existence; and that cessation from existence, here and
+hereafter, can be attained by man himself, who can reach Nirvana without
+the aid of gods, if gods there be. From the point of view of metaphysics
+the idea that there is any relation between the human personality and
+the divine falls to the ground, according to the Buddha, because,
+whether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.
+As in a conflagration--and according to the Buddha the whole world,
+burning with desire, is in a state of conflagration--the flames leap
+from one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations
+the self, or rather the character, _Karman_, like a flame, leaps from
+one form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there
+all the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is
+changing all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'
+have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as
+long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so
+long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of
+transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for
+being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the
+extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded
+in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death
+and re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.
+
+Thus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is
+a radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it
+radiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other
+religion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion
+shows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever
+Buddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who
+strove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has
+himself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether
+in the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has
+been by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.
+
+Buddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of
+religion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we
+have to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of
+humanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally in Buddhism, the
+conception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human
+personality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is
+raised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing
+as an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by
+himself, for a man can neither come into existence nor continue in
+existence by himself alone. It is an essential part of the conception of
+personality that it includes fellowship: a person to be a person must
+stand in some relation to other persons. They are presented to him, the
+subject, as objects of his awareness; and he, the subject, is also an
+object of their awareness. Humanity is thus a complex, in which alone
+persons are found and apart from which they have in fact no existence.
+Humanity thus plays in Positivism, as a religion, the part of 'the great
+Being', _le grand Être_, which in other religions is fulfilled by God,
+but with this difference, that humanity is human always and never
+divine.
+
+The ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only
+metaphorically. Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than
+metaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide. On the one hand,
+if it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it
+may be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not
+only on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism
+they are recognized to be, of purely subjective import. On the other
+hard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the
+religions of the past to the religion of the future.
+
+Another matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a
+religion. According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book _La Religion_,
+morality and religion are bound up together. They cannot exist apart
+from one another: they might, he says, 'be dissociated in fact and
+thought, were it not that they are inseparable in the life of
+humanity.' And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty. He
+says, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was
+humanity. Duty was at the beginning in humanity. By it all things were
+made, and without it nothing was made.' Thus, where duty is, there also
+is religion. Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in
+every stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it
+will also be the case with the religion of the future. Thus the
+conception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that
+entertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on
+the one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present
+from the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to
+the end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty--the
+duty which is humanity--that was in the beginning and will continue to
+the end. Both views are applications of the 'pre-formation' theory of
+evolution.
+
+But Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the 'pre-formation'
+theory. It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the 'dispersive'
+theory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding
+direct from the human heart. It may be so regarded, if we consider the
+essence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to
+imply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in
+that love of one's fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely,
+and simply because one loves. The sense of obligation, the feeling of
+duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions
+which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various
+expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo--a feeling of alarm and
+fear. If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say,
+with M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We
+may however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, 'by duty all
+things were made, and without it nothing was made'. We may hesitate and
+the Positivist may hesitate, because, primitive though the feeling of
+fear may be, the feeling of love is equally original: on it and in it
+the family and society have their base and their origin; and to it they
+owe not only their origin but their continuance. Love however is not a
+matter of duty and obedience; it is not subject to commandment or
+prohibition; nor does it strive by commands or authority to enforce
+itself. In the process by which duty--legal and moral
+obligation--evolves out of the primitive feeling of taboo, love is not
+implicated: love springs from its own source, the human heart, and runs
+its own course. Taboo may have existed from the beginning; but to the
+end, whatever its form--duty, obligation, obedience to authority--it
+remains in character what it was at first, prohibitive, negative. Love
+alone is creative: without it 'was not anything made that was made'.
+
+There seems, therefore, no necessity to regard the 'pre-formation'
+theory of evolution, rather than the 'dispersive theory, as essential to
+Positivism.
+
+Common to all the views about the evolution of religion that have been
+mentioned in this paper is the belief that, the more religion changes,
+the more it remains the same thing. If identified with duty, then duty
+it was in the beginning, and duty it will remain to the end. For those
+who conceive it to be merely magic, magic it was and magic it remains.
+Those who define it as belief in a god and communion with him find that
+belief in the earliest as well as the latest stages. All would agree in
+rejecting Bergson's view of evolution--that in evolution there is
+change, but nothing which changes. All would agree that in the evolution
+of religion there is something which, change though it may, remains the
+same thing, and that is religion itself. But on the question what
+religion is, there is no agreement: no definition of religion as
+yet--and there have been many attempts to define it--has gained general
+acceptance. We may even surmise, and admit, that no attempt ever will be
+successful. Such admission, indeed, may at first to some seem equivalent
+to admitting that religion is a nullity, and the admission may
+accordingly be welcomed or rejected. But a moment's reflection will show
+that the admission has no such consequence. None of our simple feelings
+can be defined: pleasure and pain can neither be defined; nor, when
+experienced, doubted. And some of our general terms, those at any rate
+which are ultimate, are beyond our power either to define or doubt: no
+one imagines that 'life' can be defined, but no one doubts its
+existence. And religion both as a term and as a fact of experience is
+ultimate, and, because ultimate, incapable of definition. It is not to
+be defined but only to be felt. It is an affair not merely of the
+intellect, but still more of the heart.
+
+In what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?
+Evolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes
+in religion. No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now
+remained identically the same. What seems conceivable is that throughout
+there has been, not identity but continuity--change indeed in continuity
+but also continuity in change. The child 'learns to speak the words and
+think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form
+of speech' of the community into which he is born. In the speech,
+thought, and feelings--even in the religious feelings--of the community,
+from generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.
+From generation to generation they are not identical but are
+continuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them
+over reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much
+in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and
+the great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which
+not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are
+brought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old
+things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies
+the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at
+the same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that
+what is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the
+old. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in
+continuity and continuity in change.
+
+The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one
+continuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole
+process. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which
+includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to
+the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those
+stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of
+these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by
+itself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion
+regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,
+existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;
+whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or
+evolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does
+polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they
+and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive
+fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one
+process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line
+marked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget
+that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the
+heart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not
+prove that one springs from the other.
+
+Nor can we say that values--religious or aesthetic--are to be determined
+on the simple principle that the latest edition is the best. To say that
+an _editio princeps_ has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that
+all values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all
+goodness and all love.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (A. & C. Black, 1889).
+
+J.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (Macmillan & Co., 1890-1915).
+
+Grant Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_ (Grant Richards, 1897).
+
+H. Bergson, _L'Évolution créatrice_ (F. Alcan, 1908).
+
+F.B. Jevons, _The Idea of God in Early Religions_ (1910), and
+_Comparative Religion_ (1913) (Cambridge University Press).
+
+G.F. Moore, _History of Religions_ (T. & T. Clark, 1914).
+
+A. Loisy, _La Religion_ (E. Nourry, 1917).
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY
+
+WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM
+
+PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD
+
+
+When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
+interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
+before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
+century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
+stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
+_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
+reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
+reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
+these main currents are:
+
+(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
+history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.
+
+(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.
+
+Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
+advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
+'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
+'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
+what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
+last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.
+
+How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
+stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
+least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the
+literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of
+poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
+fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
+succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
+perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
+discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
+poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
+past; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by
+the two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession
+of phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect
+more sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of
+Europe, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,
+radiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases
+are in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national
+variations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to
+take this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic
+view. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the
+years 1880 and 1900.
+
+The first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if
+unconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the
+limit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,
+precision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy
+of the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm--in the
+example most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of
+Matthew Arnold.
+
+The second, best seen in the French Symbolists, was directly hostile to
+science. But they repelled its confident analysis of material reality in
+the name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial
+world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct
+description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the
+magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to
+us in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.'.
+
+The third, still about us, and too various and incomplete for final
+definition, is in closer sympathy with science, but, in great part, only
+because science has itself found accommodation between nature and
+spirit, a new ideality born of, and growing out of, the real. If the
+first found Beauty, the end of art, in the plastic repose of sculpture,
+and the second in the mysterious cadences of music, the poetry of the
+twentieth century finds its ideal in life, in the creative evolution of
+being, even in the mere things, the 'prosaic' pariahs of previous
+poetry, on which our shaping wills are wreaked. We know it in poets
+unlike one another but yet more unlike their predecessors, from
+D'Annunzio and Dehmel and Claudel to our Georgian experimenters in the
+poetry of paradox and adventure.
+
+
+I. POETIC NATURALISM
+
+The third quarter of the nineteenth century opened, in western Europe,
+with a decided set-back for those who lived on dreams, and a
+corresponding complacency among those who throve on facts. The political
+and social revolution which swept the continent in 1848 and 1849, and
+found ominous echoes here, was everywhere, for the time, defeated. The
+discoveries of science in the third and fourth decades, resting on
+calculation and experiment, were investing it with the formidable
+prestige which it has never since lost; and both metaphysics and
+theology reeled perceptibly under the blows delivered in its name. The
+world exhibition of 1851 seemed to announce an age of settled
+prosperity, peace, and progress.
+
+In literature the counterpart of these phenomena was the revolt from
+_Romanticism_, a movement, in its origins, of poetic liberation and
+discovery, which had rejuvenated poetry in Germany and Italy, and yet
+more signally in England and in France, but was now petering out in
+emotional incoherence, deified impulse, and irresponsible caprice.
+
+The revolt accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer
+conformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to
+make art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern
+naturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, _Mme
+Bovary_ (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in _Adam
+Bede_ against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of
+dragons, but could not draw the real horses and cattle before their
+eyes.[3]
+
+Realism, at once more unflinching and more profoundly poetic, and yet
+penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of
+moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems
+an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which
+also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though
+it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of
+moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew
+his inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and
+thought. And it was chiefly through them that the Russian novel later
+helped to nourish the radically alien movement of Symbolism in France.
+
+In drama, Ibsen broke away from the Romantic tradition of his country
+with the iconoclastic energy of one who had spent his own unripe youth
+in offering it a half-reluctant homage. The man of actuality in him
+denounced the drama built upon the legends of the Scandinavian past--the
+mark for him of a people of dreamers oblivious of the calls of the hour.
+On the morrow of the disastrous (and for Norway in his view ignominious)
+Danish war of 1864, his scorn rang out with prophetic intensity in the
+fierce tirade of _Brand_. Happily for his art, revolt against romance in
+him was united, more signally than in more than two or three of his
+contemporaries, with the power of seizing and presenting contemporary
+life. 'Realism' certainly expresses inadequately enough the genius of an
+art like his, enormously alive rather than fundamentally like life, and
+no less charged with purpose and idea than the work of the great
+Russians, though under cover of reticences and irony little known to
+them. The great series of prose dramas--from 1867 (_The League of
+Youth_) onwards--with their experimental prelude _Love's Comedy_
+(1863)--were to be for all Europe the most considerable literary event
+of the fourth quarter of the century, and they generated affiliated
+schools throughout the West. They did not indeed themselves remain
+untouched by the general intellectual currents of the time, and it will
+be noticed below that the later plays (from _The Lady of the Sea_
+onward) betray affinities, like the Russian novel, with what is here
+called the second phase of the European movement.
+
+In Criticism, the showy generalizations of Villemain gave place to
+Sainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'[4]
+and Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by
+environment.[5] Among ourselves, Meredith's _Essay on Comedy_ (1872)
+brilliantly restated Molière's dictum that the comic is founded on the
+real, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold
+applied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight
+fertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging
+the native quality of minds from the incrustations of tradition and
+dogma.
+
+In poetry the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that
+has, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their
+leader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his _Poèmes antiques_
+(1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent,
+and hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's
+stormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism to the
+shade of Alfred de Musset--the Oscar Wilde of the later
+Romantics[6]--who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled
+his poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new
+poets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating
+the glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.[7] Carducci,
+too, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism--cold and
+infructuous beams, proper for Gothic ruins and graveyards--with the
+benignant and fertilizing sunshine he sought to restore; for him, too,
+the poet is no indolent caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant
+flowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.[8] Among
+us, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning
+calls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of _Prometheus_
+appropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing a
+kindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in
+clear-cut form.
+
+If we turn from the negations of the anti-romantic revolt to consider
+what it actually sought and achieved in poetry, we find that its
+positive ideals, too, without being derived from science, reflect the
+temper of a scientific time. Thus the supreme gift of all the greater
+poets of this group was a superb vision of beauty, and of beauty--_pace_
+Hogarth--there is no science. But their view of beauty was partly
+limited, partly fertilized and enriched, by the sources they discovered
+and the conditions they imposed, and both the discoveries and the
+limitations added something to the traditions and resources of poetry.
+Thus:
+
+(1) They exploited the aesthetic values to be had by knowledge. They
+pursued erudition and built their poetry upon erudition, not in the
+didactic way of the Augustans, but as a mine of poetic material and
+suggestion. Far more truly than Wordsworth's this poetry could claim to
+be the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for
+Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from
+erudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora.
+When Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the
+southern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate
+explorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity.
+The strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative
+religion and mythology, he explores with cosmopolitan impartiality and
+imaginative penetration; carving, as in marble, the tragedy of Hjalmar's
+heart and Angentyr's sword, of Cain's doom, and Erinnyes never, like
+those of Aeschylus, appeased. The Romantics had loved to play with
+exotic suggestions; but the East of Hugo's _Orientales_ or Moore's
+_Lalla Rookh_ is merely a veneer; the poet of _Qain_ has heard the wild
+asses cry and seen the Syrian sun descend into the golden foam.
+
+In the three commanding poets of our English mid-century, learning
+becomes no less evidently poetry's honoured and indispensable ally.
+Tennyson studies nature like a naturalist, not like a mystic, and finds
+felicities of phrase poised, as it were, upon delicate observation. Man,
+too, in Browning, loses the vague aureole of Shelleyan humanity, and
+becomes the Italian of the Renascence or the Arab doctor or the German
+musician, all alive but in their habits as they lived, and fashioned in
+a brain fed, like no other, on the Book of the histories of Souls.
+Matthew Arnold more distinctively than either, and both for better and
+for worse, was the scholar-poet; among other things he was, with Heredia
+and Carducci, a master of the poetry of critical portraiture, which
+focusses in a few lines (_Sophocles_, _Rahel_, _Heine_, _Obermann Once
+More_) the meaning of a great career or of a complex age.
+
+(2) In the elaboration of their vision of beauty from these enlarged
+sources, Leconte de Lisle and his followers demanded an impeccable
+artistry. 'A great poet', he said, 'and a flawless artist are
+convertible terms.' The Parnassian precision rested on the postulate
+that, with sufficient resources of vocabulary and phrase, everything can
+be adequately expressed, the analogue of the contemporary scientific
+conviction that, with sufficient resources of experiment and
+calculation, everything can be exhaustively explained. The pursuit of an
+objective calm, the repudiation of missionary ardour, of personal
+emotion, of the _cri du coeur_, of individual originality, involved the
+surrender of some of the glories of spontaneous song, but opened the
+way, for consummate artists such as these, to a profusion of
+undiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by
+the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are
+already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur
+without effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in
+Sully Prudhomme's _tours de force_ of philosophic poetry--when he
+unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the
+form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are
+compelled to the service of a rigorous logic; or in the brief cameo-like
+pieces on 'Memory', 'Habit', 'Forms', and similar unpromising
+abstractions, most nearly paralleled in English by the quatrains of Mr.
+William Watson. But the cameo comparison is still more aptly applied to
+the marvellously-chiselled sonnets of Heredia--monuments of a moment, as
+sculpture habitually is, but reaching out, as the finest sculpture does,
+to invisible horizons, and to the before and after--the old wooden
+guardian-god recalling his former career as a scarlet figure-head
+laughing at the laughter or fury of the waves; Antony seeing the flying
+ships of Actium mirrored in the traitorous azure of Cleopatra's eyes.
+
+In Italy the ideal of an austere simplicity and reserve, resting as it
+did on the immense prestige of Leopardi, asserted itself even in the
+naturally exuberant and impetuous genius of Carducci. Without it we
+should not have had those reticences of an abounding nature, those
+economies of a spendthrift, which make him one of the first poets of the
+sonnet in the land of its origin, and one of the greatest writers of
+Odes among the 'barbarians'. With reason he declared in 1891, when most
+of his poetry had been written, that 'all the apparent contradictions in
+my work are resolved by the triple formula: in politics Italy before
+all, in aesthetics classical poetry before all, in practice, frankness
+and force before all'. His two chief disciples, D'Annunzio and Pascoli,
+antithetical in almost all points, may be said to have divided his
+inheritance in this; Pascoli's Vergilian economy contrasting with the
+exuberance of D'Annunzio somewhat as with us the classicism of the
+present poet-laureate with that of Swinburne. In Germany the Parnassian
+reserve, concentration, and aristocratic exclusiveness was to reappear
+in the lyrical group of Stefan Georg.
+
+(3) Finally, the Parnassian poetry, like most contemporary science, was
+in varying degrees detached from and hostile to religion, and found some
+of its most vibrating notes in contemplating its empty universe. Leconte
+de Lisle offers the Stoic the last mournful joy of 'a heart seven-times
+steeped in the divine nothingness',[9] or calls him to 'that city of
+silence, the sepulchre of the vanished gods, the human heart, seat of
+dreams, where eternally ferments and perishes the illusory
+universe'.[10] Here, too, Leopardi had anticipated him.
+
+In the ebullient genius of Carducci and Swinburne this lofty disdain for
+theological illusions passes into the fierce derision of the Ode to
+Satan and the militant paganism of the Sonnet to Luther, and the _Hymn
+to Man_. In Matthew Arnold it became a half-wistful resignation, the
+pensive retrospect of the Greek 'thinking of his own gods beside a
+fallen runic stone', or listening to the 'melancholy long withdrawing
+roar' of the tide of faith 'down the vast edges drear and naked shingles
+of the world'; while in James Thomson resignation passed into the
+unrelieved pessimism of the _City of Dreadful Night_. In all these
+poets, what was of moment for poetry was not, of course, the
+anti-theological or anti-clerical sentiment which marks them all, but
+the notes of sombre and terrible beauty which the contemplation of the
+passing of the gods, and of man's faith in them, elicits from their art.
+
+Yet the supreme figure, not only among those who share in the
+anti-Romantic reaction but among all the European poets of his time, was
+one who had in the heyday of youth led the Romantic vanguard--Victor
+Hugo. Leconte de Lisle never ceased to own him his master, and Hugo's
+genius had since his exile, in 1851, entered upon a phase in which a
+poetry such as the Parnassian sought--objective, reticent, impersonal,
+technically consummate--was at least one of the strings of his
+many-chorded lyre. Three magnificent works--the very crown and flower of
+Hugo's production--belong to this decade, 1850-60,--the _Châtiments_,
+_Contemplations_, and _Légende des Siècles_. I said advisedly, one
+string in his lyre. Objective reticence is certainly not the virtue of
+the terrible indictment of 'Napoleon the Little'. On the other hand, the
+greatest qualities of Parnassian poetry were exemplified in many
+splendid pieces of the other two works, together with a large benignity
+which their austere Stoicism rarely permits, and I shall take as
+illustration of the finest achievement of poetry in this whole first
+phase the closing stanzas of his famous _Boaz Endormi_ in the _Légende_,
+whose beauty even translation cannot wholly disguise. Our decasyllable
+is substituted for the Alexandrine.[11]
+
+    'While thus he slumbered, Ruth, a Moabite,
+    Lay at the feet of Boaz, her breast bare,
+    Waiting, she knew not when, she knew not where,
+    The sudden mystery of wakening light.
+
+    Boaz knew not that there a woman lay,
+    Nor Ruth what God desired of her could tell;
+    Fresh rose the perfume of the asphodel,
+    And tender breathed the dusk on Galgala.
+
+    Nuptial, august, and solemn was the night,
+    Angels no doubt were passing on the wing,
+    For now and then there floated glimmering
+    As it might be an azure plume in flight.
+
+    The low breathing of Boaz mingled there
+    With the soft murmur of the mossy rills.
+    It was the month when earth is debonnaire;
+    The lilies were in flower upon the hills.
+
+    Night compassed Boaz' slumber and Ruth's dreams,
+    The sheep-bells vaguely tinkled far and near;
+    Infinite love breathed from the starry sphere;
+    'Twas the still hour when lions seek the streams.
+
+    Ur and Jerimedeth were all at rest;
+    The stars enamelled the blue vault of sky;
+    Amid those flowers of darkness in the west
+    The crescent shone; and with half open eye
+
+    Ruth wondered, moveless, in her veils concealed,
+    What heavenly reaper, when the day was done
+    And harvest gathered in, had idly thrown
+    That golden sickle on the starry field.'
+
+
+II. DREAM AND SYMBOL
+
+The rise of French symbolism towards the end of the 'seventies was a
+symptom of a changed temper of thought and feeling traceable in some
+degree throughout civilized Europe. Roughly, it marked the passing of
+the confident and rather superficial security of the 'fifties into a
+vague unrest, a kind of troubled awe. As if existence altogether was a
+bigger, more mysterious, and intractable thing than was assumed, not so
+easily to be captured in the formulas of triumphant science, or mirrored
+and analysed by the most consummate literary art.
+
+Political and social conditions contributed to the change. France stood
+on the morrow of a shattering catastrophe. The complacency of
+mid-Victorian England began to be disturbed by menaces from the
+workshops of industry. And it was precisely in triumphant Germany
+herself that revolutionary Socialism found, in Karl Marx, its first
+organizing mind and authoritative exponent. The millennium was not so
+near as it had seemed; the problems of society, instead of having been
+solved once for all, were only, it appeared, just coming into view.
+
+In the secluded workshops of Thought, subtler changes were silently
+going on. The dazzling triumphs of physical science, which had led
+poetry itself to emulate the marble impassivity of the scientific
+temper, were undiminished; but they were seen in a new perspective,
+their authority ceased to be exclusive, the focus of interest was slowly
+shifting from the physical to the psychical world. Lange, writing the
+history of _Materialism_ in 1874, virtually performed its obsequies; and
+Tyndall's brilliant effort, in 1871, to equip primordial Matter with the
+'promise and the potency' of mind, unconsciously confessed that its
+cause was lost. Psychology, after Fechner, steadily advanced in prestige
+and importance from the outlying circumference of the sciences to their
+very centre and core.
+
+But it was not merely particular doctrines that lost ground; the scope
+and validity of scientific method itself began to be questioned. In the
+most varied fields of thought there set in that 'idealistic reaction
+against science' which has been described in one of the most penetrating
+books of our time. Most significant of all, science itself, in the
+person of Mach, and Pearson, has abandoned the claim to do more than
+provide descriptive formulas for phenomena the real nature of which is
+utterly beyond its power to discover.
+
+Of this changed outlook the growth of Symbolism is the most significant
+literary expression. It was not confined to France, or to poetry. We
+know how the drama of Ibsen became charged with ulterior meanings as the
+fiery iconoclast passed into the poet of insoluble and ineluctable
+doubt. But by the French symbolists it was pursued as a creed, as a
+religion. If the dominant poetry of the third quarter of the century
+reflected the prestige of science, the dominant poetry of the fourth
+reflected the idealistic reactions against it, and Villiers de l'Ile
+Adam, its founder, came forward proclaiming that 'Science was bankrupt'.
+And so it might well seem to him, the visionary mystic inhabiting, as
+he did, a world of strange beauty and invisible mystery which science
+could not unlock. The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but
+they were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which
+language cannot articulately express, and which are yet more vitally
+real than the 'facts' which we can grasp and handle, and the
+'respectable' people whom we can measure and reckon with. Sometimes
+these potencies are vaguely mysterious, an impalpable spirit speaking
+only by hints and tokens; sometimes they are felt as the pulsations of
+an intoxicating beauty, breaking forth in every flower, but which can
+only be possessed, not described; sometimes they are moods of the soul,
+beyond analysis, and yet full of wonder and beauty, visions half
+created, half perceived. Experiences like these might have been
+described, as far as description would go, by brilliant artificers like
+the Parnassians. Verlaine and Mallarmé did not discover, but they
+applied with new daring, the fact that an experience may be communicated
+by words which, instead of representing it, suggest it by their colour,
+their cadences, their rhythm, their verbal echoes and inchoate phrases.
+All the traditional artistry of French poetic speech was condemned as
+both inadequate and insincere. 'Take eloquence and wring her neck!
+Nothing but music and the nuance--all the rest is "Literature", mere
+writing--futile verbosity!' that was the famous watchword of Verlaine's
+creed.[12]
+
+The strength of symbolism lay in this demand for a complete sincerity of
+utterance. Its revolt against science was at the same time a vindication
+of truth, an effort to get nearer to reality both by shedding off the
+incrustations of habitual phrase and by calling into play the obscure
+affinities by which it can be magically evoked. In the subtleties of
+suggestion latent in sensations the symbolists were real discoverers.
+But the way had already been pointed in famous verses by Baudelaire:
+
+    'Earth is a Temple, from whose pillared mazes
+    Murmurs confused of living utterance rise;
+    Therein Man thro' a forest of symbols paces,
+    That contemplate him with familiar eyes.
+
+    As prolonged echoes, wandering on and on,
+    At last in one far tenebrous depth unite,
+    Impalpable as darkness, and as light,
+    Scents, sounds, and colours meet in unison.'
+
+There Baudelaire had touched a chord that was to sound loud and long;
+for what else than this thought of all the senses meeting in union
+inspired the music drama of Wagner?--only one of his points of kinship,
+as we shall see, with symbolism.
+
+Thus the symbolists, in quest of reality, touched it only through the
+inner life. There they are, in their fashion, realists. 'A landscape',
+said Albert Samain, 'is a state of soul.' The landscape may be false,
+but the state of soul is veracious. What interests them in life is the
+image of life, not lucidly reflected but exquisitely transformed. Yet
+the vision of the world caught in that transforming mirror was not
+without strange revealing glimpses, invisible, like stars mirrored in a
+well, to the plain observer. They could hear the music of the spheres;
+or in the language of Samain's sonnet
+
+    'Feel flowing through them, like a pouring wave,
+    The music-tide of universal Soul;
+    Hear in their heart the beating pulse of heaven.'[13]
+
+In the earlier poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, the inner life imposes a
+more jealous sway. The poet sits not before a transforming mirror, where
+the outer world is disguised, but in a closed chamber, where it is only
+dreamed of, and it fades into the incoherence and the irrelevance of a
+dream. But the chamber is of rare beauty, and in its hushed and perfumed
+twilight, dramas of the spirit are being silently and almost
+imperceptibly enacted, more tragic than the loud passion and violence of
+the stage. He has written an essay on Silence,--silence that, like
+humility, holds for him a 'treasure' beyond the reach of eloquence or of
+pride; for it is the dwelling of our true self, the spiritual core of
+us, 'more profound and more boundless than the self of the passions or
+of pure reason.' And so there is less matter for drama in 'a captain who
+conquers in battle or a husband who avenges his honour than in an old
+man, seated in his arm-chair waiting patiently with his lamp beside him,
+giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his
+house, interpreting without comprehending, the silence of door and
+window, and the quivering voice of the light; submitting with bent head
+to the presence of his soul and his destiny.'
+
+It is on this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian
+novel,--with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of
+self-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the
+Nietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just
+then being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both
+responded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate
+future, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first
+resounding encounter when Nietzsche held up his once venerated master
+Wagner to scorn as the chief of 'decadents' because he had turned from
+the superhuman heroism of Siegfried and the boundless passion of
+Tristram to glorify the mystic Catholicism of the Grail and the
+loveliness of the 'pure fool' Parzifal.
+
+Outside France symbolism found eager response among young poets, but
+rather as a literary than as an ethical doctrine. In Germany Dehmel, the
+most powerful personality among her recent poets, began as a disciple of
+Verlaine; in Italy, D'Annunzio wove esoteric symbols into the texture of
+the more than Nietzschean supermanliness of his supermen and superwomen.
+More significant than these, however, was the symbolism of what we call
+the Celtic school of poets in Ireland. For here both their artistic
+impressionism and their mystic spirituality found a congenial soil. The
+principal mediating force was Mr. Arthur Symons, friend of Verlaine and
+of Yeats, and himself the most penetrating interpreter of Symbolism,
+both as critic and as poet.[14] And to the French influence was added
+that of Blake, a poet too great to be included in any school, but allied
+to symbolism by his scorn for 'intellect' and for rhetoric, and by his
+audacities of figured speech. But Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.', the leaders of
+the 'Celtic' group, are in no sense derivation voices. They had the
+great advantage over the French of a living native folklore and faery
+lore. Hence their symbolism, no less subtle, and no less steeped in
+poetic imagining, has not the same air of literary artifice, of studio
+fabrication, of cultured Bohemianism; it breathes of the old Irish
+hills, holy with old-world rites, and the haunted woods, and the magical
+twilight and dewy dawns. And beneath all the folklore, and animating it,
+is the passion for Ireland herself, the mother, deathless and ever
+young, whom neither the desolation of the time nor the decay of hope can
+touch:
+
+    'Out-worn heart in a time out-worn
+    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
+    Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight;
+    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
+
+    Your mother Eire is always young,
+    Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
+    Tho' hope fall from you and love decay
+    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
+
+    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill;
+    For there the mystical brotherhood
+    Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
+    And river and stream work out their will.'
+
+For that, the French had only the Fauns of a literary neo-classicism.
+The passion for France was yet indeed to find a voice in poetry. But
+this was reserved for the more trumpet-tongued tones of the contemporary
+phase to which I now turn.
+
+
+III. 'CREATIVE EVOLUTION'
+
+1. _Philosophic Analogies_
+
+Nothing is more symptomatic of the incipient twentieth century than the
+drawing together of currents of thought and action before remote or
+hostile. The Parnassians were an exclusive sect, the symbolists an
+eccentric and often disreputable coterie; Claudel, D'Annunzio, Rudyard
+Kipling, speak home to throngs of everyday readers, are even national
+idols, and our Georgians contrive to be bought and read without the
+least surrender of what is most poetic in their poetry. And the
+analogies between philosophic thinking and poetic creation become
+peculiarly striking. Merely to name Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson,
+and Benedetto Croce is to become vividly aware of these analogies and
+of the common bent from which they spring. All three--whether with
+brilliant rhetoric, or iron logic, or a blend of both--use their
+thinking power to deride the theorizing intelligence in comparison with
+the creative intuition which culminates in poetry. To define the scope
+and province of this intuition is the purport of Croce's epoch-making
+_Aesthetics_, the basis and starting-point of his illumining work, in
+_Critica_, as a literary critic. Bergson is the dominant figure in a
+line of French thinkers possessed with the conviction that life, a
+perpetual streaming forth of creative energy, cannot be caught in the
+mechanism of law, adapted to merely physical phenomena, which at best
+merely gives us generalizations and lets the all-important
+particulars--the individual living thing--slip through the meshes;
+whereas intuition--the eye fixed on the object--penetrates to the very
+heart of this individual living thing, and only drops out the skeleton
+framework of abstract laws. Philosophy, in these thinkers, was deeply
+imbued with the analogies of artistic creation. 'Beauty,' said
+Ravaisson, 'and especially beauty in the most divine and perfect form,
+contains the secret of the world.'[15] And Bergson's _Creative
+Evolution_ embodied a conception of life and of the world profoundly
+congenial to the artistic and poetic temper of his time. For he
+restated, it has been well said, the two great surviving formulas of the
+nineteenth century, evolution and the will to live, in terms precisely
+suited to the temper of the age just dawning. The will to live became a
+formula of hope and progress; evolution became a formula of vital
+impulse, of creative purpose, not of mechanical 'struggle for
+existence'.
+
+The idea that aesthetic experience gives a profounder clue than logical
+thought to the inner meaning of things was as old as Plato. It was one
+of the crowning thoughts of Kant; it deeply coloured the metaphysics of
+Schelling. And Nietzsche developed it with brilliant audacity when in
+his _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) he contrasted scornfully with the laboured
+and ineffectual constructions of the theoretic man, even of Socrates the
+founder of philosophy, the radiant vision of the artist, the lucid
+clarity of Apollo. 'His book gave the lie to a thousand years of orderly
+development', wrote the great Hellenist Wilamowitz, Nietzsche's old
+schoolfellow, indignant at his rejection of the labours of scholastic
+reason. But it affirmed energetically the passion of his own time for
+immediate and first-hand experience.
+
+And it did more. Beside and above Apollo, Nietzsche put Dionysus; beside
+vision and above it, _rage_. Of the union of these two Tragedy was born.
+And Nietzsche's glorification of this elemental creative force also
+responded to a wider movement in philosophy, here chiefly German. His
+Dionysiac rage is directly derived from that will in which Schopenhauer
+saw the master faculty of man and the hidden secret of the universe; and
+the beginning of Schopenhauer's fame, about 1850, coincides with a
+general rehabilitation of will as the dominant faculty in the soul and
+in the world, at the cost of the methodic orderly processes of
+understanding; a movement exhibited in the psychological innovations of
+Wundt and Münsterberg, in the growth of the doctrine that what a thing
+is is determined by what it _can_; that value is in fact the measure,
+and even the meaning, of existence; that will can arm impotence, create
+faith, and master disease; and in the call of the colossal will-power
+which created the German empire and launched her on the career of
+industrial greatness. Nietzsche's Superman is, above all, a being of
+colossal and masterful will, and Zarathustra, the prophet of
+superhumanity, is only an incarnation of the will that for Schopenhauer
+moved the world. The moment at which the prestige of will began
+definitely to overcome that of reasoning is marked, as Aliotta has
+pointed out, by the appearance of James's _Will to Believe_, just when
+agnosticism seemed triumphant.
+
+Nietzsche and Bergson thus, with all their obvious and immense
+divergences, concurred in this respect, important from our present point
+of view, that their influence tended to transfer authority from the
+philosophic reason to those 'irrational' elements of mind which reach
+their highest intensity in the vision and 'rage' of the poet. James's
+vindication of drunken exaltation as a source of religious insight was
+not the least symptomatic passage of his great book. And both concurred,
+however remote their methods or their speech, in conceiving reality as
+creation, creation in which we take part--a conception which again, in
+the hands of the constructive religious thinker, led directly to the
+type of faith announced in that last--the Jamesian--'Variety' of
+religious experience, which represents us as indispensable
+fellow-workers and allies of a growing and striving God.
+
+
+2. _The New Freedom_
+
+No reader of the poetry of our time can mistake the kinship of its
+prevailing temper with that which lies at the root of these
+philosophies. Without trying to fit its infinite variety to any finite
+formula, we may yet venture to find in it, as Mr. McDowall has found in
+our Georgian poetry in particular, a characteristic union of grip and
+detachment; of intense and eager grasp upon actuality as it breaks upon
+us in the successive moments of the stream of time, and yet an inner
+independence of it, a refusal to be obsessed by its sanctions and
+authorities, a tacit assumption that everything, by whatever length of
+tradition consecrated, must come before the bar of the new century to be
+judged by its new mind. 'Youth is knocking at the door,' as it is said
+of Hilda in the symbolical _Master Builder_, and doubtless in every
+generation the philistines or Victorians in possession have had occasion
+to make that remark. The difference in our time is rather that youth
+comes in without knocking, and that instead of having to work slowly up
+to final dominance against the inertia of an established literary
+household, it has spontaneously, like Hilda Wrangel, taken possession of
+the home, rinding criticism boundlessly eulogistic, the public
+inexhaustibly responsive, and philosophy interpreting the universe, as
+we have seen, precisely in sympathy with its own naïve intuitions. No
+wonder that youth at twenty is writing its autobiography or having its
+biography written, and that at twenty-five it makes a show of laying
+down the pen, like Max Beerbaum, with the gesture of one rising sated
+from the feast of life: 'I shall write no more.'
+
+The fact that youth finds itself thus at home in the world explains the
+difference in temper between the new poets of freedom and the old. The
+wild or wistful cry of Shelley for an ideal state emancipated from pain
+and death is as remote from their poetry as his spiritual anarchy from
+their politics; they can dream and see visions, in Scott's phrase, 'like
+any one going', but their feet are on the solid ground of actuality and
+citizenship, and the actuality comes into and colours their poetry no
+less than their vision. When Mr. Drinkwater looks out of his 'town
+window' he dreams of the crocus flaming gold in far-off Warwick woods;
+but he does not repudiate the drab inglorious street nor the tramway
+ringing and moaning over the cobbles, and they come into his verse. And
+I find it significant of the whole temper of the new poetry to ordinary
+life no less than that of ordinary men and women to the new poetry,
+that he has won a singularly intimate relationship with a great
+industrial community. He has not fared like his carver in stone. But
+then the eagles of his carving, though capable of rising, like
+Shelley's, to the sun, are the Cromwells and Lincolns who themselves
+brought the eagle's valour and undimmed eye into the stress and turmoil
+of affairs.
+
+No doubt a fiercer note of revolt may be heard at times in the poetry of
+contemporary France, and that precisely where devotion to some parts of
+the heritage of the past is most impassioned. The iconoclastic scorn of
+youth's idealism for the effeteness of the 'old hunkers', as Whitman
+called them, has rarely rung out more sharply than in the closing
+stanzas of Claudel's great Palm Sunday ode. All the pomp and splendour
+of bishops and cardinals is idle while victory yet is in suspense: that
+must be won by youth in arms.
+
+        'To-morrow the candles and the dais and the bishop with his clergy
+                coped and gold embossed,
+    But to-day the shout like thunder of an equal, unofficered host
+        Who, led and kindled by the flag alone,
+    With one sole spirit swollen, and on one sole thought intent,
+    Are become one cry like the crash of walls shattered and gates rent:
+        'Hosanna unto David's son!'
+
+    Needless the haughty steeds marble-sculptured, or triumphal arches, or
+                chariots and four,
+    Needless the flags and the caparisons, the moving pyramids and towers,
+                and cars that thunder and roar,--
+        'Tis but an ass whereon sits Christ;
+    For to make an end of the nightmare built by the pedants and the
+                pharisees,
+    To get home to reality across the gulf of mendacities,
+        The first she-ass he saw sufficed!
+
+    Eternal youth is master, the hideous gang of old men is done with, we
+    Stand here like children, fanned by the breath of the things to be,
+        But victory we will have to-day!
+    Afterwards the corn that like gold gives return, afterwards the gold
+                that like corn is faithful and will bear,
+    The fruit we have henceforth only to gather, the land we have
+                henceforth only to share,
+        But victory we will have to-day!'
+
+In the same spirit Charles Péguy--like Claudel, be it noted, a student
+of Bergson at the École Normale--found his ideal in the great story of
+the young girl of Domremy who saved France when all the pomp and wisdom
+of generals had broken down. And in our own poetry has not Mr. Bottomley
+rewritten the Lear story, with the focus of power and interest
+transferred from the old king--left with not an inch of king in him--to
+a glorious young Artemis-Goneril?
+
+But among our English Georgians this tense iconoclastic note is rare.
+Their detachment from what they repudiate is not fanatical or ascetic;
+it is conveyed less in invective than in paradox and irony; their temper
+is not that which flies to the wilderness and dresses in camel hair, but
+of mariners putting out to the unknown and bidding a not unfriendly
+good-bye at the shore. The temper of adventure is deeply ingrained in
+the new romance as in the old; the very word adventure is saturated with
+a sentiment very congenial to us both for better and worse; it quickens
+the hero in us and flatters the devil-may-care.
+
+In its simplest form the temper of adventure has given us the profusion
+of pleasant verses which we know as the poetry of 'vagabondage' and 'the
+open road'. The point is too familiar to be dwelt on, and has been
+admirably illustrated and discussed by Mr. McDowall. George Borrow,
+prince of vagabonds, Stevenson, the 'Ariel', with his 'Vagabond-song'--
+
+    'All I seek the heaven above,
+      And the road below me',
+
+and a few less vocal swallows, anticipated the more sustained flights
+and melodies of to-day, while Borrow's wonderful company of vagabond
+heroes and heroines is similarly premonitory of the alluring gipsies and
+circus-clowns of our Georgian poetry. Sometimes a traditional motive is
+creatively transformed; as when Father Time, the solemn shadow with
+admonitory hour-glass, appears in Mr. Hodgson's poem as an old gipsy
+pitching his caravan 'only a moment and off once again'.
+
+Elsewhere a deeper note is sounded. It is not for nothing that Jeanne
+d'Arc is the saint of French Catholic democracy, or that Péguy, her
+poet, calls the Incarnation the 'sublime adventure of God's Son'. That
+last adventure of the Dantesque Ulysses beyond the sunset thrills us
+to-day more than the Odyssean tale of his triumphant home-return, and
+D'Annunzio, greatly daring, takes it as the symbol of his own
+adventurous life. Francis Thompson's most famous poem, too, represents
+the divine effort to save the erring soul under the image of the hound's
+eager chase of a quarry which may escape; while Yeats hears God 'blowing
+his lonely horn' along the moonlit faery glades of Erin. And Meredith,
+who so often profoundly voiced the spirit of the time in which only his
+ripe old age was passed, struck this note in his sublime verses on
+revolutionary France--
+
+                      'soaring France
+    That divinely shook the dead
+    From living man; that stretched ahead
+    Her resolute forefinger straight
+    And marched toward the gloomy gate
+    Of Earth's Untried.'
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the affinity between this temper of
+adventure in poetry and the teaching of Bergson. That the link is not
+wholly fortuitous is shown by the interesting _Art Poétique_ (1903) of
+his quondam pupil, Claudel, a little treatise pervaded by the idea of
+Creative-evolution.
+
+It was natural in such a time to assume that any living art of poetry
+must itself be new, and in fact the years immediately before and after
+the turn of the century are crowded with announcements of 'new'
+movements in art of every kind. Beside Claudel's _Art Poétique_ we have
+in England the _New Aestheticism_ of Grant Allen; in Germany the 'new
+principle' in verse of Arno Holz. And here again the English innovators
+are distinguished by a good-humoured gaiety, if also by a slighter build
+of thought, from the French or Nietzschean 'revaluers'. Rupert Brooke
+delightfully parodies the exquisite hesitances and faltering half-tones
+of Pater's cloistral prose; and Mr. Chesterton pleasantly mocks at the
+set melancholy of the aggressive Decadence in which he himself grew up:
+
+    'Science announced nonentity, and art adored decay,
+    The world was old and ended, but you and I were gay.'
+
+Like their predecessors in the earlier Romantic school, the new
+adventurers have notoriously experimented with poetic _form_. France,
+the home of the most rigid and meticulous metrical tradition, had
+already led the way in substituting for the strictly measured verse the
+more loosely organized harmonies of rhythmical prose, bound together,
+and indeed made recognizable as verse, in any sense, solely by the
+rhyme. With the Symbolists 'free verse' was an attempt to capture finer
+modulations of music than the rigid frame of metre allowed. With their
+successors it had rather the value of a plastic medium in which every
+variety of matter and of mood could be faithfully expressed. But whether
+called verse or not, the vast rushing modulations of rhythmic music in
+the great pieces of Claudel and others have a magnificence not to be
+denied. And the less explicitly poetic form permits matter which would
+jar on the poetic instinct if conveyed through a metrical form to be
+taken up as it were in this larger and looser stride.
+
+In Germany, on the other hand, the rhythmic emancipation of Whitman was
+carried out, in the school of Arno Holz, with a revolutionary audacity
+beyond the example even of Claudel. Holz states with great clearness and
+trenchancy what he calls his 'new principle of lyric'; one which
+'abandons all verbal music as an aim, and is borne solely by a rhythm
+made vital by the thought struggling through it to expression'. Rhyme
+and strophe are given up, only rhythm remains.
+
+Of our Georgian poetry, it must suffice to note that here, too, the
+temper of adventure in form is rife. But it shows itself,
+characteristically, less in revolutionary innovation than in attempts to
+elicit new and strange effects from traditional measures by deploying to
+the utmost, and in bold and extreme combinations, their traditional
+resources and variations, as in the blank verse of Mr. Abercrombie and
+Mr. Bottomley. This, and much beside in Georgian verse, has moods and
+moments of rare beauty. But, on the whole, verse-form is the region of
+poetic art in which Georgian poetry as a whole is least secure.
+
+
+3. _The New Realism_
+
+We see then how deeply rooted this new freedom is in the passion for
+actuality; not the dream but the waking and alert experience throbs and
+pulses in it. We have now to look more closely into this other aspect of
+it. Realism is a hard-worked term, but it may be taken to imply that the
+overflowing vitality of which poetry is one expression fastens with
+peculiar eagerness upon the visible and tangible world about us and
+seeks to convey that zest in words. Our poets not only do not scorn the
+earth to lose themselves in the sky; they are positive friends of the
+matter-of-fact, and that not in spite of poetry, but for poetry's sake;
+and Pegasus flies more freely because 'things' are 'in the saddle' along
+with the poet.
+
+That this matter-of-factness is loved by poets, for poetry's sake, marks
+it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe.
+But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of
+Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his
+inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by
+seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply
+interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high
+sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in
+memory, not in hope--the 'glory of the grass and splendour of the
+flower' which he had seen in childhood and imaginatively re-created in
+maturity; a romance which change, and especially the intrusions of
+industrial man, dispelled and destroyed. Whereas the romance of our new
+realism rests, in good part, precisely in the sense that the _thing_ so
+vividly gripped is not or need not be permanent, may turn into something
+else, has only a tenancy, not a freehold, in its conditions of space and
+time, a 'toss-up' hold upon existence, as it were, full of the zest of
+adventurous insecurity. A pessimistic philosophy would dissipate this
+romance, or strip it of all but the mournful poetry of doom. Mr.
+Chesterton glorifies the dust which may become a flower or a face,
+against the Reverend Peter Bell for whom dust is dust and no more, and
+Hamlet who only remembers that it once was Caesar. If our realism is
+buoyant, if it had at once the absorbed and the open mind, this is, in
+large part, in virtue of the temper which finds reality a perpetual
+creation. Every moment is precious and significant, for it comes with
+the burden and meaning of something that has never completely been
+before; and goes by only to give place to another moment equally curious
+and new. This is the deeper ground of our present fashion of paradox;
+what Mr. Chesterton, its apostle, means when he says that 'the great
+romance is reality'; for paradox, the unexpected, is, in a reality so
+framed, the bare and sober truth. Hence the frequency, in our new
+poetry, of pieces founded deliberately upon, as Mr. McDowall points out,
+paradox: the breaking in of some utter surprise upon a humdrum society,
+as in Mr. de la Mare's _Three Jolly Farmers_, or Mr. Abercrombie's _End
+of the World_, or Mr. Munro's _Strange Meetings_.
+
+Moreover, in this incessantly created reality we are ourselves
+incessantly creative. That may seem to follow as a matter of course; but
+it corresponds with the most radical of the distinctions between our
+realism and that of Wordsworth. When Mr. Wells tells us that his most
+comprehensive belief about the universe is that every part of it is
+ultimately important, he is not expressing a mystic pantheism which
+feels every part to be divine, but a generous pragmatism which holds
+that every part _works_. The idea of shaping and adapting will, of
+energy in industry, of mere routine practicality in office or household,
+is no longer tabooed, or shyly evaded; not because of any theoretic
+exaltation of labour or consecration of the commonplace, but because
+merely to use things, to make them fulfil our purposes, to bring them
+into touch with our activities, itself throws a kind of halo over even
+very humble and homely members of the 'divine democracy of things'.
+Rupert Brooke draws up a famous catalogue of the things of which he was
+a 'great lover'. He loved them, he says, simply _as being_. And no
+doubt, the simple sensations of colour, touch, or smell counted for
+much. But compare them with the things that Keats, a yet greater lover
+of sensations, loved. You feel in Brooke's list that he liked doing
+things as well as feasting his passive senses; these 'plates', 'holes in
+the ground,' 'washen stones,' the cold graveness of iron, and so forth.
+One detects in the list the Brooke who, as a boy, went about with a book
+of poems in one hand and a cricket-ball in the other, and whose left
+hand well knew what his right hand did.[16] That takes us far from the
+dream of eternal beauty, which a Greek urn or a nightingale's song
+brought to Keats, and the fatal word 'forlorn', bringing back the light
+of common day, dispelled. The old ethical and aesthetic canons are
+submerged in a passion for life which finds a good beyond good and evil,
+and a beauty born of ugliness more vital than beauty's self. 'The worth
+of a drama is measured', said D'Annunzio, 'by its fullness of life', and
+the formula explains, if it does not justify, those tropical gardens,
+rank with the gross blooms of 'superhuman' eroticism and ferocity, to
+which he latterly gave that name. And we know how Maeterlinck has
+emerged from the mystic dreams and silences of his recluse chamber to
+unfold the dramatic pugnacities of Birds and Bees.
+
+Even the downright foulness and ugliness which some people find so
+puzzling in poets with an acute delight in beauty, like Mr. Masefield,
+come into it not from any aesthetic obtuseness, but because these
+uglinesses are full of the zest of drama, of things being done or made,
+of life being lived. When Masefield sounded his challenge to the old
+aesthetics:
+
+    'Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,
+     Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth',
+
+he knew well, as _The Everlasting Mercy_ and _The Widow of Bye Street_
+showed, that dirt and dross, if wrought into tragedy, can win a higher
+beauty than the harmonies of idyll. Even the hideous elder women in Mr.
+Bottomley's _Lear's Wife_, or his Regan--an ill-conditioned girl,
+sidling among the 'sweaty, half-clad cook-maids' after pig-killing,
+'smeary and hot as they', participate in this beauty and energy of
+doing.
+
+Poetry, in these cases, wins perhaps at most a Pyrrhic victory over
+reluctant matter. It is otherwise with the second of the great Belgian
+poets.
+
+In the work of Verhaeren, the modern industrial city, with its spreading
+tentacles of devouring grime and squalor, its clanging factories, its
+teeming bazaars and warehouses, and all its thronging human population,
+is taken up triumphantly into poetry. Verhaeren is the poet of
+'tumultuous forces', whether they appear in the roar and clash of 'that
+furnace we call existence', or in the heroic struggles of the Flemish
+nation for freedom. And he exhibits these surging forces in a style
+itself full of tumultuous power, Germanic rather than French in its
+violent and stormy splendour, and using the chartered licence of the
+French 'free verse' itself with more emphasis than subtlety.
+
+
+4. _The Cult of Force_
+
+In Verhaeren, indeed, we are conscious of passing into the presence of
+power more elemental and unrestrained than the civil refinement of our
+Georgians, at their wildest, allows us to suspect. The tragic and heroic
+history of his people, and their robust art, the art of Rembrandt, and
+of Teniers, vibrates in the Flemish poet. He has much of the temperament
+of Nietzsche, and if not evidently swayed by his ideas, or even aware of
+them, and with a generous faith in humanity which Nietzsche never knew,
+he thinks and imagines with a kindred joy in violence:
+
+    'I love man and the world, and I adore the force
+     Which my force gives and takes from man and the universe.'
+
+And it is no considerable step from him to the poets who in this third
+phase of our period have unequivocally exulted in power and burnt
+incense or offered sacrifice before the altar of the strong man. The joy
+in creation which, we saw, gives its romance to so much of the realism
+of our time, now appears accentuated in the fiercer romance of conflict
+and overthrow. Thanks largely to Nietzsche, this romance acquired the
+status of an authoritative philosophy--even, in his own country, that of
+an ethical orthodoxy.
+
+The German people was doubtless less deeply and universally imbued with
+this faith than our war-prejudice assumes. But phenomena such as the
+enormous success of a cheap exposition of it, _Rembrandt als Erzieher_
+(1890) by a fervent Bismarckian, and of the comic journal
+_Simplicissimus_ (founded 1895) devoted to systematic ridicule of the
+old-fashioned German virtues of tenderness and sympathy, indicated a
+current of formidable power and compass, which was soon to master all
+the other affluents of the national stream.
+
+But older, and in part foreign, influences concurred to colour and
+qualify, while they sustained, the Nietzschean influence,--the daemonic
+power of Carlyle, the iron intensity and masterful reticence of Ibsen.
+This was the case especially, as is well known, in the drama. Gerhardt
+Hauptmann, who painted the tragedy of the self-emancipated superman,--as
+Mr. Shaw about the same time showed us his self-achieved
+apotheosis,--was no doubt the most commanding (as Mr. Shaw was the most
+original) figure in the European drama of the early century.
+
+In poetry, the contributory forces were still more subtly mingled, and
+the Nietzschean spirit, which blows where it listeth, often touched men
+wholly alien from Nietzsche in cast of genius and sometimes stoutly
+hostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all.
+Among the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the
+most considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany.
+Richard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked
+comparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented.
+
+He began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the
+unrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's
+_fureur d'aimer_. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps
+the downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities
+of _la nuance_. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but
+the ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which
+finally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel.
+Nietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and
+evil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which
+transcends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil
+themselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can
+cry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the _Erlösungen_, 'I will
+fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not
+pleasure, it waters power',--he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe
+and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn
+it into the stuff of duty!'
+
+If Nietzsche provoked into antagonism the sounder elements in Dehmel, he
+was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius
+of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality
+of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman
+tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all
+their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid
+sentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than
+any other single man provoked Italy to throw herself into the great
+adventure of the War. Unapproached in popularity by any other Italian
+man of letters, D'Annunzio discovered Nietzsche, and hailed him--a great
+concession--as an equal. When Nietzsche died, in 1900, D'Annunzio
+indicted a lofty memorial ode to the Titanic Barbarian who set up once
+more the serene gods of Hellas over the vast portals of the Future.
+Nietzsche indeed let loose all the Titan, and all consequently that was
+least Hellenic, in the fertile genius of the Italian; his wonderful
+instinct for beauty, his inexhaustible resources of style are employed
+in creating orgies of superhuman valour, lust, and cruelty like some of
+his later dramas, and hymns intoxicated with the passion for Power, like
+the splendid Ode in which the City of the Seven Hills is prophetically
+seen once more the mistress of the world, loosing the knot of all the
+problems of humanity. His poetic autobiography, the first _Laude_
+(1901)--counterpart of Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and its very
+antipodes--culminates in a prayer 900 lines long to Hermes, god of the
+energy which precipitates itself on life and makes it pregnant with
+invention and discovery, of the iron will 'which chews care as a laurel
+leaf'--the god of the Superman. And so he discovers the muse of the
+Superman, the Muse of Energy, a tenth Muse whose first poet he modestly
+disclaims to be, if he may only be, as he would have us interpret his
+name, her Announcer.
+
+If D'Annunzio emulates Nietzsche, the two great militant poets of
+Catholic France would have scorned the comparison. Charles Péguy's brief
+career was shaped from his first entrance, poor and of peasant birth, at
+a Paris Lycée, to his heroic death in the field, September 1914, by a
+daemonic force of character. His heroine, glorified in his first book,
+was Jeanne d'Arc, who attempted the impossible, and achieved it. In
+writing, his principle--shocking to French literary tradition--was to
+speak the brutal truth _brutalement_. As a poet he stood in the direct
+lineage of Corneille, whose _Polyeucte_ he thought the greatest of the
+world's tragedies. As a man, he embodied with naïve intensity the
+unsurpassed inborn heroism of the French race.
+
+Claudel, even more remote as a thinker from Nietzsche than Péguy,
+exhibits a kindred temper in the ingrained violence of his art. His
+stroke is vehement and peremptory; he is an absolutist in style as in
+creed. It is the style of one who apprehends the visible world with an
+intensity as of passionate embrace, such as the young Browning expresses
+in _Pauline_. 'I would fain have seen everything,' he cries, 'possessed
+and made it my own, not with eyes and senses only, but with mind and
+spirit.' And after he was converted he saw and painted supernatural
+things with the same carnal and robust incisiveness. The half-lights of
+Symbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he
+drew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems
+to the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the
+brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a
+sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble
+house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in
+order to save the pope.
+
+And if we look, finally, for corresponding phenomena at home, we find
+them surely in the masculine, militant, and in the French sense _brutal_
+poetry of W.E. Henley and Rudyard Kipling. If any modern poets have
+conceived life in terms of will, and penetrated their verse with that
+faith, it is the author of 'I am the Captain of my Soul', the 'Book of
+the Sword', and 'London Voluntaries', friend and subject of the great
+kindred-minded sculptor Rodin, the poet over whose grave in St. Paul's
+George Wyndham found the right word when he said--marking him off from
+the great contemplative, listening poets of the past--'His music was not
+the still sad music of humanity; it was never still, rarely sad, always
+intrepid.' And we know how Kipling, after sanctioning the mischievous
+superstition that 'East and West can never meet', refuted it by
+producing his own 'two strong men'.
+
+
+5. _The New Idealism_
+
+(1) _Nationality_
+
+We have now seen something of that power, at once of grip and of
+detachment with which the dominant poetry of this century faces what it
+thinks of as the adventure of experience, its plunge into the
+ever-moving and ever-changing stream of life. How then, it remains to
+ask, has it dealt with those ideal aspirations and beliefs which one may
+live intensely and ignore, which in one sense stand 'above the battle',
+but for which men have lived and died. With a generation which holds so
+lightly by tradition, which revises and revalues all accepted values,
+these aspirations and beliefs might well drop out of its poetry. On the
+other hand, these same aspirations and beliefs might overcome the
+indifference to tradition by ceasing to be merely traditional, by being
+immersed and steeped in that moving stream of life, and interwoven with
+the creative energies of men. The inherited faiths were put to this
+dilemma, either to become intimately alive and creative in poetry or to
+be of no concern for it. Some of them failed in the test. England has
+still devotees of Protestantism, but Protestant religion has hardly
+inspired noble poetry since Milton. Nationality, on the other hand, has
+during the last century inspired finer poetry than at any time since the
+sixteenth, and that because it has been brought down from the region of
+political abstractions and ideologies into intimate union with heart and
+brain, imagination and sense. This is true also of Catholicism and of
+Socialism, and, if fitfully and uncertainly yet, of the ideal of
+international fraternity, of humanity. And to all these ideals, to all
+ideals, came finally the terrific, the overwhelming test of the War,--a
+searching, annihilating, purifying flame, in which some shrivelled away,
+some were stripped of the illusive glitter that concealed their mass of
+alloy, and some, purged of their baser constituents, shone out with a
+lustre unapproached before.
+
+What is the distinctive note of this new poetry of nationality? And for
+the moment I speak of the years before the War. May we not say that in
+it the ideal of country is saturated with that imaginative grip of
+reality in all its concrete energy and vivacity which I have called the
+new realism? The nation is no abstraction, whether it be called
+Britannia, or _Deutschland über Alles_. It is seen, and felt; seen in
+its cities as well as in its mountains, in the workers who have made it,
+as well as in the heroes who have defended it; in its roaring forges as
+well as in its idyllic woodlands and its tales of battles long ago; and
+all these not as separate strands in a woven pattern, but as waters of
+different origin and hue pouring along together in the same great
+stream.
+
+Émile Verhaeren, six years before the invasion, had seen and felt his
+country, living body and living soul, with an intensity which made it
+seem unimaginable that she should be permanently subdued. He well called
+his book _Toute la Flandre_, for all Flanders is there. Old
+Flanders,--Artevelde and Charles Téméraire--whose soul was a forest of
+huge trees and dark thickets,
+
+    'A wilderness of crossing ways below,
+    But eagles, over, soaring to the sun,'--
+
+Van Eyck and Rubens--'a thunder of colossal memories'; then the great
+cities, with their belfries and their foundries, and their warehouses
+and laboratories, their antique customs and modern ambitions; and the
+rivers, the homely familiar Lys, where the women wash the whitest of
+linen, and the mighty Scheldt, the Escaut, the 'hero sombre, violent and
+magnificent', 'savage and beautiful Escaut', whose companionship had
+moulded and made the poet, whose rhythms had begotten his music and his
+best ideas[17].
+
+None of our English poets have rendered England in poetry with the same
+lyric intensity in its whole compass of time and space, calling up into
+light and music all her teeming centuries and peopled provinces. Yet the
+present generation has in some respects made a nearer approach to such
+achievement than its predecessors. A century of growing historic
+consciousness has not passed over us in vain; and if any generic
+distinction is to be found between our recent, often penetrating and
+beautiful, poetry of the English countryside and the Nature description
+of Wordsworth or of Ruskin, it is in the ground-tone of passion and
+memory that pervades it for England herself. Wordsworth wrote
+magnificently of England threatened with invasion, and magnificently of
+the Lake Country, Nature's beloved haunt. But the War sonnets and the
+Lake and mountain poetry come from distinct strains in his genius,
+which our criticism may bring into relation, but our feeling insists on
+keeping apart. His Grasmere is a province of Nature--her favoured
+province--rather than of England; it is in the eye of Nature that the
+old Cumberland beggar lives and dies; England only provides the
+obnoxious workhouses to which these destitute vagrants were henceforth
+to be consigned. Is it not this that divides our modern local poetry
+from his? Mr. Belloc's Sussex is tenderly loved for itself; yet behind
+its great hills and its old-world harbours lies the half-mystic presence
+of historic England. And in Edward Thomas's wonderful old Wiltshireman,
+Lob, worthy I think to be named with the Cumberland Beggar,
+
+    'An old man's face, by life and weather cut
+     And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--
+     A land face, sea-blue eyed,'--
+
+you read the whole lineage of sterling English yeomen and woodlanders
+from whom Lob springs.
+
+This note is indeed relatively absent from the work of the venerable
+master who has made 'Wessex' the most vividly realized of all English
+provinces to-day, and whose prose Egdon Heath may well be put at the
+head of all the descriptive poetry of our time. But Mr. Hardy, in this
+respect, belongs to an earlier generation than that into which he
+happily survives.
+
+Sometimes this feeling is given in a single intense concentrated touch.
+When Rupert Brooke tells us of
+
+      'Some corner of a foreign field
+    That is for ever England. There shall be
+    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
+    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
+    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,'
+
+do we not feel that the solidarity of England with the English folk and
+of the English folk with the English soil, is burnt into our
+imaginations in a new and distinctive way?
+
+But the poetry of shires and provinces reacts too upon the poetry of
+nationality. It infuses something of the more instinctive and
+rudimentary attachments from which it springs into a passion peculiarly
+exposed to the contagion of rhetoric and interest. Some of the most
+strident voices among living nationalist poets have found an unexpected
+note of tenderness when they sang their home province. Mr. Kipling
+charms us when he tells, in his close-knit verse, of the 'wooded, dim,
+Blue goodness of the Weald'. And the more strident notes of D'Annunzio's
+patriotism are also assuaged by the tenderness and depth of his home
+feeling. We read with some apprehension his dedication of _La Nave_ to
+the god of seas:
+
+    'O Lord, who bringest forth and dost efface
+    The ocean-ruling Nations, race by race,
+    It is this living People, by Thy grace
+        Who on the sea
+    Shall magnify Thy name, who on the sea
+    Shall glorify Thy name, who on the sea
+    With myrrh and blood shall sacrifice to Thee
+        At the altar-prow,
+    Of all earth's oceans make our sea, O Thou!
+        Amen!
+
+But he dedicated a noble drama, the _Figlia d'Iorio_, in a different
+tone, 'To the land of the Abruzzi, to my Mother, to my Sisters, to my
+brother in exile, to my father in his grave, to all my dead and all my
+race in the mountains and by the sea, I dedicate this song of the
+ancient blood.'
+
+
+(2) _Democracy_
+
+The growth of democratic as of national feeling during the later century
+naturally produced a plentiful harvest of eloquent utterance in verse.
+With this, merely as such, I am not here concerned, even though it be
+as fine as the Socialist songs of William Morris or Edward Carpenter.
+But the Catholic Socialism of Charles Péguy,--itself an original and,
+for most of his contemporaries, a bewildering combination--struck out a
+no less original poetry,--a poetry of solidarity. Péguy's Socialism,
+like his Catholicism, was single-souled; he ignored that behind the one
+was a Party, and behind the other a Church. It was his bitterest regret
+that a vast part of humanity was removed beyond the pale of fellowship
+by eternal damnation. It was his sublimest thought that the solidarity
+of man includes the damned. In his first version of the Jeanne d'Arc
+mystery, already referred to, he tells how Jesus, crucified,
+
+    Saw not his Mother in tears at the cross-foot
+    Below him, saw not Magdalen nor John,
+    But wept, dying, only for Judas' death.
+    The Saviour loved this Judas, and though utterly
+    He gave himself, he knew he could not save him.
+
+It was the dogma of damnation which for long kept Péguy out of its fold,
+that barbarous mixture of life and death, he called it, which no man
+will accept who has won the spirit of collective humanity. But he
+revolted not because he was tolerant of evil; on the contrary to damn
+sins was for him a weak and unsocial solution; evil had not to be damned
+but to be fought down. Whether this vision of Christ weeping because he
+could not save Judas was un-Christian, or more Christian than
+Christianity itself, we need not discuss here; but I am sure that the
+spirit of a Catholic democracy as transfigured in the mind of a great
+poet could not be more nobly rendered.
+
+
+(3) _Catholicism_
+
+But Péguy's powerful personality set its own stamp upon whatever he
+believed, and though a close friend of Jaurès, he was a Socialist who
+rejected almost all the ideas of the Socialist school. As little was
+his Catholicism to the mind of the Catholic authorities. And his
+Catholic poetry is sharply marked off from most of the poetry that
+burgeoned under the stimulus of the remarkable revival of Catholic ideas
+in twentieth-century France. I say of Catholic ideas, for sceptical
+poets like Rémy de Gourmont played delicately with the symbols of
+Catholic worship, made 'Litanies' of roses, and offered prayers to
+Jeanne d'Arc, walking dreamily in the procession of 'Women Saints of
+Paradise', to 'fill our hearts with anger'.[18] The Catholic adoration
+of women-saints is one of the springs of modern poetry. At the close of
+the century of Wordsworth and Shelley, the tender Nature-worship of
+Francis of Assisi contributed not less to the recovered power of
+Catholic ideas in poetry, and this chiefly in the person of two poets,
+in France and in England, both of whom played half-mystically with the
+symbolism of their names, Francis Thompson and Francis Jammes. The
+child-like naïvete of S. Francis is more delicately reflected in Jammes,
+a Catholic W.H. Davies, who casts the idyllic light of Biblical pastoral
+over modern farm life, and prays to 'his friends, the Asses' to go with
+him to Paradise, 'For there is no hell in the land of the Bon Dieu.'
+
+But the most powerful creative imagination to-day in the service of
+Catholic ideas is certainly Paul Claudel. I pass by here the series of
+dramas, where a Catholic inspiration as fervent as Calderon's is
+enforced with Elizabethan technique and Elizabethan violence of terror,
+cruelty, and pity.[19] From the ferocious beauty of _L'Ôtage_ turn
+rather to the intense spiritual hush before the altar of some great
+French church at noon, where the poet, not long after the first
+decisive check of the invaders on the Marne, finds himself alone, before
+the shrine of Marie. Here too, his devotion finds a speech not borrowed
+from the devout or from their poetry:
+
+    'It is noon. I see the Church is open. I must enter.
+    Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray.
+
+    I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.
+    I come only, Mother, to gaze at you.
+
+    To gaze at you, to weep for happiness, to know
+    That I am your son and that you are there.
+
+    Nothing at all but for a moment when all is still,
+    Noon! to be with you, Marie, in this place where you are.
+
+    To say nothing, to gaze upon your face,
+    To let the heart sing in its own speech.'
+
+There the nationalist passion of Claudel animates his Catholic religion,
+yet does not break through its confines. But sometimes the strain of
+suffering and ruin is too intense for Christian submission, and he takes
+his God to task truculently for not doing his part in the contract; we
+are his partner in running the world, and see, he is asleep!
+
+     'There is a great alliance, willy-nilly, between us henceforth, there
+                is this bread that with no trembling hand
+      We have offered you, this wine that we have poured anew,
+    Our tears that you have gathered, our brothers that you share with us,
+                leaving the seed in the earth,
+      There is this living sacrifice of which we satisfy each day's demand,
+      This chalice we have drunk with you!'
+
+Yet the devout passion emerges again, with notes of piercing pathos:
+
+    'Lord, who hast promised us for one glass of water a boundless sea,
+        Who knows if Thou art not thirsty too?
+    And that this blood, which is all we have, will quench that thirst
+                in Thee,
+        We know, for Thou hast told us so.
+    If indeed there is a spring in us, well, that is what is to be shown,
+        If this wine of ours is red,
+    If our blood has virtue, as Thou sayest, how can it be known
+        Otherwise than by being shed?'
+
+
+(4) _Effects of the War upon Poetry_
+
+Thus could the great Catholic poet sing under pressure of the supreme
+national crisis of his country. Poetry at such times may become a great
+national instrument--a trumpet whence Milton or Wordsworth, Arndt or
+Whitman, blow soul-animating strains. The war of 1914 was for all the
+belligerent peoples far more than a stupendous military event. It
+shattered the patterns of our established mentality, and compelled us to
+seek new adjustments and support in the chaotically disorganized world.
+The psychical upheaval was most violent in the English-speaking peoples,
+where the military shock was least direct; for here a nation of
+civilians embraced suddenly the new and amazing experience of battle.
+Here too, the imaginatively sensitive minds who interpret life through
+poetry, and most of all the youngest and freshest among them, themselves
+shared in the glories and the throes of the fight as hardly one of the
+signers of our most stirring battle poetry had ever done before. How did
+this new and amazing experience react upon their poetry? This, our final
+question, is perhaps the crucial one in considering the tendencies of
+recent European poetry.
+
+In the first place it enormously stimulated and quickened what was
+deepest and strongest in the energies and qualities which had been
+apparent in our latter day poetry before. They had sought to clasp life,
+to live, not merely to contemplate, experience; and here indeed was
+life, and death, and both to be embraced. Here was adventure indeed, but
+one whose grimness made romance cheap, so that in this war-poetry, for
+the first time in history, the romance and glamour of war, the pomp and
+circumstance of military convention, fall entirely away, and the
+bitterest scorn of these soldier-poets is bestowed not on the enemy, but
+on those contemplators who disguised its realities with the camouflage
+of the pulpit and the editorial arm-chair. Turn, I will not say from
+Campbell or from Tennyson, but from Rudyard Kipling or Sir H. Newbolt,
+to Siegfried Sassoon, and you feel that you have got away from a
+literary convention, whether conveyed in the manners of the barrack-room
+or of the public-school, to something intolerably true, and which holds
+the poet in so fierce a grip that his song is a cry.
+
+But if the war has brought our poets face to face with intense kinds of
+real experience, which they have fearlessly grasped and rendered, its
+grim obsession has not made them cynical, or clogged the wings of their
+faith and their hope. I will not ask how the war has affected the
+idealism of others, whether it has left the nationalism of our press or
+the religion of our pulpits purer or more gross than it found them. But
+of our poetry at least the latter cannot be said. In Rupert Brooke the
+inspiration of the call obliterated the last trace of dilettante youth's
+pretensions, and he encountered darkness like a bride, and greeted the
+unseen death not with a cheer as a peril to be boldly faced, but as a
+great consummation, the supreme safety. How his poetry would have
+reacted to the actual experience of war we can only guess. But in
+others, his friends and comrades, the fierce immersion in the welter of
+ruin and pain and filth and horror and death brought only a more superb
+faith in the power of man's soul to rise above the hideous obsession of
+his own devilries, to retain the vision of beauty through the riot of
+foul things, of love through the tumult of hatreds, of life through the
+infinity of death. True this was not a new power: poetry to be poetry
+must always in some measure possess it. What was individual to the poets
+was that this power of mastering actuality went along in them with the
+fierce and eager immersion in it; the thrill of breathing the
+
+         'calm and serene air
+    Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
+    Which men call earth,'
+
+with the thrill of seeing and painting in all its lurid colouring the
+volcanic chaos of this 'stir and smoke' itself. Thus the same Siegfried
+Sassoon who renders with so much close analytic psychology the moods
+that cross and fluctuate in the dying hospital patient, or the haunted
+fugitive, as he flounders among snags and stumps, to feel at last the
+strangling clasp of death, can as little as the visionary Shelley
+overcome the insurgent sense that these dead are for us yet alive, made
+one with Nature.
+
+He visits the deserted home of his dead friend--
+
+    'Ah, but there was no need to call his name,
+    He was beside me now, as swift as light ...
+    For now, he said, my spirit has more eyes
+    Than heaven has stars, and they are lit by love.
+    My body is the magic of the world,
+    And dark and sunset flame with my spilt blood.'
+
+And so the undying dead
+
+      'Wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
+    And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms upflung,
+    To hail the burning heaven they left unsung.'
+
+Further, this war poetry, while reflecting military things with a
+veracity hardly known before, is yet rarely militant. We must not look
+for explicit pacifist or international ideas; but as little do we find
+jingo patriotism or hymns of hate. The author of the German hymn of hate
+was a much better poet than anyone who tried an English hymn in the same
+key, and the English poets who could have equalled its form were above
+its spirit. Edith Cavell's dying words 'Patriotism is not enough' cannot
+perhaps be paralleled in these poets, but they are continually
+suggested. They do not say, in the phrase of the old cavalier poet, that
+we should love England less if we loved not something else more, or that
+something is wanting in our love for our country if we wrong humanity in
+its name. But the spirit which is embodied in these phrases breathes
+through them; heroism matters more to them than victory, and they know
+that death and sorrow and the love of kindred have no fatherland. They
+'stand above the battle' as well as share in it, and they share in it
+without ceasing to stand above it. The German is the enemy, they never
+falter in that; and even death does not convert him into a friend. But
+for this enemy there is chivalry, and pity, and a gleam, now and then,
+of reconciling comradeship.
+
+    'He stood alone in some queer sunless place
+    Where Armageddon ends,'--
+
+the Englishman whom the Germans had killed in fight, to be themselves
+slain by his friend, the speaker. Their ghosts throng around him,--
+
+    'He stared at them, half wondering, and then
+    They told him how I'd killed them for his sake,
+    Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men:
+    At last he turned and smiled; smiled--all was well
+    Because his face would lead them out of hell.'
+
+Finally, the poet himself glories in his act; he knows that he can beat
+into music even the crashing discords that fill his ears; he knows too
+that he has a music of his own which they cannot subdue or debase:
+
+    'I keep such music in my brain
+    No din this side of death can quell,
+    Glory exulting over pain,
+    And beauty garlanded in hell.'
+
+To have found and kept and interwoven these two musics--a language of
+unflinching veracity and one of equally unflinching hope and faith--is
+the achievement of our war-poetry. May we not say that the possession
+together of these two musics, of these two moods, springing as they do
+from the blended grip and idealism of the English character, warrants
+hope for the future of English poetry? For it is rooted in the greatest,
+and the most English, of the ways of poetic experience which have gone
+to the making of our poetic literature--the way, ultimately, of
+Shakespeare, and of Wordsworth. But that temper of catholic fraternity
+which finds the stuff of poetry everywhere does not easily attain the
+consummate technique in expression of a rarer English tradition, that of
+Milton, and Gray, and Keats. Beauty abounds in our later poets, but it
+is a beauty that flashes in broken lights, not the full-orbed radiance
+of a masterpiece. To enlarge the grasp of poetry over the field of
+reality, to apprehend it over a larger range, is not at once to find
+consummate expression for what is apprehended. The flawless perfection
+of the Parnassians--of Heredia's sonnets--is nowhere approached in the
+less aristocratically exclusive poetry of to-day. But the future, in
+poetry also, is with the spirit which found the aristocracy of noble art
+not upon exclusions, negations, and routine, but upon imagination,
+penetration, discovery, and catholic openness of mind.
+
+
+SOME BOOKS FOR CONSULTATION
+
+Pellissier, _Le Mouvement Littéraire au XIXme Siècle_.
+
+Brunetière, _La Poésie Lyrique au XIXme Siècle_.
+
+Eccles, F.Y., _A Century of French Poets_.
+
+Vigié-Lecocq, _La Poésie Contemporaine_.
+
+Phelps, _Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century_.
+
+Muret, _La Littérature Italienne d'aujourd'hui_.
+
+Ladenarde, _G. Carducci_.
+
+Symons, _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_.
+
+Jackson, _The Eighteen Nineties_.
+
+McDowall, _Realism_.
+
+Aliotta, _The Idealist Reaction against Science_.
+
+Soergel, _Die deutsche Litteratur unserer Zeit_.
+
+Bithell, _Contemporary German Poetry_ (Translated).
+
+Halévy, _Charles Péguy_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: The temper of the two realists was no doubt widely
+different. 'C'est en haine du réalisme', wrote Flaubert, 'que j'ai
+entrepris ce roman. Mais je n'en déteste pas moins la fausse idéalité,
+dont nous sommes bercés par le temps qui court' (_Corresp._ 3, 67).]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Causeries du Lundi_, 1850 f.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Histoire de la littérature anglaise_, 1863.]
+
+[Footnote 6: But a Wilde who wrote no _De Profundis_ and no _Ballad of
+Reading Gaol_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _La Forge_: dedicated to Gaston Paris, the greatest
+_forgeron_ of his generation in the love of Old French.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Rime Nuove_: Classicismo e Romantismo.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Midi_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _La Paix des Dieux_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: For this and the other verse-translations the writer is
+responsible.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Even the 'music' was far removed from the simplicity of
+pure song. The song of these poets was an incantation. Nay, painting
+itself witnessed a corresponding revolt against the 'eloquence' of the
+pseudo-realists--the 'far away dirty reasonableness', as Manet dubbed
+it, which missed the essential vision by using the worn-down accepted
+phrases of the public.]
+
+[Footnote 13: _Au jardin de l'Infante: Veillée_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: To some types of Irish imagination French Naturalism, it
+is true, was no less congenial; hence the rift between the realist and
+the spiritual Irishmen delightfully played on in Max Beerbaum's cartoon
+of Yeats presenting the _Faery Queene_ to George Moore.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Aliotta, _The Idealistic Revolt_, p. 116. Cf. the account
+of the analogous views of Boutroux and Renouvier in the same chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Keats, no doubt, also aspired to the life of action. But
+in him the two moods were disparate, even in conflict; in Brooke they
+were seemingly fused.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Eighteenth-century observation, in the person of
+Goldsmith, had found no worthier epithet for the great Flemish river
+than 'lazy', and the modern tourist is likely to find this by far the
+more 'characteristic'. But which had the best chance of seeing truly,
+the life-long companion and lover, or the stranger, sad, lonely, and
+longing for home?]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Les Saintes du Paradis_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Cf. for instance the situation of Signe, in the grip of
+the brutal _préfet_, with that of Beatrice, in _The Changeling_, in the
+hands of De Flores.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HISTORICAL RESEARCH
+
+G.P. GOOCH
+
+
+The scientific study of history began a hundred years ago in the
+University of Berlin. Preparatory work of the highest importance had
+been accomplished by laborious collectors like Baronius and Muratori,
+keen-sighted critics such as Mabillon and Wolf, and brilliant narrators
+like Gibbon and Voltaire. But it was not till Niebuhr, Böckh, and above
+all Ranke preached and practised the critical use of authorities and
+documentary material that historical scholarship entered on the path
+which it has pursued with ever-increasing success for the last three
+generations. It is my task to-day to direct your attention to some of
+its main achievements during the last half-century.
+
+The outstanding feature of our time has been the immense increase in the
+material available for the knowledge and interpretation of every stage
+and chapter in the life of humanity. Primitive civilization has been
+definitely brought within the circle of historical study. The
+discoveries of Boucher des Perthes, Pitt-Rivers, and their successors
+have thrown back the opening of the human drama tens if not hundreds of
+thousands of years, and we recreate prehistoric man from skull and
+weapon, language and legend. Anthropology has become a science, and the
+habits and beliefs of our savage ancestors have been rendered
+intelligible by the piercing insight of Tylor and Sir James Frazer. In
+its boundless erudition, its constructive imagination, and its wealth of
+suggestion, the _Golden Bough_ stands forth as perhaps the most notable
+contribution of the age to our knowledge of the evolution of the human
+race.
+
+Among the most sensational events of the nineteenth century was the
+resurrection of the Ancient East. We now know that Greece and Rome, far
+from standing near the beginning of recorded history, were the heirs of
+a long series of civilizations. Our whole perspective has been changed
+or should be changed by the discovery. The ancient world thus revealed
+by the partnership of philology and archaeology ceases to be merely the
+vestibule to Christian Europe, and becomes in point of duration the
+larger part of human history.
+
+The story opens with Champollion's decipherment of the bilingual tablet
+discovered more than a century ago at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The
+key once fitted to the lock, the whole civilization of ancient Egypt lay
+open to the explorer. A secure chronological basis was supplied by
+Lepsius, and systematic excavation was commenced by Mariette, who was
+named by the Khedive Director of Antiquities and established the Cairo
+Museum. The work of the three great founders of Egyptology has been
+carried forward during the last half-century by an international army of
+scholars. The interpretation of the ancient scripts has reached a
+technical mastery unknown to the pioneers, and the genius of Brugsch
+unlocked the door to demotic, which Champollion had never thoroughly
+mastered. But the triumphs of philology have been surpassed by the
+conquests of the spade. The closest friend of Mariette's later years was
+Maspero, who succeeded him as Director of Antiquities, and whose most
+sensational find was the tombs of the Kings near Thebes. Equally eminent
+as excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to
+popularize Egyptology in France, as Flinders Petrie, the greatest
+excavator since Mariette, has popularized it in England. Until twenty
+years ago the curtain rose on the pyramid-builders of the Fourth
+dynasty. We have now not only recovered the earlier dynasties, but
+neolithic and palaeolithic Egypt emerges from the primitive cemeteries.
+The immense accession of new material has enabled Eduard Meyer to
+construct something like a definite chronology; but though marvellous
+progress has been made in our knowledge of the Early, Middle, and New
+Empires, a great gap remains between the sixth and the eleventh
+dynasties, and the period of the Hyksos is still tantalizingly obscure.
+Egyptian history in the light of the latest discoveries may be best
+studied in the judicial pages of Breasted, the foremost of American
+Egyptologists.
+
+The revelation of Assyrian civilization through Rawlinson's decipherment
+of cuneiform and the excavations of Botta and Layard in the middle of
+the nineteenth century was followed by a concerted attack on Babylonia.
+It was clear from the Nineveh tablets that most of the literary
+treasures of Assyria were merely copies of Babylonian originals; and
+when in 1877 de Sarzec, French Vice-Consul at Basra, bored into the
+mounds at Tello, the ancient Lagash, in Southern Babylonia, the most
+eager anticipations were surpassed. Texts had been found which Rawlinson
+pronounced to be pre-Semitic; but for the purpose of history the
+Sumerians were discovered at Tello. When de Sarzec died in 1901 he had
+opened a new chapter of history. The palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib,
+at which the world had marvelled in the 'forties, appeared relatively
+modern beside the vast antiquity of the Chaldean city. The chain of
+human experience lengthened before our eyes when it was realized that as
+Assyrian culture derived from Babylonia, so a large part of Babylonian
+culture, including the art of writing, was inherited by the Semites from
+the Sumerians.
+
+While de Sarzec was busy at Tello, an American expedition was sent to
+Nippur under the lead of Peters and Hilprecht; and the long array of
+magnificent volumes which embody the results of the mission, including
+the thousands of tablets found in the temple library, constitutes the
+most important source of our knowledge of Northern Babylonia. Still more
+recently a German mission under Koldewey commenced the systematic
+excavation of Babylon itself; but its operations were interrupted by the
+outbreak of the Great War. Though no monuments have been brought to
+light in Babylonia comparable in magnificence to those of Khorsabad and
+Nineveh, Babylonian culture towers above its neighbour. Since the
+discovery in the royal library of Nineveh of a cylinder containing the
+story of the Flood, no find has aroused such world-wide interest as that
+of the Code of Hammurabi, unearthed by de Morgan at Susa in 1901. The
+massive block of diorite, eight feet high, containing 282 paragraphs of
+laws, revealed in a flash a complex, refined, and orderly civilization.
+After expelling the Elamites about 2250 B.C. Hammurabi united North and
+South Babylonia into a single State, and, desiring that uniform laws
+should prevail, issued the code which bears his name. During the last
+decade the exploration of Assyria has been resumed after a long
+interval, and the city of Assur, the first capital, has been unearthed
+by the German Oriental Society. We thus learn of Assyria before the days
+of its greatness, when it was still a subject province under Babylonian
+Viceroys.
+
+The history of the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which
+was almost a blank half a century ago, may now be tentatively
+reconstructed. The vast mass of official correspondence, judicial
+decisions, and legal documents, taken in conjunction with the evidences
+of religion, science, and art, reveal a startlingly modern society a
+thousand years before Rameses and two thousand years before Pericles.
+Babylonia proves to have been to the ancient East what Rome was one day
+to be to Europe. The Tel-el-Amarna letters prove the unchallenged
+supremacy of its culture over vast areas, and the revelation of the
+religious debt of the Jews sets the Old Testament in a new frame. So
+rapid is the pace of excavation and interpretation that all but the most
+recent narratives of the Ancient East are out of date. If we master
+Leonard King's sumptuous volumes on Babylonia and the latest edition of
+the first volume of Eduard Meyer's incomparable _History of Antiquity_,
+we need go no farther afield.
+
+Scarcely if at all less remarkable has been the discovery of an advanced
+civilization in Crete in the second and third millenniums before Christ.
+While in Egypt and Mesopotamia the frontiers of knowledge were pushed
+back, in Crete an unknown world was brought to light. Its romantic
+interest was intensified by the establishment of an historic foundation
+for one of the most celebrated legends of the ancient world. How the
+Minotaur devoured the tribute of youths and maidens in the labyrinth,
+how Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a
+sword to slay the Minotaur and a thread to retrace his steps, was known
+to every Greek child and has thrilled the imagination of the centuries.
+The exploration of the city called by Homer 'Great Knossus' was among
+the ambitions of Schliemann; but it was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans,
+whose labours have outlined a series of chapters in Cretan history
+extending two thousand years before the destruction of the palace about
+the year 1400. Though the Minoan language still defies attack, the
+frescoes, sculptures, and objects of art tell their tale of a luxurious
+and peace-loving community, closely connected with Egypt and forming one
+of the main sources of the Greek culture of a later age.
+
+Most of us are old enough to remember the thrill of excitement when Susa
+and Knossus, if not Tello or Thebes, yielded up their romantic secrets;
+but the generation now growing to manhood may experience similar
+emotions as it watches the ghost of the Hittite Empire materialize
+before its eyes. The meagre references in the Old Testament have been
+supplemented by Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, revealing an
+important Power in Northern Syria and Asia Minor for a thousand years
+before it was swallowed up by Assyria. During the last twenty years
+Hittite remains, marked by crude vigour rather than by a sense of
+beauty, have been discovered all over Asia Minor and in the northern
+reaches of the great Mesopotamian plain. In 1911 the British Museum
+undertook the excavation of Carchemish on the Euphrates, the capital of
+the North Syrian sector of the Empire; but the most precious results
+have been achieved by Winckler at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the
+Cappadocian portion of the Hittite dominions, which yielded a library of
+20,000 tablets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now stored in
+the museum at Constantinople. A few bilingual inscriptions have
+furnished valuable clues; but the world still eagerly awaits the coming
+of a new Champollion to unlock the doors of the treasure-house. Winckler
+himself died in 1913; but in 1915 the Austrian Professor Hrozny startled
+the world by proclaiming his conviction that Hittite was an
+Indo-European language. Whether or no his contention is confirmed,
+orientalists of both hemispheres are hot in pursuit, and it is no rash
+prophecy that within a decade scholars will read Hittite as they now
+read cuneiform and hieroglyphics, and new chapters of incalculable
+importance will be added to the story of the Ancient East.
+
+The recovery of the political and religious history of the empires
+surrounding Palestine has run parallel with the application of critical
+methods to the Jewish scriptures. To read Ewald's _History of the People
+of Israel_, which was regarded as dangerous by pious folk in the middle
+of last century, is to realize the progress of Semitic studies. The
+great revolution in our conception of the Old Testament which rendered
+Ewald out of date was accomplished by Wellhausen's _Prolegomena to the
+History of Israel_. That the arrangement of the Canon was utterly
+misleading, that the Prophets were earlier than the priestly code and
+that the Psalms for the most part were later than both, was proclaimed
+in the writings and lectures of Vatke and Graf, Kuenen and Reuss; but it
+was not till their discoveries were confirmed and elaborated by
+Wellhausen that they won their way, and it was generally recognized that
+their reconstruction alone rendered the religious development of the
+Jews intelligible. This outline was shortly after filled in by Stade in
+the first critical history of Israel; but his emphasis on the falsity of
+tradition was overdone, and subsequent critics, while accepting the late
+redaction of the law, have argued that parts of it are far older, in
+substance if not in form, than Wellhausen and his disciple were prepared
+to allow.
+
+The history of the Jews owes much less to archaeological research on the
+arena of their historic life than Egypt or Mesopotamia. No splendid
+buildings or sculptures have been brought to light, and the inscriptions
+are few. But British, American, and German excavators have flashed light
+far back into the third millennium, and a partial excavation of
+Jerusalem has revealed a network of prehistoric tunnels and aqueducts.
+The historic life of Gezer has been minutely revealed by Macalister,
+with the strata of seven cities reaching back to the neolithic age. The
+most piquant result of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the
+Philistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris
+of two thousand years. Far more light, however, has been thrown on the
+religious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond their
+borders. The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of
+the oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished
+into thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered
+to which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her
+religion. The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues
+to be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its
+recognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and
+to provide a new background for the religious history of the world. The
+relation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other
+branches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith,
+and has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James
+Frazer on the _Folklore of the Old Testament_.
+
+The history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very
+different aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote,
+Thirlwall, and even Curtius. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Tiryns,
+and Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable
+impetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost
+pathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to
+light, and much of his work has had to be done again by Dörpfeld.
+Despite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before
+Solon remains very dark. Barely second in importance to the discoveries
+of Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of
+Athens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and
+has been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of
+living Hellenists. With the growing mass of new literary material,
+inscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery
+of innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor
+and Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece have been made.
+Professor Bury's narrative, at once scientific and popular, has
+summarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the
+most authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of
+Eduard Meyer's vast survey of antiquity. 'For the great tasks of
+history', he writes, 'salvation is only to be found when it becomes
+conscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern
+times. Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean
+peoples can its real nature be seized.' This colossal task, which proved
+beyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin
+Professor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it
+single-handed. The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by
+Grote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen,
+dwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence
+through the conquests of Alexander.
+
+Greek culture has received no less attention than Greek politics. The
+Homeric problem continues to exert an irresistible attraction. Every
+expert from Wilamowitz to Gilbert Murray and Walter Leaf adds to our
+comprehension of the epic; but no positive results have been
+established, and Holm uttered the gloomy prophecy that we shall never
+know whether Homer existed, who he was, or what he wrote. On the other
+hand we have gained a deeper insight into the early mind and soul of
+Greece, thanks in large measure to a group of English scholars with Jane
+Harrison at their head. Rohde's _Psyche_, the most illuminating treatise
+on any branch of Greek religion, has traced the conception of
+immortality through the ages. The later editions of Zeller's _Philosophy
+of the Greeks_, first published in 1851, kept pace with the progress of
+scholarship, and remains one of the glories of German scholarship. The
+more recent work of the Austrian Gomperz has won almost equal
+popularity, without placing its predecessor on the shelf. In the realm
+of literature the most interesting event has been the recovery of the
+poems of Bacchylides and Herondas, fragments of Sappho and Pindar,
+Euripides and Sophocles and Menander; and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which
+have already produced undreamed-of treasures, may well have in store for
+us further glad surprises. The attempt to assess the influence of
+economic factors, courageously undertaken by Böckh and somewhat
+neglected after his death, has in recent years been renewed, with the
+fruitful results familiar to us in Zimmern's realistic picture of Athens
+in the fifth century.
+
+The history of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the
+activity of a single man. The most personal and popular of Mommsen's
+works, the _Roman History till the death of Caesar_, the greatest effort
+of his genius though not of his scholarship, was published as far back
+as 1854, and carried his name all over the world. He next turned to
+special departments of research, pouring forth in rapid succession his
+treatises on Chronology, Coinage, the Digest, and above all the
+_Staatsrecht_, the largest and in his opinion the most important of his
+works, and perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise in historical
+literature. Meanwhile the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, which he
+edited for the Berlin Academy, was the main occupation and the most
+enduring monument of his life. He had devoted himself to Latin epigraphy
+and had edited the Sammite and Neapolitan inscriptions before the
+publication of the Roman History. The first instalment of the Corpus
+appeared in 1863, and the great scholar lived to hail the appearance of
+nearly twenty volumes, half of them edited by himself. The Inscriptions
+rendered possible a history of the Empire, and the whole world hoped
+that the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey
+of the provinces. The closing years of his life were devoted to a
+gigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes,
+Cassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus
+enlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the
+Middle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no
+immaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The
+imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating
+with a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of
+a classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since
+Scaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was
+like modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of
+Augustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.
+
+Mommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration
+has been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His
+successors naturally confine themselves to some special province or
+period. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history
+of the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century.
+Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, though frowned on by
+scholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the
+Republic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social
+crises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were
+due to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth,
+expenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in
+different sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as
+Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille
+Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs
+on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but
+the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of
+the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made
+by Fustel de Coulanges in _La Cité Antique_, which offered a complete
+interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious
+but more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by
+Warde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively
+analysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedländer,
+Boissier, and Dill. Meanwhile archaeology contributes a steady stream of
+new material. Boni's excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have
+produced sensational results. The unveiling of Pompeii moves slowly
+forward, and that of Ostia, the port of Rome, has begun. The
+resurrection of Herculaneum should be witnessed by the next generation
+if not by our own.
+
+A more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman
+Empire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church. In the middle
+decades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an
+historical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves
+whether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring
+than his writings. Weiszäcker, his successor at Tübingen, in his
+_Apostolic Age_, described with consummate scholarship and passionless
+serenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities.
+The necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity
+has grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as
+Schürer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into
+which Christ was born. The constitution of the primitive Church, too
+long hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied
+with welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch. But no man, alive or
+dead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack. His History of Dogma,
+his vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of
+the Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine, are
+inseparable companions of the student who means business. The treasures
+of the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the
+publication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome. The history of the
+early Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has
+been enriched by Ramsay's explorations in Asia Minor. While the best
+work naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are
+occasionally attempted by scholars of the first class. Renan's sparkling
+volumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be
+read with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather
+to literature than to science. If we desire a readable summary of the
+scholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the
+Catholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor
+Gwatkin.
+
+Imperial Rome and the Christian Church meet and blend in the Byzantine
+Empire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon 'a tedious and
+uniform tale of weakness and misery'. Its services to civilization and
+the greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by
+Finlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most
+considerable work of English historical literature since the _Decline
+and Fall_. In the half-century that has elapsed since its completion,
+the exploration of a thousand years has gone busily forward. The lead
+was taken in France by Rambaud, Schlumberger, and Diehl, the latter of
+whom was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as first occupant
+of the Chair created in Paris in 1899. Greater than any of the three was
+Krumbacher, the prince of German Byzantinists, for whom a Chair was
+founded at Munich in 1892, and whose encyclopaedic survey of Byzantine
+literature is beyond comparison the most important single work in this
+field of historical study. England is worthily represented by Professor
+Bury, whose narrative of the Empire has already reached the ninth
+century.
+
+Byzantium has emerged from the scholarship of two generations no longer
+decadent and inert but the mother of great statesmen and soldiers, the
+home of culture while Central and Western Europe was plunged in
+darkness, the rampart of Christian Europe for a thousand years against
+the Arab and Turk, the educator of the Slavonic races. Freeman truly
+remarked that Constantinople was for ages the seat of the only regular
+and systematic Government in the world. Its administrative machine was
+the most elaborate yet invented by man, and the Court was to mediaeval
+Europe what Versailles was to the rulers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. It was indeed a bureaucratic despotism in which
+liberty was unknown, and, except in art, its spirit was imitative; but
+to preserve Greek culture during the barbarism of the Middle Ages and to
+defend it against the repeated assaults of Islam was to deserve well of
+civilization.
+
+While the Byzantine Empire carried over important elements from the
+classical world, Western and Central Europe passed under the dominion of
+ideas which were as foreign to those of Greece and Rome as they are to
+the conceptions of to-day. We have outgrown the blind contempt of the
+eighteenth century and the gushing enthusiasm of the Romantic Movement;
+but it is still a difficult task to form a just estimate of the
+character of the thousand years that began with Augustine and ended with
+Macchiavelli. It is true that our materials grow from year to year; that
+the criticism of original authorities as taught in the École des Chartes
+has become something like an exact science; that thanks to Lord Bryce
+the Holy Roman Empire has become intelligible; that the structure and
+function of institutions have been patiently analysed by Waitz and
+Stubbs, Fustel de Coulanges and Vinogradoff, Maitland and Gierke; that
+literature and art, scholasticism and the Universities, have found their
+chroniclers and interpreters; that every ruler and every State, every
+treaty and every council, may be studied in monographs innumerable. But
+the Middle Ages were above all the reign of the Catholic Church; and we
+are still far from agreement as to the merits and influence of that
+venerable institution which, be it human or divine, occupies a unique
+place in the story of civilization.
+
+In the middle decades of last century the history of the mediaeval
+Church was related from very different standpoints in the widely-read
+works of Neander and Milman; but it was only with the opening of the
+Vatican archives by Pope Leo XIII in 1881 that it became possible to set
+forth the whole story of the Papacy and to understand the working of the
+machinery of Catholicism. So vast is the accumulation of official acts
+and documents, and such technical training is required for the task,
+that we shall have to wait many years till the material is surveyed in
+its entirety and its results made available for the use of the
+historian. Some idea of the value of the Registers may be gained from
+the Master of Balliol's pregnant lectures on Church and State in the
+Middle Ages, based on the 8,000 documents of the eleven years of the
+rule of Innocent IV in the middle of the thirteenth century. The study
+of these documents, he tells us, stirred him to admiration of the
+organization of the Papacy, and convinced him of its enormous
+superiority over its secular contemporaries as a centre not merely of
+religion but of law and government; but he adds that he derived an
+equally profound impression of the abuses which ate into the heart of
+the system, of the growing bitterness which it inspired, and of the
+devastating effects of the passion to erect a powerful principality in
+the heart of Italy.
+
+No Protestant historian is tempted to glorify the record of the Papacy
+in the last two centuries before the Reformation; but it is generally
+agreed that in the earlier half of the Middle Ages the example and
+influence of the Church were a bright light shining in a dark world.
+This notion has been recently challenged by Mr. Coulton, who, angered by
+the special pleading of Cardinal Gasquet and other professional
+apologists, hotly denounces the exaltation of the Ages of Faith. The
+Middle Ages, he complains, are the one domain of history into which, in
+England at any rate, the scientific spirit has not yet penetrated.
+Taking as his text the autobiography of the Franciscan Fra Salimbene,
+the most precious authority for the ordinary life of Catholic folk at
+the high-water mark of the Middle Ages, he draws a sombre picture of
+manners and morals and maintains that hideous vices existed in all the
+Orders long before the thirteenth century. 'Imagination', he cries,
+'staggers at the moral gulf that yawns between that age and ours.' His
+condemnation of the life and influence of the Church re-echoes in
+somewhat shrill tones the verdict of Henry Charles Lea, whose massive
+treatise on the Inquisition was rightly described by Lord Acton as the
+most important contribution of the New World to the religious history of
+the old, and whose volumes on Sacerdotal Celibacy constitute a
+formidable indictment of mediaeval Catholicism.
+
+Next to the origins of Christianity the most controversial of the larger
+problems of history is the Reformation; and here Protestants of all
+schools are ranged in a solid phalanx against Catholics. That the Church
+was in need of reform is agreed by both sides; but the Catholic contends
+that the evils to be remedied have been fantastically exaggerated, that
+there was no need for a revolt, and that the revolution inaugurated by
+Luther left Germany far worse than it found her. Realizing that the
+Protestant view most authoritatively presented in Ranke's classical
+work on the Reformation held the field, Janssen compiled a cultural
+history of the German people from the end of the Middle Ages to the
+outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Based throughout on original sources,
+and illustrating his thesis from every angle, his eight massive volumes
+were hailed with gratitude and enthusiasm by Catholics all over the
+world. No Catholic historical work of the nineteenth century, and
+certainly no attack on the Reformation since Bossuet's _Variations of
+Protestantism_, obtained such resounding success or led to so much
+controversy.
+
+Janssen's object was to show that the fifteenth century was not a period
+of moral or intellectual decrepitude, with a few 'Reformers before the
+Reformation' crying like voices in the wilderness, but an era of healthy
+activity and abounding promise. He describes the flourishing state of
+religious and secular education, the vitality of art, the comfort of the
+peasantry, and the prosperity of the towns. On reaching the sixteenth
+century, he denounces the paganism of the Humanists and paints a
+terrible picture of the material and moral chaos into which Germany was
+plunged by the Lutheran revolt. The later volumes are devoted to the era
+of the Counter-Revolution and present a canvas of unrelieved gloom,
+immorality and drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and violence. Thus
+the story which opened with the bright colours of the fifteenth century
+closes in deep shadows, and the moral is drawn that Germany was ruined
+not by the Thirty Years War but by the Reformation.
+
+Protestant historians fell upon the audacious iconoclast with fierce
+cries of anger, and had no difficulty in exposing his uncritical use of
+authorities, his habit of generalizing from isolated particulars, and
+his suppression of facts damaging to his own side. But though it was a
+dexterous polemic, not a work of disinterested science, Janssen's book
+has made it impossible for any self-respecting Protestant to write on
+the Reformation without knowing and weighing the Catholic side. Of
+similar tendency though of far higher value is the monumental work in
+which Pastor is narrating the story of the Renaissance and
+sixteenth-century Popes from the Vatican archives, which neither Ranke
+nor Creighton had been able to employ. No really objective picture of
+the Reformation can be painted by Catholic or Protestant; but a good
+deal of firm ground has been won, and the writings of Kawerau, the
+greatest of Lutheran scholars, inspire us with a confidence that no
+writings of the last generation deserved.
+
+Though Ranke's chief works had been published before the period to which
+this lecture is confined, his influence can be traced in almost every
+writer on modern history during the last half-century. His greatest
+service to scholarship was to divorce the study of the past from the
+passions of the present, and, to quote the watchword of his first book,
+to relate what actually occurred. A second was to establish the
+necessity of founding historical construction on strictly contemporary
+authorities. When he began to write in 1824 historians of high repute
+believed memoirs and chronicles to be trustworthy guides. When he laid
+down his pen in 1886 every scholar with a reputation to make had learned
+to content himself with nothing less than the papers and correspondence
+of the actors themselves and those in immediate contact with the events
+they describe. A third service was to found the science of evidence by
+the analysis of authorities, contemporary or otherwise, in the light of
+the author's temperament, affiliations, and opportunity of knowledge,
+and by comparison with the testimony of other writers. There can be no
+better preparation for the perils and responsibilities of authorship
+than to study the critical analyses of Guicciardini and Sarpi,
+Clarendon, Saint-Simon, and many another, scattered through the sixty
+volumes of the master. And finally he taught by precept and practice the
+necessity of exploring the relations of States to one another and of
+measuring the interaction of foreign and domestic policy.
+
+These sound principles have been applied by the scholars of all
+countries who have jointly built up the history of the last four
+centuries. We may study the Tudors under the guidance of Pollard, the
+Stuarts under Gardiner and Firth, the Hanoverians under Lecky, without
+fear that we are being misled or that essential facts are being withheld
+from our notice. We continue to admire the literary brilliance of
+Macaulay and Carlyle, Motley and Froude; but we are instinctively aware
+that their partisanship is out of date. The same cooling process has
+taken place in France, where the passions and tempers of Thiers and
+Michelet have tended to yield place to the calm lucidity of which Mignet
+and Guizot were the earliest masters. There is, it must be confessed, a
+good deal of the old Adam in Taine's elaborate study of Jacobinism, in
+Masson's innumerable volumes on Napoleon, and even in Aulard's priceless
+contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution; but such works
+as Lavisse's full-length portrait of Louis XIV, Ségur's volumes on
+Turgot and Necker, Sorel's massive treatise on Europe and the
+Revolution, and Vandal's incomparable presentation of the Consulate rank
+as high in scholarship as in literature.
+
+The unification of Germany after fierce struggles within and without
+naturally deflected historical scholarship from the path marked out by
+Ranke, who had grown to manhood in the era of political stagnation
+following the downfall of Napoleon. The master's Olympian serenity was
+deplored by the group of hot-blooded scholars who are collectively
+known as the Prussian School, and who were firmly convinced that the
+principal duty of historians was to supply guidance and encouragement to
+their fellow-countrymen in the national and international problems of
+the time. In his gigantic work on the History of Prussian Foreign
+Policy, Droysen, the eldest of the Triumvirate, calls four centuries to
+witness that the Hohenzollerns alone, from their unswerving fidelity to
+German interests as a whole, were fitted to restore the Empire. He
+worked exclusively from Prussian archives, and history seen exclusively
+through Prussian spectacles was bound to be one-sided. No student of
+European history would contest the value of his researches; but his
+interpretation of Prussian policy in terms of German nationalism was at
+once recognized as a fundamental error, and has long been abandoned. The
+second member of the group, Sybel, himself one of the three favourite
+pupils of Ranke, revolted in middle life, and in his two great treatises
+on the era of the French Revolution and the foundation of the German
+Empire championed the policy of the Hohenzollerns and delivered slashing
+attacks on France and Austria, their rivals and antagonists.
+
+The last and greatest of the triumvirate, Treitschke, the Bismarck of
+the Chair, devoted his life to a history of Germany in the nineteenth
+century which occupies the same unique place in the affections of German
+readers as Macaulay's unfinished masterpiece enjoys throughout the
+English-speaking world. Unlike the works of Droysen and Sybel, the
+_German History_ was far more than a political narrative, and presented
+an encyclopaedic picture of national development. His theme was the
+conflict of the forces which were promoting and opposing the
+transformation of his country into a powerful Empire, and he judges men
+and states by the measure in which they promoted or obstructed that
+purpose. On the one side stands Prussia, feeling her way to the
+realization of her historic task, on the other the middle and smaller
+states, aided and abetted by the arch-enemy Austria and deeply infected
+with the doctrinaire liberalism of France. Treitschke's stage is a
+battlefield, with the historian looking down and encouraging his friends
+with loud cries of applause. Such methods could not survive the
+realization of the aim which they had done so much to assist, and with
+Treitschke's death in 1896 the Prussian School disappeared. Its members
+were the political schoolmasters of Germany at a time of uncertainty and
+discouragement, and they braced their countrymen to the efforts which
+culminated in the creation of a mighty Empire. If the purpose of history
+is to stir a nation to action, Droysen, Sybel, and Treitschke are among
+the greatest masters of the craft. If its supreme aim is to discover
+truth and to interpret the movement of humanity, they have no claim to a
+place in the first class. The stream, temporarily deflected by their
+powerful influence, began to return to the channel which Ranke had
+marked out for it. Such works as Moriz Ritter's narrative of the
+Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Koser's biography of
+Frederick the Great, Max Lehmann's biographies of Scharnhorst and Stein,
+and Erich Marcks' studies of Bismarck and his master are as notable for
+their judgement as for their erudition.
+
+The cooling process noted in the Old World has also occurred in the New,
+and America of the twentieth century smiles at Bancroft's complacent
+idealization of the Puritan colonies. Even the slavery struggle, the
+ashes of which are scarcely yet cold, has found in James Ford Rhodes a
+historian who can do justice to Jefferson Davis and Lee no less than to
+Lincoln and Grant. But no American scholar compares in world-wide
+influence with Mahan, whose study of Sea-Power in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, published in 1889, not only founded a school of
+naval history but was inwardly digested by distinguished pupils in both
+hemispheres, among them the Emperor William II and Theodore Roosevelt.
+The Admiral's writings owe their importance not to research, for few new
+facts are brought to light, but to the new angle from which familiar
+events are envisaged. Occasionally, perhaps, the element of sea-power in
+the determination of a particular result is over-emphasized at the
+expense of other factors; but he was the first to seize the wider
+bearings of naval history and to make the general reader aware of its
+momentous significance.
+
+The scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include
+every aspect of the life of humanity. No one would now dare to maintain
+with my old master Seeley that history was the biography of States or
+with Freeman that it was merely past politics. The growth of nations,
+the achievements of men of action, the rise and fall of parties remain
+among the most engrossing themes of the historian; but he now casts his
+net wider and embraces the whole opulent record of civilization. The
+influence of nature, the pressure of economic factors, the origin and
+transformation of ideas, the contribution of science and art, religion
+and philosophy, literature and law, the material conditions of life, the
+fortunes of the masses--such problems now claim his attention in no less
+degree. He must see life steadily and see it whole. We must master such
+revealing works as Lecky's histories of Rationalism and Morals,
+Burckhardt's and Symonds' interpretations of the Italian Renaissance,
+Sainte-Beuve's full-length portrait of the Jansenists, Morley's studies
+of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists, Dean Church's sketch of
+the Oxford Movement, and Merz's survey of European Thought in the
+nineteenth century, if we are to understand the throbbing life of the
+human spirit. We must measure the operation of economic factors and
+forces and profit by the faithful labours of Schmoller and Thorold
+Rogers, Cunningham and Kovalevsky, the Webbs and the Hammonds, if we are
+to visualize the life of the unnumbered and the unknown who have done
+the routine work of the world.
+
+The fifty years roughly sketched in this lecture witnessed an immense
+and almost immeasurable advance in historical studies. The technique
+needed to turn raw materials into the finished article kept pace with
+the supply, and men learned to write the history of their own country,
+their own party, and their own beliefs, as impartially as that of other
+lands and other creeds. But the Great War has ravaged the placid
+pastures of scholarship no less than the fields of France and Belgium.
+Too many historians in every belligerent country have lost their heads
+and degenerated into shrieking partisans. International co-operation in
+the pursuit of truth, which is the condition of progress in history no
+less than in science, has been rudely shattered by the clash of arms.
+With all but the calmest minds, national self-consciousness and national
+self-righteousness have rendered frankness in dealing with the record of
+our late allies and fairness in dealing with our late enemies difficult
+if not impossible. Many years will elapse before the European atmosphere
+regains the tranquillity in which alone the disinterested pursuit of
+truth can nourish. Meanwhile it is a source of legitimate satisfaction
+that while the world was rocking to its foundations two English
+historians, Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr. William Harbutt Dawson, were
+narrating the development of Germany in the nineteenth century with a
+steadiness of pulse unsurpassed in the piping times of peace. The
+historian is a man of flesh and blood and may love his country as
+ardently as other men; but, if he is to be worthy of his high calling,
+he must trample passion and prejudice under his feet and walk humbly and
+reverently in the temple of the Goddess of Truth.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Gooch, _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_ (Longmans).
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+POLITICAL THEORY
+
+A.D. LINDSAY
+
+
+Political Philosophy or the philosophical theory of the State has closer
+relations with history than any other branch of philosophical inquiry.
+It is indeed distinguished from history in that it can disregard the
+success or failure, the historical development of this or that state.
+For it is concerned not with historical happenings but with ideals, not
+with the varying extent to which different states have approximated or
+fallen short of their purpose, but with that purpose itself, not, in
+short, with states but with _the_ State. Yet this need not involve that
+the ideal, _the_ State, is always and everywhere the same. Ideals are
+born of historical circumstances and fashioned to meet historical
+problems, and the would-be timeless ideals which political philosophers
+have put before us have always borne clear marks of the country and time
+of their origin. The ideal which men have set themselves in political
+organization has varied from time to time. That such variation is
+inevitable will be clear if we ask ourselves what we can possibly mean
+by an ideal state. That states fall short of their ideal because of the
+imperfections of their citizens is clear enough. All political life
+demands a certain standard of moral behaviour, of capacity to work for a
+common good, and an understanding of the results of our own and other
+people's actions. Were human selfishness completely overcome, the state
+would still be necessary to correct individual shortsightedness. The
+policeman, exempt from the cares of apprehending criminals, would still
+be needed to control traffic. But imagine, not that all citizens
+attained a certain standard of moral and intellectual behaviour, as the
+ideal demands, but that they were all perfectly good and perfectly wise,
+should we need any kind of government at all? Is not the supposition of
+perfection so far removed from any state of affairs we can really think
+of or plan for, that it cannot enter into our reckoning, ideal or
+practical? Every ideal takes certain facts of human life for granted
+whilst it tries to improve others. All ideal states, Plato's as well as
+others, assume certain facts about human nature and human society. These
+facts may and do vary. The Greek city state assumed that a state must be
+small, if it was to have the intensive life they demanded. The Roman
+Empire was a denial of the anarchy to which the Greek ideal had led, but
+it lost in intensity what it gained in extent. All political ideals
+assume a certain sociological background on which the state is based and
+from which spring the problems which the state is intended to solve. As
+this sociological background varies from time to time, _the_ State, the
+purpose which men set before themselves in political organization, will
+vary also. The Greek city state and the mediaeval state were not
+different approximations to the same ideal. They were the expressions of
+different ideals. They rested on different assumptions, e.g. as to the
+place of authority in society. With the disappearance at the Reformation
+of one of the great assumptions on which the mediaeval state had been
+based, a new theory of the state was inevitable. The national state of
+the seventeenth century was something new in history, and Hobbes differs
+from Aristotle, not because Hobbes is perverse and Aristotle right,
+though Hobbes often is perverse, but because the political problems
+which Hobbes and Aristotle had to face were not the same.
+
+Two great historical facts at the end of the eighteenth century, the
+French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, profoundly modified the
+basis of political organization. The modern state in consequence differs
+in many important respects from any that have preceded it. It does not
+rest on the common acceptance of authority, either religious, as did the
+mediaeval state, or personal, as did the seventeenth-century state.
+Unlike the Greek city state, it is large. Its administration is
+concerned with millions who cannot be in personal relations to one
+another, or share the same intensive life.
+
+With the nineteenth century, then, a new chapter in the development of
+political theory begins as the peculiar problems of the modern state
+develop. Professor Dicey, in his _Law and Opinion in England_, has
+divided the century into two periods of political thought--Individualism
+and Collectivism--one marking the decrease, the other the increase of
+the power and authority of the state. When our period begins, the day of
+individualism was passing. Ever since the Reformation it had, in spite
+of Burke, dominated political theory. Two forces had given it
+strength--one idealistic, one scientific. It represented the revolt of
+the individual conscience against the claims of authority, and as such
+was a theory which attempted to limit the power of government over the
+individual, whether by an appeal to natural rights in Locke and Tom
+Paine, or to the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the
+Utilitarians, or to the super-eminent value of individual liberty as set
+forth in John Stuart Mill's noble panegyric. The French Revolution gave
+a notable impetus to this side of individualism, with its passionate
+assertion of the principle that political institutions exist for man,
+not man for political institutions, and that all government must be
+tested by the life which it enables each and every one of its citizens
+to live. Individualism in this sense is concerned with the discovery of
+principles by which the power of government over the lives of its
+members may be limited. It is not necessarily a theory of the nature of
+society. Hobbes, however, was an individualist as well as Locke, and for
+Hobbes the individual was the scientific unit from which societies and
+states were built up--the starting-point for a scientific treatment of
+society. As the French Revolution gave a fresh impulse to idealistic
+individualism, the Industrial Revolution reanimated the scientific, for
+it displayed the economic man, Hobbes's hero, come to life and a
+respectable member of society. With him came the growth of political
+economy, apparently the first really scientific study of man. From
+Political Economy Darwin borrowed the conception of the struggle for
+existence and the survival of the fittest, and from the new biology the
+doctrine of Evolution through individual competition returned to
+reinforce with the prestige of the new science the economists'
+conception of society.
+
+For the first half of the nineteenth century all the forces inspiring
+individualism seemed to work together, for economics and biology
+breathed a benevolent optimism which promised that if the scientific
+forces of individualism were left to work unchecked by state
+restriction, they would of themselves produce that individual liberty
+and free development which idealistic individualism desired.
+
+The development of the industrial revolution, however, soon made
+economic optimism impossible, and with its decay idealistic and
+scientific individualism parted company. The former retained its concern
+for individual liberty but came to see that its ideal was as much
+threatened by economic dependence as by state control, that the choice
+for most members of society was not one between state interference and
+no interference at all, but between the state controlling or not
+controlling the power of interference possessed by the economically
+superior members of society. On such principles Henry Sidgwick
+justified an extensive system of state control of industry, and for such
+reason the strongest supporters of the rights of the individual have
+been found among Socialists.
+
+Scientific individualism, which found its unit in the economic man and
+sought to absorb in economics both ethics and politics, was not in
+essence affected by the discrediting of economic optimism. It painted
+the struggle between individuals in gloomy instead of in attractive
+colours, its 'scientific' prepossessions inclined it to a determinism
+which led easily to the economic theory of history and even, by a
+curious conversion of opposites, to the 'scientific socialism' of Karl
+Marx. In its essence it is a denial of the real existence of politics.
+For it is a theory of society which denies the possibility of a will for
+the common good and therefore the possibility of political ideals.
+
+It was this powerful and malignant theory which was attacked and
+answered by the modern idealist school represented by Green, Wallace,
+and Ritchie, and, in the present day, by Dr. Bosanquet. These writers
+gave us a theory of the state based on the importance and reality of
+social purpose. They went back to the theory of the Greek city state
+expounded by Plato and Aristotle, finding modern reinforcement in the
+teaching of Rousseau and more especially of Hegel. Their destructive
+criticism of 'scientific' individualism was reinforced by the teaching
+of anthropology and of historical jurisprudence, which emphasized the
+part played in early forms of society by social solidarity and showed
+the inability of individualism to account for the development of
+society. Their destructive criticism was, however, the least part of
+their achievement. They exhibited convincingly the state as the product
+of will and purpose, based on man's moral nature and being in turn the
+form in which that moral nature expresses itself. In a notable phrase of
+Dr. Bosanquet's, a phrase to which he has given constant detailed
+amplification, 'institutions are ethical ideas'; moral purpose may seem
+to shine dimly enough in many actual institutions, but it is the only
+light which shines in them at all, and only in that light can their
+meaning and reality be understood.
+
+The main principles of this idealistic school may be safely said to have
+by this time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years
+Social Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the
+contemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has
+given precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which
+strengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that
+economic relations are possible only within the framework of a society
+which has its root in moral and political purpose, although within that
+framework they may be theoretically isolated and studied by themselves.
+Sociology, after many false starts, inspired by the mistaken belief that
+a scientific treatment of society should interpret higher forms in the
+light of lower, has now found it possible to study the manifold variety
+of institutional and social life on the basis provided by idealistic
+philosophy.
+
+As a theory of society, in short, this philosophy holds the field. It
+has been criticized of late years as a theory of the state, and as these
+criticisms show both where the idealistic theory was in some respects
+defective and also where the chief problems for political philosophy in
+the future are to be found, I shall devote the greater part of my
+lecture to these considerations.
+
+The idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the
+Greek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state
+they assumed an essential identity between the Greek city state and the
+modern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the
+most self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have
+therefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all
+society, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far,
+however, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state
+the definite political or governmental organization should play the same
+function as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been
+mistaken.
+
+The Greek city state failed conspicuously to solve the problem of
+inter-state relations, and its philosophers, instead of recognizing the
+failure and trying to remedy it, made their ideal state even more
+self-centred and autonomous than the existing states around them. Modern
+Idealism, just because it glorifies the state as the necessary upholder
+of moral relations, has often found it hard to regard the state as in
+its turn a member of a moral world.
+
+Again, the Greek city state, just because it was small, could take up
+into itself all the various social activities of its members. The state,
+in the sense of the Community in its political organization, directed
+and inspired Society, and the distinction between society and the state
+was not of great importance. In the modern world the boundaries of
+political organization are not nearly as definite boundaries in society
+as are the boundaries of the Greek city state. There are all manner of
+associations whose members are of different states and whose purposes
+are but to a small degree inspired or controlled by political
+organizations. Modern states are not all or completely nation states,
+and the nation is not as pervading and dominating an entity as was the
+Greek _polis_. This is not to say that the non-political associations
+could do without the state, as some recent writers have contended.
+Churches, e.g., could not exist were there not law and government. Yet
+it is impossible to maintain that in any real sense they are upheld by
+the state. They clearly get their inspiration from other sources. The
+difficulty is not evaded if we go behind both political and
+non-political organization to the community in which both exist and
+which upholds them both. For what in this reference is 'the community'?
+In regard to the political association it is the special solidarity of
+people living in a certain area; in regard to the non-political
+organization it is the solidarity of a section of the world-wide
+society, marked off from the rest on a non-territorial basis. The
+community in the two cases is not the same. Hence there arises in the
+modern state, as there arose in the mediaeval, a conflict of loyalties
+between the state and non-political associations. If we divide the world
+into states whose lines of division follow the divisions of the
+organization of force, we are faced with a host of problems concerning
+the proper place in society of these force-bearing organizations, and
+their relation to other associations.
+
+In considering both sets of problems, international and internal, we may
+either begin with the division of the world into states, each of which
+will be an approximation of _the_ State which we are studying, or we may
+regard the whole world as in some sort one society, covered with a
+network of overlapping associations of all kinds. On the former view the
+world is thought of as consisting of a number of independent
+communities, each shaping and controlling the various forms of social
+life within its own borders, upholding their moral world, and each being
+as a whole single entity a member of the community of states. On the
+latter we start with the solidarity and will to co-operate which
+pervades in all manner of degrees the whole world society, and regard
+the organization of force which marks the state as being the mark of a
+settled and determined form of that will to co-operate which is
+characteristic of all forms of human association. How dominant and
+determinant over other forms of association is that special form which
+controls organized force--that is the problem before us. We are
+concerned in technical language with the problem of sovereignty.
+
+Let us consider first the problem of international relations. The
+doctrine of sovereignty, formulated in the seventeenth century and
+crystallized by Austin at the beginning of the nineteenth, made
+sovereignty the hallmark of the state. The person or persons, to whom
+the bulk of a given society render habitual obedience, either do or do
+not render habitual obedience in turn to some other person or persons.
+If they do not, the society constitutes a sovereign state; if they do,
+it is only part of a sovereign state. The world therefore was regarded
+as containing a number of sovereign independent states. As sovereignty
+and law necessarily went hand in hand, there could be no law between
+sovereign states. There could only be world-wide law if there were one
+world-wide state. So long as there are more states than one, there are
+communities between whom there is no law. The doctrine of sovereignty
+was in its inception individualist, but in so far as concerns the
+implications, though not the basis of sovereignty, it was taken over by
+Hegel and by the English idealist school with the exception of T.H.
+Green. Idealism, indeed, always insisted that will, not force, was the
+basis of the state, but whereas in Green the state is constituted by the
+moral willing of individuals for a general good, in Hegel and in
+Bosanquet the conflicting willings of individuals are reconciled by
+their being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state. With the
+former therefore the morality of individuals is the primary fact, the
+existence of the state the secondary; with the latter on the whole the
+existence of the state is the primary moral fact, the moral willing of
+individuals secondary. Just because the wills of individuals are
+reconciled, not by each recognizing certain abstract principles of duty,
+but by being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state, where
+there is no such supra-personal will there is no reconciliation of
+conflicting wills and no morality beyond and outside the boundaries of
+communities. Hence arises a conception of the state which fits into the
+absolutist doctrine of sovereignty which we have described.
+
+The first thing to be said about this doctrine of the independent
+sovereign state is that political facts have obviously outrun it. It was
+derived from a study of the unitary state and will hardly fit any
+federal state. It is manifestly absurd when applied to the British
+Empire. If we disregard, as we must, the superficial legal facts and
+look at the real nature of the British Empire, we must admit that the
+Dominions are neither separate sovereign states nor parts of one
+sovereign state, and that the unity of the Empire is a unity of will--a
+willingness to co-operate which has not yet clothed itself in legal
+forms, and which is not, for geographical and other reasons, as intense
+as that will to co-operate which must be at the basis of a unitary
+sovereign state. This must suggest to us that the willingness to
+co-operate admits of degrees, and the relations of communities to one
+another to have stability must reflect these degrees. The importance of
+these considerations is obvious if we think of the problems with which
+we are confronted at the present moment, when we are attempting to form
+an international organization. The problems which have confronted the
+Peace Conference have brought two things clearly to light. The first,
+that the nation state is far too simple a solution of modern
+difficulties. Self-determination will not carry us very far. There are
+many cases where the boundaries dictated by nationality on the one hand
+and by the need for common organization on the other do not coincide,
+and where the only solution is one which impairs sovereignty in the old
+sense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean
+anything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which
+join it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of
+the opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied
+impairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us
+will depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the
+be-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact
+to be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common
+purposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what
+was the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching
+that the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the
+matter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes
+we are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize
+and give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The
+political organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral
+facts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the
+Hegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the
+great achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents,
+and the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without
+making one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and
+absolute.
+
+Let us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state
+to associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders.
+Here again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist
+theory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern political
+theory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state
+was the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state
+that was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the
+hard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution
+made no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born
+democracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of
+religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had
+become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster
+within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or
+liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against
+the people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very
+different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian,
+organizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of
+the state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral
+institution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of
+morality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern
+idealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same
+principle of state absolutism over associations within the state. The
+principle was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a
+supra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.
+
+Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself
+more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the
+extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an
+increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities
+to the political organization. The ideal of the _Kulturstaat_ is now
+sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the
+part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the
+importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control
+of such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their
+associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their
+loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such
+cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.
+
+Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school,
+the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the
+doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person,
+may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from
+Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce
+for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that
+associations within the state may claim from the state a greater
+independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as
+it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their
+members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and
+complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall
+not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of
+the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and
+the state, be they personalities or not.
+
+Recent writers have mainly attempted to solve the problem by the
+principle of differentiation of function. This will certainly help us in
+considering the relation of church and state. For we can say that the
+task of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the
+good life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life,
+the fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The
+state will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the
+more delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and
+voluntary associations. This will not always provide a clean-cut and
+sufficient differentiation. The state must make up its own mind what is
+essential to the maintenance of the good life, the voluntary
+associations may hold that what the state ordains is flatly evil, as the
+state may hold that what a voluntary association teaches is subversive
+of all that makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true
+to the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has
+arisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old
+answer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early
+Christians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are
+farther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work
+that the other has to do.
+
+When we come to the problem raised by the present position and claims of
+Trade Unions, differentiation of functions is less satisfactory. Let us
+first look at the problem as it confronts us to-day. There was a time
+when the state was doubtful whether it should allow trade unions to
+exist. The Political Economy prevalent in the earlier part of the
+nineteenth century taught that trade unions were either unnecessary or
+useless--unnecessary in so far as economic relations, if unhindered by
+regulations from the state or from combinations, were regarded by
+economic optimism as themselves producing satisfactory social
+conditions; useless where Political Economy had substituted for optimism
+a belief in 'iron laws' whose results no combination or government
+regulation could affect. We now see that economic relations, just
+because they are possible between men who have no common purpose, need
+regulation inspired by a common purpose, and can be affected by such
+regulation. The growth of governmental interference with industry and of
+trade unionism are part of the same movement to control the working of
+economic relations with a view to maintaining the conditions of the good
+life. Trade unions have grown and are still steadily growing in size and
+importance. For a large portion of the nation loyalty to a trade union
+has become the most obvious form of collective loyalty or general will.
+This has been accompanied by an inevitable decrease in what we may call
+territorial loyalty. The result of the increase in means of
+communication and the growth of large towns has been that men's common
+interests as members of the same trade or as employees in the same
+workshop are coming to mean more and to constitute a greater common bond
+between men than their common interests as dwellers in the same
+locality. The trade union has often a more live and real general will
+than the Parliamentary constituency. Men's aspirations and ideals for
+their common life are being expressed more truly through trade union
+organizations than through Parliament. The growth in the prestige of
+organized labour is therefore coincident with a decay in the prestige of
+Parliament. Parliament, however, based on a local sub-division of the
+nation, is at present the only political organization of the nation.
+Trade union organization, as a political organization, has no
+constitutional authority, and all the general will which it represents
+can find no regular national expression. The result is that it either
+uses the territorial organization by getting men who really represent
+their Trade Union elected as members for Parliamentary local
+constituencies, to the detriment of both the territorial and the trade
+union organization, or acts as an _imperium in imperio_ by making
+demands on and issuing ultimata to Parliament. We seem to be approaching
+a crisis where the trade unions are asking whether they will allow the
+state to exist.
+
+This is obviously an unsatisfactory state of affairs. What is the cure
+for it? Differentiation of functions, as I have said, will not help us
+here. Some writers have maintained that vocational organization should
+concern itself with industrial or economic matters, the state, as we
+know it, with political matters. But can we possibly distinguish between
+industrial and political matters? If the aim of politics is to regulate
+men's actions in the light of men's common interests, the action of a
+trade union is in its essence political. Its differentiation from
+government is that it is concerned with the common interests of a few
+rather than the common interests of all. The difference between a trade
+union and a parliamentary constituency is that the sub-division of the
+general common interest which each represents rests on a different basis
+of division. The whole community might as well be organized by vocations
+as it now is by localities. There would seem to be certain advantages in
+both principles of differentiation, and one obvious practical solution
+of our present difficulties is that the supreme organ of government
+should in its two chambers represent the nation as organized on both
+principles, vocational and territorial.
+
+We seem to have come now to the discussion of political machinery, but,
+as in our discussion of the League of Nations, we can see that our
+attitude to such questions of machinery will vary as we regard the
+force-bearing organization with its national and territorial basis as
+the primary fact in the community, to be distinguished sharply from all
+other organizations, or regard the possession of organized force as the
+expression of men's settled and permanent will to maintain their common
+interests and safeguard the conditions of the good life. If we
+consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the
+basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization
+to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of
+common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall
+recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents
+only one form of such ramification.
+
+The view that political action is not confined to constitutional and
+governmental channels will not imply that we must give up the
+distinction between society and the state. For, on the one hand, trade
+unions have only arisen because of the special need for a _common_
+safeguarding of common interests produced by economic relations.
+Economic relations need to be controlled by, but cannot be superseded
+by, politics. On the other hand, as we have seen, the work of such
+associations as churches is different in kind from the work done by
+political organizations. The inculcation and development of moral ideals
+and the safeguarding of the conditions of the good life are
+complementary functions. Each is impossible without the other. But that
+does not make them identical, however closely interfused they may be.
+
+If, then, we accept the political theory of idealism as a theory of
+society, we must recognize in social life the distinction between
+ethical, economic, and political relations, and the task before
+Political Theory is to define the relations between politics and
+economic activities on the one side and ethical activities on the other,
+and that in a society which is not confined within the bounds of a
+single nation state. The intricate ramifications of vast economic
+undertakings and the common aspirations and ideals of humanity are but
+signs of a solidarity of mankind that political philosophy must
+recognize in all the problems it has to face.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_.
+
+Bosanquet, _Philosophical Theory of the State_.
+
+Barker, _Political Thought in England from Spencer to to-day_.
+
+Hobhouse, _The Metaphysical Theory of the State_.
+
+Figgis, _Churches in the Modern State_.
+
+Cole, _Labour in the Commonwealth_.
+
+Cole, _Self Government in Industry_.
+
+Delisle Burns, _The Morality of Nations_.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT[20]
+
+C.R. FAY
+
+
+I. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842
+
+1. Let us hover in fancy over the industrial scene in 1842, and
+photograph a stage of the economic conflict which the people of England
+were waging then with the forces which held them in thrall.
+
+Our photograph shows us great white lines, continuous or destined to
+become continuous; they are numerous in Durham and Lancashire, and the
+newest lead up to and away from London. These white lines are the new
+railroads of England, and the myriad ant-heaps along them are the
+navvies. In the year 1848 their numbers had risen to 188,000.[21]
+
+What is a navvy and how does he live? The navvy is an inland navigator
+who used to dig dykes and canals and now constructs railroads. In the
+forties the navvies are getting 5_s._ a day, and for tunnelling and
+blasting even more, but they are a rowdy crowd, and many of them are
+Irish. Said the Sheriff substitute of Renfrewshire in 1827: 'If an
+extensive drain, or canal, or road were to make that could be done by
+piecework, I should not feel in the least surprised to find that of 100
+men employed at it, 90 were Irish.'[22] In 1842 they are building
+railroads, and when they and the Highlanders are on the same job, it is
+necessary to segregate them in order to avoid a breach of the peace. The
+Irish sleep in huts and get higher pay than the natives who are lodged
+in the neighbouring cottages. The English navvy too keeps out the
+Irishman if he can. On a track in Northamptonshire, 'There is only one
+Irishman on the work, for they would not allow any other Irishman.'[23]
+
+In the South of England wages are lower and the navvies are less expert.
+In South Devon 'very few North countrymen; they are men who have worked
+down the line of the Great Western; that have followed it from one
+portion to another'.[24] The riff-raff from the villages cannot work
+stroke for stroke with the navvy. 'In tilting the waggons they could,
+but in the barrow runs it requires practice and experience.'[25]
+
+The high wages of the navvy are offset by the disadvantages of his
+employment. He is lucky if he gets the whole of his earnings in cash. In
+the Trent Valley they are paid once a month, 'but every fortnight they
+receive what is called "sub" that is subsistence money, and between the
+times of subsistence money and times of the monthly payment, they may
+have tickets by applying to the time-keeper, or whoever is the person to
+give them out, for goods; and those tickets are directed to a certain
+person; they cannot go to any other shop.'[26]
+
+The huts in which they live are little better than pigsties, and
+especially bad for regular navvies, who take their families about with
+them. In South Devon, 'man, woman, and child all sleep exposed to one
+another.'[27] On a section of the London and Birmingham Railway fever
+and small-pox broke out. 'I have seen', says an eye-witness, 'the men
+walking about with the small-pox upon them as thick as possible and no
+hospitals to go to.'[28] The country people, the witness continues, make
+money by letting rooms double. When one lot came out, another lot went
+in.
+
+Such is the navvy's life at work and at rest.
+
+
+2. If we can suppose that our camera is capable of distinguishing
+centres of industrial activity, then our picture will give us 'vital'
+patches, which stand out against a background of deadness. This deadness
+is rural England.
+
+What is the condition of the rural counties of Wessex? 'Everywhere the
+cottages are old, and frequently in a state of decay.' 'Ignorance of the
+commonest things, needle-work, cooking, and other matters of domestic
+economy, is ... nearly universally prevalent.'[29] To make both ends
+meet the wife has abandoned her now useless spinning-wheel and hired
+herself out to hoe turnips or pick stones.
+
+On the little farms inside the factory districts of Lancashire and
+Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable
+livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more
+acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by
+exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern
+peasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very
+intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in
+Northumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive
+to the advantages of knowledge, and eager to acquire it; it is a rare
+thing to find a grown-up labourer who cannot read and write and who is
+not capable of keeping his own accounts.'[30] The same sort of thing was
+said of Northumberland in 1869: 'If all England had been like
+Northumberland, this commission ought never to have been issued.' The
+Commissioner found that though the labourers worked harder and longer
+than in the South they were not working against starvation. They were
+enjoying a rough plenty, which included fresh milk. The rest of the
+family earned sufficient to leave the married woman in her home and no
+children under twelve were employed in field labour.[31]
+
+Here then in Northumberland there is a decent country life, but
+elsewhere there is an atmosphere of deadness; and it is this deadness of
+the countryside which explains the horror that new comers to industrial
+regions frequently expressed at the prospect of a forcible return to the
+parish of their origin.
+
+'I was told,' says a visitor to Lancashire in 1842, 'that there had been
+several instances of death by sheer starvation. On asking why
+application had not been made to the commissioner of the parish for
+relief, I was informed that they were persons from agricultural
+districts who, having committed an act of vagrancy, would be sent to
+their parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of
+some manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm
+labourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to
+me, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours
+in two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the
+story, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of
+prejudice or ignorance.'[32]
+
+
+3. Though there is little peasant life in England, there is life of a
+feverish desperate order for many who live in country places. These
+people are not farm workers nor yet are they craftsmen who supply the
+industrial needs of the village. They are feeders to the towns, engaged
+in what is misnamed 'domestic industry'. The life they lead is a sordid
+replica of an all too sordid original.
+
+Cobbett in a tirade against the Lords of the Loom[33] idealized the
+old-time union of agriculture and manufacture. The men should work in
+the fields, while the women and children stayed at home at their
+spinning wheels, making homespun for the family garments. But the
+picture was a vanishing one even in his day. Domestic industry does not
+mean this. The rural distress revealed in the Hand-loom Weavers
+Commission is the distress of specialized hand-workers, male and female,
+who are clinging desperately to the worst-paid branch of a dying trade.
+The worsted industry of East Anglia is perishing, defeated by the
+resources of Yorkshire, of which the power-loom is only one. The cloth
+trade in the Valley of Stroud (Gloucester) is a shadow of its former
+self. It has lost the power of recovering from a depression. The next
+period of slackness that comes along may bankrupt the business and rob a
+village of specialized hand-workers of their main employment.
+
+In Devonshire, the serge trade, which used to give employment to looms
+in almost every town and village, has become so unremunerative that it
+has passed into the hands of the wives and daughters of mechanics and
+agricultural labourers. In Oxfordshire in 1834, we are told by the Poor
+Law Commissions of that year, glove and lace making were vanishing
+occupations. In the neighbourhood of Banbury 'some make lace and gloves
+in the villages. Formerly spinning was the work for women in the
+villages, now there is scarcely any done.'[34]
+
+Since 1834 the process of disintegration had proceeded apace.
+
+We must not, however, convey the impression that domestic industry in
+1842 had all but vanished from the countryside. In its ancient
+strongholds it still endures, but it is in an unhealthy condition, and
+the towns are sucking its life-blood away.
+
+To illustrate this, let us describe the course of a boom in domestic
+industry and study how the trade boom of 1833-7 reached through to the
+country silk weavers in Essex and other places all around London. The
+terms which we usually apply to the cultivation of land are apposite.
+The town workers represent the intensive margin of cultivation, the
+country workers the extensive margin. First of all the Spitalfield
+weavers, who have been short of work, have more work given to them. The
+weavers' wives also get work, and their boys and girls who never were on
+a loom before are now put to the trade. Fresh hands are introduced. From
+the Metropolis the demand for labour pushes outwards over the country.
+Recourse is had to 'inferior soils'. Old weavers in the villages get
+work, together with their wives and families. Even farm labourers are
+impressed. Blemishes for which at other times deductions would be
+claimed are now over-looked. Carts are sent round to the villages and
+hamlets with work for the weavers, so that time may not be lost in going
+to the warehouses to take back or carry home work. Then comes the ebb:
+'the immediate effect is that all the less skilful workmen, the
+dissolute and disorderly, are denied work; the third and fourth looms,
+those worked by the sons and daughters of the weavers, are all thrown
+out of use'. The intensiveness of cultivation has been reduced in the
+towns, the least remunerative no longer pays.
+
+The ebb of the tide, which reduces the quantity of employment in the
+towns, leaves the country districts high and dry. 'At such times the
+country towns and villages to which work is liberally sent, when there
+is a demand for goods, suffer still more. A staff or skeleton only is
+kept in pay, and that chiefly with a view to operations when a demand
+returns.'[35] A skeleton--well said.
+
+Occasional cultivation is bad for land, and worse for human beings. The
+ribbon-weaving villages north of Coventry are a disorderly eruption from
+the town. Coventry itself has the better-paid 'engine weaving'; the
+rural districts have the 'single hand trade'. The country workers, say
+the Commissioners, 'retain most of their original barbarism with an
+accession of vice'. The yokels who went out to the French wars innocent
+boys returned confirmed rogues. Bastardy is greater than ever, despite
+the new Poor Law. 'It may surprise the denouncers of the factory system
+to find all the vices and miseries which they attribute to it,
+flourishing so rankly in the midst of a population not only without the
+walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large
+town.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise
+us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the
+rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of
+domestic industry marks the half-way house to full capitalism.
+
+
+4. Let us now journey to the factory districts of Lancashire and the
+West Riding of Yorkshire where town lies close upon town, and the tall
+chimneys envelop in smoke the cottages in which hand-loom weavers work
+and the children of hand-loom weavers sleep. Let us suppose that we have
+found our position by Leeds. We should like to follow the track of the
+new railroads, for we have in our pocket a small green book:
+
+  'Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to
+                  Railway Travelling'.
+
+  '10th Mo. 19th, 1839.         Price Sixpence.'
+
+Bradshaw tells us that we can get from Littleborough to Manchester in 11
+hours--via Rochdale, Heywood, and Millshill--but it is not clear how we
+are to get to Littleborough. So we follow an alternative route, the
+canal. It is a fashionable method of transit for mineral traffic and
+paupers. Mr. Muggeridge, the emigration agent, tells us how he
+transported the southern paupers in 1836. 'The journey from London to
+Manchester was made by boat or waggon, the agents assisting the
+emigrants on their journey.'[37] When we got up our geography for the
+tour out of Thomas Dugdale's 'England and Wales' this is what we read at
+every turn: 'Keighley: in the deep valley of the Aire, its prosperity
+had been much increased by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which passes
+within two miles.' 'Skipton: in a rough mountainous district. The trade
+has been greatly facilitated by the proximity of the town to the Leeds
+and Liverpool Canal.' So the Leeds and Liverpool canal shall be our
+guide.
+
+We leave Bradford, Halifax, and the worsted districts to the left of us,
+and passing by Shipley, approach the cotton district near the Lancashire
+border. 'The township of Shipley is the western-most locality of the
+Leeds clothing districts; it runs like a tongue into the worsted
+district. In like manner the worsted district blends with the cotton
+district at Steeton, Silsden, and Addingham.' We are passing, the
+Commissioner tells us, from high wages to low. 'The cloth weavers of
+Shipley work for wages little, if any, higher than those of the worsted
+weavers; while the worsted weavers north-west of Keighley are reduced
+down to the cotton standard.'[38]
+
+At Keighley we bend sharply south and soon reach Colne in Lancashire.
+Dr. Cook Taylor describes the conditions there in the early part of
+1842:
+
+     'I visited eighty-eight dwellings, selected at hazard. They were
+     destitute of furniture save old boxes for tables or stalls, or
+     even large stones for chairs; the beds are composed of straw and
+     shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and
+     water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water
+     again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the
+     markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, 'all the
+     places and persons I visited were scrupulously clean. Children
+     were in rags, but they were not in filth. In no single instance
+     was I asked for relief.... I never before saw poverty which
+     inspired respect, and misery which demanded involuntary homage.'
+
+From Colne we journey to Accrington. Of its 9,000 inhabitants not more
+than 100 were fully employed. Numbers kept themselves alive by
+collecting nettles and boiling them. Some were entirely without food
+every alternate day, and many had but one meal in the day and that a
+poor one.[39]
+
+Our last stage is Burnley, where the weavers--to quote again from Dr.
+Cook Taylor--'were haggard with famine, their eyes rolling with that
+fierce and uneasy expression common to maniacs. "We do not want
+charity," they said, "but employment." I found them all Chartists, but
+with this difference, that the block-printers and hand-loom weavers
+united to their Chartism a hatred of machinery which was far from being
+shared by the factory operatives.'
+
+What a comment on England's industrial supremacy--England with her
+virtual monopoly of large-scale manufacture in Europe! It must have been
+a puzzle, too, for the Poor Law Commissioners, who were then building
+workhouses in these parts for the purpose of depauperizing hand-loom
+weavers on the less eligibility principle.
+
+But how was it, with such a Poor Law, that the hand-loom weavers did not
+die of starvation by the thousand? If we enter a cotton mill we shall
+see why. Within these gaunt walls, which are illumined at night by
+sputtering gas-light, the factory children work, earning twice as much
+as their parents, who were too old and too respectable to become factory
+hands.
+
+By this time, perhaps, it is evening, but this matters nothing to the
+'melancholy mad engines', which feed on water or burning coals. The
+young people will still be there, with eight hours work to their credit
+and more to do--'kept to work by being spoken to or by a little
+chastisement'.[40]
+
+'I have seen them fall asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they
+have been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep,
+after the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they
+were clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of
+bed. Half asleep they stumbled or were carried to the mill, to begin
+again the ceaseless round.'
+
+'It keeps them out of mischief', said the opponents of shorter hours.
+Besides, the conditions were no worse than any other industries! Factory
+work, however, as the doctors show, was different from work in the
+mines. The heat and confinement of the mill caused precocious sexual
+development, whilst in the mines the result of exaggerated muscular
+development was to delay maturity.
+
+In 1842 conditions are better than they were in 1833--thanks to the
+factory inspectors. There is little positive cruelty, and the sight of
+deformity--enlarged ankle bones, bow legs, and knock knees, caused by
+excessive standing as a child--is rare. The problem now is one of
+industrial fatigue. The children are 'sick-tired'.
+
+
+5. The Midlands of Leicestershire, Notts, and Derbyshire are a region of
+red bricks and pantiles, dotted over valleys of exquisite green. So let
+us leave the smoke of Lancashire and hover here for a while. Here dwell
+the stocking workers or frame-work knitters--the people who knit on
+frames stockings, gloves, and other articles of hosiery. It does not
+look like a region of industry. There are only a few towns, such as
+Nottingham, Leicester, and Loughborough; and except for a few lace
+factories in Nottingham, large buildings are rare. The town knitters
+either work in their own homes or in shops with standings for perhaps as
+many as fifty frames. In the villages the knitting is nearly all done in
+the cottages, opposite long low windows, or in a small out-house which
+might well be a fowl-house.
+
+But in the streets of Leicester we can see 'life' of a sort. We can
+watch the procession to the pawnbrokers. Some of the knitters pawn their
+blankets for the day, and most lodge their Sunday clothing during the
+week. Says a Leicester pawnbroker:
+
+     'We regularly pay away from £40 to £50 (to some 300 persons)
+     every Monday morning or on the Tuesday. They will, perhaps, wash
+     on the Monday and get their linen clean preparatory to the next
+     Sunday, and in the course of the week they bring all the linen
+     things they can spare. Friday is the worst; they will then bring
+     their small trifling articles, such as are scarcely worth a
+     penny, and we lend on them, to enable them to buy a bit of meat
+     or a few trifles for dinner.'[41]
+
+They are too poor to indulge in church-going or alcohol. They have no
+clothes to go to church in. Their publican is the druggist, where they
+buy opium for themselves and Godfrey's cordial, a preparation from
+laudanum, for their children. In the whole of Leicester, with its
+population of 50,000, there are but nine gin-houses. And only on Sundays
+do they get a bit of schooling. 'We have only one bit of a cover lid to
+cover the five of us in winter ... we are all obliged to sleep in one
+bed.'[42]
+
+A frame smith, making his usual inspection of hosiers' frames at
+workmen's dwellings in Nottingham, after thus spending a fortnight,
+found his health had begun to suffer from the squalid wretchedness of
+their abodes. Thinking to improve it, he went on the same errand into
+the country, but found the frame-work knitters there in a still more
+deplorable state. From the bad air and other distressing influences in
+their condition and that of their dwellings, in another fortnight he
+returned, too ill to attend to his business for some weeks afterwards.
+This occurred in 1843.[43]
+
+Nottingham, however, with its up-to-date lace trade was usually better
+off than this. The lace factories, like the cotton mills in Lancashire,
+eased the position of the hand-workers. In Leicestershire the knitters
+had no such alternative. The more their earnings were reduced, the more
+helplessly they were bound to their only trade.
+
+
+6. 1842 is a long while ago! Let us go to sleep for thirty years and
+wake up in 1871, when the Truck Commissioners are publishing their
+report.
+
+West of Birmingham lies the black country, an area of some twenty square
+miles. Here, if we have read the evidence of the Truck Commissioners, we
+can interpret a dumb-show in Dudley, where the nail-makers dwell.
+
+On Monday mornings the nail-maker emerges from a small hovel containing
+a smithy and walks into Dudley to call on a gentleman known as a fogger,
+a petty-fogger if he is a middleman, a market-fogger if he is a master.
+The nailer comes out with a bundle of metal which he takes to a second
+house and changes for a second bundle of metal, and with this he walks
+away. (The next nailer, not so lucky, hangs about till Wednesday
+morning, waiting for his metal.) On Saturday the nailer comes back with
+his nails, enters the fogger's shop, and emerges with 12_s._ in his
+hand. But he does not go home. He slips into a shop close by and parts
+company with the shillings. In return he gets a parcel, the contents of
+which are obviously displeasing to him. What has happened?
+
+The nailer is a Government servant. But the Government only employs him
+indirectly. It puts out contracts for rivets and nails to contractors
+who sublet their contract, so that the work reaches the nailer at third
+or fourth hand. The Government, in the interest of public economy
+(Victorian England is famous for retrenchment), gives its contract to
+the lowest tenderer; and the policy of the lowest tender is responsible
+for the dumb-show we have watched.
+
+To begin with, the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has
+to change it, and this he does at the price of 2_d._ per 10_d._ bundle,
+at a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to
+wait till Wednesday for his bundle is kept idling about in order that
+he may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop'
+which is owned by yet another branch of the family of fogger.)
+
+When the nailer and his family have worked fourteen hours a day
+throughout the week, the nailer returns on Saturday with the nails, and
+receives 12_s._ for them. These shillings he takes to the fogger's store
+and exchanges for tea and other articles. The shillings are 'nimble'; we
+commend the rapidity of their circulation to Mr. Irving Fisher. A fogger
+who pays out the shillings from his warehouse receives them back again
+in a few minutes over the counter of his store. 'He will perhaps reckon
+with seven or eight at one time, and when he has reckoned with them, and
+perhaps paid them six, seven, or eight pounds, he will wait until they
+have gone to the shop and taken the money there as they leave the
+warehouse. Then he goes into the shop himself for it, as he cannot go on
+paying without it.'[44]
+
+But surely this is truck! Certainly not. There may be 'fearful cheating'
+with tea, but the nailer is not bound to go there. He is perfectly free.
+The only trouble is this: it is a case of tea or no work the week
+following. This is why, despite the Truck Act of 1831 and despite the
+known existence of the abuse, these practices are rife among the nailers
+as late as 1871, the year in which the Truck Commissioners issued the
+Report from which this scene is compiled. The plight of the nailers is
+not the plight of factory operatives or miners; it is the plight of the
+frame-work knitters, of men who are bound by the intangible fetters of
+economic need to the uncontrollable devil of 'semi-capitalism'.
+
+
+2. MINING OPERATIONS
+
+1. Coal was king of the nineteenth century. The first steam-engine was
+built to pump water out of coal mines, the first canal was cut to carry
+the Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first
+railroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit
+mouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive,
+began life as a trapper on a Tyneside colliery.
+
+Where would English industry have been without its king? In 1780 (in
+round figures) 5,000,000 tons of coal were raised in the United Kingdom:
+in 1800, 10,000,000; in 1865, 100,000,000; and in 1897, 200,000,000.
+Coal enticed the cotton factories from the dales of the Pennines to the
+moist lowlands of West Lancashire. At every stage of their work the
+iron-makers depended on coal; and the great inventions in the iron and
+steel industry are land-marks in the expansion of the demand for
+coal--Cort's puddling process 1783, Watt's steam-engine 1785, Neilson's
+hot blast 1824, Naysmith's steam-hammer 1835, Bessemer's steel-converter
+1855, Siemen's open hearth 1870, Thomas' basic process for the treatment
+of highly phosphoric ores 1878. The steamship, a novelty in 1820, ruled
+the seas in 1870; and ironclads followed steamships. The smokeless
+steam-coal of South Wales guarded the heritage of Trafalgar. By the end
+of the nineteenth century, coaling stations were an important item in
+international politics.
+
+Meanwhile, the people of England, heedless of Malthusian forebodings,
+multiplied exceedingly. They lighted their streets and buildings with
+coal-gas, and burnt coal in their grates. With coal they paid for the
+food and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw
+materials were offset by exports of coal and of textiles and hardware
+produced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity
+and oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce.
+And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us
+look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they
+think about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?
+
+
+2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In
+Scotland they had just been emancipated from the status of villeinage.
+In Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere
+they were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the
+Tyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in general are making 20_s._ to
+30_s._ per week (_sic_) the pitmen here are only making 13_s._ 6_d._ and
+from this miserable pittance deductions are made.'[45]
+
+In 1839, during the Chartist disturbances, a Welsh M.P. wrote to the
+Home Secretary begging for barracks and troops: 'A more lawless set of
+men than the colliers and miners do not exist ... it requires some
+courage to live among such a set of savages.'[46] When the miners came
+out in 1844, there were thousands of cottages tenantless in
+Northumberland and Durham. For the colliery proprietors owned the
+cottages, and when the miners struck evicted them. So the miners set up
+house in the streets. 'In one lane ... a complete new village was built,
+chests-of-drawers, deck beds, etc., formed the walls of the new dwelling;
+and the top covered with canvas or bedclothes as the case might be.'[47]
+Yet, for all their griminess, they had human hearts and voices. During
+the strike they obtained permission to hold a meeting at Newcastle; and
+the wealthy citizens who made their fortunes out of the coal trade
+trembled before the invasion of black barbarians. But the meeting passed
+off in rain and peace. Thirty thousand miners marched in procession,
+'for near a mile flags in breeze, men walking in perfect order'; and as
+they marched, they sang, as only miners sing, songs and hymns and
+topical ditties:
+
+    'Stand fast to your Union
+      Brave sons of the mine,
+    And we'll conquer the tyrants
+      Of Tees, Wear, and Tyne!'
+
+Up and down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after
+life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name
+Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from
+house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He had only one message:
+
+    'Lads, unite and better your condition.
+    When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear;
+    When men are scarce, men are dear.'[48]
+
+Such blasphemy appalled the Government's Commissioners. But the miners
+had a zest for religion as well as for strikes. During the strike of
+1844, 'frequent meetings were held in their chapels (in general those of
+the Primitive Methodists or Ranters as they are commonly called in that
+part of the country), where prayers were publicly offered up for the
+successful result of the strike.' They attended their prayer meeting 'to
+get their faith strengthened'.[49]
+
+Such ignorance could only be cured by education. Some worthy members of
+society had already recognized the fact. In 1830 a Cardiff 'Society for
+the improvement of the working population in the county of Glamorgan'
+issued improving pamphlets:
+
+No. 9. Population, or Patty's Marriage.
+
+No. 10. The Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend.
+
+No. 11. Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown.[50]
+
+But the northern miners were perverse people. In Scotland, according to
+one Wesleyan minister,[51] the miners read Adam Smith. In
+Northumberland, with still greater perversity, they preferred Plato. 'A
+translation of Plato's _Ideal Republic_ is much read among those
+classes, principally for the socialism and unionism it contains; in pure
+ignorance, of course, that Plato himself subsequently modified his
+principles and that Aristotle showed their fallacy.'[52]
+
+
+3. The Royal Commission of 1842 on the Employment and Condition of
+Children and Young Persons in Mines disclosed facts which made Cobdenite
+England gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancashire, Cheshire, the
+West Riding of Yorkshire, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these
+districts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an
+irresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves
+disliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a
+contributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancashire, were pushing
+their children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the
+legal restrictions upon sending them to the neighbouring factories.
+
+A Lancashire woman said in evidence:
+
+     'I have a belt round my waist and a chain passing between my
+     legs, and I go on my hands and feet.... The pit is very wet where
+     I work and the water comes over our clog tops always, and I have
+     seen it up to my thighs.... I have drawn till I have had the skin
+     off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family
+     way.'[53]
+
+The children's office was a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but
+being little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and
+close the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William
+Richards, aged seven-and-a-half, said in evidence:
+
+     'I been down about three years. When I first went down, I could
+     not keep my eyes open; I don't fall asleep now; I smokes my pipe,
+     smokes half a quartern a week.'[54]
+
+Except in the northern mining districts, where there were good day and
+Sunday schools and Methodism was powerful, a pagan darkness prevailed.
+As a Derbyshire witness put it:
+
+     'When the boys have been beaten, knocked about, and covered with
+     sludge all the week, they want to be in bed all day to rest on
+     Sunday.'[55]
+
+In the hope of startling a religiously-minded England, the Commissioners
+reproduced examples of working-class ignorance. James Taylor, aged
+eleven,
+
+     'Has heard of hell in the pit, when the men swore; has never
+     heard of Jesus Christ; has never heard of God; he has heard the
+     men in the pit say, "God damn thee ".'
+
+A Yorkshire girl, aged eighteen, said:
+
+     'I do not know who Jesus Christ was; I never saw him, but I have
+     seen Foster, who prays about him.'[56]
+
+
+4. Just as in the East Midlands the frame-work knitters worked for
+middlemen or master middlemen, and just as the Dudley nailers worked for
+petty-foggers and market-foggers, so too the Staffordshire miners worked
+for 'butties'. Here again the workers were exposed to the petty
+tyrannies of semi-capitalism; and here again the middlemen, in this case
+the butties, incurred the odium of a system for which their superiors,
+the coal-owners and coal-masters, were responsible.
+
+Why the butty system prevailed in the Midlands--and in a modified form
+it prevails to-day--is not clear. In some places it seems to be
+connected with the smallness of the mining concerns or of the metal
+trades which they supplied. In South Staffordshire a contributing factor
+was the ancient and allied industry of nail-making.
+
+The conditions in South Staffordshire in 1843 are fully described in the
+Midland Mining Commission of that year.
+
+The butty was a contractor who engaged with the proprietor or lessee of
+the mine to deliver the coal or iron-stone at so much per ton, himself
+hiring the labourers, using his own horses, and supplying the tools
+requisite for the working of the mine. The contract price was known as
+the 'charter price' or 'charter'. Thus by a freak of language the
+Staffordshire miner knew by the same word the 'butty's charter' which
+was the symbol of his oppression, and the 'people's charter' which was
+the goal of his desire.
+
+'The butties', said the miners and their wives, 'are the devil: they are
+negro drivers: they play the vengeance With the men.'[57] The men
+kicked when, after working a couple of hours, they were fetched up,
+without pay, on the excuse that there were no waggons to take away the
+coal. But the butty comforted them with a bottle of pit drink, and all
+was smooth again.
+
+A collier related a case where 'a pike man had worked only one half-day
+in the week and got 2_s._ for it, and because he did not spend 6_d._ of
+this at the butty's shop, the latter told the doggy (the under man) to
+let the man play for it.'[58]
+
+The miners recognized that often the butty was not to blame. In the
+district north and east of Dudley, the butties got their 'charter price'
+from the coal-owners in the form of tickets on the coal-owners'
+truck-shop. What else could they do but hand them on to the men? 'He
+used to be a very good butty,' said one miner's wife, 'till they haggled
+him and dropped his "charter", so that he cannot pay his men.'[59]
+
+West and south of Dudley the butties, though they did not truck their
+men, kept public-houses; and being employer and publican in one, they
+had a tight hold on the men.
+
+Was the compulsion to drink an oppression? To our minds, yes; as also to
+the minds of the teetotal Chartists whom the Government imprisoned, and
+of the strike leaders whom the Government's Commissioners denounced. But
+to the majority of the miners the abundance of beer was a delight. They
+objected to the butty's bullying, but they loved his beer, especially
+the feckless ones, for when wives were importunate the drunkards pleaded
+necessity.
+
+However, all the beer-drinking could not be charged to the butties. The
+miners themselves, in their own fellowships, were devoted to it; and
+the compulsion of friends was as severe as the compulsion of butties.
+Every approach to recreation, every act of mutual providence against
+accident or disease, began and ended in beer. The day a man entered the
+pit's company, he paid 1_s._ for footing-ale, and the doggy saw that no
+churl escaped. When a lad was old enough to have a sweetheart he was
+toasted with the 'nasty' shilling. The sins of the married men were
+washed away in half-a-crown's worth of ale. The beer-shop was the
+head-quarters of the Burial and Savings Clubs. The first charge on a
+Burial Club was a good oak coffin, the second charge drinks for the
+pall-bearers, and then a glass or two for the rest of the company.
+
+They had lotteries to which each man contributed 20 fortnightly
+shillings. Each week a name was drawn, and the lucky man stood a feast;
+while every member, in addition to a shilling for the box, produced
+6_d._ for drinks.
+
+In all these festivities the butty was in the offing. When they would
+have him he presided; and so at his worst an obnoxious bully, at his
+best he was an accommodating landlord.
+
+Direct employment, such as prevailed in the north of England, would have
+averted much of this evil. There were no structural difficulties in the
+way of change. Direct employment would not have meant a change to
+another class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters
+and hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through
+slackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for
+accidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They
+paid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The
+system made temperance impossible for the individual; and the masters,
+with the full approval of the Government, did their best to destroy the
+'pernicious combinations' by which alone a standard of sober decency
+could be promoted.
+
+
+5. The Report of the Truck Commissioners (1871-2) enables us to complete
+the picture. It also enables us to understand why, at this late day,
+truck was still rife in certain districts.
+
+Truck and Tommy, truck-shop and Tommy-shop, are convertible terms. Truck
+is from the French 'troc' = barter. Cobbett tells us how the word
+'Tommy' was used. In his soldiering days the rations of brown bread,
+'for what reason God knows', went by the name of Tommy. 'When the
+soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in
+England, the name of Tommy went down by tradition, and, doubtless, it
+was taken up and adapted to the truck-system in Staffordshire and
+elsewhere.'[60] From the textile districts it had all but disappeared in
+1871. When the cotton manufactures went to outlying dales for water
+power, they were almost compelled to open stores for their workpeople.
+Owen's store at New Lanark was, in effect, a well-managed truck-shop;
+and the Truck Commissioners of 1871 reported that the New Lanark Company
+of that day was breaking the law. But when the cotton industry was
+gathered in the towns, the need for company stores ceased. Consequently,
+after the passing of the Act of 1831, which prohibited truck altogether,
+the masters very generally abolished the stores of their own accord; and
+survivals were jealously watched.
+
+A collection of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in
+London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil
+notes in Ostler's handwriting which run:
+
+     _Cragg Dale Facts_
+
+     _Truck System_: Little altered: men knew they were imposed. They
+     pay in money now--but compel them to buy at their own shops....
+     Wholesale warehouses at Rochdale say, 'Oh! put it sideways: it
+     will do for Cragg Dale masters to sell among their people.'
+
+     _Song_: 'Lousy butter and burnt bread.'
+
+About 1842 a curious perversion of truck was prevalent in parts of
+Yorkshire. The trade depression in the Bradford district tempted
+disreputable woollen manufacturers to force on their operatives the
+products of the factory as part payment of wages. Combers were given
+pieces of cloth, workers in shoddy mills bundles of rags. But this
+utterly inexcusable fraud, no less than its more specious complement,
+the employer's store, was rooted out by inspectors and factory
+reformers. Therefore in 1854 the Government's Commissioner was able to
+say that in a factory district like Lancashire truck was not only
+non-existent but 'impossible'.[61]
+
+He was right as to the factory districts, but not quite right as to
+Lancashire. In Prescot, a small Lancashire town on the fringe of the
+factory district, the watchmakers in 1871 were being paid in watches.
+The masters alleged that they only gave watches to the workers when the
+latter had orders for them, but the evidence showed that these orders
+only came to hand when the men were asking for fresh work. The
+pawnbrokers explained what happened. 'Watches', said a pawnbroker's
+clerk, 'pass from hand to hand as a circulating medium until they get
+very low in the market and are pawned.'[62] The pawnshop in question
+had 700 watches on pledge, most of them belonging to workmen in the
+town.
+
+In railway contracting truck was prevalent in the forties. In roving
+employment of this type it is difficult to see how some form of
+contractor's shop could have been avoided. The navvy needed canteens or
+Y.M.C.A. huts, but such things had not been thought of then. However,
+when the big period of railway construction came to an end, the question
+lost its importance.
+
+South Staffordshire and the Black Country were the ancient strongholds
+of truck. The campaigns against truck originated here. The nailers, the
+cash-paying masters, and the respectable ratepayers joined together to
+promote the Truck Act of 1820. Lord Hatherton, a Staffordshire nobleman,
+after three years hammering at the House of Commons, obtained the Truck
+Act of 1831. But in 1843, the year of the Midland Mining Commission,
+truck was still rife in the coalfields. The well-known Tommy-shop scene
+in Disraeli's novel _Sybil_, which was published in 1845, is taken
+direct from the Commissioners' Report. Diggs, the butty of the novel, is
+Banks, the coal proprietor of the Report. In the novel the people say of
+Master Joseph Diggs, the son: 'He do swear at the women, when they rush
+in for the first turn, most fearful; they do say he's a shocking little
+dog.' In the Report, page 93, the miner's wife says: 'He swears at the
+women when the women are trying to crush in. He is a shocking little
+dog.' One touch is Disraeli's own. He makes the miners keen to purchase
+'the young Queen's picture'. 'If the Queen would do something for us
+poor men, it would be a blessed job.' In the Report there is nothing
+about this, but there is a section dealing with Chartism.
+
+However, the truck-shop was gradually disappearing. Every year it
+became easier to expose evasions, and in good times the workers used
+their prosperity to slip away from the Company store. In 1850 a final
+campaign was initiated by five local Anti-Truck Associations, backed by
+the National Miners' Association under Alexander MacDonald.
+Truck-masters were prosecuted and truck was steadily dislodged from the
+coalfields and adjacent ironworks. Only in the nail trade did it
+survive, for the reason that the complete subjection of the nailers made
+it possible to practise the essentials of truck without a formal
+violation of the law.
+
+In the remaining colliery districts in 1871 truck was prevalent only in
+West Scotland and South Wales.
+
+In West Scotland it was yielding ground before the pressure of the
+unions. The companies only maintained it by active coercion. If a miner
+held out for money, they had to yield; and if they were malicious, they
+marked him as a sloper and dismissed him the first when a depression
+came. 'Black lists', said the Truck Commissioners, 'are often kept of
+slopers; threats of dismissal were repeatedly proved; and cases of
+actual dismissal for not dealing at the store are not rare.'[63]
+However, the masters themselves were getting tired of it, since it led
+so frequently to strikes.
+
+Truck in South Staffordshire was bound up with the butty system; in
+railway construction with the system of contracting and sub-contracting,
+and similarly in South Wales, as also in the west of Scotland, it was
+bound up with and dependent on the system of long pays. In order to
+carry on from one pay day to the next, the men got advances on the
+company's store. In this way many lived permanently ahead of their
+wages. The thriftless and drunkards were always 'advance men, but the
+provident miners hated it and only dealt there on compulsion'.
+
+The Commissioners drew a vivid picture of Turn Book morning in South
+Wales at the close of the pay month.
+
+At 1 or 2 a.m. the women and children begin to arrive with their Advance
+Books. Perhaps one hundred would be there, wet or fine, sleeping on the
+doorsteps or singing ballads until morning.
+
+At 5.30 a.m. the doors opened, and the waiters made a rush for the
+counter. Advance Books were produced, and goods handed over up to the
+amount of wages which would shortly fall due. Women took their pick of
+the articles, groceries, tobacco, occasionally a few shillings.
+
+     'It is quite usual', say the Commissioners, 'for shoemakers and
+     other small tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Abersychan to be
+     paid by the workmen in goods.... Tobacco in several districts of
+     South Wales has become nothing less than a circulating medium. It
+     is bought by the men and resold by them for drink, and finds its
+     way back again to some of the Company's shops. Packets of tobacco
+     pass unopened from hand to hand. An Ebbw Vale grocer who took the
+     Company's tobacco at a discount declared: "For years, when they
+     were selling it for 1_s._ 4_d._ a lb. I used to give 1_s._; but I
+     was so much over-flooded with it that I was obliged to reduce the
+     price to 11_d._ That would not do still, and I had to reduce it
+     to 10_d._ I told the men to take it to some other shop if they
+     could get 11_d._ or 1_s._ for it. I was obliged to do that many a
+     time, in order to get rid of the large stocks I held in hand.
+     Tobacco will not keep for many months without getting worse."'
+
+Weekly pays, therefore, were the constant demand of the miners' unions.
+In Northumberland and Durham, whence truck had disappeared long ago,
+pays were fortnightly, and the only objection advanced by the owners
+against weekly pays was the practical inconvenience of the pressure on
+the pay staff. In the North of England Iron Trade, weekly pays, the
+Commissioners found, had just been introduced. In West Scotland some of
+the coal-owners were trying to recoup themselves for the loss of their
+truck-shop by charging poundage on the men's wages. But this dodge, like
+the bigger grievance of truck, was stoutly resisted by the local union.
+Indeed, in one coalfield after another the disappearance of truck and
+kindred evils coincides with the appearance of strong County Unions.
+
+
+6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on
+economics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few
+suggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from
+the worker's point of view.
+
+     i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise.
+     Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their
+     bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable
+     copper coin forged in Birmingham (_vide_ Patrick Colquhoun, _A
+     Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_, 1800, Chapter VII).
+     The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing
+     to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk
+     with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest
+     public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in
+     notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about
+     cheques--an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their
+     Bank Act of 1844.
+
+     ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency
+     led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour
+     Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against
+     time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The
+     originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was
+     probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart a capitalist.
+     The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a
+     business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after
+     this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of
+     hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange
+     in consequence had to close its doors.
+
+     iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and
+     the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The
+     currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to
+     excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were
+     therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker[64] said that he had in
+     pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought
+     from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their
+     house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.
+
+     iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the
+     currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.
+
+     v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the
+     world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no
+     Cobbett to denounce the resumption.
+
+We shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history
+with the motto:
+
+'_In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone
+made the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality_.'
+
+
+3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION
+
+1. The student of Dicey's Law and Opinion in England is invited to
+distinguish three periods:
+
+     i. The period of old Toryism or legislative quiescence (1800-38).
+
+     ii. The period of Benthamism or individualism (1825-70).
+
+     iii. The period of collectivism (1865-1900).
+
+Bentham lived during the first period and his name is rightly given to
+the second period.
+
+The student, therefore, comes to wonder if there is anything which is
+not Benthamism. Benthamism, he says to himself, stands for
+individualism. How then can the period of Benthamism include the
+humanitarian legislation which begins with the first Factory Act of 1802
+and broadens out during the middle of the century into the elaborate
+code regulating from then onwards the conditions of employment in
+workshops, factories, and mines? How can a monster beget an angel?
+
+We may perhaps throw light on this difficulty by suggesting that the
+_social_ trend from 1825-70 cannot be compressed into a single word.
+Individualism may suffice to define the dominant _legal_ trend, but it
+conceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from
+below by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary
+association coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism.
+
+
+2. What Bentham was to individualism, Robert Owen was to voluntary
+association. Bentham himself was an admirer of Owen and supported his
+philanthropy, but, as expressions of a social attitude, Benthamism and
+Owenism were poles asunder. The contrast between the two is admirably
+displayed in the evidence given before the Factory Committee of 1816 by
+two representatives of the employing class, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery
+fame and Robert Owen himself.
+
+'In the state of society,' said Wedgwood, 'in which there is evidently a
+progressive movement, it is much better to leave things as they are than
+to attempt to amend the general state of things in detail. The only
+safe way of securing the comfort of any people is to leave them at
+liberty to make the best use of their time, and to allow them to
+appropriate their earnings in such way as they think fit.'[65]
+
+Robert Owen thought otherwise. In a couple of answers he exposed the
+fallacy of enlightened self-interest. They seem obvious enough to-day,
+but in 1816 they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was
+asked whether he believed that 'there is that want of affection and
+feeling on the part of parents, that would induce them to exact from
+their children more labour than they could perform without injury to
+their health;' and he replied:
+
+'I do not imagine that there is the smallest difference between the
+general affection of the lower order of the people, except with regard
+to that which may be produced by the different circumstances in which
+they are placed.'[66]
+
+Another question was: 'Do you conceive that it is not injurious to the
+manufacturer to hazard, by overwork, the health of the people so
+employed?' He replied:
+
+'If those persons were purchased by the manufacturers I should say
+decisively, yes; but as they are not purchased by the manufacturer and
+the country must bear all the loss of their strength and their energy{;}
+it does not appear, at first sight, to be the interest of the
+manufacturer to do so.'[67]
+
+Owen had grasped the meaning of social responsibility, and he devoted
+his life to social service. But he was too wayward to observe the
+conventions of society, and passed beyond the social pale. The factory
+reformer became the Socialist. Whether his disciples comprehended his
+philosophy we may doubt, but he understood better than any one else
+their instinct for association, and he gratified it.
+
+It is not contended that Owen was responsible for all the associative
+effort of his generation; for with political and religious associations
+he had no sympathy. But the spirit which infected him infected others
+after him, rousing them to associate now for this, and now for that
+social or religious or political purpose.
+
+
+3. We may divide associations for social purposes into two classes.
+
+To the first class belong associations formed to secure the abolition of
+some abuse. These naturally disappear when their object is attained.
+
+For example, there was the Anti-slavery Campaign in which Joseph Sturge
+and other Quakers played so prominent a part. By an organized crusade of
+political education the Abolitionists induced an originally hostile
+Parliament to emancipate the West Indian negroes in 1833, and to shorten
+the period of semi-servile apprenticeship in 1838. Yorkshire was the
+home of the Short Time Committees, which organized the campaign against
+White Slavery at home. The Ten Hours Movement caused the Ten Hours Bill
+to become the law of the land. From Lancashire came the Anti-Corn Law
+League, whose story is told in another chapter.
+
+The second class of association was the association for economic
+betterment--the Friendly Society, the Co-operative Society, the Trade
+Union. Conceived in enthusiasm and self-inspired, these associations
+asked only of the State a legal framework in which to develop, but they
+did not win it without struggle and delay.
+
+The Government was anxious to encourage thrift, but the development of
+the Friendly Societies was impeded for a time by legislation aimed at
+political conspiracy. The Corresponding Societies Act of 1799 prevented
+the Friendly Societies from forming a central organization with
+branches, and the Dorchester Labourers of 1834 discovered the peril into
+which the ritual of oaths might lead innocent men.
+
+These deterrents were removed by enabling legislation. In 1829 a central
+authority, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, was appointed to
+supervise Friendly Societies, and between 1829 and 1875 further
+privileges and safeguards were conferred. But the Friendly Society
+Movement throughout the nineteenth century was wholly voluntary. In 1911
+the situation was suddenly reversed by the passing of the National
+Insurance Act.
+
+The Co-operative Societies were more suspect. They crept into legal
+recognition as the children of the Friendly Society, under the 'frugal
+investments' clause of the Act of 1846, being compelled by the legal
+prejudice against association in restraint of trade to adopt this
+unnatural mother. Their real nature was recognized in 1852, when they
+were brought under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, and in
+1862, when they were granted the boon of limited liability. But the
+accident of their legal origin still survives; for they are regulated
+to-day by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1893. The
+Co-operative Movement is now drawing closer to politics, following the
+lead of most of the continental countries, notably Belgium and Germany.
+Though we cannot say that there is any indication of the State taking
+over the movement, we may note that the growth of municipal trading in
+the 'nineties was, in principle, an application of the consumers'
+association to monopolies of distribution such as tramways, water,
+electricity, and gas.
+
+The State was altogether hostile to the growth of the Trade Union. The
+Charter of Emancipation, won by the guile of Francis Place in 1824, was
+severely curtailed in 1825. Huskisson[68] depicted in lurid terms the
+tyranny of a military trades unionism, 'representing a systematic union
+of the workers of many different trades'. It was a 'kind of federal
+republic', whose mischievous operations, if not checked, would keep the
+commercial classes 'in constant anxiety and fear about their interests
+and property'. Arnold, of Rugby, a decade later wrote of them in the
+same strain: 'you have heard, I doubt not, of the trades unions; a
+fearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or assassinate; and I see no
+counteracting power.'[69]
+
+The counteracting power was their own weakness. The early militancy
+burnt itself out, and was succeeded at the turn of the century by a 'New
+Spirit and a New Model'. The new spirit was anti-militant, and the new
+model was a trade union representing the _élite_ of the skilled trades.
+The Amalgamated Society of Engineers was founded in 1850 and served as a
+model to the Carpenters, Tailors, Compositors, Iron-founders,
+Brick-layers, and others. The Trades Unions were now respectable, and in
+1867 the State recognized the fact.
+
+The period of collectivism is denoted by the growth of the Labour Party
+in Parliament, and the increasing part played by the State in industrial
+disputes and the regulation of wages. The nationalization of railways
+and the nationalization of mines are burning questions.
+
+
+4. In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the
+initial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary
+association. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a
+notion is the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the
+insistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal
+recognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of
+English social development in the nineteenth century.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Dicey, _Law and Opinion_.
+
+Robinson, _The Spirit of Association_.
+
+Hovell, _The Chartist Movement_.
+
+Sombart (tr. Epstein), _Socialism and the Socialist Movement_.
+
+[Cd. 9236], _Report of Committee on Trusts_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: From the writer's forthcoming book _Life and Labour in the
+Nineteenth Century_, to be published by the Cambridge University Press.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Tooke and Newmarch, _History of Prices_, v. 356.]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Commons Committee on Emigration_, 1827, Q. 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Commons Committee on the Condition of Labourers employed
+in the Construction of Railways_, 1846, Q. 866.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Ibid., Q. 217.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Ibid., Q. 897.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Ibid., Q. 733.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Ibid., Q. 193.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ibid., Qs. 869-78.]
+
+[Footnote 29: _Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of
+Women and Children in Agriculture_ (1843), pp. 20, 25.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Ibid., pp. 299-300.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Report of Commissioners on the Employment of Young
+Persons in Agriculture_, p. 64.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Dr. Cook Taylor, Letter to the _Morning Chronicle_, dated
+from Rossendale Forest (Lancashire), June 20, 1842.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Rural Rides_, i. 219.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Poor Law Commission of 1834_, Appendix.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Final Report, 1841_, p.
+18.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report, 1840_, Part IV, pp. 76-81.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners_,
+1836.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report_, Part III, p. 551.]
+
+[Footnote 39: _Anti-bread Tax Circular_, No. 91, June 16, 1842.]
+
+[Footnote 40: _First Report of the Factory Commissioners_, 1833, p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Report of Commissioner on the Condition of the Framework
+Knitters_ (1845), p. 109.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Ibid., p. 115.]
+
+[Footnote 43: William Felkin, _History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery
+and Lace Manufactures_ (1867), p. 458.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_ (1871), Q.
+37,500.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Pamphlet of 1825, p. 14.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Home Office Papers_, 40, Letter from R.J. Blewitt, Esq.,
+M.P., November 6, 1839.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Richard Fynes, _Miners of Northumberland and Durham_, p.
+72.]
+
+[Footnote 48: John Wilson, _History of the Durham Miners' Association_
+(1870-1904), p. 40.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population_ (1846).]
+
+[Footnote 50: These pamphlets are in the British Museum.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population_ (1850).]
+
+[Footnote 52: Ibid. (1852).]
+
+[Footnote 53: _Royal Commission, First Report_ (_Mines_), p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Ibid., p. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Royal Commission, Second Report_ (_Trades and
+Manufactures_), p. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Ibid., pp. 155-6.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Midland Mining Commission, First Report_, p. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Ibid., p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Rural Rides_, ii. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 61: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages_ (_Hosiery, 1854_).
+Evidence of Mr. Tremenheere.]
+
+[Footnote 62: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_, Q. 33,670.]
+
+[Footnote 63: _Truck Commission, 1871. Report_, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 64: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages in the Hosiery
+Manufacture_ (1854), Q. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Commons Committee of_ 1816, pp. 64 and 73.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Ibid., p. 38.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Ibid., p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Speech, March 29, 1825.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Letter to the Chevalier Bunsen, 1834, quoted in Strachey,
+_Eminent Victorians_, p. 197.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ATOMIC THEORIES
+
+PROFESSOR W.H. BRAGG, C.B.E., D.SC., F.R.S.
+
+
+When a lecture on the progress of Science is given before a conference
+concerned largely with historical subjects, it is not inappropriate to
+point out that Science has a history of its own and that its progress
+makes a connected story. The discovery of new facts is not made in an
+isolated fashion, nor is it a matter of pure chance, unaffected by what
+has gone before. On the contrary, scientific progress is made step by
+step, each new point that is reached forming a basis for further
+advances. Even the direction of discovery is not entirely in the
+explorer's control; there is always a next step to be taken and a
+limited number of possible steps forward from which a choice can be
+made. The scientific discoverer has to go in the direction in which his
+discoveries lead him. When discoveries have been made it is possible to
+think of uses to which they may be put, but in the first instance all
+discoveries are made without any knowledge whatever of what use may
+afterwards be made of them.
+
+Consequently scientific progress is a quite orderly advance, not a
+spasmodic collection of facts, and in the truest sense of the word it
+has a history. In order that opportunities for this steady progress may
+be provided it is very important that this point should be fully
+appreciated. Every one, for example, is vaguely conscious that science
+played a great part in the War. As a consequence the number of students
+of science has greatly increased; manufacturing firms are awakening to
+the fact that they must pay more attention to scientific development
+and are founding research laboratories. It is very important that this
+awakened attention should be well informed, and for that reason it
+cannot be pointed out too often that the scientific work which has been
+the basis of all material progress can only be turned to definite
+material ends in the last stages of its development. Fundamentally
+everything rests on the pure attempt to gain knowledge without any idea
+of the use to which it may subsequently be put. Without pure science
+there is no applied science at all. It is quite right in my opinion that
+the researcher in pure science should have with him the hope that what
+he does may one day be of direct benefit to others. But it is probable
+that he does not in his own mind confine the idea of possible uses to
+such material matters as I have mentioned above and as are so prominent
+at present. He believes that his work has a less material side whose
+value need not be explained to the present audience.
+
+In the general line of progress it is natural to find that there are
+certain broad roads along which the main advance has been directed.
+Students of physics and chemistry and the subjects which are allied to
+them find that they are in general considering either matter, or
+electricity, or energy. I make this classification, not from any
+philosophical point of view, but simply for present convenience. The
+first important principle to which I would like to draw your attention
+is that each of these things can be measured quantitatively. If we
+accept the weight of a substance as an indirect measure of the amount of
+matter present, then we all know we can express the amount of matter in
+any given body in terms of a fundamental unit, like a pound or a gramme;
+and the idea has been put to immemorial use. In later years we have
+learnt that electricity itself is also a quantity and that the amount of
+electricity which stands on an electrified body, or flows past a given
+point in an electric conductor, as for example the wire connected to an
+electric light, can be expressed arithmetically in terms of some unit.
+Instruments are made for the purpose of measuring quantities of
+electricity in terms of the legal standard. It is one of the functions
+of a Government Institution, like the National Physical Laboratory, to
+test such instruments and report on their accuracy. International
+conferences have been held for the purpose of reducing these units to as
+small a number as possible so that people may be able to trade less
+wastefully and more conveniently, so that also the barriers between
+peoples may be broken down and the interchange of ideas as well as of
+materials may be made more easily. Without an arrangement of this kind
+it would be impossible to carry on industrial life in which use is made
+of electricity. It would be as difficult as to hold a market without the
+use of weights and scales, more difficult, in fact, since anyone can
+estimate the size of a piece of cloth or the amount of corn in a sack,
+but no one has a natural sense by which he can estimate an amount of
+electricity.
+
+In just the same way energy can be measured as a quantity in terms of a
+fundamental unit. The discovery that this was so was made by Joule and
+others towards the middle of the nineteenth century, and lit the road
+for further advance as a dark street is lit by the sudden turning-up of
+the lamps. All modern industry rests on this principle. We are now so
+accustomed to the idea that energy is a quantity that we can hardly
+realize a time when it was merely a vague term. If we want an
+illustration of how thoroughly we have grasped this idea let us remember
+that when we pay our electric-light bill we pay so much money for so
+many units of energy supplied; for so much energy, let us note, not for
+so much electricity, since we take into account not only the actual
+amount of electricity driven through our house wires, but also the
+magnitude of the force which is there to drive it. Energy exists in many
+forms: energy of motion, heat, gravitational energy, chemical energy,
+radiation, and so on. In the transformations of energy which are
+continually occurring in all natural processes, there is never any
+change in the total amount of energy. This is the famous principle of
+the Conservation of Energy. Sometimes it is stated in the form
+'Perpetual motion is impossible'.
+
+One of the most important forms of energy is radiation. The constant
+outpouring by the sun of energy in this form is vital to us. The fact
+was obvious long ago and that is one of the reasons why light and heat
+have interested students of science in all ages.
+
+There exist then three main subjects of study--matter, electricity, and
+energy. These themselves and their mutual relations have been, and are,
+the principal objects of interest to the scientific student, and from
+our strivings to understand them we have learnt most of what we know.
+All three are quantities and all are expressible in terms of units.
+
+Now there is one point which I have thought would especially interest
+you. A very remarkable tendency of modern discovery shows more and more
+clearly that not only are these things quantities which we can express
+in units of our own choosing, but that Nature herself has already chosen
+units for them. The natural unit does not, of course, bear any exact
+connexion with our own. This being so, it must be of the utmost
+importance that we should know what these natural units are and so be
+able to understand what Nature is ready to tell us. Nature has chosen to
+speak in a certain language; we must get to know that language.
+
+In the first place we know surely that there are natural units of
+matter. This was the great discovery made by Dalton in the beginning of
+the nineteenth century. When he found that each of the known elements,
+such as copper or oxygen or carbon, consisted ultimately of atoms, all
+the atoms of any one element being alike, he laid the foundation on
+which the huge structure of modern chemistry has been raised. The
+chemist takes one or more atoms of one element, one or more of another,
+and may be of a third or fourth, and he puts them together into a
+compound which we call a molecule. The molecule for example of ordinary
+salt contains always one atom of chlorine and one of sodium. Chlorine
+and sodium are elements, salt is a compound. Six atoms of carbon and six
+of hydrogen put together in a certain way make benzene. In the same way
+every substance that we meet is capable of analysis, showing ultimately
+the molecules as made up, according to a definite plan, of so many atoms
+of the various elements. In analytical chemistry molecules are dissected
+in order to discover the mode of their building; in synthetic chemistry
+the atoms are put together to make a molecule which is already known to
+have, or even may be anticipated to have, certain properties. This is
+the work of the chemist. Sometimes enormous forces are concerned in this
+pulling apart and putting together, witness the terrific power of modern
+explosives. But the same kind of handling by the chemist may be devoted
+to the delicate construction of a molecule which gives a certain colour
+to the dyer's vat and so pleases the eye that the great cloth industries
+feel the consequence, and nations themselves are affected by the flow of
+trade. After all, since the processes of the physical world operate
+ultimately through the power and properties of molecules, it is not
+surprising that the chemist's work in these and numberless other ways
+has such tremendous influence in the world.
+
+Here then by the recognition of the units of matter which Nature has
+chosen for herself it has been possible to do great things.
+
+It should be observed that the atom, in spite of its name, is not
+something which is incapable of all further division; it is only
+incapable of retaining its properties on division. When an atom of
+radium breaks down in the unique operation during which its singular
+properties are manifested, it dies as radium and becomes two atoms, one
+of helium, the other of a different and rare substance. It will interest
+you to know that the airships of the future are expected to be filled
+with this non-inflammable helium.
+
+The discovery of the atomic nature of electricity came later. Faraday
+established the fact that in certain processes there was more than a
+hint that electricity was always present in multiples of a definite
+unit. In the process called electrolysis the electric current is driven
+across a cell full of liquid containing molecules of some substance.
+When the electricity passes there is a loosening of the bonds that bind
+together the atoms of the molecule, and a separation; atoms of one kind
+travel with the electricity across the cell and are deposited where the
+current leaves the cell; the other kind travel the opposite way. In this
+way for example we deposit silver on metal objects in electro-plating
+processes, or separate out the purest copper for certain electrical
+purposes. The striking thing which Faraday discovered was that the
+number of atoms deposited always bore a very simple relation to the
+quantity of electricity that passes. The same current passing in
+succession through cells containing different kinds of molecules broke
+up the same number of molecules in each cell. It was as if in each
+electrolytic cell atoms of matter and atoms of electricity travelled
+together. The movement of an atom meant the simultaneous movement of a
+definite quantity of electricity. Electricity was, so to speak, done up
+in little equal parcels, and an atom of matter on the move, which was
+termed an ion, or wanderer, carried, not a vaguely defined amount of
+electricity, but one of these definite parcels.
+
+It was not, however, until the later years of the nineteenth century
+that the natural unit of electricity was manifested by itself and
+without a carrier. At a famous address to the British Association at
+York in 1881 Sir William Crookes described the first marvellous
+experiments in which this feat had been accomplished, though there was
+still to come a long controversy before the interpretation was clearly
+accepted. It is now definitely established that there is a fundamental
+atom of electricity which we now call the electron. As we all know
+electrification is of two kinds--a positive and a negative. The electron
+is of the negative kind. There does not appear to be a corresponding
+positive atom of electricity, or at least not one that is so singular in
+its properties as the electron. Electrons go to the making of all atoms,
+just as atoms go to the making of molecules. The atom which is neutral,
+that is, shows neither positive nor negative electrification, must
+contain positive electricity in some form to balance the electrons which
+we know it contains. When we strip an atom, as we know how to do, of one
+or more of these electrons, the remainder is positively charged. The
+positive ion is any sort of an atom or molecule which has become
+positively electrified in this way. An atom which has become positive by
+the loss of one or more of its electrons exercises a force on any spare
+electrons in its neighbourhood or on any atom carrying a spare electron.
+When there are large numbers of atoms seeking in this way to become
+neutral once more, as occurs often in Nature, the forces generated may
+be tremendous. They are shown, for example, in the lightning-stroke. But
+indeed it would seem that all the chemical forces of which we have
+already spoken depend ultimately upon the electric state of the atom
+concerned.
+
+It is because the force which a positively-charged atom exerts on an
+electron is so great and because the electron is so light and easily
+moved compared to an atom that the electron has not been isolated at
+will until recent years. The isolation in fact depends upon the electron
+being endowed with a sufficient speed to carry it through or past the
+action of an atom which is seeking to absorb it into its system. A lump
+of matter flying in space might enter our solar system with such speed
+as to be able to pass through and go on its way almost undeflected. Or
+again, it might have a much lower speed and go so much nearer the sun
+that it was seriously deflected in its course, as we see in the case of
+comet visitors. But if for some reason or other the lump of matter found
+itself inside the solar system without the endowment of high velocity it
+would certainly be absorbed. Just so an electron can pass through an
+atom with or without serious deviation from its line of motion, provided
+that motion is rapid enough. Only recently have we been able to exert
+electric forces of sufficient strength to set an electron in motion with
+the speed it must have if it is to maintain an individual existence Now
+we can gather electrons at will, dragging them from the interior of
+solid bodies, and hurl them with tremendous speed like a stream of
+projectiles. Since in the open air the speed is soon lost by innumerable
+collisions with the air-molecules, the effect can only be studied
+satisfactorily in a glass bulb from which the air has been evacuated.
+Crookes made great improvements in air-pumps during an investigation on
+thallium, and consequently was able to obtain the high vacuum required
+for the experiment with the electron streams. It was afterwards found by
+Röntgen that when an electron stream in an evacuated bulb was directed
+upon a target placed within the bulb, a remarkable radiation issued
+from the target. Thus arose the so-called X or Röntgen rays. As you all
+know they have for many years played a most important part in surgery
+and medicine. You may have heard that during the war they were also used
+to examine the interior of aeroplane constructions and to look for flaws
+invisible from without. Although X-Rays are of the same nature as light
+rays they can penetrate where light rays cannot, passing in greater or
+less degree through materials which are opaque to visible light and
+allowing us to examine the interior which is hidden from the eye.
+
+Every electric discharge is essentially a hurried rush of electrons.
+When we rub two bodies together and they become electrified we have in
+some way or other torn electrons from one of the bodies and piled them
+on the other. The former becomes the positively charged body and the
+latter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is
+spun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process
+too dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as
+it passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin
+the threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute
+hooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. The spinning operation
+would come to an end were there not means provided by which the air can
+be so filled with moisture that the fibres become damp and the action
+ceases. So in some cases a stream of air filled with positive and
+negative ions is made to play upon the fibres; the fibres select what
+ions they want, and so neutralizing themselves, spinning can proceed
+again.
+
+When a current of electricity runs along a wire there is in fact nothing
+more than a procession of electrons. The stream of electrons that runs
+through the filaments in the lamps that light this room, raising the
+filaments to a white heat, are set in motion by the dynamos in the city.
+There is a complete wire circuit, including the dynamo, the conductors,
+and the lamps. When the dynamos are not working the electrons do not as
+a whole move either way, though they are always there. When the dynamo
+begins to turn, the electrons set out on their continuous journey.
+
+Electrons are involved in the emission of wireless signals, and in their
+receipt. The so-called 'valve', which multiplies minute electric signals
+and was so greatly improved during the war, depends entirely on the
+action of electrons, and the brilliant experimental work was based on
+the newly-acquired knowledge of their properties.
+
+I have told you that under certain circumstances a stream of electrons
+may generate X-Rays, in reality a form of light rays. This action is a
+very common one, and it is curious that the faster the electron goes the
+shorter is the wave-length of the radiation. A very fast electron
+generates an X-Ray of so short a wave-length that the penetrating power
+of the ray, which goes with the shortness of the wave, is excessive, and
+in this way we may have rays which go right through the human body or
+even through inches of steel. As the speed of the exciting electron
+becomes less, the X-Rays are less penetrating. With still slower
+electrons we may generate ordinary light, and it will take a slower
+electron to generate red than to generate blue. The slowest electrons we
+use in this way have a speed of many hundred miles per second; the
+fastest have a speed which nearly approaches that of light, or 186,000
+miles a second.
+
+And conversely radiation can set electrons in motion. When X-Rays are
+driven into a patient's body electrons are set in motion within, and
+moving over certain minute distances, initiate chemical actions which
+are necessary to some cure. Or they may go right through the body and
+fall on a photographic plate, setting in operation chemical action which
+forms a picture on the plate.
+
+There is another occasion of an entirely different kind when the
+electron is greatly in evidence and displays effects which are most
+astonishing and significant. Every atom of radium or other radio-active
+substances sooner or later meets with the catastrophe in which its life
+as radium ends and atoms of other substances are formed. At that moment
+occurs the emission which is the characteristic property of the
+substance. One of the radiations emitted consists of high-velocity
+electrons, moving, some of them, nearly as fast as light.
+
+Now it is found that when the speed approaches that of light, 186,000
+miles or 3 x 10^{10} centimetres per second, the energy is higher than
+it should be if it followed the usual rule, viz. energy is equal to half
+the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity. It would seem that an
+electron moving with the velocity of light would have infinite energy;
+or, to put the matter in another way, the experimenter in his laboratory
+can never hope to observe an electron moving so fast; it would be the
+end of his laboratory and of himself if ever it turned up.
+
+Linked up with this result is the very strange fact that no one has ever
+been able to find any direct evidence of the existence of the ether,
+which is postulated in order to carry light-waves. It has been pictured
+as a medium through which the heavenly bodies move, and to which their
+motions may be referred. But when light is launched into the ether, its
+apparent velocity must depend on whether it travels with or against the
+drift of the ether through the laboratory where the measurement is made.
+The experiment has been performed without the discovery of any such
+difference, although the method was amply accurate enough to detect the
+effect that might be expected. It was afterwards shown that the negative
+result might be explained by supposing that a measure of length varied
+in length according to whether it was travelling with or against the
+ether. But the continual failure of all such experiments has led to a
+remarkable hypothetical development with which the name of Einstein is
+firmly connected. It is supposed that some flaw must exist in our
+fundamental hypotheses, and that if this were corrected we should then
+find that we ought to get the same value for the velocity of light
+however and whenever we measured it, and at the same time we should find
+that no measurement of the velocity of a body moving relative to the
+observer would ever equal the velocity of light. The hypothesis denies
+the existence of an absolute standard to which motions can be referred,
+and insists that they must all be considered relatively to the observer.
+It is called the principle of relativity. Calculations of its
+consequences begin with the necessary changes in the fundamentals, such
+as Einstein has introduced.[70]
+
+Time does not allow me to say more of the innumerable ways in which
+electrons play an essential part in all the processes in the world. We
+have long believed that this is so, but the picture has never been so
+clear to us as it is now; and with our understanding our power is
+increased. Yet once more the illumination of our understanding comes
+from our recognition that Nature has preferred the discrete to the
+continuous and that electricity is not infinitely divisible but is, like
+matter, and even more simply than matter, of an atomic structure. And we
+have found the unit and learnt how to handle it.
+
+It is even more strange that it may now be said of energy that there are
+signs of atomicity. It may seem absurd to think that the energy which is
+transformed in any operation is transformed in multiples of a universal
+unit or units, so that the operation cannot be arrested at any desired
+stage but only at definite intervals. Indeed we have no right to assert
+that this is always true. But undoubtedly there are cases in which the
+atomicity of energy is clear enough, as for example in the interchange
+of energy between electrons in motion and radiation. It is remarkable
+that when radiation sets an electron in motion, the electron acquires a
+perfectly definite speed depending only on the wave-length of the
+radiation and not on its intensity, and has apparently absorbed from the
+radiation a definite unit of energy. Radiation of a particular
+wave-length cannot spend its energy in this way except in multiples of a
+certain unit, because each of the electrons which it sets in motion has
+the same initial energy, which it must have got from the radiation. In
+other words, energy of radiation of the particular wave-length can only
+be transformed into energy of movement of electrons in multiples of a
+certain 'quantum' peculiar to that wave-length. The intensity of the
+radiation, that is to say, the amount of energy moving along the beam,
+can only affect the number of electrons set in motion and not the speed
+of any one of them. During the last few years a very extraordinary
+theory has been developed on the basis of these and similar facts. I
+doubt if it would be more profitable to give further instances at
+present, but I have mentioned it because it seems to show looming on the
+horizon of our knowledge another tendency of Nature to make use of the
+atomic principle.
+
+I will only add that the whole position of physics is indeed at this
+time of extraordinary interest, and at any moment there may be some
+great discovery or illuminating thought which will explain the present
+startling difficulties and open up new worlds of thought.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Bragg, _Rays and Crystals_ (Ball & Sons).
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 70: Since this address was given, the results of the Eclipse
+Expedition to Brazil are considered to have confirmed in a satisfactory
+manner one of the most remarkable deductions made by Einstein from the
+principles which he maintains. The matter has roused so much interest
+that some of the leading exponents of the relativity principle have
+published careful accounts intended for students not familiar with it:
+it would therefore be superfluous to discuss the matter here.]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY DURING THE LAST SIXTY YEARS
+
+PROFESSOR LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.
+
+
+On November 24, 1859, _The Origin of Species_ was published, and this
+date marks the beginning of an epoch in every branch of biology. Before
+it, Biology had been almost entirely a descriptive science, but within a
+few years after the publication of the _Origin_ its effects began to
+colour all aspects of biological research. A co-ordinating and unifying
+principle had been found, and the leading idea of biologists ceased to
+be to describe living things as they are, and became transformed into
+the attempt to discover how they are related to one another. The first
+effect of this change of attitude was chiefly to turn biologists towards
+the task of tracing phylogenetic or evolutionary relationships between
+different groups of animals--the drawing up of probable or possible
+genealogical trees and the explanation of natural classification on an
+evolutionary basis. When once, however, the notion of cause and effect,
+or more correctly of relationship, between the phenomena seen in living
+beings had become familiar to biologists, it spread far beyond the
+limits of tracing genealogical connexions between different animals and
+plants. It made possible the conception of a true Science of Life, in
+which every phenomenon seen in a living organism should fall into its
+true place in relation to the rest, and in which also the phenomena of
+life should be correlated with those discovered in the inorganic
+sciences of Chemistry and Physics.
+
+The history of the various branches of biological science in the past
+sixty years reflects the general course of these tendencies. Until
+shortly after 1859, the study of morphology, or the comparative
+structure of animals (and of plants) was intimately related with that of
+physiology, that is, with the study of function. In the years following
+the appearance of the _Origin_, however, anatomists and morphologists
+were seized with a new interest. For the time at least, the chief aim in
+studying structure was no longer to explain function, but rather to
+explain how that structure had come into being in the course of
+evolution, and how it was related with homologous but different
+structures in other forms. The result was a tendency to a divorce
+between morphology and physiology, or at least between morphologists and
+physiologists, which led to the division into two more or less distinct
+sciences of what had hitherto been regarded as closely inter-related
+branches of one. The greater men of the early part of the period, such
+as Huxley, remained both morphologists and physiologists, but most of
+their followers fell inevitably into one or the other group, and in
+discussing the later phases of biological progress it will be necessary
+to keep them separate.
+
+Apart from its effect on the systematic and anatomical side of Biology,
+the idea of Evolution, and especially of Darwin's theory of Natural
+Selection, had important consequences on that side of the science which
+may be described as Natural History. Before the appearance of Darwin's
+work, Natural History consisted chiefly in the observation and
+collection of facts about the habits and life-history of animals and
+plants, which as a rule had no unifying principle unless they were used,
+as in the Bridgewater Treatises, to illustrate 'the power, wisdom, and
+goodness of God'. Now, however, a new motive was provided--that of
+discovering the uses to the organism of its various colours,
+structures, and habits, and the application of the principle of natural
+selection to show how these characters conduced to the preservation and
+further evolution of the species. And out of this interest in the theory
+of natural selection grew in the last twenty years of the nineteenth
+century the greatly increased attention to the facts and theories of
+heredity, which was stimulated by Darwin's hypothesis of Pangenesis and
+especially by Weismann's speculations about the nature and behaviour of
+the 'germ-plasm'. Before the appearance of Weismann's work, the
+germ-cells, which bear somehow or other the hereditary characters that
+appear in the offspring, were supposed to be produced directly from the
+body of the parent. Darwin provisionally suggested that every cell of
+every organism gives off minute particles which become congregated in
+the germ-cells, and that these cells thus contain representative
+portions of all parts of the parent's body. Weismann, on the basis of
+his work on the origin of the germ-cells in Medusae and Insects,
+maintained that these cells are not derived from the body, but only from
+pre-existing germ-cells stored within it--that, in fact, although an egg
+gives rise to a hen, a hen does not give rise to an egg, but only keeps
+inside her a store of embryonic eggs which mature and are laid as the
+time comes round. The theory had to be modified to suit the facts of
+regeneration and vegetative reproduction, but in essence it was accepted
+by the biological world and is the orthodox opinion (if such a word may
+be used in Science) at the present day. The difference between the two
+views is not only of theoretical interest, for it involves the whole
+question of whether characteristics acquired by an individual during its
+life in response to external conditions can or cannot be transmitted to
+offspring. If the germ-cells contain representatives of all parts of the
+body, modifications impressed on the body during its life may at least
+possibly be transmitted to offspring born after the modifications have
+taken place. If, however, the germ-cells are independent of the rest of
+the body, and only stored within it for safe-keeping like a deed-box in
+the vaults of a bank, it would seem impossible for any environmental
+influence, whether for good or ill, to take effect on the offspring.
+This controversy on the heritability of 'acquired characters' was one of
+the most important towards the end of last century, and although the
+majority of biologists now follow Weismann in so far as they deny that
+'acquired' characters are transmissible, the question is not yet
+completely settled; all that can be said is that, in spite of many
+attempts to prove the contrary, there is no satisfactory evidence of the
+transmission to offspring of effects impressed on the body of the
+parent, unless the germ-cells themselves have been affected by the same
+cause--as for example in some cases of long-continued poisoning by
+alcohol or similar drugs.
+
+While the problem of the transmission of acquired characters, and of the
+cause of variation and its relation to evolution, was occupying much of
+the attention of biologists, the whole problem entered upon a new phase
+in the year 1900 with the re-discovery of Mendel's work on heredity.
+Mendel worked with plants, and published his results in 1865, but at
+that time the biological world was too much occupied with the fierce
+controversy which raged over _The Origin of Species_ to take much notice
+of a paper the bearing of which upon it was not appreciated. Mendel's
+discovery never came to the notice of Darwin, was buried in an obscure
+periodical, and remained unknown until many years after the death of its
+author. In 1900 it was unearthed, and, largely owing to the work of
+Bateson, it rapidly became known as one of the most important
+contributions to Biology made during the period under review.
+
+This is not the place to describe in detail the nature of Mendel's
+theory. Its essence is, firstly, that the various characteristics of an
+organism are in general inherited quite independently of one another;
+and, secondly, that the germ-cells of a hybrid are pure in respect of
+any one character, that is to say, that any one germ-cell can only
+transmit any unit character as it was received from one parent or the
+other, and not a combination of the two. This leads to a conception of
+the organism as something like a mosaic, in which each piece of the
+pattern is transmitted in inheritance independently of the rest, and in
+which any piece cannot be modified by association with a different but
+corresponding piece derived from another ancestor. It is impossible to
+say as yet whether this conception at all completely represents the
+nature of the living organism, but it is one which is exercising
+considerable influence in biological thought, and if established it will
+mark a revolution in Biology hardly inferior to that brought about in
+Physics and Chemistry by the discovery of radio-activity.
+
+An important consequence of the advance in our knowledge of heredity
+associated with the work of Mendel and his successors is a tendency to
+doubt whether natural selection is of such fundamental importance in
+shaping the course of evolution as was supposed in the years of the
+first enthusiasm which followed the publication of the _Origin_.
+
+Darwin based his theory of Natural Selection on the belief which he
+derived from breeders of plants and animals, that the kind of variation
+used by them to produce new breeds was the small and apparently
+unimportant differences which distinguish a 'fine' from a 'poor'
+specimen. He supposed that the skilled breeder picked out as parents of
+his stock those individuals which were slightly superior in one feature
+or another, and that by the accumulative effect of these successive
+selections not only was the breed steadily improved, but also, by
+divergent selection, new breeds were produced. Experience shows,
+however, that although this method is used to keep breeds up to the
+required standard, it is rarely, if ever, the means by which new breeds
+arise. New breeds commonly come into existence either by a 'sport' or
+mutation, or by crossing two already distinct races, and by selecting
+from among the heterogeneous descendants of the cross those individuals
+which show the required combination of characters. And it is further
+found that most of the distinguishing features of various breeds of
+domestic animals and plants are inherited according to Mendel's Law,
+suggesting that each of these characters is a unit, like one piece of a
+mosaic, independent of the rest. Now it is easy to see how the selection
+of small, continuously varying characters could take place in Nature by
+the destruction of all those individuals which failed to reach a certain
+standard, but it is much more difficult to understand how natural
+selection could act on comparatively large, sporadic, unco-ordinated
+'sports'. There is thus a distinct tendency at present to regard natural
+selection as less omnipotent in directing the course of evolution than
+was formerly supposed, but it must be admitted that no very satisfactory
+alternative hypothesis has been suggested. Some have supposed that there
+is a kind of organic momentum which causes evolution to continue in
+those directions in which it has already proceeded, while others have
+postulated, like Bergson, an _élan vital_ as a kind of directive agency.
+Others again have reverted towards the older belief in the inherited
+effects of environment--a belief which, in spite of the arguments of
+Weismann and his followers, has never been without its supporters. The
+present condition of this part of biology, as of many others, is one of
+open-mindedness approaching agnosticism. There is dissatisfaction with
+the beliefs which satisfied the preceding generation, and which were
+held up almost as dogmas, but there is no clear vision of the direction
+in which a truer view may be sought.
+
+Before leaving this side of the subject, reference must be made to one
+important aspect of modern work on heredity--that of the inheritance of
+'mental and moral' characteristics. As a result of the work of the
+biometric school founded by Galton and Pearson, it has been shown that
+the so-called mental and moral characteristics of man are inherited in
+the same manner and to the same extent as his physical features. Of the
+theoretical importance of this demonstration this is not the place to
+speak; its practical value is unquestionable, and may in the future have
+important effects on sociological problems.
+
+Another notable line of advance, entirely belonging to the period under
+review, and chiefly the product of the present century, is seen in the
+science of Cytology--the investigation of the microscopic structure of
+the cells of which the body is composed. The marvellous phenomena of
+cell and nuclear division have revealed much of the formerly unsuspected
+complexity of living things, while the universality of the processes
+shows how fundamentally alike is life in all its forms. In recent years
+great progress has been made in correlating the phenomena of heredity
+and of the determination of sex with the visible structural features of
+the germ-cells. Weismann attempted a beginning of this over thirty years
+ago, but the detailed knowledge of the facts was then insufficient.
+Since the discovery of Mendel's Law, a great amount of work has been
+done, chiefly in America, by E.B. Wilson and T.H. Morgan and their
+pupils, on tracing the actual physical basis of hereditary transmission.
+Although the matter is far from being completely known, the results
+obtained make it almost indubitable that inherited characters are in
+some way borne by the _chromosomes_ in the nuclei of the germ-cells.
+The work of Morgan and his school has shown that the actual order in
+which these inherited 'factors' are arranged in the chromosomes can
+almost certainly be demonstrated, and his results go far to support the
+conception of the organism, referred to above, as a combination or
+mosaic of independently inherited features.
+
+It was said at the beginning of this sketch that most of the more
+notable lines of advance in Biology could be traced back to the impetus
+given by the acceptance of the theory of Evolution, and the desire to
+test and prove that theory in every biological field. It is most
+convenient, therefore, to take this root-idea as a starting-point, and
+to see how the various branches of study have diverged from it and have
+themselves branched out in various ways, and how these branches have
+often again become intertwined and united in the later development of
+the science.
+
+Perhaps the most obvious method of testing the theory of evolution is by
+the study of fossil forms, and our knowledge of these has progressed
+enormously during the period under review. Not only have a number of new
+and strange types of ancient life come to light, but in some cases, e.g.
+in that of the horse and elephant, a very complete series of
+evolutionary stages has been discovered. In this branch, however, as in
+almost all others, the results have not exactly fulfilled the
+expectations of the early enthusiasts. On the one hand, evolution has
+been shown to be a much more complex thing than at first seemed
+probable; and on the other, many of the gaps which it was most hoped to
+fill still remain. A number of most remarkable 'missing links' have been
+discovered, such as, for example, _Archaeopteryx_, the stepping-stone
+between the Reptiles and the Birds, and the faith of the palaeontologist
+in the truth of evolution is everywhere confirmed. But the hope of
+finding all the stages, especially in the ancestry of Man, has not been
+realized, and it has been found that what at one time were regarded as
+direct ancestors are collaterals, and that the problem of human
+evolution is much less simple than was once supposed.
+
+A second important piece of evidence in favour of evolution is provided
+by the study of the geographical distribution of animals, on which much
+work was done in the earlier part of the period under review. And in
+this connexion mention must be made of the science of Oceanography, for
+our whole knowledge of life in the abysses of the ocean, and almost all
+that we know of the conditions of life in the sea in general, has been
+gained in the last fifty years.
+
+Another of the chief lines of evidence for the truth of the evolution
+theory is based on the study of embryology, and this also was followed
+with great vigour by the zoologists of the last thirty years of the
+nineteenth century. It is found that in many instances animals
+recapitulate in their early development the stages through which their
+ancestors passed in the course of evolution. Land Vertebrates, including
+man, have in their early embryonic life gill-clefts, heart and
+circulation, and in some respects skeleton and other organs of the type
+found in fishes, and this can only be explained on the assumption that
+they are descended from aquatic fish-like ancestors. On the basis of
+such facts as these, the theory was formulated that every animal
+recapitulates in ontogeny (development) the stages passed through in its
+phylogeny (evolution), and great hopes were founded upon this principle
+of discovering the systematic position and evolutionary history of
+isolated and aberrant forms. In many cases the search has led to
+brilliant results, but, as in the case of palaeontology, in many others
+the light that was hoped for has not been forthcoming. For it soon
+became evident that the majority of animals show adaptation to their
+environment not only in their adult stages but also in their larval or
+embryonic period, and these adaptations have led to modifications of the
+course of development which are often so great as to mask, or obscure
+altogether, the ancestral structure which may once have existed.
+Although, therefore, the results of embryological research have provided
+most convincing proof of the truth of the theory of evolution in
+general, they have not completely justified the hopes of the early
+embryologists that by this method all the outstanding phylogenetic
+problems might be solved.
+
+The detailed study of embryology, however, has led to most important
+results apart from the particular purpose for which most of the earlier
+investigations in this field were originally undertaken. For the study
+of embryology, at first purely descriptive and comparative, was soon
+found to involve fundamental problems concerning the factors which
+control development. An egg consists of a single cell, and it develops
+by the division of this cell into two, then into four, eight, and so
+forth, until a mass of cells is produced. In some cases all these cells
+are to all appearance alike, or nearly alike; in others the included
+yolk is from the first segregated more or less completely into some
+cells, leaving the other cells without it. But in any case, after this
+process of cell-division has proceeded for a certain time,
+differentiation begins to set in--some cells become modified in one way,
+others in another, and from what was a relatively homogeneous mass an
+organized embryo, with highly differentiated parts, appears. The problem
+immediately propounds itself--what are the factors which control this
+differentiation? This problem is essentially a physiological one, and
+yet, since it arises most conspicuously in a field which has been worked
+by professed zoologists rather than physiologists, it has been studied
+more by those trained in zoology and botany than by those who have
+specialized in physiology. In this way, as in many other directions,
+such as in the study of heredity, of sex, and of the effects of the
+environment on the colours and structure of animals, the trend of
+zoology in recent years has returned towards the physiological side, and
+the old division which separated the sciences (but which has never so
+seriously affected students of plant life) is being obliterated.
+
+Hence we are led back to consider the progress of Physiology as a
+whole--a subject with which the present writer hesitates to deal except
+in a very superficial manner. Physiology as an organized science has
+inevitably been deeply influenced by its close relation with medicine,
+with the result that through a large portion of the period under review
+it has concerned itself chiefly with the functions of the human body in
+particular, or at least chiefly with Vertebrates from which, by analogy,
+the human functions may be inferred. In this field it has made enormous
+progress, and a vast amount of knowledge has been gained with regard to
+the function and mechanism of all the parts and organs of the body. It
+may perhaps be suggested, however, that in the pursuit of this detailed
+(and in practice absolutely necessary) knowledge, physiologists have to
+some extent lost sight of the wood in their preoccupation with the
+trees. That is to say, while they have advanced an immense distance in
+their knowledge of organs, they have not yet got as far as might be
+hoped in the understanding of the organism--which is to say no more than
+that the great and fundamental problem of Biology, the nature and
+meaning of Life, is apparently almost as far from solution as ever. To
+this further reference will be made below.
+
+The progress of Physiology has been so great in all its branches that it
+is difficult to decide which most deserve mention; perhaps the most
+important advances are those connected with the nervous system and with
+internal secretions. Little or nothing was known fifty years ago of the
+minute structure of the nervous system, nor of the special functions of
+its different parts. Now the main functions of the various parts of the
+brain, and the relation of these parts to the activities of the other
+organs of the body, are well known, although much remains to be
+discovered with regard to the more detailed localization of function.
+The study of the microscopic structure of brain and nerve, and
+experiment on the conduction of nervous impulse, have given us some
+insight into the mechanism of the nervous system, but the fundamental
+nature of nervous action still remains unsolved.
+
+The nervous system is the chief co-ordinating link between the various
+organs of the body, but in recent years it has been discovered that the
+relations of the different parts to one another are greatly influenced
+by substances known as internal secretions or 'hormones'. These
+substances are produced by ductless glands (the thyroid, suprarenals,
+&c.), from which they diffuse into the blood-stream and exercise a
+remarkable influence either on particular organs or systems, or on the
+body as a whole. Some of these secretions act specifically on the
+involuntary muscles of the body, others control growth, others the
+development of the secondary sexual characters, such as the distinctive
+plumage of male birds, and also greatly influence the sexual instinct.
+Much still remains to be discovered with regard to them, but it seems
+clear that they are of immense importance in the economy of the body. It
+has been suggested, without much experimental support, however, that if
+a part of the body becomes modified by use or environment, it may
+produce a modified hormone, and that so, by the action of this on the
+germ-cells, the modification may be transmitted to subsequent
+generations.
+
+Before leaving the subject of physiology in the more special or
+technical application of the term, reference must be made to another
+science the growth of which has been largely under the influence of
+medicine. This is bacteriology, one of the newest branches of biology,
+and yet one which both from its practical importance and from the
+theoretical interest of its discoveries is rapidly taking a foremost
+place. Of its practical achievements in connexion with disease, and with
+the part played by bacteria and other minute organisms in the life and
+affairs of man, it is not necessary to speak. Every one knows the great
+advances that have been made in recent years in identifying (and to a
+less extent in controlling) disease-producing organisms, whether
+bacteria, protozoa (such as the organisms causing malaria, dysentery,
+etc.), or more highly organized parasites. The attempt, however, to
+combat these pathogenic bacteria has led to discoveries of the highest
+importance with regard to the production of immunity, not only against
+specific germs, but against many organic poisons such as snake venom and
+various vegetable toxins. That an attack of certain diseases leaves the
+patient immune to that disease for a longer or shorter time has of
+course been known for centuries, but it is a modern discovery that a
+specific poison induces the body to produce a specific antidote which
+neutralizes it, and the detailed working out of this principle and the
+study of the means by which the immunity is brought about promise to
+lead us a long way towards the central problem of the nature and
+activities of life itself.
+
+We have seen how zoology has been led back into physiological channels
+of research, and how the study of bacteria is opening up some of the
+deepest problems of the reaction of living things to environmental
+stimuli, and just as the various branches of these sciences interlace
+and influence one another, so all of them, in recent years, have been
+coming into contact with the inorganic sciences of chemistry and
+physics. One of the noteworthy features of science in all its branches
+in recent years has been the tendency of subjects which were at one time
+regarded as distinct to come together again and to find that the
+problems of each can only be successfully attacked by the co-operation
+of the others. In their earlier days the biological sciences were in
+most respects far removed from chemistry and physics; it was recognized,
+of course, that organisms were in one sense at least physico-chemical
+mechanisms, consisting of chemical elements and subject to the
+fundamental laws of matter and energy. With the advent of the theory of
+evolution this conception of the organism as a mechanism took more
+definite shape, and among many biologists the belief was held that in no
+very long time all the phenomena of life would be explicable by known
+physico-chemical laws. Hence arose the scientific materialism which was
+so widespread in the years following the general acceptance of Darwin's
+theory. It was recognized, of course, that our knowledge of organic
+chemistry was at the time entirely inadequate to place this belief upon
+a proved scientific basis, but the expectation of proving it gave a
+great impetus to the study of the physical and chemical phenomena of
+life. This attempt was still further stimulated by the investigation of
+the factors controlling development referred to in a preceding
+paragraph, for it is evident that to a great extent at least these
+factors are chemical and physical in nature. And concurrently, the great
+advances in organic chemistry, resulting in the analysis and in many
+cases in the artificial synthesis of substances previously regarded as
+capable of production only in the tissues of living organisms, made
+possible a much more thorough investigation of the chemical and physical
+basis of vital phenomena. The result of this has been that to a quite
+considerable extent the factors, hitherto mysterious, which control the
+fertilization, division, and differentiation of the egg, the digestion
+and absorption of food, the conduction of nervous impulses, and many of
+the changes undergone in the normal or pathological functioning of the
+organs and tissues, can be ascribed to chemical and physical causes
+which are well known in the inorganic world.
+
+As in other instances, however, some of which have been mentioned above,
+the elucidation of the organism from this point of view has turned out
+to be a much less simple process than the more sanguine of the early
+investigators supposed. The more knowledge has progressed, the more
+complex and intricate has even the simplest organism shown itself to be,
+and although the mechanism of the parts is gradually becoming
+understood, the fundamental mystery of life remains as elusive as ever.
+
+The chief reason for this failure to penetrate appreciably nearer to the
+central mystery of life appears to be the fact that an organism is
+something more than the sum of its various parts and functions. In
+tracing the behaviour of any one part or function, whether it be the
+conduction of a nervous impulse, the supply of oxygen to the tissues by
+the blood, or the transmission of inherited characters by the
+germ-cells, we may be able to give a more or less complete
+physico-chemical or mechanical account of the process. But we seem to
+get little or no nearer to an explanation of the fact that although
+every one of these processes may be explicable by laws familiar in the
+non-living, in the living organism they are co-ordinated in such a way
+that none of them is complete in itself; they are parts of a whole, but
+the whole is not simply a sum of its parts, but is in itself a unity, in
+which all the parts are subject to the controlling influence of the
+whole. An organism, alone among the material bodies which we know, is
+constantly and necessarily in a state of unstable equilibrium, and yet
+has a condition of _normality_ which is maintained by the harmonious
+interaction of all its parts. Every function of the body, if not thus
+co-ordinated with the rest, would very quickly destroy this condition of
+normality, but in consequence of the co-ordination each is subject to
+the needs of the whole, and normality is maintained. When the normality
+is artificially disturbed, all the functions of the body adapt
+themselves to the change, and, if the disturbance be not too great,
+co-operate in the restoration of the normal condition. It is in these
+phenomena of adaptation and organic unity and co-ordination that up to
+the present time the efforts to reduce the phenomena of living things to
+the operation of physico-chemical laws have most conspicuously failed.
+
+From what has been said it will be evident that, fundamentally, all
+biological research, whether its authors are conscious of it or not, is
+directed towards the solution of one central problem--the problem of the
+real and ultimate nature of life. And the main outcome of the work of
+sixty years has been that this problem has begun clearly to emerge as
+the central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem
+a reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be
+insoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it
+has led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living
+and the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem inevitably
+faces us.
+
+Many suggestions for its solution have been made. On the one hand there
+is still, as there always has been, a considerable body of opinion that
+the solution will be a mechanical one--using the word mechanical in the
+widest sense--and that the living differs from the non-living not in
+kind, but only in degree of complexity. The upholders of the mechanistic
+or materialist theory, however, are perhaps less confident than their
+predecessors of the last century, for the solution in this direction
+has to face not only the problem of organic co-ordination already
+referred to, but also that of consciousness and mind. For although the
+study of psychology on physiological lines has made similar progress to
+that of other branches of physiology, it seems to approach little nearer
+to a discovery of the nature of the relation between consciousness in
+its various aspects and the material body with which it is associated.
+So long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a
+satisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.
+
+On the other hand, there has been a revival of the ancient tendency
+towards what is called a vitalistic solution. A certain number of
+biologists, impressed by the apparent similarity between the control and
+co-ordination exercised by the organism over its functions and the
+conscious control of voluntary activity with which we are familiar in
+ourselves, have supposed that these things are not merely superficially
+similar but have a real and fundamental affinity. This does not mean
+that organic control is always conscious, but that there is a
+controlling entity, non-material in nature, which is similar in kind to
+the 'ego' of a self-conscious human being. They suppose that the
+organism is not simply material, but is a material mechanism controlled
+by a non-material entity the nature of which is more akin to what we
+mean by the word spirit than anything else of which we are accustomed to
+think. They are in fact dualists, and divide reality into the material
+and spatial on the one hand, and non-material principle or entity which
+may fairly be called spiritual on the other.
+
+And, in the third place, there are those who seek a solution which
+denies the truth of both the preceding, and which is metaphysically
+idealist or monist in character. To them, if the present writer
+understands their attitude, matter and spirit are different aspects of
+one reality. In the inorganic and non-living, phenomena appear which are
+generalized under the laws of physics and chemistry, but the phenomena
+of life fall into a different category which includes the conception of
+co-ordination or individuality, while a still higher category is
+required to include the phenomena of consciousness and mind.
+
+It is evident from this brief review that Biology in the period
+considered has passed through three main stages. The first of these was
+the acceptance of a new illuminating and unifying idea, which led to
+enthusiastic research in many directions for the purpose of proving and
+amplifying it. Very rapidly new facts, or new interpretations of facts
+already known, were shown to fall into line, and the evolution theory
+became converted from a hypothesis into something approaching a dogma.
+Not only the idea of organic evolution itself, but all the current
+beliefs about the method of evolution, and the larger speculations to
+which it gave rise, were widely regarded as almost indisputable, and
+where difficulties and inconsistencies appeared, these were supposed to
+be due solely to the insufficiency of our knowledge, which would soon be
+remedied. Then, however, as detailed knowledge increased, the voice of
+criticism and doubt was more frequently heard. The various branches of
+Biology began once more to overlap, and to join hands with chemistry and
+physics, and it became clear that the interpretation of life was very
+far from being a simple problem. And so, as with the Atomic Theory in
+chemistry, the present position is one of dissolution of the older ideas
+and of hesitation to express a fixed belief, for while Biology has a
+clearer vision of the problem before it than ever it had, its wider
+knowledge reveals the fact that the problem is far from being solved.
+Perhaps one of the chief results of the great increase of knowledge
+during the past sixty years has been to show us the immensity of the
+field still remaining to be explored.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Centenary volume on Darwin (Cambridge University Press).
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ART
+
+A. CLUTTON-BROCK
+
+
+My subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so
+far as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely
+philosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of
+the speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as
+they seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject
+is the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to
+connect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our
+beliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we
+produce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to
+confess it has not yet appeared.
+
+Indeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or
+other of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who
+are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only
+imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation
+of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them
+and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the
+artists are often confused in their practice of it.
+
+The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great
+liveliness, by Whistler in his _Ten O'clock_, and has had great
+influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and
+upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no
+concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There
+is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental
+one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.
+
+Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.
+
+     'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.
+
+     'There never was an art-loving nation.
+
+     'In the beginning man went forth each day--some to do battle,
+     some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the
+     field--all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until
+     there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose
+     pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with
+     the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
+     gourd.
+
+     'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared
+     not for conquest and fretted in the field--this designer of
+     quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in
+     nature about him curious curvings--as faces are seen in the
+     fire--this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'
+
+     'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
+     people, they took the gourd--and drank from it.'
+
+Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had
+traced on it.
+
+     'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a
+     consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
+     was none other.'
+
+So gradually there came the great ages of art.
+
+     'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and
+     drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
+     drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'
+
+And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in
+the matter.
+
+But then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class
+
+     'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of
+     the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the
+     gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and
+     charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham
+     and Manchester arose in their might--and Art was relegated to the
+     curiosity shop.'
+
+I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the
+people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at
+all, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one
+values. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and
+you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.
+
+But Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as
+we can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had
+seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him
+starve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples,
+is not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men
+is modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive
+societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that
+reason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups
+they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we
+drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive
+societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all
+dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would
+have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In
+fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist
+because he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read
+himself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes
+in a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is
+wrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a
+relation, and a necessary relation, between the artist and his public;
+but what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to
+answer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in
+fact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ tried to put it
+right.
+
+_What is Art?_ is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but
+I believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this
+contention as shortly as I can in his own words.
+
+     'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this--that
+     one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on
+     to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people
+     are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'
+
+Now this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and
+just because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if
+art is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the
+artist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of
+people who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts
+these conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He
+judges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be
+of no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that
+few can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere
+fails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of
+art exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the
+actual words of Tolstoy:
+
+     'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and
+     diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few
+     people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it
+     will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of
+     people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious
+     life.'
+
+Now this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself.
+You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good,
+you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it
+will satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are
+situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does
+proceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony
+and about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian
+peasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked
+this question about all works of art, we should none of us ever
+experience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of
+music, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that
+is to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of
+people situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to
+decide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself
+belongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting
+of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but
+for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was
+blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy
+of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in
+the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way
+of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art
+would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of
+Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century
+in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he
+condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.
+
+We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the
+tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own
+experience of art. The fact that we _can_ enjoy and experience a work
+of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and
+experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art
+is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his
+own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,
+in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the
+primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and
+always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the
+public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.
+
+According to him the proper aim of art is to do good.
+
+     'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time
+     unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,
+     and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'
+
+The word _unjust_ implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist
+sins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I
+sin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people
+do not enjoy.
+
+But as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good
+but good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of
+art I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to
+other people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that
+is as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking
+whether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of
+it, for I have nothing else to go by.
+
+And so it is with the artist; he cannot begin by asking himself whether
+the mass of men will understand what he proposes to produce; he must
+produce it, and then trust in man, and God, for its effect. Art is
+produced by the individual artist and experienced by the individual man.
+Tolstoy holds that it is to be experienced by mankind in the mass, not
+by individuals; his audience is an abstraction. Whistler holds that it
+is produced by the individual, but for himself, and not experienced by
+mankind either in the mass or as individuals. Both are heretics. What is
+the truth?
+
+I will now turn for a moment to the high aesthetic doctrine of Benedetto
+Croce. He in his _Aesthetic_ tells us that all art is expression. True
+enough, as far as it goes; but what do we mean by expression? Croce's
+doctrine of expression is incomplete, he does not explain clearly what
+he means by expression, because he also avoids the question of the
+necessary relation between the artist and his audience; and this is the
+question which our thought about art has to deal with, just as we have
+to solve it in our practice of art and in our actual relation with the
+artist. Croce does not see that the question--What is expression?
+depends upon the question--What is the relation between the artist and
+his audience? He does see that the audience exists, which Whistler
+denies; he insists that the audience have the same faculties as the
+artist, though to a less degree--that the artist is not a dreamer apart.
+He says indeed that to experience a work of art we also must exercise
+our aesthetic faculty; our very experience of it is itself expression;
+and this is a most important point. But for Croce, as for Whistler, the
+artist, when he expresses himself, is concerned only with what he
+expresses, not with the people to whom he expresses himself. Croce does
+not see this obvious fact, that a work of art is a work of art _because
+it is addressed to some one_ and is not a private activity of the
+artist. That is why he fails to give a satisfying account of the nature
+of expression. Croce cannot distinguish between expression, or art, and
+day-dreaming; but the distinction is this, that as soon as I pass from
+day-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to
+others. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that
+it is addressed to others. A story, for instance, is a story, it has a
+plot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because
+it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical
+form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be
+heard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be
+seen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.
+When a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says--This is what I
+have seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art
+is a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an
+audience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of
+address, there could be no art, no expression, at all.
+
+In fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his
+nature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man
+does not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature
+social always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in
+isolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.
+
+But although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a
+moral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of
+doing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;
+if he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself
+incompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does
+not do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not
+trying to do good.
+
+But what is it that really happens when the artist addresses us, and why
+does he wish to address us? To answer this, we must consider our own
+experience, not merely as an audience but also as artists, for we are,
+as Croce insists, all of us to some extent artists. You have all no
+doubt been aware of some failure and dissatisfaction in those of your
+experiences which seem to you the highest. Suppose, for instance, you
+see some extreme beauty, as of a sunset. It leaves you sad with a
+feeling of your own inadequacy. You have not been equal to it, and why?
+You will say in speaking of it to others--I wish I could tell you what I
+felt or what I saw, but I can't. That wish is itself natural and
+instantly stirred in you by the experience of extreme beauty. The
+experience seems incomplete, because you cannot tell anyone else what
+you felt and saw; and you are hurt by your effort and failure to do so.
+
+It is a fact of human nature that the experience of any beauty does
+arouse in us the desire to communicate our experience; and this desire
+is instinctive. It is not that we wish to do good to others by
+communicating it. It is simply that we wish to communicate it. The
+experience itself is incomplete for us until we communicate it. The
+happiness which it gives us is frustrated by our failure to communicate
+it. We should be utterly happy if we could make others see what we see
+and feel what we feel, but we fail of happiness because we cannot.
+
+Why? One can only conjecture and express conjectures in dull language.
+This beauty is itself a universal quality or virtue which makes
+particular things more real when they have it. It speaks to the
+universal in us, to the everyman in us, and, speaking so, it makes us
+aware of the universal in all men. We too wish to speak to that
+universal, we wish to find it and the more intense reality which is to
+be seen only where it is seen, we wish ourselves to be a part of it; and
+we can do that only when all other men also are a part of it. Beauty
+seems to speak not merely to us but to the whole listening earth, and we
+would be assured that all the earth is listening to it, not to us.
+
+But we ourselves have to play our part in the realizing of this
+universal; the sense of it comes and goes; for the most part we
+ourselves are not aware of it. We are merely particulars, like other
+men, and separated from them by the fact that we are all particulars.
+Only, when for a moment we are aware of it, then we are filled with a
+passion to make it real and permanent; and it is this passion which
+causes art and the blind instinctive effort at art, at communication, at
+expression, which we have all experienced.
+
+But it follows from this that the audience to which the artist addresses
+himself is not any particular men and women: it is mankind. The moment
+he addresses himself to any particular men and women and considers their
+particular wants and desires, he is giving up that very sense of the
+universal that impelled him to expression; he is ceasing to be an artist
+and becoming something else, a tradesman, a philanthropist, a
+politician. The artist as artist speaks to mankind, not to any
+particular set of men; and he speaks not of himself but of that
+universal which he has experienced. His effort is to establish that
+universal relation which he has seen, a universal relation of feeling.
+And to him, in his effort, there is neither time nor space. Mankind are
+not here or there or of this moment or of that; they are everywhere and
+for ever. The voice in Mozart's music is itself a universal voice
+speaking to the universe of universal things. And all art is an acting
+of the beauty that has been experienced, a perpetuation of it so that
+all men may share it for ever. The artist's effort is to be the sunset
+he has seen, to eternalize it in his art, but always so that he and all
+men may be part of this universal by their common experience of it.
+
+So, as I say, the artist must not speak to any particular audience with
+the aim of pleasing them--there is that amount of truth in Whistler's
+doctrine; and he does fail if he does not communicate, since his aim is
+communication--there is that amount of truth in Tolstoy's doctrine.
+
+But the next question that arises is the attitude of ourselves to the
+artist.
+
+We have to remember that he is speaking not to us in particular, but to
+all mankind, and that he speaks, not to please us or to satisfy any
+particular demand of ours, but to communicate to us that universal he
+has experienced so that we with him may become part of it.
+
+It follows then that we must not make any particular demands upon him.
+We must not come with our own ideas of what he ought to give us. If we
+do, we shall be an obstruction between him and that ideal universal
+audience to which he would address himself. We shall be tempting him,
+with our egotistical demands, to comply with them. But these demands we
+are always making; and that is why the relation between the artist and
+any actual public is usually nowadays wrong. I was once looking at
+Tintoret's 'Crucifixion' in the Scuola di San Rocco with a lady, and she
+said to me--'That isn't my idea of a horse.' 'No'--I answered--'it's
+Tintoret's. If it were your idea of a horse, why should you look at it?
+You look at a picture to get the artist's idea.' But that isn't the
+truth about art either. The artist doesn't try to substitute his own
+particular for yours. He tries to communicate to you that universal
+which he has experienced, because it is to him a universal, not his own,
+but all men's, and he wishes to realize it by sharing it with all men.
+His faith, though he may never have consciously expressed it to himself,
+is in this universal which, because it is a universal, can be
+communicated to all men. His effort is based on that faith. He speaks
+because he believes all men can hear, if they will.
+
+So the effort of the audience must be to hear and not to distract him
+with their particular demands. They must not, for instance, demand that
+he shall remind them of what they have found pleasant in actual life.
+They must not complain of him that he does not paint pretty women for
+them, or compose bright cheerful tunes. They are not to him particular
+persons to be tickled according to their particular tastes, but mankind
+to whom he wishes to communicate the universal he has experienced.
+
+So, if there is an actual audience listening for that universal and
+clearing their minds of their own egotistical demands, then art will
+flourish and the artist will be encouraged to communicate that universal
+which he has experienced. But if particular audiences demand this or
+that and are not happy until they get it, if they say to him--Tickle my
+senses--Persuade me that all is for the best in the world as I like it;
+that prosperous people like myself have a right to be prosperous; that I
+am a fine fellow because I once fell in love; that all who disagree with
+me are wicked and absurd--then you will have the kind of art you have
+now, in the theatre, in the picture gallery, in the cinema, in the
+novel; yes, and in your buildings, your cups and saucers, your pots and
+pans even. For in the very arts of use you demand that the craftsman
+shall provide you with what you demand, and as cheap as possible;
+because you do not understand that he should express himself, you do not
+understand also that his expression is worth having and that he ought to
+be paid for it. In the very pattern on a tea-cup, if it is worth having
+at all, there is the communication of that universal which the artist
+has experienced. It is there to remind you of itself whenever you drink
+tea, to bring the sacrament of the universal into everything as if it
+were music accompanying and heightening all our common actions; but if
+you want a fashionable tea-cup cheap, you will get that, and you will
+not get anything expressed or communicated with it. You will be shut up
+in yourself and your own particularity and ugliness. If we want art we
+must know how we should think and feel and act so as to encourage the
+artist to produce it.
+
+But why should we want art at all? I hope I have answered that question
+incidentally. It is so that we may have life more abundantly; for we can
+have life more abundantly only when we are in communication with each
+other, mind flowing into mind, the universal expressing itself in and
+through all of us. We all more or less blindly desire this
+communication, but we seldom know why we desire it or even what exactly
+it is we desire. We make the strangest, clumsiest efforts to communicate
+with each other--I am making one now--and we are constantly inhibited by
+false shame from real communication. We are afraid to be serious with
+each other, afraid of beauty, of the universal, when we see it. On this
+point I will tell a little story from Mr. Kirk's _Study of Silent
+Minds_. At a concert behind the front, an audience of soldiers had
+listened to the ordinary items, a performance, as Mr. Kirk says, 'clean,
+bright, and amusing', which means of course silly and ugly. Then the
+orchestra played the introduction to the _Keys of Heaven_, and a gunner
+remarked--'Sounds like a bloody hymn.' That was his fear of beauty, his
+false shame. But when the _Keys of Heaven_ was ended, the whole
+audience, including the gunner, gave a sigh of content; and after that
+they went to hear it time after time. Well, the beauty of that song, and
+of all art, is the 'Key of Heaven' itself. For Heaven is a state of
+being of which we all dream, however dully, in which all have the power
+of communication with each other; in which all are aware of the
+universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body,
+all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves,
+for a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere
+nonsense.
+
+Of course if you are to believe this, you must believe in the existence
+of a universal, independent of yourself, yet also in you and in all men.
+You must believe that beauty exists as a virtue, a quality, a relation
+of things, and that it is possible for you also to produce that virtue,
+to live in that relation. But no one can prove that to you. The only way
+to believe it is to see beauty with intensity and to make the effort of
+communication in some form or other.
+
+Tolstoy believes that the very word beauty is a useless one because, he
+says, all efforts to define beauty are vain. But that is true of the
+word life, yet we have to use the word because life exists. And all
+explanations of art which refuse to believe in beauty as a reality
+independent of us, yet one of which we may become a part, do fall into
+incredible nonsense. We are told that art is play; the only answer to
+which is that it isn't. Others say that it is an expression of the
+sexual instinct, which has forgotten itself. They discover that in some
+savage tribe the male beats a tom-tom to attract the female; and they
+conclude that Beethoven's Choral Symphony is only a more elaborate
+tom-tom beaten to attract a more sophisticated female. But again the
+only answer is that it isn't; and that if all our ancestors were, not
+Whistler's dreamers apart, but beaters of tom-toms to attract females,
+then there was something in the sound of the tom-tom that made them
+forget the female. The reality of art is to be found not in its origins
+but in what it is trying to be; and what it is trying to be is always a
+communication between mind and mind; what we aim at in art is a
+fellowship not for purposes of use but for its own sake, the fellowship
+we feel when we are all together singing a great tune.
+
+But now, since we have a hundred foolish ideas about art, its nature and
+value, it is of the greatest importance that we should attain to a right
+idea of it, not only as a matter of theory to be discussed, but as a
+religion to be practised. And, if we can grasp this right idea of it, we
+shall not think of art as consisting merely of the fine arts, painting,
+poetry, music, sculpture. We shall see that it is possible for men to be
+artists, to exercise this great activity of communication, in the work
+by which they earn their living, and that a happy society is one in
+which all men do so exercise it. We are very far from that happiness
+now, and that is why Ruskin and Morris became almost desperate rebels
+against our present society. What they said about art and its nature is
+still the best that has been said about it, far nearer to philosophic
+truth than all that the professed philosophers have said, and of the
+utmost moment to us now. For if we could believe them we should change
+most of our values; we should see that the ordinary man, now being
+deprived of all the joy of art in his work, is living a mutilated life;
+we should place art among the rights of man. Whereas Rousseau said--All
+men are born free and everywhere they are in chains--we should say--All
+men are born artists and everywhere they are drudges. With our curious
+English originality, which hits on so many momentous truths and then
+makes no use of them, it is we who have found the greatest truth about
+art, but neither we nor any other people is at present making much use
+of it. Because we lack art, lack the power of communication, we lack
+fellowship; and as Morris said--Fellowship is life and the lack of it is
+death.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+W. Morris, _Hopes and Fears for Art_.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+A GENERATION OF MUSIC
+
+DR. ERNEST WALKER
+
+
+The general subject of this course is European Thought; and, to some,
+music may perhaps seem in this connexion rather like an intruder.
+Indeed, if the musician is, in William Morris's phrase, 'the idle singer
+of an empty day', if his business is to administer alternate stimulants
+and soporifics to the nerves or, at best, the surface emotions, or to
+serve in Cinderella-like fashion any passing, shallow needs of either
+the individual or the crowd, then, obviously, he has no place worth
+self-respecting mention in the world as it exists for philosophy. But
+widespread as some such conception of the function of music is, I hope
+you will agree with me in throwing it aside as, at any rate for our
+present purpose, no more worth the trouble of even approximately patient
+argument than that other less general but more objurgated conception of
+musical composition as something like a mechanically calculated spinning
+of bloodless formulae. By the conditions of its being, music has to
+express itself through non-intellectual channels, but may we not say
+that its essence is intellectual, that it is, in Combarieu's phrase, the
+art of thinking in sound--thinking in as precise a sense as the word can
+bear? It does not express itself verbally: it is self-dependent, with a
+language available only for the expression of its own ideas and not even
+indirectly translatable by nature into a verbal medium. Yet it is
+thought none the less; perhaps all the more. Words, we have often been
+told, serve for the concealment of thought; but the language of music is
+more subtle, more comprehensive. It has been said that where words end,
+music begins; and anyhow, for musicians, there stands on record the
+serenely proud claim of one of themselves. 'Only art and knowledge',
+said Beethoven, 'raise man to the divine; and music is a higher
+revelation than all wisdom and all philosophy.'
+
+But I must not allow this little preliminary apology to stray into the
+field of abstract aesthetics. The subject proposed to me, the
+correlation of the progress of specifically musical thought during the
+last generation with the progress of European thought in general, is so
+extensive that I cannot within the necessary limits attempt to deal with
+more than some of the most salient features, and even those I shall have
+to treat in very broad outlines, with a certain disregard of detail and
+nicely balancing qualifications. I shall only attempt to put before you
+what seem to me the most prominent considerations, and to throw out
+suggestions which I hope you may perhaps, if sufficiently interested,
+develop at leisure for yourselves.
+
+In several ways the correlation of the musician with the non-musical
+world is now more intimate and conscious than ever before. Forty or
+fifty years ago--in spite of brilliant individual exceptions--musicians
+were, in the main, self-centred craftsmen; they were inclined to drift
+into a backwater, away from the chief currents of the intellectual, or
+often indeed of the general artistic life of their day, and they seem on
+the whole to have been content to have it so. In England we were
+somewhat behindhand, no doubt, in our participation in the gradual but
+steady change. But men like Parry and Stanford brought their profession
+into close touch with the general culture of their contemporaries, and
+made the universities and music understand each other; Grove, the first
+director of the Royal College, himself a man whose professional career
+(not to mention his amateur interests) had ended in music after ranging
+through civil engineering, business organization, biblical archaeology,
+and the editorship of a great literary magazine, preached with
+infectious enthusiasm the new doctrine of the larger outlook; and for
+the last thirty years, even if our practice may have occasionally seemed
+somewhat to lag behind, at any rate our theory has not looked back.
+Musicians have been granted their claim to be judged by the same
+intellectual and moral standards as other reasonable people; it is a
+modest claim, but, especially in England, it has had to be fought for.
+
+And the entry on this wider heritage, which English musicians, apart
+from an exception or two such as Pierson and Bennett, won for the first
+time a generation ago, has had in every country a definite influence on
+composition, especially (as is only natural) on the composer's attitude
+towards the musical setting of literature. I should be far from saying
+that any modern is a greater song-writer than Schubert; but it is
+obvious that the followers of Wolf and Duparc and Moussorgsky are aiming
+at something different. They may not express the general mood of the
+poem more faithfully, but they certainly attach more importance to its
+lyrical structure and to flexibly expressive diction: they accept the
+poet as an equal colleague. The serious song-writer can hardly any
+longer, like Schumann in his setting of Heine's 'Das ist ein Flöten und
+Geigen', afford to stultify great poetry by quoting from memory and
+getting the adjectives deplorably wrong. Nor can he, like Beethoven in
+'Adelaide' and the 'Entfernte Geliebte' cycle, let himself weave musical
+structures many sizes too large for the proper structure of the words,
+which have consequently to be repeated over and over again with very
+little regard for poetical or even common sense. Schumann and Beethoven,
+especially the former, were culturally very far from narrow-minded men;
+but there was not in their days any general cultural pressure
+sufficiently strong to influence them as composers. Now, the pressure is
+so strong that few can resist. Most composers have now fully learned
+their lesson of a fitting politeness towards their
+poet-colleagues--learned it in the main, so far as not intuitively, from
+the high examples set by Wolf and the modern French school--and have,
+moreover, come to recognize the duty of setting such words as may be fit
+not only to be sung but to be read, a duty shockingly neglected by many
+of the greatest geniuses in musical history.
+
+And the cultural pressure has gone farther than this. Not only has the
+increasing complexity of life broadened the musician's personal outlook,
+professional or unprofessional: it has also modified, whether for better
+or for worse, the outlook of the music itself. We may conveniently
+divide all music into two great classes: 'absolute' music, in which the
+composer appeals to the listener through the direct medium of the pure
+sound and that alone; and 'applied' music, in which the appeal is more
+or less conditioned by words, either explicit or implicit by
+association, or by bodily movement of some kind, dramatic or not, or by
+any other non-musical factor that affects the nature of the composer's
+thought and the method of its presentation. Up to the present
+generation, instrumental music, unconnected with the stage, has been
+virtually identifiable with absolute music; there are a handful of
+exceptions--sporadic pieces, usually though not invariably thrown off in
+composers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of
+serious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt--but they only serve to prove
+the rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More
+consciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its
+own special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity.
+And it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of
+particular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; or it
+may vie with the poet and the novelist in analysis of character. The
+psychology, again, may pass into the illustration of incident, whether
+partially realistic or purely imaginative, or into the illustration of
+philosophical tenets, as in Strauss's version of Nietzsche's doctrines
+in his _Also sprach Zarathustra_ or Scriabin's of theosophy in his
+_Prometheus_. Or the composer may go directly to painting, whether
+actual as in Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem on Böcklin's picture of 'The
+island of the dead', or visionary as in Debussy's 'La cathédrale
+engloutie'. There is indeed no end to such instances.
+
+All this development of instrumental music into territories more or less
+adjacent makes a very imposing show; and it is so markedly a product of
+the last generation that we easily over-estimate the novelty of its
+essential results. As I have said, instrumental music is more and more
+asking for external spurs to creative activity; but this does not mean
+that music as a whole is, so to speak, breaking loose from its moorings
+and adventurously voyaging on to uncharted seas. What it means is,
+simply, that, under the stress of modern culture, the barriers between
+vocal and instrumental, dramatic and non-dramatic, music have been to a
+great extent abolished.
+
+We may consider music as normally involving three persons: the composer,
+the performer, and the listener. Until the present generation, the role
+of the listener was normally quite passive. All that he had to do was to
+keep his ears open to the music, and further, when required, his ears
+open to words and his eyes to dramatic presentation. The composer and
+the performers did everything for him. But now they do not. The modern
+composer urges that, just as vocal music demands from the listener a
+separate knowledge of the words, so instrumental music may demand, as a
+condition of full understanding, a separate knowledge of some verbally
+expressible signification. The parallel no doubt holds well enough even
+if we answer, as we certainly may, that in much vocal music the words
+are so unimportant that it really does not musically matter if they are
+unintelligible or inaudible. But this latter-day demand on the listener
+is considerable. The listener to Strauss's _Don Quixote_, for example,
+must, in order to appreciate in full measure any section of this long
+work, have a fairly close acquaintance with Cervantes' book--whether
+derived from an analytical programme or from personal reading: there are
+neither words nor acting to give a clue, nor does the printed music
+itself give the slightest assistance, except in so far that a couple of
+themes are labelled with the names of the 'Knight of the sorrowful
+countenance' himself and Sancho Panza. Sometimes, no doubt, a composer
+helps at any rate the purchaser of his music more; but to the listener
+he gives nothing, and leaves his thought, as embodied in the mere title,
+to be reached as best it may. The modern composer makes these demands on
+the listener continually; and he does so simply because the sphere of
+the music-lover's imaginativeness and general culture has become so
+greatly enlarged that he thinks he can fairly afford to take the risk.
+
+But we may well ask whether the music of suggestion has not, in its
+restless anxiety to correlate itself with non-musical culture, reached
+or perhaps even overstepped the limits of musical possibility. It is no
+question of a composer's rights: he has a right to do anything he can,
+provided that he preserves a due proportion between essentials and
+unessentials. And judicious criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any
+rate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer's occasional realistic
+escapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are
+to him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all,
+in their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have
+occasionally allowed themselves similar little flings. It is a question
+not of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist,
+not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do
+a good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may
+personally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence,
+he has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself. The
+risk he runs may be too great. Realizing as we must that all this
+ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched
+musical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and
+feel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it. A
+composer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his
+music, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls. If he asks too
+much extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end.
+The listener will inevitably concentrate on the unessentials, and will
+as likely as not get them quite wrong; he may indeed indulge the habit
+of realistic suspicion to such an extent as to make him become
+thoughtlessly unfair and credit the composer with sins of taste, whether
+babyish or pathological, of which the objurgated culprit may be
+altogether innocent. If a composer plays with fire, he is fairly sure to
+burn some one's fingers, even if he successfully avoids burning his own.
+And anyhow it is waste of time, and worse, for us to cudgel our brains
+to fits of entirely unnecessary inventiveness when the composer has
+left his music unlabelled. We sometimes hear of children being
+encouraged to give verbal or dramatic expression of their own to
+instrumental music; that is not education--very much the reverse. It is
+merely the expense of spirit in a waste of fancifulness, the wilful
+murder of all feeling for music as such.
+
+The feeling for music as such, that is still the one thing needful. And
+by this canon, so it seems to me, we must judge all these alarums and
+excursions of modern composers. If we hold firmly by it, we shall not be
+unduly worried when we learn that the music which seems so perfectly to
+realize the composer's expressed meaning has been originally designed by
+him quite otherwise--as has happened oftener than is generally known;
+though this fact does not excuse wilful contradictions of a composer's
+definite intentions, as in the vulgar perversion of Rimsky-Korsakoff's
+_Scheherezade_ popularized by the latest fashionable toy, the Russian
+Ballet, which would do more musically unexceptionable service were it to
+confine itself to works specially designed for it, such as the
+fascinating and finely-wrought scores of Stravinsky, or concert works
+like Balakireff's _Thamar_, based on programmes that can be mimetically
+reproduced without unfaithfulness. And anyhow, in the midst of all these
+appeals to the eye or the literary memory or what not, we may call to
+mind the simple truth that music is something to be heard with either
+the inward or the outward ear, and if we are too much distracted
+otherwise, our hearing sense suffers. We shall pay too high a price for
+our latter-day correlation of music with literature and the other arts
+if the music itself has to play the part of Cinderella. 'We do it wrong,
+being so majestical.'
+
+Again, we may endeavour to correlate recent musical development with
+the development of the conceptions of nationality and race. With
+nationality in the strictly political sense music has, indeed, nothing
+to do: there is no inborn musical expression common to all the
+inhabitants of Switzerland, or the United States, or the British Empire
+(or indeed the British Islands). And if we abandon political nationality
+entirely and think of national music solely in terms of race, we still
+have to make very large deductions. Heredity counts, it would seem, for
+far less than environment in musical development--especially so in these
+days of free intercourse. Nevertheless, we may to some extent isolate
+the racial element; and within the last generation increasingly vigorous
+efforts have been made to do so--though they have perhaps neglected
+sufficiently to observe that racial ancestry is often an extremely mixed
+quantity.
+
+To the musician, this insistence on race is in the main a quite modern
+thing. It is true that, as the successive waves of Italian influence
+flowed northward in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries, they met in England, France, and Germany, and, at the end, in
+Russia, native cross-currents; and there was plenty of controversy
+between the opposing parties. But this controversy was mainly concerned
+with matters of technique; whereas the whole force of the modern
+movement consists in its reliance on the simple folk-music which is
+supposed to be characteristic of the race as a whole, and about which
+hardly any composers of the past consciously troubled themselves at all.
+Haydn and Beethoven, no doubt, used folk-tunes in their own works to
+some extent, but the former's adaptations from the uncultivated tunes of
+his own Croatian people are polished nearly out of recognition, and when
+the latter commandeers from Ireland or Russia or elsewhere, nothing but
+pure Beethovenishness remains after his masterful hand has done its
+will. We may say, indeed, that nationality, as such, was never in their
+time a conscious factor in musical composition.
+
+The modern movement seems to owe its origin to several non-musical
+causes. For example, the spread of political democracy had no little
+influence in arousing interest in the music specifically characteristic
+of at any rate the non-urban sections of the newly enfranchised classes.
+But, in the main, it was caused by the modern rise into something like
+political prominence of the smaller nations, smaller either in size or
+in historical importance. The events of 1848, for example, brought
+Hungarian folk-music before the world; Bohemian claims against Austria
+produced the work of Smetana and Dvo[vr]ák, largely based on the general
+style of their own native melodies; the Irish Question made us know the
+Irish songs; and the dominating races followed those leads, at any rate
+in so far as to take interest in their own traditional music, and try to
+evaluate its differentiating factors. Conscious connexion between
+artistic composition and folk-music has varied very much: very strong in
+Russia and other Slavonic countries, it has been very weak in Italy and
+France; in Germany we find all stages between the work of Brahms, where
+the folk-element is very notable, and of Wolf, where it is non-existent;
+in our own islands it has been very weak, but is now becoming very
+strong. But, whether this connexion has been conscious or not, still,
+sooner or later, all the insisters on the importance of the element of
+nationality have joined hands with the enthusiasts for the folk-music of
+the people. In the work of preserving the knowledge of this folk-music
+England has been one of the last of all countries: even the last edition
+of Grove's _Dictionary_, our standard authority, gives many pages to
+Scotland and Ireland and Wales, and smuggles English folk-music into an
+appendix. Only indeed in the twentieth century has anything like an
+adequate study of the varied treasures of English folk-music become
+possible, and we have learned enough to realize that great folk-music is
+no monopoly of the races that have been either politically or socially
+decentralized.
+
+This advance of the conception of racialism has widened and intensified
+music in not a few ways. It has brought to our knowledge many splendid
+melodies, infinitely varied in design and emotional range, and, at their
+best, inspirations that the greatest composers would have been proud to
+sign. And, mixed as are the feelings with which we must contemplate the
+general course of our own musical history, we can anyhow boast of some
+of the finest folk-tunes in existence in these relics of the old world
+on its last western fringes, in Ireland and the Hebrides. We have come
+to see that this great mass of traditional music--only in part, of
+course, the outpouring of sheer genius, but at its worst sincere--is,
+with its appeal alike to the child and the adult, either in years or in
+musical culture, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with
+which to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. And,
+apart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown
+the value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the
+younger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the
+Russians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the
+same, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It
+is to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before,
+to realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. And, once
+again, we have been taught the duty of being fair to the men of our own
+blood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there
+has been visible a strongly marked tendency, such as no other nation
+has shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in
+comparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse.
+But I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition
+is now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it
+was, not unnaturally, wellnigh forgotten during its sleep from the death
+of Purcell till the rise of Parry--a fairly sound sleep, during which it
+occasionally half-opened its eyes for a moment or two--but it is wide
+awake now. We are still slow to learn the lesson; but we have come to
+realize, at any rate theoretically, the duty of doing what we can, in
+the spirit not of favouritism but of justice and knowledge, to disprove
+the proverb that a prophet (and an artist also) has no honour in his own
+country and in his father's house.
+
+So much to the good. But to-day, more than ever before, many voices are
+urging us to go farther--and, I think, to fare worse. Artistic racialism
+has always been spontaneous, so far as the art is great. No composer who
+is worth anything can be dragooned into being patriotic: he will go his
+own way. Some are attracted more than others by the general types of
+phrase or the general emotional moods exemplified in the folk-music of
+their own race; but that is a matter for neither credit nor discredit.
+Individuality includes race as the greater includes the less. The only
+vital consideration is the value of the output in the general terms of
+all races; and indeed all great folk-music, like any other kind, speaks,
+for those who have ears to hear, a world-language and not a dialect. And
+there is still more at stake in this issue. Those who, as I do, hold
+that the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the
+weakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must
+needs regard very suspiciously any of these modern attempts to force
+music into channels which are deliberately designed for it by
+non-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a
+very considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. England may
+sometimes have failed in kindness to her own artistic children, living
+and dead; but at any rate we have been free from the curse of a narrow
+jealousy and have steadfastly held to the proud faith of the open door
+and the open mind. The ideal--so violently dinned into our ears
+nowadays--of a national school of composers may very easily mean a
+wilful narrowing of our artistic heritage. If an English composer with
+nothing to say for himself imitates Brahms or Debussy, it is obviously
+regrettable; but he will not mend matters by imitating Purcell. And,
+after all, the musician who (save occasionally when seeking texts for
+his own individual discourses) borrows his material from his native
+folk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other
+quarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his
+own. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about
+patriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the
+last refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the
+supreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and,
+anyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. And any
+of the world's activities would come to a strange pass if children--or
+any races or classes which, through lost opportunities or the oppression
+of others, are still virtually children--were to dictate principles of
+intolerance to those who, by no merit of their own but as a plain matter
+of fact, can possess the wider vision. Let a composer steep himself as
+much as he can in his native folk-music, as in all other great music,
+and then write in sincerity whatever is in his own marrow; but anything
+approximately like a chauvinistic attitude towards music, as towards
+any other of the things of the spirit, means either insensibility to
+spiritual ideals or unfaithfulness to them. Let me take an analogy. I
+have always felt that a philosophical and historical study of the idea
+of honour would throw more light than anything else on many great
+problems, notably the problem of war, and that in this investigation the
+conception of the duel would have a very prominent place. May we not say
+that, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members
+of the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to
+be able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will,
+if his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also?
+Neither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external
+considerations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed
+is the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the
+arts; it has not, like literature, any barriers of language, nor, like
+painting or sculpture or architecture, any local habitation. Musical
+separatism is not a natural quality; it needs careful and continuous
+fostering. And I know from personal experience that, all through the
+war, there was no difficulty at all in carrying on concerts in the
+programmes of which works by living German composers, and songs in the
+German language, were included in their due proportions just as before.
+
+Another great factor in modern European thought with which I would
+attempt to correlate music is the factor of religion. No one will deny
+that the last generation has seen profoundly important changes in
+religious thought: whatever may have been the eddies and backwaters, the
+main stream has run, and still runs, like a cataract. These changes may
+be very differently judged by different types of men, all of them
+equally firm believers in the supremacy of spiritual ideals: some may
+definitely regret, some may, with the help of such conceptions as that
+of progressive revelation, steer a middle course, some (among whom I
+would number myself) may definitely welcome. But in whatever light we
+may regard these radical refusals of the old allegiances, we shall
+naturally expect to find their influence in music, which has had in many
+ways so intimate a connexion with religion. Indeed, the conception of
+music as in some special way the handmaid of religion dies very hard. It
+is still possible, in April 1919, for distinguished musicians, when
+appealing for funds for the foundation of a professorship of
+ecclesiastical music, to put their names to the statement that 'the
+church will always be the chief home and school of music for the
+people'[71]: and this when the facts about attendances at places of
+worship have long been familiar. We must rate the influence of church
+music more modestly; it has a great influence in its own sphere, but its
+sphere is only one among many.
+
+We may, I think, envisage this religious development on its practical
+side as a process of differentiation by which the sincere standers in
+the old and the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn
+apart intellectually--but not, in societies that are happily able to
+take broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually--not
+only from each other but still more from those who, whatever their
+ostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And
+something like the same process is observable in the religious music of
+the past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped
+away, unregarded and unregretted: whatever the outlooks, and they are
+many and various, they are more clear-sighted, more sincere. Here in
+England we have somewhat lagged behind: we have had, not perhaps
+altogether fairly but indubitably, a reputation for national hypocrisy
+to sustain, and our religious music has only with difficulty shaken
+itself loose. Not very long ago, Saint-Saëns's _Samson and Delilah_, now
+one of the most popular of operas, could only be performed as an
+oratorio: it dealt with biblical incidents and characters, therefore it
+was religious music, therefore it could not be given stage presentation.
+Of course this kind of attitude is never logical: for a long time we
+closed Covent Garden to Strauss's _Salome_ for the same reason, but no
+one, so far as I know, ever proposed to endow it with a religious halo.
+Now, when Sunday secular music is everywhere, its origins seem lost in
+antiquity; but the chamber-music concerts at South Place in London and
+Balliol College in Oxford, which are, I think I am right in saying, the
+twin pioneers, are both little over thirty years old. In most other
+countries, however, music has suffered far fewer checks of this kind;
+and it is of more importance to correlate musical and religious
+development on more general lines. Particularly interesting, I think, is
+the history of the decline of the oratorio, which I should myself be
+inclined to date from the production of the German Requiem of Brahms
+about half a century ago, though the real impetus has become apparent
+only during the last generation.
+
+Brahms's Requiem was indeed something of a portent: it was a definite
+herald of revolt. The mere title, 'A German Requiem', involving the
+commandeering of the name hitherto associated exclusively with the
+ritual of the Roman Church and the practice of prayers for the dead, and
+its adaptation to entirely different words, was in itself of the utmost
+significance; and the significance was enhanced by the character of the
+words themselves. In the first place, they were self-selected on purely
+personal lines; in the second place, they were, theologically, hardly so
+much as Unitarian. Brahms claimed the right to express his own
+individual view of the problem, and at a length which involved the
+corollary that the problem was regarded in its completeness. The 'German
+Requiem' cannot be considered, as an anthem might be, as an expression
+of a mere portion of a complete conception of the particular religious
+problem: in an organic work of this length, what it does not assert it
+implicitly denies or at any rate disregards. And this was at once
+recognized, both by Brahms's opponents and by himself: he categorically
+refused to add any dogmatically Christian element to his scheme.
+Similarly with his _Ernste Gesänge_, written some thirty years later, at
+the end of his life: he balances the reflections on death taken from
+Ecclesiastes and similar sources with the Pauline chapter on faith,
+hope, and charity--not with any more definite consolation. And again,
+with the choral works, the settings of Hölderlin's _Schicksalslied_,
+Schiller's _Nänie_, Goethe's _Gesang der Parzen_ (the first-fruits of
+the essentially modern spirit which has impelled so many composers to
+choral settings of great poetry)--they deal with the ultimate things,
+but the expression is never, so to speak, orthodox: it is imaginative,
+sometimes perhaps ironical, but never anything but intensely
+non-ecclesiastical.
+
+Brahms's Requiem represents, as I have said, the beginning of the change
+in the conception of concert-room religious music, of the abandonment of
+the old type of oratorio in favour of something much more conscious and
+individual; and in refusing to take things for granted, religious music
+has been altogether in line with general religious development. The
+change can perhaps be observed in English music more markedly than
+elsewhere. Oratorio, in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term,
+is to all intents and purposes an invention of the genius of Handel
+reacting on his English environment: the form was of course older, but
+he gave it a specific shape that set the fashion for future times. It
+had its birth in a business speculation; it was a novelty designed to
+occupy the Lenten season when the theatres were not available for opera.
+Like the opera, it supplied narrative and incident and characterization
+though without scenery or action, and it dealt with biblical history.
+The history of the oratorio is the history of this loose compromise; it
+has afforded an attractive flavour of the theatre even to those to whom
+drama may in itself have seemed disreputable, and it has had the
+advantage of possessing subjects which combined unquestioningly accepted
+literal truth with unlimited possibilities for wholesale edification,
+and at the same time made no intimately personal claims. The libretto of
+Mendelssohn's _Elijah_ is perhaps at once the most familiar and the most
+skilfully compiled example of the type; but it is now, so far as great
+music is concerned, extinct. Here in England--where, for something like
+a century and a half, the demand was so large that composers, when tired
+of writing oratorios themselves, still went on producing them out of the
+mangled fragments of other music--Parry's _Judith_ of 1888 is the last
+of the old type from the pen of a great composer; and his subsequent
+works show, in striking fashion, the direction of the newer paths. There
+is no longer the assumption that everything in the Bible or the
+Apocrypha is at one and the same time literally true and somehow or
+other edifying. _Job_ and _King Saul_ are great literature and vivid
+drama; they stand on their own merits. And the long succession of
+smaller choral works, in which Parry mingled in curious but intensely
+personal fusion his own earnest but somewhat pedestrian poetry with
+fragments of the Old Testament prophets, represent a still further
+abandonment of the old routine; they form a connected exposition of his
+philosophy of life, on the whole theistic rather than specifically
+Christian, and always transparently individual. Individual--that is the
+real issue. According to their differing temperaments, different
+composers may swing towards either the right or the left wing of thought
+in these non-ecclesiastical expressions of ultimate things: Stanford may
+join with Whitman or Robert Bridges, Vaughan-Williams with Whitman or
+George Herbert, Frank Bridge with Thomas à Kempis, Walford Davies with a
+mediaeval morality-play, Gustav Hoist with the Rig-Veda, Bantock with
+Omar Khayyam. But the essentials, for any composer worth the name, are
+that his theme shall have its birth in personal vision and shall appeal
+to personal intelligence. The routine oratorio fulfilled neither of
+these conditions; and it is dead beyond recall. It was a curious
+illustration of foreign ignorance of British musical life that
+Saint-Saëns, when asked to write a choral work for the Gloucester
+Festival of 1913, should have imagined that he was meeting our national
+tastes with an oratorio on the most prehistoric lines. However, the
+unanimous chilliness with which _The Promised Land_ was received must
+have effectually disillusioned him.
+
+But the liberalisers, though the more numerous force, have no monopoly
+of sincerity: among the genuine conservatives also we can find, I think,
+signs of the correlation of musical with religious development. We have
+had, during the last generation, many works that are in the legitimate
+line of descent from the great classical settings of ritual words or (as
+with the Passions and Cantatas of Bach) words that are intended anyhow
+to appeal not as literature but as dogma. When Elgar prints on the
+title-pages of his oratorios the letters A.M.D.G.--_ad majorem Dei
+gloriam_--the personal note is, in these days, obvious. His own libretti
+to _The Apostles_ and its sequel _The Kingdom_ (and to the further
+sequels which had been sketched out twelve years ago, though none has as
+yet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so
+far as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious
+moralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things
+for granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual
+soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent
+Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was
+Perosi, the Benedictine priest, whose oratorios, tentative, childishly
+sincere mixtures of Palestrina and Wagner, were forced upon Europe in
+the late 'nineties with the full driving power of his Church, and who,
+when his musical insufficiency became palpable, was dropped in favour of
+Elgar himself, whose sudden rise into deserved fame coincides in time.
+There was again the allocution of Pius X, known as the _Motu proprio_,
+which sought to reform ecclesiastical music and has, however fruitless
+it may have been elsewhere, made the services in Westminster Cathedral,
+under Dr. Terry's direction, a Mecca for musicians of all faiths who are
+interested in the great sixteenth-century masterpieces. There are also
+the aristocratically Catholic composers of latter-day France, centring
+round Vincent d'Indy and the _Schola Cantorum_ and looking back for
+inspiration to César Franck. And again, in the English communion, there
+is the marked High-Church movement for the encouragement of dignified
+music, a movement that has had great influence in the purification of
+popular taste. And the pivot round which all this turns is the dogmatic
+faith that definitely Christian expression in music is the property,
+the exclusive property, of those who by temperament and conviction are
+Christians. The attitude, like the conditions which have brought it
+about, is, I think, new: but some of its adherents go surely too far
+when they urge that those whose minds work otherwise cannot really
+appreciate this music at its due worth. César Franck, that simple-minded
+childlike genius, once pronounced Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_
+'very amusing'--a surely unique criticism--simply, it would seem,
+because it was eccentric enough not to take Catholicism as a primary
+postulate: I do not myself happen to have any information about Kant's
+musicianship--perhaps, like too many great thinkers, he knew little
+about music and cared less--but I think we may venture to say, in the
+abstract, that his philosophy would have made him fairer to Franck than
+Franck was to him.
+
+And thus perhaps we may conclude that recent musical development has
+kept pace with religious development in concentrating more and more on
+individual sincerity, whether on the one side or the other, and
+abandoning the old easy-going haphazard routine. But, in reaction from
+the extreme right and the extreme left of the movement, we have also the
+sincere dislikers of stark thinking, whom their opponents call by
+dignified names of abuse, such as pragmatists or undenominationalists:
+and here again music keeps pace with religion. It is not the old routine
+again (though perhaps in practice it may at times come rather perilously
+near it); it is the more or less conscious adoption of a compromise. We
+can see its musical working best of all in the recent history of church
+music in England; it is true that the great mass of the younger
+musicians, here as in all other countries, stand outside these
+developments, and look both for ideals and practice elsewhere, but the
+developments have none the less been very significant. There have been
+three stages. A couple of generations ago there was no conflict and no
+call for compromise. The ecclesiastical musician of the time was
+expected, whether as composer, as organist, or as administrator, to do
+his best according to his lights: it was his accepted business, as
+presumably knowing more about the matter than the artistic laity, to
+lead their taste, not to follow. Then came the reign of men like Dykes
+and Stainer and Gounod, whose normal attitude involved the sacrifice by
+the musician of some of his musicianship in the supposed interests of
+religion. The supposed interests, I say; for the whole point of the
+third stage of development, the conflict in which English church music
+is now involved, is the denial by one of the opposing parties that the
+interests of religion are in any way served by such a sacrifice. It is a
+very keen conflict, in which the sympathies of the musician _qua_
+musician naturally lean towards those who uphold the inalienable dignity
+of his art: and even if he feels that ecclesiastical music, _qua_
+ecclesiastical, is outside his personal concern, influences from it are
+bound to radiate into the secular departments. But what I would more
+especially point out is that the religious and the musical developments
+proceed side by side. Just as the stricter purists in the one field are,
+in the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to
+uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is
+inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those
+whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically
+indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation
+afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music
+that is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of
+the average worshipper.
+
+And, even if there is no question of a lowered artistic standard, we
+see, I think, the same spirit of compromise, of ready acceptance of the
+more immediately obvious as the average and proper norm for all people,
+elsewhere on the boundaries of musical and religious life. It is so easy
+to turn a blind eye to logic and minorities, or even to majorities if
+they have little pressure, social or other, to back them up. To
+illustrate from one or two English examples, the transformations of
+cathedrals into secular concert-rooms are as open to blame from the one
+side as are, from the other, such assumptions as that of the 'Union of
+Graduates in Music' to take rank as a definitely ecclesiastical, indeed
+an Anglican society. Again, it so happens that a somewhat exceptional
+proportion of English musicians hold, or have held, as conditions of
+livelihood, posts to which not all of them would have aspired had other
+channels, open to their foreign fellow-artists, been open to them also;
+and, as a necessary consequence, there is more probability here than
+elsewhere of the musical profession presenting practical problems for
+the intellectual conscience to solve. So far as the musician is a
+personal non-conformer and also a teacher (even if not a church
+organist), he is often compelled into a tacit agreement with the
+Cowper-Temple clause, at the least: and so far as he is a convinced
+conformer, he is often compelled to strain, far beyond the meaning of
+the parable, the principle of letting the wheat and the tares grow
+together. This is called a practical age: and the compromisers, in
+religion and in religious music, are a powerful force. But I would
+venture to think that the future lies, in the long run, in other hands
+than theirs.
+
+To the mediaeval musician, religion and science were the twin
+foundations of his art. But while the influence of religious development
+can without difficulty be traced in musical history, the influence of
+scientific development is much more contestable. It may indeed, I
+think, be said that post-mediaeval music has gone its own way without
+considering science at all. Theorists of course there have been, and
+still are, who try to discover scientific foundations for the art of
+music as we moderns know it: they do their best to correlate
+mathematical physics with practical composition. But during the past
+generation these attempts, never very hopeful, have become much less so.
+It is only too easy to play scientific havoc with the foundations of
+modern music: but, arbitrary and scientifically indefensible though they
+may be, they are our inheritance. Music has come to be what it is by
+methods that will not bear accurate investigation: our tonal systems are
+mere makeshifts, and no composer can completely express his thoughts in
+our clumsy notation. I doubt if, throughout all this last generation
+that has seen such overwhelming scientific advance, music has really
+been scientifically affected (in the strict sense of the word) in the
+slightest degree, if we exclude some interesting experiments in
+sympathetic resonances, primary and secondary, at which some recent
+composers for the piano have, at present rather tentatively, tried their
+hands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in
+general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws
+of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to
+build a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string
+ultimately gives--mostly out of tune--all the notes of the chromatic
+scale, but composers employ them on principles the reverse of
+mathematical.
+
+The growth of music has not been scientific; but growth of some kind is
+evident enough, though it is none too easy to define it at all
+adequately. Some might say, with Romain Rolland in his _Musiciens
+d'autrefois_, that 'the efforts of the centuries have not advanced us a
+step nearer beauty since the days of St. Gregory and Palestrina'; but
+this is surely a narrow outlook. Beauty combines the many with the one:
+and plain-song and the _Missa Papae Marcelli_ show us only a few, a very
+few, of its manifestations. But artistic progress is, anyhow, very
+subtle and evasive; and musical progress, in particular, is hardly
+correctable with any other. Above all, we must recollect that, to us
+Europeans, music--which, in the only sense worth our present
+consideration, is an exclusively European product--is incalculably the
+youngest of the great arts; if we exclude some monophonic conceptions
+that have still their value for us, it is barely five hundred years old
+at the most.
+
+During the last generation an advance in material complexity is obvious,
+even though the complexity may often enough be one of accidentals rather
+than essentials. An orchestral score of Wagner is relatively simple in
+comparison with one of Delius or Ravel or Scriabin or Stravinsky or
+Schönberg; and the demands on performers' technique and also on their
+intelligence have steadily increased to heights altogether unknown
+before. The composer has at his present disposal a vastly enlarged
+medium; the possibilities of sound have developed incalculably more than
+those of paint or stone or marble. Pheidias could, we may imagine, have
+appreciated Rodin across a gulf of over two thousand years; but it is
+difficult to see the points of contact, after little over three hundred
+years, between Palestrina and any twentieth-century work that would
+claim to be 'in the movement'. And it is not only in complexity that we
+have advanced. We have extended the limits of musical style. We have
+adopted in sober earnest methods forecasted at rare intervals in the
+past by adventurous explorers, and employ musical notes not as elements
+in any harmonic scheme but purely as points of colour, exactly as if
+the definite notes were mere clangs of indefinite instruments like
+cymbals or triangles. Wordless vocal tone, moreover, of several
+different types, is pressed into the same service. Varied tonal and
+harmonic colour, and structural freedom: those are the two battle-cries
+of the young generation. Little by little the old tonalities, based as
+they were on fixed centres, are slipping away; all the notes of the
+chromatic scale are acquiring even status; the principles of structure
+are newborn with every new work. And advance of this kind has been
+extraordinarily accelerated during the last twenty years. At no time in
+musical history have there been such express-speed modifications of
+manner as those which divide, let us say, the latest piano pieces of
+Brahms (1893) and the latest of Scriabin (1914). It is possible, indeed,
+that our standard system of keyboard tuning may require modification in
+the not very distant future. Once again, as three hundred years ago,
+music seems to be in the throes of a new birth. On the former occasion,
+the process of convalescence lasted rather more than a century, from
+Monteverde through Carissimi and Schütz and Purcell to Bach; and it may
+perhaps take as long now.
+
+But it is plain enough that mere novelty does not involve progress; if
+it were so, the music of the casually strumming baby would demand high
+recognition. Nor is progress to be found in merely quantitative,
+Brobdingnagian expansion. And when we have taken our stand on what seems
+a sufficiently sound definition of musical progress in its material
+aspect--the combination of novelty with expansion, the new thought with
+its appropriately enlarged medium--we have yet to remember that many
+very fine composers still can, and do, express their natural and full
+selves in older idioms, and that progress of this kind, however
+widespread it may become, is not necessarily advance in the scale of
+values. There is, somewhere or other, a limit to the cubic capacity of
+things: they cannot increase indefinitely in depth and breadth at once.
+We may confidently hope that we have not yet musically come within
+hailing distance of the limit: but nevertheless it is becoming more and
+more difficult to see music steadily and see it whole, and it is useful
+to take stock of our position. Our musical minds are very much broader
+than they were: in that sense we can well, like the heroes of Homer,
+boast that we are much better than our fathers. But are they also
+deeper? We have gained access to many new rooms in the house of art,
+rooms full of strange and beautiful things, for the knowledge of which
+we must needs be profoundly and lastingly grateful; but some of the
+rooms seem rather small and their windows do not seem to have been
+opened very often, while others seem liable to be swept by hurricanes
+which upset the furniture right and left. Veterans there are, musicians
+not to be named except with high honour, who fall back for nutriment on
+the great classics and pessimism; but our notions of beauty cannot stand
+still, and in all ages of music one of the most vital tasks of criticism
+has been to distinguish between the relatively non-beautiful which has
+character and truth and its superficial imitation which has neither. All
+musicians very well recollect their first bewilderment at what has
+afterwards become as clear as daylight. But we must retain our standards
+of judgement. We have no right to criticize without familiarity, but we
+must remember that over-familiarity, mere dulled habitual acceptance,
+means equal incapacity for criticism. If, after trying our utmost, we
+still cannot see any sense in some of these modernist pages, there is no
+reason why we should not say so; it is quite possible that there really
+is no sense in them, and that the composer is perfectly aware of the
+fact. Odd stories float about the artistic world. And if the anarchists
+call us philistines and the philistines call us anarchists, it is fairly
+likely that we are seeing things pretty much as they are.
+
+Moreover, it is worth remembering that a good deal of what is loosely
+called modernism is in reality very much the reverse. There is nothing
+progressive in the confusion of processes with principles, in the
+breathless disregard of the larger issues. Take the ideal of 'direct
+expression of emotion', the attempt to give, as Pater said half a
+century ago, 'the highest quality to our moments as they pass and simply
+for those moments' sake'. Musically, it is a return to the childhood of
+our race, to the natural savage. If a musical composition is to consist
+of anything more than one isolated noise, it must inevitably have a form
+of some kind, its component parts must look backward and forward. The
+latter-day composers who speak of Form as a kind of bogey that they have
+at last exorcized remind us of those latter-day thinkers who boast that
+they have abolished metaphysics. We cannot leap off our shadows; if we
+try, we shall only find that we are left with a residuum of bad
+metaphysics or bad musical form--as thoroughly bad as the metaphysics
+and the musical form that have resulted from the confusion of the one
+with empty word-spinning and of the other with hide-bound pedantry.
+Again, much of the modern rhythmical complexity strongly resembles, in
+essence, the machine-made experiments of mediaeval times; and the
+peculiarly fashionable trick of shifting identical chords up and down
+the scale--the clothes'-peg conception of harmony, so to speak--is a
+mere throw-back still farther, to Hucbald and the diaphony of a thousand
+years ago. And the insistence, now so common, on the decorative side of
+music, the conscious preference of the sensuous to the intellectual or
+emotional elements, brings us back to our own infancy, with its
+unreflecting delight in things that sparkle prettily or are soft to the
+touch or sweet to the taste. It is a reaction from sentimentality, no
+doubt, but is a reaction to an equal extreme, a perversion of the truth
+that great art never wholly gives itself away. As Vincent d'Indy has
+justly pointed out, the 'sensualist formula'--'all for and by
+harmony'--is as much an aberration of good sense as the parallel formula
+of the ultra-melodic schools of Rossini and Donizetti: in either case it
+means the sacrifice of spaciousness to immediate effect, the supremacy
+of sensation over the equilibrium of the heart and the intelligence. Not
+of course that any music lacks the sensuous element; but it is a matter
+of proportion. And very distinguished as are many of the modern
+exponents of this side of things, history tells us, I think, that they
+are working in a blind alley. They have their supporters, no doubt. M.
+Jean-Aubry, in his very suggestive and valuable book on modern French
+musicians, has used a phrase that seems to me worth remembering; he
+speaks of the 'obsession of intellectual chastity' which, to his mind,
+disfigures the work of César Franck and other great composers whom he
+therefore rejects from his latter-day Pantheon. I am glad to think that
+Franck would have gloried in this shame. He, and a very goodly company
+with him, knew that music was, at its highest, something better than an
+entertainment, however thrilling or however refined.
+
+But, whatever critics and composers may feel about musical progress, it
+is, as Wagner said, in the home of the amateur that music is really kept
+alive, and the amateur's music depends very largely on the schools. A
+generation ago music was certainly sociologically selfish. Musicians had
+not realized that all classes of the community were open to the
+influences of fine music, if only they had the opportunities for
+knowing it. But since then there have been very great advances, both
+quantitative and qualitative, in musical education. We have spread it
+broadcast, in the increasing faith that appreciation depends, not on
+technical knowledge or executive skill, but on the responsive
+temperament and the will to understand. Familiarity, familiarity at home
+if possible, is the key to this understanding; and in this connexion
+there is, I believe, an enormous educational future before pianolas and
+gramophones, if only the preparation of their records can be taken in
+hand on artistic rather than narrowly commercial lines. And our
+standards of judgement have risen: we do not worship quite so blindly
+mere names, whether of the past or of the present, nor exalt the
+performer quite so dizzily above what is performed. Nor do we quite so
+glibly disguise our indifference to vital distinctions by talking about
+differences of taste: we know that, however catholic we may rightly be
+within the limits of the good, whether grave or gay, there comes sooner
+or later, in our judgement of musical as of all other spiritual values,
+a point where we must put our foot down. We are going on, and our
+theories are sound enough: but the path of a democratically widened, and
+rightly so widened, art is by no means easy. The principle of levelling
+up slides so readily into the practice of levelling down: and the book
+of music is closed once for all if we are to accept the plenary
+inspiration of majorities.
+
+But here in England the greatest danger to musical progress is, I
+venture to think, the self-styled practical Englishman--fortified as he
+is by the consciousness that, for at any rate a couple of centuries or
+more, we have as a nation taken a low view of the arts and have been
+rather proud of it than otherwise. It is so obvious that no profession
+is economically more unsound than that of the serious composer: it is
+not so obvious that we owe all the great things of the spirit by which
+we chiefly live to those whom the world calls dreamers, among whom the
+great musicians have had, and, I hope and believe, will always have, no
+mean place. Against the 'practical Englishman', and all that his
+attitude to music involves, we can all of us fight in our respective
+spheres: and I would commend to you for useful weapons three very
+different books by very different men--Sir Hubert Parry's great book on
+_Style in Musical Art_, Mr. C.T. Smith's account of his artistic work in
+an elementary school in the East End of London which he calls _The Music
+of Life_, and a pamphlet _Starved Arts mean Low Pleasures_ recently
+written by Mr. Bernard Shaw for the British Music Society. And one
+particular line of indirect attack, easily open to all of us, is, I am
+inclined to think, specially promising. In the third and fourth verses
+of the thirty-fifth chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus we shall find
+these injunctions, which I translate as literally as Greek epigrams can
+be translated: 'Do not hinder music: do not pour out chatter during any
+artistic performance: and do not argue unseasonably.' In other words,
+conversation, however valuable, prevents complete listening to music;
+and music that is not meant to be listened to in its completeness is not
+worth calling music, and had much better not be there at all. Musical
+progress will be spiritually well on its way when we all realize this
+axiomatic truth as firmly as this Hebrew sage of two thousand years and
+more ago.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 71: _The Times_, April 17, 1919.]
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE MODERN RENASCENCE
+
+F. MELIAN STAWELL
+
+
+To understand in any degree the modern outlook on life it seems
+necessary to go back to the time of the French Revolution. For at that
+stirring epoch there flamed up in the minds of enthusiasts an ideal of
+man's life larger than had ever yet been known, and one that has
+dominated us all ever since. If we give, as I think we should give, a
+wide sense to the word 'Liberty' and make it mean all that stands for
+self-development, then one may say that this ideal was fairly well
+summed-up in the famous Revolutionary watchword, 'Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity'. It is impossible at any rate to read the idealists of that
+time and its sequel--say from 1793 to 1848--whether in France, Germany,
+England, or Italy, whether inside or outside the Revolutionary ranks,
+without feeling their buoyant hope that a fresh era was opening in which
+man, casting aside old shackles and prejudices, could advance at once
+towards knowledge, joy, splendour, both for himself and all his fellows.
+Shelley, perhaps, is most typical of what I mean. Hogg laughed at him
+for his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the
+belief was vital to the poet. To Shelley it was a damnable doctrine that
+the many should ever be sacrificed to the few: yet neither was the
+ultimate vision that inspired him the vision of the few being sacrificed
+for the many. He was anything but an ascetic seeking martyrdom. The
+martyrdom of his Prometheus is a prelude to the Unbinding when
+happiness shall flood the world:--
+
+    'The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
+     The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
+       The vaporous exultation not to be confined!'
+
+And not only happiness and love, but knowledge also: the Earth calls to
+the Sky: 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'
+Soberer spirits shared this poet's ecstasy. Wordsworth sang
+
+    'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
+     But to be young was very heaven.'
+
+And that heaven was exactly this foretaste of the Spirit of Man entering
+undisturbed into his full inheritance at last: Science welcomed as a
+dear and honoured guest, Poetry known as 'the breath and finer spirit
+that is in the countenance of all knowledge'.
+
+It is scarcely necessary even to mention the high hopes of the French
+themselves, the confident anticipation of an Age of Reason when all men
+should be brothers and the earth bring forth all her treasures, but it
+is well worth noting the attitude of Goethe, an attitude the more
+significant because, in a sense, Goethe always stood outside the French
+Revolution. But he, like the best of its votaries--and this is less
+known than it should be--desired the development of all men every whit
+as much as he desired the high culture of a few. It was for the double
+goal that he worked. 'Only through all men,' he writes in a notable
+passage, 'only through all men, can mankind be made.'[72] All good lies
+in Man, he tells us again, and must be developed, 'only not in one man,
+but in many'. Goethe, the so-called aristocrat, has given us here as
+true a formula for the democratic faith as could well be found. And to
+him, as to Shelley and to Wordsworth, Poetry and Science were not
+enemies but friends dearer than sisters. Those three, Shelley,
+Wordsworth, and Goethe, foreshadowed a new poetry of science that has
+never yet been achieved, though fine work has been done by Tennyson,
+Whitman, Sully Prudhomme, and Meredith.
+
+Goethe, moreover, again like Shelley and the French, broke with all
+ideals of mere self-abnegation. In his poem, 'General Confession', he
+makes his disciples repent of ever having missed an opportunity for
+enjoyment and resolve never so to offend again. Here, as often, Goethe
+comes into the closest touch with our modern feeling. We, too, can never
+return to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as
+the highest life for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except
+as the means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would
+call the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the world for
+our own, the tree with the knowledge of good and evil included, reacting
+even from Christian ideals if they can make no room for that. But, after
+all, the characteristic of the belief dominant a century ago was exactly
+that such room could be made, that Hellenism could be combined with
+Christianity, and self-development with self-denial.
+
+And this belief is, I think, reflected in the music of the time.
+Schubert, that sweetest soul of tears and laughter, understands every
+shade of wistfulness, and yet again and again in his music it seems as
+though the universe had become, to quote a lover of his, one immense and
+glorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to
+have recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting
+joy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened
+spirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of
+suffering and then astounds and comforts us by ineffable vistas of
+happiness. After years of personal misery he crowns the glorious series
+of his symphonies by the one that ends in a hymn of joy, freedom, and
+faith, embracing the whole world--'Diese Kuss der ganzen Welt'--that
+majestic open melody, clear as the morning, fresh as though it came from
+far oversea, greater even than any of the great harmonies that have gone
+before, larger than the tortured human heart, steadier than the sudden
+ecstasy of the spirits set free, stronger than the swansong of the
+dying, a melody content with earth because it is conscious of heaven. I
+offer no apology for weaving my own fairy-tales round such music: I see
+no harm in the practice, but only good, so long as we understand what we
+are about. Music, it is true, is something other than, in a sense more
+than, either thought or feeling or even poetry, and cannot be reduced to
+any of them (nor any of them to it). The universe would be poor indeed
+if it could be so. But none the less the truth may be, as Spinoza
+thought, that the universe is at once a unity and a unity with many
+facets, so that any one facet, while for ever unique, can bring to our
+minds all the mysteries of the rest.
+
+In any case, the high confidence that breathes in the music of a hundred
+years ago meets us again in the philosophers.
+
+Hegel, born in the same year as Beethoven and Wordsworth (1770), is sure
+that nothing can resist the onslaught of man's spirit. 'Stronger than
+the gates of Hell are the gates of Thought.' Fichte is convinced that
+there waits in man, only to be developed, a power that will unite him
+with all other men and at the same time develop his own personality to
+the full. In a sense, the deepest, each man _is_ his fellow-men, and
+they are he.
+
+How much this conception has affected modern thought can be seen in a
+recent and very remarkable book, _The New State_,[73] where the very
+basis of democracy is shown to be the faith in this essential unity, a
+unity to be worked out, not yet realized, but capable of realization, a
+faith stirring all through the modern world, in ways expected and
+unexpected, from Syndicalism to the League of Nations.
+
+Later than Hegel and Fichte, the great Positivist conception of life
+preached by Comte is instinct with this belief that man united with his
+fellows, and only as so united, can attain heights undreamt-of and
+unlimited.
+
+The flood-tide of this faith flowed far into the nineteenth century. The
+Italian Mazzini, leader of revolt in 1848, was filled with it. Prophet
+of the most generous political gospel ever preached, he lived on the
+hope that, if freedom were given to the nations and duty set before
+them, they would prove worthy of their double mission, and peace would
+come to pass between all peoples.
+
+But even Mazzini had his moments of agonizing doubt. And others beside
+him, men of lesser intellect as well as greater, were soon to raise, or
+had already raised, voices, stern or fretful, of protest and criticism.
+It became clear at last that this joyous confidence rested on a very
+definite view of life and one that might easily be challenged, the view,
+namely, that at bottom the universe meant well to man, that his greatest
+aspirations were compatible with each other and nowise beyond
+attainment. Almost from the first there were men of the modern world who
+did challenge this. Byron and Schopenhauer are significant figures, both
+born in the same year, only eighteen years later than the great Three of
+1770, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven. Byron is full of moody
+questionings, Schopenhauer of much more than questionings. Against the
+dauntless optimism of Hegel, he flatly denies that the universe is good,
+or happiness possible for man. On the contrary, at the heart of it and
+of him there lies an infinite unrest, never to be quieted until man
+himself gives up the Will to Live and sinks back into the Unconscious
+from which he came.
+
+Now after Schopenhauer came Nietzsche, and though Nietzsche's influence
+may have been exaggerated, yet undeniably it has been of immense
+importance both for Germany and Europe. He is typical of the change that
+begins to appear about the middle of the century. Reacting from the
+optimism of the idealists (which seemed to him both smug and false),
+Nietzsche welcomed Schopenhauer's more Spartan view with a kind of
+fierce delight. But his criticism of Schopenhauer was fierce too, and he
+gave a strangely different turn to such parts of the doctrine as he did
+accept. To Schopenhauer, since it was folly to hope for real happiness
+in this life or any other, the wise course would be to kill outright, so
+far as possible, the Will to Live itself. To Nietzsche the wise course
+was to assert life, to claim it more and more abundantly, to face this
+tragic show with a courage so high that it could be gay, a courage that
+could do without happiness, and yet that turned aside from none of
+life's joys simply because they were fleeting, that was more than
+content to 'live dangerously', picking flowers, as it were, clear-eyed,
+on the edge of the precipice. And this not merely in the temper of 'Let
+us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' For him the motto would have
+run, 'Let us be up and doing, for to-morrow we die', sustained by the
+belief that the heroic struggle now would lead inevitably to the
+production of a nobler type of man, a man who would be something more
+than man--the Super-man, to give him the name that every reader knows,
+if he knows nothing else about Nietzsche.
+
+Even this short statement shows how Nietzsche shared the admiration for
+life and power characteristic of what I have called the Modern
+Renascence, and how deeply he was influenced by the doctrine of
+Evolution, and that in a not unhopeful form, the hope for an advance in
+the race at least, if not in the individuals now living. And it shows
+too how mistaken those are who see in him nothing but a preacher of
+brutal egotism. If he had been only that, he would never have won the
+influence he possessed and possesses. Yet there is important truth in
+the cursory popular judgement. If his teaching has its heroic side, a
+side that has enabled him to give succour to many when other and sweeter
+gospels are spurned as flattering unctions, he has also a most ruthless
+element. And this partly because of his very sincerity. Accept the
+doctrine that men and women perish like candles blown out in the night,
+accept it really and fully, with intellect, imagination, and feeling,
+and then see how much light-heartedness can be got out of life, if we
+still allow ourselves to pity men. Nietzsche had intellect, imagination,
+and feeling, and he saw plainly enough that, while even in such a
+universe there could be a grim happiness for the lives of heroes, there
+could be nothing but infinite sadness for the countless failures who
+have never been either happy or heroic. There was no immortality; these
+wretched beings would never have another chance. If joy was to be kept
+(and Nietzsche was avid for joy), if the universe was to be accepted
+(and Nietzsche desired above all to say Yes! to the universe), then he
+must root out pity from his heart as an unmanly weakness. In this way
+was sharpened the ruthlessness and savage arrogance latent in the man, a
+ruthlessness and an arrogance that have done so much harm both to his
+country and the world.
+
+In fairness, we must add that Nietzsche could not succeed in his own
+attempt; the struggle tore him to pieces and he died in madness.
+
+But it is above all instructive to contrast him here with several of
+his contemporaries and successors. Browning in England, Walt Whitman in
+America, facing the same problems of joy and struggle, of life and
+death, of the few great and the many commonplace, of Man himself and the
+Nature that seems at once his mother and his enemy, refused to give up
+the hope of a solution, nay, they were sure they had found a solution,
+and for them it was bound up with the hope of immortality. They go even
+beyond the earlier men in their insistence on the double ideal of
+Paganism and Christianity, but they have an insistence of their own on
+the belief in unending life as alone giving man elbow-room, so to speak,
+for working out his destiny. Browning claims eternity as the due of
+every man, however mean; and if Whitman feels his foothold 'tenon'd and
+mortised in granite', it is because he can 'laugh at dissolution' and
+knows 'the amplitude of time'.
+
+But in such insistence and such conviction they have not been followed,
+speaking broadly, by our leading writers since. On the other hand, they
+have been so followed, again speaking broadly, in their loyalty to the
+twofold ideal. Here and there, no doubt, as I have said, writers like
+Nietzsche, on the one hand, have tried to be satisfied with the splendid
+development of a Few, or, on the other hand, like Tolstoy, have flung
+back in a kind of despair to the old ideal of abnegation, of sheer
+brotherly love and nothing else, turning their backs on all splendours
+of art, knowledge, or delight, that do not directly minister to the one
+thing they hold needful. But the earlier and wider ideal, the ideal of
+our Renascence, once envisaged by man, that has not been lost, and I
+believe never can be lost. Its own greatness will keep the foremost men
+true to it. Meredith is one of the men I mean. He is full of pity, but
+he does not only pity men and women--he wants them to grow, and to grow
+for themselves. His whole attitude towards Woman shows this: for the
+women's movement is nothing more and nothing less, as Ibsen also felt,
+than one big stream of the general movement towards liberty and
+self-determination. So far Meredith marches with Browning and Whitman.
+But he will never commit himself about immortality. It seems enough for
+him to take part in the struggle for a finer life, at once heroic and
+tender, not caring overmuch whether we reach it or no. 'Spirit raves not
+for a goal' is one of his hard and characteristic sayings, and here he
+seems to me typical both of modern thought in general and especially of
+English thought, and that both for good and ill. We see in him the want
+of precision, the lack of logical coherence, that have prevented us from
+ever producing a philosopher of the first rank. At the same time there
+is something true and profound in his instinct that the moment has not
+yet come in which to formulate our faith. We all feel that we are on the
+brink of tremendous, perhaps terrifying, discoveries; we resent any
+cut-and-dried solution, however pleasant, perhaps all the more if it is
+pleasant, and we resent it because we feel that at bottom our hopes
+would be travestied by any conception we, with our little intellect and
+minute knowledge, could at present frame. It was once said to me by a
+far-seeing friend[74] that the modern dislike of church-going, the
+modern incapacity to write a long coherent poem, the modern passion for
+music and for realism, even for sordid realism, all sprang from the same
+roots, from the thirst for an infinite harmony, the belief that
+everything was somehow involved in that harmony, and the conviction that
+all systems, as yet made or makeable, were entirely inadequate.
+
+And to the list we may add, I think, the modern passion for history and
+for science. We study history not merely to be warned by failures or
+inspired by shining examples: at bottom we have a belief that somehow
+the lives and struggles of those men in the distant past are still quite
+as important as our own. We follow the discoveries of science not only
+for their commercial value or because we share the excitement of the
+chase, but because, deeper than all, we suspect that the universe is a
+glorious thing.
+
+And there is another matter, perhaps the most important of all, on which
+I would dwell as I draw to a close, where Meredith leads directly to the
+dominant thought of the present day. I mean his feeling that, if the
+universe is to be proved acceptable to man's conscience, it will be
+through the effort of man himself struggling towards his own ideal. It
+is as though the world itself had to be redeemed by man. This hope is
+the real hope of our time. So far as the modern world believes the
+doctrine of the Incarnation, it is in this sense that it believes.
+
+And this belief we find everywhere in all hopeful writers, great or
+small. It gives dignity to the latest writings of H.G. Wells, this faith
+in a spirit moving in man greater than man himself, worthy to fight and
+fit to overcome all that is wrong in the universe. Bernard Shaw's creed
+is just the same, sometimes thinly disguised under respect for 'the
+Life-Force', sometimes coming boldly forward in audacious, profound
+assertions that God needs Man to accomplish His own will and is helpless
+without him. 'There is something I want to do,' Shaw imagines his God as
+saying, 'and I don't know what it is; I must make a brain, the human
+brain, to find it out.' Rodin modelled a mighty hand, the Hand of God,
+holding within it Man and Woman. Shaw, it is reported, asked the
+sculptor: 'I suppose you meant your own hand after all?' 'Yes,' said
+Rodin, 'as the tool.'
+
+The same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson,
+the idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not
+yet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to
+be born through the struggle of man's spirit with matter. This is one
+function of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material
+through which alone man's vague ideal can become definite and actual,
+just as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the
+effort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.
+
+From this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but
+ready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are
+among the makers. Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to
+the modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight. To quote
+William James, 'It _feels_ like a real fight--as if there were something
+really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and
+faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own
+hearts from atheisms and fears.' He goes on to confess that he himself
+does not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the
+redemption will surely be accomplished. Such proof, he admits, 'may not
+be clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that
+expression may serve to symbolize)'. 'But the faithful fighters of this
+hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to
+the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with
+which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been
+gained:
+
+      "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques,
+    and you were not there!"'[75]
+
+Thus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has
+sunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of
+ecstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence
+for heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after
+all lies the root of human majesty. There is deep pathos in the change,
+but maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well. The world may
+grow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called
+'desperate hope' as distinct from 'hoping hope'. The triumphant harmony
+that seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may
+have been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own large
+spirits, at least for us, their lesser readers. Mystics have spoken of
+'The Dark Night of the Soul' as the stage inevitable before the crowning
+glory, and to-day some of those who call to us out of great darkness are
+among our greatest leaders.
+
+Of such certainly is a living writer, now beginning to be acclaimed as
+he deserves, the writer Conrad. In some ways this noble novelist might
+stand as the special representative of modern feeling. A Pole by birth
+and more than half an Englishman by sympathy, his view of life is as
+wide as it is profound and grave. It has all the sternness of temper of
+which I have spoken, the determination to look facts in the face
+whatever the consequences. Conrad would echo Sartor's noble cry for
+Truth--'Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;--no
+Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of
+Apostasy!' This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism,
+but Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic. So also does his
+pitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a
+Nietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche's ardour for heroism.
+That to him is the core of life:--'to face it.' 'Keep on facing it,' so
+the old skipper tells the young mate in _Typhoon_. And facing the
+mysterious universe, peering into the Darkness with steady alert eyes,
+Conrad has at once an endless wistfulness and, or so it seems to me, a
+secret unquenchable hope. Doubt certainly he has in plenty. The sea of
+which he is always dreaming is terrible and cruel in his eyes as well as
+august and ennobling.
+
+But he is sure of one thing: it is through the struggle with it and such
+as it that man alone can become Man. It is through facing the horrors of
+a dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young
+master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the
+Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing
+the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the
+'full-powered steam-ship' in _Typhoon_ shows what he has in him,
+compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert
+seamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with
+a power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I
+should despair of conveying by mere criticism. The book must be read for
+itself, and read again and again. It is told, in one way, simply as a
+sailor's yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a
+symbol of man's life.
+
+Threatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, 'the stupid man'
+of no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to
+be done is to keep up steam and face the wind. By sheer force of
+personality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through. And
+in the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem
+unending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of
+terrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting
+madly in the hold. MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance
+for the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as most of them
+are, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship. 'Had to do what's
+fair for all,' he mumbles stolidly to his clever grumbling mate, Jukes,
+during a dead lull in the storm--'they are only Chinamen. Give them the
+same chance with ourselves' ... 'Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if
+I knew she hadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes.' He
+does not know whether the ship will be lost or not--(and we do not know
+whether mankind will be lost or not)--what he does know is how he must
+act. But also he never loses hope. 'She may come out of it yet': that is
+the kind of answer the taciturn man gives when driven to speech. The
+chief mate, locked in his captain's arms to brace himself against the
+hurricane, scarcely able to make the other hear in the terrific gale
+though he shouts close to his head, gets back such answers, and with
+them the power to endure. He tells him the boats are gone: the captain
+yells back sensibly, 'Can't be helped.'
+
+And so noble is the power with which Conrad uses our tongue, the tongue
+he has made his own by adoption and genius, that I must let him speak
+for himself, and can find no better close for my own lame words. Jukes
+has been shouting to his captain again:
+
+     'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but
+     with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of
+     noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the
+     black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man's voice--the frail
+     and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of
+     thought, resolution, and purpose, that shall be pronouncing
+     confident words on the last day, when heavens fall and justice is
+     done--again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from
+     very, very far--"All right."'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 72: _Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre_, Bk. 8, c. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 73: By M.P. Follett (Longmans).]
+
+[Footnote 74: Professor A.C. Bradley, to whom also is due the passage
+about Schubert and the parallel drawn between Beethoven, Hegel, and
+Wordsworth.]
+
+[Footnote 75: From _The Will to Believe_, quoted in Bridges' _The Spirit
+of Man_, No. 425.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Recent Developments in European Thought, by Various
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Recent Developments in European Thought, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
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+Title: Recent Developments in European Thought
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2005 [EBook #15084]
+
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+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ***
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+
+
+<h1><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" />THE UNITY SERIES</h1>
+
+<h2>RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT</h2>
+
+<h3><i>ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED</i></h3>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>F.S. MARVIN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF 'THE LIVING PAST', ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'To hope till Hope creates<br /></span>
+<span>From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span><i>Prometheus Unbound.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br />HUMPHREY MILFORD</p>
+
+<p class="center">OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY</p>
+
+<p class="center">1920</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />PRINTED IN ENGLAND</p>
+
+<p class="center">AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE" /><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>This volume, like its two predecessors, arises from a course of lectures
+delivered at a Summer School at Woodbrooke, near Birmingham, in August,
+1919. The first, in 1915, dealt with 'The Unity of Western Civilization'
+generally, the second, in 1916, with 'Progress'. In this book an attempt
+has been made to trace the same ideas in the last period of European
+history, broadly speaking since 1870.</p>
+
+<p>It was felt at the conclusion of the course that the point of view was
+so enlightening and offered so many opportunities of useful further
+study that it should, if possible, be resumed in future years. A large
+number of subjects were suggested&mdash;'The Relations of East and West,'
+'The Duty of Advanced to Backward Peoples,' 'The R&ocirc;le of Science in
+Civilization,' &amp;c.&mdash;all containing the same elements of 'progress in
+unity' which have inspired the previous volumes. It was thought that
+possibly for the next session 'World <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />Reconstructions Past and Present'
+might be most appropriate.</p>
+
+<p>If any reader feels moved by interest or sympathy with the general idea
+to send suggestions, either as to possible places of meeting, or topics
+for treatment or any other kindred matter, they would be welcomed either
+by the Editor or by Edwin Gilbert, Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, Birmingham.</p>
+
+<p>F.S.M.</p>
+
+<p>BERKHAMSTED, <i>December, 1919.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" /><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="7" summary="Table of Contents">
+
+<tr><th align='right'>&nbsp;</th><th align='right'>&nbsp;</th><th align='left'>&nbsp;</th><th align='right'><span class="smcap">Page</span></th></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><br /></td><td align='right'><br /></td><td align='left'>
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#Page_3">PREFACE</a></span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#I">I</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">GENERAL SURVEY
+<br />By F.S. MARVIN.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#II">II</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">PHILOSOPHYr />By Professor A.E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#III">III</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">RELIGION<br />By Dr. F.B. JEVONS, Hatfield Hall, Durham.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#IV">IV</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">POETRY<br />By Professor C.H. HERFORD, Manchester.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_89">91</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#V">V</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">HISTORY<br />By G.P. GOOCH.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#VI">VI</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">POLITICAL THEORY<br />By A.D. LINDSAY, Balliol College, Oxford.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#VII">VII</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT<br />
+1. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842<br />
+2. MINING OPERATIONS<br />
+3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION<br />
+By C.R. FAY, Christ's College, Cambridge.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a><br /><a href="#Page_181">181</a><br /><a href="#Page_195">195</a><br /><a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">ATOMIC THEORIES<br />By Professor W.H. BRAGG, F.R.S.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#IX">IX</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">BIOLOGY SINCE DARWIN<br />By Professor LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#X">X</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">ART<br />By A. CLUTTON BROCK.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#XI">XI</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A GENERATION OF MUSIC<br />By Dr. ERNEST WALKER, Balliol College, Oxford.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align='right'>
+<a href="#XII">XII</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">THE MODERN RENASCENCE<br />By F. MELIAN STAWELL.</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan='4'></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I" /><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" /><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />I</h2>
+
+<p class="center">GENERAL SURVEY</p>
+
+<p class="center">F.S. MARVIN</p>
+
+
+<p>We are trying in this book to give some impression of the principal
+changes and developments of Western thought in what might roughly be
+called 'the last generation', though this limit of time has been, as it
+must be, treated liberally. From the political point of view the two
+most impressive milestones, events which will always mark for the
+consciousness of the West the beginning and the end of a period, are no
+doubt the war of 1870 and the Great War which has just ended. From 1870
+to 1914 would therefore be the most obvious delimitation of our study;
+and it is a striking illustration of human paradox, that a great stage
+in the growth of unity should be marked by two international tragedies
+and crowned by the most terrible of all.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly coincident with the political divisions there are important
+landmarks in the history of thought. During the 'sixties, while the
+power of Prussia was rising to its culmination in the Franco-Prussian
+War, the Darwinian theory of development was gaining command in biology.
+To many thinkers there has appeared a clear connexion between that
+biological doctrine and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was
+so marked a feature of the time. In any case 'post-Darwinian' might well
+describe the scientific thought of the age we have in view.</p>
+
+<p>Industrially the epoch is as clearly defined as it is in politics and
+science. For in 1871, the year of the Treaty <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />of Frankfort, an act was
+passed after a long working-class agitation, assisted by certain eminent
+members of the middle class, legalizing strikes and Trade Unions. And
+now at the end of the war, all over the world, society is faced by the
+problem of reconciling the full rights, and in some cases the extreme
+demands, of 'labour', with democratic government and the prosperity and
+social union of the whole community. This is the situation discussed in
+our seventh and eighth chapters.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy and literature a similar dividing line appears. In the
+'sixties Herbert Spencer was publishing the capital works of his system.
+The <i>Principles of Psychology</i> was published in 1872. This 'Synthetic
+Philosophy' has proved up to the present the last attempt of its kind,
+and with the vast increase of knowledge since Spencer's day it might
+well prove the last of all such syntheses carried out by a single mind.
+Specialism and criticism have gained the upper hand, and the fresh turn
+to harmony, which we shall notice later on, is rather a harmony of
+spirit than an encyclopaedic unity such as the great masters of system
+from Descartes to Comte and Spencer had attempted before.</p>
+
+<p>In literature also the dates agree. Dickens, most typical of all early
+Victorians, died in 1870. George Eliot's last great novel, <i>Daniel
+Deronda</i>, was published in 1876. Victor Hugo's greatest poem, <i>La
+L&eacute;gende des Si&egrave;cles</i>, the imaginative synthesis of all the ages,
+appeared in the 'seventies. There have been many writers since, with
+Tolstoi perhaps at their head, in whom the fire of moral enthusiasm has
+burnt as keenly, nor have the borders of human sympathy been narrowed.
+Yet one cannot fail to note a less pervading and ready confidence in
+human nature, a less fervent belief that the good must prevail if good
+men will only follow their better leading.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />Here then is our period, marked in public affairs by a progress from
+one conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations
+of the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole
+world into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion
+and depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and
+imagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters.
+No wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the
+'bankruptcy of science'.</p>
+
+<p>But it must be noted at once that these obvious landmarks, though
+striking, are in themselves superficial. They require explanation rather
+than give it, and in some cases an explanation, much less tragic than
+the symptom, is suggested by the symptom itself. We may at least fairly
+treat them at starting simply as beacon-hills to mark out the country we
+are traversing. We have to go deeper to find out the nature of the soil,
+and travel to the end to study the vista beyond.</p>
+
+<p>In making this fuller analysis of man's recent achievement, especially
+in the West, the first, and perhaps ultimately the weightiest, element
+we have to note is the continued and unexampled growth of science. Was
+there ever a more fertile period than the generation which succeeded
+Darwin's achievement in biology and Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's with the
+spectroscope? Both have created revolutions, one in our view of living
+things, the other in our view of matter. In physics the whole realm of
+radio-activity has come into our ken within these years, and during the
+same time chemistry, both organic and inorganic, has been equally
+enlarged. All branches of science in fact show a similar expansion, and
+a new school of mathematicians claim that they have recast the
+foundations of the fundamental science and assimilated it to the
+simplest laws of all thinking. Some <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />discussion of this will be found in
+the chapter on philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>It may serve as tonic&mdash;an antidote to that depression of spirits of
+which we have spoken&mdash;to consider that such an output of mental energy,
+rewarded by such a harvest of truth, is without precedent in man's
+evolution. No single generation before ever learnt so much not only of
+the world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For
+since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for
+historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down
+in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset sky at
+least is glorious.</p>
+
+<p>And there is tonic in another thought which rises from the very nature
+of this recent blossoming of knowledge. It marks the growing
+co-operative activity of mankind. The fact that science and research of
+every kind have advanced so rapidly is not only, or even primarily, a
+proof of the continued vigour of the human intellect, but of the
+stability of society, the coherence of social classes and nations, the
+readiness of the bulk of men to allow their more immediately productive
+work to be used for the support of those whose labours are in a more
+remote and ideal sphere. Science did not begin until the ancient
+priesthoods were enabled to pursue disinterested inquiries without the
+need of earning their daily bread. Civilization, we may be assured, is
+not threatened in its most vital part so long as the general will
+permits the application of the general resources to the promotion of
+learning and research without a claim for immediate marketable results.
+Our last generation has not only permitted but has encouraged this in
+all Western countries, and in other countries, such as China and Japan,
+influenced by the West. The money thus spent is vastly greater than in
+any equal period before, <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />and the United States, the land of the fullest
+democratic claims, is also the land of the amplest generosity for
+scientific and educational purposes.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of knowledge is a symptom not only of the collective capacity
+of living man but also of the continuity of the present age with those
+which had laid the earlier foundations. One school of vigorous action,
+and still more vigorous talk, advises our generation to be done with the
+past and make a fresh start on more ideal lines. This is not the voice
+of science, which, just in proportion to its growth, has shown more and
+more care for its origins and its past: and this is true at every stage
+in the history of thought. The Greeks, fighting for freedom and
+establishing in the city-state a new form of political organization for
+the world, were yet in their scientific evolution true and grateful
+successors of the priests who first compiled the observations necessary
+for the scientific study of the heavens and founded the art of medicine.
+The men of the Renascence, who were burnt and imprisoned for doubting
+the verbal inspiration of Aristotle and the Bible, were in fact going
+back to an earlier impulse than that of the scholastic philosophy. The
+mathematics of Pappus and the mechanics of Archimedes had to be carried
+further before the new sciences of which Aristotle had given the first
+sketch could be securely founded. The pioneers of the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries built therefore on the past, although accused of
+impiety and revolution; and it must be so with any intellectual
+construction which is to hold its own and form the future. So far from
+there being any opposition in nature between history and science, the
+two are but different aspects of one continuous enlargement of the human
+spirit, which sees and lives more fully at each great moment of its
+progress, and, so far as it is alive, is always informed by the real
+<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />achievements of the past. We illustrate this advance in the marvellous
+record of our fifth chapter, and its spirit is summed up in the great
+saying of Benedetto Croce that 'all history is contemporary history'.</p>
+
+<p>But the reader may here begin not unnaturally to feel some impatience
+with the argument, and to think that he is being carried into a region
+of ideal imaginings quite out of touch with the realities of blood and
+hatred and starvation with which we have been actually surrounded at the
+end of our period. It is well to be thus sharply reminded of the
+contrariety of facts, when we are sailing smoothly along on the current
+of any theory, whether of education or politics, religion or art. To get
+right with our objector, to set our sail so that the rocks in the stream
+may not completely wreck us, we will go back to the point where we were
+insisting on the obvious truth that the collective resources and
+capacity of mankind have of late enormously increased.</p>
+
+<p>The material fruits of science are among our most familiar wonders&mdash;the
+motor-car, the aeroplane, wireless telegraphy. But it is not
+sufficiently realized how all these things and the like are dependent
+upon the co-operation of a multitude of minds, the collective rather
+than the individual capacity of man. Men had dreamt for ages of flying,
+but it was not until the invention of the internal combustion engine
+that bird-like wings and the mechanical skill of man could be brought
+together and made effective. It is Humanity that flies, and not the
+individual man alone. The German Daimler, the French Levassor, are the
+two names which stand out most prominently in this later development of
+engineering as our own Watt and Stephenson stand in the history of the
+steam-engine. Wireless telegraphy offers a similar story. Faraday,
+Maxwell, Hertz, Lodge, Marconi; the names are international. In 1913,
+before ever the League <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />of Nations had been planned, Lord Bryce was
+telling an International Congress in London that 'the world is becoming
+one in an altogether new sense.... More than four centuries ago the
+discovery of America marked the first step in the process by which the
+European races have gained dominion over nearly the whole earth. As the
+earth has been narrowed through the new forces science has placed at our
+disposal, the movements of politics, of economics, and of thought, in
+each of its regions, become more closely interwoven. Whatever happens in
+any part of the globe has now a significance for every other part. World
+History is tending to become one History.'</p>
+
+<p>The war, tragically as it has shaken this growing oneness of mankind,
+has not destroyed it. In some ways it has even stimulated growth.
+Against a background of blood and fire the League of Nations has been
+forced into actual being, and the long isolation alike of the ancient
+East and the youthful West has been broken down at last. Within the
+State, again, even allowing for all setbacks, the efforts at social
+solidarity have on the whole been strengthened, not weakened. This war
+his been an accelerator of, not, as the Napoleonic, a brake upon,
+reform. Many reforms, especially in England, which had been long
+discussed and partly attempted before the war, were carried out with
+dispatch at its close. This was the case with education, with the
+franchise and with measures affecting the health, the housing, and the
+industrial conditions of the people. And there is now a greater and
+stronger demand among us for a further advance, above all for making
+every citizen not merely or even primarily a voting unit, but a
+consciously active, consciously co-operative, member of the community.</p>
+
+<p>Comte, who died in 1857 just before our period, was perhaps the clearest
+voice in Europe to herald both <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />movements: the advance to international
+unity, and social reform within the State. It was he who, under the
+title of <i>Western Republic</i>, proclaimed the existence of a real unity of
+nations, whose business it was to strengthen themselves as a moral
+force, to act as trustees for the weaker people and lead the world. It
+was he who, in the phrase 'incorporation of the proletariate', summed up
+all those social reforms in which we are immersed, which aim at making
+every citizen a full member of his nation. Like all ideals it was far
+easier to conceive and to respect than to foresee or to secure the
+necessary means to put it into effect. Perhaps the perfect symmetry of
+the plan, the over-sanguine hopes of the man who framed it, have even
+proved some hindrance to its rapid spread. It has seemed, like Dante's
+polity in the <i>De Monarchia</i>, to take its place rather among the utopias
+than the practical schemes of reform, and when men saw the infinite
+complexity of the problems and met the living lions in the path, they
+suffered the comparative depression which we have noticed as a feature
+of the age.</p>
+
+<p>Here indeed it would appear that we have reached one of the most serious
+cross-currents in recent European thought. In science, in philosophy, in
+politics, and in social economics, though we see the goal at least in
+outline, we are in some danger of being overwhelmed by the difficulties
+of the pursuit. Our vision is somewhat clouded and our steps hampered by
+the entangling details of the country between. It is substantially the
+same problem which faces us both in the philosophical and the practical
+sphere, and the analogy between the two is instructive. Spencer's
+synthesis, which we instanced as the last encyclopaedic attempt to
+present all knowledge&mdash;at least all scientific knowledge&mdash;in one system,
+has been riddled fore and aft by hostile shot, though in <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />the end more
+of it may be found to have survived than is seen at present above water.
+The philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue
+most comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt
+some of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out
+to construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that
+he is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers,
+that he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is
+interesting to note in general terms what that point of view is, as we
+shall have occasion later on to revert to it. It rests on a new
+interpretation of the nature and growth of conscious life. He is in
+short a <i>semeur d'id&eacute;es-force</i> rather than an encyclopaedist or a
+system-maker. The difference is characteristic of the age and might be
+traced in the other contemporary schools, the pragmatists, the new
+realists, and the rest. The new Descartes is looked for but not
+announced. Perhaps when he arrives he will prove to be a whole army and
+not a single man. But if an army, it will need a better co-ordination, a
+more clearly defined common spirit, than is at present apparent in the
+philosophic hosts.</p>
+
+<p>A similar perplexity in the practical sphere has a similar cause but a
+graver urgency. The multiplicity and contrariety of the facts are upon
+us as we face in practice the ideals which we have accepted from the
+earlier thinkers, from the century of hope. In science and philosophy we
+feel that the cause of unity may with some safety be left to look after
+itself. If the new Descartes does not appear in person, we may have
+confidence that plenty of inferior substitutes will be found, who, if
+they work together, will keep alive the great task of unifying thought.
+For in this region the nature of things assists our efforts and will
+sooner or later get the work done. The stars in their courses are
+fighting <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />for us and for unity. But in the world of wills the task is
+tenfold more difficult and the dangers imminent. The poor and labouring
+millions, the oppressed and dissatisfied nations, are forcing the door,
+and though there is fair agreement in theory as to how they should live
+and work together in peace, yet the realization is by no means
+automatic, and the difficulties thicken as we come nearer to them.</p>
+
+<p>But even here, perhaps most of all here, it is the first word of wisdom
+to take stock of the favourable symptoms, to see clearly the forces on
+which we can rely in our forward march. And they are not far to seek in
+all classes and in every Western land. Read any account of an English
+community in the early nineteenth century, say George Eliot's 'Milby' in
+the <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>. How far more humane, more enlightened,
+and happier is the state of the succeeding community, the Nuneaton or
+Coventry of the present day! No question but the novelist would have
+welcomed as a convincing proof of her 'meliorist' doctrine the progress
+made in her own homeland in the century since her birth. We know by
+personal experience the general kindliness and cheerfulness of our
+fellow citizens, their tolerance, their readiness to hope, their
+prevalent orderliness and self-restraint. We are thinking perhaps of a
+certain tendency to slackness, a dangerous falling-off in the output of
+work. If that be so, we need only look at the activities of any
+playground, or of a class-room in a well-ordered school, to be sure of
+the future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as
+exhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all
+for vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult community, the trustees
+of the child, who are to blame if his maturity fails of the eager
+questioning and the untiring labours of his unspoilt youth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />But we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than
+with the actual life of the times. Theories affecting the organization
+of work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society
+have had much to do with our present difficulties. They have arisen from
+the conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the
+political revolution which began about the same time, and they have
+reacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the
+mass of Western men. They are discussed in our eighth chapter. It may be
+said broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and
+<i>simpliste</i> doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of
+extinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken
+their place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due
+mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the
+present&mdash;or recent&mdash;capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned
+upside down in the interests of manual labour&mdash;this is no longer
+dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate
+battle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist
+system, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St.
+Simon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.
+The spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized
+employer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find
+rather in a reconstituted and moralized State. We all share this hope in
+our degree, <i>The Times</i> as well as the <i>Daily News</i>, and we do not
+expect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and
+private capacity and initiative of individuals. The joint stock company
+has settled that.</p>
+
+<p>What we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of
+a benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many
+mansions and, like the monks <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />of old, follow many rules of life. In this
+region our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of
+thought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.</p>
+
+<p>And here it is interesting to note that one of the most telling books on
+social reconstruction published since the war is by an international
+writer. This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose
+ideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>.
+He fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double
+attitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision
+of the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing
+groups, 'Social Guilds' or 'professional syndicates' in which both
+employers and workmen would be included with representatives of the
+Government; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must
+proceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at
+increasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.</p>
+
+<p>Our book has no special chapter on the League of Nations itself. The
+idea pervades the whole, and the subject was treated in detail in the
+first volume of this series (<i>The Unity of Western Civilization</i>, 1915).
+The history behind the League offers a striking analogy to the other
+struggles for unity of which we have spoken. There is the same advance
+from the idea of a unity dictated and controlled by one mind to a unity
+of spirit arising from the free co-operation of many diverse elements
+all aiming at the same general good. Down even to yesterday it seemed to
+many minds a necessary condition that one man, gathering in his hands
+the resources of one great State, should from that centre dominate the
+world. And in the dawn of human history it was no doubt often true, the
+only way in which the world could <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />then advance. This was true for
+Alexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true,
+conspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up
+of the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading
+all who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the
+time of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and
+reactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and
+nations too various and deeply rooted. Meanwhile a real unity, stronger
+than before, had been forming beneath the surface and needed fresh
+institutions to body it forth. This movement for unity has been, as we
+have seen, precipitated by the war into visible and decisive action. It
+had been simmering for three hundred years in 'Great Designs', 'Projects
+of Peace', Treaties of Arbitration, and Hague Conventions.</p>
+
+<p>Among much that is doubtful in the future of the League, one thing
+stands out as a capital certainty. Without losing the very spirit of its
+being it can never become a satellite system, revolving round one
+dominant Power or even a dominant clique. It was formed to contradict
+and destroy an oppressive imperialism: it can only thrive by the free
+co-operation of the partners, finding their proper end in a prosperity
+shared by all.</p>
+
+<p>Such is a short summary of some of the leading topics treated here,
+those perhaps in which public interest has been most keenly aroused. But
+nothing has been said in this introduction of Art or Music, and of
+Religion only a little by implication. It may be well in conclusion to
+attempt a still more summary impression of the main drift of the period
+on the spiritual side. We may in such a wider view see some common
+tendency in all these activities, some inspiration of religion, some
+link with art, some impulse to live strongly and to hope.</p>
+
+<p>The present writer would find this leading thread in <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />the increasing
+stress laid by recent European thought on the spiritual, or
+psychological, side of every problem, in the growing desire to
+understand the character of man's own nature and to develop all the
+powers of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>One of the latest authorities<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" /><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> on anthropology has told us that 'to
+develop soul is progress', and he has followed the clue through the
+meagre relics of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man. So does the last
+science of the nineteenth century throw light on the dim recesses of the
+past. For unquestionably psychology is the characteristic science added
+to the hierarchy in our period; it has crowned biology and is exercising
+a profound influence on philosophy, literature, and even politics. If
+Aristotle was its founder, if it was Descartes who first showed its
+profound connexion with philosophy, it is to workers in our own day that
+we must look for those methods of accurate observation, comparison, and
+the study of causes without which it could not advance farther. And
+modern psychology has advanced far enough to see that we must include in
+its purview the 'soul' of a minnow as well as of a man. Descartes had
+stopped too short, for to him animal life, as distinct from human,
+showed only the movements of automata. But now, just as the biologist
+conceives man as part of one infinite order of living things, so the
+psychologist believes that the facts of his consciousness, the crown of
+life, must find their place somewhere related to the simplest movements
+of the amoeba. Hence the whole of animate evolution, and not only that
+part of which Dr. Marett spoke, may be thought of as the growth of soul.</p>
+
+<p>But, the objector will inquire, does this imply the enlargement of every
+individual or even of the average <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />or the typical personality? And if
+not, what becomes of a 'growth of the soul'?</p>
+
+<p>To this we must admit the impossibility of any complete, or even
+approximate, answer with our present knowledge. We can only note one or
+two points of certainty or of confident belief. The first, that there
+have been individual men, an Aristotle or a Shakespeare, in the past,
+with whom later ages never have, and perhaps never may, compare. The
+second, that there are good grounds for thinking that the average man
+has improved in goodness and in knowledge since we first knew him dimly
+in the dawn of history. But more important and more certain is the fact
+that the collective soul of man has grown, and all the extensions of
+knowledge and of power of which our volume speaks bear witness to it.
+They are essentially social in origin and outlook, and rest on a
+foundation of common thought immeasurably wider than any in the more
+distant past.</p>
+
+<p>The man of science, the statesman, even the poet, now speaks for a
+multitude, and out of a multitudinous consciousness, which had not
+gathered to support, to inspire, or to weigh down, an Aristotle, a
+Pericles, a Cromwell. This is a dominating fact from which it is well to
+take our start. Assuredly the soul of mankind has been collectively
+enlarged and enriched. How far the individual can share in this
+enlargement is still one of the problems of the future. The West has
+committed itself to a general policy of education which aims at making
+every citizen a full partaker in the advance of the race. But it cannot
+be said that this policy has yet been really tried. It is the
+acknowledged ideal to which in all Western countries partial steps have
+been taken, and the democracy, through their most enlightened leaders,
+will continue to press for its fulfilment. As this approaches, the
+individual may become more and <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />more in his degree the microcosm which
+philosophers have proclaimed him, and the enlargement of the soul, which
+we know to be a fact for humanity, will become a fact for every man.
+Need we doubt that with the general raising in the level new eminences
+will appear? Do not great mountains sometimes rise from the sea and
+sometimes from the high plateau? We are now in the very midst of a
+struggle for settlement and incorporation, which, as it is accomplished,
+should prepare the way for new excellences of every kind. What may not
+be hoped of men if once they learn to live with their fellows? And they
+can only so learn by studying them. This is felt by all contemporary
+writers from Bergson in philosophy to Graham Wallas in politics. Poets
+and novelists, above all, have turned more and more to problems of the
+inner life.</p>
+
+<p>The novelists who ushered in our age are significant of this, and none
+more so than George Eliot, whose work, though somewhat out of fashion
+for the moment, is yet marked by the transition from Victorian
+complacency to modern unrest and modern hopes. Full of love and
+appreciation for the old order in England&mdash;the contentment and humours
+of the country-side, the difference of classes, the respect for
+religion&mdash;she was carried by the evolutionary philosophy of her time
+into thoughts of an eternal and world-wide order, the growth of
+humanity, the kinship of man with the universe, the social nature of
+duty. Her contribution was essentially psychological; she enlarged our
+knowledge of the soul. She showed us, not certainly more living types
+than Scott or Dickens, but more play of motives, more varied interests
+in life, more mental crises. The soul, above all the woman's soul, had
+widened its horizon between Flora Macdonald and Dorothea Brooke.</p>
+
+<p>Every reader will think of famous novelists who have <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />followed the same
+broadening path, and their work is often really great as well as famous.
+The history of thought has in fact throughout the last century been a
+commentary on those words of Keats to which many of us have turned of
+late for comfort and inspiration: 'The world is not a vale of tears, but
+a vale of soul-making.' Tears there are in abundance, as the tears of
+children. But sorrow is not the leading note of children, nor should it
+be of humanity in growth. Soul-making&mdash;the practice and the theory&mdash;has
+become more and more clearly and consciously the object of human thought
+and endeavour. We need the greater mind to see the links in the
+overwhelming mass of science, in the mazes of human action and history.
+We need it still more to grasp and to preserve the unity of our social
+life. Most of all for the healing of the world is the greater soul
+needed, with a world-consciousness, some knowledge, some sympathy, some
+hope for all mankind. Without this, a league of nations would be dead
+before its birth.</p>
+
+<p>The recent development of psychology, social as well as individual, its
+pursuit on scientific lines, and its alliance with biology, suggest one
+thought which applies generally to an age of science and may be found to
+throw some illumination even on the future. Which of all types of modern
+men is the most habitually hopeful, the man of letters, the politician,
+the business man, or the man of science? There can be no question of the
+answer. The typical man of science is sure of the greatness and solidity
+of the work he shares, and confident that the future will extend and
+make still more beneficial its results. His forward glance is more
+assured because the backward reveals a course of growing strength and
+continuous ascent. The physicist foresees unmeasured sources of energy,
+still untapped. He warns us of our dangers, but has no doubt that, with
+due foresight, we may overcome <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />them, and make the reign of man upon the
+planet wider and firmer than before. The doctor knows no disease which
+may not in time yield to scientific treatment. The agricultural expert
+foresees, and can produce, new types of grain and fruit which will
+surpass the best yet known. And the trainer of youth, the man to whom
+the new science of psychology stands most in stead, is the most hopeful
+of them all. Dealing with human nature in its growth he puts no limits
+to its powers of goodness and activity. He deplores the want of wise
+methods in the past, and if he errs at all it is in an excess of
+optimism, in believing that with new methods we may make a new man.</p>
+
+<p>On this enlargement of the soul, enlightened by science, we build the
+future. It is the crowning vision of the modern world, first sketched by
+Descartes, filled out and strengthened by the life and thought of three
+hundred years. In the interval we have lived much and learnt much, both
+of our own nature and of the world in which we live. In our own age a
+powerful stimulus has been given by a transformed biology and a new
+science which shows the soul itself in growth from an immemorial past,
+moulding the future by its own action, surmounting, while assimilating,
+the mechanism which surrounds it. But for this building two things are
+needed. One, that our souls, as builders, shall act as one with all our
+fellows and strive for unity as well as power. The other, that in the
+building the laws of growth shall be followed, which science has already
+revealed in part and will reveal more fully. For the spirit of science
+is the spirit of hope.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Walther Rathenau. Ses Id&eacute;es et ses Projets d'Organisation
+&Eacute;conomique</i>. By Gaston Raphael (Paris: Payot, 4f. 50 c).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> R.R. Marett in <i>Progress and History</i> (Oxford University
+Press).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II" /><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />II</h2>
+
+<p class="center">PHILOSOPHY</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR A.E. TAYLOR</p>
+
+
+<p>Between forty and fifty years ago a great European man of science, Emil
+du Bois-Reymond, delivered before an audience of the leading scientific
+men of Germany a famous discourse on <i>The Limits of our Knowledge of
+Nature</i>, which he followed up some years later with a second discourse
+on the <i>Seven Riddles of the Universe</i>. His object was to convince the
+materialists of the 'seventies that there were at least seven such
+unsound places in <i>their</i> story of everything. Some of the 'riddles', he
+admitted, might prove to be soluble as science advances, but the most
+important of them will always remain unanswered. Our position as regards
+them will always be <i>ignoramus et ignorabimus</i>&mdash;we do not know the
+solutions and we never shall know them. I do not ask now whether du
+Bois-Reymond was right in his judgement or not. If he was right, that
+means, of course, that the one tale of everything will never be told by
+human lips to human ears. There will no more ever be a finally true
+Philosophy than there will ever be a finally perfect poem or picture or
+symphony. But there is no reason why we should not, at any rate, try to
+make our story as nearly perfect as we can, to reduce the number of the
+places where we have to break off with 'that is another story', and
+perhaps even to hazard a 'wide solution' in matters where absolute
+certainty is beyond our reach. This is the work of human Philosophy as I
+conceive it, and <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />every man who is disinterestedly trying, without one
+eye on wealth or fame or domination over the minds of others, to make
+any contribution, however humble, to the telling of this one story or
+the removal of loose threads from it, is inspired by the true spirit of
+Philosophy. Whoever is doing anything else, no matter under what name or
+with what profit or renown to himself, is no true philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>This point of view implies, it will be seen, no sharp dividing line
+between Philosophy and Science. The avoidance of this commonly made
+distinction may offend two different sets of students&mdash;students of
+metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the
+'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed
+to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and
+definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of
+the conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction
+that the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may
+help to make my peace with both parties if I explain where I take this
+distinction of convenience to come in. If we are ever to construct an
+approximation to the one story of everything, clearly one result will
+consist of a relatively few first principles and a great mass of
+conclusions which can be inferred from them. And clearly again, since
+men differ so widely in their mental aptitudes, some men will be most
+successful in the detection of the principles which underlie all our
+knowledge, and others most successful in the accumulation of facts and
+the detailed working out of the application of the principles to the
+facts. For convenience' sake it will be well that some of us shall be
+engaged on the discovery of principles which are so very ultimate that
+most men take them for granted without reflecting on them at all, and
+others on the work of detail. Further, <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />it will be convenient that,
+within this second group, various students shall give their attention to
+more special masses of detail, according to their several tastes and
+aptitudes, some to the behaviour of moving particles, some to the
+behaviour of living organisms, some again to the structure and
+institutions of human societies, and so on. For convenience we may agree
+to call preoccupation with the great ultimate principles Philosophy and
+preoccupation with the application of the principles to masses of
+special facts Science. If we make the distinction in this way, we shall
+be following pretty closely the lines of historical development along
+which 'special' sciences have gradually been constituted. When we go
+back far enough in the history of human thought, we find that
+originally, among the great Greeks who have taught the world to think,
+there was no distinction at all between Science and Philosophy. Men like
+Plato and Aristotle were busied at once with the discovery of the first
+principles on which all our knowledge depends and with the construction
+of a satisfactory theory of the planetary motions or of the facts of
+growth and reproduction. As the study of special questions was pursued
+further, it became advisable to hand over the treatment of first one and
+then another group of closely interconnected questions to students who
+would pursue them independently of research into ultimate
+presuppositions. This is how Geometry, Astronomy, Biology came, in
+ancient times, to be successively detached from general Philosophy. The
+separation of Psychology&mdash;the detailed study of the processes of mental
+life&mdash;from Philosophy hardly goes back beyond the days of our fathers,
+and the separation of such studies as 'sociology' from general
+Philosophy may be said to belong quite definitely to our own time. If
+our children have leisure for study at all, no doubt they will see the
+process carried much further. But it is <a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />important to bear in mind that
+neither Philosophy in the narrower sense nor Science in the narrower
+sense will be fruitfully prosecuted unless the men who are working at
+each understand that their own labours are only part of a single
+undivided work. Without a genuine grasp of some department of detailed
+facts no man is likely to achieve much in the search for principles, for
+it is by analysis of facts that principles are to be found, and without
+real insight into broad general principles the worker in detail is
+likely to achieve nothing but confusion. The antagonism between
+'philosophers' and 'men of science' so characteristic of the last half
+of the nineteenth century has been productive of nothing but evil. It
+has given us 'philosophers' whose knowledge about the facts with which
+serious thinking has to deal has been hopelessly inaccurate; it has also
+given us 'men of science' who have been 'ageometretes' and have, by
+consequence, when forced to offer some account of first principles,
+taken refuge in the wildest and weirdest improvisation. For really
+fruitful work we need the union in one person of the 'man of science'
+and the 'philosopher', or at least the most intimate co-operation
+between the two. Our theories of first principles require to be
+constantly revised, purified, and quickened by contact with knowledge of
+detailed fact; and our representations of fact call for constant
+restatement in terms of a system of more and more thoroughly thought-out
+postulates or first principles. This is perhaps why the department of
+human knowledge in which the last half-century has seen the most
+remarkable advances is just that in which unremitting scrutiny of
+principles has gone most closely hand-in-hand with the mastery of fresh
+masses of detail, pure mathematics, and again why the present state of
+what is loosely called 'evolutionary' science is so unsatisfactory to
+any one who has a high ideal <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />of what a science ought to be. It exhibits
+at once an enormous mass of detailed information and an apparently
+hopeless vagueness about the meaning of the 'laws' by which all this
+detail is to be co-ordinated, the reasons for thinking these laws true,
+and the precise range of their significance. The work of men like
+Cantor, Dedekind, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, is providing us with an
+almost unexceptional theory of the first principles required for pure
+mathematics. We are already in a position to say with almost complete
+freedom from uncertainty what undefined simple notions and
+undemonstrated postulates we have to employ in the science and to
+express these ultimates without ambiguity. 'Evolutionary science,' rich
+as is its information about the details of the processes going on in the
+organic world, seems still to await its Frege or Russell. It talks, for
+example, much of 'hereditary' and non-hereditary peculiarities, and some
+of us can remember a time when our friends among the biologists seemed
+almost ready to put each other to the sword for differences of opinion
+about the inheritability of certain characteristics; but no one seems to
+trouble himself much with the question a philosopher would think most
+important of all&mdash;precisely what is meant by the metaphor of
+'inheritance' when it is applied to the facts of biology. (Indeed, it is
+still quite fashionable to talk not merely as if a 'character' were,
+like a house or an orchard, a <i>thing</i> which can be transferred bodily
+from the possession of a parent to the possession of the offspring, but
+even as though an 'heir' could 'inherit' himself.)</p>
+
+<p>This last remark leads me to a further consideration. Science and
+Philosophy are alike created by the simple determination to be
+<i>thorough</i> in our thinking about the problems which all things and
+events present to us, to use no terms whose meaning is ambiguous, to
+assert no <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />propositions as true until we are satisfied that they are
+either directly apprehended as true, or strictly deducible from other
+propositions which are thus apprehended. But now that the area of facts
+open to our exploration has become far too vast for a modern Francis
+Bacon to 'take all knowledge for his province', and convenience has led
+to the distinction between the philosopher and the man of science, a
+<i>practical</i> distinction between the two makes its appearance. It is
+<i>convenient</i> that our knowledge of detail should be steadily extended by
+considering the consequences which follow from a given set of postulates
+without waiting for the solution of the more strictly philosophical
+questions whether our postulates have been reduced to the simplest and
+most unambiguous expression, whether the list might not be curtailed by
+showing that some of its members which have been accepted on their own
+merits can be deduced from the rest, or again enlarged by the express
+addition of principles which we have all along been using without any
+actual formulation of them. The point may be illustrated by considering
+the set of 'postulates' explicitly made in the geometry of Euclid. We
+cannot be said to have made geometry thoroughly scientific until we know
+whether the traditional list of postulates is complete, whether some of
+the traditional postulates might not be capable of demonstration, and
+whether geometry as a science would be destroyed by the denial of one or
+more of the postulates. But it would be very undesirable to suspend
+examination of the consequences which follow from the Euclidean
+postulates until we have answered all these questions. Even in pure
+mathematics one has, in the first instance, to proceed tentatively, to
+venture on the work of drawing inferences from what seem to be plausible
+postulates before one can pass a verdict on the merits of the postulates
+themselves. The consequence of this <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />tentative character of our
+inquiries is that, so far as there is a difference between Philosophy
+and Science at all, it is a difference in <i>thoroughness</i>. The more
+philosophic a man's mind is, the less ready will he be to let an
+assertion pass without examination as obviously true. Thus Euclid makes
+a famous assumption&mdash;the 'parallel-postulate'&mdash;which amounts to the
+assertion that if three of the angles of a rectilinear quadrilateral are
+right angles, the fourth will be a right angle. The mathematicians of
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, again, generally assumed
+that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A
+comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions
+pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when
+it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask <i>Why</i>?'
+Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my
+quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of
+conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from
+contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I
+define a continuous function which is <i>not</i> differentiable? The raising
+of the first question led in fact to the discovery of what is called
+'non-Euclidean' geometry, the raising of the second has banished from
+the text-books of the Calculus the masses of bad reasoning which long
+made that branch of mathematics a scandal to logic and led distinguished
+philosophers&mdash;Kant among them&mdash;to suspect that there are hopeless
+contradictions in the very foundations of mathematical science.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the effect of such careful scrutiny of first principles is not, of
+course, to upset any conclusions which have been correctly drawn from a
+set of premisses. All that happens is that the conclusion is no longer
+asserted by itself as a truth; what is asserted is that the conclusion
+<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />is true <i>if</i> the premisses are true. Thus we no longer assert the
+'theorem of Pythagoras' as a categorical proposition; what we assert is
+that the theorem follows as a consequence from the assertion of some
+half-dozen ultimate postulates which will be found on analysis to be the
+premisses of Euclid's proof of his forty-seventh proposition.</p>
+
+<p>To come back to the point I wish to illustrate. The peculiarity of the
+philosopher is simply that he still goes on to 'wonder' and ask <i>Why</i>
+when other persons are ready to leave off. He is less contented than
+other men to take things for granted. Of course, he knows that, in the
+end, you cannot get away from the necessity of taking something for
+granted, but he is anxious to take for granted as few things as
+possible, and when he has to take something for granted, he is
+exceptionally anxious to know exactly what that something is. De Morgan
+tells a story of a very pertinacious controversialist who, being asked
+whether he would not at least admit that 'the whole is greater than the
+part', retorted, 'Not I, until I see what use you mean to make of the
+admission.' I am not sure whether De Morgan quotes this as an ensample
+for our following or as a warning for our avoidance, but to my own mind
+it is an excellent specimen of the philosophic temper. Until you know
+what use is going to be made of your admission, you do not really know
+what it is you have admitted. It is this superior thoroughness of
+Philosophy which Plato has in mind when he says of his supreme science
+'Dialectic' that its business is to examine and even to 'destroy'
+([Greek: anairein]) the assumptions of all the other sciences. It does
+not let propositions which they have been content to take for granted
+pass without challenge, and it may actually 'destroy' them by showing
+that there is no justification for asserting them. Thus Euclid's
+assumption about parallels ceased to be included among the indispensable
+<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />premisses of geometry, and was 'destroyed' in Plato's sense when
+Lobatchevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann showed that complete bodies of
+self-consistent geometrical theory can be deduced from sets of
+postulates in which Euclid's assumption is explicitly denied. There are
+two further points I should like to put before you in this connexion.
+One of them has been forcibly argued by Mr. Bertrand Russell in his
+admirable little work <i>The Problems of Philosophy</i>; the other has not.
+Indeed, it is just in his unwillingness to allow the second of these
+points to be raised at all that Mr. Russell seems to me to fall
+conspicuously and unaccountably short of being what, by his own showing,
+a great philosopher ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>To take first the point with which Mr. Russell has dealt. There is one
+very important branch of inquiry, if we ought not rather to say that
+there are two, which appear to belong wholly to general Philosophy and
+not to any of the 'sciences'. We cannot so much as ask the simplest
+question without making the implication that there is an ultimate
+distinction between true assertions and false ones, and certain definite
+principles by which we can infer true conclusions from true premisses.
+It is thus a very important part of the true 'story of everything' to
+state the principles upon which valid reasoning depends, and to
+enunciate the ultimate postulates which have to be taken for granted
+whenever we try to reason validly about anything. This is the inquiry
+known by the name of logic. We cannot expect men whose time is fully
+taken up with the task of reaching true conclusions about some special
+class of facts, those which concern the history of living organisms, or
+the production and distribution of 'wealth', or the stability of various
+forms of government, to burden themselves with this inquiry in addition
+to their other tasks. They may fairly be allowed to leave the
+construction of logic to others. But the man who <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />makes it the business
+of his life to get back to ultimate first principles must plainly be a
+logician, though he need not be a specialist in biology or economics or
+'sociology'. One great advantage which our children should have over
+their parents as students of Philosophy is that the last half-century
+has been one of unprecedented advance in the study of logic. In the
+'logic of relations', founded by De Morgan, carried out further in the
+third volume of Ernst Schr&ouml;der's <i>Algebra der Logik</i>, and made still
+more precise in the earliest sections of the <i>Principia Mathematica</i> of
+Whitehead and Russell, we now possess the most potent weapon of
+intellectual analysis ever yet devised by man.</p>
+
+<p>We must further remark that the serious pursuit of any kind of science
+implies not only that there <i>are</i> truths, but that some of them, at
+least, can be <i>known</i> by man. Hence there arises a problem which is not
+quite the same as that of logic. What <i>is</i> the relation we mean to speak
+of when we talk of 'knowing' something, and what conditions must be
+fulfilled in order that a proposition may not only be true but be known
+by us to be true? The very generality of this problem marks it out as
+one which belongs to what I have been all along calling Philosophy. (We
+must be careful to note that the problem does not belong to the 'special
+science' of psychology. Psychology aims at telling us how particular
+thoughts and trains of thought arise in an individual mind, but it has
+nothing to say on the question which of our thoughts give us 'knowledge'
+and which do not. The 'possibility of knowledge' has to be presupposed
+by the psychologist as a pre-condition of his particular investigations
+exactly as it is presupposed by the physicist, the botanist, or the
+economist.) The study of the problem 'what are the conditions which must
+be satisfied whenever anything at all is known' is precisely what Kant
+meant by <i>Criticism</i>, <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />though the raising of the problem in this
+definite form is not due to Kant but goes back to Plato, who made it the
+subject of one of his greatest dialogues, the <i>Theaetetus</i>. The simplest
+way to make the nature and importance of the problem clear is perhaps
+the way Mr. Russell adopts in the <i>Problems of Philosophy</i>&mdash;to give a
+very rough statement of Kant's famous solution.</p>
+
+<p>Kant held that careful analysis shows us that any piece of knowledge has
+two constituents of very diverse origin. It has a <i>matter</i> or material
+constituent consisting, as Kant held, of certain crude data supplied by
+sensation, colours, tones of varying pitch and loudness, odours,
+savours, and the like. It has also a <i>form</i> or formal constituent. Our
+data, when we know anything at all, are arranged on some definite
+principle of order. When we recognize an object by the eye or a tune by
+the ear, we do not apprehend simply so much colour or sound, but colours
+spread out and forming a pattern or notes following one another in a
+fixed order. (If you reverse the movement of a gramophone, you get the
+same notes as before, but you do not get the same tune.) Further, Kant
+thought it could be shown that the data of our knowledge are a
+disorderly medley and come to us from without, being supplied by things
+which exist and are what they are equally whether any one perceives them
+or not, but the element of form, pattern, or order is put into them by
+our own minds in the act of knowing them. Our minds are so constructed
+that we <i>can</i> only perceive things or think of them as connected by
+certain definite principles of orderly arrangement. This, he thought,
+explains the indubitable fact that we can sometimes know universal
+propositions to be true without needing to examine all the individual
+instances. I can know for certain that in every triangle the greater
+angle is subtended by the greater side, or that every event has a
+definite cause <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />among earlier events, though I cannot examine all
+triangles or all events one by one. This is because the postulates of
+geometry and the law of causality are types of order which my mind
+<i>puts</i> into the data of its knowledge in the very act of attending to
+them, and it is therefore certain that I shall never perceive or think
+anything which does not conform to these types.</p>
+
+<p>I give Kant's answer to the problem of Criticism not because I believe
+it to be the correct one, but to show what important consequences follow
+from our acceptance of a solution of this problem. If it is true that
+one of the constituent elements of every piece of knowledge is a lump of
+crude sensation, it follows that we can have no knowledge about our own
+minds or souls, and still less about God, since, if there are such
+beings as my soul and God, at any rate neither furnishes me with
+sense-data. Hence a great part of Kant's famous <i>Critique of Pure
+Reason</i> is taken up by an elaborate attempt to show that psychology and
+theology contain no real knowledge. We cannot even know whether there is
+any probability for or against the existence of the soul or of God,
+though Kant was very anxious to show that it is our duty on moral
+grounds to <i>believe</i> very firmly in both. Now if Kant is right about
+this, his result is tremendously important. If psychology and theology
+are wholly devoid of scientific value, it is most desirable that we
+should know this, not only that we may not waste time in studying them,
+but because it may reasonably make a very great difference to the
+practical ordering of our lives. If Kant can be proved wrong, it is
+equally important to be convinced that he is wrong. We may have been led
+by belief in his teaching to neglect the acquisition of a great deal of
+knowledge of high intrinsic interest, and may even have been betrayed
+into basing the conduct of life on wrong principles. If, for example, we
+can really know something <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />about the soul, it <i>may</i> be possible to know
+whether it is immortal or not, and it is not unreasonable to hold that
+certain knowledge, or even probable belief, on such a point ought to
+make a great difference to our choice between rival aims in life. There
+is clearly much less to be said for the recommendation to 'eat and drink
+for to-morrow we die' if we have reason to believe our souls immortal
+than if we have not, and some of us do not share Mr. Russell's view that
+Philosophy is called upon to abdicate what the Greeks thought her
+sovereign function, the regulation of life. It is true that Kant
+convinced himself that it is a moral duty to act as if we knew the truth
+of doctrines for or against which we cannot detect the slightest balance
+of probability. But the logically sound inference from Kant's premisses
+would be that, to use Pascal's famous metaphor, a prudent man will do
+well to bet neither for nor against immortality. Unfortunately, as
+Pascal said, you can't <i>help</i> betting; <i>il faut parier</i>. If it makes any
+difference to the relative values of different goods whether the soul
+dies with the body or not, one <i>must</i> take sides in the matter. In
+making one's choices one must prefer either the things it is reasonable
+to regard as good for a creature whose days are threescore years and ten
+or those which it is reasonable to regard as best for a being who is to
+live for ever. The only way to escape having to bet is not to be born.</p>
+
+<p>I come to the second problem, the one which, as I think, Mr. Russell
+arbitrarily ignores. A human being is not a mere knowledge-machine. The
+relation of knower to known is not the only relation in which he stands
+to himself and to other things. The 'world' is not merely something at
+which he can look on, it is also an instrument for achieving what he
+regards as good and for creating what he judges to be beautiful. To do
+good and to make beautiful things are just as much man's business as to
+<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />discover truth. A knowledge of the world would be very incomplete if it
+did not include knowledge of what ought to be, whether because it is
+morally best or because it is beautiful, as well as knowledge of what is
+actually there. And it is not immediately evident how the two, knowledge
+of what ought to be and knowledge of what merely is, are connected.</p>
+
+<p>There is, to be sure, one way in which it is pretty plain that they are
+<i>not</i> related. You cannot learn what ought to be&mdash;what is beautiful or
+morally good&mdash;merely by first finding out what has been or what is
+likely to be. This simple consideration of itself deprives many of the
+big volumes which have been written about the 'evolution' of art and
+morals of most of their value. They may have interest if they are
+treated only as contributions to the history of opinion about art and
+morals. But unhappily their authors often assume that we can find out
+what really <i>is</i> right or beautiful by merely discovering what men have
+thought right and beautiful in the remote past or guessing what they
+will think right or beautiful in the distant future. The fallacy
+underlying this procedure has been happily exposed by Mr. Russell
+himself in an occasional essay where he remarks that it is antecedently
+just as likely that evolution is going from bad to worse as that it is
+going from good to better. <i>Unless</i> it is going from bad to worse it is
+obviously absurd to suppose that you can find out what <i>is</i> good by
+discovering what our distant ancestors <i>thought</i> good. And <i>if</i> (as may
+be the case) it is going from bad to worse, no amount of knowledge about
+what our posterity will think good can throw any light on the question
+what is good. There is, in fact, no ground whatever for believing that
+'evolution' need be the same thing as progress, and this is enough to
+knock the bottom out of 'evolutionary ethics'.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it is quite certain that when we call <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />an act right
+or a picture beautiful we do not mean to be expressing a mere personal
+liking of our own, any more than when we make a statement about the
+composition of sulphuric acid or the product of 9 and 7. As Dr. Rashdall
+has put it, when we say that a given act is right, we do not pretend to
+be infallible. We know that we may fall into mistakes about right and
+wrong just as we may make mistakes in working a multiplication sum. But
+we do mean to say that <i>if</i> our own verdict 'that act is right' is a
+true one, then the verdict of any one who retorts 'that act is wrong' is
+false, just as when we state the result of our multiplication we mean to
+assert that <i>if</i> we have done the sum correctly any one else who brings
+out a different answer has worked it wrongly. Indeed, we might convince
+ourselves that these verdicts are not meant to be expressions of private
+and personal liking in a still simpler way. All of us must be aware that
+the line of action we pronounce 'right' is not always what we like nor
+the conduct we call 'wrong' what we dislike. We often like doing what we
+fully believe to be wrong and dislike doing what we believe right,
+without being in the least confused in our moral verdicts by this
+collision of liking and conviction. So again it is a common thing to
+like one poem or picture better than another, and yet to be fully
+persuaded that the work we like the less is the better work of art.
+Indeed, the whole process of moral and aesthetic education may be said
+to exist just in learning to like most what is really best.</p>
+
+<p>All this, put into so many words, may seem too simple to call for
+statement, but it makes nonsense of a great deal that has been written
+about ethics of late years. It disposes once for all of the theory that
+moral and aesthetic verdicts are 'subjective', that is, that they mean
+no more than that the persons who make them have certain <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />personal likes
+and dislikes of which these verdicts are a record. Of course, it might
+be urged that all of us do indeed mean to express truths which are
+independent of our personal likings when we make moral and aesthetic
+judgements, but that we never succeed in doing so. A man might
+conceivably hold that there is no real distinction between right and
+wrong or between beautiful and ugly, but that it is a universal illusion
+of mankind to suppose that there are such distinctions. Or he might hold
+that the distinctions are real, but that we do not know where to draw
+them. He might suggest that some ways of acting are really right and
+others really wrong, but that we do not know which are the right acts
+and so regularly confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right.
+Mr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of
+this sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as
+reasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions
+are only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers
+and astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths
+and falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do
+not know which the true propositions are. That there is a real
+distinction between true and false propositions and that, with pains and
+care, we can discover some truths are assumptions we must make if we are
+to recognize the possibility of pursuing knowledge at all, and there is
+no reason to suppose that these assumptions do not hold as good in
+matters of art and morals as elsewhere. No doubt, in practice men are
+prone to mistake what they like for what is right or beautiful, but this
+danger, such as it is, is not confined to art and morals. Men do often
+call acts right merely because they like doing them or pictures
+beautiful merely because they get pleasure from them. But it is also
+notorious that many men are <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />prone to believe that a thing is likely to
+happen merely because they wish it to happen, or that it is unlikely to
+happen merely because they wish it not to happen. Yet no one seriously
+makes the reality of these tendencies a ground for denying the
+possibility of 'inferring the future from the past'. We must then, I
+hold, regard it as an integral part of the whole story of everything to
+find an answer to the questions What is good? and What is beautiful? as
+well as to the question What is fact? By the side of the so-called
+'positive sciences', which deal with the third question, we must
+recognize as having an equal right to exist the so-called 'sciences of
+value', which deal with the first and the second.</p>
+
+<p>I want now to take a further step in which disciples of Mr. Russell
+would perhaps decline to follow me. We have already seen what is meant
+by the co-ordination of the sciences into a single body of deductions
+from definite ultimate postulates, though in what we have said about the
+task we were content to speak provisionally as if the sciences of 'what
+is' were all the sciences to be co-ordinated. We talked, in fact, as if
+the work of Philosophy were merely to work into a coherent story all
+that can be known of 'objects that present themselves to the
+contemplation' of a knower. But, of course, if Philosophy is ever to
+attack its final problem, we must take into account two things which we
+have so far ignored. The 'whole story of everything' includes the
+knowing intelligence itself as well as the 'objects' which present
+themselves to its gaze. Indeed, it is not even accurate to speak as if
+'objects' 'presented themselves' to a merely passive intelligence; to be
+apprehended, they have to be actively attended to. If we would see them,
+we have to be on the look-out for them. And the knowing intelligence is
+not aware merely of these objects. It is also aware of itself, though
+<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />it is certainly never a 'presented object'. Also, it is not only a
+knower but a doer and a maker. Intelligence is shown as much in the
+ordering of life by a rule based on a right valuation of goods and in
+the making of things of beauty as in the discovery of propositions about
+what is. Hence, we can hardly be content to leave the 'positive'
+sciences and the 'sciences of values' simply standing over against one
+another. There is that which 'is', and there is that which 'ought to
+be', and, at first sight at any rate, the two seem very different. Much
+that is&mdash;ignorance, sin, misery, ugliness&mdash;ought not to be, and much
+that ought to be is very far from being fact. We are accustomed to
+regard this as a matter of course, but, closely considered, it is
+perhaps the supreme wonder of all the wonders. We creatures of
+circumstance, as we call ourselves, can take stock of the sum of things
+to which we belong, and judge it. It is not simply that we can, and
+often do, <i>wish</i> that it were different in various ways; we can judge
+that it <i>ought</i> to be different, and you may find a man of science like
+Huxley, after a life spent in trying to understand the laws which
+prevail in the world, deliberately making it his last word to his
+fellows that their duty is to set themselves to reverse the 'cosmic
+process', to select for preservation just the human types which, if the
+much-abused metaphor may be tolerated, Nature, left to herself, selects
+for destruction.</p>
+
+<p>We might, of course, regard this apparently unreconcilable conflict
+between the arrangements which do prevail; as is commonly supposed, in
+the world, and those which ought to prevail, as a mystery which we must
+despair of ever understanding. But, to say the least of it, it is hardly
+consistent with the philosophic temper to treat any question as an
+insoluble riddle until one has tried all ways of solution and found them
+<i>culs-de-sac</i>. If we are to be thoroughly loyal to the spirit which
+<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />prompts all intelligent inquiry, we are bound at least to ask whether
+it is, after all, beyond the power of human intelligence to think of the
+world as a system in which somehow, in the end, what ought to be
+prescribes what is. It is true that, for reasons already mentioned, we
+cannot, like Spinoza or the Sufis, reconcile facts and values by the
+simple assumption that what is is shown, by the fact that it is, to be
+what ought to be, and that our common conviction that sin and ugliness
+are painfully real is only an illusion due to spiritual short sight. We
+have just as much reason to believe that some pleasures are good, that
+pain which is not a means to good is evil, that justice and purity are
+good, lewdness and cruelty bad, that some colours are lovely and others
+odious, as we have to believe that between any two points there is
+always a third, or that, if <i>B</i> and <i>C</i> are two points there is always a
+point <i>D</i> on the straight line <i>BC</i> such that <i>C</i> is between <i>B</i> and
+<i>D</i>, and a point <i>A</i> on <i>CB</i> such that <i>B</i> is between <i>C</i> and <i>A</i>.
+Indeed, the most fanatical champion of what Mr. Russell in his
+anti-ethical mood calls 'ethical neutrality' cannot well avoid
+recognizing the truth of at least one proposition in ethics, the
+proposition that knowledge of scientific truth is <i>better</i> than
+ignorance of it. The admission of this single truth of value is enough
+to raise all the time-honoured problems of ethics and theodicy. If
+knowledge of truth is better than ignorance of it, the actual present
+state of the world, in which so much truth is yet to seek, is by no
+means wholly good, and there really is at least one way in which it is
+our duty to make it more like what it ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>If then we cannot get rid of the apparent conflict between Is and Ought
+by saying that Ought is an illusion, can we get rid of it, in the only
+other possible way, by holding that what ought to be is the lasting and
+primary reality and that the 'facts' which are so far from being <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />what
+they ought to be are by comparison only half-real, much what shadows are
+to the solid things which throw them? This was the doctrine of Plato,
+who makes Socrates say in the <i>Phaedo</i> that it is the 'Good' which holds
+the Universe together, and that in the end the true reason for each
+particular arrangement in the world, whether we can see it or not, is
+that it is 'best' that this arrangement, and no other, should exist. It
+is also the foundation of Kant's well-known contention that, however
+barren speculative theology and psychology may be, the reality of the
+moral order and the unconditionality of moral obligation compel us to
+make the existence of God, the immortality of our souls, and the moral
+government of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More
+generally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and
+explanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all
+philosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of
+course, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for
+instance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes
+to be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say <i>how</i>
+any particular thing comes to be other than it ought to be, nor <i>how</i> in
+the end good is 'brought out of evil'. But if we are to have a right to
+hold a view of the Platonic or Theistic type, we must be able, not
+indeed to say how evil comes about or how it is to be finally got rid
+of, but to say, in a general way, what it is 'good for'. Thus, if there
+are certain goods of the highest value which could not exist at all
+except on the condition of the existence of less important evils, this
+consideration will remove, so far as <i>those</i> goods and evils are
+concerned, the time-honoured puzzle how evil can exist at all if God is.
+To take a specific example. To many of us it appears directly certain
+that such qualities of character as fortitude, patience, superiority <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />to
+carnal lusts, magnanimity, are goods of the highest value. We think also
+that we see that these qualities are not primitive psychological
+endowments but require for their development the experience of struggle
+and discipline in a world where there is real suffering, real
+disappointment, real temptation. To us, therefore, there seems to be no
+contradiction between the existence of God and the presence in a world
+made by God of the evils needed for the development of these virtues.
+And this will include some of the worst of all the evils we know of. Few
+things are more ghastly than some of the cruelties which have been
+practised in the late War and are still being practised in the
+distracted country of Russia. Yet we know how revulsion from these
+horrors has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or
+carnality into a Bayard or a Galahad. It may well be that this moral
+re-birth would never have been effected if the evils which provoked it
+had been less monstrous. Here, then, we seem to discern a principle
+which <i>may</i> be adequate to explain what all the ills of human life are
+'good for'.</p>
+
+<p>I must not deny that all such explanation, in my judgement, involves the
+postulate that the ennoblement of character and deepening of insight
+brought about by suffering are permanent&mdash;in fact, that it requires the
+postulates of the existence of God and the reality of everlasting life.
+Mr. Russell, I imagine, would regard this as a confession that I am sunk
+in what he airily dismisses as 'theological superstitions'. I should
+reply that the 'superstition' is on his side; to dismiss God and the
+eternal soul, without serious inquiry, as 'superstitions' is just the
+most superficial of all the superstitions. It is, of course, incumbent
+on anyone who holds the Platonic view to show that its postulates are
+not inconsistent with any known truth, and I would add that he <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />ought
+also to show that there are at any rate known facts which seem to demand
+just this kind of explanation. Both these points, as I hold, can be
+established, but I do not in the least wish to suggest that any
+philosopher will ever find it an easy task to 'justify the ways of God
+to man'. As Timaeus says in Plato, 'to find the father and fashioner of
+the Universe is <i>not</i> easy', and I want rather to lay stress on the
+magnitude of the task than to extenuate it. But I am concerned to urge
+that the doctrine which accounts for what is by what ought to be is the
+<i>only</i> philosophical theory on which it ceases to be an unintelligible
+mystery that we should have&mdash;as I maintain we certainly have&mdash;the same
+kind of assurance about values that we have about facts. The chief
+complaint I have to make about the mental attitude of Mr. Russell and
+some of his friends is that, in their zeal for the unification of
+science, they seem inclined to assume that the larger problem of the
+co-ordination of Science with Life does not exist, or, at any rate, need
+not occupy our minds. This is what I should call mere atheistic
+superstition. On this point they might, I believe, learn much which it
+imports them to know from the works of some of the notable living
+philosophers of Italy, in particular from Professor Varisco of Rome and
+Professor Aliotta of Padua, whose labours have been specially directed
+to the co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the
+sciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all,
+those who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical
+work of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought
+in their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it
+in the schools of Rome or Padua.</p>
+
+<p>You will readily see that I am suggesting in effect that if Philosophy
+is ever to execute her supreme task, she <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />will need to take into much
+more serious account than it has been the fashion to do, not only the
+work of the exact sciences but the teachings of the great masters of
+life who have founded the religions of the world, and the theologies
+which give reasoned expression to what in the great masters is immediate
+intuition. For us this means more particularly that it is high time
+philosophers ceased to treat the great Christian theologians as
+credulous persons whose convictions need not be taken seriously and the
+Gospel history as a fable to which the 'enlightened' can no longer pay
+any respect. They must be prepared to reckon with the possibility that
+the facts recorded in the Gospel happened and that Catholic theology is,
+in substance, true. If we are to be philosophers in earnest we cannot
+afford to have any path which may lead to the heart of life's mystery
+blocked for us by placards bearing the labels 'reactionary', 'unmodern,'
+and their likes. That what is most modern must be best is a superstition
+which it is strange to find in a really educated man&mdash;especially after
+the events of the last five years. A philosopher, at any rate, should be
+able to endure the charge of being 'unmodern' with fortitude. It is at
+least a tenable thesis that many of the qualities which we Western men
+have been losing in our craze for industrialism and commercialistic
+'Imperialism' are just those which are most necessary to the seeker
+after speculative truth. Abelard and St. Thomas would very likely have
+failed as advertising agents, company promoters, or editors of
+sensational daily papers. But it may well be that both of them were much
+better fitted than Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Bottomley, or Mr. A.G. Gardiner
+to tell us whether God is and what God is. In fact, one would hardly
+suppose habitual and successful composition of effective 'posters' or
+alluring prospectuses to be wholly compatible with that candour and
+scrupulous veracity <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />which are required of the philosopher. As for
+'reaction', no one but a writer in a 'revolutionary' journal would be
+fool enough to use the word as, in itself, an epithet of reproach. Most
+persons who have a bowing acquaintance with Mechanics know that you
+cannot have an engine in which there is all action and no reaction, and
+most sane men can see that before you pronounce a given 'reaction' good
+or bad you need to know what it is reacting against. If a man who wants
+to go east discovers that he is walking west, he is usually reactionary
+enough to go back on his steps.</p>
+
+<p>In short, if we mean to be philosophical, our main concern will be that
+our beliefs should be true; we shall care very little whether they
+happen to be popular or unpopular with the intellectual 'proletarians'
+of the moment, and if we can get at a truth, we shall not mind having to
+go back a long way for it. Indeed, when one wants to get on the track of
+the most ultimate and important truths of all, there is usually a great
+positive advantage in going back a very long way for them. The questions
+which deal with first principles, being the simplest&mdash;though the
+hardest&mdash;of all, are mostly raised very simply and directly by Plato and
+Aristotle, who were the very first writers to raise them. In the
+discussions of later times, the great simple questions about principles
+have so often been overlaid by mainly irrelevant accretions of secondary
+details that it is usually very hard indeed 'to see the wood for the
+trees'. This is the chief reason why one who, like myself, finds it his
+main business in life to introduce younger men and women to the study of
+Philosophy must think indifference to Greek literature about the worst
+misfortune which could happen to our intellectual civilization.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried in what I have said so far to explain what I understand by
+the philosophical spirit and what I regard <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />as the primary problems with
+which Philosophy has to wrestle. If what I have said is not wholly wide
+of the mark, it should be clear what is the deadliest enemy of the true
+spirit of Philosophy. It is the temper which is too indolent to think
+out a question for itself and consequently prefers to accept traditional
+ready-made answers to the problems of Science and Life. Traditionalism,
+wherever it is found, is the enemy, because Traditionalism is only
+another name for indolence. Observe that I say Traditionalism, not
+Tradition. Nowhere in life, and least of all in Philosophy, is the
+solitary likely to work to much purpose unless he has behind him that
+body of organized sound sense which we call Tradition. And I do not mean
+that true philosophers are necessarily 'heretics', or that 'orthodoxy'
+is less philosophical than 'heterodoxy'. I mean that however true an
+'orthodox' proposition may be, it is no living truth for me unless I
+have made it my own, as its first discoverer did, by personal labour of
+the spirit. The truth is something which each generation must rediscover
+for itself. True traditions may be quite as injurious, if they have
+become mere traditions, as false ones. It was not so much because the
+Aristotelian doctrines were false that the unquestioning acceptance of
+Aristotelian formulae all but strangled human thought in the later days
+of Scholasticism. Some of these doctrines were false, but many of them
+were much truer than anything the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+had to put in their place, and the rediscovery of their real meaning is
+perhaps the chief service of the Hegelian school to Philosophy. The
+trouble was that mechanical repetition of Aristotle's formulae as
+matters of course inevitably led to loss of real insight into the
+meaning the formulae had borne for Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>We may say, generally, that because Traditionalism is the death of sound
+thinking, the ages in which the <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />prospects of advance in Philosophy are
+brightest are just those in which a powerful historical tradition has
+broken down and men feel themselves compelled to go back on their steps
+and raise once more the fundamental questions which their fathers had
+supposed to be disposed of once for all by a formula. This has happened
+twice since the downfall of the degenerate Scholasticism, Protestant and
+Roman, of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the result
+was the great movement in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics, of which
+Descartes and Galileo are the principal figures. Towards the end of the
+eighteenth century, when the doctrines of Descartes had themselves been
+traditionalized, the same thing happened again, the leading actors in
+the drama being David Hume and Immanuel Kant; the result was first the
+revival of the 'critical' problem by Kant, and then the great, if
+over-hasty, attempt at a positive interpretation of the Universe which
+culminated in the philosophical system of Hegel. In our own age, it is
+mainly Kant and Hegel who have been traditionalized, and we seem to be
+living through the last stages of the discrediting of this third
+tradition with every prospect of a great advance if our own time can
+only find its Descartes. In what I am going on to say I must naturally
+speak of the disintegrating influences chiefly as we have seen them at
+work in our own country; but I should like, before I do so, to remark
+that on the Continent splendid work has been done in the requickening of
+genuine philosophical thought by an influence which has, so far, not
+made itself widely felt among ourselves. I mean the revival of Thomism
+so earnestly promoted in the academies of the Roman Church by Pope Leo
+XIII. Neo-Thomism, I am convinced, if its representatives will only
+maintain it at the high level characteristic, for example, of the
+Italian <i>Rivista Neo-Scolastica</i>, has a very great contribu<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />tion to make
+to the Philosophy of the future, and is much more deserving of the
+serious attention of students in our own country than the
+much-advertised 'impressionism' of Pragmatists and Bergsonians. Indeed,
+I hardly know how much we may not hope from the movement if it should
+please Providence to send into the world a Neo-Thomist who is also a
+really qualified mathematician.</p>
+
+<p>Of the state of thought in our own country we may fairly say that a
+generation ago opinion on the ultimate questions was, in the main,
+fairly divided into two camps. There were the professional
+metaphysicians, mainly living on a tradition derived from Kant and
+Hegel, and there were the men of science whose 'philosophy', such as it
+was, is perhaps best represented by two well-known and most instructive
+books, Mach's <i>Science of Mechanics</i> and Karl Pearson's <i>Grammar of
+Science</i>. The men of the Kant-Hegel tradition, whatever their family
+dissensions, were generally united by the common view that&mdash;as William
+James accused them of teaching&mdash;the function of sensation in
+contributing to knowledge, whatever it is, is something 'contemptible'.
+Kant himself, as we have seen, had thought very differently, but he was
+supposed to have been 'corrected' on this, as on so many points, by
+Hegel. The most distinguished of my own Oxford teachers seemed agreed to
+believe that our thought builds up the fabric of knowledge entirely from
+within by what Hegel called an 'immanent dialectic'. A rough idea of
+what this means may be given in the following way. You take any
+experience you please and try to put what you experience into a
+proposition. The proposition may, to begin with, be as vague as, e.g. 'I
+am now feeling something,' 'I am now aware of something.' On reflection
+you find that the statement does not do justice to the experience. You
+feel the need to say more <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />precisely <i>what</i> you are feeling or are aware
+of, how it is related to what you experience on other occasions, and
+what the 'I' is which is said to 'have' the experience. Until you have
+done this your thought is a miserable reproduction of your experience,
+and if you could ever do it completely, it would turn out that a really
+adequate account of the most trivial experience would involve complete
+knowledge of the structure and working of everything. Thus, if you once
+begin to think about your experience at all, you are irresistibly driven
+on to endless further reflection. If you try to stop short anywhere in
+the process, the results of your reflection are found to contain
+unexplained contradictions, just because you have not yet fitted on the
+fact on which you are reflecting to everything else there is to know.
+All the assumptions of every-day 'common sense' and all the more
+recondite assumptions of the sciences are saturated with these
+contradictions, because both 'common sense' and the sciences leave so
+much of the whole 'story of everything' untouched. If the whole story
+were told, all things would be found to be just one thing, which these
+philosophers call the 'Absolute', and the only perfectly true statement
+we can make would be a statement about this Absolute in which we
+asserted of it all that it is. Since no science ever attempts to say
+anything at all about this one sole thing, far less to get all there
+might be to be said about it into a single statement, no scientific
+proposition can be more than 'partially' true, and unhappily <i>we</i> do not
+know what alterations would be required to make our 'partial' truths
+quite true. Naturally enough Kant's allegation that mathematical first
+principles are so self-contradictory that you can rigidly demonstrate
+mathematical propositions which contradict each other was grist to the
+Hegelian mill. That our notions of space, time, the infinitely great,
+the infinitely little, are all <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />a jumble of contradictions was steadily
+repeated by the Hegelian philosophers, and indeed the mathematicians
+were accustomed to state their own principles so loosely and confusedly
+that there was a great deal of excuse for the suspicion that the fault
+lay with Mathematics and not with the mathematicians.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that such a philosophy ought to end in unqualified
+Agnosticism. The Hegelians, to be sure, made merry over the Unknowable
+of Mr. Spencer, but their own Absolute is really just the Unknowable in
+its 'Sunday best'. Nothing that we can say about anything which is not
+the Absolute is really true, because there really <i>is</i> nothing but the
+Absolute to speak about, and nothing that we can say about the Absolute
+is quite true either, because we can never succeed in saying itself of
+it. Mr. Bradley, far the most eminent of the philosophers of the
+Absolute, has made persistent and brilliant attempts to show that, in
+spite of this, we do know enough to be sure that our own mind is more
+like the Absolute than a cray-fish, and a cray-fish more like it than a
+crystal. But when all is said, though I owe more to Mr. Bradley than I
+can ever acknowledge adequately, I cannot help feeling that there are
+two men in Mr. Bradley, a great constructive thinker and a subtle
+destructive critic, and that the destructive Hyde is perpetually pulling
+to pieces all that the constructive Jekyll has built up. Of course it is
+obvious that the truth of mathematics, if mathematics are true, is a
+fatal stone of stumbling for this type of philosophy. Mathematics never
+attempts to say anything about the 'Absolute'&mdash;the only 'Absolute' of
+which it knows is only a 'degraded conic'&mdash;yet it claims that its
+statements, if once they have been correctly expressed, are not
+'partial' but complete.</p>
+
+<p>Over against the Hegelianizing philosophers, we had, of course, the men
+of science. No one could wish to <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />speak of the scientific men of the
+days of Huxley without deep respect for their success in adding to our
+positive knowledge of facts. But it may perhaps be said at this distance
+of time that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most
+prominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly
+be said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest,
+undertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement
+was little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that
+the whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived',
+and quite missed Kant's point that their empiricism left the formal
+constituent in knowledge, the type of order by which data are organized
+into an intelligible pattern, wholly out of account. Even when they
+deigned to read Kant, they read him without any inkling of the character
+of the 'critical' problem. Hence they taught dogmatically as true a
+theory of scientific method which Hume himself had elaborately proved
+impossible. It was just because Hume had seen so clearly that no
+universal scientific truths can be derived from premisses which merely
+record particular facts that he professed himself a follower of the
+'academic' or 'sceptical' philosophy. He recognized the impossibility of
+constructing scientific knowledge out of its material constituent alone,
+but did not see where the formal constituent could come from, and so
+resigned himself to regarding the actual successes of science as a kind
+of standing miracle.</p>
+
+<p>The men of the 'seventies were, after all, in many cases more anxious to
+damage theology than to build up Philosophy. They read Hume without any
+delicate sense for his urbane ironies, and believed in good faith that
+he and John Stuart Mill between them had shown that by a mysterious
+process called 'induction' it is <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />possible to prove rigorously universal
+conclusions in science without universal premisses. A scientific law,
+according to them, is only a convenient short-hand notation in which to
+register the 'routine of our perceptions'. Thus we have known of a great
+many men who have died, and have never known of any man who lived to
+much over a hundred without dying. The universal proposition 'all men
+are mortal' is a short expression for this information, and it is
+nothing more. It ought to have been obvious that, if this is a true
+account of science, all scientific 'generalizations' are infinitely
+improbable. The number of men of whom we <i>know</i> that they have died is
+insignificant by comparison with the multitude of those who have lived,
+are living, or will live, and we have no guarantee that this
+insignificant number is a fair average sample. So again, unless there
+are true universal propositions which are not 'short-hand' for any
+plurality of observed facts whatever, we cannot with any confidence,
+however faint, infer that a 'regular sequence' or 'routine' which has
+been observed from the dawn of recorded time up to, say, midnight,
+August 4, 1919, will continue to be observed on August 5, 1919. How,
+except by relying on the truth of some principle which does not depend
+itself on the validity of 'generalization', can we tell that it is even
+slightly probable that the nature of things will not change suddenly at
+the moment of midnight between August 4 and August 5, 1919? What is
+called 'inductive' science certainly has 'pulled off' remarkable
+successes in the past, but we can have no confidence that these
+successes will be repeated unless there are much better reasons for
+believing in its methods and initial assumptions than any which the
+scientific man who is an amateur 'empiricist' in his philosophy can
+offer us. We may note, in particular, that this empiricism, which has
+been <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />expounded most carefully by Pearson and Mach, coincides with
+Hegelian Absolutism in leading to the denial of the truth of
+mathematics. It would be a superfluous task to argue at length that,
+e.g., De Moivre's theorem or Taylor's theorem is not a short-hand
+formula for recording the 'routine of our perceptions'.</p>
+
+<p>The general state of things at the time of which I am speaking was thus
+that relations were decidedly strained between a body of philosophers
+and a body of scientific men who ought at least to have met on the
+common ground of a complete Agnosticism. The philosophers were, in
+general, shy of Science, mainly, no doubt, because they were modest men
+who knew their own limitations, but they had a way of being
+condescending to Science, which naturally annoyed the scientific men.
+These latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the
+philosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was
+always ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be
+getting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions for mutual understanding have now greatly improved,
+thanks mainly to the labour of mathematicians with philosophical minds
+on the principles of their own science. If we admit that mathematics is
+true&mdash;and it seems quite impossible to avoid the admission&mdash;we can now
+see that neither the traditional Kant-Hegel doctrine nor the traditional
+sensationalistic empiricism can be sound. Not to speak of inquiries
+which have been actually created within our own life-time, it may fairly
+be said that the whole of pure mathematics has been shown, or is on the
+verge of being shown, to form a body of conclusions rigidly deduced from
+a few unproved postulates which are of a purely logical character.
+Descartes has proved to be right in his view that the exceptional
+certainty men have always ascribed to <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />mathematical knowledge is not due
+to the supposed restriction of the science to relation of number and
+magnitude&mdash;there is a good deal of pure mathematics which deals with
+neither&mdash;but to the simplicity of its undefined notions and the high
+plausibility of its unproved postulates. Bit by bit the bad logic has
+been purged out of the Calculus and the Theory of Functions and these
+branches of study have been made into patterns of accurate reasoning on
+exactly stated premisses. It has appeared in the process that the
+alleged contradictions in mathematics upon which the followers of Kant
+and Hegel laid stress do not really exist at all, and only seemed to
+exist because mathematicians in the past expressed their meaning so
+awkwardly. Further, it has been established that the most fundamental
+idea of all in mathematics is not that of number or magnitude but that
+of <i>order</i> in a series and that the whole doctrine of series is only a
+branch of the logic of Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial
+order we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and
+from this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and
+the arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the
+logical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as
+well as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the
+Theory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction
+or breach of logic. The puzzles about the infinitely great and
+infinitely small, which used to throw a cloud of mystery over the
+'higher' branches of Mathematics, have been finally dissipated by the
+discovery that the 'infinite' is readily definable in purely ordinal
+terms and that the 'infinitesimal' does not really enter into the
+misnamed 'Infinitesimal Calculus' at all. Arithmetic and the theory of
+serial order have been shown to be the sufficient basis of the whole
+science which, as Plato long <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />ago remarked, is 'very inappropriately
+called geometry'. A r&eacute;sum&eacute; of the work which has been thus done may be
+found in the stately volumes of the <i>Principia Mathematica</i> of Whitehead
+and Russell, or&mdash;to a large extent&mdash;in the <i>Formulario Matematico</i> of
+Professor Peano. Of other works dealing with the subject, the finest
+from the strictly philosophical point of view is probably that of
+Professor G. Frege on <i>The Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic</i>. The general
+result of the whole development is that we are now at last definitely
+freed from the haunting fear that there is some hidden contradiction in
+the principles of the exact sciences which would vitiate all our
+knowledge of universal truths. This removes the chief, if not the only
+ground for the view that all the truths of Science are only 'partial'.
+At the same time, the proof that pure mathematics is a strictly logical
+development and that all its conclusions are of the hypothetical form,
+'if <i>a b c</i> ..., then <i>x</i>' definitely disproves the popular Kantian
+doctrine that <i>sense</i>-data are a necessary constituent of scientific
+knowledge. And with this dogma falls the <i>main</i> ground for the denial
+that knowledge about the soul and God is attainable. The recovery of a
+sounder philosophical method has, as Mr. Russell himself says, disposed
+of what was yesterday the accepted view that the function of Philosophy
+is to narrow down the range of possible interpretations of facts until
+only one is left. Philosophy rather opens doors than shuts them. It
+multiplies the number of logically possible sets of premisses from which
+consequences agreeing with empirical facts may be inferred. Mr.
+Russell's unreasoned anti-theism seems to me to make him curiously blind
+to an obvious application of this principle. On the other side, the
+revived attention to the logical methods of the sciences is killing the
+crude sensationalism of the days which saw the first publication <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />of
+Mach's <i>Science of Mechanics</i> and Pearson's <i>Grammar of Science</i>. The
+claims of 'induction' to be a method of establishing truths may be
+fairly said to have been completely exposed. It is clearer now than it
+was when Kant made the observation that each of the 'sciences' contains
+just so much science as it contains mathematics, and that the Critical
+Philosophy was fully justified in insisting that all science implies
+universal <i>&agrave; priori</i> postulates, though it went wrong in thinking that
+these postulates are laws of the working of the human mind or are 'put
+into' things by the human mind. How far Science has moved away from
+crude sensationalistic empiricism may be estimated by a comparison of
+the successive editions of the <i>Grammar of Science</i>. It must always have
+been apparent to an attentive reader that the chapters of that
+fascinating book which deal directly with the leading principles of
+Physics and Biology are of very different quality from the earlier
+chapters which expound, with many self-contradictions and much wrath
+against metaphysicians and theologians whom the writer seems never to
+have tried to understand, the fantastic 'metaphysics of the
+telephone-exchange'. But the difference of quality is more marked in the
+second edition than in the first, and in the (alas!) unfinished third
+edition than in the second. So far, then, as the problem of the
+unification of the sciences is concerned, the old prejudices which
+divided the rationalist philosopher from the sensationalist scientific
+man seem to have been, in the main, dissipated. We can see now that what
+used to be called Philosophy and what used to be called Science are both
+parts of one task, that they have a common method and presuppose a
+common body of principles.</p>
+
+<p>So far it may be said with truth that Philosophy is becoming more
+faithful than Kant was himself to the leading ideas of 'Criticism', and
+again that it is reverting <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />once more, as it reverted in the days of
+Galileo, to the positions of Plato. I do not mean that the whole
+programme has been completely executed and that there is nothing for a
+successor of Frege or Russell to do. It is instructive to observe that
+at the very end of the great work on arithmetic to which I have referred
+Frege found himself compelled by difficulties which had been overlooked
+until Russell called attention to them to add an appendix confessing
+that there was a single important flaw in his elaborate logical
+construction of the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there
+are certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them,
+the whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there <i>is</i>
+any object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical
+researches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved
+that some restatement of the initial assumptions of the theory was
+needed. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and
+others have done something towards the necessary rectification, and the
+resulting 'Theory of Types' is pretty certainly one of the most
+important contributions ever made to logical doctrine, but it may still
+be reasonably doubted whether the 'Theory of Types', as expounded by
+Whitehead and Russell in their <i>Principia Mathematica</i>, is the last word
+required. At any rate, it seems clear that it is a great step on the
+right road to the solution of a most difficult problem.</p>
+
+<p>There still remains the greatest problem of all, the harmonization of
+Science and Life. I cannot believe that this problem is an illegitimate
+one, or that we must sit down content to accept the severance of 'fact'
+and 'value' as final for our thought. Even the unification of the
+sciences itself remains imperfect so long as we treat it as merely
+something which 'happens to be the case' that there are many things and
+many kinds of <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />things in the universe and also a number of relations in
+which they 'happen' to stand. It is significant that in his later
+writings Mr. Russell has been driven to abandon the concept of personal
+identity, which is so fundamental for practical life, and to assert that
+each of us is not one man but an infinite series of men of whom each
+only exists for a mathematical instant. I am sure that such a theory
+requires the abandonment of the whole notion of value as an illusion,
+and even more sure that it is ruinous to any practical rule of living,
+and I cannot believe in the 'philosophy' of any man who is satisfied to
+base his practice on what he regards as detected illusion. Hence I find
+myself strongly in sympathy with my eminent Italian colleague Professor
+Varisco, who has devoted his two chief works (<i>I Massimi Problemi</i> and
+<i>Conosci Te Stesso</i>) to an exceedingly subtle attempt to show that 'what
+ought to be', in Platonic phrase 'the Good', is in the end the single
+principle from which all things derive their existence as well as their
+value. Mr. Russell's philosophy saves us half Plato, and that is much,
+but I am convinced that it is whole and entire Plato whom a profounder
+philosophy would preserve for us. I believe personally that such a
+philosophy will be led, as Plato was in the end led, to a theistic
+interpretation of life, that it is in the living God Who is over all,
+blessed for ever, that it will find the common source of fact and value.
+And again I believe that it will be led to its result very largely by
+what is, after all, perhaps the profoundest thought of Kant, the
+conviction that the most illuminating fact of all is the <i>fact</i> of the
+absolute and unconditional obligatoriness of the law of right. It is
+precisely here that fact and value most obviously meet. For when we ask
+ourselves what in fact we are, we shall assuredly find no true answer to
+this question about what <i>is</i> if we forget that we are first and
+foremost <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />beings who <i>ought</i> to follow a certain way of life, and to
+follow it for no other reason than that it is good. But I cannot, of
+course, offer reasons here for this conviction, though I am sure that
+adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this
+ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should
+prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The
+alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious,
+bad joke.</p>
+
+<p><i>Note</i>.&mdash;It may be thought that something should have been said about
+the revolt against authority and tradition which has styled itself
+variously 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism', and also about the recent vogue
+of Bergsonianism. I may in part excuse my silence by the plea that both
+movements are, in my judgement, already spent forces. If I must say more
+than this, I would only remark about Pragmatism that I could speak of it
+with more confidence if its representatives themselves were more agreed
+as to its precise principles. At present I can discern little agreement
+among them about anything except that they all show a great impatience
+with the business of thinking things quietly and steadily out, and that
+none of them seems to appreciate the importance of the 'critical'
+problem. 'Pragmatism' thus seems to me less a definite way of thinking
+than a collective name for a series of 'guesses at truth'. Some of the
+guesses may be very lucky ones, but I, at least, can hardly take the
+claims of unmethodic guessing to be a philosophy very seriously. To
+'give and receive argument' appears to me to be of the very essence of
+Philosophy. As for M. Bergson, I yield to no one in admiration for his
+brilliancy as a stylist and the happiness of many of his illustrations.
+But I have always found it difficult to grasp his central idea&mdash;if he
+really has one&mdash;because his whole doctrine has always seemed to me to be
+based upon <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />a couple of elementary blunders which will be found in the
+opening chapter of his <i>Donn&eacute;es Imm&eacute;diates de la Conscience</i>. We are
+there called on to reject the intellect in Philosophy on the grounds (1)
+that, being originally developed in the services of practical needs, it
+can at best tell us how to find our way about among the bodies around
+us, and is thus debarred from knowing more than the <i>outsides</i> of
+things; (2) that its typical achievement is therefore geometry, and
+geometry, <i>because it can measure only straight lines</i>, necessarily
+misconceives the true character of 'real duration'. Now, as to the first
+point, I should have thought it obvious that the establishment of a
+<i>modus vivendi</i> with one's fellows has always been as much of a
+practical need as the avoidance of stones and pit-falls, and the alleged
+conclusion about the defects of the intellect does not therefore seem to
+me to follow from M. Bergson's premisses, even if we had any reason, as
+I do not see that we have, to accept the premisses. And as to the second
+point, I would ask whether M. Bergson possesses a clock or a watch, and
+if he has, how he supposes time is measured on them? He seems to me to
+have forgotten the elementary fact that angles can be measured as well
+as straight lines. (I might add that he makes the further curious
+assumption that all geometry is metrical.) It may be that something
+would be left of the Bergsonian philosophy if one eliminated the
+consequences of these initial blunders, but I do not know what the
+remainder would be. At any rate, the anti-intellectualism which M.
+Bergson and his disciple, Professor Carr, seem to regard as fundamental
+will have to go, unless different and better grounds can be found for
+it. I must leave it to others to judge of the adequacy of this apology.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Varisco, <i>The Great Problem</i> (Macmillan).</p>
+
+<p>Varisco, <i>Know Thyself</i> (Macmillan).</p>
+
+<p>Aliotta, <i>The Idealistic Reaction against Science</i> (Macmillan).</p>
+
+<p>Bertrand Russell, <i>Our Knowledge of the External World</i> (Open Court
+Publishing Co.).</p>
+
+<p>Bertrand Russell, <i>The Problems of Philosophy</i> (Home University
+Library).</p>
+
+<p>A.N. Whitehead, <i>The Principles of Natural Knowledge</i> (Cambridge Press).</p>
+
+<p>G.E. Moore, <i>Ethics</i> (H.U.L.).</p>
+
+<p>W. McDougall, <i>Philosophy</i> (H.U.L.).</p>
+
+<p>A.N. Whitehead, <i>Introduction to Mathematics</i> (H.U.L.).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III" /><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />III</h2>
+
+<p class="center">RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION</p>
+
+<p class="center">F.B. JEVONS</p>
+
+
+<p>The living beings that exist or have existed upon the earth are of kinds
+innumerable; and, in the opinion of man, the chief of them all is
+mankind. Man, for the simple reason that he is man, is anthropomorphic
+in all his judgements and not merely in his religious conceptions; he
+holds himself to be the standard and measure in all things. If his right
+so to regard himself were challenged, if he were called upon to justify
+himself for having taken his foot as a unit of measurement, or his
+fingers as the basis of his system of numbers, he might reply that
+anything will serve as a standard for weights and measures, provided
+that it never varies, but is always the same whenever referred to. But
+the reply, valid though it is, does not do full justice to man: it
+leaves room for the suspicion that a standard is something chosen by man
+in a purely arbitrary manner and without reference to the facts of
+nature. If that were really the case, then man's conception of himself
+as superior to the other animals on earth might be but a prejudice of an
+arbitrary kind. When, however, we consider, from the point of view of
+evolution, the place of man among the other animals that occupy or have
+occupied the earth, it is indubitable that the human organism is in
+point of time the latest evolved and the <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />human brain is in point of
+complexity and efficiency the most highly developed. Further, the
+evidence of embryology goes to show that the organism which has
+eventually become human became so only by passing through successive
+stages, each of which has its analogue in some of the existing forms of
+animal life. Those forms of animal life exist side by side; and if we
+conceive them to be represented diagrammatically by vertical lines,
+differing in height according to their degree of evolution, the line
+representing the human organism will be the tallest, and may be
+considered to have become the tallest by successive increments or stages
+corresponding to the height of the various other parallel vertical
+lines.</p>
+
+<p>When the conception of evolution, which had been employed to explain the
+origin of species and the descent of man, and which had been gained by a
+consideration of material organisms, came to be applied to the world of
+man's thoughts, to the non-material and spiritual domain, and to be used
+for the purpose of explaining the growth and the development of
+religion, it was natural that the conception which had proved so
+valuable in the one case should be applied without modification to the
+other&mdash;as natural as that the first railway coach should be built on the
+model of the stagecoach. The possibility that the theory of evolution
+might itself evolve, and in evolving change, was one that was not, and
+at that time could hardly be, present to the minds of those who were
+extending the theory and in the process of extending it were developing
+it. Yet the possibility was there, implicit in the very conception of
+evolution, which involves continuous change&mdash;change in continuity and
+continuity in change.</p>
+
+<p>Any and every attempt to trace the evolution of religion seems at first
+necessarily to involve the assumption that from the beginning religion
+was there to be evolved. <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />That was the position assumed by Robertson
+Smith in <i>The Religion of the Semites</i>, which appeared in 1889. At that
+date the aborigines of Australia were supposed to represent the human
+race in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them,
+therefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion
+in its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to
+its lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least
+belief in a god and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to
+be found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in
+the evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must
+there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the
+Australians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that
+time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion
+that in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was
+conjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or
+plant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was
+held to be both the god and the animal or plant in which the god
+manifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to
+this day, the earliest form of sacrifice&mdash;that in which the totem animal
+was itself the totem god to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was
+itself&mdash;or rather himself&mdash;the sacramental meal furnished to his
+worshippers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of
+acquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them
+into the person of the worshipper. That the totem was eaten
+sacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by
+Robertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared
+that, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here,
+in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />savages known to
+us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which
+Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of
+which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'</p>
+
+<p>On the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and
+approved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of
+the evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were
+several totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the
+personality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it
+might, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally
+more of the nature of a spirit than a god, and totemism proper might
+easily pass into polydaemonism, that is a system in which the beings
+worshipped were conceived to possess a personality more clearly defined
+than that attributed to totems but less developed than that assigned to
+deities. From the beginning each tribe had worshipped a plurality of
+totems; it was, therefore, readily intelligible that, as these totems
+came to be credited with more and more definite and developed
+personality, the plurality of totems became not only a polydaemonism,
+but afterwards a plurality of deities, and a system of polytheism came
+to be established. From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites,
+monotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.</p>
+
+<p>On this theory the evolution of religion was, if we may so describe it,
+linear or rectilinear: the process consisted in a series of successive
+stages. In some cases, as for instance among the aborigines of
+Australia, it never rose higher than its starting-point, totemism; in
+others, as for instance in Samoa, it became polytheism without ceasing
+to be totemism; in others again, as for instance amongst the Aryan
+peoples, it became so completely polytheistic that even conjecture can
+discover but few <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />indications or 'survivals' of the totemism from which
+it is supposed to have developed; and the polytheism of the Israelites
+was so completely superseded by monotheism that the very existence of an
+earlier stage of polytheism could be as strenuously denied in their case
+as the pre-existence of totemism could be denied amongst the
+polytheistic Aryans. Nevertheless the theory was that if we represent
+the growth of the various religions of the world diagrammatically by
+vertical lines parallel to one another but of various lengths, one line
+standing for totemism, a longer line for polydaemonism, a still longer
+one for polytheism, and the longest of all for monotheism, we should see
+that the line of growth has been the same in all cases, and that it is
+in their length, or (shall we say?) in their height alone that the
+various lines differ, and that the longest line culminates in monotheism
+only because it has been, so to speak, pulled out in the same way that a
+telescope when closed, may be extended. The evolution of religion on
+this view has been a process literally of 'evolution' or unfolding: the
+idea of a god and of communion with him has been present from the
+beginning; and, much though religion may have changed, it remains to the
+end essentially the same thing. This view of the process of religious
+evolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this
+theory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it,
+and in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained
+pre-formed, though it depended on circumstances whether the seed should
+spring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a
+form of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties
+as dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the
+theory, if we <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />cut open a seed we should find within it the plant
+pre-formed; if we analyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson
+Smith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly
+succession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages
+pre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a
+miniature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither
+in totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.
+Indeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be
+found to have no such content&mdash;that the hope or expectation of finding
+anything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is
+the expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find
+inside it something which produces the sound.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, not on <i>a priori</i> grounds like these that Sir James
+Frazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the
+heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of
+'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith,
+with the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually
+observed. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.
+Spencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon
+Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith
+had seen, or had thought he saw, amongst the Australians sacramental
+rites and the worship of totem gods. Sir James Frazer is now compelled
+by the evidence of the facts to hold that in what he calls 'pure
+totemism', i.e., in totemism as we find it in Australia, 'there is
+nothing that can properly be described as worship of the totems.
+Sacrifices are not presented to them, nor prayers offered, nor temples
+built, nor priests appointed to minister to them. In a word, totems pure
+and simple are never gods, but <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />merely species of natural objects,
+united by certain intimate and mystic ties to groups of men.' It seems,
+therefore, according to Frazer, that in totemism, when dissected, there
+is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there
+is&mdash;nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum
+proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds.
+Whereas <i>ex nihilo nil fit</i>: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If,
+however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes.
+Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their
+totems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain intimate and mystic ties'.</p>
+
+<p>What then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer's view,
+something comes? We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the
+'mystic' bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him
+but of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his
+being. To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was
+something not only 'mystic' but potentially religious. And Sir James
+Frazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.
+On the contrary, he maintains that 'the aspect of the totemic system,
+which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious,
+deserves rather to be called magical'. The totem rites which Robertson
+Smith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a
+means of communion with the totem-gods Sir James Frazer regards as
+merely magical: 'totemism,' he says, 'is merely an organized system of
+magic intended to secure a supply of food.'</p>
+
+<p>We may remark, in passing, that if totemism is 'mere' magic, there is
+indeed (as Sir James holds) no worship in totemism, but in that case in
+totemism there can be no such 'intimate and mystic ties' between the
+totem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was. <a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />But
+be that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, 'in the heart of
+Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,' we find
+totemism; and totemism on examination proves to be 'merely an organized
+system of magic'. If now we start by assuming these premisses, or by
+granting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed,
+erect on them a theory of the evolution of religion. But if we so start,
+we must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of <i>The Golden
+Bough</i>: we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. <i>En
+route</i> it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and
+fundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of
+religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by
+common consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends
+colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic,
+and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are,
+nothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the
+priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were
+at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to
+produce their effects.</p>
+
+<p>If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts
+in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that
+religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft,
+and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have
+been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of
+civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the
+reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic
+is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners
+of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display
+towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is
+now generally admitted to be <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />one which it is impossible to accept in
+the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for
+the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is
+that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders
+or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them
+and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which
+feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.</p>
+
+<p>The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another
+name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but
+'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It
+simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as
+containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the
+beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of
+the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have
+religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find
+religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in
+the process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is
+appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of
+<i>The Golden Bough</i>, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion
+evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that
+there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no
+continuity between the magic which came first and the religion which
+came ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a
+fundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of
+thought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into
+two: first, that <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />like produces like; and, second, that things which
+have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each
+other.' These beliefs are due to the association of ideas: if two things
+are more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together
+in our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think
+of the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which
+is thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and
+magic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce
+like, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all
+that he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that
+belief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always
+act. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that
+at work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that
+the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings
+superior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's
+definition, constitutes religion.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he
+can gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he
+turns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to
+man whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and
+religion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic
+and religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least
+appears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, he says, 'it
+must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put
+forward by the magician, as such, is false; not one of them can be
+maintained without <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />deception, conscious or unconscious.' This
+pronouncement makes it easy for us to understand that even the savage
+would eventually find magic an unsatisfactory method of gratifying his
+desires, a deception in fact. On the other hand, Sir James apparently
+contradicts himself, that is to say, he denies that every single
+profession or claim put forward by the magician is false, and says,
+'however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians
+and condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the
+original institution of this class of man has, take it all in all, been
+productive of incalculable good to humanity.' The ground for this second
+pronouncement, so contradictory of the first, is that magicians, Sir
+James tells us, 'were the direct predecessors, not merely of our
+physicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in
+every branch of natural science.' Thus, though he no longer regards
+priests as transmogrified magicians, he does regard magicians as the
+earliest men of science, and does regard science, therefore, as a highly
+developed stage of magic. This view logically follows from the premisses
+from which it starts; and if it is felt to be unacceptable, we shall
+naturally be inclined to scrutinize the premisses once more and more
+carefully. When we do so scrutinize them, we see that the principles of
+thought on which Sir James Frazer assumes magic to be based are in
+effect the principles from which science started: they are the beliefs
+that like produces like&mdash;the basis of the law of causation&mdash;and that
+things which our experience shows to have gone together in the past tend
+always to go together&mdash;which is one way of stating our belief in the
+uniformity of nature. If then these principles of thought are the
+principles on which magic as well as science is based, then science and
+magic are the same thing, and we have only to choose whether <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />we will
+say that magic is not magic but undeveloped science, or that science is
+not science but merely magic transmogrified. Thus, the pre-formation
+theory once more reasserts itself: magic is the seed in which science is
+prefigured or pre-formed.</p>
+
+<p>If we wish to escape from this conclusion, if we wish to maintain the
+validity of science and yet always to remember 'that every single
+profession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false&mdash;not
+one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or
+unconscious', we must consider whether Sir James Frazer's account of
+magic, according to which the principles of magic are identical with
+those of science, is the only account that can be given of magic; and
+for that purpose we may contrast it with the view of Wilhelm Wundt. But
+before doing so, since Sir James Frazer holds that there is 'a
+fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic
+and religion', it will be well to try to see not only what he means by
+magic, but also whether his description or definition of religion is
+acceptable.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas Robertson Smith held that religion, reduced to its very lowest
+terms, must imply at least belief in a god and communion with him,
+Frazer considers religion to be the belief that the course of nature and
+of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. By the
+one view stress is laid on the mystic side of religion, on the communion
+which is effected through sacrifice; by the other view stress is laid on
+the power which the gods may be induced by prayer and supplication to
+exercise for the benefit of man. Our first reflection, therefore, is
+that any view of religion, to be comprehensive, cannot confine itself to
+either of these aspects singly, but must find room for both&mdash;for both
+prayer and sacrifice. They cannot be mutually exclusive, nor can <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />they
+be simply juxtaposed, as though they were atoms unrelated to one
+another, accidental neighbours in the same district. There must be a
+higher unity, not created by or subsequent to the coalescence of
+elements originally independent of each other, but a higher unity of
+which both prayer and sacrifice are manifestations. This higher unity, I
+venture to suggest, is the first principle of religion; and, if it is
+not explicitly recognized as the first principle of religion either by
+Robertson Smith or by Frazer, that may well be because their attention
+is concentrated on the earlier stages in the evolution of religion, when
+as yet it is not conspicuous and is, therefore, though in fact
+operative, liable to be overlooked. As Ferrier has said, 'first
+principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate
+largely and powerfully long before they come to the surface of human
+thought and are articulately expounded.' What then is the first
+principle of religion which only after long ages of evolution rose to
+the surface of human thought, and which, though it had been operative
+largely and powerfully, came only in the slow course of human evolution
+to be articulately expounded? The first principle of religion is
+love&mdash;love of one's neighbour and one's God.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of that first principle it is manifest that prayer and
+sacrifice are not fundamentally unrelated and accidentally juxtaposed: a
+sacrifice accompanied not even by unspoken prayer, prompted by no
+desire, no wish for anything whatever, is a meaningless concept. Equally
+unmeaning and unintelligible is the idea of a prayer which involves no
+sacrifice&mdash;whether by sacrifice we understand the offering of gifts or
+the sacrifice of self. But perhaps it may be said that, even though love
+alone can lead to sacrifice of self, still it is undeniable that prayers
+may be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he
+is going to get by doing so; and <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />that that is what Sir James Frazer
+means when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man
+may be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's
+desire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity
+between magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly
+to deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic
+and religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though
+the means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is
+the means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of
+evolution to be continuous&mdash;change in continuity and continuity in
+change.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a
+man for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning
+have been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in
+one of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by
+evolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be
+regarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires
+accomplished&mdash;his will done&mdash;but as the indispensable condition for
+doing God's will. Prayer then becomes communion with God, and the
+sacrifice of self the living exhibition of love&mdash;the first principle of
+religion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>From this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion
+will be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but
+means whereby man has&mdash;vainly&mdash;sought to satisfy desire. And the
+implication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's
+account of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open
+to criticism. He wavers between two opinions about magic: at one time he
+regards it as all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from
+which science <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />springs, just as at one time he considered magic
+fundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally
+different from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and
+science, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like
+produces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural
+causation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according
+to Wilhelm Wundt in his <i>V&ouml;lkerpsychologie</i>, primitive man has no notion
+whatever of natural causation: primitive man, Wundt says, has only one
+way of accounting for events&mdash;if something happens, somebody did it. If
+any one mysteriously falls ill and dies, the question at once presents
+itself to the savage mind, who did it? How any one could contrive to
+make the man fall ill and die is, to the man's relations, thoroughly and
+disquietingly mysterious. The one thing clear to them is that somebody
+possesses and has exercised this mysterious and horrible power. The
+person who, in the opinion not only of the relatives but also of all or
+most of the community, naturally would do this sort of thing differs in
+some way&mdash;in his appearance or habits&mdash;from the average member of the
+community, and accordingly is credited, or discredited, with this
+mysterious and dreadful power. Such a person, according to Wundt, is a
+magician. Such an event is a marvel: so long as it is supposed to be
+brought about by a man, it is a piece of magic; when it is ascribed (as,
+according to Wundt, it comes in later, though not in primitive times, to
+be ascribed) to a god, it is a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>If science then does not work magic, there must be a fundamental
+distinction between science and magic, an absolute opposition of
+principles. The principles of thought on which magic is based cannot be,
+as Frazer maintains, the same as those which give to science its
+validity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />not on any
+principle of thought, but upon the assumption that, if something
+happens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the
+power to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Wundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at
+one with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age
+of magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have
+been done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a god
+or his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is
+found usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in
+miracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that
+the age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of
+religion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at
+least from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to
+account for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from
+birds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common
+ancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the
+process of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so
+to speak, linear or rectilinear, but&mdash;to use M. Bergson's
+word&mdash;'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic
+would then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from
+reptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course
+of evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same
+direction, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a
+common starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different
+directions. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it
+runs on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from
+the same point.</p>
+
+<p>If we apply this conception of evolution in general to the evolution of
+religion in particular&mdash;and Bergson, I should say, does not&mdash;then the
+centre of dispersion, <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />common to all religions, is the heart of man. The
+forms of religion evolving, emanating and radiating from that common
+centre are, let us say, fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. If we
+wish to avoid, in the theory of religious evolution, an error analogous
+to that of supposing birds to be descended from reptiles, we must
+decline to suppose that monotheism is simply polytheism evolved, or that
+polytheism is descended from fetishism. We must consider that each of
+these three forms of religion is terminal, in the sense that no one of
+them leads on to, or passes into, either of the other two. All three
+forms of religious life may, and indeed do, exist side by side with one
+another, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found
+existing side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed
+millions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms
+of physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but
+foraminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that
+fetishism exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with
+monotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we
+must consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing
+another, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into
+the dove.</p>
+
+<p>The common centre and starting-point of fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of
+religion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague
+in the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being
+or object worshipped. In all these three forms of religion there is
+worship, and in all three forms the being worshipped is personal.
+Further, a special tie is felt to exist between the worshipper and the
+personality worshipped: religion is the bond of union between them, and
+it is also a bond which unites the worshippers to one another. It is by
+<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />its very nature a bond of union, a means of communion between persons,
+human and divine. That is the mystic aspect of religion which finds
+expression in the rite of sacrifice and in the sacramental meals which
+are felt somehow to bind together, or rather to reunite and keep
+together, the worshippers and their god. This communion however is not
+merely mystic: it has its practical effects inasmuch as it affects the
+conduct of the worshipper and enables him to do what without it he would
+not have had strength to do.</p>
+
+<p>If fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,
+the heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the
+starting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though
+in different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from
+the common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to
+become total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy
+between them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.
+Categories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,
+which are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,
+Mr. L.T. Hobhouse says, 'every child soon comes to distinguish in
+practice, are for primitive thought interwoven in wild confusion.' Two
+categories, which in primitive thought are thus interwoven in wild
+confusion, are, it may be suggested, religion and magic; and only in the
+dispersive process of evolution do they tend to become discriminated. In
+ancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Brahminism, religion fails to disentangle
+itself from magic; and not even has Christianity always succeeded in
+throwing it off. Different as we may conceive magic and religion to be,
+the fact remains that at first they grow up intertwined together. In the
+lower forms of religion magic is worked not only by magicians but by
+priests as well; spells and prayers are hardly to be <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />distinguished from
+one another. The idea that 'priest' is but 'magician' writ differently,
+that prayers are but spells under another name, is now obsolete. The
+truth may be that religion neither follows on, nor is evolved from
+magic, but that both radiate from a common centre, the heart of man; and
+that at first both are attempts made by man to secure the fulfilment of
+his desires, to do his will, though eventually he finds that the way to
+control nature is to obey her, not to try to command her by working
+magic; and that it is in endeavouring to do God's will, not his own,
+that man finds peace at the last.</p>
+
+<p>In the three forms of religion which thus far we have taken into
+account, fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, religion is felt to be a
+personal relation&mdash;a relation between the human personality and some
+personality more than human; and the human heart is reaching out and
+groping after some divine personality, if peradventure it may find Him.
+But there is yet another form of religion proceeding from the human
+heart in which this does not seem to be the case&mdash;and that is Buddhism.
+The Buddha definitely renounced the search after God and would not allow
+his disciples to engage in the pursuit. Practically the pursuit was
+useless, according to the Buddha: escape from suffering is all that man
+can want or strive or hope for. Escape from suffering is possible only
+by cessation from existence; and that cessation from existence, here and
+hereafter, can be attained by man himself, who can reach Nirvana without
+the aid of gods, if gods there be. From the point of view of metaphysics
+the idea that there is any relation between the human personality and
+the divine falls to the ground, according to the Buddha, because,
+whether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.
+As in a conflagration&mdash;and according to the Buddha the whole world,
+burning with desire, is in a state of conflagration&mdash;the flames leap
+from <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations
+the self, or rather the character, <i>Karman</i>, like a flame, leaps from
+one form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there
+all the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is
+changing all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'
+have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as
+long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so
+long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of
+transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for
+being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the
+extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded
+in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death
+and re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is
+a radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it
+radiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other
+religion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion
+shows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever
+Buddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who
+strove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has
+himself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether
+in the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has
+been by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of
+religion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we
+have to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of
+humanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />in Buddhism, the
+conception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human
+personality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is
+raised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing
+as an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by
+himself, for a man can neither come into existence nor continue in
+existence by himself alone. It is an essential part of the conception of
+personality that it includes fellowship: a person to be a person must
+stand in some relation to other persons. They are presented to him, the
+subject, as objects of his awareness; and he, the subject, is also an
+object of their awareness. Humanity is thus a complex, in which alone
+persons are found and apart from which they have in fact no existence.
+Humanity thus plays in Positivism, as a religion, the part of 'the great
+Being', <i>le grand &Ecirc;tre</i>, which in other religions is fulfilled by God,
+but with this difference, that humanity is human always and never
+divine.</p>
+
+<p>The ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only
+metaphorically. Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than
+metaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide. On the one hand,
+if it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it
+may be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not
+only on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism
+they are recognized to be, of purely subjective import. On the other
+hard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the
+religions of the past to the religion of the future.</p>
+
+<p>Another matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a
+religion. According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book <i>La Religion</i>,
+morality and religion are bound up together. They cannot exist apart
+from one another: they might, he says, 'be dissociated in fact and
+thought, <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />were it not that they are inseparable in the life of
+humanity.' And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty. He
+says, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was
+humanity. Duty was at the beginning in humanity. By it all things were
+made, and without it nothing was made.' Thus, where duty is, there also
+is religion. Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in
+every stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it
+will also be the case with the religion of the future. Thus the
+conception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that
+entertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on
+the one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present
+from the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to
+the end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty&mdash;the
+duty which is humanity&mdash;that was in the beginning and will continue to
+the end. Both views are applications of the 'pre-formation' theory of
+evolution.</p>
+
+<p>But Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the 'pre-formation'
+theory. It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the 'dispersive'
+theory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding
+direct from the human heart. It may be so regarded, if we consider the
+essence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to
+imply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in
+that love of one's fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely,
+and simply because one loves. The sense of obligation, the feeling of
+duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions
+which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various
+expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo&mdash;a feeling of alarm and
+fear. If we confine our attention <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />to this set of facts, we may say,
+with M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We
+may however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, 'by duty all
+things were made, and without it nothing was made'. We may hesitate and
+the Positivist may hesitate, because, primitive though the feeling of
+fear may be, the feeling of love is equally original: on it and in it
+the family and society have their base and their origin; and to it they
+owe not only their origin but their continuance. Love however is not a
+matter of duty and obedience; it is not subject to commandment or
+prohibition; nor does it strive by commands or authority to enforce
+itself. In the process by which duty&mdash;legal and moral
+obligation&mdash;evolves out of the primitive feeling of taboo, love is not
+implicated: love springs from its own source, the human heart, and runs
+its own course. Taboo may have existed from the beginning; but to the
+end, whatever its form&mdash;duty, obligation, obedience to authority&mdash;it
+remains in character what it was at first, prohibitive, negative. Love
+alone is creative: without it 'was not anything made that was made'.</p>
+
+<p>There seems, therefore, no necessity to regard the 'pre-formation'
+theory of evolution, rather than the 'dispersive theory, as essential to
+Positivism.</p>
+
+<p>Common to all the views about the evolution of religion that have been
+mentioned in this paper is the belief that, the more religion changes,
+the more it remains the same thing. If identified with duty, then duty
+it was in the beginning, and duty it will remain to the end. For those
+who conceive it to be merely magic, magic it was and magic it remains.
+Those who define it as belief in a god and communion with him find that
+belief in the earliest as well as the latest stages. All would agree in
+rejecting Bergson's view of evolution&mdash;that in evolution there is
+change, but nothing which changes. All would agree that in the evolution
+of religion there is something which, change though it may, remains the
+same thing, and that is religion itself. But on the question what
+religion is, there is no agreement: no definition of religion as
+yet&mdash;and there have been many attempts to define it&mdash;has gained general
+acceptance. We may even surmise, and admit, that no attempt ever will be
+successful. Such admission, indeed, may at first to some seem equivalent
+to admitting that religion is a nullity, and the admission may
+accordingly be welcomed or rejected. But a moment's reflection will show
+that the admission has no such consequence. None of our simple feelings
+can be defined: pleasure and pain can neither be defined; nor, when
+experienced, doubted. And some of our general terms, those at any rate
+which are ultimate, are beyond our power either to define or doubt: no
+one imagines that 'life' can be defined, but no one doubts its
+existence. And religion both as a term and as a fact of experience is
+ultimate, and, because ultimate, incapable of definition. It is not to
+be defined but only to be felt. It is an affair not merely of the
+intellect, but still more of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>In what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?
+Evolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes
+in religion. No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now
+remained identically the same. What seems conceivable is that throughout
+there has been, not identity but continuity&mdash;change indeed in continuity
+but also continuity in change. The child 'learns to speak the words and
+think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form
+of speech' of the community into which he is born. In the speech,
+thought, and feelings&mdash;even in the religious feelings&mdash;of the community,
+from generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.
+From generation to generation they are not identical but are
+continuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them
+over reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much
+in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and
+the great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which
+not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are
+brought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old
+things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies
+the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at
+the same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that
+what is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the
+old. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in
+continuity and continuity in change.</p>
+
+<p>The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one
+continuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole
+process. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which
+includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to
+the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those
+stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of
+these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by
+itself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion
+regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,
+existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;
+whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or
+evolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does
+polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they
+and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive
+fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one
+process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line
+marked off into <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget
+that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the
+heart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not
+prove that one springs from the other.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can we say that values&mdash;religious or aesthetic&mdash;are to be determined
+on the simple principle that the latest edition is the best. To say that
+an <i>editio princeps</i> has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that
+all values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all
+goodness and all love.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Robertson Smith, <i>The Religion of the Semites</i> (A. &amp; C. Black, 1889).</p>
+
+<p>J.G. Frazer, <i>The Golden Bough</i> (Macmillan &amp; Co., 1890-1915).</p>
+
+<p>Grant Allen, <i>The Evolution of the Idea of God</i> (Grant Richards, 1897).</p>
+
+<p>H. Bergson, <i>L'&Eacute;volution cr&eacute;atrice</i> (F. Alcan, 1908).</p>
+
+<p>F.B. Jevons, <i>The Idea of God in Early Religions</i> (1910), and
+<i>Comparative Religion</i> (1913) (Cambridge University Press).</p>
+
+<p>G.F. Moore, <i>History of Religions</i> (T. &amp; T. Clark, 1914).</p>
+
+<p>A. Loisy, <i>La Religion</i> (E. Nourry, 1917).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV" /><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />IV</h2>
+
+<p class="center">RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY</p>
+
+<p class="center">WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD</p>
+
+
+<p>When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
+interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
+before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
+century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
+stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
+<i>belles-lettres</i> than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
+reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
+reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
+these main currents are:</p>
+
+<p>(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
+history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The growth in our sense of the <i>worth</i> of every part of existence.</p>
+
+<p>Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
+advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
+'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
+'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
+what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
+last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
+stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
+least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all&mdash;the
+literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer&mdash;the movement of
+poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
+fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
+succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
+perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
+discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
+poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
+past; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by
+the two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession
+of phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect
+more sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of
+Europe, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,
+radiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases
+are in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national
+variations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to
+take this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic
+view. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the
+years 1880 and 1900.</p>
+
+<p>The first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if
+unconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the
+limit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,
+precision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy
+of the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm&mdash;in the
+example most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of
+Matthew Arnold.</p>
+
+<p>The second, best seen in the French Symbolists, was <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />directly hostile to
+science. But they repelled its confident analysis of material reality in
+the name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial
+world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct
+description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the
+magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to
+us in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.'.</p>
+
+<p>The third, still about us, and too various and incomplete for final
+definition, is in closer sympathy with science, but, in great part, only
+because science has itself found accommodation between nature and
+spirit, a new ideality born of, and growing out of, the real. If the
+first found Beauty, the end of art, in the plastic repose of sculpture,
+and the second in the mysterious cadences of music, the poetry of the
+twentieth century finds its ideal in life, in the creative evolution of
+being, even in the mere things, the 'prosaic' pariahs of previous
+poetry, on which our shaping wills are wreaked. We know it in poets
+unlike one another but yet more unlike their predecessors, from
+D'Annunzio and Dehmel and Claudel to our Georgian experimenters in the
+poetry of paradox and adventure.</p>
+
+
+<p>I. POETIC NATURALISM</p>
+
+<p>The third quarter of the nineteenth century opened, in western Europe,
+with a decided set-back for those who lived on dreams, and a
+corresponding complacency among those who throve on facts. The political
+and social revolution which swept the continent in 1848 and 1849, and
+found ominous echoes here, was everywhere, for the time, defeated. The
+discoveries of science in the third and fourth decades, resting on
+calculation and experiment, were investing it with the formidable
+prestige which it has never since lost; and both metaphysics and
+theology reeled perceptibly under the blows delivered in its name. <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />The
+world exhibition of 1851 seemed to announce an age of settled
+prosperity, peace, and progress.</p>
+
+<p>In literature the counterpart of these phenomena was the revolt from
+<i>Romanticism</i>, a movement, in its origins, of poetic liberation and
+discovery, which had rejuvenated poetry in Germany and Italy, and yet
+more signally in England and in France, but was now petering out in
+emotional incoherence, deified impulse, and irresponsible caprice.</p>
+
+<p>The revolt accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer
+conformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to
+make art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern
+naturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, <i>Mme
+Bovary</i> (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in <i>Adam
+Bede</i> against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of
+dragons, but could not draw the real horses and cattle before their
+eyes.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" /><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Realism, at once more unflinching and more profoundly poetic, and yet
+penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of
+moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems
+an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which
+also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though
+it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of
+moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew
+his inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and
+thought. And it was chiefly through them that the Russian novel later
+helped to nourish the radically alien movement of Symbolism in France.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />In drama, Ibsen broke away from the Romantic tradition of his country
+with the iconoclastic energy of one who had spent his own unripe youth
+in offering it a half-reluctant homage. The man of actuality in him
+denounced the drama built upon the legends of the Scandinavian past&mdash;the
+mark for him of a people of dreamers oblivious of the calls of the hour.
+On the morrow of the disastrous (and for Norway in his view ignominious)
+Danish war of 1864, his scorn rang out with prophetic intensity in the
+fierce tirade of <i>Brand</i>. Happily for his art, revolt against romance in
+him was united, more signally than in more than two or three of his
+contemporaries, with the power of seizing and presenting contemporary
+life. 'Realism' certainly expresses inadequately enough the genius of an
+art like his, enormously alive rather than fundamentally like life, and
+no less charged with purpose and idea than the work of the great
+Russians, though under cover of reticences and irony little known to
+them. The great series of prose dramas&mdash;from 1867 (<i>The League of
+Youth</i>) onwards&mdash;with their experimental prelude <i>Love's Comedy</i>
+(1863)&mdash;were to be for all Europe the most considerable literary event
+of the fourth quarter of the century, and they generated affiliated
+schools throughout the West. They did not indeed themselves remain
+untouched by the general intellectual currents of the time, and it will
+be noticed below that the later plays (from <i>The Lady of the Sea</i>
+onward) betray affinities, like the Russian novel, with what is here
+called the second phase of the European movement.</p>
+
+<p>In Criticism, the showy generalizations of Villemain gave place to
+Sainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" /><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+and Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by
+environment.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" /><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Among <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />ourselves, Meredith's <i>Essay on Comedy</i> (1872)
+brilliantly restated Moli&egrave;re's dictum that the comic is founded on the
+real, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold
+applied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight
+fertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging
+the native quality of minds from the incrustations of tradition and
+dogma.</p>
+
+<p>In poetry the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that
+has, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their
+leader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his <i>Po&egrave;mes antiques</i>
+(1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent,
+and hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's
+stormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism to the
+shade of Alfred de Musset&mdash;the Oscar Wilde of the later
+Romantics<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" /><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>&mdash;who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled
+his poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new
+poets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating
+the glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" /><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Carducci,
+too, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism&mdash;cold and
+infructuous beams, proper for Gothic ruins and graveyards&mdash;with the
+benignant and fertilizing sunshine he sought to restore; for him, too,
+the poet is no indolent caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant
+flowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" /><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Among
+us, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning
+calls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of <i>Prometheus</i>
+appropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />a
+kindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in
+clear-cut form.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn from the negations of the anti-romantic revolt to consider
+what it actually sought and achieved in poetry, we find that its
+positive ideals, too, without being derived from science, reflect the
+temper of a scientific time. Thus the supreme gift of all the greater
+poets of this group was a superb vision of beauty, and of beauty&mdash;<i>pace</i>
+Hogarth&mdash;there is no science. But their view of beauty was partly
+limited, partly fertilized and enriched, by the sources they discovered
+and the conditions they imposed, and both the discoveries and the
+limitations added something to the traditions and resources of poetry.
+Thus:</p>
+
+<p>(1) They exploited the aesthetic values to be had by knowledge. They
+pursued erudition and built their poetry upon erudition, not in the
+didactic way of the Augustans, but as a mine of poetic material and
+suggestion. Far more truly than Wordsworth's this poetry could claim to
+be the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for
+Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from
+erudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora.
+When Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the
+southern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate
+explorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity.
+The strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative
+religion and mythology, he explores with cosmopolitan impartiality and
+imaginative penetration; carving, as in marble, the tragedy of Hjalmar's
+heart and Angentyr's sword, of Cain's doom, and Erinnyes never, like
+those of Aeschylus, appeased. The Romantics had loved to play with
+exotic suggestions; but the East of Hugo's <i>Orientales</i> or Moore's
+<i>Lalla Rookh</i> is merely a veneer; the poet of <i>Qain</i> has heard the wild
+asses cry and seen the Syrian sun descend into the golden foam.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />In the three commanding poets of our English mid-century, learning
+becomes no less evidently poetry's honoured and indispensable ally.
+Tennyson studies nature like a naturalist, not like a mystic, and finds
+felicities of phrase poised, as it were, upon delicate observation. Man,
+too, in Browning, loses the vague aureole of Shelleyan humanity, and
+becomes the Italian of the Renascence or the Arab doctor or the German
+musician, all alive but in their habits as they lived, and fashioned in
+a brain fed, like no other, on the Book of the histories of Souls.
+Matthew Arnold more distinctively than either, and both for better and
+for worse, was the scholar-poet; among other things he was, with Heredia
+and Carducci, a master of the poetry of critical portraiture, which
+focusses in a few lines (<i>Sophocles</i>, <i>Rahel</i>, <i>Heine</i>, <i>Obermann Once
+More</i>) the meaning of a great career or of a complex age.</p>
+
+<p>(2) In the elaboration of their vision of beauty from these enlarged
+sources, Leconte de Lisle and his followers demanded an impeccable
+artistry. 'A great poet', he said, 'and a flawless artist are
+convertible terms.' The Parnassian precision rested on the postulate
+that, with sufficient resources of vocabulary and phrase, everything can
+be adequately expressed, the analogue of the contemporary scientific
+conviction that, with sufficient resources of experiment and
+calculation, everything can be exhaustively explained. The pursuit of an
+objective calm, the repudiation of missionary ardour, of personal
+emotion, of the <i>cri du coeur</i>, of individual originality, involved the
+surrender of some of the glories of spontaneous song, but opened the
+way, for consummate artists such as these, to a profusion of
+undiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by
+the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are
+already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur
+without effort. The power of sheer style to <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />ennoble is better seen in
+Sully Prudhomme's <i>tours de force</i> of philosophic poetry&mdash;when he
+unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the
+form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are
+compelled to the service of a rigorous logic; or in the brief cameo-like
+pieces on 'Memory', 'Habit', 'Forms', and similar unpromising
+abstractions, most nearly paralleled in English by the quatrains of Mr.
+William Watson. But the cameo comparison is still more aptly applied to
+the marvellously-chiselled sonnets of Heredia&mdash;monuments of a moment, as
+sculpture habitually is, but reaching out, as the finest sculpture does,
+to invisible horizons, and to the before and after&mdash;the old wooden
+guardian-god recalling his former career as a scarlet figure-head
+laughing at the laughter or fury of the waves; Antony seeing the flying
+ships of Actium mirrored in the traitorous azure of Cleopatra's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy the ideal of an austere simplicity and reserve, resting as it
+did on the immense prestige of Leopardi, asserted itself even in the
+naturally exuberant and impetuous genius of Carducci. Without it we
+should not have had those reticences of an abounding nature, those
+economies of a spendthrift, which make him one of the first poets of the
+sonnet in the land of its origin, and one of the greatest writers of
+Odes among the 'barbarians'. With reason he declared in 1891, when most
+of his poetry had been written, that 'all the apparent contradictions in
+my work are resolved by the triple formula: in politics Italy before
+all, in aesthetics classical poetry before all, in practice, frankness
+and force before all'. His two chief disciples, D'Annunzio and Pascoli,
+antithetical in almost all points, may be said to have divided his
+inheritance in this; Pascoli's Vergilian economy contrasting with the
+exuberance of D'Annunzio somewhat as with us the classicism of the
+present poet-laureate with that of <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />Swinburne. In Germany the Parnassian
+reserve, concentration, and aristocratic exclusiveness was to reappear
+in the lyrical group of Stefan Georg.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Finally, the Parnassian poetry, like most contemporary science, was
+in varying degrees detached from and hostile to religion, and found some
+of its most vibrating notes in contemplating its empty universe. Leconte
+de Lisle offers the Stoic the last mournful joy of 'a heart seven-times
+steeped in the divine nothingness',<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" /><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> or calls him to 'that city of
+silence, the sepulchre of the vanished gods, the human heart, seat of
+dreams, where eternally ferments and perishes the illusory
+universe'.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" /><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> Here, too, Leopardi had anticipated him.</p>
+
+<p>In the ebullient genius of Carducci and Swinburne this lofty disdain for
+theological illusions passes into the fierce derision of the Ode to
+Satan and the militant paganism of the Sonnet to Luther, and the <i>Hymn
+to Man</i>. In Matthew Arnold it became a half-wistful resignation, the
+pensive retrospect of the Greek 'thinking of his own gods beside a
+fallen runic stone', or listening to the 'melancholy long withdrawing
+roar' of the tide of faith 'down the vast edges drear and naked shingles
+of the world'; while in James Thomson resignation passed into the
+unrelieved pessimism of the <i>City of Dreadful Night</i>. In all these
+poets, what was of moment for poetry was not, of course, the
+anti-theological or anti-clerical sentiment which marks them all, but
+the notes of sombre and terrible beauty which the contemplation of the
+passing of the gods, and of man's faith in them, elicits from their art.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the supreme figure, not only among those who share in the
+anti-Romantic reaction but among all the European poets of his time, was
+one who had in the heyday of youth led the Romantic vanguard&mdash;Victor
+Hugo. Leconte de Lisle never ceased to own him his <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />master, and Hugo's
+genius had since his exile, in 1851, entered upon a phase in which a
+poetry such as the Parnassian sought&mdash;objective, reticent, impersonal,
+technically consummate&mdash;was at least one of the strings of his
+many-chorded lyre. Three magnificent works&mdash;the very crown and flower of
+Hugo's production&mdash;belong to this decade, 1850-60,&mdash;the <i>Ch&acirc;timents</i>,
+<i>Contemplations</i>, and <i>L&eacute;gende des Si&egrave;cles</i>. I said advisedly, one
+string in his lyre. Objective reticence is certainly not the virtue of
+the terrible indictment of 'Napoleon the Little'. On the other hand, the
+greatest qualities of Parnassian poetry were exemplified in many
+splendid pieces of the other two works, together with a large benignity
+which their austere Stoicism rarely permits, and I shall take as
+illustration of the finest achievement of poetry in this whole first
+phase the closing stanzas of his famous <i>Boaz Endormi</i> in the <i>L&eacute;gende</i>,
+whose beauty even translation cannot wholly disguise. Our decasyllable
+is substituted for the Alexandrine.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" /><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'While thus he slumbered, Ruth, a Moabite,<br /></span>
+<span>Lay at the feet of Boaz, her breast bare,<br /></span>
+<span>Waiting, she knew not when, she knew not where,<br /></span>
+<span>The sudden mystery of wakening light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Boaz knew not that there a woman lay,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor Ruth what God desired of her could tell;<br /></span>
+<span>Fresh rose the perfume of the asphodel,<br /></span>
+<span>And tender breathed the dusk on Galgala.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Nuptial, august, and solemn was the night,<br /></span>
+<span>Angels no doubt were passing on the wing,<br /></span>
+<span>For now and then there floated glimmering<br /></span>
+<span>As it might be an azure plume in flight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>The low breathing of Boaz mingled there<br /></span>
+<span>With the soft murmur of the mossy rills.<br /></span>
+<span>It was the month when earth is debonnaire;<br /></span>
+<span>The lilies were in flower upon the hills.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />Night compassed Boaz' slumber and Ruth's dreams,<br /></span>
+<span>The sheep-bells vaguely tinkled far and near;<br /></span>
+<span>Infinite love breathed from the starry sphere;<br /></span>
+<span>'Twas the still hour when lions seek the streams.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Ur and Jerimedeth were all at rest;<br /></span>
+<span>The stars enamelled the blue vault of sky;<br /></span>
+<span>Amid those flowers of darkness in the west<br /></span>
+<span>The crescent shone; and with half open eye<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Ruth wondered, moveless, in her veils concealed,<br /></span>
+<span>What heavenly reaper, when the day was done<br /></span>
+<span>And harvest gathered in, had idly thrown<br /></span>
+<span>That golden sickle on the starry field.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>II. DREAM AND SYMBOL</p>
+
+<p>The rise of French symbolism towards the end of the 'seventies was a
+symptom of a changed temper of thought and feeling traceable in some
+degree throughout civilized Europe. Roughly, it marked the passing of
+the confident and rather superficial security of the 'fifties into a
+vague unrest, a kind of troubled awe. As if existence altogether was a
+bigger, more mysterious, and intractable thing than was assumed, not so
+easily to be captured in the formulas of triumphant science, or mirrored
+and analysed by the most consummate literary art.</p>
+
+<p>Political and social conditions contributed to the change. France stood
+on the morrow of a shattering catastrophe. The complacency of
+mid-Victorian England began to be disturbed by menaces from the
+workshops of industry. And it was precisely in triumphant Germany
+herself that revolutionary Socialism found, in Karl Marx, its first
+organizing mind and authoritative exponent. The millennium was not so
+near as it had seemed; the problems of society, instead of having been
+solved once for all, were only, it appeared, just coming into view.</p>
+
+<p>In the secluded workshops of Thought, subtler changes were silently
+going on. The dazzling triumphs of physical <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />science, which had led
+poetry itself to emulate the marble impassivity of the scientific
+temper, were undiminished; but they were seen in a new perspective,
+their authority ceased to be exclusive, the focus of interest was slowly
+shifting from the physical to the psychical world. Lange, writing the
+history of <i>Materialism</i> in 1874, virtually performed its obsequies; and
+Tyndall's brilliant effort, in 1871, to equip primordial Matter with the
+'promise and the potency' of mind, unconsciously confessed that its
+cause was lost. Psychology, after Fechner, steadily advanced in prestige
+and importance from the outlying circumference of the sciences to their
+very centre and core.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not merely particular doctrines that lost ground; the scope
+and validity of scientific method itself began to be questioned. In the
+most varied fields of thought there set in that 'idealistic reaction
+against science' which has been described in one of the most penetrating
+books of our time. Most significant of all, science itself, in the
+person of Mach, and Pearson, has abandoned the claim to do more than
+provide descriptive formulas for phenomena the real nature of which is
+utterly beyond its power to discover.</p>
+
+<p>Of this changed outlook the growth of Symbolism is the most significant
+literary expression. It was not confined to France, or to poetry. We
+know how the drama of Ibsen became charged with ulterior meanings as the
+fiery iconoclast passed into the poet of insoluble and ineluctable
+doubt. But by the French symbolists it was pursued as a creed, as a
+religion. If the dominant poetry of the third quarter of the century
+reflected the prestige of science, the dominant poetry of the fourth
+reflected the idealistic reactions against it, and Villiers de l'Ile
+Adam, its founder, came forward proclaiming that 'Science was bankrupt'.
+And so it might well seem to <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />him, the visionary mystic inhabiting, as
+he did, a world of strange beauty and invisible mystery which science
+could not unlock. The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but
+they were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which
+language cannot articulately express, and which are yet more vitally
+real than the 'facts' which we can grasp and handle, and the
+'respectable' people whom we can measure and reckon with. Sometimes
+these potencies are vaguely mysterious, an impalpable spirit speaking
+only by hints and tokens; sometimes they are felt as the pulsations of
+an intoxicating beauty, breaking forth in every flower, but which can
+only be possessed, not described; sometimes they are moods of the soul,
+beyond analysis, and yet full of wonder and beauty, visions half
+created, half perceived. Experiences like these might have been
+described, as far as description would go, by brilliant artificers like
+the Parnassians. Verlaine and Mallarm&eacute; did not discover, but they
+applied with new daring, the fact that an experience may be communicated
+by words which, instead of representing it, suggest it by their colour,
+their cadences, their rhythm, their verbal echoes and inchoate phrases.
+All the traditional artistry of French poetic speech was condemned as
+both inadequate and insincere. 'Take eloquence and wring her neck!
+Nothing but music and the nuance&mdash;all the rest is &quot;Literature&quot;, mere
+writing&mdash;futile verbosity!' that was the famous watchword of Verlaine's
+creed.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" /><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>The strength of symbolism lay in this demand for a complete sincerity of
+utterance. Its revolt against science was at the same time a vindication
+of truth, an <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />effort to get nearer to reality both by shedding off the
+incrustations of habitual phrase and by calling into play the obscure
+affinities by which it can be magically evoked. In the subtleties of
+suggestion latent in sensations the symbolists were real discoverers.
+But the way had already been pointed in famous verses by Baudelaire:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Earth is a Temple, from whose pillared mazes<br /></span>
+<span>Murmurs confused of living utterance rise;<br /></span>
+<span>Therein Man thro' a forest of symbols paces,<br /></span>
+<span>That contemplate him with familiar eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>As prolonged echoes, wandering on and on,<br /></span>
+<span>At last in one far tenebrous depth unite,<br /></span>
+<span>Impalpable as darkness, and as light,<br /></span>
+<span>Scents, sounds, and colours meet in unison.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There Baudelaire had touched a chord that was to sound loud and long;
+for what else than this thought of all the senses meeting in union
+inspired the music drama of Wagner?&mdash;only one of his points of kinship,
+as we shall see, with symbolism.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the symbolists, in quest of reality, touched it only through the
+inner life. There they are, in their fashion, realists. 'A landscape',
+said Albert Samain, 'is a state of soul.' The landscape may be false,
+but the state of soul is veracious. What interests them in life is the
+image of life, not lucidly reflected but exquisitely transformed. Yet
+the vision of the world caught in that transforming mirror was not
+without strange revealing glimpses, invisible, like stars mirrored in a
+well, to the plain observer. They could hear the music of the spheres;
+or in the language of Samain's sonnet</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Feel flowing through them, like a pouring wave,<br /></span>
+<span>The music-tide of universal Soul;<br /></span>
+<span>Hear in their heart the beating pulse of heaven.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" /><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />In the earlier poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, the inner life imposes a
+more jealous sway. The poet sits not before a transforming mirror, where
+the outer world is disguised, but in a closed chamber, where it is only
+dreamed of, and it fades into the incoherence and the irrelevance of a
+dream. But the chamber is of rare beauty, and in its hushed and perfumed
+twilight, dramas of the spirit are being silently and almost
+imperceptibly enacted, more tragic than the loud passion and violence of
+the stage. He has written an essay on Silence,&mdash;silence that, like
+humility, holds for him a 'treasure' beyond the reach of eloquence or of
+pride; for it is the dwelling of our true self, the spiritual core of
+us, 'more profound and more boundless than the self of the passions or
+of pure reason.' And so there is less matter for drama in 'a captain who
+conquers in battle or a husband who avenges his honour than in an old
+man, seated in his arm-chair waiting patiently with his lamp beside him,
+giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his
+house, interpreting without comprehending, the silence of door and
+window, and the quivering voice of the light; submitting with bent head
+to the presence of his soul and his destiny.'</p>
+
+<p>It is on this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian
+novel,&mdash;with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of
+self-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the
+Nietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just
+then being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both
+responded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate
+future, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first
+resounding encounter when Nietzsche held up his once venerated master
+Wagner to scorn as the chief of 'decadents' because he had turned from
+the superhuman heroism of Siegfried <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />and the boundless passion of
+Tristram to glorify the mystic Catholicism of the Grail and the
+loveliness of the 'pure fool' Parzifal.</p>
+
+<p>Outside France symbolism found eager response among young poets, but
+rather as a literary than as an ethical doctrine. In Germany Dehmel, the
+most powerful personality among her recent poets, began as a disciple of
+Verlaine; in Italy, D'Annunzio wove esoteric symbols into the texture of
+the more than Nietzschean supermanliness of his supermen and superwomen.
+More significant than these, however, was the symbolism of what we call
+the Celtic school of poets in Ireland. For here both their artistic
+impressionism and their mystic spirituality found a congenial soil. The
+principal mediating force was Mr. Arthur Symons, friend of Verlaine and
+of Yeats, and himself the most penetrating interpreter of Symbolism,
+both as critic and as poet.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> And to the French influence was added
+that of Blake, a poet too great to be included in any school, but allied
+to symbolism by his scorn for 'intellect' and for rhetoric, and by his
+audacities of figured speech. But Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.', the leaders of
+the 'Celtic' group, are in no sense derivation voices. They had the
+great advantage over the French of a living native folklore and faery
+lore. Hence their symbolism, no less subtle, and no less steeped in
+poetic imagining, has not the same air of literary artifice, of studio
+fabrication, of cultured Bohemianism; it breathes of the old Irish
+hills, holy with old-world rites, and the haunted woods, and the magical
+twilight and dewy dawns. And beneath all the folklore, and animating it,
+is the passion for Ireland <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />herself, the mother, deathless and ever
+young, whom neither the desolation of the time nor the decay of hope can
+touch:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Out-worn heart in a time out-worn<br /></span>
+<span>Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;<br /></span>
+<span>Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight;<br /></span>
+<span>Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Your mother Eire is always young,<br /></span>
+<span>Dew ever shining and twilight grey;<br /></span>
+<span>Tho' hope fall from you and love decay<br /></span>
+<span>Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill;<br /></span>
+<span>For there the mystical brotherhood<br /></span>
+<span>Of sun and moon and hollow and wood<br /></span>
+<span>And river and stream work out their will.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For that, the French had only the Fauns of a literary neo-classicism.
+The passion for France was yet indeed to find a voice in poetry. But
+this was reserved for the more trumpet-tongued tones of the contemporary
+phase to which I now turn.</p>
+
+
+<p>III. 'CREATIVE EVOLUTION'</p>
+
+<p>1. <i>Philosophic Analogies</i></p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more symptomatic of the incipient twentieth century than the
+drawing together of currents of thought and action before remote or
+hostile. The Parnassians were an exclusive sect, the symbolists an
+eccentric and often disreputable coterie; Claudel, D'Annunzio, Rudyard
+Kipling, speak home to throngs of everyday readers, are even national
+idols, and our Georgians contrive to be bought and read without the
+least surrender of what is most poetic in their poetry. And the
+analogies between philosophic thinking and poetic creation become
+peculiarly striking. Merely to name Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson,
+and Benedetto Croce is to become vividly <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />aware of these analogies and
+of the common bent from which they spring. All three&mdash;whether with
+brilliant rhetoric, or iron logic, or a blend of both&mdash;use their
+thinking power to deride the theorizing intelligence in comparison with
+the creative intuition which culminates in poetry. To define the scope
+and province of this intuition is the purport of Croce's epoch-making
+<i>Aesthetics</i>, the basis and starting-point of his illumining work, in
+<i>Critica</i>, as a literary critic. Bergson is the dominant figure in a
+line of French thinkers possessed with the conviction that life, a
+perpetual streaming forth of creative energy, cannot be caught in the
+mechanism of law, adapted to merely physical phenomena, which at best
+merely gives us generalizations and lets the all-important
+particulars&mdash;the individual living thing&mdash;slip through the meshes;
+whereas intuition&mdash;the eye fixed on the object&mdash;penetrates to the very
+heart of this individual living thing, and only drops out the skeleton
+framework of abstract laws. Philosophy, in these thinkers, was deeply
+imbued with the analogies of artistic creation. 'Beauty,' said
+Ravaisson, 'and especially beauty in the most divine and perfect form,
+contains the secret of the world.'<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" /><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> And Bergson's <i>Creative
+Evolution</i> embodied a conception of life and of the world profoundly
+congenial to the artistic and poetic temper of his time. For he
+restated, it has been well said, the two great surviving formulas of the
+nineteenth century, evolution and the will to live, in terms precisely
+suited to the temper of the age just dawning. The will to live became a
+formula of hope and progress; evolution became a formula of vital
+impulse, of creative purpose, not of mechanical 'struggle for
+existence'.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that aesthetic experience gives a profounder <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />clue than logical
+thought to the inner meaning of things was as old as Plato. It was one
+of the crowning thoughts of Kant; it deeply coloured the metaphysics of
+Schelling. And Nietzsche developed it with brilliant audacity when in
+his <i>Birth of Tragedy</i> (1872) he contrasted scornfully with the laboured
+and ineffectual constructions of the theoretic man, even of Socrates the
+founder of philosophy, the radiant vision of the artist, the lucid
+clarity of Apollo. 'His book gave the lie to a thousand years of orderly
+development', wrote the great Hellenist Wilamowitz, Nietzsche's old
+schoolfellow, indignant at his rejection of the labours of scholastic
+reason. But it affirmed energetically the passion of his own time for
+immediate and first-hand experience.</p>
+
+<p>And it did more. Beside and above Apollo, Nietzsche put Dionysus; beside
+vision and above it, <i>rage</i>. Of the union of these two Tragedy was born.
+And Nietzsche's glorification of this elemental creative force also
+responded to a wider movement in philosophy, here chiefly German. His
+Dionysiac rage is directly derived from that will in which Schopenhauer
+saw the master faculty of man and the hidden secret of the universe; and
+the beginning of Schopenhauer's fame, about 1850, coincides with a
+general rehabilitation of will as the dominant faculty in the soul and
+in the world, at the cost of the methodic orderly processes of
+understanding; a movement exhibited in the psychological innovations of
+Wundt and M&uuml;nsterberg, in the growth of the doctrine that what a thing
+is is determined by what it <i>can</i>; that value is in fact the measure,
+and even the meaning, of existence; that will can arm impotence, create
+faith, and master disease; and in the call of the colossal will-power
+which created the German empire and launched her on the career of
+industrial greatness. Nietzsche's Superman is, above all, a being of
+colossal and masterful will, and <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />Zarathustra, the prophet of
+superhumanity, is only an incarnation of the will that for Schopenhauer
+moved the world. The moment at which the prestige of will began
+definitely to overcome that of reasoning is marked, as Aliotta has
+pointed out, by the appearance of James's <i>Will to Believe</i>, just when
+agnosticism seemed triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>Nietzsche and Bergson thus, with all their obvious and immense
+divergences, concurred in this respect, important from our present point
+of view, that their influence tended to transfer authority from the
+philosophic reason to those 'irrational' elements of mind which reach
+their highest intensity in the vision and 'rage' of the poet. James's
+vindication of drunken exaltation as a source of religious insight was
+not the least symptomatic passage of his great book. And both concurred,
+however remote their methods or their speech, in conceiving reality as
+creation, creation in which we take part&mdash;a conception which again, in
+the hands of the constructive religious thinker, led directly to the
+type of faith announced in that last&mdash;the Jamesian&mdash;'Variety' of
+religious experience, which represents us as indispensable
+fellow-workers and allies of a growing and striving God.</p>
+
+
+<p>2. <i>The New Freedom</i></p>
+
+<p>No reader of the poetry of our time can mistake the kinship of its
+prevailing temper with that which lies at the root of these
+philosophies. Without trying to fit its infinite variety to any finite
+formula, we may yet venture to find in it, as Mr. McDowall has found in
+our Georgian poetry in particular, a characteristic union of grip and
+detachment; of intense and eager grasp upon actuality as it breaks upon
+us in the successive moments of the stream of time, and yet an inner
+independence of it, a refusal to be obsessed by its sanctions and
+authorities, a tacit assumption that everything, by whatever length <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />of
+tradition consecrated, must come before the bar of the new century to be
+judged by its new mind. 'Youth is knocking at the door,' as it is said
+of Hilda in the symbolical <i>Master Builder</i>, and doubtless in every
+generation the philistines or Victorians in possession have had occasion
+to make that remark. The difference in our time is rather that youth
+comes in without knocking, and that instead of having to work slowly up
+to final dominance against the inertia of an established literary
+household, it has spontaneously, like Hilda Wrangel, taken possession of
+the home, rinding criticism boundlessly eulogistic, the public
+inexhaustibly responsive, and philosophy interpreting the universe, as
+we have seen, precisely in sympathy with its own na&iuml;ve intuitions. No
+wonder that youth at twenty is writing its autobiography or having its
+biography written, and that at twenty-five it makes a show of laying
+down the pen, like Max Beerbaum, with the gesture of one rising sated
+from the feast of life: 'I shall write no more.'</p>
+
+<p>The fact that youth finds itself thus at home in the world explains the
+difference in temper between the new poets of freedom and the old. The
+wild or wistful cry of Shelley for an ideal state emancipated from pain
+and death is as remote from their poetry as his spiritual anarchy from
+their politics; they can dream and see visions, in Scott's phrase, 'like
+any one going', but their feet are on the solid ground of actuality and
+citizenship, and the actuality comes into and colours their poetry no
+less than their vision. When Mr. Drinkwater looks out of his 'town
+window' he dreams of the crocus flaming gold in far-off Warwick woods;
+but he does not repudiate the drab inglorious street nor the tramway
+ringing and moaning over the cobbles, and they come into his verse. And
+I find it significant of the whole temper of the new poetry to ordinary
+life no less than that of ordinary men <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />and women to the new poetry,
+that he has won a singularly intimate relationship with a great
+industrial community. He has not fared like his carver in stone. But
+then the eagles of his carving, though capable of rising, like
+Shelley's, to the sun, are the Cromwells and Lincolns who themselves
+brought the eagle's valour and undimmed eye into the stress and turmoil
+of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt a fiercer note of revolt may be heard at times in the poetry of
+contemporary France, and that precisely where devotion to some parts of
+the heritage of the past is most impassioned. The iconoclastic scorn of
+youth's idealism for the effeteness of the 'old hunkers', as Whitman
+called them, has rarely rung out more sharply than in the closing
+stanzas of Claudel's great Palm Sunday ode. All the pomp and splendour
+of bishops and cardinals is idle while victory yet is in suspense: that
+must be won by youth in arms.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'To-morrow the candles and the dais and the bishop with his clergy<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">coped and gold embossed,<br /></span>
+<span>But to-day the shout like thunder of an equal, unofficered host<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who, led and kindled by the flag alone,<br /></span>
+<span>With one sole spirit swollen, and on one sole thought intent,<br /></span>
+<span>Are become one cry like the crash of walls shattered and gates rent:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Hosanna unto David's son!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Needless the haughty steeds marble-sculptured, or triumphal arches, or<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">chariots and four,<br /></span>
+<span>Needless the flags and the caparisons, the moving pyramids and towers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">and cars that thunder and roar,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Tis but an ass whereon sits Christ;<br /></span>
+<span>For to make an end of the nightmare built by the pedants and the<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">pharisees,<br /></span>
+<span>To get home to reality across the gulf of mendacities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The first she-ass he saw sufficed!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" /><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" /><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />Eternal youth is master, the hideous gang of old men is done with, we<br /></span>
+<span>Stand here like children, fanned by the breath of the things to be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But victory we will have to-day!<br /></span>
+<span>Afterwards the corn that like gold gives return, afterwards the gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">that like corn is faithful and will bear,<br /></span>
+<span>The fruit we have henceforth only to gather, the land we have<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">henceforth only to share,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But victory we will have to-day!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the same spirit Charles P&eacute;guy&mdash;like Claudel, be it noted, a student
+of Bergson at the &Eacute;cole Normale&mdash;found his ideal in the great story of
+the young girl of Domremy who saved France when all the pomp and wisdom
+of generals had broken down. And in our own poetry has not Mr. Bottomley
+rewritten the Lear story, with the focus of power and interest
+transferred from the old king&mdash;left with not an inch of king in him&mdash;to
+a glorious young Artemis-Goneril?</p>
+
+<p>But among our English Georgians this tense iconoclastic note is rare.
+Their detachment from what they repudiate is not fanatical or ascetic;
+it is conveyed less in invective than in paradox and irony; their temper
+is not that which flies to the wilderness and dresses in camel hair, but
+of mariners putting out to the unknown and bidding a not unfriendly
+good-bye at the shore. The temper of adventure is deeply ingrained in
+the new romance as in the old; the very word adventure is saturated with
+a sentiment very congenial to us both for better and worse; it quickens
+the hero in us and flatters the devil-may-care.</p>
+
+<p>In its simplest form the temper of adventure has given us the profusion
+of pleasant verses which we know as the poetry of 'vagabondage' and 'the
+open road'. The point is too familiar to be dwelt on, and has been
+admirably illustrated and discussed by Mr. McDowall. <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />George Borrow,
+prince of vagabonds, Stevenson, the 'Ariel', with his 'Vagabond-song'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'All I seek the heaven above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the road below me',<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and a few less vocal swallows, anticipated the more sustained flights
+and melodies of to-day, while Borrow's wonderful company of vagabond
+heroes and heroines is similarly premonitory of the alluring gipsies and
+circus-clowns of our Georgian poetry. Sometimes a traditional motive is
+creatively transformed; as when Father Time, the solemn shadow with
+admonitory hour-glass, appears in Mr. Hodgson's poem as an old gipsy
+pitching his caravan 'only a moment and off once again'.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere a deeper note is sounded. It is not for nothing that Jeanne
+d'Arc is the saint of French Catholic democracy, or that P&eacute;guy, her
+poet, calls the Incarnation the 'sublime adventure of God's Son'. That
+last adventure of the Dantesque Ulysses beyond the sunset thrills us
+to-day more than the Odyssean tale of his triumphant home-return, and
+D'Annunzio, greatly daring, takes it as the symbol of his own
+adventurous life. Francis Thompson's most famous poem, too, represents
+the divine effort to save the erring soul under the image of the hound's
+eager chase of a quarry which may escape; while Yeats hears God 'blowing
+his lonely horn' along the moonlit faery glades of Erin. And Meredith,
+who so often profoundly voiced the spirit of the time in which only his
+ripe old age was passed, struck this note in his sublime verses on
+revolutionary France&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">'soaring France<br /></span>
+<span>That divinely shook the dead<br /></span>
+<span>From living man; that stretched ahead<br /></span>
+<span>Her resolute forefinger straight<br /></span>
+<span>And marched toward the gloomy gate<br /></span>
+<span>Of Earth's Untried.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />It is needless to dwell upon the affinity between this temper of
+adventure in poetry and the teaching of Bergson. That the link is not
+wholly fortuitous is shown by the interesting <i>Art Po&eacute;tique</i> (1903) of
+his quondam pupil, Claudel, a little treatise pervaded by the idea of
+Creative-evolution.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural in such a time to assume that any living art of poetry
+must itself be new, and in fact the years immediately before and after
+the turn of the century are crowded with announcements of 'new'
+movements in art of every kind. Beside Claudel's <i>Art Po&eacute;tique</i> we have
+in England the <i>New Aestheticism</i> of Grant Allen; in Germany the 'new
+principle' in verse of Arno Holz. And here again the English innovators
+are distinguished by a good-humoured gaiety, if also by a slighter build
+of thought, from the French or Nietzschean 'revaluers'. Rupert Brooke
+delightfully parodies the exquisite hesitances and faltering half-tones
+of Pater's cloistral prose; and Mr. Chesterton pleasantly mocks at the
+set melancholy of the aggressive Decadence in which he himself grew up:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Science announced nonentity, and art adored decay,<br /></span>
+<span>The world was old and ended, but you and I were gay.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Like their predecessors in the earlier Romantic school, the new
+adventurers have notoriously experimented with poetic <i>form</i>. France,
+the home of the most rigid and meticulous metrical tradition, had
+already led the way in substituting for the strictly measured verse the
+more loosely organized harmonies of rhythmical prose, bound together,
+and indeed made recognizable as verse, in any sense, solely by the
+rhyme. With the Symbolists 'free verse' was an attempt to capture finer
+modulations of music than the rigid frame of metre allowed. With their
+successors it had rather the value of a plastic medium in which every
+variety of matter and of mood could be faithfully expressed. But whether
+called verse or not, <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />the vast rushing modulations of rhythmic music in
+the great pieces of Claudel and others have a magnificence not to be
+denied. And the less explicitly poetic form permits matter which would
+jar on the poetic instinct if conveyed through a metrical form to be
+taken up as it were in this larger and looser stride.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, on the other hand, the rhythmic emancipation of Whitman was
+carried out, in the school of Arno Holz, with a revolutionary audacity
+beyond the example even of Claudel. Holz states with great clearness and
+trenchancy what he calls his 'new principle of lyric'; one which
+'abandons all verbal music as an aim, and is borne solely by a rhythm
+made vital by the thought struggling through it to expression'. Rhyme
+and strophe are given up, only rhythm remains.</p>
+
+<p>Of our Georgian poetry, it must suffice to note that here, too, the
+temper of adventure in form is rife. But it shows itself,
+characteristically, less in revolutionary innovation than in attempts to
+elicit new and strange effects from traditional measures by deploying to
+the utmost, and in bold and extreme combinations, their traditional
+resources and variations, as in the blank verse of Mr. Abercrombie and
+Mr. Bottomley. This, and much beside in Georgian verse, has moods and
+moments of rare beauty. But, on the whole, verse-form is the region of
+poetic art in which Georgian poetry as a whole is least secure.</p>
+
+
+<p>3. <i>The New Realism</i></p>
+
+<p>We see then how deeply rooted this new freedom is in the passion for
+actuality; not the dream but the waking and alert experience throbs and
+pulses in it. We have now to look more closely into this other aspect of
+it. Realism is a hard-worked term, but it may be taken to imply that the
+overflowing vitality of which poetry is one expression fastens with
+peculiar eagerness upon the <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />visible and tangible world about us and
+seeks to convey that zest in words. Our poets not only do not scorn the
+earth to lose themselves in the sky; they are positive friends of the
+matter-of-fact, and that not in spite of poetry, but for poetry's sake;
+and Pegasus flies more freely because 'things' are 'in the saddle' along
+with the poet.</p>
+
+<p>That this matter-of-factness is loved by poets, for poetry's sake, marks
+it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe.
+But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of
+Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his
+inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by
+seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply
+interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high
+sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in
+memory, not in hope&mdash;the 'glory of the grass and splendour of the
+flower' which he had seen in childhood and imaginatively re-created in
+maturity; a romance which change, and especially the intrusions of
+industrial man, dispelled and destroyed. Whereas the romance of our new
+realism rests, in good part, precisely in the sense that the <i>thing</i> so
+vividly gripped is not or need not be permanent, may turn into something
+else, has only a tenancy, not a freehold, in its conditions of space and
+time, a 'toss-up' hold upon existence, as it were, full of the zest of
+adventurous insecurity. A pessimistic philosophy would dissipate this
+romance, or strip it of all but the mournful poetry of doom. Mr.
+Chesterton glorifies the dust which may become a flower or a face,
+against the Reverend Peter Bell for whom dust is dust and no more, and
+Hamlet who only remembers that it once was Caesar. If our realism is
+buoyant, if it had at once the absorbed and the open mind, this is, in
+large part, in virtue of the temper which finds reality a perpetual
+creation. Every moment is precious <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />and significant, for it comes with
+the burden and meaning of something that has never completely been
+before; and goes by only to give place to another moment equally curious
+and new. This is the deeper ground of our present fashion of paradox;
+what Mr. Chesterton, its apostle, means when he says that 'the great
+romance is reality'; for paradox, the unexpected, is, in a reality so
+framed, the bare and sober truth. Hence the frequency, in our new
+poetry, of pieces founded deliberately upon, as Mr. McDowall points out,
+paradox: the breaking in of some utter surprise upon a humdrum society,
+as in Mr. de la Mare's <i>Three Jolly Farmers</i>, or Mr. Abercrombie's <i>End
+of the World</i>, or Mr. Munro's <i>Strange Meetings</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, in this incessantly created reality we are ourselves
+incessantly creative. That may seem to follow as a matter of course; but
+it corresponds with the most radical of the distinctions between our
+realism and that of Wordsworth. When Mr. Wells tells us that his most
+comprehensive belief about the universe is that every part of it is
+ultimately important, he is not expressing a mystic pantheism which
+feels every part to be divine, but a generous pragmatism which holds
+that every part <i>works</i>. The idea of shaping and adapting will, of
+energy in industry, of mere routine practicality in office or household,
+is no longer tabooed, or shyly evaded; not because of any theoretic
+exaltation of labour or consecration of the commonplace, but because
+merely to use things, to make them fulfil our purposes, to bring them
+into touch with our activities, itself throws a kind of halo over even
+very humble and homely members of the 'divine democracy of things'.
+Rupert Brooke draws up a famous catalogue of the things of which he was
+a 'great lover'. He loved them, he says, simply <i>as being</i>. And no
+doubt, the simple sensations of colour, touch, or smell counted for
+much. But compare them with the things that <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />Keats, a yet greater lover
+of sensations, loved. You feel in Brooke's list that he liked doing
+things as well as feasting his passive senses; these 'plates', 'holes in
+the ground,' 'washen stones,' the cold graveness of iron, and so forth.
+One detects in the list the Brooke who, as a boy, went about with a book
+of poems in one hand and a cricket-ball in the other, and whose left
+hand well knew what his right hand did.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" /><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> That takes us far from the
+dream of eternal beauty, which a Greek urn or a nightingale's song
+brought to Keats, and the fatal word 'forlorn', bringing back the light
+of common day, dispelled. The old ethical and aesthetic canons are
+submerged in a passion for life which finds a good beyond good and evil,
+and a beauty born of ugliness more vital than beauty's self. 'The worth
+of a drama is measured', said D'Annunzio, 'by its fullness of life', and
+the formula explains, if it does not justify, those tropical gardens,
+rank with the gross blooms of 'superhuman' eroticism and ferocity, to
+which he latterly gave that name. And we know how Maeterlinck has
+emerged from the mystic dreams and silences of his recluse chamber to
+unfold the dramatic pugnacities of Birds and Bees.</p>
+
+<p>Even the downright foulness and ugliness which some people find so
+puzzling in poets with an acute delight in beauty, like Mr. Masefield,
+come into it not from any aesthetic obtuseness, but because these
+uglinesses are full of the zest of drama, of things being done or made,
+of life being lived. When Masefield sounded his challenge to the old
+aesthetics:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth',<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />he knew well, as <i>The Everlasting Mercy</i> and <i>The Widow of Bye Street</i>
+showed, that dirt and dross, if wrought into tragedy, can win a higher
+beauty than the harmonies of idyll. Even the hideous elder women in Mr.
+Bottomley's <i>Lear's Wife</i>, or his Regan&mdash;an ill-conditioned girl,
+sidling among the 'sweaty, half-clad cook-maids' after pig-killing,
+'smeary and hot as they', participate in this beauty and energy of
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry, in these cases, wins perhaps at most a Pyrrhic victory over
+reluctant matter. It is otherwise with the second of the great Belgian
+poets.</p>
+
+<p>In the work of Verhaeren, the modern industrial city, with its spreading
+tentacles of devouring grime and squalor, its clanging factories, its
+teeming bazaars and warehouses, and all its thronging human population,
+is taken up triumphantly into poetry. Verhaeren is the poet of
+'tumultuous forces', whether they appear in the roar and clash of 'that
+furnace we call existence', or in the heroic struggles of the Flemish
+nation for freedom. And he exhibits these surging forces in a style
+itself full of tumultuous power, Germanic rather than French in its
+violent and stormy splendour, and using the chartered licence of the
+French 'free verse' itself with more emphasis than subtlety.</p>
+
+
+<p>4. <i>The Cult of Force</i></p>
+
+<p>In Verhaeren, indeed, we are conscious of passing into the presence of
+power more elemental and unrestrained than the civil refinement of our
+Georgians, at their wildest, allows us to suspect. The tragic and heroic
+history of his people, and their robust art, the art of Rembrandt, and
+of Teniers, vibrates in the Flemish poet. He has much of the temperament
+of Nietzsche, and if not evidently swayed by his ideas, or even aware of
+them, and with a generous faith in humanity which Nietzsche <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />never knew,
+he thinks and imagines with a kindred joy in violence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'I love man and the world, and I adore the force<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Which my force gives and takes from man and the universe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And it is no considerable step from him to the poets who in this third
+phase of our period have unequivocally exulted in power and burnt
+incense or offered sacrifice before the altar of the strong man. The joy
+in creation which, we saw, gives its romance to so much of the realism
+of our time, now appears accentuated in the fiercer romance of conflict
+and overthrow. Thanks largely to Nietzsche, this romance acquired the
+status of an authoritative philosophy&mdash;even, in his own country, that of
+an ethical orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>The German people was doubtless less deeply and universally imbued with
+this faith than our war-prejudice assumes. But phenomena such as the
+enormous success of a cheap exposition of it, <i>Rembrandt als Erzieher</i>
+(1890) by a fervent Bismarckian, and of the comic journal
+<i>Simplicissimus</i> (founded 1895) devoted to systematic ridicule of the
+old-fashioned German virtues of tenderness and sympathy, indicated a
+current of formidable power and compass, which was soon to master all
+the other affluents of the national stream.</p>
+
+<p>But older, and in part foreign, influences concurred to colour and
+qualify, while they sustained, the Nietzschean influence,&mdash;the daemonic
+power of Carlyle, the iron intensity and masterful reticence of Ibsen.
+This was the case especially, as is well known, in the drama. Gerhardt
+Hauptmann, who painted the tragedy of the self-emancipated superman,&mdash;as
+Mr. Shaw about the same time showed us his self-achieved
+apotheosis,&mdash;was no doubt the most commanding (as Mr. Shaw was the most
+original) figure in the European drama of the early century.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />In poetry, the contributory forces were still more subtly mingled, and
+the Nietzschean spirit, which blows where it listeth, often touched men
+wholly alien from Nietzsche in cast of genius and sometimes stoutly
+hostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all.
+Among the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the
+most considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany.
+Richard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked
+comparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented.</p>
+
+<p>He began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the
+unrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's
+<i>fureur d'aimer</i>. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps
+the downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities
+of <i>la nuance</i>. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but
+the ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which
+finally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel.
+Nietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and
+evil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which
+transcends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil
+themselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can
+cry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the <i>Erl&ouml;sungen</i>, 'I will
+fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not
+pleasure, it waters power',&mdash;he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe
+and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn
+it into the stuff of duty!'</p>
+
+<p>If Nietzsche provoked into antagonism the sounder elements in Dehmel, he
+was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius
+of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality
+of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />along with a Roman
+tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all
+their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid
+sentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than
+any other single man provoked Italy to throw herself into the great
+adventure of the War. Unapproached in popularity by any other Italian
+man of letters, D'Annunzio discovered Nietzsche, and hailed him&mdash;a great
+concession&mdash;as an equal. When Nietzsche died, in 1900, D'Annunzio
+indicted a lofty memorial ode to the Titanic Barbarian who set up once
+more the serene gods of Hellas over the vast portals of the Future.
+Nietzsche indeed let loose all the Titan, and all consequently that was
+least Hellenic, in the fertile genius of the Italian; his wonderful
+instinct for beauty, his inexhaustible resources of style are employed
+in creating orgies of superhuman valour, lust, and cruelty like some of
+his later dramas, and hymns intoxicated with the passion for Power, like
+the splendid Ode in which the City of the Seven Hills is prophetically
+seen once more the mistress of the world, loosing the knot of all the
+problems of humanity. His poetic autobiography, the first <i>Laude</i>
+(1901)&mdash;counterpart of Wordsworth's <i>Prelude</i> and its very
+antipodes&mdash;culminates in a prayer 900 lines long to Hermes, god of the
+energy which precipitates itself on life and makes it pregnant with
+invention and discovery, of the iron will 'which chews care as a laurel
+leaf'&mdash;the god of the Superman. And so he discovers the muse of the
+Superman, the Muse of Energy, a tenth Muse whose first poet he modestly
+disclaims to be, if he may only be, as he would have us interpret his
+name, her Announcer.</p>
+
+<p>If D'Annunzio emulates Nietzsche, the two great militant poets of
+Catholic France would have scorned the comparison. Charles P&eacute;guy's brief
+career was shaped from his first entrance, poor and of peasant birth, at
+<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />a Paris Lyc&eacute;e, to his heroic death in the field, September 1914, by a
+daemonic force of character. His heroine, glorified in his first book,
+was Jeanne d'Arc, who attempted the impossible, and achieved it. In
+writing, his principle&mdash;shocking to French literary tradition&mdash;was to
+speak the brutal truth <i>brutalement</i>. As a poet he stood in the direct
+lineage of Corneille, whose <i>Polyeucte</i> he thought the greatest of the
+world's tragedies. As a man, he embodied with na&iuml;ve intensity the
+unsurpassed inborn heroism of the French race.</p>
+
+<p>Claudel, even more remote as a thinker from Nietzsche than P&eacute;guy,
+exhibits a kindred temper in the ingrained violence of his art. His
+stroke is vehement and peremptory; he is an absolutist in style as in
+creed. It is the style of one who apprehends the visible world with an
+intensity as of passionate embrace, such as the young Browning expresses
+in <i>Pauline</i>. 'I would fain have seen everything,' he cries, 'possessed
+and made it my own, not with eyes and senses only, but with mind and
+spirit.' And after he was converted he saw and painted supernatural
+things with the same carnal and robust incisiveness. The half-lights of
+Symbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he
+drew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems
+to the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the
+brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a
+sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble
+house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in
+order to save the pope.</p>
+
+<p>And if we look, finally, for corresponding phenomena at home, we find
+them surely in the masculine, militant, and in the French sense <i>brutal</i>
+poetry of W.E. Henley and Rudyard Kipling. If any modern poets have
+conceived life in terms of will, and penetrated their verse <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />with that
+faith, it is the author of 'I am the Captain of my Soul', the 'Book of
+the Sword', and 'London Voluntaries', friend and subject of the great
+kindred-minded sculptor Rodin, the poet over whose grave in St. Paul's
+George Wyndham found the right word when he said&mdash;marking him off from
+the great contemplative, listening poets of the past&mdash;'His music was not
+the still sad music of humanity; it was never still, rarely sad, always
+intrepid.' And we know how Kipling, after sanctioning the mischievous
+superstition that 'East and West can never meet', refuted it by
+producing his own 'two strong men'.</p>
+
+
+<p>5. <i>The New Idealism</i></p>
+
+<p>(1) <i>Nationality</i></p>
+
+<p>We have now seen something of that power, at once of grip and of
+detachment with which the dominant poetry of this century faces what it
+thinks of as the adventure of experience, its plunge into the
+ever-moving and ever-changing stream of life. How then, it remains to
+ask, has it dealt with those ideal aspirations and beliefs which one may
+live intensely and ignore, which in one sense stand 'above the battle',
+but for which men have lived and died. With a generation which holds so
+lightly by tradition, which revises and revalues all accepted values,
+these aspirations and beliefs might well drop out of its poetry. On the
+other hand, these same aspirations and beliefs might overcome the
+indifference to tradition by ceasing to be merely traditional, by being
+immersed and steeped in that moving stream of life, and interwoven with
+the creative energies of men. The inherited faiths were put to this
+dilemma, either to become intimately alive and creative in poetry or to
+be of no concern for it. Some of them failed in the test. England has
+still devotees of <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />Protestantism, but Protestant religion has hardly
+inspired noble poetry since Milton. Nationality, on the other hand, has
+during the last century inspired finer poetry than at any time since the
+sixteenth, and that because it has been brought down from the region of
+political abstractions and ideologies into intimate union with heart and
+brain, imagination and sense. This is true also of Catholicism and of
+Socialism, and, if fitfully and uncertainly yet, of the ideal of
+international fraternity, of humanity. And to all these ideals, to all
+ideals, came finally the terrific, the overwhelming test of the War,&mdash;a
+searching, annihilating, purifying flame, in which some shrivelled away,
+some were stripped of the illusive glitter that concealed their mass of
+alloy, and some, purged of their baser constituents, shone out with a
+lustre unapproached before.</p>
+
+<p>What is the distinctive note of this new poetry of nationality? And for
+the moment I speak of the years before the War. May we not say that in
+it the ideal of country is saturated with that imaginative grip of
+reality in all its concrete energy and vivacity which I have called the
+new realism? The nation is no abstraction, whether it be called
+Britannia, or <i>Deutschland &uuml;ber Alles</i>. It is seen, and felt; seen in
+its cities as well as in its mountains, in the workers who have made it,
+as well as in the heroes who have defended it; in its roaring forges as
+well as in its idyllic woodlands and its tales of battles long ago; and
+all these not as separate strands in a woven pattern, but as waters of
+different origin and hue pouring along together in the same great
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>&Eacute;mile Verhaeren, six years before the invasion, had seen and felt his
+country, living body and living soul, with an intensity which made it
+seem unimaginable that she should be permanently subdued. He well called
+his book <i>Toute la Flandre</i>, for all Flanders is there. Old
+Flanders,&mdash;Artevelde <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />and Charles T&eacute;m&eacute;raire&mdash;whose soul was a forest of
+huge trees and dark thickets,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'A wilderness of crossing ways below,<br /></span>
+<span>But eagles, over, soaring to the sun,'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Van Eyck and Rubens&mdash;'a thunder of colossal memories'; then the great
+cities, with their belfries and their foundries, and their warehouses
+and laboratories, their antique customs and modern ambitions; and the
+rivers, the homely familiar Lys, where the women wash the whitest of
+linen, and the mighty Scheldt, the Escaut, the 'hero sombre, violent and
+magnificent', 'savage and beautiful Escaut', whose companionship had
+moulded and made the poet, whose rhythms had begotten his music and his
+best ideas<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" /><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>None of our English poets have rendered England in poetry with the same
+lyric intensity in its whole compass of time and space, calling up into
+light and music all her teeming centuries and peopled provinces. Yet the
+present generation has in some respects made a nearer approach to such
+achievement than its predecessors. A century of growing historic
+consciousness has not passed over us in vain; and if any generic
+distinction is to be found between our recent, often penetrating and
+beautiful, poetry of the English countryside and the Nature description
+of Wordsworth or of Ruskin, it is in the ground-tone of passion and
+memory that pervades it for England herself. Wordsworth wrote
+magnificently of England threatened with invasion, and magnificently of
+the Lake Country, Nature's beloved haunt. But the War sonnets and the
+Lake and <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />mountain poetry come from distinct strains in his genius,
+which our criticism may bring into relation, but our feeling insists on
+keeping apart. His Grasmere is a province of Nature&mdash;her favoured
+province&mdash;rather than of England; it is in the eye of Nature that the
+old Cumberland beggar lives and dies; England only provides the
+obnoxious workhouses to which these destitute vagrants were henceforth
+to be consigned. Is it not this that divides our modern local poetry
+from his? Mr. Belloc's Sussex is tenderly loved for itself; yet behind
+its great hills and its old-world harbours lies the half-mystic presence
+of historic England. And in Edward Thomas's wonderful old Wiltshireman,
+Lob, worthy I think to be named with the Cumberland Beggar,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'An old man's face, by life and weather cut<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And coloured,&mdash;rough, brown, sweet as any nut,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A land face, sea-blue eyed,'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>you read the whole lineage of sterling English yeomen and woodlanders
+from whom Lob springs.</p>
+
+<p>This note is indeed relatively absent from the work of the venerable
+master who has made 'Wessex' the most vividly realized of all English
+provinces to-day, and whose prose Egdon Heath may well be put at the
+head of all the descriptive poetry of our time. But Mr. Hardy, in this
+respect, belongs to an earlier generation than that into which he
+happily survives.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes this feeling is given in a single intense concentrated touch.
+When Rupert Brooke tells us of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'Some corner of a foreign field<br /></span>
+<span>That is for ever England. There shall be<br /></span>
+<span>In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;<br /></span>
+<span>A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,<br /></span>
+<span>Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>do we not feel that the solidarity of England with the English folk and
+of the English folk with the English soil, <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />is burnt into our
+imaginations in a new and distinctive way?</p>
+
+<p>But the poetry of shires and provinces reacts too upon the poetry of
+nationality. It infuses something of the more instinctive and
+rudimentary attachments from which it springs into a passion peculiarly
+exposed to the contagion of rhetoric and interest. Some of the most
+strident voices among living nationalist poets have found an unexpected
+note of tenderness when they sang their home province. Mr. Kipling
+charms us when he tells, in his close-knit verse, of the 'wooded, dim,
+Blue goodness of the Weald'. And the more strident notes of D'Annunzio's
+patriotism are also assuaged by the tenderness and depth of his home
+feeling. We read with some apprehension his dedication of <i>La Nave</i> to
+the god of seas:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'O Lord, who bringest forth and dost efface<br /></span>
+<span>The ocean-ruling Nations, race by race,<br /></span>
+<span>It is this living People, by Thy grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who on the sea<br /></span>
+<span>Shall magnify Thy name, who on the sea<br /></span>
+<span>Shall glorify Thy name, who on the sea<br /></span>
+<span>With myrrh and blood shall sacrifice to Thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">At the altar-prow,<br /></span>
+<span>Of all earth's oceans make our sea, O Thou!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Amen!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But he dedicated a noble drama, the <i>Figlia d'Iorio</i>, in a different
+tone, 'To the land of the Abruzzi, to my Mother, to my Sisters, to my
+brother in exile, to my father in his grave, to all my dead and all my
+race in the mountains and by the sea, I dedicate this song of the
+ancient blood.'</p>
+
+
+<p>(2) <i>Democracy</i></p>
+
+<p>The growth of democratic as of national feeling during the later century
+naturally produced a plentiful harvest of eloquent utterance in verse.
+With this, merely as such, <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />I am not here concerned, even though it be
+as fine as the Socialist songs of William Morris or Edward Carpenter.
+But the Catholic Socialism of Charles P&eacute;guy,&mdash;itself an original and,
+for most of his contemporaries, a bewildering combination&mdash;struck out a
+no less original poetry,&mdash;a poetry of solidarity. P&eacute;guy's Socialism,
+like his Catholicism, was single-souled; he ignored that behind the one
+was a Party, and behind the other a Church. It was his bitterest regret
+that a vast part of humanity was removed beyond the pale of fellowship
+by eternal damnation. It was his sublimest thought that the solidarity
+of man includes the damned. In his first version of the Jeanne d'Arc
+mystery, already referred to, he tells how Jesus, crucified,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Saw not his Mother in tears at the cross-foot<br /></span>
+<span>Below him, saw not Magdalen nor John,<br /></span>
+<span>But wept, dying, only for Judas' death.<br /></span>
+<span>The Saviour loved this Judas, and though utterly<br /></span>
+<span>He gave himself, he knew he could not save him.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was the dogma of damnation which for long kept P&eacute;guy out of its fold,
+that barbarous mixture of life and death, he called it, which no man
+will accept who has won the spirit of collective humanity. But he
+revolted not because he was tolerant of evil; on the contrary to damn
+sins was for him a weak and unsocial solution; evil had not to be damned
+but to be fought down. Whether this vision of Christ weeping because he
+could not save Judas was un-Christian, or more Christian than
+Christianity itself, we need not discuss here; but I am sure that the
+spirit of a Catholic democracy as transfigured in the mind of a great
+poet could not be more nobly rendered.</p>
+
+
+<p>(3) <i>Catholicism</i></p>
+
+<p>But P&eacute;guy's powerful personality set its own stamp upon whatever he
+believed, and though a close friend of Jaur&egrave;s, he was a Socialist who
+rejected almost all the ideas <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />of the Socialist school. As little was
+his Catholicism to the mind of the Catholic authorities. And his
+Catholic poetry is sharply marked off from most of the poetry that
+burgeoned under the stimulus of the remarkable revival of Catholic ideas
+in twentieth-century France. I say of Catholic ideas, for sceptical
+poets like R&eacute;my de Gourmont played delicately with the symbols of
+Catholic worship, made 'Litanies' of roses, and offered prayers to
+Jeanne d'Arc, walking dreamily in the procession of 'Women Saints of
+Paradise', to 'fill our hearts with anger'.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" /><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> The Catholic adoration
+of women-saints is one of the springs of modern poetry. At the close of
+the century of Wordsworth and Shelley, the tender Nature-worship of
+Francis of Assisi contributed not less to the recovered power of
+Catholic ideas in poetry, and this chiefly in the person of two poets,
+in France and in England, both of whom played half-mystically with the
+symbolism of their names, Francis Thompson and Francis Jammes. The
+child-like na&iuml;vete of S. Francis is more delicately reflected in Jammes,
+a Catholic W.H. Davies, who casts the idyllic light of Biblical pastoral
+over modern farm life, and prays to 'his friends, the Asses' to go with
+him to Paradise, 'For there is no hell in the land of the Bon Dieu.'</p>
+
+<p>But the most powerful creative imagination to-day in the service of
+Catholic ideas is certainly Paul Claudel. I pass by here the series of
+dramas, where a Catholic inspiration as fervent as Calderon's is
+enforced with Elizabethan technique and Elizabethan violence of terror,
+cruelty, and pity.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" /><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> From the ferocious beauty of <i>L'&Ocirc;tage</i> turn
+rather to the intense spiritual hush before the altar of some great
+French church at noon, where the <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />poet, not long after the first
+decisive check of the invaders on the Marne, finds himself alone, before
+the shrine of Marie. Here too, his devotion finds a speech not borrowed
+from the devout or from their poetry:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'It is noon. I see the Church is open. I must enter.<br /></span>
+<span>Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.<br /></span>
+<span>I come only, Mother, to gaze at you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>To gaze at you, to weep for happiness, to know<br /></span>
+<span>That I am your son and that you are there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Nothing at all but for a moment when all is still,<br /></span>
+<span>Noon! to be with you, Marie, in this place where you are.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>To say nothing, to gaze upon your face,<br /></span>
+<span>To let the heart sing in its own speech.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There the nationalist passion of Claudel animates his Catholic religion,
+yet does not break through its confines. But sometimes the strain of
+suffering and ruin is too intense for Christian submission, and he takes
+his God to task truculently for not doing his part in the contract; we
+are his partner in running the world, and see, he is asleep!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">'There is a great alliance, willy-nilly, between us henceforth, there<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">is this bread that with no trembling hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We have offered you, this wine that we have poured anew,<br /></span>
+<span>Our tears that you have gathered, our brothers that you share with us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">leaving the seed in the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There is this living sacrifice of which we satisfy each day's demand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This chalice we have drunk with you!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet the devout passion emerges again, with notes of piercing pathos:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Lord, who hast promised us for one glass of water a boundless sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who knows if Thou art not thirsty too?<br /></span>
+<span><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />And that this blood, which is all we have, will quench that thirst<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">in Thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">We know, for Thou hast told us so.<br /></span>
+<span>If indeed there is a spring in us, well, that is what is to be shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">If this wine of ours is red,<br /></span>
+<span>If our blood has virtue, as Thou sayest, how can it be known<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Otherwise than by being shed?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>(4) <i>Effects of the War upon Poetry</i></p>
+
+<p>Thus could the great Catholic poet sing under pressure of the supreme
+national crisis of his country. Poetry at such times may become a great
+national instrument&mdash;a trumpet whence Milton or Wordsworth, Arndt or
+Whitman, blow soul-animating strains. The war of 1914 was for all the
+belligerent peoples far more than a stupendous military event. It
+shattered the patterns of our established mentality, and compelled us to
+seek new adjustments and support in the chaotically disorganized world.
+The psychical upheaval was most violent in the English-speaking peoples,
+where the military shock was least direct; for here a nation of
+civilians embraced suddenly the new and amazing experience of battle.
+Here too, the imaginatively sensitive minds who interpret life through
+poetry, and most of all the youngest and freshest among them, themselves
+shared in the glories and the throes of the fight as hardly one of the
+signers of our most stirring battle poetry had ever done before. How did
+this new and amazing experience react upon their poetry? This, our final
+question, is perhaps the crucial one in considering the tendencies of
+recent European poetry.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place it enormously stimulated and quickened what was
+deepest and strongest in the energies and qualities which had been
+apparent in our latter day poetry before. They had sought to clasp life,
+to live, <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />not merely to contemplate, experience; and here indeed was
+life, and death, and both to be embraced. Here was adventure indeed, but
+one whose grimness made romance cheap, so that in this war-poetry, for
+the first time in history, the romance and glamour of war, the pomp and
+circumstance of military convention, fall entirely away, and the
+bitterest scorn of these soldier-poets is bestowed not on the enemy, but
+on those contemplators who disguised its realities with the camouflage
+of the pulpit and the editorial arm-chair. Turn, I will not say from
+Campbell or from Tennyson, but from Rudyard Kipling or Sir H. Newbolt,
+to Siegfried Sassoon, and you feel that you have got away from a
+literary convention, whether conveyed in the manners of the barrack-room
+or of the public-school, to something intolerably true, and which holds
+the poet in so fierce a grip that his song is a cry.</p>
+
+<p>But if the war has brought our poets face to face with intense kinds of
+real experience, which they have fearlessly grasped and rendered, its
+grim obsession has not made them cynical, or clogged the wings of their
+faith and their hope. I will not ask how the war has affected the
+idealism of others, whether it has left the nationalism of our press or
+the religion of our pulpits purer or more gross than it found them. But
+of our poetry at least the latter cannot be said. In Rupert Brooke the
+inspiration of the call obliterated the last trace of dilettante youth's
+pretensions, and he encountered darkness like a bride, and greeted the
+unseen death not with a cheer as a peril to be boldly faced, but as a
+great consummation, the supreme safety. How his poetry would have
+reacted to the actual experience of war we can only guess. But in
+others, his friends and comrades, the fierce immersion in the welter of
+ruin and pain and filth and horror and death brought only a more superb
+faith in the power of man's <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />soul to rise above the hideous obsession of
+his own devilries, to retain the vision of beauty through the riot of
+foul things, of love through the tumult of hatreds, of life through the
+infinity of death. True this was not a new power: poetry to be poetry
+must always in some measure possess it. What was individual to the poets
+was that this power of mastering actuality went along in them with the
+fierce and eager immersion in it; the thrill of breathing the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">'calm and serene air<br /></span>
+<span>Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot<br /></span>
+<span>Which men call earth,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>with the thrill of seeing and painting in all its lurid colouring the
+volcanic chaos of this 'stir and smoke' itself. Thus the same Siegfried
+Sassoon who renders with so much close analytic psychology the moods
+that cross and fluctuate in the dying hospital patient, or the haunted
+fugitive, as he flounders among snags and stumps, to feel at last the
+strangling clasp of death, can as little as the visionary Shelley
+overcome the insurgent sense that these dead are for us yet alive, made
+one with Nature.</p>
+
+<p>He visits the deserted home of his dead friend&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Ah, but there was no need to call his name,<br /></span>
+<span>He was beside me now, as swift as light ...<br /></span>
+<span>For now, he said, my spirit has more eyes<br /></span>
+<span>Than heaven has stars, and they are lit by love.<br /></span>
+<span>My body is the magic of the world,<br /></span>
+<span>And dark and sunset flame with my spilt blood.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And so the undying dead</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'Wander in the dusk with chanting streams,<br /></span>
+<span>And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms upflung,<br /></span>
+<span>To hail the burning heaven they left unsung.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Further, this war poetry, while reflecting military things with a
+veracity hardly known before, is yet rarely <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />militant. We must not look
+for explicit pacifist or international ideas; but as little do we find
+jingo patriotism or hymns of hate. The author of the German hymn of hate
+was a much better poet than anyone who tried an English hymn in the same
+key, and the English poets who could have equalled its form were above
+its spirit. Edith Cavell's dying words 'Patriotism is not enough' cannot
+perhaps be paralleled in these poets, but they are continually
+suggested. They do not say, in the phrase of the old cavalier poet, that
+we should love England less if we loved not something else more, or that
+something is wanting in our love for our country if we wrong humanity in
+its name. But the spirit which is embodied in these phrases breathes
+through them; heroism matters more to them than victory, and they know
+that death and sorrow and the love of kindred have no fatherland. They
+'stand above the battle' as well as share in it, and they share in it
+without ceasing to stand above it. The German is the enemy, they never
+falter in that; and even death does not convert him into a friend. But
+for this enemy there is chivalry, and pity, and a gleam, now and then,
+of reconciling comradeship.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'He stood alone in some queer sunless place<br /></span>
+<span>Where Armageddon ends,'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the Englishman whom the Germans had killed in fight, to be themselves
+slain by his friend, the speaker. Their ghosts throng around him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'He stared at them, half wondering, and then<br /></span>
+<span>They told him how I'd killed them for his sake,<br /></span>
+<span>Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men:<br /></span>
+<span>At last he turned and smiled; smiled&mdash;all was well<br /></span>
+<span>Because his face would lead them out of hell.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Finally, the poet himself glories in his act; he knows that he can beat
+into music even the crashing discords <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />that fill his ears; he knows too
+that he has a music of his own which they cannot subdue or debase:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'I keep such music in my brain<br /></span>
+<span>No din this side of death can quell,<br /></span>
+<span>Glory exulting over pain,<br /></span>
+<span>And beauty garlanded in hell.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To have found and kept and interwoven these two musics&mdash;a language of
+unflinching veracity and one of equally unflinching hope and faith&mdash;is
+the achievement of our war-poetry. May we not say that the possession
+together of these two musics, of these two moods, springing as they do
+from the blended grip and idealism of the English character, warrants
+hope for the future of English poetry? For it is rooted in the greatest,
+and the most English, of the ways of poetic experience which have gone
+to the making of our poetic literature&mdash;the way, ultimately, of
+Shakespeare, and of Wordsworth. But that temper of catholic fraternity
+which finds the stuff of poetry everywhere does not easily attain the
+consummate technique in expression of a rarer English tradition, that of
+Milton, and Gray, and Keats. Beauty abounds in our later poets, but it
+is a beauty that flashes in broken lights, not the full-orbed radiance
+of a masterpiece. To enlarge the grasp of poetry over the field of
+reality, to apprehend it over a larger range, is not at once to find
+consummate expression for what is apprehended. The flawless perfection
+of the Parnassians&mdash;of Heredia's sonnets&mdash;is nowhere approached in the
+less aristocratically exclusive poetry of to-day. But the future, in
+poetry also, is with the spirit which found the aristocracy of noble art
+not upon exclusions, negations, and routine, but upon imagination,
+penetration, discovery, and catholic openness of mind.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />SOME BOOKS FOR CONSULTATION</p>
+
+<p>Pellissier, <i>Le Mouvement Litt&eacute;raire au XIXme Si&egrave;cle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Bruneti&egrave;re, <i>La Po&eacute;sie Lyrique au XIXme Si&egrave;cle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Eccles, F.Y., <i>A Century of French Poets</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Vigi&eacute;-Lecocq, <i>La Po&eacute;sie Contemporaine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Phelps, <i>Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Muret, <i>La Litt&eacute;rature Italienne d'aujourd'hui</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ladenarde, <i>G. Carducci</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Symons, <i>The Symbolist Movement in Literature</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Jackson, <i>The Eighteen Nineties</i>.</p>
+
+<p>McDowall, <i>Realism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Aliotta, <i>The Idealist Reaction against Science</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soergel, <i>Die deutsche Litteratur unserer Zeit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Bithell, <i>Contemporary German Poetry</i> (Translated).</p>
+
+<p>Hal&eacute;vy, <i>Charles P&eacute;guy</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The temper of the two realists was no doubt widely
+different. 'C'est en haine du r&eacute;alisme', wrote Flaubert, 'que j'ai
+entrepris ce roman. Mais je n'en d&eacute;teste pas moins la fausse id&eacute;alit&eacute;,
+dont nous sommes berc&eacute;s par le temps qui court' (<i>Corresp.</i> 3, 67).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Causeries du Lundi</i>, 1850 f.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Histoire de la litt&eacute;rature anglaise</i>, 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> But a Wilde who wrote no <i>De Profundis</i> and no <i>Ballad of
+Reading Gaol</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>La Forge</i>: dedicated to Gaston Paris, the greatest
+<i>forgeron</i> of his generation in the love of Old French.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Rime Nuove</i>: Classicismo e Romantismo.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Midi</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>La Paix des Dieux</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11" /><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> For this and the other verse-translations the writer is
+responsible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12" /><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Even the 'music' was far removed from the simplicity of
+pure song. The song of these poets was an incantation. Nay, painting
+itself witnessed a corresponding revolt against the 'eloquence' of the
+pseudo-realists&mdash;the 'far away dirty reasonableness', as Manet dubbed
+it, which missed the essential vision by using the worn-down accepted
+phrases of the public.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13" /><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Au jardin de l'Infante: Veill&eacute;e</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> To some types of Irish imagination French Naturalism, it
+is true, was no less congenial; hence the rift between the realist and
+the spiritual Irishmen delightfully played on in Max Beerbaum's cartoon
+of Yeats presenting the <i>Faery Queene</i> to George Moore.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Aliotta, <i>The Idealistic Revolt</i>, p. 116. Cf. the account
+of the analogous views of Boutroux and Renouvier in the same chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16" /><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Keats, no doubt, also aspired to the life of action. But
+in him the two moods were disparate, even in conflict; in Brooke they
+were seemingly fused.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17" /><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Eighteenth-century observation, in the person of
+Goldsmith, had found no worthier epithet for the great Flemish river
+than 'lazy', and the modern tourist is likely to find this by far the
+more 'characteristic'. But which had the best chance of seeing truly,
+the life-long companion and lover, or the stranger, sad, lonely, and
+longing for home?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18" /><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Les Saintes du Paradis</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19" /><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Cf. for instance the situation of Signe, in the grip of
+the brutal <i>pr&eacute;fet</i>, with that of Beatrice, in <i>The Changeling</i>, in the
+hands of De Flores.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V" /><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />V</h2>
+
+<p class="center">HISTORICAL RESEARCH</p>
+
+<p class="center">G.P. GOOCH</p>
+
+
+<p>The scientific study of history began a hundred years ago in the
+University of Berlin. Preparatory work of the highest importance had
+been accomplished by laborious collectors like Baronius and Muratori,
+keen-sighted critics such as Mabillon and Wolf, and brilliant narrators
+like Gibbon and Voltaire. But it was not till Niebuhr, B&ouml;ckh, and above
+all Ranke preached and practised the critical use of authorities and
+documentary material that historical scholarship entered on the path
+which it has pursued with ever-increasing success for the last three
+generations. It is my task to-day to direct your attention to some of
+its main achievements during the last half-century.</p>
+
+<p>The outstanding feature of our time has been the immense increase in the
+material available for the knowledge and interpretation of every stage
+and chapter in the life of humanity. Primitive civilization has been
+definitely brought within the circle of historical study. The
+discoveries of Boucher des Perthes, Pitt-Rivers, and their successors
+have thrown back the opening of the human drama tens if not hundreds of
+thousands of years, and we recreate prehistoric man from skull and
+weapon, language and legend. Anthropology has become a science, and the
+habits and beliefs of our savage ancestors have been rendered
+intelligible by the piercing insight of Tylor and Sir James Frazer. In
+its boundless erudition, its constructive imagination, and its wealth of
+suggestion, the <i>Golden Bough</i> stands forth as perhaps the <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />most notable
+contribution of the age to our knowledge of the evolution of the human
+race.</p>
+
+<p>Among the most sensational events of the nineteenth century was the
+resurrection of the Ancient East. We now know that Greece and Rome, far
+from standing near the beginning of recorded history, were the heirs of
+a long series of civilizations. Our whole perspective has been changed
+or should be changed by the discovery. The ancient world thus revealed
+by the partnership of philology and archaeology ceases to be merely the
+vestibule to Christian Europe, and becomes in point of duration the
+larger part of human history.</p>
+
+<p>The story opens with Champollion's decipherment of the bilingual tablet
+discovered more than a century ago at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The
+key once fitted to the lock, the whole civilization of ancient Egypt lay
+open to the explorer. A secure chronological basis was supplied by
+Lepsius, and systematic excavation was commenced by Mariette, who was
+named by the Khedive Director of Antiquities and established the Cairo
+Museum. The work of the three great founders of Egyptology has been
+carried forward during the last half-century by an international army of
+scholars. The interpretation of the ancient scripts has reached a
+technical mastery unknown to the pioneers, and the genius of Brugsch
+unlocked the door to demotic, which Champollion had never thoroughly
+mastered. But the triumphs of philology have been surpassed by the
+conquests of the spade. The closest friend of Mariette's later years was
+Maspero, who succeeded him as Director of Antiquities, and whose most
+sensational find was the tombs of the Kings near Thebes. Equally eminent
+as excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to
+popularize Egyptology in France, as Flinders Petrie, the greatest
+excavator since Mariette, has popularized it in England. Until twenty
+years ago the curtain rose on the <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />pyramid-builders of the Fourth
+dynasty. We have now not only recovered the earlier dynasties, but
+neolithic and palaeolithic Egypt emerges from the primitive cemeteries.
+The immense accession of new material has enabled Eduard Meyer to
+construct something like a definite chronology; but though marvellous
+progress has been made in our knowledge of the Early, Middle, and New
+Empires, a great gap remains between the sixth and the eleventh
+dynasties, and the period of the Hyksos is still tantalizingly obscure.
+Egyptian history in the light of the latest discoveries may be best
+studied in the judicial pages of Breasted, the foremost of American
+Egyptologists.</p>
+
+<p>The revelation of Assyrian civilization through Rawlinson's decipherment
+of cuneiform and the excavations of Botta and Layard in the middle of
+the nineteenth century was followed by a concerted attack on Babylonia.
+It was clear from the Nineveh tablets that most of the literary
+treasures of Assyria were merely copies of Babylonian originals; and
+when in 1877 de Sarzec, French Vice-Consul at Basra, bored into the
+mounds at Tello, the ancient Lagash, in Southern Babylonia, the most
+eager anticipations were surpassed. Texts had been found which Rawlinson
+pronounced to be pre-Semitic; but for the purpose of history the
+Sumerians were discovered at Tello. When de Sarzec died in 1901 he had
+opened a new chapter of history. The palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib,
+at which the world had marvelled in the 'forties, appeared relatively
+modern beside the vast antiquity of the Chaldean city. The chain of
+human experience lengthened before our eyes when it was realized that as
+Assyrian culture derived from Babylonia, so a large part of Babylonian
+culture, including the art of writing, was inherited by the Semites from
+the Sumerians.</p>
+
+<p>While de Sarzec was busy at Tello, an American expedition was sent to
+Nippur under the lead of Peters and <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />Hilprecht; and the long array of
+magnificent volumes which embody the results of the mission, including
+the thousands of tablets found in the temple library, constitutes the
+most important source of our knowledge of Northern Babylonia. Still more
+recently a German mission under Koldewey commenced the systematic
+excavation of Babylon itself; but its operations were interrupted by the
+outbreak of the Great War. Though no monuments have been brought to
+light in Babylonia comparable in magnificence to those of Khorsabad and
+Nineveh, Babylonian culture towers above its neighbour. Since the
+discovery in the royal library of Nineveh of a cylinder containing the
+story of the Flood, no find has aroused such world-wide interest as that
+of the Code of Hammurabi, unearthed by de Morgan at Susa in 1901. The
+massive block of diorite, eight feet high, containing 282 paragraphs of
+laws, revealed in a flash a complex, refined, and orderly civilization.
+After expelling the Elamites about 2250 B.C. Hammurabi united North and
+South Babylonia into a single State, and, desiring that uniform laws
+should prevail, issued the code which bears his name. During the last
+decade the exploration of Assyria has been resumed after a long
+interval, and the city of Assur, the first capital, has been unearthed
+by the German Oriental Society. We thus learn of Assyria before the days
+of its greatness, when it was still a subject province under Babylonian
+Viceroys.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which
+was almost a blank half a century ago, may now be tentatively
+reconstructed. The vast mass of official correspondence, judicial
+decisions, and legal documents, taken in conjunction with the evidences
+of religion, science, and art, reveal a startlingly modern society a
+thousand years before Rameses and two thousand years before Pericles.
+Babylonia proves to have been to the <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />ancient East what Rome was one day
+to be to Europe. The Tel-el-Amarna letters prove the unchallenged
+supremacy of its culture over vast areas, and the revelation of the
+religious debt of the Jews sets the Old Testament in a new frame. So
+rapid is the pace of excavation and interpretation that all but the most
+recent narratives of the Ancient East are out of date. If we master
+Leonard King's sumptuous volumes on Babylonia and the latest edition of
+the first volume of Eduard Meyer's incomparable <i>History of Antiquity</i>,
+we need go no farther afield.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely if at all less remarkable has been the discovery of an advanced
+civilization in Crete in the second and third millenniums before Christ.
+While in Egypt and Mesopotamia the frontiers of knowledge were pushed
+back, in Crete an unknown world was brought to light. Its romantic
+interest was intensified by the establishment of an historic foundation
+for one of the most celebrated legends of the ancient world. How the
+Minotaur devoured the tribute of youths and maidens in the labyrinth,
+how Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a
+sword to slay the Minotaur and a thread to retrace his steps, was known
+to every Greek child and has thrilled the imagination of the centuries.
+The exploration of the city called by Homer 'Great Knossus' was among
+the ambitions of Schliemann; but it was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans,
+whose labours have outlined a series of chapters in Cretan history
+extending two thousand years before the destruction of the palace about
+the year 1400. Though the Minoan language still defies attack, the
+frescoes, sculptures, and objects of art tell their tale of a luxurious
+and peace-loving community, closely connected with Egypt and forming one
+of the main sources of the Greek culture of a later age.</p>
+
+<p>Most of us are old enough to remember the thrill of excitement when Susa
+and Knossus, if not Tello or Thebes, <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />yielded up their romantic secrets;
+but the generation now growing to manhood may experience similar
+emotions as it watches the ghost of the Hittite Empire materialize
+before its eyes. The meagre references in the Old Testament have been
+supplemented by Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, revealing an
+important Power in Northern Syria and Asia Minor for a thousand years
+before it was swallowed up by Assyria. During the last twenty years
+Hittite remains, marked by crude vigour rather than by a sense of
+beauty, have been discovered all over Asia Minor and in the northern
+reaches of the great Mesopotamian plain. In 1911 the British Museum
+undertook the excavation of Carchemish on the Euphrates, the capital of
+the North Syrian sector of the Empire; but the most precious results
+have been achieved by Winckler at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the
+Cappadocian portion of the Hittite dominions, which yielded a library of
+20,000 tablets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now stored in
+the museum at Constantinople. A few bilingual inscriptions have
+furnished valuable clues; but the world still eagerly awaits the coming
+of a new Champollion to unlock the doors of the treasure-house. Winckler
+himself died in 1913; but in 1915 the Austrian Professor Hrozny startled
+the world by proclaiming his conviction that Hittite was an
+Indo-European language. Whether or no his contention is confirmed,
+orientalists of both hemispheres are hot in pursuit, and it is no rash
+prophecy that within a decade scholars will read Hittite as they now
+read cuneiform and hieroglyphics, and new chapters of incalculable
+importance will be added to the story of the Ancient East.</p>
+
+<p>The recovery of the political and religious history of the empires
+surrounding Palestine has run parallel with the application of critical
+methods to the Jewish scriptures. To read Ewald's <i>History of the People
+of Israel</i>, which was <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />regarded as dangerous by pious folk in the middle
+of last century, is to realize the progress of Semitic studies. The
+great revolution in our conception of the Old Testament which rendered
+Ewald out of date was accomplished by Wellhausen's <i>Prolegomena to the
+History of Israel</i>. That the arrangement of the Canon was utterly
+misleading, that the Prophets were earlier than the priestly code and
+that the Psalms for the most part were later than both, was proclaimed
+in the writings and lectures of Vatke and Graf, Kuenen and Reuss; but it
+was not till their discoveries were confirmed and elaborated by
+Wellhausen that they won their way, and it was generally recognized that
+their reconstruction alone rendered the religious development of the
+Jews intelligible. This outline was shortly after filled in by Stade in
+the first critical history of Israel; but his emphasis on the falsity of
+tradition was overdone, and subsequent critics, while accepting the late
+redaction of the law, have argued that parts of it are far older, in
+substance if not in form, than Wellhausen and his disciple were prepared
+to allow.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the Jews owes much less to archaeological research on the
+arena of their historic life than Egypt or Mesopotamia. No splendid
+buildings or sculptures have been brought to light, and the inscriptions
+are few. But British, American, and German excavators have flashed light
+far back into the third millennium, and a partial excavation of
+Jerusalem has revealed a network of prehistoric tunnels and aqueducts.
+The historic life of Gezer has been minutely revealed by Macalister,
+with the strata of seven cities reaching back to the neolithic age. The
+most piquant result of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the
+Philistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris
+of two thousand years. Far more light, however, has been thrown on the
+religious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />their
+borders. The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of
+the oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished
+into thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered
+to which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her
+religion. The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues
+to be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its
+recognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and
+to provide a new background for the religious history of the world. The
+relation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other
+branches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith,
+and has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James
+Frazer on the <i>Folklore of the Old Testament</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very
+different aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote,
+Thirlwall, and even Curtius. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Tiryns,
+and Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable
+impetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost
+pathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to
+light, and much of his work has had to be done again by D&ouml;rpfeld.
+Despite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before
+Solon remains very dark. Barely second in importance to the discoveries
+of Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of
+Athens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and
+has been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of
+living Hellenists. With the growing mass of new literary material,
+inscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery
+of innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor
+and Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />have been made.
+Professor Bury's narrative, at once scientific and popular, has
+summarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the
+most authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of
+Eduard Meyer's vast survey of antiquity. 'For the great tasks of
+history', he writes, 'salvation is only to be found when it becomes
+conscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern
+times. Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean
+peoples can its real nature be seized.' This colossal task, which proved
+beyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin
+Professor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it
+single-handed. The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by
+Grote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen,
+dwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence
+through the conquests of Alexander.</p>
+
+<p>Greek culture has received no less attention than Greek politics. The
+Homeric problem continues to exert an irresistible attraction. Every
+expert from Wilamowitz to Gilbert Murray and Walter Leaf adds to our
+comprehension of the epic; but no positive results have been
+established, and Holm uttered the gloomy prophecy that we shall never
+know whether Homer existed, who he was, or what he wrote. On the other
+hand we have gained a deeper insight into the early mind and soul of
+Greece, thanks in large measure to a group of English scholars with Jane
+Harrison at their head. Rohde's <i>Psyche</i>, the most illuminating treatise
+on any branch of Greek religion, has traced the conception of
+immortality through the ages. The later editions of Zeller's <i>Philosophy
+of the Greeks</i>, first published in 1851, kept pace with the progress of
+scholarship, and remains one of the glories of German scholarship. The
+more recent work of the Austrian Gomperz has won almost equal
+popularity, without <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />placing its predecessor on the shelf. In the realm
+of literature the most interesting event has been the recovery of the
+poems of Bacchylides and Herondas, fragments of Sappho and Pindar,
+Euripides and Sophocles and Menander; and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which
+have already produced undreamed-of treasures, may well have in store for
+us further glad surprises. The attempt to assess the influence of
+economic factors, courageously undertaken by B&ouml;ckh and somewhat
+neglected after his death, has in recent years been renewed, with the
+fruitful results familiar to us in Zimmern's realistic picture of Athens
+in the fifth century.</p>
+
+<p>The history of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the
+activity of a single man. The most personal and popular of Mommsen's
+works, the <i>Roman History till the death of Caesar</i>, the greatest effort
+of his genius though not of his scholarship, was published as far back
+as 1854, and carried his name all over the world. He next turned to
+special departments of research, pouring forth in rapid succession his
+treatises on Chronology, Coinage, the Digest, and above all the
+<i>Staatsrecht</i>, the largest and in his opinion the most important of his
+works, and perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise in historical
+literature. Meanwhile the <i>Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum</i>, which he
+edited for the Berlin Academy, was the main occupation and the most
+enduring monument of his life. He had devoted himself to Latin epigraphy
+and had edited the Sammite and Neapolitan inscriptions before the
+publication of the Roman History. The first instalment of the Corpus
+appeared in 1863, and the great scholar lived to hail the appearance of
+nearly twenty volumes, half of them edited by himself. The Inscriptions
+rendered possible a history of the Empire, and the whole world hoped
+that the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey
+of the provinces. <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />The closing years of his life were devoted to a
+gigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes,
+Cassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus
+enlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the
+Middle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no
+immaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The
+imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating
+with a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of
+a classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since
+Scaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was
+like modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of
+Augustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.</p>
+
+<p>Mommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration
+has been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His
+successors naturally confine themselves to some special province or
+period. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history
+of the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century.
+Ferrero's <i>Greatness and Decline of Rome</i>, though frowned on by
+scholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the
+Republic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social
+crises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were
+due to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth,
+expenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in
+different sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as
+Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille
+Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs
+on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but
+the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of
+<a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made
+by Fustel de Coulanges in <i>La Cit&eacute; Antique</i>, which offered a complete
+interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious
+but more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by
+Warde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively
+analysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedl&auml;nder,
+Boissier, and Dill. Meanwhile archaeology contributes a steady stream of
+new material. Boni's excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have
+produced sensational results. The unveiling of Pompeii moves slowly
+forward, and that of Ostia, the port of Rome, has begun. The
+resurrection of Herculaneum should be witnessed by the next generation
+if not by our own.</p>
+
+<p>A more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman
+Empire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church. In the middle
+decades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an
+historical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves
+whether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring
+than his writings. Weisz&auml;cker, his successor at T&uuml;bingen, in his
+<i>Apostolic Age</i>, described with consummate scholarship and passionless
+serenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities.
+The necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity
+has grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as
+Sch&uuml;rer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into
+which Christ was born. The constitution of the primitive Church, too
+long hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied
+with welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch. But no man, alive or
+dead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack. His History of Dogma,
+his vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of
+the Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />Constantine, are
+inseparable companions of the student who means business. The treasures
+of the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the
+publication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome. The history of the
+early Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has
+been enriched by Ramsay's explorations in Asia Minor. While the best
+work naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are
+occasionally attempted by scholars of the first class. Renan's sparkling
+volumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be
+read with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather
+to literature than to science. If we desire a readable summary of the
+scholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the
+Catholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor
+Gwatkin.</p>
+
+<p>Imperial Rome and the Christian Church meet and blend in the Byzantine
+Empire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon 'a tedious and
+uniform tale of weakness and misery'. Its services to civilization and
+the greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by
+Finlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most
+considerable work of English historical literature since the <i>Decline
+and Fall</i>. In the half-century that has elapsed since its completion,
+the exploration of a thousand years has gone busily forward. The lead
+was taken in France by Rambaud, Schlumberger, and Diehl, the latter of
+whom was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as first occupant
+of the Chair created in Paris in 1899. Greater than any of the three was
+Krumbacher, the prince of German Byzantinists, for whom a Chair was
+founded at Munich in 1892, and whose encyclopaedic survey of Byzantine
+literature is beyond comparison the most important single work in this
+field of historical study. England is worthily represented by Professor
+Bury, <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />whose narrative of the Empire has already reached the ninth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Byzantium has emerged from the scholarship of two generations no longer
+decadent and inert but the mother of great statesmen and soldiers, the
+home of culture while Central and Western Europe was plunged in
+darkness, the rampart of Christian Europe for a thousand years against
+the Arab and Turk, the educator of the Slavonic races. Freeman truly
+remarked that Constantinople was for ages the seat of the only regular
+and systematic Government in the world. Its administrative machine was
+the most elaborate yet invented by man, and the Court was to mediaeval
+Europe what Versailles was to the rulers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. It was indeed a bureaucratic despotism in which
+liberty was unknown, and, except in art, its spirit was imitative; but
+to preserve Greek culture during the barbarism of the Middle Ages and to
+defend it against the repeated assaults of Islam was to deserve well of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>While the Byzantine Empire carried over important elements from the
+classical world, Western and Central Europe passed under the dominion of
+ideas which were as foreign to those of Greece and Rome as they are to
+the conceptions of to-day. We have outgrown the blind contempt of the
+eighteenth century and the gushing enthusiasm of the Romantic Movement;
+but it is still a difficult task to form a just estimate of the
+character of the thousand years that began with Augustine and ended with
+Macchiavelli. It is true that our materials grow from year to year; that
+the criticism of original authorities as taught in the &Eacute;cole des Chartes
+has become something like an exact science; that thanks to Lord Bryce
+the Holy Roman Empire has become intelligible; that the structure and
+function of institutions have been patiently analysed by Waitz and
+Stubbs, Fustel de <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />Coulanges and Vinogradoff, Maitland and Gierke; that
+literature and art, scholasticism and the Universities, have found their
+chroniclers and interpreters; that every ruler and every State, every
+treaty and every council, may be studied in monographs innumerable. But
+the Middle Ages were above all the reign of the Catholic Church; and we
+are still far from agreement as to the merits and influence of that
+venerable institution which, be it human or divine, occupies a unique
+place in the story of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle decades of last century the history of the mediaeval
+Church was related from very different standpoints in the widely-read
+works of Neander and Milman; but it was only with the opening of the
+Vatican archives by Pope Leo XIII in 1881 that it became possible to set
+forth the whole story of the Papacy and to understand the working of the
+machinery of Catholicism. So vast is the accumulation of official acts
+and documents, and such technical training is required for the task,
+that we shall have to wait many years till the material is surveyed in
+its entirety and its results made available for the use of the
+historian. Some idea of the value of the Registers may be gained from
+the Master of Balliol's pregnant lectures on Church and State in the
+Middle Ages, based on the 8,000 documents of the eleven years of the
+rule of Innocent IV in the middle of the thirteenth century. The study
+of these documents, he tells us, stirred him to admiration of the
+organization of the Papacy, and convinced him of its enormous
+superiority over its secular contemporaries as a centre not merely of
+religion but of law and government; but he adds that he derived an
+equally profound impression of the abuses which ate into the heart of
+the system, of the growing bitterness which it inspired, and of the
+devastating effects of the passion to erect a powerful principality in
+the heart of Italy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />No Protestant historian is tempted to glorify the record of the Papacy
+in the last two centuries before the Reformation; but it is generally
+agreed that in the earlier half of the Middle Ages the example and
+influence of the Church were a bright light shining in a dark world.
+This notion has been recently challenged by Mr. Coulton, who, angered by
+the special pleading of Cardinal Gasquet and other professional
+apologists, hotly denounces the exaltation of the Ages of Faith. The
+Middle Ages, he complains, are the one domain of history into which, in
+England at any rate, the scientific spirit has not yet penetrated.
+Taking as his text the autobiography of the Franciscan Fra Salimbene,
+the most precious authority for the ordinary life of Catholic folk at
+the high-water mark of the Middle Ages, he draws a sombre picture of
+manners and morals and maintains that hideous vices existed in all the
+Orders long before the thirteenth century. 'Imagination', he cries,
+'staggers at the moral gulf that yawns between that age and ours.' His
+condemnation of the life and influence of the Church re-echoes in
+somewhat shrill tones the verdict of Henry Charles Lea, whose massive
+treatise on the Inquisition was rightly described by Lord Acton as the
+most important contribution of the New World to the religious history of
+the old, and whose volumes on Sacerdotal Celibacy constitute a
+formidable indictment of mediaeval Catholicism.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the origins of Christianity the most controversial of the larger
+problems of history is the Reformation; and here Protestants of all
+schools are ranged in a solid phalanx against Catholics. That the Church
+was in need of reform is agreed by both sides; but the Catholic contends
+that the evils to be remedied have been fantastically exaggerated, that
+there was no need for a revolt, and that the revolution inaugurated by
+Luther left Germany far worse than it found her. Realizing that the
+Protestant <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />view most authoritatively presented in Ranke's classical
+work on the Reformation held the field, Janssen compiled a cultural
+history of the German people from the end of the Middle Ages to the
+outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Based throughout on original sources,
+and illustrating his thesis from every angle, his eight massive volumes
+were hailed with gratitude and enthusiasm by Catholics all over the
+world. No Catholic historical work of the nineteenth century, and
+certainly no attack on the Reformation since Bossuet's <i>Variations of
+Protestantism</i>, obtained such resounding success or led to so much
+controversy.</p>
+
+<p>Janssen's object was to show that the fifteenth century was not a period
+of moral or intellectual decrepitude, with a few 'Reformers before the
+Reformation' crying like voices in the wilderness, but an era of healthy
+activity and abounding promise. He describes the flourishing state of
+religious and secular education, the vitality of art, the comfort of the
+peasantry, and the prosperity of the towns. On reaching the sixteenth
+century, he denounces the paganism of the Humanists and paints a
+terrible picture of the material and moral chaos into which Germany was
+plunged by the Lutheran revolt. The later volumes are devoted to the era
+of the Counter-Revolution and present a canvas of unrelieved gloom,
+immorality and drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and violence. Thus
+the story which opened with the bright colours of the fifteenth century
+closes in deep shadows, and the moral is drawn that Germany was ruined
+not by the Thirty Years War but by the Reformation.</p>
+
+<p>Protestant historians fell upon the audacious iconoclast with fierce
+cries of anger, and had no difficulty in exposing his uncritical use of
+authorities, his habit of generalizing from isolated particulars, and
+his suppression of facts damaging to his own side. But though it was a
+dexterous <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />polemic, not a work of disinterested science, Janssen's book
+has made it impossible for any self-respecting Protestant to write on
+the Reformation without knowing and weighing the Catholic side. Of
+similar tendency though of far higher value is the monumental work in
+which Pastor is narrating the story of the Renaissance and
+sixteenth-century Popes from the Vatican archives, which neither Ranke
+nor Creighton had been able to employ. No really objective picture of
+the Reformation can be painted by Catholic or Protestant; but a good
+deal of firm ground has been won, and the writings of Kawerau, the
+greatest of Lutheran scholars, inspire us with a confidence that no
+writings of the last generation deserved.</p>
+
+<p>Though Ranke's chief works had been published before the period to which
+this lecture is confined, his influence can be traced in almost every
+writer on modern history during the last half-century. His greatest
+service to scholarship was to divorce the study of the past from the
+passions of the present, and, to quote the watchword of his first book,
+to relate what actually occurred. A second was to establish the
+necessity of founding historical construction on strictly contemporary
+authorities. When he began to write in 1824 historians of high repute
+believed memoirs and chronicles to be trustworthy guides. When he laid
+down his pen in 1886 every scholar with a reputation to make had learned
+to content himself with nothing less than the papers and correspondence
+of the actors themselves and those in immediate contact with the events
+they describe. A third service was to found the science of evidence by
+the analysis of authorities, contemporary or otherwise, in the light of
+the author's temperament, affiliations, and opportunity of knowledge,
+and by comparison with the testimony of other writers. There can be no
+better preparation for the perils and responsibilities <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />of authorship
+than to study the critical analyses of Guicciardini and Sarpi,
+Clarendon, Saint-Simon, and many another, scattered through the sixty
+volumes of the master. And finally he taught by precept and practice the
+necessity of exploring the relations of States to one another and of
+measuring the interaction of foreign and domestic policy.</p>
+
+<p>These sound principles have been applied by the scholars of all
+countries who have jointly built up the history of the last four
+centuries. We may study the Tudors under the guidance of Pollard, the
+Stuarts under Gardiner and Firth, the Hanoverians under Lecky, without
+fear that we are being misled or that essential facts are being withheld
+from our notice. We continue to admire the literary brilliance of
+Macaulay and Carlyle, Motley and Froude; but we are instinctively aware
+that their partisanship is out of date. The same cooling process has
+taken place in France, where the passions and tempers of Thiers and
+Michelet have tended to yield place to the calm lucidity of which Mignet
+and Guizot were the earliest masters. There is, it must be confessed, a
+good deal of the old Adam in Taine's elaborate study of Jacobinism, in
+Masson's innumerable volumes on Napoleon, and even in Aulard's priceless
+contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution; but such works
+as Lavisse's full-length portrait of Louis XIV, S&eacute;gur's volumes on
+Turgot and Necker, Sorel's massive treatise on Europe and the
+Revolution, and Vandal's incomparable presentation of the Consulate rank
+as high in scholarship as in literature.</p>
+
+<p>The unification of Germany after fierce struggles within and without
+naturally deflected historical scholarship from the path marked out by
+Ranke, who had grown to manhood in the era of political stagnation
+following the downfall of Napoleon. The master's Olympian serenity was
+deplored by the group of hot-blooded scholars who <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />are collectively
+known as the Prussian School, and who were firmly convinced that the
+principal duty of historians was to supply guidance and encouragement to
+their fellow-countrymen in the national and international problems of
+the time. In his gigantic work on the History of Prussian Foreign
+Policy, Droysen, the eldest of the Triumvirate, calls four centuries to
+witness that the Hohenzollerns alone, from their unswerving fidelity to
+German interests as a whole, were fitted to restore the Empire. He
+worked exclusively from Prussian archives, and history seen exclusively
+through Prussian spectacles was bound to be one-sided. No student of
+European history would contest the value of his researches; but his
+interpretation of Prussian policy in terms of German nationalism was at
+once recognized as a fundamental error, and has long been abandoned. The
+second member of the group, Sybel, himself one of the three favourite
+pupils of Ranke, revolted in middle life, and in his two great treatises
+on the era of the French Revolution and the foundation of the German
+Empire championed the policy of the Hohenzollerns and delivered slashing
+attacks on France and Austria, their rivals and antagonists.</p>
+
+<p>The last and greatest of the triumvirate, Treitschke, the Bismarck of
+the Chair, devoted his life to a history of Germany in the nineteenth
+century which occupies the same unique place in the affections of German
+readers as Macaulay's unfinished masterpiece enjoys throughout the
+English-speaking world. Unlike the works of Droysen and Sybel, the
+<i>German History</i> was far more than a political narrative, and presented
+an encyclopaedic picture of national development. His theme was the
+conflict of the forces which were promoting and opposing the
+transformation of his country into a powerful Empire, and he judges men
+and states by the measure in which they promoted or obstructed that
+purpose. On the one side <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />stands Prussia, feeling her way to the
+realization of her historic task, on the other the middle and smaller
+states, aided and abetted by the arch-enemy Austria and deeply infected
+with the doctrinaire liberalism of France. Treitschke's stage is a
+battlefield, with the historian looking down and encouraging his friends
+with loud cries of applause. Such methods could not survive the
+realization of the aim which they had done so much to assist, and with
+Treitschke's death in 1896 the Prussian School disappeared. Its members
+were the political schoolmasters of Germany at a time of uncertainty and
+discouragement, and they braced their countrymen to the efforts which
+culminated in the creation of a mighty Empire. If the purpose of history
+is to stir a nation to action, Droysen, Sybel, and Treitschke are among
+the greatest masters of the craft. If its supreme aim is to discover
+truth and to interpret the movement of humanity, they have no claim to a
+place in the first class. The stream, temporarily deflected by their
+powerful influence, began to return to the channel which Ranke had
+marked out for it. Such works as Moriz Ritter's narrative of the
+Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Koser's biography of
+Frederick the Great, Max Lehmann's biographies of Scharnhorst and Stein,
+and Erich Marcks' studies of Bismarck and his master are as notable for
+their judgement as for their erudition.</p>
+
+<p>The cooling process noted in the Old World has also occurred in the New,
+and America of the twentieth century smiles at Bancroft's complacent
+idealization of the Puritan colonies. Even the slavery struggle, the
+ashes of which are scarcely yet cold, has found in James Ford Rhodes a
+historian who can do justice to Jefferson Davis and Lee no less than to
+Lincoln and Grant. But no American scholar compares in world-wide
+influence with Mahan, whose study of Sea-Power in the seventeenth <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />and
+eighteenth centuries, published in 1889, not only founded a school of
+naval history but was inwardly digested by distinguished pupils in both
+hemispheres, among them the Emperor William II and Theodore Roosevelt.
+The Admiral's writings owe their importance not to research, for few new
+facts are brought to light, but to the new angle from which familiar
+events are envisaged. Occasionally, perhaps, the element of sea-power in
+the determination of a particular result is over-emphasized at the
+expense of other factors; but he was the first to seize the wider
+bearings of naval history and to make the general reader aware of its
+momentous significance.</p>
+
+<p>The scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include
+every aspect of the life of humanity. No one would now dare to maintain
+with my old master Seeley that history was the biography of States or
+with Freeman that it was merely past politics. The growth of nations,
+the achievements of men of action, the rise and fall of parties remain
+among the most engrossing themes of the historian; but he now casts his
+net wider and embraces the whole opulent record of civilization. The
+influence of nature, the pressure of economic factors, the origin and
+transformation of ideas, the contribution of science and art, religion
+and philosophy, literature and law, the material conditions of life, the
+fortunes of the masses&mdash;such problems now claim his attention in no less
+degree. He must see life steadily and see it whole. We must master such
+revealing works as Lecky's histories of Rationalism and Morals,
+Burckhardt's and Symonds' interpretations of the Italian Renaissance,
+Sainte-Beuve's full-length portrait of the Jansenists, Morley's studies
+of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists, Dean Church's sketch of
+the Oxford Movement, and Merz's survey of European Thought in the
+nineteenth century, <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />if we are to understand the throbbing life of the
+human spirit. We must measure the operation of economic factors and
+forces and profit by the faithful labours of Schmoller and Thorold
+Rogers, Cunningham and Kovalevsky, the Webbs and the Hammonds, if we are
+to visualize the life of the unnumbered and the unknown who have done
+the routine work of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The fifty years roughly sketched in this lecture witnessed an immense
+and almost immeasurable advance in historical studies. The technique
+needed to turn raw materials into the finished article kept pace with
+the supply, and men learned to write the history of their own country,
+their own party, and their own beliefs, as impartially as that of other
+lands and other creeds. But the Great War has ravaged the placid
+pastures of scholarship no less than the fields of France and Belgium.
+Too many historians in every belligerent country have lost their heads
+and degenerated into shrieking partisans. International co-operation in
+the pursuit of truth, which is the condition of progress in history no
+less than in science, has been rudely shattered by the clash of arms.
+With all but the calmest minds, national self-consciousness and national
+self-righteousness have rendered frankness in dealing with the record of
+our late allies and fairness in dealing with our late enemies difficult
+if not impossible. Many years will elapse before the European atmosphere
+regains the tranquillity in which alone the disinterested pursuit of
+truth can nourish. Meanwhile it is a source of legitimate satisfaction
+that while the world was rocking to its foundations two English
+historians, Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr. William Harbutt Dawson, were
+narrating the development of Germany in the nineteenth century with a
+steadiness of pulse unsurpassed in the piping times of peace. The
+historian is a man of flesh and blood and may love his country as
+ardently as other men; but, if he is <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />to be worthy of his high calling,
+he must trample passion and prejudice under his feet and walk humbly and
+reverently in the temple of the Goddess of Truth.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Gooch, <i>History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century</i> (Longmans).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI" /><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />VI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">POLITICAL THEORY</p>
+
+<p class="center">A.D. LINDSAY</p>
+
+
+<p>Political Philosophy or the philosophical theory of the State has closer
+relations with history than any other branch of philosophical inquiry.
+It is indeed distinguished from history in that it can disregard the
+success or failure, the historical development of this or that state.
+For it is concerned not with historical happenings but with ideals, not
+with the varying extent to which different states have approximated or
+fallen short of their purpose, but with that purpose itself, not, in
+short, with states but with <i>the</i> State. Yet this need not involve that
+the ideal, <i>the</i> State, is always and everywhere the same. Ideals are
+born of historical circumstances and fashioned to meet historical
+problems, and the would-be timeless ideals which political philosophers
+have put before us have always borne clear marks of the country and time
+of their origin. The ideal which men have set themselves in political
+organization has varied from time to time. That such variation is
+inevitable will be clear if we ask ourselves what we can possibly mean
+by an ideal state. That states fall short of their ideal because of the
+imperfections of their citizens is clear enough. All political life
+demands a certain standard of moral behaviour, of capacity to work for a
+common good, and an understanding of the results of our own and other
+people's actions. Were human selfishness completely overcome, the state
+would still be necessary to correct individual shortsightedness. The
+policeman, exempt from the cares of apprehending <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />criminals, would still
+be needed to control traffic. But imagine, not that all citizens
+attained a certain standard of moral and intellectual behaviour, as the
+ideal demands, but that they were all perfectly good and perfectly wise,
+should we need any kind of government at all? Is not the supposition of
+perfection so far removed from any state of affairs we can really think
+of or plan for, that it cannot enter into our reckoning, ideal or
+practical? Every ideal takes certain facts of human life for granted
+whilst it tries to improve others. All ideal states, Plato's as well as
+others, assume certain facts about human nature and human society. These
+facts may and do vary. The Greek city state assumed that a state must be
+small, if it was to have the intensive life they demanded. The Roman
+Empire was a denial of the anarchy to which the Greek ideal had led, but
+it lost in intensity what it gained in extent. All political ideals
+assume a certain sociological background on which the state is based and
+from which spring the problems which the state is intended to solve. As
+this sociological background varies from time to time, <i>the</i> State, the
+purpose which men set before themselves in political organization, will
+vary also. The Greek city state and the mediaeval state were not
+different approximations to the same ideal. They were the expressions of
+different ideals. They rested on different assumptions, e.g. as to the
+place of authority in society. With the disappearance at the Reformation
+of one of the great assumptions on which the mediaeval state had been
+based, a new theory of the state was inevitable. The national state of
+the seventeenth century was something new in history, and Hobbes differs
+from Aristotle, not because Hobbes is perverse and Aristotle right,
+though Hobbes often is perverse, but because the political problems
+which Hobbes and Aristotle had to face were not the same.</p>
+
+<p>Two great historical facts at the end of the eighteenth <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />century, the
+French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, profoundly modified the
+basis of political organization. The modern state in consequence differs
+in many important respects from any that have preceded it. It does not
+rest on the common acceptance of authority, either religious, as did the
+mediaeval state, or personal, as did the seventeenth-century state.
+Unlike the Greek city state, it is large. Its administration is
+concerned with millions who cannot be in personal relations to one
+another, or share the same intensive life.</p>
+
+<p>With the nineteenth century, then, a new chapter in the development of
+political theory begins as the peculiar problems of the modern state
+develop. Professor Dicey, in his <i>Law and Opinion in England</i>, has
+divided the century into two periods of political thought&mdash;Individualism
+and Collectivism&mdash;one marking the decrease, the other the increase of
+the power and authority of the state. When our period begins, the day of
+individualism was passing. Ever since the Reformation it had, in spite
+of Burke, dominated political theory. Two forces had given it
+strength&mdash;one idealistic, one scientific. It represented the revolt of
+the individual conscience against the claims of authority, and as such
+was a theory which attempted to limit the power of government over the
+individual, whether by an appeal to natural rights in Locke and Tom
+Paine, or to the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the
+Utilitarians, or to the super-eminent value of individual liberty as set
+forth in John Stuart Mill's noble panegyric. The French Revolution gave
+a notable impetus to this side of individualism, with its passionate
+assertion of the principle that political institutions exist for man,
+not man for political institutions, and that all government must be
+tested by the life which it enables each and every one of its citizens
+to live. Individualism in this sense is concerned with the discovery of
+principles by which the <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />power of government over the lives of its
+members may be limited. It is not necessarily a theory of the nature of
+society. Hobbes, however, was an individualist as well as Locke, and for
+Hobbes the individual was the scientific unit from which societies and
+states were built up&mdash;the starting-point for a scientific treatment of
+society. As the French Revolution gave a fresh impulse to idealistic
+individualism, the Industrial Revolution reanimated the scientific, for
+it displayed the economic man, Hobbes's hero, come to life and a
+respectable member of society. With him came the growth of political
+economy, apparently the first really scientific study of man. From
+Political Economy Darwin borrowed the conception of the struggle for
+existence and the survival of the fittest, and from the new biology the
+doctrine of Evolution through individual competition returned to
+reinforce with the prestige of the new science the economists'
+conception of society.</p>
+
+<p>For the first half of the nineteenth century all the forces inspiring
+individualism seemed to work together, for economics and biology
+breathed a benevolent optimism which promised that if the scientific
+forces of individualism were left to work unchecked by state
+restriction, they would of themselves produce that individual liberty
+and free development which idealistic individualism desired.</p>
+
+<p>The development of the industrial revolution, however, soon made
+economic optimism impossible, and with its decay idealistic and
+scientific individualism parted company. The former retained its concern
+for individual liberty but came to see that its ideal was as much
+threatened by economic dependence as by state control, that the choice
+for most members of society was not one between state interference and
+no interference at all, but between the state controlling or not
+controlling the power of interference possessed by the economically
+<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />superior members of society. On such principles Henry Sidgwick
+justified an extensive system of state control of industry, and for such
+reason the strongest supporters of the rights of the individual have
+been found among Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>Scientific individualism, which found its unit in the economic man and
+sought to absorb in economics both ethics and politics, was not in
+essence affected by the discrediting of economic optimism. It painted
+the struggle between individuals in gloomy instead of in attractive
+colours, its 'scientific' prepossessions inclined it to a determinism
+which led easily to the economic theory of history and even, by a
+curious conversion of opposites, to the 'scientific socialism' of Karl
+Marx. In its essence it is a denial of the real existence of politics.
+For it is a theory of society which denies the possibility of a will for
+the common good and therefore the possibility of political ideals.</p>
+
+<p>It was this powerful and malignant theory which was attacked and
+answered by the modern idealist school represented by Green, Wallace,
+and Ritchie, and, in the present day, by Dr. Bosanquet. These writers
+gave us a theory of the state based on the importance and reality of
+social purpose. They went back to the theory of the Greek city state
+expounded by Plato and Aristotle, finding modern reinforcement in the
+teaching of Rousseau and more especially of Hegel. Their destructive
+criticism of 'scientific' individualism was reinforced by the teaching
+of anthropology and of historical jurisprudence, which emphasized the
+part played in early forms of society by social solidarity and showed
+the inability of individualism to account for the development of
+society. Their destructive criticism was, however, the least part of
+their achievement. They exhibited convincingly the state as the product
+of will and purpose, based on man's moral nature <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />and being in turn the
+form in which that moral nature expresses itself. In a notable phrase of
+Dr. Bosanquet's, a phrase to which he has given constant detailed
+amplification, 'institutions are ethical ideas'; moral purpose may seem
+to shine dimly enough in many actual institutions, but it is the only
+light which shines in them at all, and only in that light can their
+meaning and reality be understood.</p>
+
+<p>The main principles of this idealistic school may be safely said to have
+by this time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years
+Social Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the
+contemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has
+given precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which
+strengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that
+economic relations are possible only within the framework of a society
+which has its root in moral and political purpose, although within that
+framework they may be theoretically isolated and studied by themselves.
+Sociology, after many false starts, inspired by the mistaken belief that
+a scientific treatment of society should interpret higher forms in the
+light of lower, has now found it possible to study the manifold variety
+of institutional and social life on the basis provided by idealistic
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>As a theory of society, in short, this philosophy holds the field. It
+has been criticized of late years as a theory of the state, and as these
+criticisms show both where the idealistic theory was in some respects
+defective and also where the chief problems for political philosophy in
+the future are to be found, I shall devote the greater part of my
+lecture to these considerations.</p>
+
+<p>The idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the
+Greek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state
+they assumed an essential <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />identity between the Greek city state and the
+modern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the
+most self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have
+therefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all
+society, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far,
+however, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state
+the definite political or governmental organization should play the same
+function as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been
+mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek city state failed conspicuously to solve the problem of
+inter-state relations, and its philosophers, instead of recognizing the
+failure and trying to remedy it, made their ideal state even more
+self-centred and autonomous than the existing states around them. Modern
+Idealism, just because it glorifies the state as the necessary upholder
+of moral relations, has often found it hard to regard the state as in
+its turn a member of a moral world.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the Greek city state, just because it was small, could take up
+into itself all the various social activities of its members. The state,
+in the sense of the Community in its political organization, directed
+and inspired Society, and the distinction between society and the state
+was not of great importance. In the modern world the boundaries of
+political organization are not nearly as definite boundaries in society
+as are the boundaries of the Greek city state. There are all manner of
+associations whose members are of different states and whose purposes
+are but to a small degree inspired or controlled by political
+organizations. Modern states are not all or completely nation states,
+and the nation is not as pervading and dominating an entity as was the
+Greek <i>polis</i>. This is not to say that the non-political associations
+could do without the state, as some recent writers have contended.
+<a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />Churches, e.g., could not exist were there not law and government. Yet
+it is impossible to maintain that in any real sense they are upheld by
+the state. They clearly get their inspiration from other sources. The
+difficulty is not evaded if we go behind both political and
+non-political organization to the community in which both exist and
+which upholds them both. For what in this reference is 'the community'?
+In regard to the political association it is the special solidarity of
+people living in a certain area; in regard to the non-political
+organization it is the solidarity of a section of the world-wide
+society, marked off from the rest on a non-territorial basis. The
+community in the two cases is not the same. Hence there arises in the
+modern state, as there arose in the mediaeval, a conflict of loyalties
+between the state and non-political associations. If we divide the world
+into states whose lines of division follow the divisions of the
+organization of force, we are faced with a host of problems concerning
+the proper place in society of these force-bearing organizations, and
+their relation to other associations.</p>
+
+<p>In considering both sets of problems, international and internal, we may
+either begin with the division of the world into states, each of which
+will be an approximation of <i>the</i> State which we are studying, or we may
+regard the whole world as in some sort one society, covered with a
+network of overlapping associations of all kinds. On the former view the
+world is thought of as consisting of a number of independent
+communities, each shaping and controlling the various forms of social
+life within its own borders, upholding their moral world, and each being
+as a whole single entity a member of the community of states. On the
+latter we start with the solidarity and will to co-operate which
+pervades in all manner of degrees the whole world society, and regard
+the organization of force <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />which marks the state as being the mark of a
+settled and determined form of that will to co-operate which is
+characteristic of all forms of human association. How dominant and
+determinant over other forms of association is that special form which
+controls organized force&mdash;that is the problem before us. We are
+concerned in technical language with the problem of sovereignty.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider first the problem of international relations. The
+doctrine of sovereignty, formulated in the seventeenth century and
+crystallized by Austin at the beginning of the nineteenth, made
+sovereignty the hallmark of the state. The person or persons, to whom
+the bulk of a given society render habitual obedience, either do or do
+not render habitual obedience in turn to some other person or persons.
+If they do not, the society constitutes a sovereign state; if they do,
+it is only part of a sovereign state. The world therefore was regarded
+as containing a number of sovereign independent states. As sovereignty
+and law necessarily went hand in hand, there could be no law between
+sovereign states. There could only be world-wide law if there were one
+world-wide state. So long as there are more states than one, there are
+communities between whom there is no law. The doctrine of sovereignty
+was in its inception individualist, but in so far as concerns the
+implications, though not the basis of sovereignty, it was taken over by
+Hegel and by the English idealist school with the exception of T.H.
+Green. Idealism, indeed, always insisted that will, not force, was the
+basis of the state, but whereas in Green the state is constituted by the
+moral willing of individuals for a general good, in Hegel and in
+Bosanquet the conflicting willings of individuals are reconciled by
+their being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state. With the
+former therefore the morality of individuals is the primary fact, the
+existence of the state the secondary; <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />with the latter on the whole the
+existence of the state is the primary moral fact, the moral willing of
+individuals secondary. Just because the wills of individuals are
+reconciled, not by each recognizing certain abstract principles of duty,
+but by being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state, where
+there is no such supra-personal will there is no reconciliation of
+conflicting wills and no morality beyond and outside the boundaries of
+communities. Hence arises a conception of the state which fits into the
+absolutist doctrine of sovereignty which we have described.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing to be said about this doctrine of the independent
+sovereign state is that political facts have obviously outrun it. It was
+derived from a study of the unitary state and will hardly fit any
+federal state. It is manifestly absurd when applied to the British
+Empire. If we disregard, as we must, the superficial legal facts and
+look at the real nature of the British Empire, we must admit that the
+Dominions are neither separate sovereign states nor parts of one
+sovereign state, and that the unity of the Empire is a unity of will&mdash;a
+willingness to co-operate which has not yet clothed itself in legal
+forms, and which is not, for geographical and other reasons, as intense
+as that will to co-operate which must be at the basis of a unitary
+sovereign state. This must suggest to us that the willingness to
+co-operate admits of degrees, and the relations of communities to one
+another to have stability must reflect these degrees. The importance of
+these considerations is obvious if we think of the problems with which
+we are confronted at the present moment, when we are attempting to form
+an international organization. The problems which have confronted the
+Peace Conference have brought two things clearly to light. The first,
+that the nation state is far too simple a solution of modern
+difficulties. Self-determination will not carry <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />us very far. There are
+many cases where the boundaries dictated by nationality on the one hand
+and by the need for common organization on the other do not coincide,
+and where the only solution is one which impairs sovereignty in the old
+sense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean
+anything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which
+join it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of
+the opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied
+impairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us
+will depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the
+be-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact
+to be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common
+purposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what
+was the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching
+that the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the
+matter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes
+we are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize
+and give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The
+political organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral
+facts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the
+Hegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the
+great achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents,
+and the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without
+making one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and
+absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Let us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state
+to associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders.
+Here again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist
+theory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />political
+theory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state
+was the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state
+that was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the
+hard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution
+made no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born
+democracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of
+religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had
+become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster
+within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or
+liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against
+the people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very
+different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian,
+organizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of
+the state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral
+institution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of
+morality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern
+idealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same
+principle of state absolutism over associations within the state. The
+principle was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a
+supra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.</p>
+
+<p>Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself
+more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the
+extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an
+increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities
+to the political organization. The ideal of the <i>Kulturstaat</i> is now
+sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the
+part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the
+importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control
+of such <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their
+associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their
+loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such
+cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school,
+the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the
+doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person,
+may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from
+Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce
+for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that
+associations within the state may claim from the state a greater
+independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as
+it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their
+members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and
+complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall
+not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of
+the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and
+the state, be they personalities or not.</p>
+
+<p>Recent writers have mainly attempted to solve the problem by the
+principle of differentiation of function. This will certainly help us in
+considering the relation of church and state. For we can say that the
+task of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the
+good life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life,
+the fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The
+state will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the
+more delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and
+voluntary associations. This will not always provide a clean-cut and
+sufficient differentiation. The state must <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />make up its own mind what is
+essential to the maintenance of the good life, the voluntary
+associations may hold that what the state ordains is flatly evil, as the
+state may hold that what a voluntary association teaches is subversive
+of all that makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true
+to the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has
+arisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old
+answer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early
+Christians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are
+farther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work
+that the other has to do.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to the problem raised by the present position and claims of
+Trade Unions, differentiation of functions is less satisfactory. Let us
+first look at the problem as it confronts us to-day. There was a time
+when the state was doubtful whether it should allow trade unions to
+exist. The Political Economy prevalent in the earlier part of the
+nineteenth century taught that trade unions were either unnecessary or
+useless&mdash;unnecessary in so far as economic relations, if unhindered by
+regulations from the state or from combinations, were regarded by
+economic optimism as themselves producing satisfactory social
+conditions; useless where Political Economy had substituted for optimism
+a belief in 'iron laws' whose results no combination or government
+regulation could affect. We now see that economic relations, just
+because they are possible between men who have no common purpose, need
+regulation inspired by a common purpose, and can be affected by such
+regulation. The growth of governmental interference with industry and of
+trade unionism are part of the same movement to control the working of
+economic relations with a view to maintaining the conditions of the good
+life. Trade unions have grown and are still steadily growing in size and
+<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />importance. For a large portion of the nation loyalty to a trade union
+has become the most obvious form of collective loyalty or general will.
+This has been accompanied by an inevitable decrease in what we may call
+territorial loyalty. The result of the increase in means of
+communication and the growth of large towns has been that men's common
+interests as members of the same trade or as employees in the same
+workshop are coming to mean more and to constitute a greater common bond
+between men than their common interests as dwellers in the same
+locality. The trade union has often a more live and real general will
+than the Parliamentary constituency. Men's aspirations and ideals for
+their common life are being expressed more truly through trade union
+organizations than through Parliament. The growth in the prestige of
+organized labour is therefore coincident with a decay in the prestige of
+Parliament. Parliament, however, based on a local sub-division of the
+nation, is at present the only political organization of the nation.
+Trade union organization, as a political organization, has no
+constitutional authority, and all the general will which it represents
+can find no regular national expression. The result is that it either
+uses the territorial organization by getting men who really represent
+their Trade Union elected as members for Parliamentary local
+constituencies, to the detriment of both the territorial and the trade
+union organization, or acts as an <i>imperium in imperio</i> by making
+demands on and issuing ultimata to Parliament. We seem to be approaching
+a crisis where the trade unions are asking whether they will allow the
+state to exist.</p>
+
+<p>This is obviously an unsatisfactory state of affairs. What is the cure
+for it? Differentiation of functions, as I have said, will not help us
+here. Some writers have maintained that vocational organization should
+concern itself with industrial or economic matters, the state, as <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />we
+know it, with political matters. But can we possibly distinguish between
+industrial and political matters? If the aim of politics is to regulate
+men's actions in the light of men's common interests, the action of a
+trade union is in its essence political. Its differentiation from
+government is that it is concerned with the common interests of a few
+rather than the common interests of all. The difference between a trade
+union and a parliamentary constituency is that the sub-division of the
+general common interest which each represents rests on a different basis
+of division. The whole community might as well be organized by vocations
+as it now is by localities. There would seem to be certain advantages in
+both principles of differentiation, and one obvious practical solution
+of our present difficulties is that the supreme organ of government
+should in its two chambers represent the nation as organized on both
+principles, vocational and territorial.</p>
+
+<p>We seem to have come now to the discussion of political machinery, but,
+as in our discussion of the League of Nations, we can see that our
+attitude to such questions of machinery will vary as we regard the
+force-bearing organization with its national and territorial basis as
+the primary fact in the community, to be distinguished sharply from all
+other organizations, or regard the possession of organized force as the
+expression of men's settled and permanent will to maintain their common
+interests and safeguard the conditions of the good life. If we
+consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the
+basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization
+to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of
+common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall
+recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents
+only one form of such ramification.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />The view that political action is not confined to constitutional and
+governmental channels will not imply that we must give up the
+distinction between society and the state. For, on the one hand, trade
+unions have only arisen because of the special need for a <i>common</i>
+safeguarding of common interests produced by economic relations.
+Economic relations need to be controlled by, but cannot be superseded
+by, politics. On the other hand, as we have seen, the work of such
+associations as churches is different in kind from the work done by
+political organizations. The inculcation and development of moral ideals
+and the safeguarding of the conditions of the good life are
+complementary functions. Each is impossible without the other. But that
+does not make them identical, however closely interfused they may be.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, we accept the political theory of idealism as a theory of
+society, we must recognize in social life the distinction between
+ethical, economic, and political relations, and the task before
+Political Theory is to define the relations between politics and
+economic activities on the one side and ethical activities on the other,
+and that in a society which is not confined within the bounds of a
+single nation state. The intricate ramifications of vast economic
+undertakings and the common aspirations and ideals of humanity are but
+signs of a solidarity of mankind that political philosophy must
+recognize in all the problems it has to face.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Green, <i>Principles of Political Obligation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Bosanquet, <i>Philosophical Theory of the State</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Barker, <i>Political Thought in England from Spencer to to-day</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Hobhouse, <i>The Metaphysical Theory of the State</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Figgis, <i>Churches in the Modern State</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Cole, <i>Labour in the Commonwealth</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Cole, <i>Self Government in Industry</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Delisle Burns, <i>The Morality of Nations</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII" /><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />VII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" /><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p class="center">C.R. FAY</p>
+
+
+<p>I. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842</p>
+
+<p>1. Let us hover in fancy over the industrial scene in 1842, and
+photograph a stage of the economic conflict which the people of England
+were waging then with the forces which held them in thrall.</p>
+
+<p>Our photograph shows us great white lines, continuous or destined to
+become continuous; they are numerous in Durham and Lancashire, and the
+newest lead up to and away from London. These white lines are the new
+railroads of England, and the myriad ant-heaps along them are the
+navvies. In the year 1848 their numbers had risen to 188,000.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" /><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>What is a navvy and how does he live? The navvy is an inland navigator
+who used to dig dykes and canals and now constructs railroads. In the
+forties the navvies are getting 5<i>s.</i> a day, and for tunnelling and
+blasting even more, but they are a rowdy crowd, and many of them are
+Irish. Said the Sheriff substitute of Renfrewshire in 1827: 'If an
+extensive drain, or canal, or road were to make that could be done by
+piecework, I should not feel in the least surprised to find that of 100
+men employed at it, 90 were Irish.'<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" /><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> In 1842 they are building
+railroads, <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />and when they and the Highlanders are on the same job, it is
+necessary to segregate them in order to avoid a breach of the peace. The
+Irish sleep in huts and get higher pay than the natives who are lodged
+in the neighbouring cottages. The English navvy too keeps out the
+Irishman if he can. On a track in Northamptonshire, 'There is only one
+Irishman on the work, for they would not allow any other Irishman.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" /><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the South of England wages are lower and the navvies are less expert.
+In South Devon 'very few North countrymen; they are men who have worked
+down the line of the Great Western; that have followed it from one
+portion to another'.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" /><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> The riff-raff from the villages cannot work
+stroke for stroke with the navvy. 'In tilting the waggons they could,
+but in the barrow runs it requires practice and experience.'<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" /><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>The high wages of the navvy are offset by the disadvantages of his
+employment. He is lucky if he gets the whole of his earnings in cash. In
+the Trent Valley they are paid once a month, 'but every fortnight they
+receive what is called &quot;sub&quot; that is subsistence money, and between the
+times of subsistence money and times of the monthly payment, they may
+have tickets by applying to the time-keeper, or whoever is the person to
+give them out, for goods; and those tickets are directed to a certain
+person; they cannot go to any other shop.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" /><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>The huts in which they live are little better than pigsties, and
+especially bad for regular navvies, who take their families about with
+them. In South Devon, 'man, woman, and child all sleep exposed to one
+another.'<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" /><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> On a section of the London and Birmingham Railway <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />fever
+and small-pox broke out. 'I have seen', says an eye-witness, 'the men
+walking about with the small-pox upon them as thick as possible and no
+hospitals to go to.'<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" /><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> The country people, the witness continues, make
+money by letting rooms double. When one lot came out, another lot went
+in.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the navvy's life at work and at rest.</p>
+
+
+<p>2. If we can suppose that our camera is capable of distinguishing
+centres of industrial activity, then our picture will give us 'vital'
+patches, which stand out against a background of deadness. This deadness
+is rural England.</p>
+
+<p>What is the condition of the rural counties of Wessex? 'Everywhere the
+cottages are old, and frequently in a state of decay.' 'Ignorance of the
+commonest things, needle-work, cooking, and other matters of domestic
+economy, is ... nearly universally prevalent.'<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" /><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> To make both ends
+meet the wife has abandoned her now useless spinning-wheel and hired
+herself out to hoe turnips or pick stones.</p>
+
+<p>On the little farms inside the factory districts of Lancashire and
+Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable
+livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more
+acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by
+exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern
+peasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very
+intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in
+Northumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive
+to the advantages of knowledge, and eager to acquire it; it is a rare
+thing to find a grown-up <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />labourer who cannot read and write and who is
+not capable of keeping his own accounts.'<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" /><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> The same sort of thing was
+said of Northumberland in 1869: 'If all England had been like
+Northumberland, this commission ought never to have been issued.' The
+Commissioner found that though the labourers worked harder and longer
+than in the South they were not working against starvation. They were
+enjoying a rough plenty, which included fresh milk. The rest of the
+family earned sufficient to leave the married woman in her home and no
+children under twelve were employed in field labour.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" /><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here then in Northumberland there is a decent country life, but
+elsewhere there is an atmosphere of deadness; and it is this deadness of
+the countryside which explains the horror that new comers to industrial
+regions frequently expressed at the prospect of a forcible return to the
+parish of their origin.</p>
+
+<p>'I was told,' says a visitor to Lancashire in 1842, 'that there had been
+several instances of death by sheer starvation. On asking why
+application had not been made to the commissioner of the parish for
+relief, I was informed that they were persons from agricultural
+districts who, having committed an act of vagrancy, would be sent to
+their parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of
+some manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm
+labourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to
+me, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours
+in two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the
+story, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of
+prejudice or ignorance.'<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" /><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />3. Though there is little peasant life in England, there is life of a
+feverish desperate order for many who live in country places. These
+people are not farm workers nor yet are they craftsmen who supply the
+industrial needs of the village. They are feeders to the towns, engaged
+in what is misnamed 'domestic industry'. The life they lead is a sordid
+replica of an all too sordid original.</p>
+
+<p>Cobbett in a tirade against the Lords of the Loom<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" /><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> idealized the
+old-time union of agriculture and manufacture. The men should work in
+the fields, while the women and children stayed at home at their
+spinning wheels, making homespun for the family garments. But the
+picture was a vanishing one even in his day. Domestic industry does not
+mean this. The rural distress revealed in the Hand-loom Weavers
+Commission is the distress of specialized hand-workers, male and female,
+who are clinging desperately to the worst-paid branch of a dying trade.
+The worsted industry of East Anglia is perishing, defeated by the
+resources of Yorkshire, of which the power-loom is only one. The cloth
+trade in the Valley of Stroud (Gloucester) is a shadow of its former
+self. It has lost the power of recovering from a depression. The next
+period of slackness that comes along may bankrupt the business and rob a
+village of specialized hand-workers of their main employment.</p>
+
+<p>In Devonshire, the serge trade, which used to give employment to looms
+in almost every town and village, has become so unremunerative that it
+has passed into the hands of the wives and daughters of mechanics and
+agricultural labourers. In Oxfordshire in 1834, we are told by the Poor
+Law Commissions of that year, glove and lace making were vanishing
+occupations. In the neighbourhood of Banbury 'some make lace and gloves
+<a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />in the villages. Formerly spinning was the work for women in the
+villages, now there is scarcely any done.'<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" /><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Since 1834 the process of disintegration had proceeded apace.</p>
+
+<p>We must not, however, convey the impression that domestic industry in
+1842 had all but vanished from the countryside. In its ancient
+strongholds it still endures, but it is in an unhealthy condition, and
+the towns are sucking its life-blood away.</p>
+
+<p>To illustrate this, let us describe the course of a boom in domestic
+industry and study how the trade boom of 1833-7 reached through to the
+country silk weavers in Essex and other places all around London. The
+terms which we usually apply to the cultivation of land are apposite.
+The town workers represent the intensive margin of cultivation, the
+country workers the extensive margin. First of all the Spitalfield
+weavers, who have been short of work, have more work given to them. The
+weavers' wives also get work, and their boys and girls who never were on
+a loom before are now put to the trade. Fresh hands are introduced. From
+the Metropolis the demand for labour pushes outwards over the country.
+Recourse is had to 'inferior soils'. Old weavers in the villages get
+work, together with their wives and families. Even farm labourers are
+impressed. Blemishes for which at other times deductions would be
+claimed are now over-looked. Carts are sent round to the villages and
+hamlets with work for the weavers, so that time may not be lost in going
+to the warehouses to take back or carry home work. Then comes the ebb:
+'the immediate effect is that all the less skilful workmen, the
+dissolute and disorderly, are denied work; the third and fourth looms,
+those worked by the sons and daughters of the weavers, are all thrown
+out of use'. The intensive<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />ness of cultivation has been reduced in the
+towns, the least remunerative no longer pays.</p>
+
+<p>The ebb of the tide, which reduces the quantity of employment in the
+towns, leaves the country districts high and dry. 'At such times the
+country towns and villages to which work is liberally sent, when there
+is a demand for goods, suffer still more. A staff or skeleton only is
+kept in pay, and that chiefly with a view to operations when a demand
+returns.'<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" /><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> A skeleton&mdash;well said.</p>
+
+<p>Occasional cultivation is bad for land, and worse for human beings. The
+ribbon-weaving villages north of Coventry are a disorderly eruption from
+the town. Coventry itself has the better-paid 'engine weaving'; the
+rural districts have the 'single hand trade'. The country workers, say
+the Commissioners, 'retain most of their original barbarism with an
+accession of vice'. The yokels who went out to the French wars innocent
+boys returned confirmed rogues. Bastardy is greater than ever, despite
+the new Poor Law. 'It may surprise the denouncers of the factory system
+to find all the vices and miseries which they attribute to it,
+flourishing so rankly in the midst of a population not only without the
+walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large
+town.'<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" /><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise
+us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the
+rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of
+domestic industry marks the half-way house to full capitalism.</p>
+
+
+<p>4. Let us now journey to the factory districts of Lancashire and the
+West Riding of Yorkshire where town <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />lies close upon town, and the tall
+chimneys envelop in smoke the cottages in which hand-loom weavers work
+and the children of hand-loom weavers sleep. Let us suppose that we have
+found our position by Leeds. We should like to follow the track of the
+new railroads, for we have in our pocket a small green book:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Railway Travelling'.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'10th Mo. 19th, 1839.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Price Sixpence.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Bradshaw tells us that we can get from Littleborough to Manchester in 11
+hours&mdash;via Rochdale, Heywood, and Millshill&mdash;but it is not clear how we
+are to get to Littleborough. So we follow an alternative route, the
+canal. It is a fashionable method of transit for mineral traffic and
+paupers. Mr. Muggeridge, the emigration agent, tells us how he
+transported the southern paupers in 1836. 'The journey from London to
+Manchester was made by boat or waggon, the agents assisting the
+emigrants on their journey.'<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" /><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> When we got up our geography for the
+tour out of Thomas Dugdale's 'England and Wales' this is what we read at
+every turn: 'Keighley: in the deep valley of the Aire, its prosperity
+had been much increased by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which passes
+within two miles.' 'Skipton: in a rough mountainous district. The trade
+has been greatly facilitated by the proximity of the town to the Leeds
+and Liverpool Canal.' So the Leeds and Liverpool canal shall be our
+guide.</p>
+
+<p>We leave Bradford, Halifax, and the worsted districts to the left of us,
+and passing by Shipley, approach the cotton district near the Lancashire
+border. 'The township of Shipley is the western-most locality of the
+Leeds clothing districts; it runs like a tongue into the worsted
+<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />district. In like manner the worsted district blends with the cotton
+district at Steeton, Silsden, and Addingham.' We are passing, the
+Commissioner tells us, from high wages to low. 'The cloth weavers of
+Shipley work for wages little, if any, higher than those of the worsted
+weavers; while the worsted weavers north-west of Keighley are reduced
+down to the cotton standard.'<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" /><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>At Keighley we bend sharply south and soon reach Colne in Lancashire.
+Dr. Cook Taylor describes the conditions there in the early part of
+1842:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I visited eighty-eight dwellings, selected at hazard. They were
+     destitute of furniture save old boxes for tables or stalls, or
+     even large stones for chairs; the beds are composed of straw and
+     shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and
+     water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water
+     again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the
+     markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, 'all the
+     places and persons I visited were scrupulously clean. Children
+     were in rags, but they were not in filth. In no single instance
+     was I asked for relief.... I never before saw poverty which
+     inspired respect, and misery which demanded involuntary homage.'</p></div>
+
+<p>From Colne we journey to Accrington. Of its 9,000 inhabitants not more
+than 100 were fully employed. Numbers kept themselves alive by
+collecting nettles and boiling them. Some were entirely without food
+every alternate day, and many had but one meal in the day and that a
+poor one.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" /><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Our last stage is Burnley, where the weavers&mdash;to quote again from Dr.
+Cook Taylor&mdash;'were haggard with famine, their eyes rolling with that
+fierce and uneasy expression common to maniacs. &quot;We do not want
+charity,&quot; they <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />said, &quot;but employment.&quot; I found them all Chartists, but
+with this difference, that the block-printers and hand-loom weavers
+united to their Chartism a hatred of machinery which was far from being
+shared by the factory operatives.'</p>
+
+<p>What a comment on England's industrial supremacy&mdash;England with her
+virtual monopoly of large-scale manufacture in Europe! It must have been
+a puzzle, too, for the Poor Law Commissioners, who were then building
+workhouses in these parts for the purpose of depauperizing hand-loom
+weavers on the less eligibility principle.</p>
+
+<p>But how was it, with such a Poor Law, that the hand-loom weavers did not
+die of starvation by the thousand? If we enter a cotton mill we shall
+see why. Within these gaunt walls, which are illumined at night by
+sputtering gas-light, the factory children work, earning twice as much
+as their parents, who were too old and too respectable to become factory
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, perhaps, it is evening, but this matters nothing to the
+'melancholy mad engines', which feed on water or burning coals. The
+young people will still be there, with eight hours work to their credit
+and more to do&mdash;'kept to work by being spoken to or by a little
+chastisement'.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" /><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>'I have seen them fall asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they
+have been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep,
+after the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they
+were clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of
+bed. Half asleep they stumbled or were carried to the mill, to begin
+again the ceaseless round.'</p>
+
+<p>'It keeps them out of mischief', said the opponents of shorter hours.
+Besides, the conditions were no worse than any other industries! Factory
+work, however, as <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />the doctors show, was different from work in the
+mines. The heat and confinement of the mill caused precocious sexual
+development, whilst in the mines the result of exaggerated muscular
+development was to delay maturity.</p>
+
+<p>In 1842 conditions are better than they were in 1833&mdash;thanks to the
+factory inspectors. There is little positive cruelty, and the sight of
+deformity&mdash;enlarged ankle bones, bow legs, and knock knees, caused by
+excessive standing as a child&mdash;is rare. The problem now is one of
+industrial fatigue. The children are 'sick-tired'.</p>
+
+
+<p>5. The Midlands of Leicestershire, Notts, and Derbyshire are a region of
+red bricks and pantiles, dotted over valleys of exquisite green. So let
+us leave the smoke of Lancashire and hover here for a while. Here dwell
+the stocking workers or frame-work knitters&mdash;the people who knit on
+frames stockings, gloves, and other articles of hosiery. It does not
+look like a region of industry. There are only a few towns, such as
+Nottingham, Leicester, and Loughborough; and except for a few lace
+factories in Nottingham, large buildings are rare. The town knitters
+either work in their own homes or in shops with standings for perhaps as
+many as fifty frames. In the villages the knitting is nearly all done in
+the cottages, opposite long low windows, or in a small out-house which
+might well be a fowl-house.</p>
+
+<p>But in the streets of Leicester we can see 'life' of a sort. We can
+watch the procession to the pawnbrokers. Some of the knitters pawn their
+blankets for the day, and most lodge their Sunday clothing during the
+week. Says a Leicester pawnbroker:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'We regularly pay away from &pound;40 to &pound;50 (to some 300 persons)
+     every Monday morning or on the Tuesday. They will, perhaps, wash
+     on the Monday and get their linen clean preparatory to the next
+     Sunday, and in the <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />course of the week they bring all the linen
+     things they can spare. Friday is the worst; they will then bring
+     their small trifling articles, such as are scarcely worth a
+     penny, and we lend on them, to enable them to buy a bit of meat
+     or a few trifles for dinner.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" /><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>They are too poor to indulge in church-going or alcohol. They have no
+clothes to go to church in. Their publican is the druggist, where they
+buy opium for themselves and Godfrey's cordial, a preparation from
+laudanum, for their children. In the whole of Leicester, with its
+population of 50,000, there are but nine gin-houses. And only on Sundays
+do they get a bit of schooling. 'We have only one bit of a cover lid to
+cover the five of us in winter ... we are all obliged to sleep in one
+bed.'<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" /><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>A frame smith, making his usual inspection of hosiers' frames at
+workmen's dwellings in Nottingham, after thus spending a fortnight,
+found his health had begun to suffer from the squalid wretchedness of
+their abodes. Thinking to improve it, he went on the same errand into
+the country, but found the frame-work knitters there in a still more
+deplorable state. From the bad air and other distressing influences in
+their condition and that of their dwellings, in another fortnight he
+returned, too ill to attend to his business for some weeks afterwards.
+This occurred in 1843.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" /><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nottingham, however, with its up-to-date lace trade was usually better
+off than this. The lace factories, like the cotton mills in Lancashire,
+eased the position of the hand-workers. In Leicestershire the knitters
+had no such alternative. The more their earnings were reduced, the more
+helplessly they were bound to their only trade.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />6. 1842 is a long while ago! Let us go to sleep for thirty years and
+wake up in 1871, when the Truck Commissioners are publishing their
+report.</p>
+
+<p>West of Birmingham lies the black country, an area of some twenty square
+miles. Here, if we have read the evidence of the Truck Commissioners, we
+can interpret a dumb-show in Dudley, where the nail-makers dwell.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday mornings the nail-maker emerges from a small hovel containing
+a smithy and walks into Dudley to call on a gentleman known as a fogger,
+a petty-fogger if he is a middleman, a market-fogger if he is a master.
+The nailer comes out with a bundle of metal which he takes to a second
+house and changes for a second bundle of metal, and with this he walks
+away. (The next nailer, not so lucky, hangs about till Wednesday
+morning, waiting for his metal.) On Saturday the nailer comes back with
+his nails, enters the fogger's shop, and emerges with 12<i>s.</i> in his
+hand. But he does not go home. He slips into a shop close by and parts
+company with the shillings. In return he gets a parcel, the contents of
+which are obviously displeasing to him. What has happened?</p>
+
+<p>The nailer is a Government servant. But the Government only employs him
+indirectly. It puts out contracts for rivets and nails to contractors
+who sublet their contract, so that the work reaches the nailer at third
+or fourth hand. The Government, in the interest of public economy
+(Victorian England is famous for retrenchment), gives its contract to
+the lowest tenderer; and the policy of the lowest tender is responsible
+for the dumb-show we have watched.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has
+to change it, and this he does at the price of 2<i>d.</i> per 10<i>d.</i> bundle,
+at a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to
+wait till Wednesday <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />for his bundle is kept idling about in order that
+he may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop'
+which is owned by yet another branch of the family of fogger.)</p>
+
+<p>When the nailer and his family have worked fourteen hours a day
+throughout the week, the nailer returns on Saturday with the nails, and
+receives 12<i>s.</i> for them. These shillings he takes to the fogger's store
+and exchanges for tea and other articles. The shillings are 'nimble'; we
+commend the rapidity of their circulation to Mr. Irving Fisher. A fogger
+who pays out the shillings from his warehouse receives them back again
+in a few minutes over the counter of his store. 'He will perhaps reckon
+with seven or eight at one time, and when he has reckoned with them, and
+perhaps paid them six, seven, or eight pounds, he will wait until they
+have gone to the shop and taken the money there as they leave the
+warehouse. Then he goes into the shop himself for it, as he cannot go on
+paying without it.'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" /><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>But surely this is truck! Certainly not. There may be 'fearful cheating'
+with tea, but the nailer is not bound to go there. He is perfectly free.
+The only trouble is this: it is a case of tea or no work the week
+following. This is why, despite the Truck Act of 1831 and despite the
+known existence of the abuse, these practices are rife among the nailers
+as late as 1871, the year in which the Truck Commissioners issued the
+Report from which this scene is compiled. The plight of the nailers is
+not the plight of factory operatives or miners; it is the plight of the
+frame-work knitters, of men who are bound by the intangible fetters of
+economic need to the uncontrollable devil of 'semi-capitalism'.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />2. MINING OPERATIONS</p>
+
+<p>1. Coal was king of the nineteenth century. The first steam-engine was
+built to pump water out of coal mines, the first canal was cut to carry
+the Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first
+railroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit
+mouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive,
+began life as a trapper on a Tyneside colliery.</p>
+
+<p>Where would English industry have been without its king? In 1780 (in
+round figures) 5,000,000 tons of coal were raised in the United Kingdom:
+in 1800, 10,000,000; in 1865, 100,000,000; and in 1897, 200,000,000.
+Coal enticed the cotton factories from the dales of the Pennines to the
+moist lowlands of West Lancashire. At every stage of their work the
+iron-makers depended on coal; and the great inventions in the iron and
+steel industry are land-marks in the expansion of the demand for
+coal&mdash;Cort's puddling process 1783, Watt's steam-engine 1785, Neilson's
+hot blast 1824, Naysmith's steam-hammer 1835, Bessemer's steel-converter
+1855, Siemen's open hearth 1870, Thomas' basic process for the treatment
+of highly phosphoric ores 1878. The steamship, a novelty in 1820, ruled
+the seas in 1870; and ironclads followed steamships. The smokeless
+steam-coal of South Wales guarded the heritage of Trafalgar. By the end
+of the nineteenth century, coaling stations were an important item in
+international politics.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the people of England, heedless of Malthusian forebodings,
+multiplied exceedingly. They lighted their streets and buildings with
+coal-gas, and burnt coal in their grates. With coal they paid for the
+food and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw
+materials were offset by exports of coal and of <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />textiles and hardware
+produced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity
+and oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce.
+And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us
+look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they
+think about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?</p>
+
+
+<p>2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In
+Scotland they had just been emancipated from the status of villeinage.
+In Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere
+they were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the
+Tyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in general are making 20<i>s.</i> to
+30<i>s.</i> per week (<i>sic</i>) the pitmen here are only making 13<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> and
+from this miserable pittance deductions are made.'<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" /><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1839, during the Chartist disturbances, a Welsh M.P. wrote to the
+Home Secretary begging for barracks and troops: 'A more lawless set of
+men than the colliers and miners do not exist ... it requires some
+courage to live among such a set of savages.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" /><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> When the miners came
+out in 1844, there were thousands of cottages tenantless in
+Northumberland and Durham. For the colliery proprietors owned the
+cottages, and when the miners struck evicted them. So the miners set up
+house in the streets. 'In one lane ... a complete new village was built,
+chests-of-drawers, deck beds, etc., formed the walls of the new dwelling;
+and the top covered with canvas or bedclothes as the case might be.'<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" /><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
+Yet, for all their griminess, they had human hearts and voices. During
+the <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />strike they obtained permission to hold a meeting at Newcastle; and
+the wealthy citizens who made their fortunes out of the coal trade
+trembled before the invasion of black barbarians. But the meeting passed
+off in rain and peace. Thirty thousand miners marched in procession,
+'for near a mile flags in breeze, men walking in perfect order'; and as
+they marched, they sang, as only miners sing, songs and hymns and
+topical ditties:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Stand fast to your Union<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brave sons of the mine,<br /></span>
+<span>And we'll conquer the tyrants<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Tees, Wear, and Tyne!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Up and down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after
+life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name
+Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from
+house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He had only one message:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Lads, unite and better your condition.<br /></span>
+<span>When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear;<br /></span>
+<span>When men are scarce, men are dear.'<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" /><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Such blasphemy appalled the Government's Commissioners. But the miners
+had a zest for religion as well as for strikes. During the strike of
+1844, 'frequent meetings were held in their chapels (in general those of
+the Primitive Methodists or Ranters as they are commonly called in that
+part of the country), where prayers were publicly offered up for the
+successful result of the strike.' They attended their prayer meeting 'to
+get their faith strengthened'.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" /><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />Such ignorance could only be cured by education. Some worthy members of
+society had already recognized the fact. In 1830 a Cardiff 'Society for
+the improvement of the working population in the county of Glamorgan'
+issued improving pamphlets:</p>
+
+<p>No. 9. Population, or Patty's Marriage.</p>
+
+<p>No. 10. The Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend.</p>
+
+<p>No. 11. Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" /><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the northern miners were perverse people. In Scotland, according to
+one Wesleyan minister,<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" /><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> the miners read Adam Smith. In
+Northumberland, with still greater perversity, they preferred Plato. 'A
+translation of Plato's <i>Ideal Republic</i> is much read among those
+classes, principally for the socialism and unionism it contains; in pure
+ignorance, of course, that Plato himself subsequently modified his
+principles and that Aristotle showed their fallacy.'<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" /><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>3. The Royal Commission of 1842 on the Employment and Condition of
+Children and Young Persons in Mines disclosed facts which made Cobdenite
+England gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancashire, Cheshire, the
+West Riding of Yorkshire, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these
+districts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an
+irresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves
+disliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a
+contributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancashire, were pushing
+their children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the
+legal restrictions upon sending them to the neighbouring factories.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />A Lancashire woman said in evidence:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I have a belt round my waist and a chain passing between my
+     legs, and I go on my hands and feet.... The pit is very wet where
+     I work and the water comes over our clog tops always, and I have
+     seen it up to my thighs.... I have drawn till I have had the skin
+     off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family
+     way.'<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" /><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>The children's office was a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but
+being little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and
+close the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William
+Richards, aged seven-and-a-half, said in evidence:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I been down about three years. When I first went down, I could
+     not keep my eyes open; I don't fall asleep now; I smokes my pipe,
+     smokes half a quartern a week.'<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" /><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Except in the northern mining districts, where there were good day and
+Sunday schools and Methodism was powerful, a pagan darkness prevailed.
+As a Derbyshire witness put it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'When the boys have been beaten, knocked about, and covered with
+     sludge all the week, they want to be in bed all day to rest on
+     Sunday.'<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" /><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>In the hope of startling a religiously-minded England, the Commissioners
+reproduced examples of working-class ignorance. James Taylor, aged
+eleven,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Has heard of hell in the pit, when the men swore; has never
+     heard of Jesus Christ; has never heard of God; he has heard the
+     men in the pit say, &quot;God damn thee &quot;.'</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />A Yorkshire girl, aged eighteen, said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I do not know who Jesus Christ was; I never saw him, but I have
+     seen Foster, who prays about him.'<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" /><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p></div>
+
+
+<p>4. Just as in the East Midlands the frame-work knitters worked for
+middlemen or master middlemen, and just as the Dudley nailers worked for
+petty-foggers and market-foggers, so too the Staffordshire miners worked
+for 'butties'. Here again the workers were exposed to the petty
+tyrannies of semi-capitalism; and here again the middlemen, in this case
+the butties, incurred the odium of a system for which their superiors,
+the coal-owners and coal-masters, were responsible.</p>
+
+<p>Why the butty system prevailed in the Midlands&mdash;and in a modified form
+it prevails to-day&mdash;is not clear. In some places it seems to be
+connected with the smallness of the mining concerns or of the metal
+trades which they supplied. In South Staffordshire a contributing factor
+was the ancient and allied industry of nail-making.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions in South Staffordshire in 1843 are fully described in the
+Midland Mining Commission of that year.</p>
+
+<p>The butty was a contractor who engaged with the proprietor or lessee of
+the mine to deliver the coal or iron-stone at so much per ton, himself
+hiring the labourers, using his own horses, and supplying the tools
+requisite for the working of the mine. The contract price was known as
+the 'charter price' or 'charter'. Thus by a freak of language the
+Staffordshire miner knew by the same word the 'butty's charter' which
+was the symbol of his oppression, and the 'people's charter' which was
+the goal of his desire.</p>
+
+<p>'The butties', said the miners and their wives, 'are the devil: they are
+negro drivers: they play the vengeance <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />With the men.'<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" /><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The men
+kicked when, after working a couple of hours, they were fetched up,
+without pay, on the excuse that there were no waggons to take away the
+coal. But the butty comforted them with a bottle of pit drink, and all
+was smooth again.</p>
+
+<p>A collier related a case where 'a pike man had worked only one half-day
+in the week and got 2<i>s.</i> for it, and because he did not spend 6<i>d.</i> of
+this at the butty's shop, the latter told the doggy (the under man) to
+let the man play for it.'<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" /><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>The miners recognized that often the butty was not to blame. In the
+district north and east of Dudley, the butties got their 'charter price'
+from the coal-owners in the form of tickets on the coal-owners'
+truck-shop. What else could they do but hand them on to the men? 'He
+used to be a very good butty,' said one miner's wife, 'till they haggled
+him and dropped his &quot;charter&quot;, so that he cannot pay his men.'<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" /><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>West and south of Dudley the butties, though they did not truck their
+men, kept public-houses; and being employer and publican in one, they
+had a tight hold on the men.</p>
+
+<p>Was the compulsion to drink an oppression? To our minds, yes; as also to
+the minds of the teetotal Chartists whom the Government imprisoned, and
+of the strike leaders whom the Government's Commissioners denounced. But
+to the majority of the miners the abundance of beer was a delight. They
+objected to the butty's bullying, but they loved his beer, especially
+the feckless ones, for when wives were importunate the drunkards pleaded
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>However, all the beer-drinking could not be charged to the butties. The
+miners themselves, in their own fellow<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />ships, were devoted to it; and
+the compulsion of friends was as severe as the compulsion of butties.
+Every approach to recreation, every act of mutual providence against
+accident or disease, began and ended in beer. The day a man entered the
+pit's company, he paid 1<i>s.</i> for footing-ale, and the doggy saw that no
+churl escaped. When a lad was old enough to have a sweetheart he was
+toasted with the 'nasty' shilling. The sins of the married men were
+washed away in half-a-crown's worth of ale. The beer-shop was the
+head-quarters of the Burial and Savings Clubs. The first charge on a
+Burial Club was a good oak coffin, the second charge drinks for the
+pall-bearers, and then a glass or two for the rest of the company.</p>
+
+<p>They had lotteries to which each man contributed 20 fortnightly
+shillings. Each week a name was drawn, and the lucky man stood a feast;
+while every member, in addition to a shilling for the box, produced
+6<i>d.</i> for drinks.</p>
+
+<p>In all these festivities the butty was in the offing. When they would
+have him he presided; and so at his worst an obnoxious bully, at his
+best he was an accommodating landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Direct employment, such as prevailed in the north of England, would have
+averted much of this evil. There were no structural difficulties in the
+way of change. Direct employment would not have meant a change to
+another class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters
+and hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through
+slackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for
+accidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They
+paid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The
+system made temperance impossible for the individual; and the <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />masters,
+with the full approval of the Government, did their best to destroy the
+'pernicious combinations' by which alone a standard of sober decency
+could be promoted.</p>
+
+
+<p>5. The Report of the Truck Commissioners (1871-2) enables us to complete
+the picture. It also enables us to understand why, at this late day,
+truck was still rife in certain districts.</p>
+
+<p>Truck and Tommy, truck-shop and Tommy-shop, are convertible terms. Truck
+is from the French 'troc' = barter. Cobbett tells us how the word
+'Tommy' was used. In his soldiering days the rations of brown bread,
+'for what reason God knows', went by the name of Tommy. 'When the
+soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in
+England, the name of Tommy went down by tradition, and, doubtless, it
+was taken up and adapted to the truck-system in Staffordshire and
+elsewhere.'<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" /><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> From the textile districts it had all but disappeared in
+1871. When the cotton manufactures went to outlying dales for water
+power, they were almost compelled to open stores for their workpeople.
+Owen's store at New Lanark was, in effect, a well-managed truck-shop;
+and the Truck Commissioners of 1871 reported that the New Lanark Company
+of that day was breaking the law. But when the cotton industry was
+gathered in the towns, the need for company stores ceased. Consequently,
+after the passing of the Act of 1831, which prohibited truck altogether,
+the masters very generally abolished the stores of their own accord; and
+survivals were jealously watched.</p>
+
+<p>A collection of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in
+London, contains a copy of the Factory <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />Bill of 1833, with some pencil
+notes in Ostler's handwriting which run:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Cragg Dale Facts</i>
+
+     <i>Truck System</i>: Little altered: men knew they were imposed. They
+     pay in money now&mdash;but compel them to buy at their own shops....
+     Wholesale warehouses at Rochdale say, 'Oh! put it sideways: it
+     will do for Cragg Dale masters to sell among their people.'
+
+     <i>Song</i>: 'Lousy butter and burnt bread.'</p></div>
+
+<p>About 1842 a curious perversion of truck was prevalent in parts of
+Yorkshire. The trade depression in the Bradford district tempted
+disreputable woollen manufacturers to force on their operatives the
+products of the factory as part payment of wages. Combers were given
+pieces of cloth, workers in shoddy mills bundles of rags. But this
+utterly inexcusable fraud, no less than its more specious complement,
+the employer's store, was rooted out by inspectors and factory
+reformers. Therefore in 1854 the Government's Commissioner was able to
+say that in a factory district like Lancashire truck was not only
+non-existent but 'impossible'.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" /><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>He was right as to the factory districts, but not quite right as to
+Lancashire. In Prescot, a small Lancashire town on the fringe of the
+factory district, the watchmakers in 1871 were being paid in watches.
+The masters alleged that they only gave watches to the workers when the
+latter had orders for them, but the evidence showed that these orders
+only came to hand when the men were asking for fresh work. The
+pawnbrokers explained what happened. 'Watches', said a pawnbroker's
+clerk, 'pass from hand to hand as a circulating medium until they get
+very low in the market and are <a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />pawned.'<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" /><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> The pawnshop in question
+had 700 watches on pledge, most of them belonging to workmen in the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>In railway contracting truck was prevalent in the forties. In roving
+employment of this type it is difficult to see how some form of
+contractor's shop could have been avoided. The navvy needed canteens or
+Y.M.C.A. huts, but such things had not been thought of then. However,
+when the big period of railway construction came to an end, the question
+lost its importance.</p>
+
+<p>South Staffordshire and the Black Country were the ancient strongholds
+of truck. The campaigns against truck originated here. The nailers, the
+cash-paying masters, and the respectable ratepayers joined together to
+promote the Truck Act of 1820. Lord Hatherton, a Staffordshire nobleman,
+after three years hammering at the House of Commons, obtained the Truck
+Act of 1831. But in 1843, the year of the Midland Mining Commission,
+truck was still rife in the coalfields. The well-known Tommy-shop scene
+in Disraeli's novel <i>Sybil</i>, which was published in 1845, is taken
+direct from the Commissioners' Report. Diggs, the butty of the novel, is
+Banks, the coal proprietor of the Report. In the novel the people say of
+Master Joseph Diggs, the son: 'He do swear at the women, when they rush
+in for the first turn, most fearful; they do say he's a shocking little
+dog.' In the Report, page 93, the miner's wife says: 'He swears at the
+women when the women are trying to crush in. He is a shocking little
+dog.' One touch is Disraeli's own. He makes the miners keen to purchase
+'the young Queen's picture'. 'If the Queen would do something for us
+poor men, it would be a blessed job.' In the Report there is nothing
+about this, but there is a section dealing with Chartism.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />However, the truck-shop was gradually disappearing. Every year it
+became easier to expose evasions, and in good times the workers used
+their prosperity to slip away from the Company store. In 1850 a final
+campaign was initiated by five local Anti-Truck Associations, backed by
+the National Miners' Association under Alexander MacDonald.
+Truck-masters were prosecuted and truck was steadily dislodged from the
+coalfields and adjacent ironworks. Only in the nail trade did it
+survive, for the reason that the complete subjection of the nailers made
+it possible to practise the essentials of truck without a formal
+violation of the law.</p>
+
+<p>In the remaining colliery districts in 1871 truck was prevalent only in
+West Scotland and South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>In West Scotland it was yielding ground before the pressure of the
+unions. The companies only maintained it by active coercion. If a miner
+held out for money, they had to yield; and if they were malicious, they
+marked him as a sloper and dismissed him the first when a depression
+came. 'Black lists', said the Truck Commissioners, 'are often kept of
+slopers; threats of dismissal were repeatedly proved; and cases of
+actual dismissal for not dealing at the store are not rare.'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" /><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>
+However, the masters themselves were getting tired of it, since it led
+so frequently to strikes.</p>
+
+<p>Truck in South Staffordshire was bound up with the butty system; in
+railway construction with the system of contracting and sub-contracting,
+and similarly in South Wales, as also in the west of Scotland, it was
+bound up with and dependent on the system of long pays. In order to
+carry on from one pay day to the next, the men got advances on the
+company's store. In this way many lived permanently ahead of their
+wages. The thriftless and drunkards were always 'advance men, <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />but the
+provident miners hated it and only dealt there on compulsion'.</p>
+
+<p>The Commissioners drew a vivid picture of Turn Book morning in South
+Wales at the close of the pay month.</p>
+
+<p>At 1 or 2 a.m. the women and children begin to arrive with their Advance
+Books. Perhaps one hundred would be there, wet or fine, sleeping on the
+doorsteps or singing ballads until morning.</p>
+
+<p>At 5.30 a.m. the doors opened, and the waiters made a rush for the
+counter. Advance Books were produced, and goods handed over up to the
+amount of wages which would shortly fall due. Women took their pick of
+the articles, groceries, tobacco, occasionally a few shillings.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It is quite usual', say the Commissioners, 'for shoemakers and
+     other small tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Abersychan to be
+     paid by the workmen in goods.... Tobacco in several districts of
+     South Wales has become nothing less than a circulating medium. It
+     is bought by the men and resold by them for drink, and finds its
+     way back again to some of the Company's shops. Packets of tobacco
+     pass unopened from hand to hand. An Ebbw Vale grocer who took the
+     Company's tobacco at a discount declared: &quot;For years, when they
+     were selling it for 1<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> a lb. I used to give 1<i>s.</i>; but I
+     was so much over-flooded with it that I was obliged to reduce the
+     price to 11<i>d.</i> That would not do still, and I had to reduce it
+     to 10<i>d.</i> I told the men to take it to some other shop if they
+     could get 11<i>d.</i> or 1<i>s.</i> for it. I was obliged to do that many a
+     time, in order to get rid of the large stocks I held in hand.
+     Tobacco will not keep for many months without getting worse.&quot;'</p></div>
+
+<p>Weekly pays, therefore, were the constant demand of the miners' unions.
+In Northumberland and Durham, whence truck had disappeared long ago,
+pays were fortnightly, and the only objection advanced by the owners
+against weekly pays was the practical inconvenience of the pressure on
+the pay staff. In the North of England <a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />Iron Trade, weekly pays, the
+Commissioners found, had just been introduced. In West Scotland some of
+the coal-owners were trying to recoup themselves for the loss of their
+truck-shop by charging poundage on the men's wages. But this dodge, like
+the bigger grievance of truck, was stoutly resisted by the local union.
+Indeed, in one coalfield after another the disappearance of truck and
+kindred evils coincides with the appearance of strong County Unions.</p>
+
+
+<p>6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on
+economics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few
+suggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from
+the worker's point of view.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise.
+     Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their
+     bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable
+     copper coin forged in Birmingham (<i>vide</i> Patrick Colquhoun, <i>A
+     Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis</i>, 1800, Chapter VII).
+     The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing
+     to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk
+     with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest
+     public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in
+     notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about
+     cheques&mdash;an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their
+     Bank Act of 1844.</p>
+
+<p>     ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency
+     led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour
+     Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against
+     time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The
+     originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was
+     probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />a capitalist.
+     The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a
+     business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after
+     this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of
+     hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange
+     in consequence had to close its doors.</p>
+
+<p>     iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and
+     the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The
+     currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to
+     excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were
+     therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" /><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> said that he had in
+     pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought
+     from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their
+     house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.</p>
+
+<p>     iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the
+     currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.</p>
+
+<p>     v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the
+     world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no
+     Cobbett to denounce the resumption.</p></div>
+
+<p>We shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history
+with the motto:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone
+made the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality</i>.'</p>
+
+
+<p>3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION</p>
+
+<p>1. The student of Dicey's Law and Opinion in England is invited to
+distinguish three periods:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">i. The period of old Toryism or legislative quiescence (1800-38).
+
+     <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />ii. The period of Benthamism or individualism (1825-70).
+
+     iii. The period of collectivism (1865-1900).</div>
+
+<p>Bentham lived during the first period and his name is rightly given to
+the second period.</p>
+
+<p>The student, therefore, comes to wonder if there is anything which is
+not Benthamism. Benthamism, he says to himself, stands for
+individualism. How then can the period of Benthamism include the
+humanitarian legislation which begins with the first Factory Act of 1802
+and broadens out during the middle of the century into the elaborate
+code regulating from then onwards the conditions of employment in
+workshops, factories, and mines? How can a monster beget an angel?</p>
+
+<p>We may perhaps throw light on this difficulty by suggesting that the
+<i>social</i> trend from 1825-70 cannot be compressed into a single word.
+Individualism may suffice to define the dominant <i>legal</i> trend, but it
+conceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from
+below by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary
+association coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism.</p>
+
+
+<p>2. What Bentham was to individualism, Robert Owen was to voluntary
+association. Bentham himself was an admirer of Owen and supported his
+philanthropy, but, as expressions of a social attitude, Benthamism and
+Owenism were poles asunder. The contrast between the two is admirably
+displayed in the evidence given before the Factory Committee of 1816 by
+two representatives of the employing class, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery
+fame and Robert Owen himself.</p>
+
+<p>'In the state of society,' said Wedgwood, 'in which there is evidently a
+progressive movement, it is much better to leave things as they are than
+to attempt to <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />amend the general state of things in detail. The only
+safe way of securing the comfort of any people is to leave them at
+liberty to make the best use of their time, and to allow them to
+appropriate their earnings in such way as they think fit.'<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" /><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<p>Robert Owen thought otherwise. In a couple of answers he exposed the
+fallacy of enlightened self-interest. They seem obvious enough to-day,
+but in 1816 they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was
+asked whether he believed that 'there is that want of affection and
+feeling on the part of parents, that would induce them to exact from
+their children more labour than they could perform without injury to
+their health;' and he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not imagine that there is the smallest difference between the
+general affection of the lower order of the people, except with regard
+to that which may be produced by the different circumstances in which
+they are placed.'<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" /><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another question was: 'Do you conceive that it is not injurious to the
+manufacturer to hazard, by overwork, the health of the people so
+employed?' He replied:</p>
+
+<p>'If those persons were purchased by the manufacturers I should say
+decisively, yes; but as they are not purchased by the manufacturer and
+the country must bear all the loss of their strength and their energy{;}
+it does not appear, at first sight, to be the interest of the
+manufacturer to do so.'<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" /><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>Owen had grasped the meaning of social responsibility, and he devoted
+his life to social service. But he was too wayward to observe the
+conventions of society, and passed beyond the social pale. The factory
+reformer became the Socialist. Whether his disciples comprehended his
+<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />philosophy we may doubt, but he understood better than any one else
+their instinct for association, and he gratified it.</p>
+
+<p>It is not contended that Owen was responsible for all the associative
+effort of his generation; for with political and religious associations
+he had no sympathy. But the spirit which infected him infected others
+after him, rousing them to associate now for this, and now for that
+social or religious or political purpose.</p>
+
+
+<p>3. We may divide associations for social purposes into two classes.</p>
+
+<p>To the first class belong associations formed to secure the abolition of
+some abuse. These naturally disappear when their object is attained.</p>
+
+<p>For example, there was the Anti-slavery Campaign in which Joseph Sturge
+and other Quakers played so prominent a part. By an organized crusade of
+political education the Abolitionists induced an originally hostile
+Parliament to emancipate the West Indian negroes in 1833, and to shorten
+the period of semi-servile apprenticeship in 1838. Yorkshire was the
+home of the Short Time Committees, which organized the campaign against
+White Slavery at home. The Ten Hours Movement caused the Ten Hours Bill
+to become the law of the land. From Lancashire came the Anti-Corn Law
+League, whose story is told in another chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The second class of association was the association for economic
+betterment&mdash;the Friendly Society, the Co-operative Society, the Trade
+Union. Conceived in enthusiasm and self-inspired, these associations
+asked only of the State a legal framework in which to develop, but they
+did not win it without struggle and delay.</p>
+
+<p>The Government was anxious to encourage thrift, but the development of
+the Friendly Societies was impeded <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />for a time by legislation aimed at
+political conspiracy. The Corresponding Societies Act of 1799 prevented
+the Friendly Societies from forming a central organization with
+branches, and the Dorchester Labourers of 1834 discovered the peril into
+which the ritual of oaths might lead innocent men.</p>
+
+<p>These deterrents were removed by enabling legislation. In 1829 a central
+authority, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, was appointed to
+supervise Friendly Societies, and between 1829 and 1875 further
+privileges and safeguards were conferred. But the Friendly Society
+Movement throughout the nineteenth century was wholly voluntary. In 1911
+the situation was suddenly reversed by the passing of the National
+Insurance Act.</p>
+
+<p>The Co-operative Societies were more suspect. They crept into legal
+recognition as the children of the Friendly Society, under the 'frugal
+investments' clause of the Act of 1846, being compelled by the legal
+prejudice against association in restraint of trade to adopt this
+unnatural mother. Their real nature was recognized in 1852, when they
+were brought under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, and in
+1862, when they were granted the boon of limited liability. But the
+accident of their legal origin still survives; for they are regulated
+to-day by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1893. The
+Co-operative Movement is now drawing closer to politics, following the
+lead of most of the continental countries, notably Belgium and Germany.
+Though we cannot say that there is any indication of the State taking
+over the movement, we may note that the growth of municipal trading in
+the 'nineties was, in principle, an application of the consumers'
+association to monopolies of distribution such as tramways, water,
+electricity, and gas.</p>
+
+<p>The State was altogether hostile to the growth of the <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />Trade Union. The
+Charter of Emancipation, won by the guile of Francis Place in 1824, was
+severely curtailed in 1825. Huskisson<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" /><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> depicted in lurid terms the
+tyranny of a military trades unionism, 'representing a systematic union
+of the workers of many different trades'. It was a 'kind of federal
+republic', whose mischievous operations, if not checked, would keep the
+commercial classes 'in constant anxiety and fear about their interests
+and property'. Arnold, of Rugby, a decade later wrote of them in the
+same strain: 'you have heard, I doubt not, of the trades unions; a
+fearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or assassinate; and I see no
+counteracting power.'<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" /><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+<p>The counteracting power was their own weakness. The early militancy
+burnt itself out, and was succeeded at the turn of the century by a 'New
+Spirit and a New Model'. The new spirit was anti-militant, and the new
+model was a trade union representing the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of the skilled trades.
+The Amalgamated Society of Engineers was founded in 1850 and served as a
+model to the Carpenters, Tailors, Compositors, Iron-founders,
+Brick-layers, and others. The Trades Unions were now respectable, and in
+1867 the State recognized the fact.</p>
+
+<p>The period of collectivism is denoted by the growth of the Labour Party
+in Parliament, and the increasing part played by the State in industrial
+disputes and the regulation of wages. The nationalization of railways
+and the nationalization of mines are burning questions.</p>
+
+
+<p>4. In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the
+initial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary
+association. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a
+notion is <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the
+insistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal
+recognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of
+English social development in the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Dicey, <i>Law and Opinion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Robinson, <i>The Spirit of Association</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Hovell, <i>The Chartist Movement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Sombart (tr. Epstein), <i>Socialism and the Socialist Movement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>[Cd. 9236], <i>Report of Committee on Trusts</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20" /><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> From the writer's forthcoming book <i>Life and Labour in the
+Nineteenth Century</i>, to be published by the Cambridge University Press.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21" /><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Tooke and Newmarch, <i>History of Prices</i>, v. 356.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22" /><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Commons Committee on Emigration</i>, 1827, Q. 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23" /><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Commons Committee on the Condition of Labourers employed
+in the Construction of Railways</i>, 1846, Q. 866.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Ibid., Q. 217.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25" /><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Ibid., Q. 897.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Ibid., Q. 733.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27" /><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Ibid., Q. 193.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28" /><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Ibid., Qs. 869-78.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29" /><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of
+Women and Children in Agriculture</i> (1843), pp. 20, 25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30" /><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 299-300.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31" /><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Report of Commissioners on the Employment of Young
+Persons in Agriculture</i>, p. 64.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32" /><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Dr. Cook Taylor, Letter to the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, dated
+from Rossendale Forest (Lancashire), June 20, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33" /><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Rural Rides</i>, i. 219.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34" /><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Poor Law Commission of 1834</i>, Appendix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35" /><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Final Report, 1841</i>, p.
+18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36" /><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report, 1840</i>, Part IV, pp. 76-81.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37" /><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners</i>,
+1836.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38" /><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report</i>, Part III, p. 551.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39" /><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Anti-bread Tax Circular</i>, No. 91, June 16, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40" /><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>First Report of the Factory Commissioners</i>, 1833, p. 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41" /><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Report of Commissioner on the Condition of the Framework
+Knitters</i> (1845), p. 109.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42" /><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Ibid., p. 115.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43" /><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> William Felkin, <i>History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery
+and Lace Manufactures</i> (1867), p. 458.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44" /><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Evidence before the Truck Commissioners</i> (1871), Q.
+37,500.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45" /><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Pamphlet of 1825, p. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46" /><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Home Office Papers</i>, 40, Letter from R.J. Blewitt, Esq.,
+M.P., November 6, 1839.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47" /><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Richard Fynes, <i>Miners of Northumberland and Durham</i>, p.
+72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48" /><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> John Wilson, <i>History of the Durham Miners' Association</i>
+(1870-1904), p. 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49" /><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population</i> (1846).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50" /><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> These pamphlets are in the British Museum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51" /><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population</i> (1850).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52" /><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Ibid. (1852).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53" /><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>Royal Commission, First Report</i> (<i>Mines</i>), p. 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54" /><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Ibid., p. 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55" /><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Royal Commission, Second Report</i> (<i>Trades and
+Manufactures</i>), p. 147.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56" /><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 155-6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57" /><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Midland Mining Commission, First Report</i>, p. 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58" /><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Ibid., p. 91.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59" /><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Ibid., p. 44.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" /><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Rural Rides</i>, ii. 353.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61" /><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages</i> (<i>Hosiery, 1854</i>).
+Evidence of Mr. Tremenheere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62" /><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Evidence before the Truck Commissioners</i>, Q. 33,670.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63" /><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Truck Commission, 1871. Report</i>, p. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64" /><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages in the Hosiery
+Manufacture</i> (1854), Q. 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65" /><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Commons Committee of</i> 1816, pp. 64 and 73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66" /><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Ibid., p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67" /><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Ibid., p. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68" /><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Speech, March 29, 1825.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Letter to the Chevalier Bunsen, 1834, quoted in Strachey,
+<i>Eminent Victorians</i>, p. 197.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII" /><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ATOMIC THEORIES</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR W.H. BRAGG, C.B.E., D.SC., F.R.S.</p>
+
+
+<p>When a lecture on the progress of Science is given before a conference
+concerned largely with historical subjects, it is not inappropriate to
+point out that Science has a history of its own and that its progress
+makes a connected story. The discovery of new facts is not made in an
+isolated fashion, nor is it a matter of pure chance, unaffected by what
+has gone before. On the contrary, scientific progress is made step by
+step, each new point that is reached forming a basis for further
+advances. Even the direction of discovery is not entirely in the
+explorer's control; there is always a next step to be taken and a
+limited number of possible steps forward from which a choice can be
+made. The scientific discoverer has to go in the direction in which his
+discoveries lead him. When discoveries have been made it is possible to
+think of uses to which they may be put, but in the first instance all
+discoveries are made without any knowledge whatever of what use may
+afterwards be made of them.</p>
+
+<p>Consequently scientific progress is a quite orderly advance, not a
+spasmodic collection of facts, and in the truest sense of the word it
+has a history. In order that opportunities for this steady progress may
+be provided it is very important that this point should be fully
+appreciated. Every one, for example, is vaguely conscious that science
+played a great part in the War. As a consequence the number of students
+of science has greatly increased; manufacturing firms are awakening to
+the fact that they <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />must pay more attention to scientific development
+and are founding research laboratories. It is very important that this
+awakened attention should be well informed, and for that reason it
+cannot be pointed out too often that the scientific work which has been
+the basis of all material progress can only be turned to definite
+material ends in the last stages of its development. Fundamentally
+everything rests on the pure attempt to gain knowledge without any idea
+of the use to which it may subsequently be put. Without pure science
+there is no applied science at all. It is quite right in my opinion that
+the researcher in pure science should have with him the hope that what
+he does may one day be of direct benefit to others. But it is probable
+that he does not in his own mind confine the idea of possible uses to
+such material matters as I have mentioned above and as are so prominent
+at present. He believes that his work has a less material side whose
+value need not be explained to the present audience.</p>
+
+<p>In the general line of progress it is natural to find that there are
+certain broad roads along which the main advance has been directed.
+Students of physics and chemistry and the subjects which are allied to
+them find that they are in general considering either matter, or
+electricity, or energy. I make this classification, not from any
+philosophical point of view, but simply for present convenience. The
+first important principle to which I would like to draw your attention
+is that each of these things can be measured quantitatively. If we
+accept the weight of a substance as an indirect measure of the amount of
+matter present, then we all know we can express the amount of matter in
+any given body in terms of a fundamental unit, like a pound or a gramme;
+and the idea has been put to immemorial use. In later years we have
+learnt that electricity itself is also a quantity and that the amount of
+electricity which stands on an electrified body, <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />or flows past a given
+point in an electric conductor, as for example the wire connected to an
+electric light, can be expressed arithmetically in terms of some unit.
+Instruments are made for the purpose of measuring quantities of
+electricity in terms of the legal standard. It is one of the functions
+of a Government Institution, like the National Physical Laboratory, to
+test such instruments and report on their accuracy. International
+conferences have been held for the purpose of reducing these units to as
+small a number as possible so that people may be able to trade less
+wastefully and more conveniently, so that also the barriers between
+peoples may be broken down and the interchange of ideas as well as of
+materials may be made more easily. Without an arrangement of this kind
+it would be impossible to carry on industrial life in which use is made
+of electricity. It would be as difficult as to hold a market without the
+use of weights and scales, more difficult, in fact, since anyone can
+estimate the size of a piece of cloth or the amount of corn in a sack,
+but no one has a natural sense by which he can estimate an amount of
+electricity.</p>
+
+<p>In just the same way energy can be measured as a quantity in terms of a
+fundamental unit. The discovery that this was so was made by Joule and
+others towards the middle of the nineteenth century, and lit the road
+for further advance as a dark street is lit by the sudden turning-up of
+the lamps. All modern industry rests on this principle. We are now so
+accustomed to the idea that energy is a quantity that we can hardly
+realize a time when it was merely a vague term. If we want an
+illustration of how thoroughly we have grasped this idea let us remember
+that when we pay our electric-light bill we pay so much money for so
+many units of energy supplied; for so much energy, let us note, not for
+so much electricity, since we take into account not only the actual
+amount of <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />electricity driven through our house wires, but also the
+magnitude of the force which is there to drive it. Energy exists in many
+forms: energy of motion, heat, gravitational energy, chemical energy,
+radiation, and so on. In the transformations of energy which are
+continually occurring in all natural processes, there is never any
+change in the total amount of energy. This is the famous principle of
+the Conservation of Energy. Sometimes it is stated in the form
+'Perpetual motion is impossible'.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important forms of energy is radiation. The constant
+outpouring by the sun of energy in this form is vital to us. The fact
+was obvious long ago and that is one of the reasons why light and heat
+have interested students of science in all ages.</p>
+
+<p>There exist then three main subjects of study&mdash;matter, electricity, and
+energy. These themselves and their mutual relations have been, and are,
+the principal objects of interest to the scientific student, and from
+our strivings to understand them we have learnt most of what we know.
+All three are quantities and all are expressible in terms of units.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is one point which I have thought would especially interest
+you. A very remarkable tendency of modern discovery shows more and more
+clearly that not only are these things quantities which we can express
+in units of our own choosing, but that Nature herself has already chosen
+units for them. The natural unit does not, of course, bear any exact
+connexion with our own. This being so, it must be of the utmost
+importance that we should know what these natural units are and so be
+able to understand what Nature is ready to tell us. Nature has chosen to
+speak in a certain language; we must get to know that language.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place we know surely that there are natural units of
+matter. This was the great discovery made by <a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />Dalton in the beginning of
+the nineteenth century. When he found that each of the known elements,
+such as copper or oxygen or carbon, consisted ultimately of atoms, all
+the atoms of any one element being alike, he laid the foundation on
+which the huge structure of modern chemistry has been raised. The
+chemist takes one or more atoms of one element, one or more of another,
+and may be of a third or fourth, and he puts them together into a
+compound which we call a molecule. The molecule for example of ordinary
+salt contains always one atom of chlorine and one of sodium. Chlorine
+and sodium are elements, salt is a compound. Six atoms of carbon and six
+of hydrogen put together in a certain way make benzene. In the same way
+every substance that we meet is capable of analysis, showing ultimately
+the molecules as made up, according to a definite plan, of so many atoms
+of the various elements. In analytical chemistry molecules are dissected
+in order to discover the mode of their building; in synthetic chemistry
+the atoms are put together to make a molecule which is already known to
+have, or even may be anticipated to have, certain properties. This is
+the work of the chemist. Sometimes enormous forces are concerned in this
+pulling apart and putting together, witness the terrific power of modern
+explosives. But the same kind of handling by the chemist may be devoted
+to the delicate construction of a molecule which gives a certain colour
+to the dyer's vat and so pleases the eye that the great cloth industries
+feel the consequence, and nations themselves are affected by the flow of
+trade. After all, since the processes of the physical world operate
+ultimately through the power and properties of molecules, it is not
+surprising that the chemist's work in these and numberless other ways
+has such tremendous influence in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Here then by the recognition of the units of matter <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />which Nature has
+chosen for herself it has been possible to do great things.</p>
+
+<p>It should be observed that the atom, in spite of its name, is not
+something which is incapable of all further division; it is only
+incapable of retaining its properties on division. When an atom of
+radium breaks down in the unique operation during which its singular
+properties are manifested, it dies as radium and becomes two atoms, one
+of helium, the other of a different and rare substance. It will interest
+you to know that the airships of the future are expected to be filled
+with this non-inflammable helium.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the atomic nature of electricity came later. Faraday
+established the fact that in certain processes there was more than a
+hint that electricity was always present in multiples of a definite
+unit. In the process called electrolysis the electric current is driven
+across a cell full of liquid containing molecules of some substance.
+When the electricity passes there is a loosening of the bonds that bind
+together the atoms of the molecule, and a separation; atoms of one kind
+travel with the electricity across the cell and are deposited where the
+current leaves the cell; the other kind travel the opposite way. In this
+way for example we deposit silver on metal objects in electro-plating
+processes, or separate out the purest copper for certain electrical
+purposes. The striking thing which Faraday discovered was that the
+number of atoms deposited always bore a very simple relation to the
+quantity of electricity that passes. The same current passing in
+succession through cells containing different kinds of molecules broke
+up the same number of molecules in each cell. It was as if in each
+electrolytic cell atoms of matter and atoms of electricity travelled
+together. The movement of an atom meant the simultaneous movement of a
+definite quantity of electricity. Electricity was, so to <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />speak, done up
+in little equal parcels, and an atom of matter on the move, which was
+termed an ion, or wanderer, carried, not a vaguely defined amount of
+electricity, but one of these definite parcels.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, until the later years of the nineteenth century
+that the natural unit of electricity was manifested by itself and
+without a carrier. At a famous address to the British Association at
+York in 1881 Sir William Crookes described the first marvellous
+experiments in which this feat had been accomplished, though there was
+still to come a long controversy before the interpretation was clearly
+accepted. It is now definitely established that there is a fundamental
+atom of electricity which we now call the electron. As we all know
+electrification is of two kinds&mdash;a positive and a negative. The electron
+is of the negative kind. There does not appear to be a corresponding
+positive atom of electricity, or at least not one that is so singular in
+its properties as the electron. Electrons go to the making of all atoms,
+just as atoms go to the making of molecules. The atom which is neutral,
+that is, shows neither positive nor negative electrification, must
+contain positive electricity in some form to balance the electrons which
+we know it contains. When we strip an atom, as we know how to do, of one
+or more of these electrons, the remainder is positively charged. The
+positive ion is any sort of an atom or molecule which has become
+positively electrified in this way. An atom which has become positive by
+the loss of one or more of its electrons exercises a force on any spare
+electrons in its neighbourhood or on any atom carrying a spare electron.
+When there are large numbers of atoms seeking in this way to become
+neutral once more, as occurs often in Nature, the forces generated may
+be tremendous. They are shown, for example, in the lightning-stroke. But
+indeed it would seem that all the chemical forces of which <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />we have
+already spoken depend ultimately upon the electric state of the atom
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>It is because the force which a positively-charged atom exerts on an
+electron is so great and because the electron is so light and easily
+moved compared to an atom that the electron has not been isolated at
+will until recent years. The isolation in fact depends upon the electron
+being endowed with a sufficient speed to carry it through or past the
+action of an atom which is seeking to absorb it into its system. A lump
+of matter flying in space might enter our solar system with such speed
+as to be able to pass through and go on its way almost undeflected. Or
+again, it might have a much lower speed and go so much nearer the sun
+that it was seriously deflected in its course, as we see in the case of
+comet visitors. But if for some reason or other the lump of matter found
+itself inside the solar system without the endowment of high velocity it
+would certainly be absorbed. Just so an electron can pass through an
+atom with or without serious deviation from its line of motion, provided
+that motion is rapid enough. Only recently have we been able to exert
+electric forces of sufficient strength to set an electron in motion with
+the speed it must have if it is to maintain an individual existence Now
+we can gather electrons at will, dragging them from the interior of
+solid bodies, and hurl them with tremendous speed like a stream of
+projectiles. Since in the open air the speed is soon lost by innumerable
+collisions with the air-molecules, the effect can only be studied
+satisfactorily in a glass bulb from which the air has been evacuated.
+Crookes made great improvements in air-pumps during an investigation on
+thallium, and consequently was able to obtain the high vacuum required
+for the experiment with the electron streams. It was afterwards found by
+R&ouml;ntgen that when an electron stream in an evacuated bulb was directed
+upon a target placed <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />within the bulb, a remarkable radiation issued
+from the target. Thus arose the so-called X or R&ouml;ntgen rays. As you all
+know they have for many years played a most important part in surgery
+and medicine. You may have heard that during the war they were also used
+to examine the interior of aeroplane constructions and to look for flaws
+invisible from without. Although X-Rays are of the same nature as light
+rays they can penetrate where light rays cannot, passing in greater or
+less degree through materials which are opaque to visible light and
+allowing us to examine the interior which is hidden from the eye.</p>
+
+<p>Every electric discharge is essentially a hurried rush of electrons.
+When we rub two bodies together and they become electrified we have in
+some way or other torn electrons from one of the bodies and piled them
+on the other. The former becomes the positively charged body and the
+latter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is
+spun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process
+too dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as
+it passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin
+the threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute
+hooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. The spinning operation
+would come to an end were there not means provided by which the air can
+be so filled with moisture that the fibres become damp and the action
+ceases. So in some cases a stream of air filled with positive and
+negative ions is made to play upon the fibres; the fibres select what
+ions they want, and so neutralizing themselves, spinning can proceed
+again.</p>
+
+<p>When a current of electricity runs along a wire there is in fact nothing
+more than a procession of electrons. The stream of electrons that runs
+through the filaments in the lamps that light this room, raising the
+filaments to a white heat, are set in motion by the dynamos in the city.
+<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />There is a complete wire circuit, including the dynamo, the conductors,
+and the lamps. When the dynamos are not working the electrons do not as
+a whole move either way, though they are always there. When the dynamo
+begins to turn, the electrons set out on their continuous journey.</p>
+
+<p>Electrons are involved in the emission of wireless signals, and in their
+receipt. The so-called 'valve', which multiplies minute electric signals
+and was so greatly improved during the war, depends entirely on the
+action of electrons, and the brilliant experimental work was based on
+the newly-acquired knowledge of their properties.</p>
+
+<p>I have told you that under certain circumstances a stream of electrons
+may generate X-Rays, in reality a form of light rays. This action is a
+very common one, and it is curious that the faster the electron goes the
+shorter is the wave-length of the radiation. A very fast electron
+generates an X-Ray of so short a wave-length that the penetrating power
+of the ray, which goes with the shortness of the wave, is excessive, and
+in this way we may have rays which go right through the human body or
+even through inches of steel. As the speed of the exciting electron
+becomes less, the X-Rays are less penetrating. With still slower
+electrons we may generate ordinary light, and it will take a slower
+electron to generate red than to generate blue. The slowest electrons we
+use in this way have a speed of many hundred miles per second; the
+fastest have a speed which nearly approaches that of light, or 186,000
+miles a second.</p>
+
+<p>And conversely radiation can set electrons in motion. When X-Rays are
+driven into a patient's body electrons are set in motion within, and
+moving over certain minute distances, initiate chemical actions which
+are necessary to some cure. Or they may go right through the body and
+fall on a photographic plate, setting in operation chemical action which
+forms a picture on the plate.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />There is another occasion of an entirely different kind when the
+electron is greatly in evidence and displays effects which are most
+astonishing and significant. Every atom of radium or other radio-active
+substances sooner or later meets with the catastrophe in which its life
+as radium ends and atoms of other substances are formed. At that moment
+occurs the emission which is the characteristic property of the
+substance. One of the radiations emitted consists of high-velocity
+electrons, moving, some of them, nearly as fast as light.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is found that when the speed approaches that of light, 186,000
+miles or 3 x 10<sup>10</sup> centimetres per second, the energy is higher than
+it should be if it followed the usual rule, viz. energy is equal to half
+the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity. It would seem that an
+electron moving with the velocity of light would have infinite energy;
+or, to put the matter in another way, the experimenter in his laboratory
+can never hope to observe an electron moving so fast; it would be the
+end of his laboratory and of himself if ever it turned up.</p>
+
+<p>Linked up with this result is the very strange fact that no one has ever
+been able to find any direct evidence of the existence of the ether,
+which is postulated in order to carry light-waves. It has been pictured
+as a medium through which the heavenly bodies move, and to which their
+motions may be referred. But when light is launched into the ether, its
+apparent velocity must depend on whether it travels with or against the
+drift of the ether through the laboratory where the measurement is made.
+The experiment has been performed without the discovery of any such
+difference, although the method was amply accurate enough to detect the
+effect that might be expected. It was afterwards shown that the negative
+result might be explained by supposing that a measure of length varied
+in length according to whether it was travelling with or against the
+ether. But the continual <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />failure of all such experiments has led to a
+remarkable hypothetical development with which the name of Einstein is
+firmly connected. It is supposed that some flaw must exist in our
+fundamental hypotheses, and that if this were corrected we should then
+find that we ought to get the same value for the velocity of light
+however and whenever we measured it, and at the same time we should find
+that no measurement of the velocity of a body moving relative to the
+observer would ever equal the velocity of light. The hypothesis denies
+the existence of an absolute standard to which motions can be referred,
+and insists that they must all be considered relatively to the observer.
+It is called the principle of relativity. Calculations of its
+consequences begin with the necessary changes in the fundamentals, such
+as Einstein has introduced.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" /><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>Time does not allow me to say more of the innumerable ways in which
+electrons play an essential part in all the processes in the world. We
+have long believed that this is so, but the picture has never been so
+clear to us as it is now; and with our understanding our power is
+increased. Yet once more the illumination of our understanding comes
+from our recognition that Nature has preferred the discrete to the
+continuous and that electricity is not infinitely divisible but is, like
+matter, and even more simply than matter, of an atomic structure. And we
+have found the unit and learnt how to handle it.</p>
+
+<p>It is even more strange that it may now be said of energy that there are
+signs of atomicity. It may seem absurd to think that the energy which is
+transformed in <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />any operation is transformed in multiples of a universal
+unit or units, so that the operation cannot be arrested at any desired
+stage but only at definite intervals. Indeed we have no right to assert
+that this is always true. But undoubtedly there are cases in which the
+atomicity of energy is clear enough, as for example in the interchange
+of energy between electrons in motion and radiation. It is remarkable
+that when radiation sets an electron in motion, the electron acquires a
+perfectly definite speed depending only on the wave-length of the
+radiation and not on its intensity, and has apparently absorbed from the
+radiation a definite unit of energy. Radiation of a particular
+wave-length cannot spend its energy in this way except in multiples of a
+certain unit, because each of the electrons which it sets in motion has
+the same initial energy, which it must have got from the radiation. In
+other words, energy of radiation of the particular wave-length can only
+be transformed into energy of movement of electrons in multiples of a
+certain 'quantum' peculiar to that wave-length. The intensity of the
+radiation, that is to say, the amount of energy moving along the beam,
+can only affect the number of electrons set in motion and not the speed
+of any one of them. During the last few years a very extraordinary
+theory has been developed on the basis of these and similar facts. I
+doubt if it would be more profitable to give further instances at
+present, but I have mentioned it because it seems to show looming on the
+horizon of our knowledge another tendency of Nature to make use of the
+atomic principle.</p>
+
+<p>I will only add that the whole position of physics is indeed at this
+time of extraordinary interest, and at any moment there may be some
+great discovery or illuminating thought which will explain the present
+startling difficulties and open up new worlds of thought.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Bragg, <i>Rays and Crystals</i> (Ball &amp; Sons).</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70" /><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Since this address was given, the results of the Eclipse
+Expedition to Brazil are considered to have confirmed in a satisfactory
+manner one of the most remarkable deductions made by Einstein from the
+principles which he maintains. The matter has roused so much interest
+that some of the leading exponents of the relativity principle have
+published careful accounts intended for students not familiar with it:
+it would therefore be superfluous to discuss the matter here.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX" /><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />IX</h2>
+
+<p class="center">PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY DURING THE LAST SIXTY YEARS</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.</p>
+
+
+<p>On November 24, 1859, <i>The Origin of Species</i> was published, and this
+date marks the beginning of an epoch in every branch of biology. Before
+it, Biology had been almost entirely a descriptive science, but within a
+few years after the publication of the <i>Origin</i> its effects began to
+colour all aspects of biological research. A co-ordinating and unifying
+principle had been found, and the leading idea of biologists ceased to
+be to describe living things as they are, and became transformed into
+the attempt to discover how they are related to one another. The first
+effect of this change of attitude was chiefly to turn biologists towards
+the task of tracing phylogenetic or evolutionary relationships between
+different groups of animals&mdash;the drawing up of probable or possible
+genealogical trees and the explanation of natural classification on an
+evolutionary basis. When once, however, the notion of cause and effect,
+or more correctly of relationship, between the phenomena seen in living
+beings had become familiar to biologists, it spread far beyond the
+limits of tracing genealogical connexions between different animals and
+plants. It made possible the conception of a true Science of Life, in
+which every phenomenon seen in a living organism should fall into its
+true place in relation to the rest, and in which also the phenomena of
+life should be correlated with those discovered in the inorganic
+sciences of Chemistry and Physics.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />The history of the various branches of biological science in the past
+sixty years reflects the general course of these tendencies. Until
+shortly after 1859, the study of morphology, or the comparative
+structure of animals (and of plants) was intimately related with that of
+physiology, that is, with the study of function. In the years following
+the appearance of the <i>Origin</i>, however, anatomists and morphologists
+were seized with a new interest. For the time at least, the chief aim in
+studying structure was no longer to explain function, but rather to
+explain how that structure had come into being in the course of
+evolution, and how it was related with homologous but different
+structures in other forms. The result was a tendency to a divorce
+between morphology and physiology, or at least between morphologists and
+physiologists, which led to the division into two more or less distinct
+sciences of what had hitherto been regarded as closely inter-related
+branches of one. The greater men of the early part of the period, such
+as Huxley, remained both morphologists and physiologists, but most of
+their followers fell inevitably into one or the other group, and in
+discussing the later phases of biological progress it will be necessary
+to keep them separate.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from its effect on the systematic and anatomical side of Biology,
+the idea of Evolution, and especially of Darwin's theory of Natural
+Selection, had important consequences on that side of the science which
+may be described as Natural History. Before the appearance of Darwin's
+work, Natural History consisted chiefly in the observation and
+collection of facts about the habits and life-history of animals and
+plants, which as a rule had no unifying principle unless they were used,
+as in the Bridgewater Treatises, to illustrate 'the power, wisdom, and
+goodness of God'. Now, however, a new motive was provided&mdash;that of
+discovering the uses to the organism of <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />its various colours,
+structures, and habits, and the application of the principle of natural
+selection to show how these characters conduced to the preservation and
+further evolution of the species. And out of this interest in the theory
+of natural selection grew in the last twenty years of the nineteenth
+century the greatly increased attention to the facts and theories of
+heredity, which was stimulated by Darwin's hypothesis of Pangenesis and
+especially by Weismann's speculations about the nature and behaviour of
+the 'germ-plasm'. Before the appearance of Weismann's work, the
+germ-cells, which bear somehow or other the hereditary characters that
+appear in the offspring, were supposed to be produced directly from the
+body of the parent. Darwin provisionally suggested that every cell of
+every organism gives off minute particles which become congregated in
+the germ-cells, and that these cells thus contain representative
+portions of all parts of the parent's body. Weismann, on the basis of
+his work on the origin of the germ-cells in Medusae and Insects,
+maintained that these cells are not derived from the body, but only from
+pre-existing germ-cells stored within it&mdash;that, in fact, although an egg
+gives rise to a hen, a hen does not give rise to an egg, but only keeps
+inside her a store of embryonic eggs which mature and are laid as the
+time comes round. The theory had to be modified to suit the facts of
+regeneration and vegetative reproduction, but in essence it was accepted
+by the biological world and is the orthodox opinion (if such a word may
+be used in Science) at the present day. The difference between the two
+views is not only of theoretical interest, for it involves the whole
+question of whether characteristics acquired by an individual during its
+life in response to external conditions can or cannot be transmitted to
+offspring. If the germ-cells contain representatives of all parts of the
+body, modifications impressed on the body during its life may at least
+<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />possibly be transmitted to offspring born after the modifications have
+taken place. If, however, the germ-cells are independent of the rest of
+the body, and only stored within it for safe-keeping like a deed-box in
+the vaults of a bank, it would seem impossible for any environmental
+influence, whether for good or ill, to take effect on the offspring.
+This controversy on the heritability of 'acquired characters' was one of
+the most important towards the end of last century, and although the
+majority of biologists now follow Weismann in so far as they deny that
+'acquired' characters are transmissible, the question is not yet
+completely settled; all that can be said is that, in spite of many
+attempts to prove the contrary, there is no satisfactory evidence of the
+transmission to offspring of effects impressed on the body of the
+parent, unless the germ-cells themselves have been affected by the same
+cause&mdash;as for example in some cases of long-continued poisoning by
+alcohol or similar drugs.</p>
+
+<p>While the problem of the transmission of acquired characters, and of the
+cause of variation and its relation to evolution, was occupying much of
+the attention of biologists, the whole problem entered upon a new phase
+in the year 1900 with the re-discovery of Mendel's work on heredity.
+Mendel worked with plants, and published his results in 1865, but at
+that time the biological world was too much occupied with the fierce
+controversy which raged over <i>The Origin of Species</i> to take much notice
+of a paper the bearing of which upon it was not appreciated. Mendel's
+discovery never came to the notice of Darwin, was buried in an obscure
+periodical, and remained unknown until many years after the death of its
+author. In 1900 it was unearthed, and, largely owing to the work of
+Bateson, it rapidly became known as one of the most important
+contributions to Biology made during the period under review.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />This is not the place to describe in detail the nature of Mendel's
+theory. Its essence is, firstly, that the various characteristics of an
+organism are in general inherited quite independently of one another;
+and, secondly, that the germ-cells of a hybrid are pure in respect of
+any one character, that is to say, that any one germ-cell can only
+transmit any unit character as it was received from one parent or the
+other, and not a combination of the two. This leads to a conception of
+the organism as something like a mosaic, in which each piece of the
+pattern is transmitted in inheritance independently of the rest, and in
+which any piece cannot be modified by association with a different but
+corresponding piece derived from another ancestor. It is impossible to
+say as yet whether this conception at all completely represents the
+nature of the living organism, but it is one which is exercising
+considerable influence in biological thought, and if established it will
+mark a revolution in Biology hardly inferior to that brought about in
+Physics and Chemistry by the discovery of radio-activity.</p>
+
+<p>An important consequence of the advance in our knowledge of heredity
+associated with the work of Mendel and his successors is a tendency to
+doubt whether natural selection is of such fundamental importance in
+shaping the course of evolution as was supposed in the years of the
+first enthusiasm which followed the publication of the <i>Origin</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin based his theory of Natural Selection on the belief which he
+derived from breeders of plants and animals, that the kind of variation
+used by them to produce new breeds was the small and apparently
+unimportant differences which distinguish a 'fine' from a 'poor'
+specimen. He supposed that the skilled breeder picked out as parents of
+his stock those individuals which were slightly superior in one feature
+or another, and that <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />by the accumulative effect of these successive
+selections not only was the breed steadily improved, but also, by
+divergent selection, new breeds were produced. Experience shows,
+however, that although this method is used to keep breeds up to the
+required standard, it is rarely, if ever, the means by which new breeds
+arise. New breeds commonly come into existence either by a 'sport' or
+mutation, or by crossing two already distinct races, and by selecting
+from among the heterogeneous descendants of the cross those individuals
+which show the required combination of characters. And it is further
+found that most of the distinguishing features of various breeds of
+domestic animals and plants are inherited according to Mendel's Law,
+suggesting that each of these characters is a unit, like one piece of a
+mosaic, independent of the rest. Now it is easy to see how the selection
+of small, continuously varying characters could take place in Nature by
+the destruction of all those individuals which failed to reach a certain
+standard, but it is much more difficult to understand how natural
+selection could act on comparatively large, sporadic, unco-ordinated
+'sports'. There is thus a distinct tendency at present to regard natural
+selection as less omnipotent in directing the course of evolution than
+was formerly supposed, but it must be admitted that no very satisfactory
+alternative hypothesis has been suggested. Some have supposed that there
+is a kind of organic momentum which causes evolution to continue in
+those directions in which it has already proceeded, while others have
+postulated, like Bergson, an <i>&eacute;lan vital</i> as a kind of directive agency.
+Others again have reverted towards the older belief in the inherited
+effects of environment&mdash;a belief which, in spite of the arguments of
+Weismann and his followers, has never been without its supporters. The
+present condition of this part of biology, as of many others, is one of
+open-mindedness approaching agnosticism. <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />There is dissatisfaction with
+the beliefs which satisfied the preceding generation, and which were
+held up almost as dogmas, but there is no clear vision of the direction
+in which a truer view may be sought.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving this side of the subject, reference must be made to one
+important aspect of modern work on heredity&mdash;that of the inheritance of
+'mental and moral' characteristics. As a result of the work of the
+biometric school founded by Galton and Pearson, it has been shown that
+the so-called mental and moral characteristics of man are inherited in
+the same manner and to the same extent as his physical features. Of the
+theoretical importance of this demonstration this is not the place to
+speak; its practical value is unquestionable, and may in the future have
+important effects on sociological problems.</p>
+
+<p>Another notable line of advance, entirely belonging to the period under
+review, and chiefly the product of the present century, is seen in the
+science of Cytology&mdash;the investigation of the microscopic structure of
+the cells of which the body is composed. The marvellous phenomena of
+cell and nuclear division have revealed much of the formerly unsuspected
+complexity of living things, while the universality of the processes
+shows how fundamentally alike is life in all its forms. In recent years
+great progress has been made in correlating the phenomena of heredity
+and of the determination of sex with the visible structural features of
+the germ-cells. Weismann attempted a beginning of this over thirty years
+ago, but the detailed knowledge of the facts was then insufficient.
+Since the discovery of Mendel's Law, a great amount of work has been
+done, chiefly in America, by E.B. Wilson and T.H. Morgan and their
+pupils, on tracing the actual physical basis of hereditary transmission.
+Although the matter is far from being completely known, the results
+obtained make it almost indubitable that inherited characters are in
+some <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />way borne by the <i>chromosomes</i> in the nuclei of the germ-cells.
+The work of Morgan and his school has shown that the actual order in
+which these inherited 'factors' are arranged in the chromosomes can
+almost certainly be demonstrated, and his results go far to support the
+conception of the organism, referred to above, as a combination or
+mosaic of independently inherited features.</p>
+
+<p>It was said at the beginning of this sketch that most of the more
+notable lines of advance in Biology could be traced back to the impetus
+given by the acceptance of the theory of Evolution, and the desire to
+test and prove that theory in every biological field. It is most
+convenient, therefore, to take this root-idea as a starting-point, and
+to see how the various branches of study have diverged from it and have
+themselves branched out in various ways, and how these branches have
+often again become intertwined and united in the later development of
+the science.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most obvious method of testing the theory of evolution is by
+the study of fossil forms, and our knowledge of these has progressed
+enormously during the period under review. Not only have a number of new
+and strange types of ancient life come to light, but in some cases, e.g.
+in that of the horse and elephant, a very complete series of
+evolutionary stages has been discovered. In this branch, however, as in
+almost all others, the results have not exactly fulfilled the
+expectations of the early enthusiasts. On the one hand, evolution has
+been shown to be a much more complex thing than at first seemed
+probable; and on the other, many of the gaps which it was most hoped to
+fill still remain. A number of most remarkable 'missing links' have been
+discovered, such as, for example, <i>Archaeopteryx</i>, the stepping-stone
+between the Reptiles and the Birds, and the faith of the palaeontologist
+in the truth of evolution is everywhere confirmed. But the hope of
+finding all the stages, <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />especially in the ancestry of Man, has not been
+realized, and it has been found that what at one time were regarded as
+direct ancestors are collaterals, and that the problem of human
+evolution is much less simple than was once supposed.</p>
+
+<p>A second important piece of evidence in favour of evolution is provided
+by the study of the geographical distribution of animals, on which much
+work was done in the earlier part of the period under review. And in
+this connexion mention must be made of the science of Oceanography, for
+our whole knowledge of life in the abysses of the ocean, and almost all
+that we know of the conditions of life in the sea in general, has been
+gained in the last fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>Another of the chief lines of evidence for the truth of the evolution
+theory is based on the study of embryology, and this also was followed
+with great vigour by the zoologists of the last thirty years of the
+nineteenth century. It is found that in many instances animals
+recapitulate in their early development the stages through which their
+ancestors passed in the course of evolution. Land Vertebrates, including
+man, have in their early embryonic life gill-clefts, heart and
+circulation, and in some respects skeleton and other organs of the type
+found in fishes, and this can only be explained on the assumption that
+they are descended from aquatic fish-like ancestors. On the basis of
+such facts as these, the theory was formulated that every animal
+recapitulates in ontogeny (development) the stages passed through in its
+phylogeny (evolution), and great hopes were founded upon this principle
+of discovering the systematic position and evolutionary history of
+isolated and aberrant forms. In many cases the search has led to
+brilliant results, but, as in the case of palaeontology, in many others
+the light that was hoped for has not been forthcoming. For it soon
+became evident that the majority of animals show adaptation to their
+<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />environment not only in their adult stages but also in their larval or
+embryonic period, and these adaptations have led to modifications of the
+course of development which are often so great as to mask, or obscure
+altogether, the ancestral structure which may once have existed.
+Although, therefore, the results of embryological research have provided
+most convincing proof of the truth of the theory of evolution in
+general, they have not completely justified the hopes of the early
+embryologists that by this method all the outstanding phylogenetic
+problems might be solved.</p>
+
+<p>The detailed study of embryology, however, has led to most important
+results apart from the particular purpose for which most of the earlier
+investigations in this field were originally undertaken. For the study
+of embryology, at first purely descriptive and comparative, was soon
+found to involve fundamental problems concerning the factors which
+control development. An egg consists of a single cell, and it develops
+by the division of this cell into two, then into four, eight, and so
+forth, until a mass of cells is produced. In some cases all these cells
+are to all appearance alike, or nearly alike; in others the included
+yolk is from the first segregated more or less completely into some
+cells, leaving the other cells without it. But in any case, after this
+process of cell-division has proceeded for a certain time,
+differentiation begins to set in&mdash;some cells become modified in one way,
+others in another, and from what was a relatively homogeneous mass an
+organized embryo, with highly differentiated parts, appears. The problem
+immediately propounds itself&mdash;what are the factors which control this
+differentiation? This problem is essentially a physiological one, and
+yet, since it arises most conspicuously in a field which has been worked
+by professed zoologists rather than physiologists, it has been studied
+more by those trained in zoology and botany than by <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />those who have
+specialized in physiology. In this way, as in many other directions,
+such as in the study of heredity, of sex, and of the effects of the
+environment on the colours and structure of animals, the trend of
+zoology in recent years has returned towards the physiological side, and
+the old division which separated the sciences (but which has never so
+seriously affected students of plant life) is being obliterated.</p>
+
+<p>Hence we are led back to consider the progress of Physiology as a
+whole&mdash;a subject with which the present writer hesitates to deal except
+in a very superficial manner. Physiology as an organized science has
+inevitably been deeply influenced by its close relation with medicine,
+with the result that through a large portion of the period under review
+it has concerned itself chiefly with the functions of the human body in
+particular, or at least chiefly with Vertebrates from which, by analogy,
+the human functions may be inferred. In this field it has made enormous
+progress, and a vast amount of knowledge has been gained with regard to
+the function and mechanism of all the parts and organs of the body. It
+may perhaps be suggested, however, that in the pursuit of this detailed
+(and in practice absolutely necessary) knowledge, physiologists have to
+some extent lost sight of the wood in their preoccupation with the
+trees. That is to say, while they have advanced an immense distance in
+their knowledge of organs, they have not yet got as far as might be
+hoped in the understanding of the organism&mdash;which is to say no more than
+that the great and fundamental problem of Biology, the nature and
+meaning of Life, is apparently almost as far from solution as ever. To
+this further reference will be made below.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of Physiology has been so great in all its branches that it
+is difficult to decide which most deserve mention; perhaps the most
+important advances are <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />those connected with the nervous system and with
+internal secretions. Little or nothing was known fifty years ago of the
+minute structure of the nervous system, nor of the special functions of
+its different parts. Now the main functions of the various parts of the
+brain, and the relation of these parts to the activities of the other
+organs of the body, are well known, although much remains to be
+discovered with regard to the more detailed localization of function.
+The study of the microscopic structure of brain and nerve, and
+experiment on the conduction of nervous impulse, have given us some
+insight into the mechanism of the nervous system, but the fundamental
+nature of nervous action still remains unsolved.</p>
+
+<p>The nervous system is the chief co-ordinating link between the various
+organs of the body, but in recent years it has been discovered that the
+relations of the different parts to one another are greatly influenced
+by substances known as internal secretions or 'hormones'. These
+substances are produced by ductless glands (the thyroid, suprarenals,
+&amp;c.), from which they diffuse into the blood-stream and exercise a
+remarkable influence either on particular organs or systems, or on the
+body as a whole. Some of these secretions act specifically on the
+involuntary muscles of the body, others control growth, others the
+development of the secondary sexual characters, such as the distinctive
+plumage of male birds, and also greatly influence the sexual instinct.
+Much still remains to be discovered with regard to them, but it seems
+clear that they are of immense importance in the economy of the body. It
+has been suggested, without much experimental support, however, that if
+a part of the body becomes modified by use or environment, it may
+produce a modified hormone, and that so, by the action of this on the
+germ-cells, the modification may be transmitted to subsequent
+generations.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />Before leaving the subject of physiology in the more special or
+technical application of the term, reference must be made to another
+science the growth of which has been largely under the influence of
+medicine. This is bacteriology, one of the newest branches of biology,
+and yet one which both from its practical importance and from the
+theoretical interest of its discoveries is rapidly taking a foremost
+place. Of its practical achievements in connexion with disease, and with
+the part played by bacteria and other minute organisms in the life and
+affairs of man, it is not necessary to speak. Every one knows the great
+advances that have been made in recent years in identifying (and to a
+less extent in controlling) disease-producing organisms, whether
+bacteria, protozoa (such as the organisms causing malaria, dysentery,
+etc.), or more highly organized parasites. The attempt, however, to
+combat these pathogenic bacteria has led to discoveries of the highest
+importance with regard to the production of immunity, not only against
+specific germs, but against many organic poisons such as snake venom and
+various vegetable toxins. That an attack of certain diseases leaves the
+patient immune to that disease for a longer or shorter time has of
+course been known for centuries, but it is a modern discovery that a
+specific poison induces the body to produce a specific antidote which
+neutralizes it, and the detailed working out of this principle and the
+study of the means by which the immunity is brought about promise to
+lead us a long way towards the central problem of the nature and
+activities of life itself.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen how zoology has been led back into physiological channels
+of research, and how the study of bacteria is opening up some of the
+deepest problems of the reaction of living things to environmental
+stimuli, and just as the various branches of these sciences interlace
+and influence one another, so all of them, in recent years, <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />have been
+coming into contact with the inorganic sciences of chemistry and
+physics. One of the noteworthy features of science in all its branches
+in recent years has been the tendency of subjects which were at one time
+regarded as distinct to come together again and to find that the
+problems of each can only be successfully attacked by the co-operation
+of the others. In their earlier days the biological sciences were in
+most respects far removed from chemistry and physics; it was recognized,
+of course, that organisms were in one sense at least physico-chemical
+mechanisms, consisting of chemical elements and subject to the
+fundamental laws of matter and energy. With the advent of the theory of
+evolution this conception of the organism as a mechanism took more
+definite shape, and among many biologists the belief was held that in no
+very long time all the phenomena of life would be explicable by known
+physico-chemical laws. Hence arose the scientific materialism which was
+so widespread in the years following the general acceptance of Darwin's
+theory. It was recognized, of course, that our knowledge of organic
+chemistry was at the time entirely inadequate to place this belief upon
+a proved scientific basis, but the expectation of proving it gave a
+great impetus to the study of the physical and chemical phenomena of
+life. This attempt was still further stimulated by the investigation of
+the factors controlling development referred to in a preceding
+paragraph, for it is evident that to a great extent at least these
+factors are chemical and physical in nature. And concurrently, the great
+advances in organic chemistry, resulting in the analysis and in many
+cases in the artificial synthesis of substances previously regarded as
+capable of production only in the tissues of living organisms, made
+possible a much more thorough investigation of the chemical and physical
+basis of vital phenomena. The result of this has been that to a quite
+considerable extent <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />the factors, hitherto mysterious, which control the
+fertilization, division, and differentiation of the egg, the digestion
+and absorption of food, the conduction of nervous impulses, and many of
+the changes undergone in the normal or pathological functioning of the
+organs and tissues, can be ascribed to chemical and physical causes
+which are well known in the inorganic world.</p>
+
+<p>As in other instances, however, some of which have been mentioned above,
+the elucidation of the organism from this point of view has turned out
+to be a much less simple process than the more sanguine of the early
+investigators supposed. The more knowledge has progressed, the more
+complex and intricate has even the simplest organism shown itself to be,
+and although the mechanism of the parts is gradually becoming
+understood, the fundamental mystery of life remains as elusive as ever.</p>
+
+<p>The chief reason for this failure to penetrate appreciably nearer to the
+central mystery of life appears to be the fact that an organism is
+something more than the sum of its various parts and functions. In
+tracing the behaviour of any one part or function, whether it be the
+conduction of a nervous impulse, the supply of oxygen to the tissues by
+the blood, or the transmission of inherited characters by the
+germ-cells, we may be able to give a more or less complete
+physico-chemical or mechanical account of the process. But we seem to
+get little or no nearer to an explanation of the fact that although
+every one of these processes may be explicable by laws familiar in the
+non-living, in the living organism they are co-ordinated in such a way
+that none of them is complete in itself; they are parts of a whole, but
+the whole is not simply a sum of its parts, but is in itself a unity, in
+which all the parts are subject to the controlling influence of the
+whole. An organism, alone among the material bodies which we know, is
+constantly and necessarily in a state of unstable <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />equilibrium, and yet
+has a condition of <i>normality</i> which is maintained by the harmonious
+interaction of all its parts. Every function of the body, if not thus
+co-ordinated with the rest, would very quickly destroy this condition of
+normality, but in consequence of the co-ordination each is subject to
+the needs of the whole, and normality is maintained. When the normality
+is artificially disturbed, all the functions of the body adapt
+themselves to the change, and, if the disturbance be not too great,
+co-operate in the restoration of the normal condition. It is in these
+phenomena of adaptation and organic unity and co-ordination that up to
+the present time the efforts to reduce the phenomena of living things to
+the operation of physico-chemical laws have most conspicuously failed.</p>
+
+<p>From what has been said it will be evident that, fundamentally, all
+biological research, whether its authors are conscious of it or not, is
+directed towards the solution of one central problem&mdash;the problem of the
+real and ultimate nature of life. And the main outcome of the work of
+sixty years has been that this problem has begun clearly to emerge as
+the central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem
+a reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be
+insoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it
+has led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living
+and the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem inevitably
+faces us.</p>
+
+<p>Many suggestions for its solution have been made. On the one hand there
+is still, as there always has been, a considerable body of opinion that
+the solution will be a mechanical one&mdash;using the word mechanical in the
+widest sense&mdash;and that the living differs from the non-living not in
+kind, but only in degree of complexity. The upholders of the mechanistic
+or materialist theory, however, are perhaps less confident than their
+predecessors of the last century, for the solution in this direction
+<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />has to face not only the problem of organic co-ordination already
+referred to, but also that of consciousness and mind. For although the
+study of psychology on physiological lines has made similar progress to
+that of other branches of physiology, it seems to approach little nearer
+to a discovery of the nature of the relation between consciousness in
+its various aspects and the material body with which it is associated.
+So long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a
+satisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, there has been a revival of the ancient tendency
+towards what is called a vitalistic solution. A certain number of
+biologists, impressed by the apparent similarity between the control and
+co-ordination exercised by the organism over its functions and the
+conscious control of voluntary activity with which we are familiar in
+ourselves, have supposed that these things are not merely superficially
+similar but have a real and fundamental affinity. This does not mean
+that organic control is always conscious, but that there is a
+controlling entity, non-material in nature, which is similar in kind to
+the 'ego' of a self-conscious human being. They suppose that the
+organism is not simply material, but is a material mechanism controlled
+by a non-material entity the nature of which is more akin to what we
+mean by the word spirit than anything else of which we are accustomed to
+think. They are in fact dualists, and divide reality into the material
+and spatial on the one hand, and non-material principle or entity which
+may fairly be called spiritual on the other.</p>
+
+<p>And, in the third place, there are those who seek a solution which
+denies the truth of both the preceding, and which is metaphysically
+idealist or monist in character. To them, if the present writer
+understands their attitude, matter and spirit are different aspects of
+one reality. In the inorganic and non-living, phenomena appear which are
+generalized under the laws of physics and chemistry, <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />but the phenomena
+of life fall into a different category which includes the conception of
+co-ordination or individuality, while a still higher category is
+required to include the phenomena of consciousness and mind.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident from this brief review that Biology in the period
+considered has passed through three main stages. The first of these was
+the acceptance of a new illuminating and unifying idea, which led to
+enthusiastic research in many directions for the purpose of proving and
+amplifying it. Very rapidly new facts, or new interpretations of facts
+already known, were shown to fall into line, and the evolution theory
+became converted from a hypothesis into something approaching a dogma.
+Not only the idea of organic evolution itself, but all the current
+beliefs about the method of evolution, and the larger speculations to
+which it gave rise, were widely regarded as almost indisputable, and
+where difficulties and inconsistencies appeared, these were supposed to
+be due solely to the insufficiency of our knowledge, which would soon be
+remedied. Then, however, as detailed knowledge increased, the voice of
+criticism and doubt was more frequently heard. The various branches of
+Biology began once more to overlap, and to join hands with chemistry and
+physics, and it became clear that the interpretation of life was very
+far from being a simple problem. And so, as with the Atomic Theory in
+chemistry, the present position is one of dissolution of the older ideas
+and of hesitation to express a fixed belief, for while Biology has a
+clearer vision of the problem before it than ever it had, its wider
+knowledge reveals the fact that the problem is far from being solved.
+Perhaps one of the chief results of the great increase of knowledge
+during the past sixty years has been to show us the immensity of the
+field still remaining to be explored.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>Centenary volume on Darwin (Cambridge University Press).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X" /><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />X</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ART</p>
+
+<p class="center">A. CLUTTON-BROCK</p>
+
+
+<p>My subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so
+far as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely
+philosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of
+the speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as
+they seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject
+is the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to
+connect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our
+beliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we
+produce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to
+confess it has not yet appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or
+other of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who
+are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only
+imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation
+of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them
+and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the
+artists are often confused in their practice of it.</p>
+
+<p>The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great
+liveliness, by Whistler in his <i>Ten O'clock</i>, and has had great
+influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and
+upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no
+concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />There
+is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental
+one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.</p>
+
+<p>Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.
+
+     'There never was an art-loving nation.
+
+     'In the beginning man went forth each day&mdash;some to do battle,
+     some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the
+     field&mdash;all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until
+     there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose
+     pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with
+     the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
+     gourd.
+
+     'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren&mdash;who cared
+     not for conquest and fretted in the field&mdash;this designer of
+     quaint patterns&mdash;this deviser of the beautiful&mdash;who perceived in
+     nature about him curious curvings&mdash;as faces are seen in the
+     fire&mdash;this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'
+
+     'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
+     people, they took the gourd&mdash;and drank from it.'</div>
+
+<p>Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had
+traced on it.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a
+     consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
+     was none other.'</p></div>
+
+<p>So gradually there came the great ages of art.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art&mdash;and ate and
+     drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
+     drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>But then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" /></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of
+     the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the
+     gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and
+     charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham
+     and Manchester arose in their might&mdash;and Art was relegated to the
+     curiosity shop.'</p></div>
+
+<p>I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the
+people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at
+all, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one
+values. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and
+you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.</p>
+
+<p>But Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as
+we can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had
+seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him
+starve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples,
+is not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men
+is modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive
+societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that
+reason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups
+they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we
+drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive
+societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all
+dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would
+have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In
+fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist
+because he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read
+himself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes
+in a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is
+wrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a
+relation, and a necessary relation, between <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />the artist and his public;
+but what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to
+answer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in
+fact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his <i>What is Art?</i> tried to put it
+right.</p>
+
+<p><i>What is Art?</i> is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but
+I believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this
+contention as shortly as I can in his own words.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this&mdash;that
+     one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on
+     to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people
+     are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Now this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and
+just because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if
+art is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the
+artist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of
+people who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts
+these conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He
+judges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be
+of no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that
+few can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere
+fails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of
+art exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the
+actual words of Tolstoy:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and
+     diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few
+     people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it
+     will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of
+     people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious
+     life.'</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />Now this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself.
+You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good,
+you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it
+will satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are
+situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does
+proceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony
+and about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian
+peasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked
+this question about all works of art, we should none of us ever
+experience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of
+music, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that
+is to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of
+people situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to
+decide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself
+belongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting
+of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but
+for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was
+blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy
+of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in
+the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way
+of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art
+would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of
+Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century
+in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he
+condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.</p>
+
+<p>We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the
+tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own
+experience of art. The fact that we <i>can</i> <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />enjoy and experience a work
+of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and
+experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art
+is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his
+own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,
+in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the
+primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and
+always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the
+public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.</p>
+
+<p>According to him the proper aim of art is to do good.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time
+     unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,
+     and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The word <i>unjust</i> implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist
+sins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I
+sin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people
+do not enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>But as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good
+but good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of
+art I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to
+other people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that
+is as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking
+whether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of
+it, for I have nothing else to go by.</p>
+
+<p>And so it is with the artist; he cannot begin by asking himself whether
+the mass of men will understand what he proposes to produce; he must
+produce it, and then trust in man, and God, for its effect. Art is
+produced by the individual artist and experienced by the individual man.
+Tolstoy holds that it is to be experienced by mankind in the mass, not
+by individuals; his audience is an abstrac<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />tion. Whistler holds that it
+is produced by the individual, but for himself, and not experienced by
+mankind either in the mass or as individuals. Both are heretics. What is
+the truth?</p>
+
+<p>I will now turn for a moment to the high aesthetic doctrine of Benedetto
+Croce. He in his <i>Aesthetic</i> tells us that all art is expression. True
+enough, as far as it goes; but what do we mean by expression? Croce's
+doctrine of expression is incomplete, he does not explain clearly what
+he means by expression, because he also avoids the question of the
+necessary relation between the artist and his audience; and this is the
+question which our thought about art has to deal with, just as we have
+to solve it in our practice of art and in our actual relation with the
+artist. Croce does not see that the question&mdash;What is expression?
+depends upon the question&mdash;What is the relation between the artist and
+his audience? He does see that the audience exists, which Whistler
+denies; he insists that the audience have the same faculties as the
+artist, though to a less degree&mdash;that the artist is not a dreamer apart.
+He says indeed that to experience a work of art we also must exercise
+our aesthetic faculty; our very experience of it is itself expression;
+and this is a most important point. But for Croce, as for Whistler, the
+artist, when he expresses himself, is concerned only with what he
+expresses, not with the people to whom he expresses himself. Croce does
+not see this obvious fact, that a work of art is a work of art <i>because
+it is addressed to some one</i> and is not a private activity of the
+artist. That is why he fails to give a satisfying account of the nature
+of expression. Croce cannot distinguish between expression, or art, and
+day-dreaming; but the distinction is this, that as soon as I pass from
+day-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to
+others. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that
+it is addressed to others. <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />A story, for instance, is a story, it has a
+plot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because
+it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical
+form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be
+heard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be
+seen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.
+When a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says&mdash;This is what I
+have seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art
+is a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an
+audience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of
+address, there could be no art, no expression, at all.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his
+nature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man
+does not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature
+social always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in
+isolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.</p>
+
+<p>But although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a
+moral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of
+doing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;
+if he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself
+incompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does
+not do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not
+trying to do good.</p>
+
+<p>But what is it that really happens when the artist addresses us, and why
+does he wish to address us? To answer this, we must consider our own
+experience, not merely as an audience but also as artists, for we are,
+as Croce insists, all of us to some extent artists. You have all no
+doubt been aware of some failure and dissatisfaction in those of your
+experiences which seem to you the highest. Suppose, for instance, you
+see some extreme beauty, as <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />of a sunset. It leaves you sad with a
+feeling of your own inadequacy. You have not been equal to it, and why?
+You will say in speaking of it to others&mdash;I wish I could tell you what I
+felt or what I saw, but I can't. That wish is itself natural and
+instantly stirred in you by the experience of extreme beauty. The
+experience seems incomplete, because you cannot tell anyone else what
+you felt and saw; and you are hurt by your effort and failure to do so.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fact of human nature that the experience of any beauty does
+arouse in us the desire to communicate our experience; and this desire
+is instinctive. It is not that we wish to do good to others by
+communicating it. It is simply that we wish to communicate it. The
+experience itself is incomplete for us until we communicate it. The
+happiness which it gives us is frustrated by our failure to communicate
+it. We should be utterly happy if we could make others see what we see
+and feel what we feel, but we fail of happiness because we cannot.</p>
+
+<p>Why? One can only conjecture and express conjectures in dull language.
+This beauty is itself a universal quality or virtue which makes
+particular things more real when they have it. It speaks to the
+universal in us, to the everyman in us, and, speaking so, it makes us
+aware of the universal in all men. We too wish to speak to that
+universal, we wish to find it and the more intense reality which is to
+be seen only where it is seen, we wish ourselves to be a part of it; and
+we can do that only when all other men also are a part of it. Beauty
+seems to speak not merely to us but to the whole listening earth, and we
+would be assured that all the earth is listening to it, not to us.</p>
+
+<p>But we ourselves have to play our part in the realizing of this
+universal; the sense of it comes and goes; for the most part we
+ourselves are not aware of it. We are merely <a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />particulars, like other
+men, and separated from them by the fact that we are all particulars.
+Only, when for a moment we are aware of it, then we are filled with a
+passion to make it real and permanent; and it is this passion which
+causes art and the blind instinctive effort at art, at communication, at
+expression, which we have all experienced.</p>
+
+<p>But it follows from this that the audience to which the artist addresses
+himself is not any particular men and women: it is mankind. The moment
+he addresses himself to any particular men and women and considers their
+particular wants and desires, he is giving up that very sense of the
+universal that impelled him to expression; he is ceasing to be an artist
+and becoming something else, a tradesman, a philanthropist, a
+politician. The artist as artist speaks to mankind, not to any
+particular set of men; and he speaks not of himself but of that
+universal which he has experienced. His effort is to establish that
+universal relation which he has seen, a universal relation of feeling.
+And to him, in his effort, there is neither time nor space. Mankind are
+not here or there or of this moment or of that; they are everywhere and
+for ever. The voice in Mozart's music is itself a universal voice
+speaking to the universe of universal things. And all art is an acting
+of the beauty that has been experienced, a perpetuation of it so that
+all men may share it for ever. The artist's effort is to be the sunset
+he has seen, to eternalize it in his art, but always so that he and all
+men may be part of this universal by their common experience of it.</p>
+
+<p>So, as I say, the artist must not speak to any particular audience with
+the aim of pleasing them&mdash;there is that amount of truth in Whistler's
+doctrine; and he does fail if he does not communicate, since his aim is
+communication&mdash;there is that amount of truth in Tolstoy's doctrine.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />But the next question that arises is the attitude of ourselves to the
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>We have to remember that he is speaking not to us in particular, but to
+all mankind, and that he speaks, not to please us or to satisfy any
+particular demand of ours, but to communicate to us that universal he
+has experienced so that we with him may become part of it.</p>
+
+<p>It follows then that we must not make any particular demands upon him.
+We must not come with our own ideas of what he ought to give us. If we
+do, we shall be an obstruction between him and that ideal universal
+audience to which he would address himself. We shall be tempting him,
+with our egotistical demands, to comply with them. But these demands we
+are always making; and that is why the relation between the artist and
+any actual public is usually nowadays wrong. I was once looking at
+Tintoret's 'Crucifixion' in the Scuola di San Rocco with a lady, and she
+said to me&mdash;'That isn't my idea of a horse.' 'No'&mdash;I answered&mdash;'it's
+Tintoret's. If it were your idea of a horse, why should you look at it?
+You look at a picture to get the artist's idea.' But that isn't the
+truth about art either. The artist doesn't try to substitute his own
+particular for yours. He tries to communicate to you that universal
+which he has experienced, because it is to him a universal, not his own,
+but all men's, and he wishes to realize it by sharing it with all men.
+His faith, though he may never have consciously expressed it to himself,
+is in this universal which, because it is a universal, can be
+communicated to all men. His effort is based on that faith. He speaks
+because he believes all men can hear, if they will.</p>
+
+<p>So the effort of the audience must be to hear and not to distract him
+with their particular demands. They must not, for instance, demand that
+he shall remind them of <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />what they have found pleasant in actual life.
+They must not complain of him that he does not paint pretty women for
+them, or compose bright cheerful tunes. They are not to him particular
+persons to be tickled according to their particular tastes, but mankind
+to whom he wishes to communicate the universal he has experienced.</p>
+
+<p>So, if there is an actual audience listening for that universal and
+clearing their minds of their own egotistical demands, then art will
+flourish and the artist will be encouraged to communicate that universal
+which he has experienced. But if particular audiences demand this or
+that and are not happy until they get it, if they say to him&mdash;Tickle my
+senses&mdash;Persuade me that all is for the best in the world as I like it;
+that prosperous people like myself have a right to be prosperous; that I
+am a fine fellow because I once fell in love; that all who disagree with
+me are wicked and absurd&mdash;then you will have the kind of art you have
+now, in the theatre, in the picture gallery, in the cinema, in the
+novel; yes, and in your buildings, your cups and saucers, your pots and
+pans even. For in the very arts of use you demand that the craftsman
+shall provide you with what you demand, and as cheap as possible;
+because you do not understand that he should express himself, you do not
+understand also that his expression is worth having and that he ought to
+be paid for it. In the very pattern on a tea-cup, if it is worth having
+at all, there is the communication of that universal which the artist
+has experienced. It is there to remind you of itself whenever you drink
+tea, to bring the sacrament of the universal into everything as if it
+were music accompanying and heightening all our common actions; but if
+you want a fashionable tea-cup cheap, you will get that, and you will
+not get anything expressed or communicated with it. You will be shut up
+in yourself and your own particularity and ugliness. If we want art we
+<a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />must know how we should think and feel and act so as to encourage the
+artist to produce it.</p>
+
+<p>But why should we want art at all? I hope I have answered that question
+incidentally. It is so that we may have life more abundantly; for we can
+have life more abundantly only when we are in communication with each
+other, mind flowing into mind, the universal expressing itself in and
+through all of us. We all more or less blindly desire this
+communication, but we seldom know why we desire it or even what exactly
+it is we desire. We make the strangest, clumsiest efforts to communicate
+with each other&mdash;I am making one now&mdash;and we are constantly inhibited by
+false shame from real communication. We are afraid to be serious with
+each other, afraid of beauty, of the universal, when we see it. On this
+point I will tell a little story from Mr. Kirk's <i>Study of Silent
+Minds</i>. At a concert behind the front, an audience of soldiers had
+listened to the ordinary items, a performance, as Mr. Kirk says, 'clean,
+bright, and amusing', which means of course silly and ugly. Then the
+orchestra played the introduction to the <i>Keys of Heaven</i>, and a gunner
+remarked&mdash;'Sounds like a bloody hymn.' That was his fear of beauty, his
+false shame. But when the <i>Keys of Heaven</i> was ended, the whole
+audience, including the gunner, gave a sigh of content; and after that
+they went to hear it time after time. Well, the beauty of that song, and
+of all art, is the 'Key of Heaven' itself. For Heaven is a state of
+being of which we all dream, however dully, in which all have the power
+of communication with each other; in which all are aware of the
+universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body,
+all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves,
+for a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere
+nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>Of course if you are to believe this, you must believe in <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />the existence
+of a universal, independent of yourself, yet also in you and in all men.
+You must believe that beauty exists as a virtue, a quality, a relation
+of things, and that it is possible for you also to produce that virtue,
+to live in that relation. But no one can prove that to you. The only way
+to believe it is to see beauty with intensity and to make the effort of
+communication in some form or other.</p>
+
+<p>Tolstoy believes that the very word beauty is a useless one because, he
+says, all efforts to define beauty are vain. But that is true of the
+word life, yet we have to use the word because life exists. And all
+explanations of art which refuse to believe in beauty as a reality
+independent of us, yet one of which we may become a part, do fall into
+incredible nonsense. We are told that art is play; the only answer to
+which is that it isn't. Others say that it is an expression of the
+sexual instinct, which has forgotten itself. They discover that in some
+savage tribe the male beats a tom-tom to attract the female; and they
+conclude that Beethoven's Choral Symphony is only a more elaborate
+tom-tom beaten to attract a more sophisticated female. But again the
+only answer is that it isn't; and that if all our ancestors were, not
+Whistler's dreamers apart, but beaters of tom-toms to attract females,
+then there was something in the sound of the tom-tom that made them
+forget the female. The reality of art is to be found not in its origins
+but in what it is trying to be; and what it is trying to be is always a
+communication between mind and mind; what we aim at in art is a
+fellowship not for purposes of use but for its own sake, the fellowship
+we feel when we are all together singing a great tune.</p>
+
+<p>But now, since we have a hundred foolish ideas about art, its nature and
+value, it is of the greatest importance that we should attain to a right
+idea of it, not only as a matter of theory to be discussed, but as a
+religion to be practised. And, if we can grasp this right idea of it, we
+<a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />shall not think of art as consisting merely of the fine arts, painting,
+poetry, music, sculpture. We shall see that it is possible for men to be
+artists, to exercise this great activity of communication, in the work
+by which they earn their living, and that a happy society is one in
+which all men do so exercise it. We are very far from that happiness
+now, and that is why Ruskin and Morris became almost desperate rebels
+against our present society. What they said about art and its nature is
+still the best that has been said about it, far nearer to philosophic
+truth than all that the professed philosophers have said, and of the
+utmost moment to us now. For if we could believe them we should change
+most of our values; we should see that the ordinary man, now being
+deprived of all the joy of art in his work, is living a mutilated life;
+we should place art among the rights of man. Whereas Rousseau said&mdash;All
+men are born free and everywhere they are in chains&mdash;we should say&mdash;All
+men are born artists and everywhere they are drudges. With our curious
+English originality, which hits on so many momentous truths and then
+makes no use of them, it is we who have found the greatest truth about
+art, but neither we nor any other people is at present making much use
+of it. Because we lack art, lack the power of communication, we lack
+fellowship; and as Morris said&mdash;Fellowship is life and the lack of it is
+death.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOR REFERENCE</p>
+
+<p>W. Morris, <i>Hopes and Fears for Art</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI" /><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />XI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">A GENERATION OF MUSIC</p>
+
+<p class="center">DR. ERNEST WALKER</p>
+
+
+<p>The general subject of this course is European Thought; and, to some,
+music may perhaps seem in this connexion rather like an intruder.
+Indeed, if the musician is, in William Morris's phrase, 'the idle singer
+of an empty day', if his business is to administer alternate stimulants
+and soporifics to the nerves or, at best, the surface emotions, or to
+serve in Cinderella-like fashion any passing, shallow needs of either
+the individual or the crowd, then, obviously, he has no place worth
+self-respecting mention in the world as it exists for philosophy. But
+widespread as some such conception of the function of music is, I hope
+you will agree with me in throwing it aside as, at any rate for our
+present purpose, no more worth the trouble of even approximately patient
+argument than that other less general but more objurgated conception of
+musical composition as something like a mechanically calculated spinning
+of bloodless formulae. By the conditions of its being, music has to
+express itself through non-intellectual channels, but may we not say
+that its essence is intellectual, that it is, in Combarieu's phrase, the
+art of thinking in sound&mdash;thinking in as precise a sense as the word can
+bear? It does not express itself verbally: it is self-dependent, with a
+language available only for the expression of its own ideas and not even
+indirectly translatable by nature into a verbal medium. Yet it is
+thought none the less; perhaps all the more. Words, we have often <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />been
+told, serve for the concealment of thought; but the language of music is
+more subtle, more comprehensive. It has been said that where words end,
+music begins; and anyhow, for musicians, there stands on record the
+serenely proud claim of one of themselves. 'Only art and knowledge',
+said Beethoven, 'raise man to the divine; and music is a higher
+revelation than all wisdom and all philosophy.'</p>
+
+<p>But I must not allow this little preliminary apology to stray into the
+field of abstract aesthetics. The subject proposed to me, the
+correlation of the progress of specifically musical thought during the
+last generation with the progress of European thought in general, is so
+extensive that I cannot within the necessary limits attempt to deal with
+more than some of the most salient features, and even those I shall have
+to treat in very broad outlines, with a certain disregard of detail and
+nicely balancing qualifications. I shall only attempt to put before you
+what seem to me the most prominent considerations, and to throw out
+suggestions which I hope you may perhaps, if sufficiently interested,
+develop at leisure for yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>In several ways the correlation of the musician with the non-musical
+world is now more intimate and conscious than ever before. Forty or
+fifty years ago&mdash;in spite of brilliant individual exceptions&mdash;musicians
+were, in the main, self-centred craftsmen; they were inclined to drift
+into a backwater, away from the chief currents of the intellectual, or
+often indeed of the general artistic life of their day, and they seem on
+the whole to have been content to have it so. In England we were
+somewhat behindhand, no doubt, in our participation in the gradual but
+steady change. But men like Parry and Stanford brought their profession
+into close touch with the general culture of their contemporaries, and
+made the <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />universities and music understand each other; Grove, the first
+director of the Royal College, himself a man whose professional career
+(not to mention his amateur interests) had ended in music after ranging
+through civil engineering, business organization, biblical archaeology,
+and the editorship of a great literary magazine, preached with
+infectious enthusiasm the new doctrine of the larger outlook; and for
+the last thirty years, even if our practice may have occasionally seemed
+somewhat to lag behind, at any rate our theory has not looked back.
+Musicians have been granted their claim to be judged by the same
+intellectual and moral standards as other reasonable people; it is a
+modest claim, but, especially in England, it has had to be fought for.</p>
+
+<p>And the entry on this wider heritage, which English musicians, apart
+from an exception or two such as Pierson and Bennett, won for the first
+time a generation ago, has had in every country a definite influence on
+composition, especially (as is only natural) on the composer's attitude
+towards the musical setting of literature. I should be far from saying
+that any modern is a greater song-writer than Schubert; but it is
+obvious that the followers of Wolf and Duparc and Moussorgsky are aiming
+at something different. They may not express the general mood of the
+poem more faithfully, but they certainly attach more importance to its
+lyrical structure and to flexibly expressive diction: they accept the
+poet as an equal colleague. The serious song-writer can hardly any
+longer, like Schumann in his setting of Heine's 'Das ist ein Fl&ouml;ten und
+Geigen', afford to stultify great poetry by quoting from memory and
+getting the adjectives deplorably wrong. Nor can he, like Beethoven in
+'Adelaide' and the 'Entfernte Geliebte' cycle, let himself weave musical
+structures many sizes too large for the proper structure of the <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />words,
+which have consequently to be repeated over and over again with very
+little regard for poetical or even common sense. Schumann and Beethoven,
+especially the former, were culturally very far from narrow-minded men;
+but there was not in their days any general cultural pressure
+sufficiently strong to influence them as composers. Now, the pressure is
+so strong that few can resist. Most composers have now fully learned
+their lesson of a fitting politeness towards their
+poet-colleagues&mdash;learned it in the main, so far as not intuitively, from
+the high examples set by Wolf and the modern French school&mdash;and have,
+moreover, come to recognize the duty of setting such words as may be fit
+not only to be sung but to be read, a duty shockingly neglected by many
+of the greatest geniuses in musical history.</p>
+
+<p>And the cultural pressure has gone farther than this. Not only has the
+increasing complexity of life broadened the musician's personal outlook,
+professional or unprofessional: it has also modified, whether for better
+or for worse, the outlook of the music itself. We may conveniently
+divide all music into two great classes: 'absolute' music, in which the
+composer appeals to the listener through the direct medium of the pure
+sound and that alone; and 'applied' music, in which the appeal is more
+or less conditioned by words, either explicit or implicit by
+association, or by bodily movement of some kind, dramatic or not, or by
+any other non-musical factor that affects the nature of the composer's
+thought and the method of its presentation. Up to the present
+generation, instrumental music, unconnected with the stage, has been
+virtually identifiable with absolute music; there are a handful of
+exceptions&mdash;sporadic pieces, usually though not invariably thrown off in
+composers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of
+serious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt&mdash;but they <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />only serve to prove
+the rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More
+consciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its
+own special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity.
+And it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of
+particular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; or it
+may vie with the poet and the novelist in analysis of character. The
+psychology, again, may pass into the illustration of incident, whether
+partially realistic or purely imaginative, or into the illustration of
+philosophical tenets, as in Strauss's version of Nietzsche's doctrines
+in his <i>Also sprach Zarathustra</i> or Scriabin's of theosophy in his
+<i>Prometheus</i>. Or the composer may go directly to painting, whether
+actual as in Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem on B&ouml;cklin's picture of 'The
+island of the dead', or visionary as in Debussy's 'La cath&eacute;drale
+engloutie'. There is indeed no end to such instances.</p>
+
+<p>All this development of instrumental music into territories more or less
+adjacent makes a very imposing show; and it is so markedly a product of
+the last generation that we easily over-estimate the novelty of its
+essential results. As I have said, instrumental music is more and more
+asking for external spurs to creative activity; but this does not mean
+that music as a whole is, so to speak, breaking loose from its moorings
+and adventurously voyaging on to uncharted seas. What it means is,
+simply, that, under the stress of modern culture, the barriers between
+vocal and instrumental, dramatic and non-dramatic, music have been to a
+great extent abolished.</p>
+
+<p>We may consider music as normally involving three persons: the composer,
+the performer, and the listener. Until the present generation, the role
+of the listener was normally quite passive. All that he had to do was to
+keep his ears open to the music, and further, when <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />required, his ears
+open to words and his eyes to dramatic presentation. The composer and
+the performers did everything for him. But now they do not. The modern
+composer urges that, just as vocal music demands from the listener a
+separate knowledge of the words, so instrumental music may demand, as a
+condition of full understanding, a separate knowledge of some verbally
+expressible signification. The parallel no doubt holds well enough even
+if we answer, as we certainly may, that in much vocal music the words
+are so unimportant that it really does not musically matter if they are
+unintelligible or inaudible. But this latter-day demand on the listener
+is considerable. The listener to Strauss's <i>Don Quixote</i>, for example,
+must, in order to appreciate in full measure any section of this long
+work, have a fairly close acquaintance with Cervantes' book&mdash;whether
+derived from an analytical programme or from personal reading: there are
+neither words nor acting to give a clue, nor does the printed music
+itself give the slightest assistance, except in so far that a couple of
+themes are labelled with the names of the 'Knight of the sorrowful
+countenance' himself and Sancho Panza. Sometimes, no doubt, a composer
+helps at any rate the purchaser of his music more; but to the listener
+he gives nothing, and leaves his thought, as embodied in the mere title,
+to be reached as best it may. The modern composer makes these demands on
+the listener continually; and he does so simply because the sphere of
+the music-lover's imaginativeness and general culture has become so
+greatly enlarged that he thinks he can fairly afford to take the risk.</p>
+
+<p>But we may well ask whether the music of suggestion has not, in its
+restless anxiety to correlate itself with non-musical culture, reached
+or perhaps even overstepped the limits of musical possibility. It is no
+question of a composer's rights: he has a right to do anything he <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />can,
+provided that he preserves a due proportion between essentials and
+unessentials. And judicious criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any
+rate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer's occasional realistic
+escapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are
+to him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all,
+in their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have
+occasionally allowed themselves similar little flings. It is a question
+not of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist,
+not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do
+a good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may
+personally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence,
+he has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself. The
+risk he runs may be too great. Realizing as we must that all this
+ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched
+musical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and
+feel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it. A
+composer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his
+music, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls. If he asks too
+much extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end.
+The listener will inevitably concentrate on the unessentials, and will
+as likely as not get them quite wrong; he may indeed indulge the habit
+of realistic suspicion to such an extent as to make him become
+thoughtlessly unfair and credit the composer with sins of taste, whether
+babyish or pathological, of which the objurgated culprit may be
+altogether innocent. If a composer plays with fire, he is fairly sure to
+burn some one's fingers, even if he successfully avoids burning his own.
+And anyhow it is waste of time, and worse, for us to cudgel our brains
+to fits of <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" />entirely unnecessary inventiveness when the composer has
+left his music unlabelled. We sometimes hear of children being
+encouraged to give verbal or dramatic expression of their own to
+instrumental music; that is not education&mdash;very much the reverse. It is
+merely the expense of spirit in a waste of fancifulness, the wilful
+murder of all feeling for music as such.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling for music as such, that is still the one thing needful. And
+by this canon, so it seems to me, we must judge all these alarums and
+excursions of modern composers. If we hold firmly by it, we shall not be
+unduly worried when we learn that the music which seems so perfectly to
+realize the composer's expressed meaning has been originally designed by
+him quite otherwise&mdash;as has happened oftener than is generally known;
+though this fact does not excuse wilful contradictions of a composer's
+definite intentions, as in the vulgar perversion of Rimsky-Korsakoff's
+<i>Scheherezade</i> popularized by the latest fashionable toy, the Russian
+Ballet, which would do more musically unexceptionable service were it to
+confine itself to works specially designed for it, such as the
+fascinating and finely-wrought scores of Stravinsky, or concert works
+like Balakireff's <i>Thamar</i>, based on programmes that can be mimetically
+reproduced without unfaithfulness. And anyhow, in the midst of all these
+appeals to the eye or the literary memory or what not, we may call to
+mind the simple truth that music is something to be heard with either
+the inward or the outward ear, and if we are too much distracted
+otherwise, our hearing sense suffers. We shall pay too high a price for
+our latter-day correlation of music with literature and the other arts
+if the music itself has to play the part of Cinderella. 'We do it wrong,
+being so majestical.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, we may endeavour to correlate recent musical <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />development with
+the development of the conceptions of nationality and race. With
+nationality in the strictly political sense music has, indeed, nothing
+to do: there is no inborn musical expression common to all the
+inhabitants of Switzerland, or the United States, or the British Empire
+(or indeed the British Islands). And if we abandon political nationality
+entirely and think of national music solely in terms of race, we still
+have to make very large deductions. Heredity counts, it would seem, for
+far less than environment in musical development&mdash;especially so in these
+days of free intercourse. Nevertheless, we may to some extent isolate
+the racial element; and within the last generation increasingly vigorous
+efforts have been made to do so&mdash;though they have perhaps neglected
+sufficiently to observe that racial ancestry is often an extremely mixed
+quantity.</p>
+
+<p>To the musician, this insistence on race is in the main a quite modern
+thing. It is true that, as the successive waves of Italian influence
+flowed northward in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries, they met in England, France, and Germany, and, at the end, in
+Russia, native cross-currents; and there was plenty of controversy
+between the opposing parties. But this controversy was mainly concerned
+with matters of technique; whereas the whole force of the modern
+movement consists in its reliance on the simple folk-music which is
+supposed to be characteristic of the race as a whole, and about which
+hardly any composers of the past consciously troubled themselves at all.
+Haydn and Beethoven, no doubt, used folk-tunes in their own works to
+some extent, but the former's adaptations from the uncultivated tunes of
+his own Croatian people are polished nearly out of recognition, and when
+the latter commandeers from Ireland or Russia or elsewhere, nothing but
+pure Beethovenishness remains after his <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />masterful hand has done its
+will. We may say, indeed, that nationality, as such, was never in their
+time a conscious factor in musical composition.</p>
+
+<p>The modern movement seems to owe its origin to several non-musical
+causes. For example, the spread of political democracy had no little
+influence in arousing interest in the music specifically characteristic
+of at any rate the non-urban sections of the newly enfranchised classes.
+But, in the main, it was caused by the modern rise into something like
+political prominence of the smaller nations, smaller either in size or
+in historical importance. The events of 1848, for example, brought
+Hungarian folk-music before the world; Bohemian claims against Austria
+produced the work of Smetana and Dvo&#345;&aacute;k, largely based on the general
+style of their own native melodies; the Irish Question made us know the
+Irish songs; and the dominating races followed those leads, at any rate
+in so far as to take interest in their own traditional music, and try to
+evaluate its differentiating factors. Conscious connexion between
+artistic composition and folk-music has varied very much: very strong in
+Russia and other Slavonic countries, it has been very weak in Italy and
+France; in Germany we find all stages between the work of Brahms, where
+the folk-element is very notable, and of Wolf, where it is non-existent;
+in our own islands it has been very weak, but is now becoming very
+strong. But, whether this connexion has been conscious or not, still,
+sooner or later, all the insisters on the importance of the element of
+nationality have joined hands with the enthusiasts for the folk-music of
+the people. In the work of preserving the knowledge of this folk-music
+England has been one of the last of all countries: even the last edition
+of Grove's <i>Dictionary</i>, our standard authority, gives many pages to
+Scotland and Ireland and Wales, and <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />smuggles English folk-music into an
+appendix. Only indeed in the twentieth century has anything like an
+adequate study of the varied treasures of English folk-music become
+possible, and we have learned enough to realize that great folk-music is
+no monopoly of the races that have been either politically or socially
+decentralized.</p>
+
+<p>This advance of the conception of racialism has widened and intensified
+music in not a few ways. It has brought to our knowledge many splendid
+melodies, infinitely varied in design and emotional range, and, at their
+best, inspirations that the greatest composers would have been proud to
+sign. And, mixed as are the feelings with which we must contemplate the
+general course of our own musical history, we can anyhow boast of some
+of the finest folk-tunes in existence in these relics of the old world
+on its last western fringes, in Ireland and the Hebrides. We have come
+to see that this great mass of traditional music&mdash;only in part, of
+course, the outpouring of sheer genius, but at its worst sincere&mdash;is,
+with its appeal alike to the child and the adult, either in years or in
+musical culture, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with
+which to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. And,
+apart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown
+the value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the
+younger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the
+Russians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the
+same, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It
+is to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before,
+to realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. And, once
+again, we have been taught the duty of being fair to the men of our own
+blood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there
+has been visible a strongly <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />marked tendency, such as no other nation
+has shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in
+comparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse.
+But I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition
+is now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it
+was, not unnaturally, wellnigh forgotten during its sleep from the death
+of Purcell till the rise of Parry&mdash;a fairly sound sleep, during which it
+occasionally half-opened its eyes for a moment or two&mdash;but it is wide
+awake now. We are still slow to learn the lesson; but we have come to
+realize, at any rate theoretically, the duty of doing what we can, in
+the spirit not of favouritism but of justice and knowledge, to disprove
+the proverb that a prophet (and an artist also) has no honour in his own
+country and in his father's house.</p>
+
+<p>So much to the good. But to-day, more than ever before, many voices are
+urging us to go farther&mdash;and, I think, to fare worse. Artistic racialism
+has always been spontaneous, so far as the art is great. No composer who
+is worth anything can be dragooned into being patriotic: he will go his
+own way. Some are attracted more than others by the general types of
+phrase or the general emotional moods exemplified in the folk-music of
+their own race; but that is a matter for neither credit nor discredit.
+Individuality includes race as the greater includes the less. The only
+vital consideration is the value of the output in the general terms of
+all races; and indeed all great folk-music, like any other kind, speaks,
+for those who have ears to hear, a world-language and not a dialect. And
+there is still more at stake in this issue. Those who, as I do, hold
+that the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the
+weakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must
+needs regard very suspiciously any of these modern <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />attempts to force
+music into channels which are deliberately designed for it by
+non-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a
+very considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. England may
+sometimes have failed in kindness to her own artistic children, living
+and dead; but at any rate we have been free from the curse of a narrow
+jealousy and have steadfastly held to the proud faith of the open door
+and the open mind. The ideal&mdash;so violently dinned into our ears
+nowadays&mdash;of a national school of composers may very easily mean a
+wilful narrowing of our artistic heritage. If an English composer with
+nothing to say for himself imitates Brahms or Debussy, it is obviously
+regrettable; but he will not mend matters by imitating Purcell. And,
+after all, the musician who (save occasionally when seeking texts for
+his own individual discourses) borrows his material from his native
+folk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other
+quarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his
+own. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about
+patriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the
+last refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the
+supreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and,
+anyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. And any
+of the world's activities would come to a strange pass if children&mdash;or
+any races or classes which, through lost opportunities or the oppression
+of others, are still virtually children&mdash;were to dictate principles of
+intolerance to those who, by no merit of their own but as a plain matter
+of fact, can possess the wider vision. Let a composer steep himself as
+much as he can in his native folk-music, as in all other great music,
+and then write in sincerity whatever is in his own marrow; but anything
+<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />approximately like a chauvinistic attitude towards music, as towards
+any other of the things of the spirit, means either insensibility to
+spiritual ideals or unfaithfulness to them. Let me take an analogy. I
+have always felt that a philosophical and historical study of the idea
+of honour would throw more light than anything else on many great
+problems, notably the problem of war, and that in this investigation the
+conception of the duel would have a very prominent place. May we not say
+that, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members
+of the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to
+be able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will,
+if his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also?
+Neither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external
+considerations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed
+is the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the
+arts; it has not, like literature, any barriers of language, nor, like
+painting or sculpture or architecture, any local habitation. Musical
+separatism is not a natural quality; it needs careful and continuous
+fostering. And I know from personal experience that, all through the
+war, there was no difficulty at all in carrying on concerts in the
+programmes of which works by living German composers, and songs in the
+German language, were included in their due proportions just as before.</p>
+
+<p>Another great factor in modern European thought with which I would
+attempt to correlate music is the factor of religion. No one will deny
+that the last generation has seen profoundly important changes in
+religious thought: whatever may have been the eddies and backwaters, the
+main stream has run, and still runs, like a cataract. These changes may
+be very differently judged by different types of men, all of them
+equally <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />firm believers in the supremacy of spiritual ideals: some may
+definitely regret, some may, with the help of such conceptions as that
+of progressive revelation, steer a middle course, some (among whom I
+would number myself) may definitely welcome. But in whatever light we
+may regard these radical refusals of the old allegiances, we shall
+naturally expect to find their influence in music, which has had in many
+ways so intimate a connexion with religion. Indeed, the conception of
+music as in some special way the handmaid of religion dies very hard. It
+is still possible, in April 1919, for distinguished musicians, when
+appealing for funds for the foundation of a professorship of
+ecclesiastical music, to put their names to the statement that 'the
+church will always be the chief home and school of music for the
+people'<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" /><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a>: and this when the facts about attendances at places of
+worship have long been familiar. We must rate the influence of church
+music more modestly; it has a great influence in its own sphere, but its
+sphere is only one among many.</p>
+
+<p>We may, I think, envisage this religious development on its practical
+side as a process of differentiation by which the sincere standers in
+the old and the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn
+apart intellectually&mdash;but not, in societies that are happily able to
+take broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually&mdash;not
+only from each other but still more from those who, whatever their
+ostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And
+something like the same process is observable in the religious music of
+the past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped
+away, unregarded and unregretted: whatever the outlooks, and they are
+many and various, they are more clear-sighted, more sincere. <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />Here in
+England we have somewhat lagged behind: we have had, not perhaps
+altogether fairly but indubitably, a reputation for national hypocrisy
+to sustain, and our religious music has only with difficulty shaken
+itself loose. Not very long ago, Saint-Sa&euml;ns's <i>Samson and Delilah</i>, now
+one of the most popular of operas, could only be performed as an
+oratorio: it dealt with biblical incidents and characters, therefore it
+was religious music, therefore it could not be given stage presentation.
+Of course this kind of attitude is never logical: for a long time we
+closed Covent Garden to Strauss's <i>Salome</i> for the same reason, but no
+one, so far as I know, ever proposed to endow it with a religious halo.
+Now, when Sunday secular music is everywhere, its origins seem lost in
+antiquity; but the chamber-music concerts at South Place in London and
+Balliol College in Oxford, which are, I think I am right in saying, the
+twin pioneers, are both little over thirty years old. In most other
+countries, however, music has suffered far fewer checks of this kind;
+and it is of more importance to correlate musical and religious
+development on more general lines. Particularly interesting, I think, is
+the history of the decline of the oratorio, which I should myself be
+inclined to date from the production of the German Requiem of Brahms
+about half a century ago, though the real impetus has become apparent
+only during the last generation.</p>
+
+<p>Brahms's Requiem was indeed something of a portent: it was a definite
+herald of revolt. The mere title, 'A German Requiem', involving the
+commandeering of the name hitherto associated exclusively with the
+ritual of the Roman Church and the practice of prayers for the dead, and
+its adaptation to entirely different words, was in itself of the utmost
+significance; and the significance was enhanced by the character of the
+words themselves. <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />In the first place, they were self-selected on purely
+personal lines; in the second place, they were, theologically, hardly so
+much as Unitarian. Brahms claimed the right to express his own
+individual view of the problem, and at a length which involved the
+corollary that the problem was regarded in its completeness. The 'German
+Requiem' cannot be considered, as an anthem might be, as an expression
+of a mere portion of a complete conception of the particular religious
+problem: in an organic work of this length, what it does not assert it
+implicitly denies or at any rate disregards. And this was at once
+recognized, both by Brahms's opponents and by himself: he categorically
+refused to add any dogmatically Christian element to his scheme.
+Similarly with his <i>Ernste Ges&auml;nge</i>, written some thirty years later, at
+the end of his life: he balances the reflections on death taken from
+Ecclesiastes and similar sources with the Pauline chapter on faith,
+hope, and charity&mdash;not with any more definite consolation. And again,
+with the choral works, the settings of H&ouml;lderlin's <i>Schicksalslied</i>,
+Schiller's <i>N&auml;nie</i>, Goethe's <i>Gesang der Parzen</i> (the first-fruits of
+the essentially modern spirit which has impelled so many composers to
+choral settings of great poetry)&mdash;they deal with the ultimate things,
+but the expression is never, so to speak, orthodox: it is imaginative,
+sometimes perhaps ironical, but never anything but intensely
+non-ecclesiastical.</p>
+
+<p>Brahms's Requiem represents, as I have said, the beginning of the change
+in the conception of concert-room religious music, of the abandonment of
+the old type of oratorio in favour of something much more conscious and
+individual; and in refusing to take things for granted, religious music
+has been altogether in line with general religious development. The
+change can perhaps be observed in English music more markedly <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />than
+elsewhere. Oratorio, in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term,
+is to all intents and purposes an invention of the genius of Handel
+reacting on his English environment: the form was of course older, but
+he gave it a specific shape that set the fashion for future times. It
+had its birth in a business speculation; it was a novelty designed to
+occupy the Lenten season when the theatres were not available for opera.
+Like the opera, it supplied narrative and incident and characterization
+though without scenery or action, and it dealt with biblical history.
+The history of the oratorio is the history of this loose compromise; it
+has afforded an attractive flavour of the theatre even to those to whom
+drama may in itself have seemed disreputable, and it has had the
+advantage of possessing subjects which combined unquestioningly accepted
+literal truth with unlimited possibilities for wholesale edification,
+and at the same time made no intimately personal claims. The libretto of
+Mendelssohn's <i>Elijah</i> is perhaps at once the most familiar and the most
+skilfully compiled example of the type; but it is now, so far as great
+music is concerned, extinct. Here in England&mdash;where, for something like
+a century and a half, the demand was so large that composers, when tired
+of writing oratorios themselves, still went on producing them out of the
+mangled fragments of other music&mdash;Parry's <i>Judith</i> of 1888 is the last
+of the old type from the pen of a great composer; and his subsequent
+works show, in striking fashion, the direction of the newer paths. There
+is no longer the assumption that everything in the Bible or the
+Apocrypha is at one and the same time literally true and somehow or
+other edifying. <i>Job</i> and <i>King Saul</i> are great literature and vivid
+drama; they stand on their own merits. And the long succession of
+smaller choral works, in which Parry mingled in curious but <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />intensely
+personal fusion his own earnest but somewhat pedestrian poetry with
+fragments of the Old Testament prophets, represent a still further
+abandonment of the old routine; they form a connected exposition of his
+philosophy of life, on the whole theistic rather than specifically
+Christian, and always transparently individual. Individual&mdash;that is the
+real issue. According to their differing temperaments, different
+composers may swing towards either the right or the left wing of thought
+in these non-ecclesiastical expressions of ultimate things: Stanford may
+join with Whitman or Robert Bridges, Vaughan-Williams with Whitman or
+George Herbert, Frank Bridge with Thomas &agrave; Kempis, Walford Davies with a
+mediaeval morality-play, Gustav Hoist with the Rig-Veda, Bantock with
+Omar Khayyam. But the essentials, for any composer worth the name, are
+that his theme shall have its birth in personal vision and shall appeal
+to personal intelligence. The routine oratorio fulfilled neither of
+these conditions; and it is dead beyond recall. It was a curious
+illustration of foreign ignorance of British musical life that
+Saint-Sa&euml;ns, when asked to write a choral work for the Gloucester
+Festival of 1913, should have imagined that he was meeting our national
+tastes with an oratorio on the most prehistoric lines. However, the
+unanimous chilliness with which <i>The Promised Land</i> was received must
+have effectually disillusioned him.</p>
+
+<p>But the liberalisers, though the more numerous force, have no monopoly
+of sincerity: among the genuine conservatives also we can find, I think,
+signs of the correlation of musical with religious development. We have
+had, during the last generation, many works that are in the legitimate
+line of descent from the great classical settings of ritual words or (as
+with the Passions and Cantatas of Bach) words that are intended anyhow
+to <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" />appeal not as literature but as dogma. When Elgar prints on the
+title-pages of his oratorios the letters A.M.D.G.&mdash;<i>ad majorem Dei
+gloriam</i>&mdash;the personal note is, in these days, obvious. His own libretti
+to <i>The Apostles</i> and its sequel <i>The Kingdom</i> (and to the further
+sequels which had been sketched out twelve years ago, though none has as
+yet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so
+far as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious
+moralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things
+for granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual
+soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent
+Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was
+Perosi, the Benedictine priest, whose oratorios, tentative, childishly
+sincere mixtures of Palestrina and Wagner, were forced upon Europe in
+the late 'nineties with the full driving power of his Church, and who,
+when his musical insufficiency became palpable, was dropped in favour of
+Elgar himself, whose sudden rise into deserved fame coincides in time.
+There was again the allocution of Pius X, known as the <i>Motu proprio</i>,
+which sought to reform ecclesiastical music and has, however fruitless
+it may have been elsewhere, made the services in Westminster Cathedral,
+under Dr. Terry's direction, a Mecca for musicians of all faiths who are
+interested in the great sixteenth-century masterpieces. There are also
+the aristocratically Catholic composers of latter-day France, centring
+round Vincent d'Indy and the <i>Schola Cantorum</i> and looking back for
+inspiration to C&eacute;sar Franck. And again, in the English communion, there
+is the marked High-Church movement for the encouragement of dignified
+music, a movement that has had great influence in the purification of
+popular taste. And the pivot round which all this turns is the dogmatic
+faith that definitely <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />Christian expression in music is the property,
+the exclusive property, of those who by temperament and conviction are
+Christians. The attitude, like the conditions which have brought it
+about, is, I think, new: but some of its adherents go surely too far
+when they urge that those whose minds work otherwise cannot really
+appreciate this music at its due worth. C&eacute;sar Franck, that simple-minded
+childlike genius, once pronounced Kant's <i>Kritik der reinen Vernunft</i>
+'very amusing'&mdash;a surely unique criticism&mdash;simply, it would seem,
+because it was eccentric enough not to take Catholicism as a primary
+postulate: I do not myself happen to have any information about Kant's
+musicianship&mdash;perhaps, like too many great thinkers, he knew little
+about music and cared less&mdash;but I think we may venture to say, in the
+abstract, that his philosophy would have made him fairer to Franck than
+Franck was to him.</p>
+
+<p>And thus perhaps we may conclude that recent musical development has
+kept pace with religious development in concentrating more and more on
+individual sincerity, whether on the one side or the other, and
+abandoning the old easy-going haphazard routine. But, in reaction from
+the extreme right and the extreme left of the movement, we have also the
+sincere dislikers of stark thinking, whom their opponents call by
+dignified names of abuse, such as pragmatists or undenominationalists:
+and here again music keeps pace with religion. It is not the old routine
+again (though perhaps in practice it may at times come rather perilously
+near it); it is the more or less conscious adoption of a compromise. We
+can see its musical working best of all in the recent history of church
+music in England; it is true that the great mass of the younger
+musicians, here as in all other countries, stand outside these
+developments, and look both for ideals and practice elsewhere, but the
+developments <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />have none the less been very significant. There have been
+three stages. A couple of generations ago there was no conflict and no
+call for compromise. The ecclesiastical musician of the time was
+expected, whether as composer, as organist, or as administrator, to do
+his best according to his lights: it was his accepted business, as
+presumably knowing more about the matter than the artistic laity, to
+lead their taste, not to follow. Then came the reign of men like Dykes
+and Stainer and Gounod, whose normal attitude involved the sacrifice by
+the musician of some of his musicianship in the supposed interests of
+religion. The supposed interests, I say; for the whole point of the
+third stage of development, the conflict in which English church music
+is now involved, is the denial by one of the opposing parties that the
+interests of religion are in any way served by such a sacrifice. It is a
+very keen conflict, in which the sympathies of the musician <i>qua</i>
+musician naturally lean towards those who uphold the inalienable dignity
+of his art: and even if he feels that ecclesiastical music, <i>qua</i>
+ecclesiastical, is outside his personal concern, influences from it are
+bound to radiate into the secular departments. But what I would more
+especially point out is that the religious and the musical developments
+proceed side by side. Just as the stricter purists in the one field are,
+in the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to
+uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is
+inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those
+whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically
+indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation
+afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music
+that is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of
+the average worshipper.</p>
+
+<p>And, even if there is no question of a lowered artistic <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />standard, we
+see, I think, the same spirit of compromise, of ready acceptance of the
+more immediately obvious as the average and proper norm for all people,
+elsewhere on the boundaries of musical and religious life. It is so easy
+to turn a blind eye to logic and minorities, or even to majorities if
+they have little pressure, social or other, to back them up. To
+illustrate from one or two English examples, the transformations of
+cathedrals into secular concert-rooms are as open to blame from the one
+side as are, from the other, such assumptions as that of the 'Union of
+Graduates in Music' to take rank as a definitely ecclesiastical, indeed
+an Anglican society. Again, it so happens that a somewhat exceptional
+proportion of English musicians hold, or have held, as conditions of
+livelihood, posts to which not all of them would have aspired had other
+channels, open to their foreign fellow-artists, been open to them also;
+and, as a necessary consequence, there is more probability here than
+elsewhere of the musical profession presenting practical problems for
+the intellectual conscience to solve. So far as the musician is a
+personal non-conformer and also a teacher (even if not a church
+organist), he is often compelled into a tacit agreement with the
+Cowper-Temple clause, at the least: and so far as he is a convinced
+conformer, he is often compelled to strain, far beyond the meaning of
+the parable, the principle of letting the wheat and the tares grow
+together. This is called a practical age: and the compromisers, in
+religion and in religious music, are a powerful force. But I would
+venture to think that the future lies, in the long run, in other hands
+than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>To the mediaeval musician, religion and science were the twin
+foundations of his art. But while the influence of religious development
+can without difficulty be traced in musical history, the influence of
+scientific development <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />is much more contestable. It may indeed, I
+think, be said that post-mediaeval music has gone its own way without
+considering science at all. Theorists of course there have been, and
+still are, who try to discover scientific foundations for the art of
+music as we moderns know it: they do their best to correlate
+mathematical physics with practical composition. But during the past
+generation these attempts, never very hopeful, have become much less so.
+It is only too easy to play scientific havoc with the foundations of
+modern music: but, arbitrary and scientifically indefensible though they
+may be, they are our inheritance. Music has come to be what it is by
+methods that will not bear accurate investigation: our tonal systems are
+mere makeshifts, and no composer can completely express his thoughts in
+our clumsy notation. I doubt if, throughout all this last generation
+that has seen such overwhelming scientific advance, music has really
+been scientifically affected (in the strict sense of the word) in the
+slightest degree, if we exclude some interesting experiments in
+sympathetic resonances, primary and secondary, at which some recent
+composers for the piano have, at present rather tentatively, tried their
+hands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in
+general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws
+of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to
+build a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string
+ultimately gives&mdash;mostly out of tune&mdash;all the notes of the chromatic
+scale, but composers employ them on principles the reverse of
+mathematical.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of music has not been scientific; but growth of some kind is
+evident enough, though it is none too easy to define it at all
+adequately. Some might say, with Romain Rolland in his <i>Musiciens
+d'autrefois</i>, that 'the efforts of the centuries have not advanced us a
+step nearer <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />beauty since the days of St. Gregory and Palestrina'; but
+this is surely a narrow outlook. Beauty combines the many with the one:
+and plain-song and the <i>Missa Papae Marcelli</i> show us only a few, a very
+few, of its manifestations. But artistic progress is, anyhow, very
+subtle and evasive; and musical progress, in particular, is hardly
+correctable with any other. Above all, we must recollect that, to us
+Europeans, music&mdash;which, in the only sense worth our present
+consideration, is an exclusively European product&mdash;is incalculably the
+youngest of the great arts; if we exclude some monophonic conceptions
+that have still their value for us, it is barely five hundred years old
+at the most.</p>
+
+<p>During the last generation an advance in material complexity is obvious,
+even though the complexity may often enough be one of accidentals rather
+than essentials. An orchestral score of Wagner is relatively simple in
+comparison with one of Delius or Ravel or Scriabin or Stravinsky or
+Sch&ouml;nberg; and the demands on performers' technique and also on their
+intelligence have steadily increased to heights altogether unknown
+before. The composer has at his present disposal a vastly enlarged
+medium; the possibilities of sound have developed incalculably more than
+those of paint or stone or marble. Pheidias could, we may imagine, have
+appreciated Rodin across a gulf of over two thousand years; but it is
+difficult to see the points of contact, after little over three hundred
+years, between Palestrina and any twentieth-century work that would
+claim to be 'in the movement'. And it is not only in complexity that we
+have advanced. We have extended the limits of musical style. We have
+adopted in sober earnest methods forecasted at rare intervals in the
+past by adventurous explorers, and employ musical notes not as elements
+in any harmonic scheme but purely as points of colour, <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />exactly as if
+the definite notes were mere clangs of indefinite instruments like
+cymbals or triangles. Wordless vocal tone, moreover, of several
+different types, is pressed into the same service. Varied tonal and
+harmonic colour, and structural freedom: those are the two battle-cries
+of the young generation. Little by little the old tonalities, based as
+they were on fixed centres, are slipping away; all the notes of the
+chromatic scale are acquiring even status; the principles of structure
+are newborn with every new work. And advance of this kind has been
+extraordinarily accelerated during the last twenty years. At no time in
+musical history have there been such express-speed modifications of
+manner as those which divide, let us say, the latest piano pieces of
+Brahms (1893) and the latest of Scriabin (1914). It is possible, indeed,
+that our standard system of keyboard tuning may require modification in
+the not very distant future. Once again, as three hundred years ago,
+music seems to be in the throes of a new birth. On the former occasion,
+the process of convalescence lasted rather more than a century, from
+Monteverde through Carissimi and Sch&uuml;tz and Purcell to Bach; and it may
+perhaps take as long now.</p>
+
+<p>But it is plain enough that mere novelty does not involve progress; if
+it were so, the music of the casually strumming baby would demand high
+recognition. Nor is progress to be found in merely quantitative,
+Brobdingnagian expansion. And when we have taken our stand on what seems
+a sufficiently sound definition of musical progress in its material
+aspect&mdash;the combination of novelty with expansion, the new thought with
+its appropriately enlarged medium&mdash;we have yet to remember that many
+very fine composers still can, and do, express their natural and full
+selves in older idioms, and that progress of this kind, however
+widespread it may become, <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" />is not necessarily advance in the scale of
+values. There is, somewhere or other, a limit to the cubic capacity of
+things: they cannot increase indefinitely in depth and breadth at once.
+We may confidently hope that we have not yet musically come within
+hailing distance of the limit: but nevertheless it is becoming more and
+more difficult to see music steadily and see it whole, and it is useful
+to take stock of our position. Our musical minds are very much broader
+than they were: in that sense we can well, like the heroes of Homer,
+boast that we are much better than our fathers. But are they also
+deeper? We have gained access to many new rooms in the house of art,
+rooms full of strange and beautiful things, for the knowledge of which
+we must needs be profoundly and lastingly grateful; but some of the
+rooms seem rather small and their windows do not seem to have been
+opened very often, while others seem liable to be swept by hurricanes
+which upset the furniture right and left. Veterans there are, musicians
+not to be named except with high honour, who fall back for nutriment on
+the great classics and pessimism; but our notions of beauty cannot stand
+still, and in all ages of music one of the most vital tasks of criticism
+has been to distinguish between the relatively non-beautiful which has
+character and truth and its superficial imitation which has neither. All
+musicians very well recollect their first bewilderment at what has
+afterwards become as clear as daylight. But we must retain our standards
+of judgement. We have no right to criticize without familiarity, but we
+must remember that over-familiarity, mere dulled habitual acceptance,
+means equal incapacity for criticism. If, after trying our utmost, we
+still cannot see any sense in some of these modernist pages, there is no
+reason why we should not say so; it is quite possible that there really
+is no sense in them, and that the composer is <a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" />perfectly aware of the
+fact. Odd stories float about the artistic world. And if the anarchists
+call us philistines and the philistines call us anarchists, it is fairly
+likely that we are seeing things pretty much as they are.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is worth remembering that a good deal of what is loosely
+called modernism is in reality very much the reverse. There is nothing
+progressive in the confusion of processes with principles, in the
+breathless disregard of the larger issues. Take the ideal of 'direct
+expression of emotion', the attempt to give, as Pater said half a
+century ago, 'the highest quality to our moments as they pass and simply
+for those moments' sake'. Musically, it is a return to the childhood of
+our race, to the natural savage. If a musical composition is to consist
+of anything more than one isolated noise, it must inevitably have a form
+of some kind, its component parts must look backward and forward. The
+latter-day composers who speak of Form as a kind of bogey that they have
+at last exorcized remind us of those latter-day thinkers who boast that
+they have abolished metaphysics. We cannot leap off our shadows; if we
+try, we shall only find that we are left with a residuum of bad
+metaphysics or bad musical form&mdash;as thoroughly bad as the metaphysics
+and the musical form that have resulted from the confusion of the one
+with empty word-spinning and of the other with hide-bound pedantry.
+Again, much of the modern rhythmical complexity strongly resembles, in
+essence, the machine-made experiments of mediaeval times; and the
+peculiarly fashionable trick of shifting identical chords up and down
+the scale&mdash;the clothes'-peg conception of harmony, so to speak&mdash;is a
+mere throw-back still farther, to Hucbald and the diaphony of a thousand
+years ago. And the insistence, now so common, on the decorative side of
+music, the conscious preference of the sensuous to the intellectual <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />or
+emotional elements, brings us back to our own infancy, with its
+unreflecting delight in things that sparkle prettily or are soft to the
+touch or sweet to the taste. It is a reaction from sentimentality, no
+doubt, but is a reaction to an equal extreme, a perversion of the truth
+that great art never wholly gives itself away. As Vincent d'Indy has
+justly pointed out, the 'sensualist formula'&mdash;'all for and by
+harmony'&mdash;is as much an aberration of good sense as the parallel formula
+of the ultra-melodic schools of Rossini and Donizetti: in either case it
+means the sacrifice of spaciousness to immediate effect, the supremacy
+of sensation over the equilibrium of the heart and the intelligence. Not
+of course that any music lacks the sensuous element; but it is a matter
+of proportion. And very distinguished as are many of the modern
+exponents of this side of things, history tells us, I think, that they
+are working in a blind alley. They have their supporters, no doubt. M.
+Jean-Aubry, in his very suggestive and valuable book on modern French
+musicians, has used a phrase that seems to me worth remembering; he
+speaks of the 'obsession of intellectual chastity' which, to his mind,
+disfigures the work of C&eacute;sar Franck and other great composers whom he
+therefore rejects from his latter-day Pantheon. I am glad to think that
+Franck would have gloried in this shame. He, and a very goodly company
+with him, knew that music was, at its highest, something better than an
+entertainment, however thrilling or however refined.</p>
+
+<p>But, whatever critics and composers may feel about musical progress, it
+is, as Wagner said, in the home of the amateur that music is really kept
+alive, and the amateur's music depends very largely on the schools. A
+generation ago music was certainly sociologically selfish. Musicians had
+not realized that all classes of the community were open to the
+influences of fine music, if only they had the <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />opportunities for
+knowing it. But since then there have been very great advances, both
+quantitative and qualitative, in musical education. We have spread it
+broadcast, in the increasing faith that appreciation depends, not on
+technical knowledge or executive skill, but on the responsive
+temperament and the will to understand. Familiarity, familiarity at home
+if possible, is the key to this understanding; and in this connexion
+there is, I believe, an enormous educational future before pianolas and
+gramophones, if only the preparation of their records can be taken in
+hand on artistic rather than narrowly commercial lines. And our
+standards of judgement have risen: we do not worship quite so blindly
+mere names, whether of the past or of the present, nor exalt the
+performer quite so dizzily above what is performed. Nor do we quite so
+glibly disguise our indifference to vital distinctions by talking about
+differences of taste: we know that, however catholic we may rightly be
+within the limits of the good, whether grave or gay, there comes sooner
+or later, in our judgement of musical as of all other spiritual values,
+a point where we must put our foot down. We are going on, and our
+theories are sound enough: but the path of a democratically widened, and
+rightly so widened, art is by no means easy. The principle of levelling
+up slides so readily into the practice of levelling down: and the book
+of music is closed once for all if we are to accept the plenary
+inspiration of majorities.</p>
+
+<p>But here in England the greatest danger to musical progress is, I
+venture to think, the self-styled practical Englishman&mdash;fortified as he
+is by the consciousness that, for at any rate a couple of centuries or
+more, we have as a nation taken a low view of the arts and have been
+rather proud of it than otherwise. It is so obvious that no profession
+is economically more unsound than that of the serious composer: it is
+not so obvious that we <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />owe all the great things of the spirit by which
+we chiefly live to those whom the world calls dreamers, among whom the
+great musicians have had, and, I hope and believe, will always have, no
+mean place. Against the 'practical Englishman', and all that his
+attitude to music involves, we can all of us fight in our respective
+spheres: and I would commend to you for useful weapons three very
+different books by very different men&mdash;Sir Hubert Parry's great book on
+<i>Style in Musical Art</i>, Mr. C.T. Smith's account of his artistic work in
+an elementary school in the East End of London which he calls <i>The Music
+of Life</i>, and a pamphlet <i>Starved Arts mean Low Pleasures</i> recently
+written by Mr. Bernard Shaw for the British Music Society. And one
+particular line of indirect attack, easily open to all of us, is, I am
+inclined to think, specially promising. In the third and fourth verses
+of the thirty-fifth chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus we shall find
+these injunctions, which I translate as literally as Greek epigrams can
+be translated: 'Do not hinder music: do not pour out chatter during any
+artistic performance: and do not argue unseasonably.' In other words,
+conversation, however valuable, prevents complete listening to music;
+and music that is not meant to be listened to in its completeness is not
+worth calling music, and had much better not be there at all. Musical
+progress will be spiritually well on its way when we all realize this
+axiomatic truth as firmly as this Hebrew sage of two thousand years and
+more ago.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> <i>The Times</i>, April 17, 1919.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII" /><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />XII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">THE MODERN RENASCENCE</p>
+
+<p class="center">F. MELIAN STAWELL</p>
+
+
+<p>To understand in any degree the modern outlook on life it seems
+necessary to go back to the time of the French Revolution. For at that
+stirring epoch there flamed up in the minds of enthusiasts an ideal of
+man's life larger than had ever yet been known, and one that has
+dominated us all ever since. If we give, as I think we should give, a
+wide sense to the word 'Liberty' and make it mean all that stands for
+self-development, then one may say that this ideal was fairly well
+summed-up in the famous Revolutionary watchword, 'Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity'. It is impossible at any rate to read the idealists of that
+time and its sequel&mdash;say from 1793 to 1848&mdash;whether in France, Germany,
+England, or Italy, whether inside or outside the Revolutionary ranks,
+without feeling their buoyant hope that a fresh era was opening in which
+man, casting aside old shackles and prejudices, could advance at once
+towards knowledge, joy, splendour, both for himself and all his fellows.
+Shelley, perhaps, is most typical of what I mean. Hogg laughed at him
+for his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the
+belief was vital to the poet. To Shelley it was a damnable doctrine that
+the many should ever be sacrificed to the few: yet neither was the
+ultimate vision that inspired him the vision of the few being sacrificed
+for the many. He was anything but an ascetic seeking martyrdom. The
+martyrdom of his Prometheus <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />is a prelude to the Unbinding when
+happiness shall flood the world:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The vaporous exultation not to be confined!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And not only happiness and love, but knowledge also: the Earth calls to
+the Sky: 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'
+Soberer spirits shared this poet's ecstasy. Wordsworth sang</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But to be young was very heaven.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And that heaven was exactly this foretaste of the Spirit of Man entering
+undisturbed into his full inheritance at last: Science welcomed as a
+dear and honoured guest, Poetry known as 'the breath and finer spirit
+that is in the countenance of all knowledge'.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary even to mention the high hopes of the French
+themselves, the confident anticipation of an Age of Reason when all men
+should be brothers and the earth bring forth all her treasures, but it
+is well worth noting the attitude of Goethe, an attitude the more
+significant because, in a sense, Goethe always stood outside the French
+Revolution. But he, like the best of its votaries&mdash;and this is less
+known than it should be&mdash;desired the development of all men every whit
+as much as he desired the high culture of a few. It was for the double
+goal that he worked. 'Only through all men,' he writes in a notable
+passage, 'only through all men, can mankind be made.'<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" /><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> All good lies
+in Man, he tells us again, and must be developed, 'only not in one man,
+but in many'. Goethe, the so-called aristocrat, has given us here as
+true a formula for the democratic faith as could well be found. And to
+him, as to Shelley and to Words<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" />worth, Poetry and Science were not
+enemies but friends dearer than sisters. Those three, Shelley,
+Wordsworth, and Goethe, foreshadowed a new poetry of science that has
+never yet been achieved, though fine work has been done by Tennyson,
+Whitman, Sully Prudhomme, and Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe, moreover, again like Shelley and the French, broke with all
+ideals of mere self-abnegation. In his poem, 'General Confession', he
+makes his disciples repent of ever having missed an opportunity for
+enjoyment and resolve never so to offend again. Here, as often, Goethe
+comes into the closest touch with our modern feeling. We, too, can never
+return to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as
+the highest life for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except
+as the means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would
+call the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the world for
+our own, the tree with the knowledge of good and evil included, reacting
+even from Christian ideals if they can make no room for that. But, after
+all, the characteristic of the belief dominant a century ago was exactly
+that such room could be made, that Hellenism could be combined with
+Christianity, and self-development with self-denial.</p>
+
+<p>And this belief is, I think, reflected in the music of the time.
+Schubert, that sweetest soul of tears and laughter, understands every
+shade of wistfulness, and yet again and again in his music it seems as
+though the universe had become, to quote a lover of his, one immense and
+glorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to
+have recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting
+joy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened
+spirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of
+suffering and then astounds and comforts us by ineffable <a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />vistas of
+happiness. After years of personal misery he crowns the glorious series
+of his symphonies by the one that ends in a hymn of joy, freedom, and
+faith, embracing the whole world&mdash;'Diese Kuss der ganzen Welt'&mdash;that
+majestic open melody, clear as the morning, fresh as though it came from
+far oversea, greater even than any of the great harmonies that have gone
+before, larger than the tortured human heart, steadier than the sudden
+ecstasy of the spirits set free, stronger than the swansong of the
+dying, a melody content with earth because it is conscious of heaven. I
+offer no apology for weaving my own fairy-tales round such music: I see
+no harm in the practice, but only good, so long as we understand what we
+are about. Music, it is true, is something other than, in a sense more
+than, either thought or feeling or even poetry, and cannot be reduced to
+any of them (nor any of them to it). The universe would be poor indeed
+if it could be so. But none the less the truth may be, as Spinoza
+thought, that the universe is at once a unity and a unity with many
+facets, so that any one facet, while for ever unique, can bring to our
+minds all the mysteries of the rest.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, the high confidence that breathes in the music of a hundred
+years ago meets us again in the philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Hegel, born in the same year as Beethoven and Wordsworth (1770), is sure
+that nothing can resist the onslaught of man's spirit. 'Stronger than
+the gates of Hell are the gates of Thought.' Fichte is convinced that
+there waits in man, only to be developed, a power that will unite him
+with all other men and at the same time develop his own personality to
+the full. In a sense, the deepest, each man <i>is</i> his fellow-men, and
+they are he.</p>
+
+<p>How much this conception has affected modern thought can be seen in a
+recent and very remarkable book, <i>The <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />New State</i>,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" /><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> where the very
+basis of democracy is shown to be the faith in this essential unity, a
+unity to be worked out, not yet realized, but capable of realization, a
+faith stirring all through the modern world, in ways expected and
+unexpected, from Syndicalism to the League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p>Later than Hegel and Fichte, the great Positivist conception of life
+preached by Comte is instinct with this belief that man united with his
+fellows, and only as so united, can attain heights undreamt-of and
+unlimited.</p>
+
+<p>The flood-tide of this faith flowed far into the nineteenth century. The
+Italian Mazzini, leader of revolt in 1848, was filled with it. Prophet
+of the most generous political gospel ever preached, he lived on the
+hope that, if freedom were given to the nations and duty set before
+them, they would prove worthy of their double mission, and peace would
+come to pass between all peoples.</p>
+
+<p>But even Mazzini had his moments of agonizing doubt. And others beside
+him, men of lesser intellect as well as greater, were soon to raise, or
+had already raised, voices, stern or fretful, of protest and criticism.
+It became clear at last that this joyous confidence rested on a very
+definite view of life and one that might easily be challenged, the view,
+namely, that at bottom the universe meant well to man, that his greatest
+aspirations were compatible with each other and nowise beyond
+attainment. Almost from the first there were men of the modern world who
+did challenge this. Byron and Schopenhauer are significant figures, both
+born in the same year, only eighteen years later than the great Three of
+1770, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven. Byron is full of moody
+questionings, Schopenhauer of much more than questionings. Against the
+dauntless optimism of Hegel, he flatly denies that the universe is good,
+or happiness possible for man. On the <a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" />contrary, at the heart of it and
+of him there lies an infinite unrest, never to be quieted until man
+himself gives up the Will to Live and sinks back into the Unconscious
+from which he came.</p>
+
+<p>Now after Schopenhauer came Nietzsche, and though Nietzsche's influence
+may have been exaggerated, yet undeniably it has been of immense
+importance both for Germany and Europe. He is typical of the change that
+begins to appear about the middle of the century. Reacting from the
+optimism of the idealists (which seemed to him both smug and false),
+Nietzsche welcomed Schopenhauer's more Spartan view with a kind of
+fierce delight. But his criticism of Schopenhauer was fierce too, and he
+gave a strangely different turn to such parts of the doctrine as he did
+accept. To Schopenhauer, since it was folly to hope for real happiness
+in this life or any other, the wise course would be to kill outright, so
+far as possible, the Will to Live itself. To Nietzsche the wise course
+was to assert life, to claim it more and more abundantly, to face this
+tragic show with a courage so high that it could be gay, a courage that
+could do without happiness, and yet that turned aside from none of
+life's joys simply because they were fleeting, that was more than
+content to 'live dangerously', picking flowers, as it were, clear-eyed,
+on the edge of the precipice. And this not merely in the temper of 'Let
+us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' For him the motto would have
+run, 'Let us be up and doing, for to-morrow we die', sustained by the
+belief that the heroic struggle now would lead inevitably to the
+production of a nobler type of man, a man who would be something more
+than man&mdash;the Super-man, to give him the name that every reader knows,
+if he knows nothing else about Nietzsche.</p>
+
+<p>Even this short statement shows how Nietzsche shared the admiration for
+life and power characteristic of what <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />I have called the Modern
+Renascence, and how deeply he was influenced by the doctrine of
+Evolution, and that in a not unhopeful form, the hope for an advance in
+the race at least, if not in the individuals now living. And it shows
+too how mistaken those are who see in him nothing but a preacher of
+brutal egotism. If he had been only that, he would never have won the
+influence he possessed and possesses. Yet there is important truth in
+the cursory popular judgement. If his teaching has its heroic side, a
+side that has enabled him to give succour to many when other and sweeter
+gospels are spurned as flattering unctions, he has also a most ruthless
+element. And this partly because of his very sincerity. Accept the
+doctrine that men and women perish like candles blown out in the night,
+accept it really and fully, with intellect, imagination, and feeling,
+and then see how much light-heartedness can be got out of life, if we
+still allow ourselves to pity men. Nietzsche had intellect, imagination,
+and feeling, and he saw plainly enough that, while even in such a
+universe there could be a grim happiness for the lives of heroes, there
+could be nothing but infinite sadness for the countless failures who
+have never been either happy or heroic. There was no immortality; these
+wretched beings would never have another chance. If joy was to be kept
+(and Nietzsche was avid for joy), if the universe was to be accepted
+(and Nietzsche desired above all to say Yes! to the universe), then he
+must root out pity from his heart as an unmanly weakness. In this way
+was sharpened the ruthlessness and savage arrogance latent in the man, a
+ruthlessness and an arrogance that have done so much harm both to his
+country and the world.</p>
+
+<p>In fairness, we must add that Nietzsche could not succeed in his own
+attempt; the struggle tore him to pieces and he died in madness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />But it is above all instructive to contrast him here with several of
+his contemporaries and successors. Browning in England, Walt Whitman in
+America, facing the same problems of joy and struggle, of life and
+death, of the few great and the many commonplace, of Man himself and the
+Nature that seems at once his mother and his enemy, refused to give up
+the hope of a solution, nay, they were sure they had found a solution,
+and for them it was bound up with the hope of immortality. They go even
+beyond the earlier men in their insistence on the double ideal of
+Paganism and Christianity, but they have an insistence of their own on
+the belief in unending life as alone giving man elbow-room, so to speak,
+for working out his destiny. Browning claims eternity as the due of
+every man, however mean; and if Whitman feels his foothold 'tenon'd and
+mortised in granite', it is because he can 'laugh at dissolution' and
+knows 'the amplitude of time'.</p>
+
+<p>But in such insistence and such conviction they have not been followed,
+speaking broadly, by our leading writers since. On the other hand, they
+have been so followed, again speaking broadly, in their loyalty to the
+twofold ideal. Here and there, no doubt, as I have said, writers like
+Nietzsche, on the one hand, have tried to be satisfied with the splendid
+development of a Few, or, on the other hand, like Tolstoy, have flung
+back in a kind of despair to the old ideal of abnegation, of sheer
+brotherly love and nothing else, turning their backs on all splendours
+of art, knowledge, or delight, that do not directly minister to the one
+thing they hold needful. But the earlier and wider ideal, the ideal of
+our Renascence, once envisaged by man, that has not been lost, and I
+believe never can be lost. Its own greatness will keep the foremost men
+true to it. Meredith is one of the men I mean. He is full of pity, but
+he does not only pity men and women&mdash;he wants them to grow, and to grow
+for themselves. His <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" />whole attitude towards Woman shows this: for the
+women's movement is nothing more and nothing less, as Ibsen also felt,
+than one big stream of the general movement towards liberty and
+self-determination. So far Meredith marches with Browning and Whitman.
+But he will never commit himself about immortality. It seems enough for
+him to take part in the struggle for a finer life, at once heroic and
+tender, not caring overmuch whether we reach it or no. 'Spirit raves not
+for a goal' is one of his hard and characteristic sayings, and here he
+seems to me typical both of modern thought in general and especially of
+English thought, and that both for good and ill. We see in him the want
+of precision, the lack of logical coherence, that have prevented us from
+ever producing a philosopher of the first rank. At the same time there
+is something true and profound in his instinct that the moment has not
+yet come in which to formulate our faith. We all feel that we are on the
+brink of tremendous, perhaps terrifying, discoveries; we resent any
+cut-and-dried solution, however pleasant, perhaps all the more if it is
+pleasant, and we resent it because we feel that at bottom our hopes
+would be travestied by any conception we, with our little intellect and
+minute knowledge, could at present frame. It was once said to me by a
+far-seeing friend<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" /><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> that the modern dislike of church-going, the
+modern incapacity to write a long coherent poem, the modern passion for
+music and for realism, even for sordid realism, all sprang from the same
+roots, from the thirst for an infinite harmony, the belief that
+everything was somehow involved in that harmony, and the conviction that
+all systems, as yet made or makeable, were entirely inadequate.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />And to the list we may add, I think, the modern passion for history and
+for science. We study history not merely to be warned by failures or
+inspired by shining examples: at bottom we have a belief that somehow
+the lives and struggles of those men in the distant past are still quite
+as important as our own. We follow the discoveries of science not only
+for their commercial value or because we share the excitement of the
+chase, but because, deeper than all, we suspect that the universe is a
+glorious thing.</p>
+
+<p>And there is another matter, perhaps the most important of all, on which
+I would dwell as I draw to a close, where Meredith leads directly to the
+dominant thought of the present day. I mean his feeling that, if the
+universe is to be proved acceptable to man's conscience, it will be
+through the effort of man himself struggling towards his own ideal. It
+is as though the world itself had to be redeemed by man. This hope is
+the real hope of our time. So far as the modern world believes the
+doctrine of the Incarnation, it is in this sense that it believes.</p>
+
+<p>And this belief we find everywhere in all hopeful writers, great or
+small. It gives dignity to the latest writings of H.G. Wells, this faith
+in a spirit moving in man greater than man himself, worthy to fight and
+fit to overcome all that is wrong in the universe. Bernard Shaw's creed
+is just the same, sometimes thinly disguised under respect for 'the
+Life-Force', sometimes coming boldly forward in audacious, profound
+assertions that God needs Man to accomplish His own will and is helpless
+without him. 'There is something I want to do,' Shaw imagines his God as
+saying, 'and I don't know what it is; I must make a brain, the human
+brain, to find it out.' Rodin modelled a mighty hand, the Hand of God,
+holding within it Man and Woman. Shaw, it is reported, asked the
+sculptor: 'I suppose you meant your own hand after all?' 'Yes,' said
+Rodin, 'as the tool.'</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />The same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson,
+the idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not
+yet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to
+be born through the struggle of man's spirit with matter. This is one
+function of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material
+through which alone man's vague ideal can become definite and actual,
+just as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the
+effort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.</p>
+
+<p>From this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but
+ready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are
+among the makers. Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to
+the modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight. To quote
+William James, 'It <i>feels</i> like a real fight&mdash;as if there were something
+really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and
+faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own
+hearts from atheisms and fears.' He goes on to confess that he himself
+does not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the
+redemption will surely be accomplished. Such proof, he admits, 'may not
+be clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that
+expression may serve to symbolize)'. 'But the faithful fighters of this
+hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to
+the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with
+which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been
+gained:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&quot;Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques,<br /></span>
+<span>and you were not there!&quot;'<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" /><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />Thus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has
+sunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of
+ecstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence
+for heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after
+all lies the root of human majesty. There is deep pathos in the change,
+but maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well. The world may
+grow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called
+'desperate hope' as distinct from 'hoping hope'. The triumphant harmony
+that seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may
+have been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own large
+spirits, at least for us, their lesser readers. Mystics have spoken of
+'The Dark Night of the Soul' as the stage inevitable before the crowning
+glory, and to-day some of those who call to us out of great darkness are
+among our greatest leaders.</p>
+
+<p>Of such certainly is a living writer, now beginning to be acclaimed as
+he deserves, the writer Conrad. In some ways this noble novelist might
+stand as the special representative of modern feeling. A Pole by birth
+and more than half an Englishman by sympathy, his view of life is as
+wide as it is profound and grave. It has all the sternness of temper of
+which I have spoken, the determination to look facts in the face
+whatever the consequences. Conrad would echo Sartor's noble cry for
+Truth&mdash;'Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;&mdash;no
+Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of
+Apostasy!' This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism,
+but Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic. So also does his
+pitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a
+Nietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche's ardour for heroism.
+That to him is the core of life:&mdash;'to face it.' 'Keep on facing it,' so
+the old <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />skipper tells the young mate in <i>Typhoon</i>. And facing the
+mysterious universe, peering into the Darkness with steady alert eyes,
+Conrad has at once an endless wistfulness and, or so it seems to me, a
+secret unquenchable hope. Doubt certainly he has in plenty. The sea of
+which he is always dreaming is terrible and cruel in his eyes as well as
+august and ennobling.</p>
+
+<p>But he is sure of one thing: it is through the struggle with it and such
+as it that man alone can become Man. It is through facing the horrors of
+a dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young
+master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the
+Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing
+the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the
+'full-powered steam-ship' in <i>Typhoon</i> shows what he has in him,
+compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert
+seamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with
+a power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I
+should despair of conveying by mere criticism. The book must be read for
+itself, and read again and again. It is told, in one way, simply as a
+sailor's yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a
+symbol of man's life.</p>
+
+<p>Threatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, 'the stupid man'
+of no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to
+be done is to keep up steam and face the wind. By sheer force of
+personality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through. And
+in the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem
+unending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of
+terrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting
+madly in the hold. MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance
+for the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />most of them
+are, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship. 'Had to do what's
+fair for all,' he mumbles stolidly to his clever grumbling mate, Jukes,
+during a dead lull in the storm&mdash;'they are only Chinamen. Give them the
+same chance with ourselves' ... 'Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if
+I knew she hadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes.' He
+does not know whether the ship will be lost or not&mdash;(and we do not know
+whether mankind will be lost or not)&mdash;what he does know is how he must
+act. But also he never loses hope. 'She may come out of it yet': that is
+the kind of answer the taciturn man gives when driven to speech. The
+chief mate, locked in his captain's arms to brace himself against the
+hurricane, scarcely able to make the other hear in the terrific gale
+though he shouts close to his head, gets back such answers, and with
+them the power to endure. He tells him the boats are gone: the captain
+yells back sensibly, 'Can't be helped.'</p>
+
+<p>And so noble is the power with which Conrad uses our tongue, the tongue
+he has made his own by adoption and genius, that I must let him speak
+for himself, and can find no better close for my own lame words. Jukes
+has been shouting to his captain again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but
+     with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of
+     noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the
+     black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man's voice&mdash;the frail
+     and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of
+     thought, resolution, and purpose, that shall be pronouncing
+     confident words on the last day, when heavens fall and justice is
+     done&mdash;again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from
+     very, very far&mdash;&quot;All right.&quot;'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72" /><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre</i>, Bk. 8, c. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> By M.P. Follett (Longmans).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74" /><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Professor A.C. Bradley, to whom also is due the passage
+about Schubert and the parallel drawn between Beethoven, Hegel, and
+Wordsworth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75" /><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> From <i>The Will to Believe</i>, quoted in Bridges' <i>The Spirit
+of Man</i>, No. 425.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Recent Developments in European Thought, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Recent Developments in European Thought
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2005 [EBook #15084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Garrett Alley, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNITY SERIES
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT
+
+_ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED_
+
+BY
+
+F.S. MARVIN
+
+AUTHOR OF 'THE LIVING PAST', ETC.
+
+    'To hope till Hope creates
+    From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.'
+
+    _Prometheus Unbound._
+
+HUMPHREY MILFORD
+
+OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY
+
+1920
+
+PRINTED IN ENGLAND
+
+AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume, like its two predecessors, arises from a course of lectures
+delivered at a Summer School at Woodbrooke, near Birmingham, in August,
+1919. The first, in 1915, dealt with 'The Unity of Western Civilization'
+generally, the second, in 1916, with 'Progress'. In this book an attempt
+has been made to trace the same ideas in the last period of European
+history, broadly speaking since 1870.
+
+It was felt at the conclusion of the course that the point of view was
+so enlightening and offered so many opportunities of useful further
+study that it should, if possible, be resumed in future years. A large
+number of subjects were suggested--'The Relations of East and West,'
+'The Duty of Advanced to Backward Peoples,' 'The Role of Science in
+Civilization,' &c.--all containing the same elements of 'progress in
+unity' which have inspired the previous volumes. It was thought that
+possibly for the next session 'World Reconstructions Past and Present'
+might be most appropriate.
+
+If any reader feels moved by interest or sympathy with the general idea
+to send suggestions, either as to possible places of meeting, or topics
+for treatment or any other kindred matter, they would be welcomed either
+by the Editor or by Edwin Gilbert, Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, Birmingham.
+
+F.S.M.
+
+BERKHAMSTED, _December, 1919._
+
+
+[** Transcriber's Note: This text contains a single instance of a
+    character with a diacritical mark. The character is a lower-case
+    'r' with a caron (v-shaped symbol) above it. In the text, that
+    character is depicted thusly: [vr] **]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                      PAGE
+
+   I. GENERAL SURVEY                                     7
+      By F.S. MARVIN.
+
+  II. PHILOSOPHY                                        25
+      By Professor A.E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews.
+
+ III. RELIGION                                          65
+      By Dr. F.B. JEVONS, Hatfield Hall, Durham.
+
+  IV. POETRY                                            91
+      By Professor C.H. HERFORD, Manchester.
+
+   V. HISTORY                                          140
+      By G.P. GOOCH.
+
+  VI. POLITICAL THEORY                                 164
+      By A.D. LINDSAY, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+ VII. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT                             181
+      1. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842                    181
+      2. MINING OPERATIONS                             195
+      3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION                     209
+         By C.R. FAY, Christ's College, Cambridge.
+
+VIII. ATOMIC THEORIES                                  216
+      By Professor W.H. BRAGG, F.R.S.
+
+  IX. BIOLOGY SINCE DARWIN                             229
+      By Professor LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.
+
+   X. ART                                              247
+      By A. CLUTTON BROCK.
+
+  XI. A GENERATION OF MUSIC                            262
+      By Dr. ERNEST WALKER, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+ XII. THE MODERN RENASCENCE                            293
+      By F. MELIAN STAWELL.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+GENERAL SURVEY
+
+F.S. MARVIN
+
+
+We are trying in this book to give some impression of the principal
+changes and developments of Western thought in what might roughly be
+called 'the last generation', though this limit of time has been, as it
+must be, treated liberally. From the political point of view the two
+most impressive milestones, events which will always mark for the
+consciousness of the West the beginning and the end of a period, are no
+doubt the war of 1870 and the Great War which has just ended. From 1870
+to 1914 would therefore be the most obvious delimitation of our study;
+and it is a striking illustration of human paradox, that a great stage
+in the growth of unity should be marked by two international tragedies
+and crowned by the most terrible of all.
+
+Nearly coincident with the political divisions there are important
+landmarks in the history of thought. During the 'sixties, while the
+power of Prussia was rising to its culmination in the Franco-Prussian
+War, the Darwinian theory of development was gaining command in biology.
+To many thinkers there has appeared a clear connexion between that
+biological doctrine and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was
+so marked a feature of the time. In any case 'post-Darwinian' might well
+describe the scientific thought of the age we have in view.
+
+Industrially the epoch is as clearly defined as it is in politics and
+science. For in 1871, the year of the Treaty of Frankfort, an act was
+passed after a long working-class agitation, assisted by certain eminent
+members of the middle class, legalizing strikes and Trade Unions. And
+now at the end of the war, all over the world, society is faced by the
+problem of reconciling the full rights, and in some cases the extreme
+demands, of 'labour', with democratic government and the prosperity and
+social union of the whole community. This is the situation discussed in
+our seventh and eighth chapters.
+
+In philosophy and literature a similar dividing line appears. In the
+'sixties Herbert Spencer was publishing the capital works of his system.
+The _Principles of Psychology_ was published in 1872. This 'Synthetic
+Philosophy' has proved up to the present the last attempt of its kind,
+and with the vast increase of knowledge since Spencer's day it might
+well prove the last of all such syntheses carried out by a single mind.
+Specialism and criticism have gained the upper hand, and the fresh turn
+to harmony, which we shall notice later on, is rather a harmony of
+spirit than an encyclopaedic unity such as the great masters of system
+from Descartes to Comte and Spencer had attempted before.
+
+In literature also the dates agree. Dickens, most typical of all early
+Victorians, died in 1870. George Eliot's last great novel, _Daniel
+Deronda_, was published in 1876. Victor Hugo's greatest poem, _La
+Legende des Siecles_, the imaginative synthesis of all the ages,
+appeared in the 'seventies. There have been many writers since, with
+Tolstoi perhaps at their head, in whom the fire of moral enthusiasm has
+burnt as keenly, nor have the borders of human sympathy been narrowed.
+Yet one cannot fail to note a less pervading and ready confidence in
+human nature, a less fervent belief that the good must prevail if good
+men will only follow their better leading.
+
+Here then is our period, marked in public affairs by a progress from
+one conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations
+of the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole
+world into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion
+and depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and
+imagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters.
+No wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the
+'bankruptcy of science'.
+
+But it must be noted at once that these obvious landmarks, though
+striking, are in themselves superficial. They require explanation rather
+than give it, and in some cases an explanation, much less tragic than
+the symptom, is suggested by the symptom itself. We may at least fairly
+treat them at starting simply as beacon-hills to mark out the country we
+are traversing. We have to go deeper to find out the nature of the soil,
+and travel to the end to study the vista beyond.
+
+In making this fuller analysis of man's recent achievement, especially
+in the West, the first, and perhaps ultimately the weightiest, element
+we have to note is the continued and unexampled growth of science. Was
+there ever a more fertile period than the generation which succeeded
+Darwin's achievement in biology and Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's with the
+spectroscope? Both have created revolutions, one in our view of living
+things, the other in our view of matter. In physics the whole realm of
+radio-activity has come into our ken within these years, and during the
+same time chemistry, both organic and inorganic, has been equally
+enlarged. All branches of science in fact show a similar expansion, and
+a new school of mathematicians claim that they have recast the
+foundations of the fundamental science and assimilated it to the
+simplest laws of all thinking. Some discussion of this will be found in
+the chapter on philosophy.
+
+It may serve as tonic--an antidote to that depression of spirits of
+which we have spoken--to consider that such an output of mental energy,
+rewarded by such a harvest of truth, is without precedent in man's
+evolution. No single generation before ever learnt so much not only of
+the world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For
+since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for
+historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down
+in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset sky at
+least is glorious.
+
+And there is tonic in another thought which rises from the very nature
+of this recent blossoming of knowledge. It marks the growing
+co-operative activity of mankind. The fact that science and research of
+every kind have advanced so rapidly is not only, or even primarily, a
+proof of the continued vigour of the human intellect, but of the
+stability of society, the coherence of social classes and nations, the
+readiness of the bulk of men to allow their more immediately productive
+work to be used for the support of those whose labours are in a more
+remote and ideal sphere. Science did not begin until the ancient
+priesthoods were enabled to pursue disinterested inquiries without the
+need of earning their daily bread. Civilization, we may be assured, is
+not threatened in its most vital part so long as the general will
+permits the application of the general resources to the promotion of
+learning and research without a claim for immediate marketable results.
+Our last generation has not only permitted but has encouraged this in
+all Western countries, and in other countries, such as China and Japan,
+influenced by the West. The money thus spent is vastly greater than in
+any equal period before, and the United States, the land of the fullest
+democratic claims, is also the land of the amplest generosity for
+scientific and educational purposes.
+
+The growth of knowledge is a symptom not only of the collective capacity
+of living man but also of the continuity of the present age with those
+which had laid the earlier foundations. One school of vigorous action,
+and still more vigorous talk, advises our generation to be done with the
+past and make a fresh start on more ideal lines. This is not the voice
+of science, which, just in proportion to its growth, has shown more and
+more care for its origins and its past: and this is true at every stage
+in the history of thought. The Greeks, fighting for freedom and
+establishing in the city-state a new form of political organization for
+the world, were yet in their scientific evolution true and grateful
+successors of the priests who first compiled the observations necessary
+for the scientific study of the heavens and founded the art of medicine.
+The men of the Renascence, who were burnt and imprisoned for doubting
+the verbal inspiration of Aristotle and the Bible, were in fact going
+back to an earlier impulse than that of the scholastic philosophy. The
+mathematics of Pappus and the mechanics of Archimedes had to be carried
+further before the new sciences of which Aristotle had given the first
+sketch could be securely founded. The pioneers of the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries built therefore on the past, although accused of
+impiety and revolution; and it must be so with any intellectual
+construction which is to hold its own and form the future. So far from
+there being any opposition in nature between history and science, the
+two are but different aspects of one continuous enlargement of the human
+spirit, which sees and lives more fully at each great moment of its
+progress, and, so far as it is alive, is always informed by the real
+achievements of the past. We illustrate this advance in the marvellous
+record of our fifth chapter, and its spirit is summed up in the great
+saying of Benedetto Croce that 'all history is contemporary history'.
+
+But the reader may here begin not unnaturally to feel some impatience
+with the argument, and to think that he is being carried into a region
+of ideal imaginings quite out of touch with the realities of blood and
+hatred and starvation with which we have been actually surrounded at the
+end of our period. It is well to be thus sharply reminded of the
+contrariety of facts, when we are sailing smoothly along on the current
+of any theory, whether of education or politics, religion or art. To get
+right with our objector, to set our sail so that the rocks in the stream
+may not completely wreck us, we will go back to the point where we were
+insisting on the obvious truth that the collective resources and
+capacity of mankind have of late enormously increased.
+
+The material fruits of science are among our most familiar wonders--the
+motor-car, the aeroplane, wireless telegraphy. But it is not
+sufficiently realized how all these things and the like are dependent
+upon the co-operation of a multitude of minds, the collective rather
+than the individual capacity of man. Men had dreamt for ages of flying,
+but it was not until the invention of the internal combustion engine
+that bird-like wings and the mechanical skill of man could be brought
+together and made effective. It is Humanity that flies, and not the
+individual man alone. The German Daimler, the French Levassor, are the
+two names which stand out most prominently in this later development of
+engineering as our own Watt and Stephenson stand in the history of the
+steam-engine. Wireless telegraphy offers a similar story. Faraday,
+Maxwell, Hertz, Lodge, Marconi; the names are international. In 1913,
+before ever the League of Nations had been planned, Lord Bryce was
+telling an International Congress in London that 'the world is becoming
+one in an altogether new sense.... More than four centuries ago the
+discovery of America marked the first step in the process by which the
+European races have gained dominion over nearly the whole earth. As the
+earth has been narrowed through the new forces science has placed at our
+disposal, the movements of politics, of economics, and of thought, in
+each of its regions, become more closely interwoven. Whatever happens in
+any part of the globe has now a significance for every other part. World
+History is tending to become one History.'
+
+The war, tragically as it has shaken this growing oneness of mankind,
+has not destroyed it. In some ways it has even stimulated growth.
+Against a background of blood and fire the League of Nations has been
+forced into actual being, and the long isolation alike of the ancient
+East and the youthful West has been broken down at last. Within the
+State, again, even allowing for all setbacks, the efforts at social
+solidarity have on the whole been strengthened, not weakened. This war
+his been an accelerator of, not, as the Napoleonic, a brake upon,
+reform. Many reforms, especially in England, which had been long
+discussed and partly attempted before the war, were carried out with
+dispatch at its close. This was the case with education, with the
+franchise and with measures affecting the health, the housing, and the
+industrial conditions of the people. And there is now a greater and
+stronger demand among us for a further advance, above all for making
+every citizen not merely or even primarily a voting unit, but a
+consciously active, consciously co-operative, member of the community.
+
+Comte, who died in 1857 just before our period, was perhaps the clearest
+voice in Europe to herald both movements: the advance to international
+unity, and social reform within the State. It was he who, under the
+title of _Western Republic_, proclaimed the existence of a real unity of
+nations, whose business it was to strengthen themselves as a moral
+force, to act as trustees for the weaker people and lead the world. It
+was he who, in the phrase 'incorporation of the proletariate', summed up
+all those social reforms in which we are immersed, which aim at making
+every citizen a full member of his nation. Like all ideals it was far
+easier to conceive and to respect than to foresee or to secure the
+necessary means to put it into effect. Perhaps the perfect symmetry of
+the plan, the over-sanguine hopes of the man who framed it, have even
+proved some hindrance to its rapid spread. It has seemed, like Dante's
+polity in the _De Monarchia_, to take its place rather among the utopias
+than the practical schemes of reform, and when men saw the infinite
+complexity of the problems and met the living lions in the path, they
+suffered the comparative depression which we have noticed as a feature
+of the age.
+
+Here indeed it would appear that we have reached one of the most serious
+cross-currents in recent European thought. In science, in philosophy, in
+politics, and in social economics, though we see the goal at least in
+outline, we are in some danger of being overwhelmed by the difficulties
+of the pursuit. Our vision is somewhat clouded and our steps hampered by
+the entangling details of the country between. It is substantially the
+same problem which faces us both in the philosophical and the practical
+sphere, and the analogy between the two is instructive. Spencer's
+synthesis, which we instanced as the last encyclopaedic attempt to
+present all knowledge--at least all scientific knowledge--in one system,
+has been riddled fore and aft by hostile shot, though in the end more
+of it may be found to have survived than is seen at present above water.
+The philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue
+most comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt
+some of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out
+to construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that
+he is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers,
+that he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is
+interesting to note in general terms what that point of view is, as we
+shall have occasion later on to revert to it. It rests on a new
+interpretation of the nature and growth of conscious life. He is in
+short a _semeur d'idees-force_ rather than an encyclopaedist or a
+system-maker. The difference is characteristic of the age and might be
+traced in the other contemporary schools, the pragmatists, the new
+realists, and the rest. The new Descartes is looked for but not
+announced. Perhaps when he arrives he will prove to be a whole army and
+not a single man. But if an army, it will need a better co-ordination, a
+more clearly defined common spirit, than is at present apparent in the
+philosophic hosts.
+
+A similar perplexity in the practical sphere has a similar cause but a
+graver urgency. The multiplicity and contrariety of the facts are upon
+us as we face in practice the ideals which we have accepted from the
+earlier thinkers, from the century of hope. In science and philosophy we
+feel that the cause of unity may with some safety be left to look after
+itself. If the new Descartes does not appear in person, we may have
+confidence that plenty of inferior substitutes will be found, who, if
+they work together, will keep alive the great task of unifying thought.
+For in this region the nature of things assists our efforts and will
+sooner or later get the work done. The stars in their courses are
+fighting for us and for unity. But in the world of wills the task is
+tenfold more difficult and the dangers imminent. The poor and labouring
+millions, the oppressed and dissatisfied nations, are forcing the door,
+and though there is fair agreement in theory as to how they should live
+and work together in peace, yet the realization is by no means
+automatic, and the difficulties thicken as we come nearer to them.
+
+But even here, perhaps most of all here, it is the first word of wisdom
+to take stock of the favourable symptoms, to see clearly the forces on
+which we can rely in our forward march. And they are not far to seek in
+all classes and in every Western land. Read any account of an English
+community in the early nineteenth century, say George Eliot's 'Milby' in
+the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. How far more humane, more enlightened,
+and happier is the state of the succeeding community, the Nuneaton or
+Coventry of the present day! No question but the novelist would have
+welcomed as a convincing proof of her 'meliorist' doctrine the progress
+made in her own homeland in the century since her birth. We know by
+personal experience the general kindliness and cheerfulness of our
+fellow citizens, their tolerance, their readiness to hope, their
+prevalent orderliness and self-restraint. We are thinking perhaps of a
+certain tendency to slackness, a dangerous falling-off in the output of
+work. If that be so, we need only look at the activities of any
+playground, or of a class-room in a well-ordered school, to be sure of
+the future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as
+exhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all
+for vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult community, the trustees
+of the child, who are to blame if his maturity fails of the eager
+questioning and the untiring labours of his unspoilt youth.
+
+But we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than
+with the actual life of the times. Theories affecting the organization
+of work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society
+have had much to do with our present difficulties. They have arisen from
+the conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the
+political revolution which began about the same time, and they have
+reacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the
+mass of Western men. They are discussed in our eighth chapter. It may be
+said broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and
+_simpliste_ doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of
+extinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken
+their place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due
+mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the
+present--or recent--capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned
+upside down in the interests of manual labour--this is no longer
+dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate
+battle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist
+system, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St.
+Simon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.
+The spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized
+employer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find
+rather in a reconstituted and moralized State. We all share this hope in
+our degree, _The Times_ as well as the _Daily News_, and we do not
+expect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and
+private capacity and initiative of individuals. The joint stock company
+has settled that.
+
+What we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of
+a benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many
+mansions and, like the monks of old, follow many rules of life. In this
+region our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of
+thought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.
+
+And here it is interesting to note that one of the most telling books on
+social reconstruction published since the war is by an international
+writer. This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose
+ideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael[1].
+He fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double
+attitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision
+of the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing
+groups, 'Social Guilds' or 'professional syndicates' in which both
+employers and workmen would be included with representatives of the
+Government; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must
+proceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at
+increasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.
+
+Our book has no special chapter on the League of Nations itself. The
+idea pervades the whole, and the subject was treated in detail in the
+first volume of this series (_The Unity of Western Civilization_, 1915).
+The history behind the League offers a striking analogy to the other
+struggles for unity of which we have spoken. There is the same advance
+from the idea of a unity dictated and controlled by one mind to a unity
+of spirit arising from the free co-operation of many diverse elements
+all aiming at the same general good. Down even to yesterday it seemed to
+many minds a necessary condition that one man, gathering in his hands
+the resources of one great State, should from that centre dominate the
+world. And in the dawn of human history it was no doubt often true, the
+only way in which the world could then advance. This was true for
+Alexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true,
+conspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up
+of the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading
+all who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the
+time of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and
+reactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and
+nations too various and deeply rooted. Meanwhile a real unity, stronger
+than before, had been forming beneath the surface and needed fresh
+institutions to body it forth. This movement for unity has been, as we
+have seen, precipitated by the war into visible and decisive action. It
+had been simmering for three hundred years in 'Great Designs', 'Projects
+of Peace', Treaties of Arbitration, and Hague Conventions.
+
+Among much that is doubtful in the future of the League, one thing
+stands out as a capital certainty. Without losing the very spirit of its
+being it can never become a satellite system, revolving round one
+dominant Power or even a dominant clique. It was formed to contradict
+and destroy an oppressive imperialism: it can only thrive by the free
+co-operation of the partners, finding their proper end in a prosperity
+shared by all.
+
+Such is a short summary of some of the leading topics treated here,
+those perhaps in which public interest has been most keenly aroused. But
+nothing has been said in this introduction of Art or Music, and of
+Religion only a little by implication. It may be well in conclusion to
+attempt a still more summary impression of the main drift of the period
+on the spiritual side. We may in such a wider view see some common
+tendency in all these activities, some inspiration of religion, some
+link with art, some impulse to live strongly and to hope.
+
+The present writer would find this leading thread in the increasing
+stress laid by recent European thought on the spiritual, or
+psychological, side of every problem, in the growing desire to
+understand the character of man's own nature and to develop all the
+powers of his soul.
+
+One of the latest authorities[2] on anthropology has told us that 'to
+develop soul is progress', and he has followed the clue through the
+meagre relics of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man. So does the last
+science of the nineteenth century throw light on the dim recesses of the
+past. For unquestionably psychology is the characteristic science added
+to the hierarchy in our period; it has crowned biology and is exercising
+a profound influence on philosophy, literature, and even politics. If
+Aristotle was its founder, if it was Descartes who first showed its
+profound connexion with philosophy, it is to workers in our own day that
+we must look for those methods of accurate observation, comparison, and
+the study of causes without which it could not advance farther. And
+modern psychology has advanced far enough to see that we must include in
+its purview the 'soul' of a minnow as well as of a man. Descartes had
+stopped too short, for to him animal life, as distinct from human,
+showed only the movements of automata. But now, just as the biologist
+conceives man as part of one infinite order of living things, so the
+psychologist believes that the facts of his consciousness, the crown of
+life, must find their place somewhere related to the simplest movements
+of the amoeba. Hence the whole of animate evolution, and not only that
+part of which Dr. Marett spoke, may be thought of as the growth of soul.
+
+But, the objector will inquire, does this imply the enlargement of every
+individual or even of the average or the typical personality? And if
+not, what becomes of a 'growth of the soul'?
+
+To this we must admit the impossibility of any complete, or even
+approximate, answer with our present knowledge. We can only note one or
+two points of certainty or of confident belief. The first, that there
+have been individual men, an Aristotle or a Shakespeare, in the past,
+with whom later ages never have, and perhaps never may, compare. The
+second, that there are good grounds for thinking that the average man
+has improved in goodness and in knowledge since we first knew him dimly
+in the dawn of history. But more important and more certain is the fact
+that the collective soul of man has grown, and all the extensions of
+knowledge and of power of which our volume speaks bear witness to it.
+They are essentially social in origin and outlook, and rest on a
+foundation of common thought immeasurably wider than any in the more
+distant past.
+
+The man of science, the statesman, even the poet, now speaks for a
+multitude, and out of a multitudinous consciousness, which had not
+gathered to support, to inspire, or to weigh down, an Aristotle, a
+Pericles, a Cromwell. This is a dominating fact from which it is well to
+take our start. Assuredly the soul of mankind has been collectively
+enlarged and enriched. How far the individual can share in this
+enlargement is still one of the problems of the future. The West has
+committed itself to a general policy of education which aims at making
+every citizen a full partaker in the advance of the race. But it cannot
+be said that this policy has yet been really tried. It is the
+acknowledged ideal to which in all Western countries partial steps have
+been taken, and the democracy, through their most enlightened leaders,
+will continue to press for its fulfilment. As this approaches, the
+individual may become more and more in his degree the microcosm which
+philosophers have proclaimed him, and the enlargement of the soul, which
+we know to be a fact for humanity, will become a fact for every man.
+Need we doubt that with the general raising in the level new eminences
+will appear? Do not great mountains sometimes rise from the sea and
+sometimes from the high plateau? We are now in the very midst of a
+struggle for settlement and incorporation, which, as it is accomplished,
+should prepare the way for new excellences of every kind. What may not
+be hoped of men if once they learn to live with their fellows? And they
+can only so learn by studying them. This is felt by all contemporary
+writers from Bergson in philosophy to Graham Wallas in politics. Poets
+and novelists, above all, have turned more and more to problems of the
+inner life.
+
+The novelists who ushered in our age are significant of this, and none
+more so than George Eliot, whose work, though somewhat out of fashion
+for the moment, is yet marked by the transition from Victorian
+complacency to modern unrest and modern hopes. Full of love and
+appreciation for the old order in England--the contentment and humours
+of the country-side, the difference of classes, the respect for
+religion--she was carried by the evolutionary philosophy of her time
+into thoughts of an eternal and world-wide order, the growth of
+humanity, the kinship of man with the universe, the social nature of
+duty. Her contribution was essentially psychological; she enlarged our
+knowledge of the soul. She showed us, not certainly more living types
+than Scott or Dickens, but more play of motives, more varied interests
+in life, more mental crises. The soul, above all the woman's soul, had
+widened its horizon between Flora Macdonald and Dorothea Brooke.
+
+Every reader will think of famous novelists who have followed the same
+broadening path, and their work is often really great as well as famous.
+The history of thought has in fact throughout the last century been a
+commentary on those words of Keats to which many of us have turned of
+late for comfort and inspiration: 'The world is not a vale of tears, but
+a vale of soul-making.' Tears there are in abundance, as the tears of
+children. But sorrow is not the leading note of children, nor should it
+be of humanity in growth. Soul-making--the practice and the theory--has
+become more and more clearly and consciously the object of human thought
+and endeavour. We need the greater mind to see the links in the
+overwhelming mass of science, in the mazes of human action and history.
+We need it still more to grasp and to preserve the unity of our social
+life. Most of all for the healing of the world is the greater soul
+needed, with a world-consciousness, some knowledge, some sympathy, some
+hope for all mankind. Without this, a league of nations would be dead
+before its birth.
+
+The recent development of psychology, social as well as individual, its
+pursuit on scientific lines, and its alliance with biology, suggest one
+thought which applies generally to an age of science and may be found to
+throw some illumination even on the future. Which of all types of modern
+men is the most habitually hopeful, the man of letters, the politician,
+the business man, or the man of science? There can be no question of the
+answer. The typical man of science is sure of the greatness and solidity
+of the work he shares, and confident that the future will extend and
+make still more beneficial its results. His forward glance is more
+assured because the backward reveals a course of growing strength and
+continuous ascent. The physicist foresees unmeasured sources of energy,
+still untapped. He warns us of our dangers, but has no doubt that, with
+due foresight, we may overcome them, and make the reign of man upon the
+planet wider and firmer than before. The doctor knows no disease which
+may not in time yield to scientific treatment. The agricultural expert
+foresees, and can produce, new types of grain and fruit which will
+surpass the best yet known. And the trainer of youth, the man to whom
+the new science of psychology stands most in stead, is the most hopeful
+of them all. Dealing with human nature in its growth he puts no limits
+to its powers of goodness and activity. He deplores the want of wise
+methods in the past, and if he errs at all it is in an excess of
+optimism, in believing that with new methods we may make a new man.
+
+On this enlargement of the soul, enlightened by science, we build the
+future. It is the crowning vision of the modern world, first sketched by
+Descartes, filled out and strengthened by the life and thought of three
+hundred years. In the interval we have lived much and learnt much, both
+of our own nature and of the world in which we live. In our own age a
+powerful stimulus has been given by a transformed biology and a new
+science which shows the soul itself in growth from an immemorial past,
+moulding the future by its own action, surmounting, while assimilating,
+the mechanism which surrounds it. But for this building two things are
+needed. One, that our souls, as builders, shall act as one with all our
+fellows and strive for unity as well as power. The other, that in the
+building the laws of growth shall be followed, which science has already
+revealed in part and will reveal more fully. For the spirit of science
+is the spirit of hope.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _Walther Rathenau. Ses Idees et ses Projets d'Organisation
+Economique_. By Gaston Raphael (Paris: Payot, 4f. 50 c).]
+
+[Footnote 2: R.R. Marett in _Progress and History_ (Oxford University
+Press).]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+PHILOSOPHY
+
+PROFESSOR A.E. TAYLOR
+
+
+Between forty and fifty years ago a great European man of science, Emil
+du Bois-Reymond, delivered before an audience of the leading scientific
+men of Germany a famous discourse on _The Limits of our Knowledge of
+Nature_, which he followed up some years later with a second discourse
+on the _Seven Riddles of the Universe_. His object was to convince the
+materialists of the 'seventies that there were at least seven such
+unsound places in _their_ story of everything. Some of the 'riddles', he
+admitted, might prove to be soluble as science advances, but the most
+important of them will always remain unanswered. Our position as regards
+them will always be _ignoramus et ignorabimus_--we do not know the
+solutions and we never shall know them. I do not ask now whether du
+Bois-Reymond was right in his judgement or not. If he was right, that
+means, of course, that the one tale of everything will never be told by
+human lips to human ears. There will no more ever be a finally true
+Philosophy than there will ever be a finally perfect poem or picture or
+symphony. But there is no reason why we should not, at any rate, try to
+make our story as nearly perfect as we can, to reduce the number of the
+places where we have to break off with 'that is another story', and
+perhaps even to hazard a 'wide solution' in matters where absolute
+certainty is beyond our reach. This is the work of human Philosophy as I
+conceive it, and every man who is disinterestedly trying, without one
+eye on wealth or fame or domination over the minds of others, to make
+any contribution, however humble, to the telling of this one story or
+the removal of loose threads from it, is inspired by the true spirit of
+Philosophy. Whoever is doing anything else, no matter under what name or
+with what profit or renown to himself, is no true philosopher.
+
+This point of view implies, it will be seen, no sharp dividing line
+between Philosophy and Science. The avoidance of this commonly made
+distinction may offend two different sets of students--students of
+metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the
+'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed
+to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and
+definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of
+the conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction
+that the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may
+help to make my peace with both parties if I explain where I take this
+distinction of convenience to come in. If we are ever to construct an
+approximation to the one story of everything, clearly one result will
+consist of a relatively few first principles and a great mass of
+conclusions which can be inferred from them. And clearly again, since
+men differ so widely in their mental aptitudes, some men will be most
+successful in the detection of the principles which underlie all our
+knowledge, and others most successful in the accumulation of facts and
+the detailed working out of the application of the principles to the
+facts. For convenience' sake it will be well that some of us shall be
+engaged on the discovery of principles which are so very ultimate that
+most men take them for granted without reflecting on them at all, and
+others on the work of detail. Further, it will be convenient that,
+within this second group, various students shall give their attention to
+more special masses of detail, according to their several tastes and
+aptitudes, some to the behaviour of moving particles, some to the
+behaviour of living organisms, some again to the structure and
+institutions of human societies, and so on. For convenience we may agree
+to call preoccupation with the great ultimate principles Philosophy and
+preoccupation with the application of the principles to masses of
+special facts Science. If we make the distinction in this way, we shall
+be following pretty closely the lines of historical development along
+which 'special' sciences have gradually been constituted. When we go
+back far enough in the history of human thought, we find that
+originally, among the great Greeks who have taught the world to think,
+there was no distinction at all between Science and Philosophy. Men like
+Plato and Aristotle were busied at once with the discovery of the first
+principles on which all our knowledge depends and with the construction
+of a satisfactory theory of the planetary motions or of the facts of
+growth and reproduction. As the study of special questions was pursued
+further, it became advisable to hand over the treatment of first one and
+then another group of closely interconnected questions to students who
+would pursue them independently of research into ultimate
+presuppositions. This is how Geometry, Astronomy, Biology came, in
+ancient times, to be successively detached from general Philosophy. The
+separation of Psychology--the detailed study of the processes of mental
+life--from Philosophy hardly goes back beyond the days of our fathers,
+and the separation of such studies as 'sociology' from general
+Philosophy may be said to belong quite definitely to our own time. If
+our children have leisure for study at all, no doubt they will see the
+process carried much further. But it is important to bear in mind that
+neither Philosophy in the narrower sense nor Science in the narrower
+sense will be fruitfully prosecuted unless the men who are working at
+each understand that their own labours are only part of a single
+undivided work. Without a genuine grasp of some department of detailed
+facts no man is likely to achieve much in the search for principles, for
+it is by analysis of facts that principles are to be found, and without
+real insight into broad general principles the worker in detail is
+likely to achieve nothing but confusion. The antagonism between
+'philosophers' and 'men of science' so characteristic of the last half
+of the nineteenth century has been productive of nothing but evil. It
+has given us 'philosophers' whose knowledge about the facts with which
+serious thinking has to deal has been hopelessly inaccurate; it has also
+given us 'men of science' who have been 'ageometretes' and have, by
+consequence, when forced to offer some account of first principles,
+taken refuge in the wildest and weirdest improvisation. For really
+fruitful work we need the union in one person of the 'man of science'
+and the 'philosopher', or at least the most intimate co-operation
+between the two. Our theories of first principles require to be
+constantly revised, purified, and quickened by contact with knowledge of
+detailed fact; and our representations of fact call for constant
+restatement in terms of a system of more and more thoroughly thought-out
+postulates or first principles. This is perhaps why the department of
+human knowledge in which the last half-century has seen the most
+remarkable advances is just that in which unremitting scrutiny of
+principles has gone most closely hand-in-hand with the mastery of fresh
+masses of detail, pure mathematics, and again why the present state of
+what is loosely called 'evolutionary' science is so unsatisfactory to
+any one who has a high ideal of what a science ought to be. It exhibits
+at once an enormous mass of detailed information and an apparently
+hopeless vagueness about the meaning of the 'laws' by which all this
+detail is to be co-ordinated, the reasons for thinking these laws true,
+and the precise range of their significance. The work of men like
+Cantor, Dedekind, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, is providing us with an
+almost unexceptional theory of the first principles required for pure
+mathematics. We are already in a position to say with almost complete
+freedom from uncertainty what undefined simple notions and
+undemonstrated postulates we have to employ in the science and to
+express these ultimates without ambiguity. 'Evolutionary science,' rich
+as is its information about the details of the processes going on in the
+organic world, seems still to await its Frege or Russell. It talks, for
+example, much of 'hereditary' and non-hereditary peculiarities, and some
+of us can remember a time when our friends among the biologists seemed
+almost ready to put each other to the sword for differences of opinion
+about the inheritability of certain characteristics; but no one seems to
+trouble himself much with the question a philosopher would think most
+important of all--precisely what is meant by the metaphor of
+'inheritance' when it is applied to the facts of biology. (Indeed, it is
+still quite fashionable to talk not merely as if a 'character' were,
+like a house or an orchard, a _thing_ which can be transferred bodily
+from the possession of a parent to the possession of the offspring, but
+even as though an 'heir' could 'inherit' himself.)
+
+This last remark leads me to a further consideration. Science and
+Philosophy are alike created by the simple determination to be
+_thorough_ in our thinking about the problems which all things and
+events present to us, to use no terms whose meaning is ambiguous, to
+assert no propositions as true until we are satisfied that they are
+either directly apprehended as true, or strictly deducible from other
+propositions which are thus apprehended. But now that the area of facts
+open to our exploration has become far too vast for a modern Francis
+Bacon to 'take all knowledge for his province', and convenience has led
+to the distinction between the philosopher and the man of science, a
+_practical_ distinction between the two makes its appearance. It is
+_convenient_ that our knowledge of detail should be steadily extended by
+considering the consequences which follow from a given set of postulates
+without waiting for the solution of the more strictly philosophical
+questions whether our postulates have been reduced to the simplest and
+most unambiguous expression, whether the list might not be curtailed by
+showing that some of its members which have been accepted on their own
+merits can be deduced from the rest, or again enlarged by the express
+addition of principles which we have all along been using without any
+actual formulation of them. The point may be illustrated by considering
+the set of 'postulates' explicitly made in the geometry of Euclid. We
+cannot be said to have made geometry thoroughly scientific until we know
+whether the traditional list of postulates is complete, whether some of
+the traditional postulates might not be capable of demonstration, and
+whether geometry as a science would be destroyed by the denial of one or
+more of the postulates. But it would be very undesirable to suspend
+examination of the consequences which follow from the Euclidean
+postulates until we have answered all these questions. Even in pure
+mathematics one has, in the first instance, to proceed tentatively, to
+venture on the work of drawing inferences from what seem to be plausible
+postulates before one can pass a verdict on the merits of the postulates
+themselves. The consequence of this tentative character of our
+inquiries is that, so far as there is a difference between Philosophy
+and Science at all, it is a difference in _thoroughness_. The more
+philosophic a man's mind is, the less ready will he be to let an
+assertion pass without examination as obviously true. Thus Euclid makes
+a famous assumption--the 'parallel-postulate'--which amounts to the
+assertion that if three of the angles of a rectilinear quadrilateral are
+right angles, the fourth will be a right angle. The mathematicians of
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, again, generally assumed
+that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A
+comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions
+pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when
+it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask _Why_?'
+Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my
+quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of
+conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from
+contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I
+define a continuous function which is _not_ differentiable? The raising
+of the first question led in fact to the discovery of what is called
+'non-Euclidean' geometry, the raising of the second has banished from
+the text-books of the Calculus the masses of bad reasoning which long
+made that branch of mathematics a scandal to logic and led distinguished
+philosophers--Kant among them--to suspect that there are hopeless
+contradictions in the very foundations of mathematical science.
+
+Now, the effect of such careful scrutiny of first principles is not, of
+course, to upset any conclusions which have been correctly drawn from a
+set of premisses. All that happens is that the conclusion is no longer
+asserted by itself as a truth; what is asserted is that the conclusion
+is true _if_ the premisses are true. Thus we no longer assert the
+'theorem of Pythagoras' as a categorical proposition; what we assert is
+that the theorem follows as a consequence from the assertion of some
+half-dozen ultimate postulates which will be found on analysis to be the
+premisses of Euclid's proof of his forty-seventh proposition.
+
+To come back to the point I wish to illustrate. The peculiarity of the
+philosopher is simply that he still goes on to 'wonder' and ask _Why_
+when other persons are ready to leave off. He is less contented than
+other men to take things for granted. Of course, he knows that, in the
+end, you cannot get away from the necessity of taking something for
+granted, but he is anxious to take for granted as few things as
+possible, and when he has to take something for granted, he is
+exceptionally anxious to know exactly what that something is. De Morgan
+tells a story of a very pertinacious controversialist who, being asked
+whether he would not at least admit that 'the whole is greater than the
+part', retorted, 'Not I, until I see what use you mean to make of the
+admission.' I am not sure whether De Morgan quotes this as an ensample
+for our following or as a warning for our avoidance, but to my own mind
+it is an excellent specimen of the philosophic temper. Until you know
+what use is going to be made of your admission, you do not really know
+what it is you have admitted. It is this superior thoroughness of
+Philosophy which Plato has in mind when he says of his supreme science
+'Dialectic' that its business is to examine and even to 'destroy'
+([Greek: anairein]) the assumptions of all the other sciences. It does
+not let propositions which they have been content to take for granted
+pass without challenge, and it may actually 'destroy' them by showing
+that there is no justification for asserting them. Thus Euclid's
+assumption about parallels ceased to be included among the indispensable
+premisses of geometry, and was 'destroyed' in Plato's sense when
+Lobatchevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann showed that complete bodies of
+self-consistent geometrical theory can be deduced from sets of
+postulates in which Euclid's assumption is explicitly denied. There are
+two further points I should like to put before you in this connexion.
+One of them has been forcibly argued by Mr. Bertrand Russell in his
+admirable little work _The Problems of Philosophy_; the other has not.
+Indeed, it is just in his unwillingness to allow the second of these
+points to be raised at all that Mr. Russell seems to me to fall
+conspicuously and unaccountably short of being what, by his own showing,
+a great philosopher ought to be.
+
+To take first the point with which Mr. Russell has dealt. There is one
+very important branch of inquiry, if we ought not rather to say that
+there are two, which appear to belong wholly to general Philosophy and
+not to any of the 'sciences'. We cannot so much as ask the simplest
+question without making the implication that there is an ultimate
+distinction between true assertions and false ones, and certain definite
+principles by which we can infer true conclusions from true premisses.
+It is thus a very important part of the true 'story of everything' to
+state the principles upon which valid reasoning depends, and to
+enunciate the ultimate postulates which have to be taken for granted
+whenever we try to reason validly about anything. This is the inquiry
+known by the name of logic. We cannot expect men whose time is fully
+taken up with the task of reaching true conclusions about some special
+class of facts, those which concern the history of living organisms, or
+the production and distribution of 'wealth', or the stability of various
+forms of government, to burden themselves with this inquiry in addition
+to their other tasks. They may fairly be allowed to leave the
+construction of logic to others. But the man who makes it the business
+of his life to get back to ultimate first principles must plainly be a
+logician, though he need not be a specialist in biology or economics or
+'sociology'. One great advantage which our children should have over
+their parents as students of Philosophy is that the last half-century
+has been one of unprecedented advance in the study of logic. In the
+'logic of relations', founded by De Morgan, carried out further in the
+third volume of Ernst Schroeder's _Algebra der Logik_, and made still
+more precise in the earliest sections of the _Principia Mathematica_ of
+Whitehead and Russell, we now possess the most potent weapon of
+intellectual analysis ever yet devised by man.
+
+We must further remark that the serious pursuit of any kind of science
+implies not only that there _are_ truths, but that some of them, at
+least, can be _known_ by man. Hence there arises a problem which is not
+quite the same as that of logic. What _is_ the relation we mean to speak
+of when we talk of 'knowing' something, and what conditions must be
+fulfilled in order that a proposition may not only be true but be known
+by us to be true? The very generality of this problem marks it out as
+one which belongs to what I have been all along calling Philosophy. (We
+must be careful to note that the problem does not belong to the 'special
+science' of psychology. Psychology aims at telling us how particular
+thoughts and trains of thought arise in an individual mind, but it has
+nothing to say on the question which of our thoughts give us 'knowledge'
+and which do not. The 'possibility of knowledge' has to be presupposed
+by the psychologist as a pre-condition of his particular investigations
+exactly as it is presupposed by the physicist, the botanist, or the
+economist.) The study of the problem 'what are the conditions which must
+be satisfied whenever anything at all is known' is precisely what Kant
+meant by _Criticism_, though the raising of the problem in this
+definite form is not due to Kant but goes back to Plato, who made it the
+subject of one of his greatest dialogues, the _Theaetetus_. The simplest
+way to make the nature and importance of the problem clear is perhaps
+the way Mr. Russell adopts in the _Problems of Philosophy_--to give a
+very rough statement of Kant's famous solution.
+
+Kant held that careful analysis shows us that any piece of knowledge has
+two constituents of very diverse origin. It has a _matter_ or material
+constituent consisting, as Kant held, of certain crude data supplied by
+sensation, colours, tones of varying pitch and loudness, odours,
+savours, and the like. It has also a _form_ or formal constituent. Our
+data, when we know anything at all, are arranged on some definite
+principle of order. When we recognize an object by the eye or a tune by
+the ear, we do not apprehend simply so much colour or sound, but colours
+spread out and forming a pattern or notes following one another in a
+fixed order. (If you reverse the movement of a gramophone, you get the
+same notes as before, but you do not get the same tune.) Further, Kant
+thought it could be shown that the data of our knowledge are a
+disorderly medley and come to us from without, being supplied by things
+which exist and are what they are equally whether any one perceives them
+or not, but the element of form, pattern, or order is put into them by
+our own minds in the act of knowing them. Our minds are so constructed
+that we _can_ only perceive things or think of them as connected by
+certain definite principles of orderly arrangement. This, he thought,
+explains the indubitable fact that we can sometimes know universal
+propositions to be true without needing to examine all the individual
+instances. I can know for certain that in every triangle the greater
+angle is subtended by the greater side, or that every event has a
+definite cause among earlier events, though I cannot examine all
+triangles or all events one by one. This is because the postulates of
+geometry and the law of causality are types of order which my mind
+_puts_ into the data of its knowledge in the very act of attending to
+them, and it is therefore certain that I shall never perceive or think
+anything which does not conform to these types.
+
+I give Kant's answer to the problem of Criticism not because I believe
+it to be the correct one, but to show what important consequences follow
+from our acceptance of a solution of this problem. If it is true that
+one of the constituent elements of every piece of knowledge is a lump of
+crude sensation, it follows that we can have no knowledge about our own
+minds or souls, and still less about God, since, if there are such
+beings as my soul and God, at any rate neither furnishes me with
+sense-data. Hence a great part of Kant's famous _Critique of Pure
+Reason_ is taken up by an elaborate attempt to show that psychology and
+theology contain no real knowledge. We cannot even know whether there is
+any probability for or against the existence of the soul or of God,
+though Kant was very anxious to show that it is our duty on moral
+grounds to _believe_ very firmly in both. Now if Kant is right about
+this, his result is tremendously important. If psychology and theology
+are wholly devoid of scientific value, it is most desirable that we
+should know this, not only that we may not waste time in studying them,
+but because it may reasonably make a very great difference to the
+practical ordering of our lives. If Kant can be proved wrong, it is
+equally important to be convinced that he is wrong. We may have been led
+by belief in his teaching to neglect the acquisition of a great deal of
+knowledge of high intrinsic interest, and may even have been betrayed
+into basing the conduct of life on wrong principles. If, for example, we
+can really know something about the soul, it _may_ be possible to know
+whether it is immortal or not, and it is not unreasonable to hold that
+certain knowledge, or even probable belief, on such a point ought to
+make a great difference to our choice between rival aims in life. There
+is clearly much less to be said for the recommendation to 'eat and drink
+for to-morrow we die' if we have reason to believe our souls immortal
+than if we have not, and some of us do not share Mr. Russell's view that
+Philosophy is called upon to abdicate what the Greeks thought her
+sovereign function, the regulation of life. It is true that Kant
+convinced himself that it is a moral duty to act as if we knew the truth
+of doctrines for or against which we cannot detect the slightest balance
+of probability. But the logically sound inference from Kant's premisses
+would be that, to use Pascal's famous metaphor, a prudent man will do
+well to bet neither for nor against immortality. Unfortunately, as
+Pascal said, you can't _help_ betting; _il faut parier_. If it makes any
+difference to the relative values of different goods whether the soul
+dies with the body or not, one _must_ take sides in the matter. In
+making one's choices one must prefer either the things it is reasonable
+to regard as good for a creature whose days are threescore years and ten
+or those which it is reasonable to regard as best for a being who is to
+live for ever. The only way to escape having to bet is not to be born.
+
+I come to the second problem, the one which, as I think, Mr. Russell
+arbitrarily ignores. A human being is not a mere knowledge-machine. The
+relation of knower to known is not the only relation in which he stands
+to himself and to other things. The 'world' is not merely something at
+which he can look on, it is also an instrument for achieving what he
+regards as good and for creating what he judges to be beautiful. To do
+good and to make beautiful things are just as much man's business as to
+discover truth. A knowledge of the world would be very incomplete if it
+did not include knowledge of what ought to be, whether because it is
+morally best or because it is beautiful, as well as knowledge of what is
+actually there. And it is not immediately evident how the two, knowledge
+of what ought to be and knowledge of what merely is, are connected.
+
+There is, to be sure, one way in which it is pretty plain that they are
+_not_ related. You cannot learn what ought to be--what is beautiful or
+morally good--merely by first finding out what has been or what is
+likely to be. This simple consideration of itself deprives many of the
+big volumes which have been written about the 'evolution' of art and
+morals of most of their value. They may have interest if they are
+treated only as contributions to the history of opinion about art and
+morals. But unhappily their authors often assume that we can find out
+what really _is_ right or beautiful by merely discovering what men have
+thought right and beautiful in the remote past or guessing what they
+will think right or beautiful in the distant future. The fallacy
+underlying this procedure has been happily exposed by Mr. Russell
+himself in an occasional essay where he remarks that it is antecedently
+just as likely that evolution is going from bad to worse as that it is
+going from good to better. _Unless_ it is going from bad to worse it is
+obviously absurd to suppose that you can find out what _is_ good by
+discovering what our distant ancestors _thought_ good. And _if_ (as may
+be the case) it is going from bad to worse, no amount of knowledge about
+what our posterity will think good can throw any light on the question
+what is good. There is, in fact, no ground whatever for believing that
+'evolution' need be the same thing as progress, and this is enough to
+knock the bottom out of 'evolutionary ethics'.
+
+On the other hand, it is quite certain that when we call an act right
+or a picture beautiful we do not mean to be expressing a mere personal
+liking of our own, any more than when we make a statement about the
+composition of sulphuric acid or the product of 9 and 7. As Dr. Rashdall
+has put it, when we say that a given act is right, we do not pretend to
+be infallible. We know that we may fall into mistakes about right and
+wrong just as we may make mistakes in working a multiplication sum. But
+we do mean to say that _if_ our own verdict 'that act is right' is a
+true one, then the verdict of any one who retorts 'that act is wrong' is
+false, just as when we state the result of our multiplication we mean to
+assert that _if_ we have done the sum correctly any one else who brings
+out a different answer has worked it wrongly. Indeed, we might convince
+ourselves that these verdicts are not meant to be expressions of private
+and personal liking in a still simpler way. All of us must be aware that
+the line of action we pronounce 'right' is not always what we like nor
+the conduct we call 'wrong' what we dislike. We often like doing what we
+fully believe to be wrong and dislike doing what we believe right,
+without being in the least confused in our moral verdicts by this
+collision of liking and conviction. So again it is a common thing to
+like one poem or picture better than another, and yet to be fully
+persuaded that the work we like the less is the better work of art.
+Indeed, the whole process of moral and aesthetic education may be said
+to exist just in learning to like most what is really best.
+
+All this, put into so many words, may seem too simple to call for
+statement, but it makes nonsense of a great deal that has been written
+about ethics of late years. It disposes once for all of the theory that
+moral and aesthetic verdicts are 'subjective', that is, that they mean
+no more than that the persons who make them have certain personal likes
+and dislikes of which these verdicts are a record. Of course, it might
+be urged that all of us do indeed mean to express truths which are
+independent of our personal likings when we make moral and aesthetic
+judgements, but that we never succeed in doing so. A man might
+conceivably hold that there is no real distinction between right and
+wrong or between beautiful and ugly, but that it is a universal illusion
+of mankind to suppose that there are such distinctions. Or he might hold
+that the distinctions are real, but that we do not know where to draw
+them. He might suggest that some ways of acting are really right and
+others really wrong, but that we do not know which are the right acts
+and so regularly confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right.
+Mr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of
+this sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as
+reasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions
+are only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers
+and astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths
+and falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do
+not know which the true propositions are. That there is a real
+distinction between true and false propositions and that, with pains and
+care, we can discover some truths are assumptions we must make if we are
+to recognize the possibility of pursuing knowledge at all, and there is
+no reason to suppose that these assumptions do not hold as good in
+matters of art and morals as elsewhere. No doubt, in practice men are
+prone to mistake what they like for what is right or beautiful, but this
+danger, such as it is, is not confined to art and morals. Men do often
+call acts right merely because they like doing them or pictures
+beautiful merely because they get pleasure from them. But it is also
+notorious that many men are prone to believe that a thing is likely to
+happen merely because they wish it to happen, or that it is unlikely to
+happen merely because they wish it not to happen. Yet no one seriously
+makes the reality of these tendencies a ground for denying the
+possibility of 'inferring the future from the past'. We must then, I
+hold, regard it as an integral part of the whole story of everything to
+find an answer to the questions What is good? and What is beautiful? as
+well as to the question What is fact? By the side of the so-called
+'positive sciences', which deal with the third question, we must
+recognize as having an equal right to exist the so-called 'sciences of
+value', which deal with the first and the second.
+
+I want now to take a further step in which disciples of Mr. Russell
+would perhaps decline to follow me. We have already seen what is meant
+by the co-ordination of the sciences into a single body of deductions
+from definite ultimate postulates, though in what we have said about the
+task we were content to speak provisionally as if the sciences of 'what
+is' were all the sciences to be co-ordinated. We talked, in fact, as if
+the work of Philosophy were merely to work into a coherent story all
+that can be known of 'objects that present themselves to the
+contemplation' of a knower. But, of course, if Philosophy is ever to
+attack its final problem, we must take into account two things which we
+have so far ignored. The 'whole story of everything' includes the
+knowing intelligence itself as well as the 'objects' which present
+themselves to its gaze. Indeed, it is not even accurate to speak as if
+'objects' 'presented themselves' to a merely passive intelligence; to be
+apprehended, they have to be actively attended to. If we would see them,
+we have to be on the look-out for them. And the knowing intelligence is
+not aware merely of these objects. It is also aware of itself, though
+it is certainly never a 'presented object'. Also, it is not only a
+knower but a doer and a maker. Intelligence is shown as much in the
+ordering of life by a rule based on a right valuation of goods and in
+the making of things of beauty as in the discovery of propositions about
+what is. Hence, we can hardly be content to leave the 'positive'
+sciences and the 'sciences of values' simply standing over against one
+another. There is that which 'is', and there is that which 'ought to
+be', and, at first sight at any rate, the two seem very different. Much
+that is--ignorance, sin, misery, ugliness--ought not to be, and much
+that ought to be is very far from being fact. We are accustomed to
+regard this as a matter of course, but, closely considered, it is
+perhaps the supreme wonder of all the wonders. We creatures of
+circumstance, as we call ourselves, can take stock of the sum of things
+to which we belong, and judge it. It is not simply that we can, and
+often do, _wish_ that it were different in various ways; we can judge
+that it _ought_ to be different, and you may find a man of science like
+Huxley, after a life spent in trying to understand the laws which
+prevail in the world, deliberately making it his last word to his
+fellows that their duty is to set themselves to reverse the 'cosmic
+process', to select for preservation just the human types which, if the
+much-abused metaphor may be tolerated, Nature, left to herself, selects
+for destruction.
+
+We might, of course, regard this apparently unreconcilable conflict
+between the arrangements which do prevail; as is commonly supposed, in
+the world, and those which ought to prevail, as a mystery which we must
+despair of ever understanding. But, to say the least of it, it is hardly
+consistent with the philosophic temper to treat any question as an
+insoluble riddle until one has tried all ways of solution and found them
+_culs-de-sac_. If we are to be thoroughly loyal to the spirit which
+prompts all intelligent inquiry, we are bound at least to ask whether
+it is, after all, beyond the power of human intelligence to think of the
+world as a system in which somehow, in the end, what ought to be
+prescribes what is. It is true that, for reasons already mentioned, we
+cannot, like Spinoza or the Sufis, reconcile facts and values by the
+simple assumption that what is is shown, by the fact that it is, to be
+what ought to be, and that our common conviction that sin and ugliness
+are painfully real is only an illusion due to spiritual short sight. We
+have just as much reason to believe that some pleasures are good, that
+pain which is not a means to good is evil, that justice and purity are
+good, lewdness and cruelty bad, that some colours are lovely and others
+odious, as we have to believe that between any two points there is
+always a third, or that, if _B_ and _C_ are two points there is always a
+point _D_ on the straight line _BC_ such that _C_ is between _B_ and
+_D_, and a point _A_ on _CB_ such that _B_ is between _C_ and _A_.
+Indeed, the most fanatical champion of what Mr. Russell in his
+anti-ethical mood calls 'ethical neutrality' cannot well avoid
+recognizing the truth of at least one proposition in ethics, the
+proposition that knowledge of scientific truth is _better_ than
+ignorance of it. The admission of this single truth of value is enough
+to raise all the time-honoured problems of ethics and theodicy. If
+knowledge of truth is better than ignorance of it, the actual present
+state of the world, in which so much truth is yet to seek, is by no
+means wholly good, and there really is at least one way in which it is
+our duty to make it more like what it ought to be.
+
+If then we cannot get rid of the apparent conflict between Is and Ought
+by saying that Ought is an illusion, can we get rid of it, in the only
+other possible way, by holding that what ought to be is the lasting and
+primary reality and that the 'facts' which are so far from being what
+they ought to be are by comparison only half-real, much what shadows are
+to the solid things which throw them? This was the doctrine of Plato,
+who makes Socrates say in the _Phaedo_ that it is the 'Good' which holds
+the Universe together, and that in the end the true reason for each
+particular arrangement in the world, whether we can see it or not, is
+that it is 'best' that this arrangement, and no other, should exist. It
+is also the foundation of Kant's well-known contention that, however
+barren speculative theology and psychology may be, the reality of the
+moral order and the unconditionality of moral obligation compel us to
+make the existence of God, the immortality of our souls, and the moral
+government of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More
+generally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and
+explanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all
+philosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of
+course, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for
+instance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes
+to be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say _how_
+any particular thing comes to be other than it ought to be, nor _how_ in
+the end good is 'brought out of evil'. But if we are to have a right to
+hold a view of the Platonic or Theistic type, we must be able, not
+indeed to say how evil comes about or how it is to be finally got rid
+of, but to say, in a general way, what it is 'good for'. Thus, if there
+are certain goods of the highest value which could not exist at all
+except on the condition of the existence of less important evils, this
+consideration will remove, so far as _those_ goods and evils are
+concerned, the time-honoured puzzle how evil can exist at all if God is.
+To take a specific example. To many of us it appears directly certain
+that such qualities of character as fortitude, patience, superiority to
+carnal lusts, magnanimity, are goods of the highest value. We think also
+that we see that these qualities are not primitive psychological
+endowments but require for their development the experience of struggle
+and discipline in a world where there is real suffering, real
+disappointment, real temptation. To us, therefore, there seems to be no
+contradiction between the existence of God and the presence in a world
+made by God of the evils needed for the development of these virtues.
+And this will include some of the worst of all the evils we know of. Few
+things are more ghastly than some of the cruelties which have been
+practised in the late War and are still being practised in the
+distracted country of Russia. Yet we know how revulsion from these
+horrors has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or
+carnality into a Bayard or a Galahad. It may well be that this moral
+re-birth would never have been effected if the evils which provoked it
+had been less monstrous. Here, then, we seem to discern a principle
+which _may_ be adequate to explain what all the ills of human life are
+'good for'.
+
+I must not deny that all such explanation, in my judgement, involves the
+postulate that the ennoblement of character and deepening of insight
+brought about by suffering are permanent--in fact, that it requires the
+postulates of the existence of God and the reality of everlasting life.
+Mr. Russell, I imagine, would regard this as a confession that I am sunk
+in what he airily dismisses as 'theological superstitions'. I should
+reply that the 'superstition' is on his side; to dismiss God and the
+eternal soul, without serious inquiry, as 'superstitions' is just the
+most superficial of all the superstitions. It is, of course, incumbent
+on anyone who holds the Platonic view to show that its postulates are
+not inconsistent with any known truth, and I would add that he ought
+also to show that there are at any rate known facts which seem to demand
+just this kind of explanation. Both these points, as I hold, can be
+established, but I do not in the least wish to suggest that any
+philosopher will ever find it an easy task to 'justify the ways of God
+to man'. As Timaeus says in Plato, 'to find the father and fashioner of
+the Universe is _not_ easy', and I want rather to lay stress on the
+magnitude of the task than to extenuate it. But I am concerned to urge
+that the doctrine which accounts for what is by what ought to be is the
+_only_ philosophical theory on which it ceases to be an unintelligible
+mystery that we should have--as I maintain we certainly have--the same
+kind of assurance about values that we have about facts. The chief
+complaint I have to make about the mental attitude of Mr. Russell and
+some of his friends is that, in their zeal for the unification of
+science, they seem inclined to assume that the larger problem of the
+co-ordination of Science with Life does not exist, or, at any rate, need
+not occupy our minds. This is what I should call mere atheistic
+superstition. On this point they might, I believe, learn much which it
+imports them to know from the works of some of the notable living
+philosophers of Italy, in particular from Professor Varisco of Rome and
+Professor Aliotta of Padua, whose labours have been specially directed
+to the co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the
+sciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all,
+those who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical
+work of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought
+in their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it
+in the schools of Rome or Padua.
+
+You will readily see that I am suggesting in effect that if Philosophy
+is ever to execute her supreme task, she will need to take into much
+more serious account than it has been the fashion to do, not only the
+work of the exact sciences but the teachings of the great masters of
+life who have founded the religions of the world, and the theologies
+which give reasoned expression to what in the great masters is immediate
+intuition. For us this means more particularly that it is high time
+philosophers ceased to treat the great Christian theologians as
+credulous persons whose convictions need not be taken seriously and the
+Gospel history as a fable to which the 'enlightened' can no longer pay
+any respect. They must be prepared to reckon with the possibility that
+the facts recorded in the Gospel happened and that Catholic theology is,
+in substance, true. If we are to be philosophers in earnest we cannot
+afford to have any path which may lead to the heart of life's mystery
+blocked for us by placards bearing the labels 'reactionary', 'unmodern,'
+and their likes. That what is most modern must be best is a superstition
+which it is strange to find in a really educated man--especially after
+the events of the last five years. A philosopher, at any rate, should be
+able to endure the charge of being 'unmodern' with fortitude. It is at
+least a tenable thesis that many of the qualities which we Western men
+have been losing in our craze for industrialism and commercialistic
+'Imperialism' are just those which are most necessary to the seeker
+after speculative truth. Abelard and St. Thomas would very likely have
+failed as advertising agents, company promoters, or editors of
+sensational daily papers. But it may well be that both of them were much
+better fitted than Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Bottomley, or Mr. A.G. Gardiner
+to tell us whether God is and what God is. In fact, one would hardly
+suppose habitual and successful composition of effective 'posters' or
+alluring prospectuses to be wholly compatible with that candour and
+scrupulous veracity which are required of the philosopher. As for
+'reaction', no one but a writer in a 'revolutionary' journal would be
+fool enough to use the word as, in itself, an epithet of reproach. Most
+persons who have a bowing acquaintance with Mechanics know that you
+cannot have an engine in which there is all action and no reaction, and
+most sane men can see that before you pronounce a given 'reaction' good
+or bad you need to know what it is reacting against. If a man who wants
+to go east discovers that he is walking west, he is usually reactionary
+enough to go back on his steps.
+
+In short, if we mean to be philosophical, our main concern will be that
+our beliefs should be true; we shall care very little whether they
+happen to be popular or unpopular with the intellectual 'proletarians'
+of the moment, and if we can get at a truth, we shall not mind having to
+go back a long way for it. Indeed, when one wants to get on the track of
+the most ultimate and important truths of all, there is usually a great
+positive advantage in going back a very long way for them. The questions
+which deal with first principles, being the simplest--though the
+hardest--of all, are mostly raised very simply and directly by Plato and
+Aristotle, who were the very first writers to raise them. In the
+discussions of later times, the great simple questions about principles
+have so often been overlaid by mainly irrelevant accretions of secondary
+details that it is usually very hard indeed 'to see the wood for the
+trees'. This is the chief reason why one who, like myself, finds it his
+main business in life to introduce younger men and women to the study of
+Philosophy must think indifference to Greek literature about the worst
+misfortune which could happen to our intellectual civilization.
+
+I have tried in what I have said so far to explain what I understand by
+the philosophical spirit and what I regard as the primary problems with
+which Philosophy has to wrestle. If what I have said is not wholly wide
+of the mark, it should be clear what is the deadliest enemy of the true
+spirit of Philosophy. It is the temper which is too indolent to think
+out a question for itself and consequently prefers to accept traditional
+ready-made answers to the problems of Science and Life. Traditionalism,
+wherever it is found, is the enemy, because Traditionalism is only
+another name for indolence. Observe that I say Traditionalism, not
+Tradition. Nowhere in life, and least of all in Philosophy, is the
+solitary likely to work to much purpose unless he has behind him that
+body of organized sound sense which we call Tradition. And I do not mean
+that true philosophers are necessarily 'heretics', or that 'orthodoxy'
+is less philosophical than 'heterodoxy'. I mean that however true an
+'orthodox' proposition may be, it is no living truth for me unless I
+have made it my own, as its first discoverer did, by personal labour of
+the spirit. The truth is something which each generation must rediscover
+for itself. True traditions may be quite as injurious, if they have
+become mere traditions, as false ones. It was not so much because the
+Aristotelian doctrines were false that the unquestioning acceptance of
+Aristotelian formulae all but strangled human thought in the later days
+of Scholasticism. Some of these doctrines were false, but many of them
+were much truer than anything the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+had to put in their place, and the rediscovery of their real meaning is
+perhaps the chief service of the Hegelian school to Philosophy. The
+trouble was that mechanical repetition of Aristotle's formulae as
+matters of course inevitably led to loss of real insight into the
+meaning the formulae had borne for Aristotle.
+
+We may say, generally, that because Traditionalism is the death of sound
+thinking, the ages in which the prospects of advance in Philosophy are
+brightest are just those in which a powerful historical tradition has
+broken down and men feel themselves compelled to go back on their steps
+and raise once more the fundamental questions which their fathers had
+supposed to be disposed of once for all by a formula. This has happened
+twice since the downfall of the degenerate Scholasticism, Protestant and
+Roman, of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the result
+was the great movement in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics, of which
+Descartes and Galileo are the principal figures. Towards the end of the
+eighteenth century, when the doctrines of Descartes had themselves been
+traditionalized, the same thing happened again, the leading actors in
+the drama being David Hume and Immanuel Kant; the result was first the
+revival of the 'critical' problem by Kant, and then the great, if
+over-hasty, attempt at a positive interpretation of the Universe which
+culminated in the philosophical system of Hegel. In our own age, it is
+mainly Kant and Hegel who have been traditionalized, and we seem to be
+living through the last stages of the discrediting of this third
+tradition with every prospect of a great advance if our own time can
+only find its Descartes. In what I am going on to say I must naturally
+speak of the disintegrating influences chiefly as we have seen them at
+work in our own country; but I should like, before I do so, to remark
+that on the Continent splendid work has been done in the requickening of
+genuine philosophical thought by an influence which has, so far, not
+made itself widely felt among ourselves. I mean the revival of Thomism
+so earnestly promoted in the academies of the Roman Church by Pope Leo
+XIII. Neo-Thomism, I am convinced, if its representatives will only
+maintain it at the high level characteristic, for example, of the
+Italian _Rivista Neo-Scolastica_, has a very great contribution to make
+to the Philosophy of the future, and is much more deserving of the
+serious attention of students in our own country than the
+much-advertised 'impressionism' of Pragmatists and Bergsonians. Indeed,
+I hardly know how much we may not hope from the movement if it should
+please Providence to send into the world a Neo-Thomist who is also a
+really qualified mathematician.
+
+Of the state of thought in our own country we may fairly say that a
+generation ago opinion on the ultimate questions was, in the main,
+fairly divided into two camps. There were the professional
+metaphysicians, mainly living on a tradition derived from Kant and
+Hegel, and there were the men of science whose 'philosophy', such as it
+was, is perhaps best represented by two well-known and most instructive
+books, Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Karl Pearson's _Grammar of
+Science_. The men of the Kant-Hegel tradition, whatever their family
+dissensions, were generally united by the common view that--as William
+James accused them of teaching--the function of sensation in
+contributing to knowledge, whatever it is, is something 'contemptible'.
+Kant himself, as we have seen, had thought very differently, but he was
+supposed to have been 'corrected' on this, as on so many points, by
+Hegel. The most distinguished of my own Oxford teachers seemed agreed to
+believe that our thought builds up the fabric of knowledge entirely from
+within by what Hegel called an 'immanent dialectic'. A rough idea of
+what this means may be given in the following way. You take any
+experience you please and try to put what you experience into a
+proposition. The proposition may, to begin with, be as vague as, e.g. 'I
+am now feeling something,' 'I am now aware of something.' On reflection
+you find that the statement does not do justice to the experience. You
+feel the need to say more precisely _what_ you are feeling or are aware
+of, how it is related to what you experience on other occasions, and
+what the 'I' is which is said to 'have' the experience. Until you have
+done this your thought is a miserable reproduction of your experience,
+and if you could ever do it completely, it would turn out that a really
+adequate account of the most trivial experience would involve complete
+knowledge of the structure and working of everything. Thus, if you once
+begin to think about your experience at all, you are irresistibly driven
+on to endless further reflection. If you try to stop short anywhere in
+the process, the results of your reflection are found to contain
+unexplained contradictions, just because you have not yet fitted on the
+fact on which you are reflecting to everything else there is to know.
+All the assumptions of every-day 'common sense' and all the more
+recondite assumptions of the sciences are saturated with these
+contradictions, because both 'common sense' and the sciences leave so
+much of the whole 'story of everything' untouched. If the whole story
+were told, all things would be found to be just one thing, which these
+philosophers call the 'Absolute', and the only perfectly true statement
+we can make would be a statement about this Absolute in which we
+asserted of it all that it is. Since no science ever attempts to say
+anything at all about this one sole thing, far less to get all there
+might be to be said about it into a single statement, no scientific
+proposition can be more than 'partially' true, and unhappily _we_ do not
+know what alterations would be required to make our 'partial' truths
+quite true. Naturally enough Kant's allegation that mathematical first
+principles are so self-contradictory that you can rigidly demonstrate
+mathematical propositions which contradict each other was grist to the
+Hegelian mill. That our notions of space, time, the infinitely great,
+the infinitely little, are all a jumble of contradictions was steadily
+repeated by the Hegelian philosophers, and indeed the mathematicians
+were accustomed to state their own principles so loosely and confusedly
+that there was a great deal of excuse for the suspicion that the fault
+lay with Mathematics and not with the mathematicians.
+
+It is clear that such a philosophy ought to end in unqualified
+Agnosticism. The Hegelians, to be sure, made merry over the Unknowable
+of Mr. Spencer, but their own Absolute is really just the Unknowable in
+its 'Sunday best'. Nothing that we can say about anything which is not
+the Absolute is really true, because there really _is_ nothing but the
+Absolute to speak about, and nothing that we can say about the Absolute
+is quite true either, because we can never succeed in saying itself of
+it. Mr. Bradley, far the most eminent of the philosophers of the
+Absolute, has made persistent and brilliant attempts to show that, in
+spite of this, we do know enough to be sure that our own mind is more
+like the Absolute than a cray-fish, and a cray-fish more like it than a
+crystal. But when all is said, though I owe more to Mr. Bradley than I
+can ever acknowledge adequately, I cannot help feeling that there are
+two men in Mr. Bradley, a great constructive thinker and a subtle
+destructive critic, and that the destructive Hyde is perpetually pulling
+to pieces all that the constructive Jekyll has built up. Of course it is
+obvious that the truth of mathematics, if mathematics are true, is a
+fatal stone of stumbling for this type of philosophy. Mathematics never
+attempts to say anything about the 'Absolute'--the only 'Absolute' of
+which it knows is only a 'degraded conic'--yet it claims that its
+statements, if once they have been correctly expressed, are not
+'partial' but complete.
+
+Over against the Hegelianizing philosophers, we had, of course, the men
+of science. No one could wish to speak of the scientific men of the
+days of Huxley without deep respect for their success in adding to our
+positive knowledge of facts. But it may perhaps be said at this distance
+of time that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most
+prominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly
+be said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest,
+undertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement
+was little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that
+the whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived',
+and quite missed Kant's point that their empiricism left the formal
+constituent in knowledge, the type of order by which data are organized
+into an intelligible pattern, wholly out of account. Even when they
+deigned to read Kant, they read him without any inkling of the character
+of the 'critical' problem. Hence they taught dogmatically as true a
+theory of scientific method which Hume himself had elaborately proved
+impossible. It was just because Hume had seen so clearly that no
+universal scientific truths can be derived from premisses which merely
+record particular facts that he professed himself a follower of the
+'academic' or 'sceptical' philosophy. He recognized the impossibility of
+constructing scientific knowledge out of its material constituent alone,
+but did not see where the formal constituent could come from, and so
+resigned himself to regarding the actual successes of science as a kind
+of standing miracle.
+
+The men of the 'seventies were, after all, in many cases more anxious to
+damage theology than to build up Philosophy. They read Hume without any
+delicate sense for his urbane ironies, and believed in good faith that
+he and John Stuart Mill between them had shown that by a mysterious
+process called 'induction' it is possible to prove rigorously universal
+conclusions in science without universal premisses. A scientific law,
+according to them, is only a convenient short-hand notation in which to
+register the 'routine of our perceptions'. Thus we have known of a great
+many men who have died, and have never known of any man who lived to
+much over a hundred without dying. The universal proposition 'all men
+are mortal' is a short expression for this information, and it is
+nothing more. It ought to have been obvious that, if this is a true
+account of science, all scientific 'generalizations' are infinitely
+improbable. The number of men of whom we _know_ that they have died is
+insignificant by comparison with the multitude of those who have lived,
+are living, or will live, and we have no guarantee that this
+insignificant number is a fair average sample. So again, unless there
+are true universal propositions which are not 'short-hand' for any
+plurality of observed facts whatever, we cannot with any confidence,
+however faint, infer that a 'regular sequence' or 'routine' which has
+been observed from the dawn of recorded time up to, say, midnight,
+August 4, 1919, will continue to be observed on August 5, 1919. How,
+except by relying on the truth of some principle which does not depend
+itself on the validity of 'generalization', can we tell that it is even
+slightly probable that the nature of things will not change suddenly at
+the moment of midnight between August 4 and August 5, 1919? What is
+called 'inductive' science certainly has 'pulled off' remarkable
+successes in the past, but we can have no confidence that these
+successes will be repeated unless there are much better reasons for
+believing in its methods and initial assumptions than any which the
+scientific man who is an amateur 'empiricist' in his philosophy can
+offer us. We may note, in particular, that this empiricism, which has
+been expounded most carefully by Pearson and Mach, coincides with
+Hegelian Absolutism in leading to the denial of the truth of
+mathematics. It would be a superfluous task to argue at length that,
+e.g., De Moivre's theorem or Taylor's theorem is not a short-hand
+formula for recording the 'routine of our perceptions'.
+
+The general state of things at the time of which I am speaking was thus
+that relations were decidedly strained between a body of philosophers
+and a body of scientific men who ought at least to have met on the
+common ground of a complete Agnosticism. The philosophers were, in
+general, shy of Science, mainly, no doubt, because they were modest men
+who knew their own limitations, but they had a way of being
+condescending to Science, which naturally annoyed the scientific men.
+These latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the
+philosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was
+always ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be
+getting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere in
+particular.
+
+The conditions for mutual understanding have now greatly improved,
+thanks mainly to the labour of mathematicians with philosophical minds
+on the principles of their own science. If we admit that mathematics is
+true--and it seems quite impossible to avoid the admission--we can now
+see that neither the traditional Kant-Hegel doctrine nor the traditional
+sensationalistic empiricism can be sound. Not to speak of inquiries
+which have been actually created within our own life-time, it may fairly
+be said that the whole of pure mathematics has been shown, or is on the
+verge of being shown, to form a body of conclusions rigidly deduced from
+a few unproved postulates which are of a purely logical character.
+Descartes has proved to be right in his view that the exceptional
+certainty men have always ascribed to mathematical knowledge is not due
+to the supposed restriction of the science to relation of number and
+magnitude--there is a good deal of pure mathematics which deals with
+neither--but to the simplicity of its undefined notions and the high
+plausibility of its unproved postulates. Bit by bit the bad logic has
+been purged out of the Calculus and the Theory of Functions and these
+branches of study have been made into patterns of accurate reasoning on
+exactly stated premisses. It has appeared in the process that the
+alleged contradictions in mathematics upon which the followers of Kant
+and Hegel laid stress do not really exist at all, and only seemed to
+exist because mathematicians in the past expressed their meaning so
+awkwardly. Further, it has been established that the most fundamental
+idea of all in mathematics is not that of number or magnitude but that
+of _order_ in a series and that the whole doctrine of series is only a
+branch of the logic of Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial
+order we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and
+from this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and
+the arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the
+logical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as
+well as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the
+Theory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction
+or breach of logic. The puzzles about the infinitely great and
+infinitely small, which used to throw a cloud of mystery over the
+'higher' branches of Mathematics, have been finally dissipated by the
+discovery that the 'infinite' is readily definable in purely ordinal
+terms and that the 'infinitesimal' does not really enter into the
+misnamed 'Infinitesimal Calculus' at all. Arithmetic and the theory of
+serial order have been shown to be the sufficient basis of the whole
+science which, as Plato long ago remarked, is 'very inappropriately
+called geometry'. A resume of the work which has been thus done may be
+found in the stately volumes of the _Principia Mathematica_ of Whitehead
+and Russell, or--to a large extent--in the _Formulario Matematico_ of
+Professor Peano. Of other works dealing with the subject, the finest
+from the strictly philosophical point of view is probably that of
+Professor G. Frege on _The Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic_. The general
+result of the whole development is that we are now at last definitely
+freed from the haunting fear that there is some hidden contradiction in
+the principles of the exact sciences which would vitiate all our
+knowledge of universal truths. This removes the chief, if not the only
+ground for the view that all the truths of Science are only 'partial'.
+At the same time, the proof that pure mathematics is a strictly logical
+development and that all its conclusions are of the hypothetical form,
+'if _a b c_ ..., then _x_' definitely disproves the popular Kantian
+doctrine that _sense_-data are a necessary constituent of scientific
+knowledge. And with this dogma falls the _main_ ground for the denial
+that knowledge about the soul and God is attainable. The recovery of a
+sounder philosophical method has, as Mr. Russell himself says, disposed
+of what was yesterday the accepted view that the function of Philosophy
+is to narrow down the range of possible interpretations of facts until
+only one is left. Philosophy rather opens doors than shuts them. It
+multiplies the number of logically possible sets of premisses from which
+consequences agreeing with empirical facts may be inferred. Mr.
+Russell's unreasoned anti-theism seems to me to make him curiously blind
+to an obvious application of this principle. On the other side, the
+revived attention to the logical methods of the sciences is killing the
+crude sensationalism of the days which saw the first publication of
+Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Pearson's _Grammar of Science_. The
+claims of 'induction' to be a method of establishing truths may be
+fairly said to have been completely exposed. It is clearer now than it
+was when Kant made the observation that each of the 'sciences' contains
+just so much science as it contains mathematics, and that the Critical
+Philosophy was fully justified in insisting that all science implies
+universal _a priori_ postulates, though it went wrong in thinking that
+these postulates are laws of the working of the human mind or are 'put
+into' things by the human mind. How far Science has moved away from
+crude sensationalistic empiricism may be estimated by a comparison of
+the successive editions of the _Grammar of Science_. It must always have
+been apparent to an attentive reader that the chapters of that
+fascinating book which deal directly with the leading principles of
+Physics and Biology are of very different quality from the earlier
+chapters which expound, with many self-contradictions and much wrath
+against metaphysicians and theologians whom the writer seems never to
+have tried to understand, the fantastic 'metaphysics of the
+telephone-exchange'. But the difference of quality is more marked in the
+second edition than in the first, and in the (alas!) unfinished third
+edition than in the second. So far, then, as the problem of the
+unification of the sciences is concerned, the old prejudices which
+divided the rationalist philosopher from the sensationalist scientific
+man seem to have been, in the main, dissipated. We can see now that what
+used to be called Philosophy and what used to be called Science are both
+parts of one task, that they have a common method and presuppose a
+common body of principles.
+
+So far it may be said with truth that Philosophy is becoming more
+faithful than Kant was himself to the leading ideas of 'Criticism', and
+again that it is reverting once more, as it reverted in the days of
+Galileo, to the positions of Plato. I do not mean that the whole
+programme has been completely executed and that there is nothing for a
+successor of Frege or Russell to do. It is instructive to observe that
+at the very end of the great work on arithmetic to which I have referred
+Frege found himself compelled by difficulties which had been overlooked
+until Russell called attention to them to add an appendix confessing
+that there was a single important flaw in his elaborate logical
+construction of the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there
+are certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them,
+the whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there _is_
+any object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical
+researches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved
+that some restatement of the initial assumptions of the theory was
+needed. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and
+others have done something towards the necessary rectification, and the
+resulting 'Theory of Types' is pretty certainly one of the most
+important contributions ever made to logical doctrine, but it may still
+be reasonably doubted whether the 'Theory of Types', as expounded by
+Whitehead and Russell in their _Principia Mathematica_, is the last word
+required. At any rate, it seems clear that it is a great step on the
+right road to the solution of a most difficult problem.
+
+There still remains the greatest problem of all, the harmonization of
+Science and Life. I cannot believe that this problem is an illegitimate
+one, or that we must sit down content to accept the severance of 'fact'
+and 'value' as final for our thought. Even the unification of the
+sciences itself remains imperfect so long as we treat it as merely
+something which 'happens to be the case' that there are many things and
+many kinds of things in the universe and also a number of relations in
+which they 'happen' to stand. It is significant that in his later
+writings Mr. Russell has been driven to abandon the concept of personal
+identity, which is so fundamental for practical life, and to assert that
+each of us is not one man but an infinite series of men of whom each
+only exists for a mathematical instant. I am sure that such a theory
+requires the abandonment of the whole notion of value as an illusion,
+and even more sure that it is ruinous to any practical rule of living,
+and I cannot believe in the 'philosophy' of any man who is satisfied to
+base his practice on what he regards as detected illusion. Hence I find
+myself strongly in sympathy with my eminent Italian colleague Professor
+Varisco, who has devoted his two chief works (_I Massimi Problemi_ and
+_Conosci Te Stesso_) to an exceedingly subtle attempt to show that 'what
+ought to be', in Platonic phrase 'the Good', is in the end the single
+principle from which all things derive their existence as well as their
+value. Mr. Russell's philosophy saves us half Plato, and that is much,
+but I am convinced that it is whole and entire Plato whom a profounder
+philosophy would preserve for us. I believe personally that such a
+philosophy will be led, as Plato was in the end led, to a theistic
+interpretation of life, that it is in the living God Who is over all,
+blessed for ever, that it will find the common source of fact and value.
+And again I believe that it will be led to its result very largely by
+what is, after all, perhaps the profoundest thought of Kant, the
+conviction that the most illuminating fact of all is the _fact_ of the
+absolute and unconditional obligatoriness of the law of right. It is
+precisely here that fact and value most obviously meet. For when we ask
+ourselves what in fact we are, we shall assuredly find no true answer to
+this question about what _is_ if we forget that we are first and
+foremost beings who _ought_ to follow a certain way of life, and to
+follow it for no other reason than that it is good. But I cannot, of
+course, offer reasons here for this conviction, though I am sure that
+adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this
+ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should
+prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The
+alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious,
+bad joke.
+
+_Note_.--It may be thought that something should have been said about
+the revolt against authority and tradition which has styled itself
+variously 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism', and also about the recent vogue
+of Bergsonianism. I may in part excuse my silence by the plea that both
+movements are, in my judgement, already spent forces. If I must say more
+than this, I would only remark about Pragmatism that I could speak of it
+with more confidence if its representatives themselves were more agreed
+as to its precise principles. At present I can discern little agreement
+among them about anything except that they all show a great impatience
+with the business of thinking things quietly and steadily out, and that
+none of them seems to appreciate the importance of the 'critical'
+problem. 'Pragmatism' thus seems to me less a definite way of thinking
+than a collective name for a series of 'guesses at truth'. Some of the
+guesses may be very lucky ones, but I, at least, can hardly take the
+claims of unmethodic guessing to be a philosophy very seriously. To
+'give and receive argument' appears to me to be of the very essence of
+Philosophy. As for M. Bergson, I yield to no one in admiration for his
+brilliancy as a stylist and the happiness of many of his illustrations.
+But I have always found it difficult to grasp his central idea--if he
+really has one--because his whole doctrine has always seemed to me to be
+based upon a couple of elementary blunders which will be found in the
+opening chapter of his _Donnees Immediates de la Conscience_. We are
+there called on to reject the intellect in Philosophy on the grounds (1)
+that, being originally developed in the services of practical needs, it
+can at best tell us how to find our way about among the bodies around
+us, and is thus debarred from knowing more than the _outsides_ of
+things; (2) that its typical achievement is therefore geometry, and
+geometry, _because it can measure only straight lines_, necessarily
+misconceives the true character of 'real duration'. Now, as to the first
+point, I should have thought it obvious that the establishment of a
+_modus vivendi_ with one's fellows has always been as much of a
+practical need as the avoidance of stones and pit-falls, and the alleged
+conclusion about the defects of the intellect does not therefore seem to
+me to follow from M. Bergson's premisses, even if we had any reason, as
+I do not see that we have, to accept the premisses. And as to the second
+point, I would ask whether M. Bergson possesses a clock or a watch, and
+if he has, how he supposes time is measured on them? He seems to me to
+have forgotten the elementary fact that angles can be measured as well
+as straight lines. (I might add that he makes the further curious
+assumption that all geometry is metrical.) It may be that something
+would be left of the Bergsonian philosophy if one eliminated the
+consequences of these initial blunders, but I do not know what the
+remainder would be. At any rate, the anti-intellectualism which M.
+Bergson and his disciple, Professor Carr, seem to regard as fundamental
+will have to go, unless different and better grounds can be found for
+it. I must leave it to others to judge of the adequacy of this apology.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Varisco, _The Great Problem_ (Macmillan).
+
+Varisco, _Know Thyself_ (Macmillan).
+
+Aliotta, _The Idealistic Reaction against Science_ (Macmillan).
+
+Bertrand Russell, _Our Knowledge of the External World_ (Open Court
+Publishing Co.).
+
+Bertrand Russell, _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University
+Library).
+
+A.N. Whitehead, _The Principles of Natural Knowledge_ (Cambridge Press).
+
+G.E. Moore, _Ethics_ (H.U.L.).
+
+W. McDougall, _Philosophy_ (H.U.L.).
+
+A.N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (H.U.L.).
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
+
+F.B. JEVONS
+
+
+The living beings that exist or have existed upon the earth are of kinds
+innumerable; and, in the opinion of man, the chief of them all is
+mankind. Man, for the simple reason that he is man, is anthropomorphic
+in all his judgements and not merely in his religious conceptions; he
+holds himself to be the standard and measure in all things. If his right
+so to regard himself were challenged, if he were called upon to justify
+himself for having taken his foot as a unit of measurement, or his
+fingers as the basis of his system of numbers, he might reply that
+anything will serve as a standard for weights and measures, provided
+that it never varies, but is always the same whenever referred to. But
+the reply, valid though it is, does not do full justice to man: it
+leaves room for the suspicion that a standard is something chosen by man
+in a purely arbitrary manner and without reference to the facts of
+nature. If that were really the case, then man's conception of himself
+as superior to the other animals on earth might be but a prejudice of an
+arbitrary kind. When, however, we consider, from the point of view of
+evolution, the place of man among the other animals that occupy or have
+occupied the earth, it is indubitable that the human organism is in
+point of time the latest evolved and the human brain is in point of
+complexity and efficiency the most highly developed. Further, the
+evidence of embryology goes to show that the organism which has
+eventually become human became so only by passing through successive
+stages, each of which has its analogue in some of the existing forms of
+animal life. Those forms of animal life exist side by side; and if we
+conceive them to be represented diagrammatically by vertical lines,
+differing in height according to their degree of evolution, the line
+representing the human organism will be the tallest, and may be
+considered to have become the tallest by successive increments or stages
+corresponding to the height of the various other parallel vertical
+lines.
+
+When the conception of evolution, which had been employed to explain the
+origin of species and the descent of man, and which had been gained by a
+consideration of material organisms, came to be applied to the world of
+man's thoughts, to the non-material and spiritual domain, and to be used
+for the purpose of explaining the growth and the development of
+religion, it was natural that the conception which had proved so
+valuable in the one case should be applied without modification to the
+other--as natural as that the first railway coach should be built on the
+model of the stagecoach. The possibility that the theory of evolution
+might itself evolve, and in evolving change, was one that was not, and
+at that time could hardly be, present to the minds of those who were
+extending the theory and in the process of extending it were developing
+it. Yet the possibility was there, implicit in the very conception of
+evolution, which involves continuous change--change in continuity and
+continuity in change.
+
+Any and every attempt to trace the evolution of religion seems at first
+necessarily to involve the assumption that from the beginning religion
+was there to be evolved. That was the position assumed by Robertson
+Smith in _The Religion of the Semites_, which appeared in 1889. At that
+date the aborigines of Australia were supposed to represent the human
+race in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them,
+therefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion
+in its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to
+its lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least
+belief in a god and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to
+be found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in
+the evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must
+there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the
+Australians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that
+time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion
+that in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was
+conjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or
+plant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was
+held to be both the god and the animal or plant in which the god
+manifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to
+this day, the earliest form of sacrifice--that in which the totem animal
+was itself the totem god to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was
+itself--or rather himself--the sacramental meal furnished to his
+worshippers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of
+acquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them
+into the person of the worshipper. That the totem was eaten
+sacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by
+Robertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared
+that, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here,
+in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to
+us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which
+Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of
+which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'
+
+On the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and
+approved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of
+the evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were
+several totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the
+personality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it
+might, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally
+more of the nature of a spirit than a god, and totemism proper might
+easily pass into polydaemonism, that is a system in which the beings
+worshipped were conceived to possess a personality more clearly defined
+than that attributed to totems but less developed than that assigned to
+deities. From the beginning each tribe had worshipped a plurality of
+totems; it was, therefore, readily intelligible that, as these totems
+came to be credited with more and more definite and developed
+personality, the plurality of totems became not only a polydaemonism,
+but afterwards a plurality of deities, and a system of polytheism came
+to be established. From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites,
+monotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.
+
+On this theory the evolution of religion was, if we may so describe it,
+linear or rectilinear: the process consisted in a series of successive
+stages. In some cases, as for instance among the aborigines of
+Australia, it never rose higher than its starting-point, totemism; in
+others, as for instance in Samoa, it became polytheism without ceasing
+to be totemism; in others again, as for instance amongst the Aryan
+peoples, it became so completely polytheistic that even conjecture can
+discover but few indications or 'survivals' of the totemism from which
+it is supposed to have developed; and the polytheism of the Israelites
+was so completely superseded by monotheism that the very existence of an
+earlier stage of polytheism could be as strenuously denied in their case
+as the pre-existence of totemism could be denied amongst the
+polytheistic Aryans. Nevertheless the theory was that if we represent
+the growth of the various religions of the world diagrammatically by
+vertical lines parallel to one another but of various lengths, one line
+standing for totemism, a longer line for polydaemonism, a still longer
+one for polytheism, and the longest of all for monotheism, we should see
+that the line of growth has been the same in all cases, and that it is
+in their length, or (shall we say?) in their height alone that the
+various lines differ, and that the longest line culminates in monotheism
+only because it has been, so to speak, pulled out in the same way that a
+telescope when closed, may be extended. The evolution of religion on
+this view has been a process literally of 'evolution' or unfolding: the
+idea of a god and of communion with him has been present from the
+beginning; and, much though religion may have changed, it remains to the
+end essentially the same thing. This view of the process of religious
+evolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this
+theory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it,
+and in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained
+pre-formed, though it depended on circumstances whether the seed should
+spring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.
+
+Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a
+form of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties
+as dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the
+theory, if we cut open a seed we should find within it the plant
+pre-formed; if we analyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson
+Smith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly
+succession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages
+pre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a
+miniature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither
+in totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.
+Indeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be
+found to have no such content--that the hope or expectation of finding
+anything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is
+the expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find
+inside it something which produces the sound.
+
+It was, however, not on _a priori_ grounds like these that Sir James
+Frazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the
+heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of
+'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith,
+with the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually
+observed. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.
+Spencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon
+Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith
+had seen, or had thought he saw, amongst the Australians sacramental
+rites and the worship of totem gods. Sir James Frazer is now compelled
+by the evidence of the facts to hold that in what he calls 'pure
+totemism', i.e., in totemism as we find it in Australia, 'there is
+nothing that can properly be described as worship of the totems.
+Sacrifices are not presented to them, nor prayers offered, nor temples
+built, nor priests appointed to minister to them. In a word, totems pure
+and simple are never gods, but merely species of natural objects,
+united by certain intimate and mystic ties to groups of men.' It seems,
+therefore, according to Frazer, that in totemism, when dissected, there
+is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there
+is--nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum
+proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds.
+Whereas _ex nihilo nil fit_: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If,
+however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes.
+Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their
+totems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain intimate and mystic ties'.
+
+What then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer's view,
+something comes? We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the
+'mystic' bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him
+but of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his
+being. To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was
+something not only 'mystic' but potentially religious. And Sir James
+Frazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.
+On the contrary, he maintains that 'the aspect of the totemic system,
+which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious,
+deserves rather to be called magical'. The totem rites which Robertson
+Smith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a
+means of communion with the totem-gods Sir James Frazer regards as
+merely magical: 'totemism,' he says, 'is merely an organized system of
+magic intended to secure a supply of food.'
+
+We may remark, in passing, that if totemism is 'mere' magic, there is
+indeed (as Sir James holds) no worship in totemism, but in that case in
+totemism there can be no such 'intimate and mystic ties' between the
+totem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was. But
+be that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, 'in the heart of
+Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,' we find
+totemism; and totemism on examination proves to be 'merely an organized
+system of magic'. If now we start by assuming these premisses, or by
+granting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed,
+erect on them a theory of the evolution of religion. But if we so start,
+we must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of _The Golden
+Bough_: we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. _En
+route_ it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and
+fundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of
+religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by
+common consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends
+colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic,
+and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are,
+nothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the
+priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were
+at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to
+produce their effects.
+
+If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts
+in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that
+religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft,
+and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have
+been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of
+civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the
+reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic
+is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners
+of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display
+towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is
+now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in
+the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for
+the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is
+that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders
+or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them
+and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which
+feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.
+
+The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another
+name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but
+'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It
+simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as
+containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the
+beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of
+the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have
+religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find
+religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in
+the process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is
+appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of
+_The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion
+evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that
+there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no
+continuity between the magic which came first and the religion which
+came ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a
+fundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of
+thought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into
+two: first, that like produces like; and, second, that things which
+have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each
+other.' These beliefs are due to the association of ideas: if two things
+are more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together
+in our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think
+of the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which
+is thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and
+magic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce
+like, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all
+that he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that
+belief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always
+act. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that
+at work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that
+the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings
+superior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's
+definition, constitutes religion.
+
+The fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle
+between magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he
+can gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he
+turns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to
+man whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.
+
+Whether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and
+religion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic
+and religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least
+appears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, he says, 'it
+must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put
+forward by the magician, as such, is false; not one of them can be
+maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious.' This
+pronouncement makes it easy for us to understand that even the savage
+would eventually find magic an unsatisfactory method of gratifying his
+desires, a deception in fact. On the other hand, Sir James apparently
+contradicts himself, that is to say, he denies that every single
+profession or claim put forward by the magician is false, and says,
+'however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians
+and condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the
+original institution of this class of man has, take it all in all, been
+productive of incalculable good to humanity.' The ground for this second
+pronouncement, so contradictory of the first, is that magicians, Sir
+James tells us, 'were the direct predecessors, not merely of our
+physicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in
+every branch of natural science.' Thus, though he no longer regards
+priests as transmogrified magicians, he does regard magicians as the
+earliest men of science, and does regard science, therefore, as a highly
+developed stage of magic. This view logically follows from the premisses
+from which it starts; and if it is felt to be unacceptable, we shall
+naturally be inclined to scrutinize the premisses once more and more
+carefully. When we do so scrutinize them, we see that the principles of
+thought on which Sir James Frazer assumes magic to be based are in
+effect the principles from which science started: they are the beliefs
+that like produces like--the basis of the law of causation--and that
+things which our experience shows to have gone together in the past tend
+always to go together--which is one way of stating our belief in the
+uniformity of nature. If then these principles of thought are the
+principles on which magic as well as science is based, then science and
+magic are the same thing, and we have only to choose whether we will
+say that magic is not magic but undeveloped science, or that science is
+not science but merely magic transmogrified. Thus, the pre-formation
+theory once more reasserts itself: magic is the seed in which science is
+prefigured or pre-formed.
+
+If we wish to escape from this conclusion, if we wish to maintain the
+validity of science and yet always to remember 'that every single
+profession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false--not
+one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or
+unconscious', we must consider whether Sir James Frazer's account of
+magic, according to which the principles of magic are identical with
+those of science, is the only account that can be given of magic; and
+for that purpose we may contrast it with the view of Wilhelm Wundt. But
+before doing so, since Sir James Frazer holds that there is 'a
+fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic
+and religion', it will be well to try to see not only what he means by
+magic, but also whether his description or definition of religion is
+acceptable.
+
+Whereas Robertson Smith held that religion, reduced to its very lowest
+terms, must imply at least belief in a god and communion with him,
+Frazer considers religion to be the belief that the course of nature and
+of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. By the
+one view stress is laid on the mystic side of religion, on the communion
+which is effected through sacrifice; by the other view stress is laid on
+the power which the gods may be induced by prayer and supplication to
+exercise for the benefit of man. Our first reflection, therefore, is
+that any view of religion, to be comprehensive, cannot confine itself to
+either of these aspects singly, but must find room for both--for both
+prayer and sacrifice. They cannot be mutually exclusive, nor can they
+be simply juxtaposed, as though they were atoms unrelated to one
+another, accidental neighbours in the same district. There must be a
+higher unity, not created by or subsequent to the coalescence of
+elements originally independent of each other, but a higher unity of
+which both prayer and sacrifice are manifestations. This higher unity, I
+venture to suggest, is the first principle of religion; and, if it is
+not explicitly recognized as the first principle of religion either by
+Robertson Smith or by Frazer, that may well be because their attention
+is concentrated on the earlier stages in the evolution of religion, when
+as yet it is not conspicuous and is, therefore, though in fact
+operative, liable to be overlooked. As Ferrier has said, 'first
+principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate
+largely and powerfully long before they come to the surface of human
+thought and are articulately expounded.' What then is the first
+principle of religion which only after long ages of evolution rose to
+the surface of human thought, and which, though it had been operative
+largely and powerfully, came only in the slow course of human evolution
+to be articulately expounded? The first principle of religion is
+love--love of one's neighbour and one's God.
+
+In the light of that first principle it is manifest that prayer and
+sacrifice are not fundamentally unrelated and accidentally juxtaposed: a
+sacrifice accompanied not even by unspoken prayer, prompted by no
+desire, no wish for anything whatever, is a meaningless concept. Equally
+unmeaning and unintelligible is the idea of a prayer which involves no
+sacrifice--whether by sacrifice we understand the offering of gifts or
+the sacrifice of self. But perhaps it may be said that, even though love
+alone can lead to sacrifice of self, still it is undeniable that prayers
+may be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he
+is going to get by doing so; and that that is what Sir James Frazer
+means when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man
+may be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's
+desire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity
+between magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly
+to deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic
+and religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though
+the means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is
+the means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of
+evolution to be continuous--change in continuity and continuity in
+change.
+
+Now it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a
+man for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning
+have been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in
+one of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by
+evolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be
+regarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires
+accomplished--his will done--but as the indispensable condition for
+doing God's will. Prayer then becomes communion with God, and the
+sacrifice of self the living exhibition of love--the first principle of
+religion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in
+sacrifice.
+
+From this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion
+will be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but
+means whereby man has--vainly--sought to satisfy desire. And the
+implication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's
+account of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open
+to criticism. He wavers between two opinions about magic: at one time he
+regards it as all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from
+which science springs, just as at one time he considered magic
+fundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally
+different from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and
+science, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like
+produces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural
+causation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according
+to Wilhelm Wundt in his _Voelkerpsychologie_, primitive man has no notion
+whatever of natural causation: primitive man, Wundt says, has only one
+way of accounting for events--if something happens, somebody did it. If
+any one mysteriously falls ill and dies, the question at once presents
+itself to the savage mind, who did it? How any one could contrive to
+make the man fall ill and die is, to the man's relations, thoroughly and
+disquietingly mysterious. The one thing clear to them is that somebody
+possesses and has exercised this mysterious and horrible power. The
+person who, in the opinion not only of the relatives but also of all or
+most of the community, naturally would do this sort of thing differs in
+some way--in his appearance or habits--from the average member of the
+community, and accordingly is credited, or discredited, with this
+mysterious and dreadful power. Such a person, according to Wundt, is a
+magician. Such an event is a marvel: so long as it is supposed to be
+brought about by a man, it is a piece of magic; when it is ascribed (as,
+according to Wundt, it comes in later, though not in primitive times, to
+be ascribed) to a god, it is a miracle.
+
+If science then does not work magic, there must be a fundamental
+distinction between science and magic, an absolute opposition of
+principles. The principles of thought on which magic is based cannot be,
+as Frazer maintains, the same as those which give to science its
+validity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based not on any
+principle of thought, but upon the assumption that, if something
+happens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the
+power to do it.
+
+Wundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at
+one with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age
+of magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have
+been done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a god
+or his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is
+found usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in
+miracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that
+the age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of
+religion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at
+least from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to
+account for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from
+birds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common
+ancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the
+process of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so
+to speak, linear or rectilinear, but--to use M. Bergson's
+word--'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic
+would then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from
+reptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course
+of evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same
+direction, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a
+common starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different
+directions. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it
+runs on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from
+the same point.
+
+If we apply this conception of evolution in general to the evolution of
+religion in particular--and Bergson, I should say, does not--then the
+centre of dispersion, common to all religions, is the heart of man. The
+forms of religion evolving, emanating and radiating from that common
+centre are, let us say, fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. If we
+wish to avoid, in the theory of religious evolution, an error analogous
+to that of supposing birds to be descended from reptiles, we must
+decline to suppose that monotheism is simply polytheism evolved, or that
+polytheism is descended from fetishism. We must consider that each of
+these three forms of religion is terminal, in the sense that no one of
+them leads on to, or passes into, either of the other two. All three
+forms of religious life may, and indeed do, exist side by side with one
+another, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found
+existing side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed
+millions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms
+of physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but
+foraminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that
+fetishism exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with
+monotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we
+must consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing
+another, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into
+the dove.
+
+The common centre and starting-point of fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of
+religion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague
+in the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being
+or object worshipped. In all these three forms of religion there is
+worship, and in all three forms the being worshipped is personal.
+Further, a special tie is felt to exist between the worshipper and the
+personality worshipped: religion is the bond of union between them, and
+it is also a bond which unites the worshippers to one another. It is by
+its very nature a bond of union, a means of communion between persons,
+human and divine. That is the mystic aspect of religion which finds
+expression in the rite of sacrifice and in the sacramental meals which
+are felt somehow to bind together, or rather to reunite and keep
+together, the worshippers and their god. This communion however is not
+merely mystic: it has its practical effects inasmuch as it affects the
+conduct of the worshipper and enables him to do what without it he would
+not have had strength to do.
+
+If fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,
+the heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the
+starting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though
+in different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from
+the common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to
+become total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy
+between them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.
+Categories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,
+which are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,
+Mr. L.T. Hobhouse says, 'every child soon comes to distinguish in
+practice, are for primitive thought interwoven in wild confusion.' Two
+categories, which in primitive thought are thus interwoven in wild
+confusion, are, it may be suggested, religion and magic; and only in the
+dispersive process of evolution do they tend to become discriminated. In
+ancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Brahminism, religion fails to disentangle
+itself from magic; and not even has Christianity always succeeded in
+throwing it off. Different as we may conceive magic and religion to be,
+the fact remains that at first they grow up intertwined together. In the
+lower forms of religion magic is worked not only by magicians but by
+priests as well; spells and prayers are hardly to be distinguished from
+one another. The idea that 'priest' is but 'magician' writ differently,
+that prayers are but spells under another name, is now obsolete. The
+truth may be that religion neither follows on, nor is evolved from
+magic, but that both radiate from a common centre, the heart of man; and
+that at first both are attempts made by man to secure the fulfilment of
+his desires, to do his will, though eventually he finds that the way to
+control nature is to obey her, not to try to command her by working
+magic; and that it is in endeavouring to do God's will, not his own,
+that man finds peace at the last.
+
+In the three forms of religion which thus far we have taken into
+account, fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, religion is felt to be a
+personal relation--a relation between the human personality and some
+personality more than human; and the human heart is reaching out and
+groping after some divine personality, if peradventure it may find Him.
+But there is yet another form of religion proceeding from the human
+heart in which this does not seem to be the case--and that is Buddhism.
+The Buddha definitely renounced the search after God and would not allow
+his disciples to engage in the pursuit. Practically the pursuit was
+useless, according to the Buddha: escape from suffering is all that man
+can want or strive or hope for. Escape from suffering is possible only
+by cessation from existence; and that cessation from existence, here and
+hereafter, can be attained by man himself, who can reach Nirvana without
+the aid of gods, if gods there be. From the point of view of metaphysics
+the idea that there is any relation between the human personality and
+the divine falls to the ground, according to the Buddha, because,
+whether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.
+As in a conflagration--and according to the Buddha the whole world,
+burning with desire, is in a state of conflagration--the flames leap
+from one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations
+the self, or rather the character, _Karman_, like a flame, leaps from
+one form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there
+all the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is
+changing all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'
+have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as
+long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so
+long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of
+transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for
+being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the
+extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded
+in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death
+and re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.
+
+Thus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is
+a radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it
+radiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other
+religion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion
+shows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever
+Buddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who
+strove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has
+himself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether
+in the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has
+been by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.
+
+Buddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of
+religion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we
+have to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and
+monotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of
+humanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally in Buddhism, the
+conception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human
+personality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is
+raised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing
+as an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by
+himself, for a man can neither come into existence nor continue in
+existence by himself alone. It is an essential part of the conception of
+personality that it includes fellowship: a person to be a person must
+stand in some relation to other persons. They are presented to him, the
+subject, as objects of his awareness; and he, the subject, is also an
+object of their awareness. Humanity is thus a complex, in which alone
+persons are found and apart from which they have in fact no existence.
+Humanity thus plays in Positivism, as a religion, the part of 'the great
+Being', _le grand Etre_, which in other religions is fulfilled by God,
+but with this difference, that humanity is human always and never
+divine.
+
+The ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only
+metaphorically. Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than
+metaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide. On the one hand,
+if it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it
+may be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not
+only on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism
+they are recognized to be, of purely subjective import. On the other
+hard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the
+religions of the past to the religion of the future.
+
+Another matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a
+religion. According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book _La Religion_,
+morality and religion are bound up together. They cannot exist apart
+from one another: they might, he says, 'be dissociated in fact and
+thought, were it not that they are inseparable in the life of
+humanity.' And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty. He
+says, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was
+humanity. Duty was at the beginning in humanity. By it all things were
+made, and without it nothing was made.' Thus, where duty is, there also
+is religion. Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in
+every stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it
+will also be the case with the religion of the future. Thus the
+conception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that
+entertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on
+the one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present
+from the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to
+the end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty--the
+duty which is humanity--that was in the beginning and will continue to
+the end. Both views are applications of the 'pre-formation' theory of
+evolution.
+
+But Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the 'pre-formation'
+theory. It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the 'dispersive'
+theory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding
+direct from the human heart. It may be so regarded, if we consider the
+essence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to
+imply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in
+that love of one's fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely,
+and simply because one loves. The sense of obligation, the feeling of
+duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions
+which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various
+expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo--a feeling of alarm and
+fear. If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say,
+with M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We
+may however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, 'by duty all
+things were made, and without it nothing was made'. We may hesitate and
+the Positivist may hesitate, because, primitive though the feeling of
+fear may be, the feeling of love is equally original: on it and in it
+the family and society have their base and their origin; and to it they
+owe not only their origin but their continuance. Love however is not a
+matter of duty and obedience; it is not subject to commandment or
+prohibition; nor does it strive by commands or authority to enforce
+itself. In the process by which duty--legal and moral
+obligation--evolves out of the primitive feeling of taboo, love is not
+implicated: love springs from its own source, the human heart, and runs
+its own course. Taboo may have existed from the beginning; but to the
+end, whatever its form--duty, obligation, obedience to authority--it
+remains in character what it was at first, prohibitive, negative. Love
+alone is creative: without it 'was not anything made that was made'.
+
+There seems, therefore, no necessity to regard the 'pre-formation'
+theory of evolution, rather than the 'dispersive theory, as essential to
+Positivism.
+
+Common to all the views about the evolution of religion that have been
+mentioned in this paper is the belief that, the more religion changes,
+the more it remains the same thing. If identified with duty, then duty
+it was in the beginning, and duty it will remain to the end. For those
+who conceive it to be merely magic, magic it was and magic it remains.
+Those who define it as belief in a god and communion with him find that
+belief in the earliest as well as the latest stages. All would agree in
+rejecting Bergson's view of evolution--that in evolution there is
+change, but nothing which changes. All would agree that in the evolution
+of religion there is something which, change though it may, remains the
+same thing, and that is religion itself. But on the question what
+religion is, there is no agreement: no definition of religion as
+yet--and there have been many attempts to define it--has gained general
+acceptance. We may even surmise, and admit, that no attempt ever will be
+successful. Such admission, indeed, may at first to some seem equivalent
+to admitting that religion is a nullity, and the admission may
+accordingly be welcomed or rejected. But a moment's reflection will show
+that the admission has no such consequence. None of our simple feelings
+can be defined: pleasure and pain can neither be defined; nor, when
+experienced, doubted. And some of our general terms, those at any rate
+which are ultimate, are beyond our power either to define or doubt: no
+one imagines that 'life' can be defined, but no one doubts its
+existence. And religion both as a term and as a fact of experience is
+ultimate, and, because ultimate, incapable of definition. It is not to
+be defined but only to be felt. It is an affair not merely of the
+intellect, but still more of the heart.
+
+In what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?
+Evolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes
+in religion. No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now
+remained identically the same. What seems conceivable is that throughout
+there has been, not identity but continuity--change indeed in continuity
+but also continuity in change. The child 'learns to speak the words and
+think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form
+of speech' of the community into which he is born. In the speech,
+thought, and feelings--even in the religious feelings--of the community,
+from generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.
+From generation to generation they are not identical but are
+continuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them
+over reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much
+in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and
+the great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which
+not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are
+brought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old
+things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies
+the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at
+the same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that
+what is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the
+old. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in
+continuity and continuity in change.
+
+The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one
+continuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole
+process. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which
+includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to
+the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those
+stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of
+these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by
+itself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion
+regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,
+existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;
+whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or
+evolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does
+polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they
+and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive
+fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one
+process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line
+marked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget
+that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the
+heart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not
+prove that one springs from the other.
+
+Nor can we say that values--religious or aesthetic--are to be determined
+on the simple principle that the latest edition is the best. To say that
+an _editio princeps_ has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that
+all values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all
+goodness and all love.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (A. & C. Black, 1889).
+
+J.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (Macmillan & Co., 1890-1915).
+
+Grant Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_ (Grant Richards, 1897).
+
+H. Bergson, _L'Evolution creatrice_ (F. Alcan, 1908).
+
+F.B. Jevons, _The Idea of God in Early Religions_ (1910), and
+_Comparative Religion_ (1913) (Cambridge University Press).
+
+G.F. Moore, _History of Religions_ (T. & T. Clark, 1914).
+
+A. Loisy, _La Religion_ (E. Nourry, 1917).
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY
+
+WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM
+
+PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD
+
+
+When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
+interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
+before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
+century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
+stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
+_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
+reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
+reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
+these main currents are:
+
+(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
+history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.
+
+(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.
+
+Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
+advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
+'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
+'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
+what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
+last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.
+
+How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
+stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
+least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the
+literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of
+poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
+fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
+succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
+perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
+discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
+poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
+past; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by
+the two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession
+of phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect
+more sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of
+Europe, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,
+radiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases
+are in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national
+variations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to
+take this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic
+view. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the
+years 1880 and 1900.
+
+The first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if
+unconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the
+limit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,
+precision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy
+of the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm--in the
+example most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of
+Matthew Arnold.
+
+The second, best seen in the French Symbolists, was directly hostile to
+science. But they repelled its confident analysis of material reality in
+the name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial
+world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct
+description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the
+magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to
+us in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.'.
+
+The third, still about us, and too various and incomplete for final
+definition, is in closer sympathy with science, but, in great part, only
+because science has itself found accommodation between nature and
+spirit, a new ideality born of, and growing out of, the real. If the
+first found Beauty, the end of art, in the plastic repose of sculpture,
+and the second in the mysterious cadences of music, the poetry of the
+twentieth century finds its ideal in life, in the creative evolution of
+being, even in the mere things, the 'prosaic' pariahs of previous
+poetry, on which our shaping wills are wreaked. We know it in poets
+unlike one another but yet more unlike their predecessors, from
+D'Annunzio and Dehmel and Claudel to our Georgian experimenters in the
+poetry of paradox and adventure.
+
+
+I. POETIC NATURALISM
+
+The third quarter of the nineteenth century opened, in western Europe,
+with a decided set-back for those who lived on dreams, and a
+corresponding complacency among those who throve on facts. The political
+and social revolution which swept the continent in 1848 and 1849, and
+found ominous echoes here, was everywhere, for the time, defeated. The
+discoveries of science in the third and fourth decades, resting on
+calculation and experiment, were investing it with the formidable
+prestige which it has never since lost; and both metaphysics and
+theology reeled perceptibly under the blows delivered in its name. The
+world exhibition of 1851 seemed to announce an age of settled
+prosperity, peace, and progress.
+
+In literature the counterpart of these phenomena was the revolt from
+_Romanticism_, a movement, in its origins, of poetic liberation and
+discovery, which had rejuvenated poetry in Germany and Italy, and yet
+more signally in England and in France, but was now petering out in
+emotional incoherence, deified impulse, and irresponsible caprice.
+
+The revolt accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer
+conformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to
+make art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern
+naturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, _Mme
+Bovary_ (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in _Adam
+Bede_ against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of
+dragons, but could not draw the real horses and cattle before their
+eyes.[3]
+
+Realism, at once more unflinching and more profoundly poetic, and yet
+penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of
+moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems
+an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which
+also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though
+it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of
+moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew
+his inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and
+thought. And it was chiefly through them that the Russian novel later
+helped to nourish the radically alien movement of Symbolism in France.
+
+In drama, Ibsen broke away from the Romantic tradition of his country
+with the iconoclastic energy of one who had spent his own unripe youth
+in offering it a half-reluctant homage. The man of actuality in him
+denounced the drama built upon the legends of the Scandinavian past--the
+mark for him of a people of dreamers oblivious of the calls of the hour.
+On the morrow of the disastrous (and for Norway in his view ignominious)
+Danish war of 1864, his scorn rang out with prophetic intensity in the
+fierce tirade of _Brand_. Happily for his art, revolt against romance in
+him was united, more signally than in more than two or three of his
+contemporaries, with the power of seizing and presenting contemporary
+life. 'Realism' certainly expresses inadequately enough the genius of an
+art like his, enormously alive rather than fundamentally like life, and
+no less charged with purpose and idea than the work of the great
+Russians, though under cover of reticences and irony little known to
+them. The great series of prose dramas--from 1867 (_The League of
+Youth_) onwards--with their experimental prelude _Love's Comedy_
+(1863)--were to be for all Europe the most considerable literary event
+of the fourth quarter of the century, and they generated affiliated
+schools throughout the West. They did not indeed themselves remain
+untouched by the general intellectual currents of the time, and it will
+be noticed below that the later plays (from _The Lady of the Sea_
+onward) betray affinities, like the Russian novel, with what is here
+called the second phase of the European movement.
+
+In Criticism, the showy generalizations of Villemain gave place to
+Sainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'[4]
+and Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by
+environment.[5] Among ourselves, Meredith's _Essay on Comedy_ (1872)
+brilliantly restated Moliere's dictum that the comic is founded on the
+real, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold
+applied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight
+fertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging
+the native quality of minds from the incrustations of tradition and
+dogma.
+
+In poetry the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that
+has, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their
+leader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his _Poemes antiques_
+(1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent,
+and hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's
+stormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism to the
+shade of Alfred de Musset--the Oscar Wilde of the later
+Romantics[6]--who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled
+his poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new
+poets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating
+the glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.[7] Carducci,
+too, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism--cold and
+infructuous beams, proper for Gothic ruins and graveyards--with the
+benignant and fertilizing sunshine he sought to restore; for him, too,
+the poet is no indolent caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant
+flowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.[8] Among
+us, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning
+calls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of _Prometheus_
+appropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing a
+kindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in
+clear-cut form.
+
+If we turn from the negations of the anti-romantic revolt to consider
+what it actually sought and achieved in poetry, we find that its
+positive ideals, too, without being derived from science, reflect the
+temper of a scientific time. Thus the supreme gift of all the greater
+poets of this group was a superb vision of beauty, and of beauty--_pace_
+Hogarth--there is no science. But their view of beauty was partly
+limited, partly fertilized and enriched, by the sources they discovered
+and the conditions they imposed, and both the discoveries and the
+limitations added something to the traditions and resources of poetry.
+Thus:
+
+(1) They exploited the aesthetic values to be had by knowledge. They
+pursued erudition and built their poetry upon erudition, not in the
+didactic way of the Augustans, but as a mine of poetic material and
+suggestion. Far more truly than Wordsworth's this poetry could claim to
+be the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for
+Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from
+erudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora.
+When Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the
+southern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate
+explorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity.
+The strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative
+religion and mythology, he explores with cosmopolitan impartiality and
+imaginative penetration; carving, as in marble, the tragedy of Hjalmar's
+heart and Angentyr's sword, of Cain's doom, and Erinnyes never, like
+those of Aeschylus, appeased. The Romantics had loved to play with
+exotic suggestions; but the East of Hugo's _Orientales_ or Moore's
+_Lalla Rookh_ is merely a veneer; the poet of _Qain_ has heard the wild
+asses cry and seen the Syrian sun descend into the golden foam.
+
+In the three commanding poets of our English mid-century, learning
+becomes no less evidently poetry's honoured and indispensable ally.
+Tennyson studies nature like a naturalist, not like a mystic, and finds
+felicities of phrase poised, as it were, upon delicate observation. Man,
+too, in Browning, loses the vague aureole of Shelleyan humanity, and
+becomes the Italian of the Renascence or the Arab doctor or the German
+musician, all alive but in their habits as they lived, and fashioned in
+a brain fed, like no other, on the Book of the histories of Souls.
+Matthew Arnold more distinctively than either, and both for better and
+for worse, was the scholar-poet; among other things he was, with Heredia
+and Carducci, a master of the poetry of critical portraiture, which
+focusses in a few lines (_Sophocles_, _Rahel_, _Heine_, _Obermann Once
+More_) the meaning of a great career or of a complex age.
+
+(2) In the elaboration of their vision of beauty from these enlarged
+sources, Leconte de Lisle and his followers demanded an impeccable
+artistry. 'A great poet', he said, 'and a flawless artist are
+convertible terms.' The Parnassian precision rested on the postulate
+that, with sufficient resources of vocabulary and phrase, everything can
+be adequately expressed, the analogue of the contemporary scientific
+conviction that, with sufficient resources of experiment and
+calculation, everything can be exhaustively explained. The pursuit of an
+objective calm, the repudiation of missionary ardour, of personal
+emotion, of the _cri du coeur_, of individual originality, involved the
+surrender of some of the glories of spontaneous song, but opened the
+way, for consummate artists such as these, to a profusion of
+undiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by
+the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are
+already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur
+without effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in
+Sully Prudhomme's _tours de force_ of philosophic poetry--when he
+unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the
+form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are
+compelled to the service of a rigorous logic; or in the brief cameo-like
+pieces on 'Memory', 'Habit', 'Forms', and similar unpromising
+abstractions, most nearly paralleled in English by the quatrains of Mr.
+William Watson. But the cameo comparison is still more aptly applied to
+the marvellously-chiselled sonnets of Heredia--monuments of a moment, as
+sculpture habitually is, but reaching out, as the finest sculpture does,
+to invisible horizons, and to the before and after--the old wooden
+guardian-god recalling his former career as a scarlet figure-head
+laughing at the laughter or fury of the waves; Antony seeing the flying
+ships of Actium mirrored in the traitorous azure of Cleopatra's eyes.
+
+In Italy the ideal of an austere simplicity and reserve, resting as it
+did on the immense prestige of Leopardi, asserted itself even in the
+naturally exuberant and impetuous genius of Carducci. Without it we
+should not have had those reticences of an abounding nature, those
+economies of a spendthrift, which make him one of the first poets of the
+sonnet in the land of its origin, and one of the greatest writers of
+Odes among the 'barbarians'. With reason he declared in 1891, when most
+of his poetry had been written, that 'all the apparent contradictions in
+my work are resolved by the triple formula: in politics Italy before
+all, in aesthetics classical poetry before all, in practice, frankness
+and force before all'. His two chief disciples, D'Annunzio and Pascoli,
+antithetical in almost all points, may be said to have divided his
+inheritance in this; Pascoli's Vergilian economy contrasting with the
+exuberance of D'Annunzio somewhat as with us the classicism of the
+present poet-laureate with that of Swinburne. In Germany the Parnassian
+reserve, concentration, and aristocratic exclusiveness was to reappear
+in the lyrical group of Stefan Georg.
+
+(3) Finally, the Parnassian poetry, like most contemporary science, was
+in varying degrees detached from and hostile to religion, and found some
+of its most vibrating notes in contemplating its empty universe. Leconte
+de Lisle offers the Stoic the last mournful joy of 'a heart seven-times
+steeped in the divine nothingness',[9] or calls him to 'that city of
+silence, the sepulchre of the vanished gods, the human heart, seat of
+dreams, where eternally ferments and perishes the illusory
+universe'.[10] Here, too, Leopardi had anticipated him.
+
+In the ebullient genius of Carducci and Swinburne this lofty disdain for
+theological illusions passes into the fierce derision of the Ode to
+Satan and the militant paganism of the Sonnet to Luther, and the _Hymn
+to Man_. In Matthew Arnold it became a half-wistful resignation, the
+pensive retrospect of the Greek 'thinking of his own gods beside a
+fallen runic stone', or listening to the 'melancholy long withdrawing
+roar' of the tide of faith 'down the vast edges drear and naked shingles
+of the world'; while in James Thomson resignation passed into the
+unrelieved pessimism of the _City of Dreadful Night_. In all these
+poets, what was of moment for poetry was not, of course, the
+anti-theological or anti-clerical sentiment which marks them all, but
+the notes of sombre and terrible beauty which the contemplation of the
+passing of the gods, and of man's faith in them, elicits from their art.
+
+Yet the supreme figure, not only among those who share in the
+anti-Romantic reaction but among all the European poets of his time, was
+one who had in the heyday of youth led the Romantic vanguard--Victor
+Hugo. Leconte de Lisle never ceased to own him his master, and Hugo's
+genius had since his exile, in 1851, entered upon a phase in which a
+poetry such as the Parnassian sought--objective, reticent, impersonal,
+technically consummate--was at least one of the strings of his
+many-chorded lyre. Three magnificent works--the very crown and flower of
+Hugo's production--belong to this decade, 1850-60,--the _Chatiments_,
+_Contemplations_, and _Legende des Siecles_. I said advisedly, one
+string in his lyre. Objective reticence is certainly not the virtue of
+the terrible indictment of 'Napoleon the Little'. On the other hand, the
+greatest qualities of Parnassian poetry were exemplified in many
+splendid pieces of the other two works, together with a large benignity
+which their austere Stoicism rarely permits, and I shall take as
+illustration of the finest achievement of poetry in this whole first
+phase the closing stanzas of his famous _Boaz Endormi_ in the _Legende_,
+whose beauty even translation cannot wholly disguise. Our decasyllable
+is substituted for the Alexandrine.[11]
+
+    'While thus he slumbered, Ruth, a Moabite,
+    Lay at the feet of Boaz, her breast bare,
+    Waiting, she knew not when, she knew not where,
+    The sudden mystery of wakening light.
+
+    Boaz knew not that there a woman lay,
+    Nor Ruth what God desired of her could tell;
+    Fresh rose the perfume of the asphodel,
+    And tender breathed the dusk on Galgala.
+
+    Nuptial, august, and solemn was the night,
+    Angels no doubt were passing on the wing,
+    For now and then there floated glimmering
+    As it might be an azure plume in flight.
+
+    The low breathing of Boaz mingled there
+    With the soft murmur of the mossy rills.
+    It was the month when earth is debonnaire;
+    The lilies were in flower upon the hills.
+
+    Night compassed Boaz' slumber and Ruth's dreams,
+    The sheep-bells vaguely tinkled far and near;
+    Infinite love breathed from the starry sphere;
+    'Twas the still hour when lions seek the streams.
+
+    Ur and Jerimedeth were all at rest;
+    The stars enamelled the blue vault of sky;
+    Amid those flowers of darkness in the west
+    The crescent shone; and with half open eye
+
+    Ruth wondered, moveless, in her veils concealed,
+    What heavenly reaper, when the day was done
+    And harvest gathered in, had idly thrown
+    That golden sickle on the starry field.'
+
+
+II. DREAM AND SYMBOL
+
+The rise of French symbolism towards the end of the 'seventies was a
+symptom of a changed temper of thought and feeling traceable in some
+degree throughout civilized Europe. Roughly, it marked the passing of
+the confident and rather superficial security of the 'fifties into a
+vague unrest, a kind of troubled awe. As if existence altogether was a
+bigger, more mysterious, and intractable thing than was assumed, not so
+easily to be captured in the formulas of triumphant science, or mirrored
+and analysed by the most consummate literary art.
+
+Political and social conditions contributed to the change. France stood
+on the morrow of a shattering catastrophe. The complacency of
+mid-Victorian England began to be disturbed by menaces from the
+workshops of industry. And it was precisely in triumphant Germany
+herself that revolutionary Socialism found, in Karl Marx, its first
+organizing mind and authoritative exponent. The millennium was not so
+near as it had seemed; the problems of society, instead of having been
+solved once for all, were only, it appeared, just coming into view.
+
+In the secluded workshops of Thought, subtler changes were silently
+going on. The dazzling triumphs of physical science, which had led
+poetry itself to emulate the marble impassivity of the scientific
+temper, were undiminished; but they were seen in a new perspective,
+their authority ceased to be exclusive, the focus of interest was slowly
+shifting from the physical to the psychical world. Lange, writing the
+history of _Materialism_ in 1874, virtually performed its obsequies; and
+Tyndall's brilliant effort, in 1871, to equip primordial Matter with the
+'promise and the potency' of mind, unconsciously confessed that its
+cause was lost. Psychology, after Fechner, steadily advanced in prestige
+and importance from the outlying circumference of the sciences to their
+very centre and core.
+
+But it was not merely particular doctrines that lost ground; the scope
+and validity of scientific method itself began to be questioned. In the
+most varied fields of thought there set in that 'idealistic reaction
+against science' which has been described in one of the most penetrating
+books of our time. Most significant of all, science itself, in the
+person of Mach, and Pearson, has abandoned the claim to do more than
+provide descriptive formulas for phenomena the real nature of which is
+utterly beyond its power to discover.
+
+Of this changed outlook the growth of Symbolism is the most significant
+literary expression. It was not confined to France, or to poetry. We
+know how the drama of Ibsen became charged with ulterior meanings as the
+fiery iconoclast passed into the poet of insoluble and ineluctable
+doubt. But by the French symbolists it was pursued as a creed, as a
+religion. If the dominant poetry of the third quarter of the century
+reflected the prestige of science, the dominant poetry of the fourth
+reflected the idealistic reactions against it, and Villiers de l'Ile
+Adam, its founder, came forward proclaiming that 'Science was bankrupt'.
+And so it might well seem to him, the visionary mystic inhabiting, as
+he did, a world of strange beauty and invisible mystery which science
+could not unlock. The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but
+they were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which
+language cannot articulately express, and which are yet more vitally
+real than the 'facts' which we can grasp and handle, and the
+'respectable' people whom we can measure and reckon with. Sometimes
+these potencies are vaguely mysterious, an impalpable spirit speaking
+only by hints and tokens; sometimes they are felt as the pulsations of
+an intoxicating beauty, breaking forth in every flower, but which can
+only be possessed, not described; sometimes they are moods of the soul,
+beyond analysis, and yet full of wonder and beauty, visions half
+created, half perceived. Experiences like these might have been
+described, as far as description would go, by brilliant artificers like
+the Parnassians. Verlaine and Mallarme did not discover, but they
+applied with new daring, the fact that an experience may be communicated
+by words which, instead of representing it, suggest it by their colour,
+their cadences, their rhythm, their verbal echoes and inchoate phrases.
+All the traditional artistry of French poetic speech was condemned as
+both inadequate and insincere. 'Take eloquence and wring her neck!
+Nothing but music and the nuance--all the rest is "Literature", mere
+writing--futile verbosity!' that was the famous watchword of Verlaine's
+creed.[12]
+
+The strength of symbolism lay in this demand for a complete sincerity of
+utterance. Its revolt against science was at the same time a vindication
+of truth, an effort to get nearer to reality both by shedding off the
+incrustations of habitual phrase and by calling into play the obscure
+affinities by which it can be magically evoked. In the subtleties of
+suggestion latent in sensations the symbolists were real discoverers.
+But the way had already been pointed in famous verses by Baudelaire:
+
+    'Earth is a Temple, from whose pillared mazes
+    Murmurs confused of living utterance rise;
+    Therein Man thro' a forest of symbols paces,
+    That contemplate him with familiar eyes.
+
+    As prolonged echoes, wandering on and on,
+    At last in one far tenebrous depth unite,
+    Impalpable as darkness, and as light,
+    Scents, sounds, and colours meet in unison.'
+
+There Baudelaire had touched a chord that was to sound loud and long;
+for what else than this thought of all the senses meeting in union
+inspired the music drama of Wagner?--only one of his points of kinship,
+as we shall see, with symbolism.
+
+Thus the symbolists, in quest of reality, touched it only through the
+inner life. There they are, in their fashion, realists. 'A landscape',
+said Albert Samain, 'is a state of soul.' The landscape may be false,
+but the state of soul is veracious. What interests them in life is the
+image of life, not lucidly reflected but exquisitely transformed. Yet
+the vision of the world caught in that transforming mirror was not
+without strange revealing glimpses, invisible, like stars mirrored in a
+well, to the plain observer. They could hear the music of the spheres;
+or in the language of Samain's sonnet
+
+    'Feel flowing through them, like a pouring wave,
+    The music-tide of universal Soul;
+    Hear in their heart the beating pulse of heaven.'[13]
+
+In the earlier poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, the inner life imposes a
+more jealous sway. The poet sits not before a transforming mirror, where
+the outer world is disguised, but in a closed chamber, where it is only
+dreamed of, and it fades into the incoherence and the irrelevance of a
+dream. But the chamber is of rare beauty, and in its hushed and perfumed
+twilight, dramas of the spirit are being silently and almost
+imperceptibly enacted, more tragic than the loud passion and violence of
+the stage. He has written an essay on Silence,--silence that, like
+humility, holds for him a 'treasure' beyond the reach of eloquence or of
+pride; for it is the dwelling of our true self, the spiritual core of
+us, 'more profound and more boundless than the self of the passions or
+of pure reason.' And so there is less matter for drama in 'a captain who
+conquers in battle or a husband who avenges his honour than in an old
+man, seated in his arm-chair waiting patiently with his lamp beside him,
+giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his
+house, interpreting without comprehending, the silence of door and
+window, and the quivering voice of the light; submitting with bent head
+to the presence of his soul and his destiny.'
+
+It is on this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian
+novel,--with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of
+self-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the
+Nietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just
+then being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both
+responded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate
+future, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first
+resounding encounter when Nietzsche held up his once venerated master
+Wagner to scorn as the chief of 'decadents' because he had turned from
+the superhuman heroism of Siegfried and the boundless passion of
+Tristram to glorify the mystic Catholicism of the Grail and the
+loveliness of the 'pure fool' Parzifal.
+
+Outside France symbolism found eager response among young poets, but
+rather as a literary than as an ethical doctrine. In Germany Dehmel, the
+most powerful personality among her recent poets, began as a disciple of
+Verlaine; in Italy, D'Annunzio wove esoteric symbols into the texture of
+the more than Nietzschean supermanliness of his supermen and superwomen.
+More significant than these, however, was the symbolism of what we call
+the Celtic school of poets in Ireland. For here both their artistic
+impressionism and their mystic spirituality found a congenial soil. The
+principal mediating force was Mr. Arthur Symons, friend of Verlaine and
+of Yeats, and himself the most penetrating interpreter of Symbolism,
+both as critic and as poet.[14] And to the French influence was added
+that of Blake, a poet too great to be included in any school, but allied
+to symbolism by his scorn for 'intellect' and for rhetoric, and by his
+audacities of figured speech. But Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.', the leaders of
+the 'Celtic' group, are in no sense derivation voices. They had the
+great advantage over the French of a living native folklore and faery
+lore. Hence their symbolism, no less subtle, and no less steeped in
+poetic imagining, has not the same air of literary artifice, of studio
+fabrication, of cultured Bohemianism; it breathes of the old Irish
+hills, holy with old-world rites, and the haunted woods, and the magical
+twilight and dewy dawns. And beneath all the folklore, and animating it,
+is the passion for Ireland herself, the mother, deathless and ever
+young, whom neither the desolation of the time nor the decay of hope can
+touch:
+
+    'Out-worn heart in a time out-worn
+    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
+    Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight;
+    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
+
+    Your mother Eire is always young,
+    Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
+    Tho' hope fall from you and love decay
+    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
+
+    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill;
+    For there the mystical brotherhood
+    Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
+    And river and stream work out their will.'
+
+For that, the French had only the Fauns of a literary neo-classicism.
+The passion for France was yet indeed to find a voice in poetry. But
+this was reserved for the more trumpet-tongued tones of the contemporary
+phase to which I now turn.
+
+
+III. 'CREATIVE EVOLUTION'
+
+1. _Philosophic Analogies_
+
+Nothing is more symptomatic of the incipient twentieth century than the
+drawing together of currents of thought and action before remote or
+hostile. The Parnassians were an exclusive sect, the symbolists an
+eccentric and often disreputable coterie; Claudel, D'Annunzio, Rudyard
+Kipling, speak home to throngs of everyday readers, are even national
+idols, and our Georgians contrive to be bought and read without the
+least surrender of what is most poetic in their poetry. And the
+analogies between philosophic thinking and poetic creation become
+peculiarly striking. Merely to name Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson,
+and Benedetto Croce is to become vividly aware of these analogies and
+of the common bent from which they spring. All three--whether with
+brilliant rhetoric, or iron logic, or a blend of both--use their
+thinking power to deride the theorizing intelligence in comparison with
+the creative intuition which culminates in poetry. To define the scope
+and province of this intuition is the purport of Croce's epoch-making
+_Aesthetics_, the basis and starting-point of his illumining work, in
+_Critica_, as a literary critic. Bergson is the dominant figure in a
+line of French thinkers possessed with the conviction that life, a
+perpetual streaming forth of creative energy, cannot be caught in the
+mechanism of law, adapted to merely physical phenomena, which at best
+merely gives us generalizations and lets the all-important
+particulars--the individual living thing--slip through the meshes;
+whereas intuition--the eye fixed on the object--penetrates to the very
+heart of this individual living thing, and only drops out the skeleton
+framework of abstract laws. Philosophy, in these thinkers, was deeply
+imbued with the analogies of artistic creation. 'Beauty,' said
+Ravaisson, 'and especially beauty in the most divine and perfect form,
+contains the secret of the world.'[15] And Bergson's _Creative
+Evolution_ embodied a conception of life and of the world profoundly
+congenial to the artistic and poetic temper of his time. For he
+restated, it has been well said, the two great surviving formulas of the
+nineteenth century, evolution and the will to live, in terms precisely
+suited to the temper of the age just dawning. The will to live became a
+formula of hope and progress; evolution became a formula of vital
+impulse, of creative purpose, not of mechanical 'struggle for
+existence'.
+
+The idea that aesthetic experience gives a profounder clue than logical
+thought to the inner meaning of things was as old as Plato. It was one
+of the crowning thoughts of Kant; it deeply coloured the metaphysics of
+Schelling. And Nietzsche developed it with brilliant audacity when in
+his _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) he contrasted scornfully with the laboured
+and ineffectual constructions of the theoretic man, even of Socrates the
+founder of philosophy, the radiant vision of the artist, the lucid
+clarity of Apollo. 'His book gave the lie to a thousand years of orderly
+development', wrote the great Hellenist Wilamowitz, Nietzsche's old
+schoolfellow, indignant at his rejection of the labours of scholastic
+reason. But it affirmed energetically the passion of his own time for
+immediate and first-hand experience.
+
+And it did more. Beside and above Apollo, Nietzsche put Dionysus; beside
+vision and above it, _rage_. Of the union of these two Tragedy was born.
+And Nietzsche's glorification of this elemental creative force also
+responded to a wider movement in philosophy, here chiefly German. His
+Dionysiac rage is directly derived from that will in which Schopenhauer
+saw the master faculty of man and the hidden secret of the universe; and
+the beginning of Schopenhauer's fame, about 1850, coincides with a
+general rehabilitation of will as the dominant faculty in the soul and
+in the world, at the cost of the methodic orderly processes of
+understanding; a movement exhibited in the psychological innovations of
+Wundt and Muensterberg, in the growth of the doctrine that what a thing
+is is determined by what it _can_; that value is in fact the measure,
+and even the meaning, of existence; that will can arm impotence, create
+faith, and master disease; and in the call of the colossal will-power
+which created the German empire and launched her on the career of
+industrial greatness. Nietzsche's Superman is, above all, a being of
+colossal and masterful will, and Zarathustra, the prophet of
+superhumanity, is only an incarnation of the will that for Schopenhauer
+moved the world. The moment at which the prestige of will began
+definitely to overcome that of reasoning is marked, as Aliotta has
+pointed out, by the appearance of James's _Will to Believe_, just when
+agnosticism seemed triumphant.
+
+Nietzsche and Bergson thus, with all their obvious and immense
+divergences, concurred in this respect, important from our present point
+of view, that their influence tended to transfer authority from the
+philosophic reason to those 'irrational' elements of mind which reach
+their highest intensity in the vision and 'rage' of the poet. James's
+vindication of drunken exaltation as a source of religious insight was
+not the least symptomatic passage of his great book. And both concurred,
+however remote their methods or their speech, in conceiving reality as
+creation, creation in which we take part--a conception which again, in
+the hands of the constructive religious thinker, led directly to the
+type of faith announced in that last--the Jamesian--'Variety' of
+religious experience, which represents us as indispensable
+fellow-workers and allies of a growing and striving God.
+
+
+2. _The New Freedom_
+
+No reader of the poetry of our time can mistake the kinship of its
+prevailing temper with that which lies at the root of these
+philosophies. Without trying to fit its infinite variety to any finite
+formula, we may yet venture to find in it, as Mr. McDowall has found in
+our Georgian poetry in particular, a characteristic union of grip and
+detachment; of intense and eager grasp upon actuality as it breaks upon
+us in the successive moments of the stream of time, and yet an inner
+independence of it, a refusal to be obsessed by its sanctions and
+authorities, a tacit assumption that everything, by whatever length of
+tradition consecrated, must come before the bar of the new century to be
+judged by its new mind. 'Youth is knocking at the door,' as it is said
+of Hilda in the symbolical _Master Builder_, and doubtless in every
+generation the philistines or Victorians in possession have had occasion
+to make that remark. The difference in our time is rather that youth
+comes in without knocking, and that instead of having to work slowly up
+to final dominance against the inertia of an established literary
+household, it has spontaneously, like Hilda Wrangel, taken possession of
+the home, rinding criticism boundlessly eulogistic, the public
+inexhaustibly responsive, and philosophy interpreting the universe, as
+we have seen, precisely in sympathy with its own naive intuitions. No
+wonder that youth at twenty is writing its autobiography or having its
+biography written, and that at twenty-five it makes a show of laying
+down the pen, like Max Beerbaum, with the gesture of one rising sated
+from the feast of life: 'I shall write no more.'
+
+The fact that youth finds itself thus at home in the world explains the
+difference in temper between the new poets of freedom and the old. The
+wild or wistful cry of Shelley for an ideal state emancipated from pain
+and death is as remote from their poetry as his spiritual anarchy from
+their politics; they can dream and see visions, in Scott's phrase, 'like
+any one going', but their feet are on the solid ground of actuality and
+citizenship, and the actuality comes into and colours their poetry no
+less than their vision. When Mr. Drinkwater looks out of his 'town
+window' he dreams of the crocus flaming gold in far-off Warwick woods;
+but he does not repudiate the drab inglorious street nor the tramway
+ringing and moaning over the cobbles, and they come into his verse. And
+I find it significant of the whole temper of the new poetry to ordinary
+life no less than that of ordinary men and women to the new poetry,
+that he has won a singularly intimate relationship with a great
+industrial community. He has not fared like his carver in stone. But
+then the eagles of his carving, though capable of rising, like
+Shelley's, to the sun, are the Cromwells and Lincolns who themselves
+brought the eagle's valour and undimmed eye into the stress and turmoil
+of affairs.
+
+No doubt a fiercer note of revolt may be heard at times in the poetry of
+contemporary France, and that precisely where devotion to some parts of
+the heritage of the past is most impassioned. The iconoclastic scorn of
+youth's idealism for the effeteness of the 'old hunkers', as Whitman
+called them, has rarely rung out more sharply than in the closing
+stanzas of Claudel's great Palm Sunday ode. All the pomp and splendour
+of bishops and cardinals is idle while victory yet is in suspense: that
+must be won by youth in arms.
+
+        'To-morrow the candles and the dais and the bishop with his clergy
+                coped and gold embossed,
+    But to-day the shout like thunder of an equal, unofficered host
+        Who, led and kindled by the flag alone,
+    With one sole spirit swollen, and on one sole thought intent,
+    Are become one cry like the crash of walls shattered and gates rent:
+        'Hosanna unto David's son!'
+
+    Needless the haughty steeds marble-sculptured, or triumphal arches, or
+                chariots and four,
+    Needless the flags and the caparisons, the moving pyramids and towers,
+                and cars that thunder and roar,--
+        'Tis but an ass whereon sits Christ;
+    For to make an end of the nightmare built by the pedants and the
+                pharisees,
+    To get home to reality across the gulf of mendacities,
+        The first she-ass he saw sufficed!
+
+    Eternal youth is master, the hideous gang of old men is done with, we
+    Stand here like children, fanned by the breath of the things to be,
+        But victory we will have to-day!
+    Afterwards the corn that like gold gives return, afterwards the gold
+                that like corn is faithful and will bear,
+    The fruit we have henceforth only to gather, the land we have
+                henceforth only to share,
+        But victory we will have to-day!'
+
+In the same spirit Charles Peguy--like Claudel, be it noted, a student
+of Bergson at the Ecole Normale--found his ideal in the great story of
+the young girl of Domremy who saved France when all the pomp and wisdom
+of generals had broken down. And in our own poetry has not Mr. Bottomley
+rewritten the Lear story, with the focus of power and interest
+transferred from the old king--left with not an inch of king in him--to
+a glorious young Artemis-Goneril?
+
+But among our English Georgians this tense iconoclastic note is rare.
+Their detachment from what they repudiate is not fanatical or ascetic;
+it is conveyed less in invective than in paradox and irony; their temper
+is not that which flies to the wilderness and dresses in camel hair, but
+of mariners putting out to the unknown and bidding a not unfriendly
+good-bye at the shore. The temper of adventure is deeply ingrained in
+the new romance as in the old; the very word adventure is saturated with
+a sentiment very congenial to us both for better and worse; it quickens
+the hero in us and flatters the devil-may-care.
+
+In its simplest form the temper of adventure has given us the profusion
+of pleasant verses which we know as the poetry of 'vagabondage' and 'the
+open road'. The point is too familiar to be dwelt on, and has been
+admirably illustrated and discussed by Mr. McDowall. George Borrow,
+prince of vagabonds, Stevenson, the 'Ariel', with his 'Vagabond-song'--
+
+    'All I seek the heaven above,
+      And the road below me',
+
+and a few less vocal swallows, anticipated the more sustained flights
+and melodies of to-day, while Borrow's wonderful company of vagabond
+heroes and heroines is similarly premonitory of the alluring gipsies and
+circus-clowns of our Georgian poetry. Sometimes a traditional motive is
+creatively transformed; as when Father Time, the solemn shadow with
+admonitory hour-glass, appears in Mr. Hodgson's poem as an old gipsy
+pitching his caravan 'only a moment and off once again'.
+
+Elsewhere a deeper note is sounded. It is not for nothing that Jeanne
+d'Arc is the saint of French Catholic democracy, or that Peguy, her
+poet, calls the Incarnation the 'sublime adventure of God's Son'. That
+last adventure of the Dantesque Ulysses beyond the sunset thrills us
+to-day more than the Odyssean tale of his triumphant home-return, and
+D'Annunzio, greatly daring, takes it as the symbol of his own
+adventurous life. Francis Thompson's most famous poem, too, represents
+the divine effort to save the erring soul under the image of the hound's
+eager chase of a quarry which may escape; while Yeats hears God 'blowing
+his lonely horn' along the moonlit faery glades of Erin. And Meredith,
+who so often profoundly voiced the spirit of the time in which only his
+ripe old age was passed, struck this note in his sublime verses on
+revolutionary France--
+
+                      'soaring France
+    That divinely shook the dead
+    From living man; that stretched ahead
+    Her resolute forefinger straight
+    And marched toward the gloomy gate
+    Of Earth's Untried.'
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the affinity between this temper of
+adventure in poetry and the teaching of Bergson. That the link is not
+wholly fortuitous is shown by the interesting _Art Poetique_ (1903) of
+his quondam pupil, Claudel, a little treatise pervaded by the idea of
+Creative-evolution.
+
+It was natural in such a time to assume that any living art of poetry
+must itself be new, and in fact the years immediately before and after
+the turn of the century are crowded with announcements of 'new'
+movements in art of every kind. Beside Claudel's _Art Poetique_ we have
+in England the _New Aestheticism_ of Grant Allen; in Germany the 'new
+principle' in verse of Arno Holz. And here again the English innovators
+are distinguished by a good-humoured gaiety, if also by a slighter build
+of thought, from the French or Nietzschean 'revaluers'. Rupert Brooke
+delightfully parodies the exquisite hesitances and faltering half-tones
+of Pater's cloistral prose; and Mr. Chesterton pleasantly mocks at the
+set melancholy of the aggressive Decadence in which he himself grew up:
+
+    'Science announced nonentity, and art adored decay,
+    The world was old and ended, but you and I were gay.'
+
+Like their predecessors in the earlier Romantic school, the new
+adventurers have notoriously experimented with poetic _form_. France,
+the home of the most rigid and meticulous metrical tradition, had
+already led the way in substituting for the strictly measured verse the
+more loosely organized harmonies of rhythmical prose, bound together,
+and indeed made recognizable as verse, in any sense, solely by the
+rhyme. With the Symbolists 'free verse' was an attempt to capture finer
+modulations of music than the rigid frame of metre allowed. With their
+successors it had rather the value of a plastic medium in which every
+variety of matter and of mood could be faithfully expressed. But whether
+called verse or not, the vast rushing modulations of rhythmic music in
+the great pieces of Claudel and others have a magnificence not to be
+denied. And the less explicitly poetic form permits matter which would
+jar on the poetic instinct if conveyed through a metrical form to be
+taken up as it were in this larger and looser stride.
+
+In Germany, on the other hand, the rhythmic emancipation of Whitman was
+carried out, in the school of Arno Holz, with a revolutionary audacity
+beyond the example even of Claudel. Holz states with great clearness and
+trenchancy what he calls his 'new principle of lyric'; one which
+'abandons all verbal music as an aim, and is borne solely by a rhythm
+made vital by the thought struggling through it to expression'. Rhyme
+and strophe are given up, only rhythm remains.
+
+Of our Georgian poetry, it must suffice to note that here, too, the
+temper of adventure in form is rife. But it shows itself,
+characteristically, less in revolutionary innovation than in attempts to
+elicit new and strange effects from traditional measures by deploying to
+the utmost, and in bold and extreme combinations, their traditional
+resources and variations, as in the blank verse of Mr. Abercrombie and
+Mr. Bottomley. This, and much beside in Georgian verse, has moods and
+moments of rare beauty. But, on the whole, verse-form is the region of
+poetic art in which Georgian poetry as a whole is least secure.
+
+
+3. _The New Realism_
+
+We see then how deeply rooted this new freedom is in the passion for
+actuality; not the dream but the waking and alert experience throbs and
+pulses in it. We have now to look more closely into this other aspect of
+it. Realism is a hard-worked term, but it may be taken to imply that the
+overflowing vitality of which poetry is one expression fastens with
+peculiar eagerness upon the visible and tangible world about us and
+seeks to convey that zest in words. Our poets not only do not scorn the
+earth to lose themselves in the sky; they are positive friends of the
+matter-of-fact, and that not in spite of poetry, but for poetry's sake;
+and Pegasus flies more freely because 'things' are 'in the saddle' along
+with the poet.
+
+That this matter-of-factness is loved by poets, for poetry's sake, marks
+it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe.
+But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of
+Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his
+inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by
+seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply
+interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high
+sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in
+memory, not in hope--the 'glory of the grass and splendour of the
+flower' which he had seen in childhood and imaginatively re-created in
+maturity; a romance which change, and especially the intrusions of
+industrial man, dispelled and destroyed. Whereas the romance of our new
+realism rests, in good part, precisely in the sense that the _thing_ so
+vividly gripped is not or need not be permanent, may turn into something
+else, has only a tenancy, not a freehold, in its conditions of space and
+time, a 'toss-up' hold upon existence, as it were, full of the zest of
+adventurous insecurity. A pessimistic philosophy would dissipate this
+romance, or strip it of all but the mournful poetry of doom. Mr.
+Chesterton glorifies the dust which may become a flower or a face,
+against the Reverend Peter Bell for whom dust is dust and no more, and
+Hamlet who only remembers that it once was Caesar. If our realism is
+buoyant, if it had at once the absorbed and the open mind, this is, in
+large part, in virtue of the temper which finds reality a perpetual
+creation. Every moment is precious and significant, for it comes with
+the burden and meaning of something that has never completely been
+before; and goes by only to give place to another moment equally curious
+and new. This is the deeper ground of our present fashion of paradox;
+what Mr. Chesterton, its apostle, means when he says that 'the great
+romance is reality'; for paradox, the unexpected, is, in a reality so
+framed, the bare and sober truth. Hence the frequency, in our new
+poetry, of pieces founded deliberately upon, as Mr. McDowall points out,
+paradox: the breaking in of some utter surprise upon a humdrum society,
+as in Mr. de la Mare's _Three Jolly Farmers_, or Mr. Abercrombie's _End
+of the World_, or Mr. Munro's _Strange Meetings_.
+
+Moreover, in this incessantly created reality we are ourselves
+incessantly creative. That may seem to follow as a matter of course; but
+it corresponds with the most radical of the distinctions between our
+realism and that of Wordsworth. When Mr. Wells tells us that his most
+comprehensive belief about the universe is that every part of it is
+ultimately important, he is not expressing a mystic pantheism which
+feels every part to be divine, but a generous pragmatism which holds
+that every part _works_. The idea of shaping and adapting will, of
+energy in industry, of mere routine practicality in office or household,
+is no longer tabooed, or shyly evaded; not because of any theoretic
+exaltation of labour or consecration of the commonplace, but because
+merely to use things, to make them fulfil our purposes, to bring them
+into touch with our activities, itself throws a kind of halo over even
+very humble and homely members of the 'divine democracy of things'.
+Rupert Brooke draws up a famous catalogue of the things of which he was
+a 'great lover'. He loved them, he says, simply _as being_. And no
+doubt, the simple sensations of colour, touch, or smell counted for
+much. But compare them with the things that Keats, a yet greater lover
+of sensations, loved. You feel in Brooke's list that he liked doing
+things as well as feasting his passive senses; these 'plates', 'holes in
+the ground,' 'washen stones,' the cold graveness of iron, and so forth.
+One detects in the list the Brooke who, as a boy, went about with a book
+of poems in one hand and a cricket-ball in the other, and whose left
+hand well knew what his right hand did.[16] That takes us far from the
+dream of eternal beauty, which a Greek urn or a nightingale's song
+brought to Keats, and the fatal word 'forlorn', bringing back the light
+of common day, dispelled. The old ethical and aesthetic canons are
+submerged in a passion for life which finds a good beyond good and evil,
+and a beauty born of ugliness more vital than beauty's self. 'The worth
+of a drama is measured', said D'Annunzio, 'by its fullness of life', and
+the formula explains, if it does not justify, those tropical gardens,
+rank with the gross blooms of 'superhuman' eroticism and ferocity, to
+which he latterly gave that name. And we know how Maeterlinck has
+emerged from the mystic dreams and silences of his recluse chamber to
+unfold the dramatic pugnacities of Birds and Bees.
+
+Even the downright foulness and ugliness which some people find so
+puzzling in poets with an acute delight in beauty, like Mr. Masefield,
+come into it not from any aesthetic obtuseness, but because these
+uglinesses are full of the zest of drama, of things being done or made,
+of life being lived. When Masefield sounded his challenge to the old
+aesthetics:
+
+    'Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,
+     Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth',
+
+he knew well, as _The Everlasting Mercy_ and _The Widow of Bye Street_
+showed, that dirt and dross, if wrought into tragedy, can win a higher
+beauty than the harmonies of idyll. Even the hideous elder women in Mr.
+Bottomley's _Lear's Wife_, or his Regan--an ill-conditioned girl,
+sidling among the 'sweaty, half-clad cook-maids' after pig-killing,
+'smeary and hot as they', participate in this beauty and energy of
+doing.
+
+Poetry, in these cases, wins perhaps at most a Pyrrhic victory over
+reluctant matter. It is otherwise with the second of the great Belgian
+poets.
+
+In the work of Verhaeren, the modern industrial city, with its spreading
+tentacles of devouring grime and squalor, its clanging factories, its
+teeming bazaars and warehouses, and all its thronging human population,
+is taken up triumphantly into poetry. Verhaeren is the poet of
+'tumultuous forces', whether they appear in the roar and clash of 'that
+furnace we call existence', or in the heroic struggles of the Flemish
+nation for freedom. And he exhibits these surging forces in a style
+itself full of tumultuous power, Germanic rather than French in its
+violent and stormy splendour, and using the chartered licence of the
+French 'free verse' itself with more emphasis than subtlety.
+
+
+4. _The Cult of Force_
+
+In Verhaeren, indeed, we are conscious of passing into the presence of
+power more elemental and unrestrained than the civil refinement of our
+Georgians, at their wildest, allows us to suspect. The tragic and heroic
+history of his people, and their robust art, the art of Rembrandt, and
+of Teniers, vibrates in the Flemish poet. He has much of the temperament
+of Nietzsche, and if not evidently swayed by his ideas, or even aware of
+them, and with a generous faith in humanity which Nietzsche never knew,
+he thinks and imagines with a kindred joy in violence:
+
+    'I love man and the world, and I adore the force
+     Which my force gives and takes from man and the universe.'
+
+And it is no considerable step from him to the poets who in this third
+phase of our period have unequivocally exulted in power and burnt
+incense or offered sacrifice before the altar of the strong man. The joy
+in creation which, we saw, gives its romance to so much of the realism
+of our time, now appears accentuated in the fiercer romance of conflict
+and overthrow. Thanks largely to Nietzsche, this romance acquired the
+status of an authoritative philosophy--even, in his own country, that of
+an ethical orthodoxy.
+
+The German people was doubtless less deeply and universally imbued with
+this faith than our war-prejudice assumes. But phenomena such as the
+enormous success of a cheap exposition of it, _Rembrandt als Erzieher_
+(1890) by a fervent Bismarckian, and of the comic journal
+_Simplicissimus_ (founded 1895) devoted to systematic ridicule of the
+old-fashioned German virtues of tenderness and sympathy, indicated a
+current of formidable power and compass, which was soon to master all
+the other affluents of the national stream.
+
+But older, and in part foreign, influences concurred to colour and
+qualify, while they sustained, the Nietzschean influence,--the daemonic
+power of Carlyle, the iron intensity and masterful reticence of Ibsen.
+This was the case especially, as is well known, in the drama. Gerhardt
+Hauptmann, who painted the tragedy of the self-emancipated superman,--as
+Mr. Shaw about the same time showed us his self-achieved
+apotheosis,--was no doubt the most commanding (as Mr. Shaw was the most
+original) figure in the European drama of the early century.
+
+In poetry, the contributory forces were still more subtly mingled, and
+the Nietzschean spirit, which blows where it listeth, often touched men
+wholly alien from Nietzsche in cast of genius and sometimes stoutly
+hostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all.
+Among the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the
+most considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany.
+Richard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked
+comparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented.
+
+He began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the
+unrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's
+_fureur d'aimer_. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps
+the downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities
+of _la nuance_. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but
+the ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which
+finally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel.
+Nietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and
+evil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which
+transcends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil
+themselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can
+cry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the _Erloesungen_, 'I will
+fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not
+pleasure, it waters power',--he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe
+and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn
+it into the stuff of duty!'
+
+If Nietzsche provoked into antagonism the sounder elements in Dehmel, he
+was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius
+of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality
+of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman
+tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all
+their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid
+sentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than
+any other single man provoked Italy to throw herself into the great
+adventure of the War. Unapproached in popularity by any other Italian
+man of letters, D'Annunzio discovered Nietzsche, and hailed him--a great
+concession--as an equal. When Nietzsche died, in 1900, D'Annunzio
+indicted a lofty memorial ode to the Titanic Barbarian who set up once
+more the serene gods of Hellas over the vast portals of the Future.
+Nietzsche indeed let loose all the Titan, and all consequently that was
+least Hellenic, in the fertile genius of the Italian; his wonderful
+instinct for beauty, his inexhaustible resources of style are employed
+in creating orgies of superhuman valour, lust, and cruelty like some of
+his later dramas, and hymns intoxicated with the passion for Power, like
+the splendid Ode in which the City of the Seven Hills is prophetically
+seen once more the mistress of the world, loosing the knot of all the
+problems of humanity. His poetic autobiography, the first _Laude_
+(1901)--counterpart of Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and its very
+antipodes--culminates in a prayer 900 lines long to Hermes, god of the
+energy which precipitates itself on life and makes it pregnant with
+invention and discovery, of the iron will 'which chews care as a laurel
+leaf'--the god of the Superman. And so he discovers the muse of the
+Superman, the Muse of Energy, a tenth Muse whose first poet he modestly
+disclaims to be, if he may only be, as he would have us interpret his
+name, her Announcer.
+
+If D'Annunzio emulates Nietzsche, the two great militant poets of
+Catholic France would have scorned the comparison. Charles Peguy's brief
+career was shaped from his first entrance, poor and of peasant birth, at
+a Paris Lycee, to his heroic death in the field, September 1914, by a
+daemonic force of character. His heroine, glorified in his first book,
+was Jeanne d'Arc, who attempted the impossible, and achieved it. In
+writing, his principle--shocking to French literary tradition--was to
+speak the brutal truth _brutalement_. As a poet he stood in the direct
+lineage of Corneille, whose _Polyeucte_ he thought the greatest of the
+world's tragedies. As a man, he embodied with naive intensity the
+unsurpassed inborn heroism of the French race.
+
+Claudel, even more remote as a thinker from Nietzsche than Peguy,
+exhibits a kindred temper in the ingrained violence of his art. His
+stroke is vehement and peremptory; he is an absolutist in style as in
+creed. It is the style of one who apprehends the visible world with an
+intensity as of passionate embrace, such as the young Browning expresses
+in _Pauline_. 'I would fain have seen everything,' he cries, 'possessed
+and made it my own, not with eyes and senses only, but with mind and
+spirit.' And after he was converted he saw and painted supernatural
+things with the same carnal and robust incisiveness. The half-lights of
+Symbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he
+drew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems
+to the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the
+brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a
+sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble
+house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in
+order to save the pope.
+
+And if we look, finally, for corresponding phenomena at home, we find
+them surely in the masculine, militant, and in the French sense _brutal_
+poetry of W.E. Henley and Rudyard Kipling. If any modern poets have
+conceived life in terms of will, and penetrated their verse with that
+faith, it is the author of 'I am the Captain of my Soul', the 'Book of
+the Sword', and 'London Voluntaries', friend and subject of the great
+kindred-minded sculptor Rodin, the poet over whose grave in St. Paul's
+George Wyndham found the right word when he said--marking him off from
+the great contemplative, listening poets of the past--'His music was not
+the still sad music of humanity; it was never still, rarely sad, always
+intrepid.' And we know how Kipling, after sanctioning the mischievous
+superstition that 'East and West can never meet', refuted it by
+producing his own 'two strong men'.
+
+
+5. _The New Idealism_
+
+(1) _Nationality_
+
+We have now seen something of that power, at once of grip and of
+detachment with which the dominant poetry of this century faces what it
+thinks of as the adventure of experience, its plunge into the
+ever-moving and ever-changing stream of life. How then, it remains to
+ask, has it dealt with those ideal aspirations and beliefs which one may
+live intensely and ignore, which in one sense stand 'above the battle',
+but for which men have lived and died. With a generation which holds so
+lightly by tradition, which revises and revalues all accepted values,
+these aspirations and beliefs might well drop out of its poetry. On the
+other hand, these same aspirations and beliefs might overcome the
+indifference to tradition by ceasing to be merely traditional, by being
+immersed and steeped in that moving stream of life, and interwoven with
+the creative energies of men. The inherited faiths were put to this
+dilemma, either to become intimately alive and creative in poetry or to
+be of no concern for it. Some of them failed in the test. England has
+still devotees of Protestantism, but Protestant religion has hardly
+inspired noble poetry since Milton. Nationality, on the other hand, has
+during the last century inspired finer poetry than at any time since the
+sixteenth, and that because it has been brought down from the region of
+political abstractions and ideologies into intimate union with heart and
+brain, imagination and sense. This is true also of Catholicism and of
+Socialism, and, if fitfully and uncertainly yet, of the ideal of
+international fraternity, of humanity. And to all these ideals, to all
+ideals, came finally the terrific, the overwhelming test of the War,--a
+searching, annihilating, purifying flame, in which some shrivelled away,
+some were stripped of the illusive glitter that concealed their mass of
+alloy, and some, purged of their baser constituents, shone out with a
+lustre unapproached before.
+
+What is the distinctive note of this new poetry of nationality? And for
+the moment I speak of the years before the War. May we not say that in
+it the ideal of country is saturated with that imaginative grip of
+reality in all its concrete energy and vivacity which I have called the
+new realism? The nation is no abstraction, whether it be called
+Britannia, or _Deutschland ueber Alles_. It is seen, and felt; seen in
+its cities as well as in its mountains, in the workers who have made it,
+as well as in the heroes who have defended it; in its roaring forges as
+well as in its idyllic woodlands and its tales of battles long ago; and
+all these not as separate strands in a woven pattern, but as waters of
+different origin and hue pouring along together in the same great
+stream.
+
+Emile Verhaeren, six years before the invasion, had seen and felt his
+country, living body and living soul, with an intensity which made it
+seem unimaginable that she should be permanently subdued. He well called
+his book _Toute la Flandre_, for all Flanders is there. Old
+Flanders,--Artevelde and Charles Temeraire--whose soul was a forest of
+huge trees and dark thickets,
+
+    'A wilderness of crossing ways below,
+    But eagles, over, soaring to the sun,'--
+
+Van Eyck and Rubens--'a thunder of colossal memories'; then the great
+cities, with their belfries and their foundries, and their warehouses
+and laboratories, their antique customs and modern ambitions; and the
+rivers, the homely familiar Lys, where the women wash the whitest of
+linen, and the mighty Scheldt, the Escaut, the 'hero sombre, violent and
+magnificent', 'savage and beautiful Escaut', whose companionship had
+moulded and made the poet, whose rhythms had begotten his music and his
+best ideas[17].
+
+None of our English poets have rendered England in poetry with the same
+lyric intensity in its whole compass of time and space, calling up into
+light and music all her teeming centuries and peopled provinces. Yet the
+present generation has in some respects made a nearer approach to such
+achievement than its predecessors. A century of growing historic
+consciousness has not passed over us in vain; and if any generic
+distinction is to be found between our recent, often penetrating and
+beautiful, poetry of the English countryside and the Nature description
+of Wordsworth or of Ruskin, it is in the ground-tone of passion and
+memory that pervades it for England herself. Wordsworth wrote
+magnificently of England threatened with invasion, and magnificently of
+the Lake Country, Nature's beloved haunt. But the War sonnets and the
+Lake and mountain poetry come from distinct strains in his genius,
+which our criticism may bring into relation, but our feeling insists on
+keeping apart. His Grasmere is a province of Nature--her favoured
+province--rather than of England; it is in the eye of Nature that the
+old Cumberland beggar lives and dies; England only provides the
+obnoxious workhouses to which these destitute vagrants were henceforth
+to be consigned. Is it not this that divides our modern local poetry
+from his? Mr. Belloc's Sussex is tenderly loved for itself; yet behind
+its great hills and its old-world harbours lies the half-mystic presence
+of historic England. And in Edward Thomas's wonderful old Wiltshireman,
+Lob, worthy I think to be named with the Cumberland Beggar,
+
+    'An old man's face, by life and weather cut
+     And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--
+     A land face, sea-blue eyed,'--
+
+you read the whole lineage of sterling English yeomen and woodlanders
+from whom Lob springs.
+
+This note is indeed relatively absent from the work of the venerable
+master who has made 'Wessex' the most vividly realized of all English
+provinces to-day, and whose prose Egdon Heath may well be put at the
+head of all the descriptive poetry of our time. But Mr. Hardy, in this
+respect, belongs to an earlier generation than that into which he
+happily survives.
+
+Sometimes this feeling is given in a single intense concentrated touch.
+When Rupert Brooke tells us of
+
+      'Some corner of a foreign field
+    That is for ever England. There shall be
+    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
+    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
+    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,'
+
+do we not feel that the solidarity of England with the English folk and
+of the English folk with the English soil, is burnt into our
+imaginations in a new and distinctive way?
+
+But the poetry of shires and provinces reacts too upon the poetry of
+nationality. It infuses something of the more instinctive and
+rudimentary attachments from which it springs into a passion peculiarly
+exposed to the contagion of rhetoric and interest. Some of the most
+strident voices among living nationalist poets have found an unexpected
+note of tenderness when they sang their home province. Mr. Kipling
+charms us when he tells, in his close-knit verse, of the 'wooded, dim,
+Blue goodness of the Weald'. And the more strident notes of D'Annunzio's
+patriotism are also assuaged by the tenderness and depth of his home
+feeling. We read with some apprehension his dedication of _La Nave_ to
+the god of seas:
+
+    'O Lord, who bringest forth and dost efface
+    The ocean-ruling Nations, race by race,
+    It is this living People, by Thy grace
+        Who on the sea
+    Shall magnify Thy name, who on the sea
+    Shall glorify Thy name, who on the sea
+    With myrrh and blood shall sacrifice to Thee
+        At the altar-prow,
+    Of all earth's oceans make our sea, O Thou!
+        Amen!
+
+But he dedicated a noble drama, the _Figlia d'Iorio_, in a different
+tone, 'To the land of the Abruzzi, to my Mother, to my Sisters, to my
+brother in exile, to my father in his grave, to all my dead and all my
+race in the mountains and by the sea, I dedicate this song of the
+ancient blood.'
+
+
+(2) _Democracy_
+
+The growth of democratic as of national feeling during the later century
+naturally produced a plentiful harvest of eloquent utterance in verse.
+With this, merely as such, I am not here concerned, even though it be
+as fine as the Socialist songs of William Morris or Edward Carpenter.
+But the Catholic Socialism of Charles Peguy,--itself an original and,
+for most of his contemporaries, a bewildering combination--struck out a
+no less original poetry,--a poetry of solidarity. Peguy's Socialism,
+like his Catholicism, was single-souled; he ignored that behind the one
+was a Party, and behind the other a Church. It was his bitterest regret
+that a vast part of humanity was removed beyond the pale of fellowship
+by eternal damnation. It was his sublimest thought that the solidarity
+of man includes the damned. In his first version of the Jeanne d'Arc
+mystery, already referred to, he tells how Jesus, crucified,
+
+    Saw not his Mother in tears at the cross-foot
+    Below him, saw not Magdalen nor John,
+    But wept, dying, only for Judas' death.
+    The Saviour loved this Judas, and though utterly
+    He gave himself, he knew he could not save him.
+
+It was the dogma of damnation which for long kept Peguy out of its fold,
+that barbarous mixture of life and death, he called it, which no man
+will accept who has won the spirit of collective humanity. But he
+revolted not because he was tolerant of evil; on the contrary to damn
+sins was for him a weak and unsocial solution; evil had not to be damned
+but to be fought down. Whether this vision of Christ weeping because he
+could not save Judas was un-Christian, or more Christian than
+Christianity itself, we need not discuss here; but I am sure that the
+spirit of a Catholic democracy as transfigured in the mind of a great
+poet could not be more nobly rendered.
+
+
+(3) _Catholicism_
+
+But Peguy's powerful personality set its own stamp upon whatever he
+believed, and though a close friend of Jaures, he was a Socialist who
+rejected almost all the ideas of the Socialist school. As little was
+his Catholicism to the mind of the Catholic authorities. And his
+Catholic poetry is sharply marked off from most of the poetry that
+burgeoned under the stimulus of the remarkable revival of Catholic ideas
+in twentieth-century France. I say of Catholic ideas, for sceptical
+poets like Remy de Gourmont played delicately with the symbols of
+Catholic worship, made 'Litanies' of roses, and offered prayers to
+Jeanne d'Arc, walking dreamily in the procession of 'Women Saints of
+Paradise', to 'fill our hearts with anger'.[18] The Catholic adoration
+of women-saints is one of the springs of modern poetry. At the close of
+the century of Wordsworth and Shelley, the tender Nature-worship of
+Francis of Assisi contributed not less to the recovered power of
+Catholic ideas in poetry, and this chiefly in the person of two poets,
+in France and in England, both of whom played half-mystically with the
+symbolism of their names, Francis Thompson and Francis Jammes. The
+child-like naivete of S. Francis is more delicately reflected in Jammes,
+a Catholic W.H. Davies, who casts the idyllic light of Biblical pastoral
+over modern farm life, and prays to 'his friends, the Asses' to go with
+him to Paradise, 'For there is no hell in the land of the Bon Dieu.'
+
+But the most powerful creative imagination to-day in the service of
+Catholic ideas is certainly Paul Claudel. I pass by here the series of
+dramas, where a Catholic inspiration as fervent as Calderon's is
+enforced with Elizabethan technique and Elizabethan violence of terror,
+cruelty, and pity.[19] From the ferocious beauty of _L'Otage_ turn
+rather to the intense spiritual hush before the altar of some great
+French church at noon, where the poet, not long after the first
+decisive check of the invaders on the Marne, finds himself alone, before
+the shrine of Marie. Here too, his devotion finds a speech not borrowed
+from the devout or from their poetry:
+
+    'It is noon. I see the Church is open. I must enter.
+    Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray.
+
+    I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.
+    I come only, Mother, to gaze at you.
+
+    To gaze at you, to weep for happiness, to know
+    That I am your son and that you are there.
+
+    Nothing at all but for a moment when all is still,
+    Noon! to be with you, Marie, in this place where you are.
+
+    To say nothing, to gaze upon your face,
+    To let the heart sing in its own speech.'
+
+There the nationalist passion of Claudel animates his Catholic religion,
+yet does not break through its confines. But sometimes the strain of
+suffering and ruin is too intense for Christian submission, and he takes
+his God to task truculently for not doing his part in the contract; we
+are his partner in running the world, and see, he is asleep!
+
+     'There is a great alliance, willy-nilly, between us henceforth, there
+                is this bread that with no trembling hand
+      We have offered you, this wine that we have poured anew,
+    Our tears that you have gathered, our brothers that you share with us,
+                leaving the seed in the earth,
+      There is this living sacrifice of which we satisfy each day's demand,
+      This chalice we have drunk with you!'
+
+Yet the devout passion emerges again, with notes of piercing pathos:
+
+    'Lord, who hast promised us for one glass of water a boundless sea,
+        Who knows if Thou art not thirsty too?
+    And that this blood, which is all we have, will quench that thirst
+                in Thee,
+        We know, for Thou hast told us so.
+    If indeed there is a spring in us, well, that is what is to be shown,
+        If this wine of ours is red,
+    If our blood has virtue, as Thou sayest, how can it be known
+        Otherwise than by being shed?'
+
+
+(4) _Effects of the War upon Poetry_
+
+Thus could the great Catholic poet sing under pressure of the supreme
+national crisis of his country. Poetry at such times may become a great
+national instrument--a trumpet whence Milton or Wordsworth, Arndt or
+Whitman, blow soul-animating strains. The war of 1914 was for all the
+belligerent peoples far more than a stupendous military event. It
+shattered the patterns of our established mentality, and compelled us to
+seek new adjustments and support in the chaotically disorganized world.
+The psychical upheaval was most violent in the English-speaking peoples,
+where the military shock was least direct; for here a nation of
+civilians embraced suddenly the new and amazing experience of battle.
+Here too, the imaginatively sensitive minds who interpret life through
+poetry, and most of all the youngest and freshest among them, themselves
+shared in the glories and the throes of the fight as hardly one of the
+signers of our most stirring battle poetry had ever done before. How did
+this new and amazing experience react upon their poetry? This, our final
+question, is perhaps the crucial one in considering the tendencies of
+recent European poetry.
+
+In the first place it enormously stimulated and quickened what was
+deepest and strongest in the energies and qualities which had been
+apparent in our latter day poetry before. They had sought to clasp life,
+to live, not merely to contemplate, experience; and here indeed was
+life, and death, and both to be embraced. Here was adventure indeed, but
+one whose grimness made romance cheap, so that in this war-poetry, for
+the first time in history, the romance and glamour of war, the pomp and
+circumstance of military convention, fall entirely away, and the
+bitterest scorn of these soldier-poets is bestowed not on the enemy, but
+on those contemplators who disguised its realities with the camouflage
+of the pulpit and the editorial arm-chair. Turn, I will not say from
+Campbell or from Tennyson, but from Rudyard Kipling or Sir H. Newbolt,
+to Siegfried Sassoon, and you feel that you have got away from a
+literary convention, whether conveyed in the manners of the barrack-room
+or of the public-school, to something intolerably true, and which holds
+the poet in so fierce a grip that his song is a cry.
+
+But if the war has brought our poets face to face with intense kinds of
+real experience, which they have fearlessly grasped and rendered, its
+grim obsession has not made them cynical, or clogged the wings of their
+faith and their hope. I will not ask how the war has affected the
+idealism of others, whether it has left the nationalism of our press or
+the religion of our pulpits purer or more gross than it found them. But
+of our poetry at least the latter cannot be said. In Rupert Brooke the
+inspiration of the call obliterated the last trace of dilettante youth's
+pretensions, and he encountered darkness like a bride, and greeted the
+unseen death not with a cheer as a peril to be boldly faced, but as a
+great consummation, the supreme safety. How his poetry would have
+reacted to the actual experience of war we can only guess. But in
+others, his friends and comrades, the fierce immersion in the welter of
+ruin and pain and filth and horror and death brought only a more superb
+faith in the power of man's soul to rise above the hideous obsession of
+his own devilries, to retain the vision of beauty through the riot of
+foul things, of love through the tumult of hatreds, of life through the
+infinity of death. True this was not a new power: poetry to be poetry
+must always in some measure possess it. What was individual to the poets
+was that this power of mastering actuality went along in them with the
+fierce and eager immersion in it; the thrill of breathing the
+
+         'calm and serene air
+    Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
+    Which men call earth,'
+
+with the thrill of seeing and painting in all its lurid colouring the
+volcanic chaos of this 'stir and smoke' itself. Thus the same Siegfried
+Sassoon who renders with so much close analytic psychology the moods
+that cross and fluctuate in the dying hospital patient, or the haunted
+fugitive, as he flounders among snags and stumps, to feel at last the
+strangling clasp of death, can as little as the visionary Shelley
+overcome the insurgent sense that these dead are for us yet alive, made
+one with Nature.
+
+He visits the deserted home of his dead friend--
+
+    'Ah, but there was no need to call his name,
+    He was beside me now, as swift as light ...
+    For now, he said, my spirit has more eyes
+    Than heaven has stars, and they are lit by love.
+    My body is the magic of the world,
+    And dark and sunset flame with my spilt blood.'
+
+And so the undying dead
+
+      'Wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
+    And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms upflung,
+    To hail the burning heaven they left unsung.'
+
+Further, this war poetry, while reflecting military things with a
+veracity hardly known before, is yet rarely militant. We must not look
+for explicit pacifist or international ideas; but as little do we find
+jingo patriotism or hymns of hate. The author of the German hymn of hate
+was a much better poet than anyone who tried an English hymn in the same
+key, and the English poets who could have equalled its form were above
+its spirit. Edith Cavell's dying words 'Patriotism is not enough' cannot
+perhaps be paralleled in these poets, but they are continually
+suggested. They do not say, in the phrase of the old cavalier poet, that
+we should love England less if we loved not something else more, or that
+something is wanting in our love for our country if we wrong humanity in
+its name. But the spirit which is embodied in these phrases breathes
+through them; heroism matters more to them than victory, and they know
+that death and sorrow and the love of kindred have no fatherland. They
+'stand above the battle' as well as share in it, and they share in it
+without ceasing to stand above it. The German is the enemy, they never
+falter in that; and even death does not convert him into a friend. But
+for this enemy there is chivalry, and pity, and a gleam, now and then,
+of reconciling comradeship.
+
+    'He stood alone in some queer sunless place
+    Where Armageddon ends,'--
+
+the Englishman whom the Germans had killed in fight, to be themselves
+slain by his friend, the speaker. Their ghosts throng around him,--
+
+    'He stared at them, half wondering, and then
+    They told him how I'd killed them for his sake,
+    Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men:
+    At last he turned and smiled; smiled--all was well
+    Because his face would lead them out of hell.'
+
+Finally, the poet himself glories in his act; he knows that he can beat
+into music even the crashing discords that fill his ears; he knows too
+that he has a music of his own which they cannot subdue or debase:
+
+    'I keep such music in my brain
+    No din this side of death can quell,
+    Glory exulting over pain,
+    And beauty garlanded in hell.'
+
+To have found and kept and interwoven these two musics--a language of
+unflinching veracity and one of equally unflinching hope and faith--is
+the achievement of our war-poetry. May we not say that the possession
+together of these two musics, of these two moods, springing as they do
+from the blended grip and idealism of the English character, warrants
+hope for the future of English poetry? For it is rooted in the greatest,
+and the most English, of the ways of poetic experience which have gone
+to the making of our poetic literature--the way, ultimately, of
+Shakespeare, and of Wordsworth. But that temper of catholic fraternity
+which finds the stuff of poetry everywhere does not easily attain the
+consummate technique in expression of a rarer English tradition, that of
+Milton, and Gray, and Keats. Beauty abounds in our later poets, but it
+is a beauty that flashes in broken lights, not the full-orbed radiance
+of a masterpiece. To enlarge the grasp of poetry over the field of
+reality, to apprehend it over a larger range, is not at once to find
+consummate expression for what is apprehended. The flawless perfection
+of the Parnassians--of Heredia's sonnets--is nowhere approached in the
+less aristocratically exclusive poetry of to-day. But the future, in
+poetry also, is with the spirit which found the aristocracy of noble art
+not upon exclusions, negations, and routine, but upon imagination,
+penetration, discovery, and catholic openness of mind.
+
+
+SOME BOOKS FOR CONSULTATION
+
+Pellissier, _Le Mouvement Litteraire au XIXme Siecle_.
+
+Brunetiere, _La Poesie Lyrique au XIXme Siecle_.
+
+Eccles, F.Y., _A Century of French Poets_.
+
+Vigie-Lecocq, _La Poesie Contemporaine_.
+
+Phelps, _Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century_.
+
+Muret, _La Litterature Italienne d'aujourd'hui_.
+
+Ladenarde, _G. Carducci_.
+
+Symons, _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_.
+
+Jackson, _The Eighteen Nineties_.
+
+McDowall, _Realism_.
+
+Aliotta, _The Idealist Reaction against Science_.
+
+Soergel, _Die deutsche Litteratur unserer Zeit_.
+
+Bithell, _Contemporary German Poetry_ (Translated).
+
+Halevy, _Charles Peguy_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: The temper of the two realists was no doubt widely
+different. 'C'est en haine du realisme', wrote Flaubert, 'que j'ai
+entrepris ce roman. Mais je n'en deteste pas moins la fausse idealite,
+dont nous sommes berces par le temps qui court' (_Corresp._ 3, 67).]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Causeries du Lundi_, 1850 f.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Histoire de la litterature anglaise_, 1863.]
+
+[Footnote 6: But a Wilde who wrote no _De Profundis_ and no _Ballad of
+Reading Gaol_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _La Forge_: dedicated to Gaston Paris, the greatest
+_forgeron_ of his generation in the love of Old French.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Rime Nuove_: Classicismo e Romantismo.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Midi_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _La Paix des Dieux_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: For this and the other verse-translations the writer is
+responsible.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Even the 'music' was far removed from the simplicity of
+pure song. The song of these poets was an incantation. Nay, painting
+itself witnessed a corresponding revolt against the 'eloquence' of the
+pseudo-realists--the 'far away dirty reasonableness', as Manet dubbed
+it, which missed the essential vision by using the worn-down accepted
+phrases of the public.]
+
+[Footnote 13: _Au jardin de l'Infante: Veillee_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: To some types of Irish imagination French Naturalism, it
+is true, was no less congenial; hence the rift between the realist and
+the spiritual Irishmen delightfully played on in Max Beerbaum's cartoon
+of Yeats presenting the _Faery Queene_ to George Moore.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Aliotta, _The Idealistic Revolt_, p. 116. Cf. the account
+of the analogous views of Boutroux and Renouvier in the same chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Keats, no doubt, also aspired to the life of action. But
+in him the two moods were disparate, even in conflict; in Brooke they
+were seemingly fused.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Eighteenth-century observation, in the person of
+Goldsmith, had found no worthier epithet for the great Flemish river
+than 'lazy', and the modern tourist is likely to find this by far the
+more 'characteristic'. But which had the best chance of seeing truly,
+the life-long companion and lover, or the stranger, sad, lonely, and
+longing for home?]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Les Saintes du Paradis_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Cf. for instance the situation of Signe, in the grip of
+the brutal _prefet_, with that of Beatrice, in _The Changeling_, in the
+hands of De Flores.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HISTORICAL RESEARCH
+
+G.P. GOOCH
+
+
+The scientific study of history began a hundred years ago in the
+University of Berlin. Preparatory work of the highest importance had
+been accomplished by laborious collectors like Baronius and Muratori,
+keen-sighted critics such as Mabillon and Wolf, and brilliant narrators
+like Gibbon and Voltaire. But it was not till Niebuhr, Boeckh, and above
+all Ranke preached and practised the critical use of authorities and
+documentary material that historical scholarship entered on the path
+which it has pursued with ever-increasing success for the last three
+generations. It is my task to-day to direct your attention to some of
+its main achievements during the last half-century.
+
+The outstanding feature of our time has been the immense increase in the
+material available for the knowledge and interpretation of every stage
+and chapter in the life of humanity. Primitive civilization has been
+definitely brought within the circle of historical study. The
+discoveries of Boucher des Perthes, Pitt-Rivers, and their successors
+have thrown back the opening of the human drama tens if not hundreds of
+thousands of years, and we recreate prehistoric man from skull and
+weapon, language and legend. Anthropology has become a science, and the
+habits and beliefs of our savage ancestors have been rendered
+intelligible by the piercing insight of Tylor and Sir James Frazer. In
+its boundless erudition, its constructive imagination, and its wealth of
+suggestion, the _Golden Bough_ stands forth as perhaps the most notable
+contribution of the age to our knowledge of the evolution of the human
+race.
+
+Among the most sensational events of the nineteenth century was the
+resurrection of the Ancient East. We now know that Greece and Rome, far
+from standing near the beginning of recorded history, were the heirs of
+a long series of civilizations. Our whole perspective has been changed
+or should be changed by the discovery. The ancient world thus revealed
+by the partnership of philology and archaeology ceases to be merely the
+vestibule to Christian Europe, and becomes in point of duration the
+larger part of human history.
+
+The story opens with Champollion's decipherment of the bilingual tablet
+discovered more than a century ago at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The
+key once fitted to the lock, the whole civilization of ancient Egypt lay
+open to the explorer. A secure chronological basis was supplied by
+Lepsius, and systematic excavation was commenced by Mariette, who was
+named by the Khedive Director of Antiquities and established the Cairo
+Museum. The work of the three great founders of Egyptology has been
+carried forward during the last half-century by an international army of
+scholars. The interpretation of the ancient scripts has reached a
+technical mastery unknown to the pioneers, and the genius of Brugsch
+unlocked the door to demotic, which Champollion had never thoroughly
+mastered. But the triumphs of philology have been surpassed by the
+conquests of the spade. The closest friend of Mariette's later years was
+Maspero, who succeeded him as Director of Antiquities, and whose most
+sensational find was the tombs of the Kings near Thebes. Equally eminent
+as excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to
+popularize Egyptology in France, as Flinders Petrie, the greatest
+excavator since Mariette, has popularized it in England. Until twenty
+years ago the curtain rose on the pyramid-builders of the Fourth
+dynasty. We have now not only recovered the earlier dynasties, but
+neolithic and palaeolithic Egypt emerges from the primitive cemeteries.
+The immense accession of new material has enabled Eduard Meyer to
+construct something like a definite chronology; but though marvellous
+progress has been made in our knowledge of the Early, Middle, and New
+Empires, a great gap remains between the sixth and the eleventh
+dynasties, and the period of the Hyksos is still tantalizingly obscure.
+Egyptian history in the light of the latest discoveries may be best
+studied in the judicial pages of Breasted, the foremost of American
+Egyptologists.
+
+The revelation of Assyrian civilization through Rawlinson's decipherment
+of cuneiform and the excavations of Botta and Layard in the middle of
+the nineteenth century was followed by a concerted attack on Babylonia.
+It was clear from the Nineveh tablets that most of the literary
+treasures of Assyria were merely copies of Babylonian originals; and
+when in 1877 de Sarzec, French Vice-Consul at Basra, bored into the
+mounds at Tello, the ancient Lagash, in Southern Babylonia, the most
+eager anticipations were surpassed. Texts had been found which Rawlinson
+pronounced to be pre-Semitic; but for the purpose of history the
+Sumerians were discovered at Tello. When de Sarzec died in 1901 he had
+opened a new chapter of history. The palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib,
+at which the world had marvelled in the 'forties, appeared relatively
+modern beside the vast antiquity of the Chaldean city. The chain of
+human experience lengthened before our eyes when it was realized that as
+Assyrian culture derived from Babylonia, so a large part of Babylonian
+culture, including the art of writing, was inherited by the Semites from
+the Sumerians.
+
+While de Sarzec was busy at Tello, an American expedition was sent to
+Nippur under the lead of Peters and Hilprecht; and the long array of
+magnificent volumes which embody the results of the mission, including
+the thousands of tablets found in the temple library, constitutes the
+most important source of our knowledge of Northern Babylonia. Still more
+recently a German mission under Koldewey commenced the systematic
+excavation of Babylon itself; but its operations were interrupted by the
+outbreak of the Great War. Though no monuments have been brought to
+light in Babylonia comparable in magnificence to those of Khorsabad and
+Nineveh, Babylonian culture towers above its neighbour. Since the
+discovery in the royal library of Nineveh of a cylinder containing the
+story of the Flood, no find has aroused such world-wide interest as that
+of the Code of Hammurabi, unearthed by de Morgan at Susa in 1901. The
+massive block of diorite, eight feet high, containing 282 paragraphs of
+laws, revealed in a flash a complex, refined, and orderly civilization.
+After expelling the Elamites about 2250 B.C. Hammurabi united North and
+South Babylonia into a single State, and, desiring that uniform laws
+should prevail, issued the code which bears his name. During the last
+decade the exploration of Assyria has been resumed after a long
+interval, and the city of Assur, the first capital, has been unearthed
+by the German Oriental Society. We thus learn of Assyria before the days
+of its greatness, when it was still a subject province under Babylonian
+Viceroys.
+
+The history of the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which
+was almost a blank half a century ago, may now be tentatively
+reconstructed. The vast mass of official correspondence, judicial
+decisions, and legal documents, taken in conjunction with the evidences
+of religion, science, and art, reveal a startlingly modern society a
+thousand years before Rameses and two thousand years before Pericles.
+Babylonia proves to have been to the ancient East what Rome was one day
+to be to Europe. The Tel-el-Amarna letters prove the unchallenged
+supremacy of its culture over vast areas, and the revelation of the
+religious debt of the Jews sets the Old Testament in a new frame. So
+rapid is the pace of excavation and interpretation that all but the most
+recent narratives of the Ancient East are out of date. If we master
+Leonard King's sumptuous volumes on Babylonia and the latest edition of
+the first volume of Eduard Meyer's incomparable _History of Antiquity_,
+we need go no farther afield.
+
+Scarcely if at all less remarkable has been the discovery of an advanced
+civilization in Crete in the second and third millenniums before Christ.
+While in Egypt and Mesopotamia the frontiers of knowledge were pushed
+back, in Crete an unknown world was brought to light. Its romantic
+interest was intensified by the establishment of an historic foundation
+for one of the most celebrated legends of the ancient world. How the
+Minotaur devoured the tribute of youths and maidens in the labyrinth,
+how Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a
+sword to slay the Minotaur and a thread to retrace his steps, was known
+to every Greek child and has thrilled the imagination of the centuries.
+The exploration of the city called by Homer 'Great Knossus' was among
+the ambitions of Schliemann; but it was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans,
+whose labours have outlined a series of chapters in Cretan history
+extending two thousand years before the destruction of the palace about
+the year 1400. Though the Minoan language still defies attack, the
+frescoes, sculptures, and objects of art tell their tale of a luxurious
+and peace-loving community, closely connected with Egypt and forming one
+of the main sources of the Greek culture of a later age.
+
+Most of us are old enough to remember the thrill of excitement when Susa
+and Knossus, if not Tello or Thebes, yielded up their romantic secrets;
+but the generation now growing to manhood may experience similar
+emotions as it watches the ghost of the Hittite Empire materialize
+before its eyes. The meagre references in the Old Testament have been
+supplemented by Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, revealing an
+important Power in Northern Syria and Asia Minor for a thousand years
+before it was swallowed up by Assyria. During the last twenty years
+Hittite remains, marked by crude vigour rather than by a sense of
+beauty, have been discovered all over Asia Minor and in the northern
+reaches of the great Mesopotamian plain. In 1911 the British Museum
+undertook the excavation of Carchemish on the Euphrates, the capital of
+the North Syrian sector of the Empire; but the most precious results
+have been achieved by Winckler at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the
+Cappadocian portion of the Hittite dominions, which yielded a library of
+20,000 tablets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now stored in
+the museum at Constantinople. A few bilingual inscriptions have
+furnished valuable clues; but the world still eagerly awaits the coming
+of a new Champollion to unlock the doors of the treasure-house. Winckler
+himself died in 1913; but in 1915 the Austrian Professor Hrozny startled
+the world by proclaiming his conviction that Hittite was an
+Indo-European language. Whether or no his contention is confirmed,
+orientalists of both hemispheres are hot in pursuit, and it is no rash
+prophecy that within a decade scholars will read Hittite as they now
+read cuneiform and hieroglyphics, and new chapters of incalculable
+importance will be added to the story of the Ancient East.
+
+The recovery of the political and religious history of the empires
+surrounding Palestine has run parallel with the application of critical
+methods to the Jewish scriptures. To read Ewald's _History of the People
+of Israel_, which was regarded as dangerous by pious folk in the middle
+of last century, is to realize the progress of Semitic studies. The
+great revolution in our conception of the Old Testament which rendered
+Ewald out of date was accomplished by Wellhausen's _Prolegomena to the
+History of Israel_. That the arrangement of the Canon was utterly
+misleading, that the Prophets were earlier than the priestly code and
+that the Psalms for the most part were later than both, was proclaimed
+in the writings and lectures of Vatke and Graf, Kuenen and Reuss; but it
+was not till their discoveries were confirmed and elaborated by
+Wellhausen that they won their way, and it was generally recognized that
+their reconstruction alone rendered the religious development of the
+Jews intelligible. This outline was shortly after filled in by Stade in
+the first critical history of Israel; but his emphasis on the falsity of
+tradition was overdone, and subsequent critics, while accepting the late
+redaction of the law, have argued that parts of it are far older, in
+substance if not in form, than Wellhausen and his disciple were prepared
+to allow.
+
+The history of the Jews owes much less to archaeological research on the
+arena of their historic life than Egypt or Mesopotamia. No splendid
+buildings or sculptures have been brought to light, and the inscriptions
+are few. But British, American, and German excavators have flashed light
+far back into the third millennium, and a partial excavation of
+Jerusalem has revealed a network of prehistoric tunnels and aqueducts.
+The historic life of Gezer has been minutely revealed by Macalister,
+with the strata of seven cities reaching back to the neolithic age. The
+most piquant result of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the
+Philistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris
+of two thousand years. Far more light, however, has been thrown on the
+religious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond their
+borders. The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of
+the oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished
+into thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered
+to which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her
+religion. The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues
+to be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its
+recognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and
+to provide a new background for the religious history of the world. The
+relation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other
+branches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith,
+and has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James
+Frazer on the _Folklore of the Old Testament_.
+
+The history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very
+different aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote,
+Thirlwall, and even Curtius. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Tiryns,
+and Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable
+impetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost
+pathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to
+light, and much of his work has had to be done again by Doerpfeld.
+Despite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before
+Solon remains very dark. Barely second in importance to the discoveries
+of Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of
+Athens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and
+has been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of
+living Hellenists. With the growing mass of new literary material,
+inscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery
+of innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor
+and Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece have been made.
+Professor Bury's narrative, at once scientific and popular, has
+summarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the
+most authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of
+Eduard Meyer's vast survey of antiquity. 'For the great tasks of
+history', he writes, 'salvation is only to be found when it becomes
+conscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern
+times. Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean
+peoples can its real nature be seized.' This colossal task, which proved
+beyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin
+Professor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it
+single-handed. The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by
+Grote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen,
+dwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence
+through the conquests of Alexander.
+
+Greek culture has received no less attention than Greek politics. The
+Homeric problem continues to exert an irresistible attraction. Every
+expert from Wilamowitz to Gilbert Murray and Walter Leaf adds to our
+comprehension of the epic; but no positive results have been
+established, and Holm uttered the gloomy prophecy that we shall never
+know whether Homer existed, who he was, or what he wrote. On the other
+hand we have gained a deeper insight into the early mind and soul of
+Greece, thanks in large measure to a group of English scholars with Jane
+Harrison at their head. Rohde's _Psyche_, the most illuminating treatise
+on any branch of Greek religion, has traced the conception of
+immortality through the ages. The later editions of Zeller's _Philosophy
+of the Greeks_, first published in 1851, kept pace with the progress of
+scholarship, and remains one of the glories of German scholarship. The
+more recent work of the Austrian Gomperz has won almost equal
+popularity, without placing its predecessor on the shelf. In the realm
+of literature the most interesting event has been the recovery of the
+poems of Bacchylides and Herondas, fragments of Sappho and Pindar,
+Euripides and Sophocles and Menander; and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which
+have already produced undreamed-of treasures, may well have in store for
+us further glad surprises. The attempt to assess the influence of
+economic factors, courageously undertaken by Boeckh and somewhat
+neglected after his death, has in recent years been renewed, with the
+fruitful results familiar to us in Zimmern's realistic picture of Athens
+in the fifth century.
+
+The history of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the
+activity of a single man. The most personal and popular of Mommsen's
+works, the _Roman History till the death of Caesar_, the greatest effort
+of his genius though not of his scholarship, was published as far back
+as 1854, and carried his name all over the world. He next turned to
+special departments of research, pouring forth in rapid succession his
+treatises on Chronology, Coinage, the Digest, and above all the
+_Staatsrecht_, the largest and in his opinion the most important of his
+works, and perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise in historical
+literature. Meanwhile the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, which he
+edited for the Berlin Academy, was the main occupation and the most
+enduring monument of his life. He had devoted himself to Latin epigraphy
+and had edited the Sammite and Neapolitan inscriptions before the
+publication of the Roman History. The first instalment of the Corpus
+appeared in 1863, and the great scholar lived to hail the appearance of
+nearly twenty volumes, half of them edited by himself. The Inscriptions
+rendered possible a history of the Empire, and the whole world hoped
+that the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey
+of the provinces. The closing years of his life were devoted to a
+gigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes,
+Cassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus
+enlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the
+Middle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no
+immaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The
+imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating
+with a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of
+a classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since
+Scaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was
+like modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of
+Augustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.
+
+Mommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration
+has been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His
+successors naturally confine themselves to some special province or
+period. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history
+of the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century.
+Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, though frowned on by
+scholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the
+Republic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social
+crises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were
+due to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth,
+expenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in
+different sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as
+Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille
+Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs
+on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but
+the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of
+the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made
+by Fustel de Coulanges in _La Cite Antique_, which offered a complete
+interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious
+but more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by
+Warde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively
+analysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedlaender,
+Boissier, and Dill. Meanwhile archaeology contributes a steady stream of
+new material. Boni's excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have
+produced sensational results. The unveiling of Pompeii moves slowly
+forward, and that of Ostia, the port of Rome, has begun. The
+resurrection of Herculaneum should be witnessed by the next generation
+if not by our own.
+
+A more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman
+Empire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church. In the middle
+decades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an
+historical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves
+whether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring
+than his writings. Weiszaecker, his successor at Tuebingen, in his
+_Apostolic Age_, described with consummate scholarship and passionless
+serenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities.
+The necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity
+has grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as
+Schuerer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into
+which Christ was born. The constitution of the primitive Church, too
+long hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied
+with welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch. But no man, alive or
+dead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack. His History of Dogma,
+his vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of
+the Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine, are
+inseparable companions of the student who means business. The treasures
+of the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the
+publication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome. The history of the
+early Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has
+been enriched by Ramsay's explorations in Asia Minor. While the best
+work naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are
+occasionally attempted by scholars of the first class. Renan's sparkling
+volumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be
+read with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather
+to literature than to science. If we desire a readable summary of the
+scholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the
+Catholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor
+Gwatkin.
+
+Imperial Rome and the Christian Church meet and blend in the Byzantine
+Empire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon 'a tedious and
+uniform tale of weakness and misery'. Its services to civilization and
+the greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by
+Finlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most
+considerable work of English historical literature since the _Decline
+and Fall_. In the half-century that has elapsed since its completion,
+the exploration of a thousand years has gone busily forward. The lead
+was taken in France by Rambaud, Schlumberger, and Diehl, the latter of
+whom was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as first occupant
+of the Chair created in Paris in 1899. Greater than any of the three was
+Krumbacher, the prince of German Byzantinists, for whom a Chair was
+founded at Munich in 1892, and whose encyclopaedic survey of Byzantine
+literature is beyond comparison the most important single work in this
+field of historical study. England is worthily represented by Professor
+Bury, whose narrative of the Empire has already reached the ninth
+century.
+
+Byzantium has emerged from the scholarship of two generations no longer
+decadent and inert but the mother of great statesmen and soldiers, the
+home of culture while Central and Western Europe was plunged in
+darkness, the rampart of Christian Europe for a thousand years against
+the Arab and Turk, the educator of the Slavonic races. Freeman truly
+remarked that Constantinople was for ages the seat of the only regular
+and systematic Government in the world. Its administrative machine was
+the most elaborate yet invented by man, and the Court was to mediaeval
+Europe what Versailles was to the rulers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. It was indeed a bureaucratic despotism in which
+liberty was unknown, and, except in art, its spirit was imitative; but
+to preserve Greek culture during the barbarism of the Middle Ages and to
+defend it against the repeated assaults of Islam was to deserve well of
+civilization.
+
+While the Byzantine Empire carried over important elements from the
+classical world, Western and Central Europe passed under the dominion of
+ideas which were as foreign to those of Greece and Rome as they are to
+the conceptions of to-day. We have outgrown the blind contempt of the
+eighteenth century and the gushing enthusiasm of the Romantic Movement;
+but it is still a difficult task to form a just estimate of the
+character of the thousand years that began with Augustine and ended with
+Macchiavelli. It is true that our materials grow from year to year; that
+the criticism of original authorities as taught in the Ecole des Chartes
+has become something like an exact science; that thanks to Lord Bryce
+the Holy Roman Empire has become intelligible; that the structure and
+function of institutions have been patiently analysed by Waitz and
+Stubbs, Fustel de Coulanges and Vinogradoff, Maitland and Gierke; that
+literature and art, scholasticism and the Universities, have found their
+chroniclers and interpreters; that every ruler and every State, every
+treaty and every council, may be studied in monographs innumerable. But
+the Middle Ages were above all the reign of the Catholic Church; and we
+are still far from agreement as to the merits and influence of that
+venerable institution which, be it human or divine, occupies a unique
+place in the story of civilization.
+
+In the middle decades of last century the history of the mediaeval
+Church was related from very different standpoints in the widely-read
+works of Neander and Milman; but it was only with the opening of the
+Vatican archives by Pope Leo XIII in 1881 that it became possible to set
+forth the whole story of the Papacy and to understand the working of the
+machinery of Catholicism. So vast is the accumulation of official acts
+and documents, and such technical training is required for the task,
+that we shall have to wait many years till the material is surveyed in
+its entirety and its results made available for the use of the
+historian. Some idea of the value of the Registers may be gained from
+the Master of Balliol's pregnant lectures on Church and State in the
+Middle Ages, based on the 8,000 documents of the eleven years of the
+rule of Innocent IV in the middle of the thirteenth century. The study
+of these documents, he tells us, stirred him to admiration of the
+organization of the Papacy, and convinced him of its enormous
+superiority over its secular contemporaries as a centre not merely of
+religion but of law and government; but he adds that he derived an
+equally profound impression of the abuses which ate into the heart of
+the system, of the growing bitterness which it inspired, and of the
+devastating effects of the passion to erect a powerful principality in
+the heart of Italy.
+
+No Protestant historian is tempted to glorify the record of the Papacy
+in the last two centuries before the Reformation; but it is generally
+agreed that in the earlier half of the Middle Ages the example and
+influence of the Church were a bright light shining in a dark world.
+This notion has been recently challenged by Mr. Coulton, who, angered by
+the special pleading of Cardinal Gasquet and other professional
+apologists, hotly denounces the exaltation of the Ages of Faith. The
+Middle Ages, he complains, are the one domain of history into which, in
+England at any rate, the scientific spirit has not yet penetrated.
+Taking as his text the autobiography of the Franciscan Fra Salimbene,
+the most precious authority for the ordinary life of Catholic folk at
+the high-water mark of the Middle Ages, he draws a sombre picture of
+manners and morals and maintains that hideous vices existed in all the
+Orders long before the thirteenth century. 'Imagination', he cries,
+'staggers at the moral gulf that yawns between that age and ours.' His
+condemnation of the life and influence of the Church re-echoes in
+somewhat shrill tones the verdict of Henry Charles Lea, whose massive
+treatise on the Inquisition was rightly described by Lord Acton as the
+most important contribution of the New World to the religious history of
+the old, and whose volumes on Sacerdotal Celibacy constitute a
+formidable indictment of mediaeval Catholicism.
+
+Next to the origins of Christianity the most controversial of the larger
+problems of history is the Reformation; and here Protestants of all
+schools are ranged in a solid phalanx against Catholics. That the Church
+was in need of reform is agreed by both sides; but the Catholic contends
+that the evils to be remedied have been fantastically exaggerated, that
+there was no need for a revolt, and that the revolution inaugurated by
+Luther left Germany far worse than it found her. Realizing that the
+Protestant view most authoritatively presented in Ranke's classical
+work on the Reformation held the field, Janssen compiled a cultural
+history of the German people from the end of the Middle Ages to the
+outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Based throughout on original sources,
+and illustrating his thesis from every angle, his eight massive volumes
+were hailed with gratitude and enthusiasm by Catholics all over the
+world. No Catholic historical work of the nineteenth century, and
+certainly no attack on the Reformation since Bossuet's _Variations of
+Protestantism_, obtained such resounding success or led to so much
+controversy.
+
+Janssen's object was to show that the fifteenth century was not a period
+of moral or intellectual decrepitude, with a few 'Reformers before the
+Reformation' crying like voices in the wilderness, but an era of healthy
+activity and abounding promise. He describes the flourishing state of
+religious and secular education, the vitality of art, the comfort of the
+peasantry, and the prosperity of the towns. On reaching the sixteenth
+century, he denounces the paganism of the Humanists and paints a
+terrible picture of the material and moral chaos into which Germany was
+plunged by the Lutheran revolt. The later volumes are devoted to the era
+of the Counter-Revolution and present a canvas of unrelieved gloom,
+immorality and drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and violence. Thus
+the story which opened with the bright colours of the fifteenth century
+closes in deep shadows, and the moral is drawn that Germany was ruined
+not by the Thirty Years War but by the Reformation.
+
+Protestant historians fell upon the audacious iconoclast with fierce
+cries of anger, and had no difficulty in exposing his uncritical use of
+authorities, his habit of generalizing from isolated particulars, and
+his suppression of facts damaging to his own side. But though it was a
+dexterous polemic, not a work of disinterested science, Janssen's book
+has made it impossible for any self-respecting Protestant to write on
+the Reformation without knowing and weighing the Catholic side. Of
+similar tendency though of far higher value is the monumental work in
+which Pastor is narrating the story of the Renaissance and
+sixteenth-century Popes from the Vatican archives, which neither Ranke
+nor Creighton had been able to employ. No really objective picture of
+the Reformation can be painted by Catholic or Protestant; but a good
+deal of firm ground has been won, and the writings of Kawerau, the
+greatest of Lutheran scholars, inspire us with a confidence that no
+writings of the last generation deserved.
+
+Though Ranke's chief works had been published before the period to which
+this lecture is confined, his influence can be traced in almost every
+writer on modern history during the last half-century. His greatest
+service to scholarship was to divorce the study of the past from the
+passions of the present, and, to quote the watchword of his first book,
+to relate what actually occurred. A second was to establish the
+necessity of founding historical construction on strictly contemporary
+authorities. When he began to write in 1824 historians of high repute
+believed memoirs and chronicles to be trustworthy guides. When he laid
+down his pen in 1886 every scholar with a reputation to make had learned
+to content himself with nothing less than the papers and correspondence
+of the actors themselves and those in immediate contact with the events
+they describe. A third service was to found the science of evidence by
+the analysis of authorities, contemporary or otherwise, in the light of
+the author's temperament, affiliations, and opportunity of knowledge,
+and by comparison with the testimony of other writers. There can be no
+better preparation for the perils and responsibilities of authorship
+than to study the critical analyses of Guicciardini and Sarpi,
+Clarendon, Saint-Simon, and many another, scattered through the sixty
+volumes of the master. And finally he taught by precept and practice the
+necessity of exploring the relations of States to one another and of
+measuring the interaction of foreign and domestic policy.
+
+These sound principles have been applied by the scholars of all
+countries who have jointly built up the history of the last four
+centuries. We may study the Tudors under the guidance of Pollard, the
+Stuarts under Gardiner and Firth, the Hanoverians under Lecky, without
+fear that we are being misled or that essential facts are being withheld
+from our notice. We continue to admire the literary brilliance of
+Macaulay and Carlyle, Motley and Froude; but we are instinctively aware
+that their partisanship is out of date. The same cooling process has
+taken place in France, where the passions and tempers of Thiers and
+Michelet have tended to yield place to the calm lucidity of which Mignet
+and Guizot were the earliest masters. There is, it must be confessed, a
+good deal of the old Adam in Taine's elaborate study of Jacobinism, in
+Masson's innumerable volumes on Napoleon, and even in Aulard's priceless
+contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution; but such works
+as Lavisse's full-length portrait of Louis XIV, Segur's volumes on
+Turgot and Necker, Sorel's massive treatise on Europe and the
+Revolution, and Vandal's incomparable presentation of the Consulate rank
+as high in scholarship as in literature.
+
+The unification of Germany after fierce struggles within and without
+naturally deflected historical scholarship from the path marked out by
+Ranke, who had grown to manhood in the era of political stagnation
+following the downfall of Napoleon. The master's Olympian serenity was
+deplored by the group of hot-blooded scholars who are collectively
+known as the Prussian School, and who were firmly convinced that the
+principal duty of historians was to supply guidance and encouragement to
+their fellow-countrymen in the national and international problems of
+the time. In his gigantic work on the History of Prussian Foreign
+Policy, Droysen, the eldest of the Triumvirate, calls four centuries to
+witness that the Hohenzollerns alone, from their unswerving fidelity to
+German interests as a whole, were fitted to restore the Empire. He
+worked exclusively from Prussian archives, and history seen exclusively
+through Prussian spectacles was bound to be one-sided. No student of
+European history would contest the value of his researches; but his
+interpretation of Prussian policy in terms of German nationalism was at
+once recognized as a fundamental error, and has long been abandoned. The
+second member of the group, Sybel, himself one of the three favourite
+pupils of Ranke, revolted in middle life, and in his two great treatises
+on the era of the French Revolution and the foundation of the German
+Empire championed the policy of the Hohenzollerns and delivered slashing
+attacks on France and Austria, their rivals and antagonists.
+
+The last and greatest of the triumvirate, Treitschke, the Bismarck of
+the Chair, devoted his life to a history of Germany in the nineteenth
+century which occupies the same unique place in the affections of German
+readers as Macaulay's unfinished masterpiece enjoys throughout the
+English-speaking world. Unlike the works of Droysen and Sybel, the
+_German History_ was far more than a political narrative, and presented
+an encyclopaedic picture of national development. His theme was the
+conflict of the forces which were promoting and opposing the
+transformation of his country into a powerful Empire, and he judges men
+and states by the measure in which they promoted or obstructed that
+purpose. On the one side stands Prussia, feeling her way to the
+realization of her historic task, on the other the middle and smaller
+states, aided and abetted by the arch-enemy Austria and deeply infected
+with the doctrinaire liberalism of France. Treitschke's stage is a
+battlefield, with the historian looking down and encouraging his friends
+with loud cries of applause. Such methods could not survive the
+realization of the aim which they had done so much to assist, and with
+Treitschke's death in 1896 the Prussian School disappeared. Its members
+were the political schoolmasters of Germany at a time of uncertainty and
+discouragement, and they braced their countrymen to the efforts which
+culminated in the creation of a mighty Empire. If the purpose of history
+is to stir a nation to action, Droysen, Sybel, and Treitschke are among
+the greatest masters of the craft. If its supreme aim is to discover
+truth and to interpret the movement of humanity, they have no claim to a
+place in the first class. The stream, temporarily deflected by their
+powerful influence, began to return to the channel which Ranke had
+marked out for it. Such works as Moriz Ritter's narrative of the
+Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Koser's biography of
+Frederick the Great, Max Lehmann's biographies of Scharnhorst and Stein,
+and Erich Marcks' studies of Bismarck and his master are as notable for
+their judgement as for their erudition.
+
+The cooling process noted in the Old World has also occurred in the New,
+and America of the twentieth century smiles at Bancroft's complacent
+idealization of the Puritan colonies. Even the slavery struggle, the
+ashes of which are scarcely yet cold, has found in James Ford Rhodes a
+historian who can do justice to Jefferson Davis and Lee no less than to
+Lincoln and Grant. But no American scholar compares in world-wide
+influence with Mahan, whose study of Sea-Power in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, published in 1889, not only founded a school of
+naval history but was inwardly digested by distinguished pupils in both
+hemispheres, among them the Emperor William II and Theodore Roosevelt.
+The Admiral's writings owe their importance not to research, for few new
+facts are brought to light, but to the new angle from which familiar
+events are envisaged. Occasionally, perhaps, the element of sea-power in
+the determination of a particular result is over-emphasized at the
+expense of other factors; but he was the first to seize the wider
+bearings of naval history and to make the general reader aware of its
+momentous significance.
+
+The scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include
+every aspect of the life of humanity. No one would now dare to maintain
+with my old master Seeley that history was the biography of States or
+with Freeman that it was merely past politics. The growth of nations,
+the achievements of men of action, the rise and fall of parties remain
+among the most engrossing themes of the historian; but he now casts his
+net wider and embraces the whole opulent record of civilization. The
+influence of nature, the pressure of economic factors, the origin and
+transformation of ideas, the contribution of science and art, religion
+and philosophy, literature and law, the material conditions of life, the
+fortunes of the masses--such problems now claim his attention in no less
+degree. He must see life steadily and see it whole. We must master such
+revealing works as Lecky's histories of Rationalism and Morals,
+Burckhardt's and Symonds' interpretations of the Italian Renaissance,
+Sainte-Beuve's full-length portrait of the Jansenists, Morley's studies
+of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists, Dean Church's sketch of
+the Oxford Movement, and Merz's survey of European Thought in the
+nineteenth century, if we are to understand the throbbing life of the
+human spirit. We must measure the operation of economic factors and
+forces and profit by the faithful labours of Schmoller and Thorold
+Rogers, Cunningham and Kovalevsky, the Webbs and the Hammonds, if we are
+to visualize the life of the unnumbered and the unknown who have done
+the routine work of the world.
+
+The fifty years roughly sketched in this lecture witnessed an immense
+and almost immeasurable advance in historical studies. The technique
+needed to turn raw materials into the finished article kept pace with
+the supply, and men learned to write the history of their own country,
+their own party, and their own beliefs, as impartially as that of other
+lands and other creeds. But the Great War has ravaged the placid
+pastures of scholarship no less than the fields of France and Belgium.
+Too many historians in every belligerent country have lost their heads
+and degenerated into shrieking partisans. International co-operation in
+the pursuit of truth, which is the condition of progress in history no
+less than in science, has been rudely shattered by the clash of arms.
+With all but the calmest minds, national self-consciousness and national
+self-righteousness have rendered frankness in dealing with the record of
+our late allies and fairness in dealing with our late enemies difficult
+if not impossible. Many years will elapse before the European atmosphere
+regains the tranquillity in which alone the disinterested pursuit of
+truth can nourish. Meanwhile it is a source of legitimate satisfaction
+that while the world was rocking to its foundations two English
+historians, Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr. William Harbutt Dawson, were
+narrating the development of Germany in the nineteenth century with a
+steadiness of pulse unsurpassed in the piping times of peace. The
+historian is a man of flesh and blood and may love his country as
+ardently as other men; but, if he is to be worthy of his high calling,
+he must trample passion and prejudice under his feet and walk humbly and
+reverently in the temple of the Goddess of Truth.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Gooch, _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_ (Longmans).
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+POLITICAL THEORY
+
+A.D. LINDSAY
+
+
+Political Philosophy or the philosophical theory of the State has closer
+relations with history than any other branch of philosophical inquiry.
+It is indeed distinguished from history in that it can disregard the
+success or failure, the historical development of this or that state.
+For it is concerned not with historical happenings but with ideals, not
+with the varying extent to which different states have approximated or
+fallen short of their purpose, but with that purpose itself, not, in
+short, with states but with _the_ State. Yet this need not involve that
+the ideal, _the_ State, is always and everywhere the same. Ideals are
+born of historical circumstances and fashioned to meet historical
+problems, and the would-be timeless ideals which political philosophers
+have put before us have always borne clear marks of the country and time
+of their origin. The ideal which men have set themselves in political
+organization has varied from time to time. That such variation is
+inevitable will be clear if we ask ourselves what we can possibly mean
+by an ideal state. That states fall short of their ideal because of the
+imperfections of their citizens is clear enough. All political life
+demands a certain standard of moral behaviour, of capacity to work for a
+common good, and an understanding of the results of our own and other
+people's actions. Were human selfishness completely overcome, the state
+would still be necessary to correct individual shortsightedness. The
+policeman, exempt from the cares of apprehending criminals, would still
+be needed to control traffic. But imagine, not that all citizens
+attained a certain standard of moral and intellectual behaviour, as the
+ideal demands, but that they were all perfectly good and perfectly wise,
+should we need any kind of government at all? Is not the supposition of
+perfection so far removed from any state of affairs we can really think
+of or plan for, that it cannot enter into our reckoning, ideal or
+practical? Every ideal takes certain facts of human life for granted
+whilst it tries to improve others. All ideal states, Plato's as well as
+others, assume certain facts about human nature and human society. These
+facts may and do vary. The Greek city state assumed that a state must be
+small, if it was to have the intensive life they demanded. The Roman
+Empire was a denial of the anarchy to which the Greek ideal had led, but
+it lost in intensity what it gained in extent. All political ideals
+assume a certain sociological background on which the state is based and
+from which spring the problems which the state is intended to solve. As
+this sociological background varies from time to time, _the_ State, the
+purpose which men set before themselves in political organization, will
+vary also. The Greek city state and the mediaeval state were not
+different approximations to the same ideal. They were the expressions of
+different ideals. They rested on different assumptions, e.g. as to the
+place of authority in society. With the disappearance at the Reformation
+of one of the great assumptions on which the mediaeval state had been
+based, a new theory of the state was inevitable. The national state of
+the seventeenth century was something new in history, and Hobbes differs
+from Aristotle, not because Hobbes is perverse and Aristotle right,
+though Hobbes often is perverse, but because the political problems
+which Hobbes and Aristotle had to face were not the same.
+
+Two great historical facts at the end of the eighteenth century, the
+French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, profoundly modified the
+basis of political organization. The modern state in consequence differs
+in many important respects from any that have preceded it. It does not
+rest on the common acceptance of authority, either religious, as did the
+mediaeval state, or personal, as did the seventeenth-century state.
+Unlike the Greek city state, it is large. Its administration is
+concerned with millions who cannot be in personal relations to one
+another, or share the same intensive life.
+
+With the nineteenth century, then, a new chapter in the development of
+political theory begins as the peculiar problems of the modern state
+develop. Professor Dicey, in his _Law and Opinion in England_, has
+divided the century into two periods of political thought--Individualism
+and Collectivism--one marking the decrease, the other the increase of
+the power and authority of the state. When our period begins, the day of
+individualism was passing. Ever since the Reformation it had, in spite
+of Burke, dominated political theory. Two forces had given it
+strength--one idealistic, one scientific. It represented the revolt of
+the individual conscience against the claims of authority, and as such
+was a theory which attempted to limit the power of government over the
+individual, whether by an appeal to natural rights in Locke and Tom
+Paine, or to the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the
+Utilitarians, or to the super-eminent value of individual liberty as set
+forth in John Stuart Mill's noble panegyric. The French Revolution gave
+a notable impetus to this side of individualism, with its passionate
+assertion of the principle that political institutions exist for man,
+not man for political institutions, and that all government must be
+tested by the life which it enables each and every one of its citizens
+to live. Individualism in this sense is concerned with the discovery of
+principles by which the power of government over the lives of its
+members may be limited. It is not necessarily a theory of the nature of
+society. Hobbes, however, was an individualist as well as Locke, and for
+Hobbes the individual was the scientific unit from which societies and
+states were built up--the starting-point for a scientific treatment of
+society. As the French Revolution gave a fresh impulse to idealistic
+individualism, the Industrial Revolution reanimated the scientific, for
+it displayed the economic man, Hobbes's hero, come to life and a
+respectable member of society. With him came the growth of political
+economy, apparently the first really scientific study of man. From
+Political Economy Darwin borrowed the conception of the struggle for
+existence and the survival of the fittest, and from the new biology the
+doctrine of Evolution through individual competition returned to
+reinforce with the prestige of the new science the economists'
+conception of society.
+
+For the first half of the nineteenth century all the forces inspiring
+individualism seemed to work together, for economics and biology
+breathed a benevolent optimism which promised that if the scientific
+forces of individualism were left to work unchecked by state
+restriction, they would of themselves produce that individual liberty
+and free development which idealistic individualism desired.
+
+The development of the industrial revolution, however, soon made
+economic optimism impossible, and with its decay idealistic and
+scientific individualism parted company. The former retained its concern
+for individual liberty but came to see that its ideal was as much
+threatened by economic dependence as by state control, that the choice
+for most members of society was not one between state interference and
+no interference at all, but between the state controlling or not
+controlling the power of interference possessed by the economically
+superior members of society. On such principles Henry Sidgwick
+justified an extensive system of state control of industry, and for such
+reason the strongest supporters of the rights of the individual have
+been found among Socialists.
+
+Scientific individualism, which found its unit in the economic man and
+sought to absorb in economics both ethics and politics, was not in
+essence affected by the discrediting of economic optimism. It painted
+the struggle between individuals in gloomy instead of in attractive
+colours, its 'scientific' prepossessions inclined it to a determinism
+which led easily to the economic theory of history and even, by a
+curious conversion of opposites, to the 'scientific socialism' of Karl
+Marx. In its essence it is a denial of the real existence of politics.
+For it is a theory of society which denies the possibility of a will for
+the common good and therefore the possibility of political ideals.
+
+It was this powerful and malignant theory which was attacked and
+answered by the modern idealist school represented by Green, Wallace,
+and Ritchie, and, in the present day, by Dr. Bosanquet. These writers
+gave us a theory of the state based on the importance and reality of
+social purpose. They went back to the theory of the Greek city state
+expounded by Plato and Aristotle, finding modern reinforcement in the
+teaching of Rousseau and more especially of Hegel. Their destructive
+criticism of 'scientific' individualism was reinforced by the teaching
+of anthropology and of historical jurisprudence, which emphasized the
+part played in early forms of society by social solidarity and showed
+the inability of individualism to account for the development of
+society. Their destructive criticism was, however, the least part of
+their achievement. They exhibited convincingly the state as the product
+of will and purpose, based on man's moral nature and being in turn the
+form in which that moral nature expresses itself. In a notable phrase of
+Dr. Bosanquet's, a phrase to which he has given constant detailed
+amplification, 'institutions are ethical ideas'; moral purpose may seem
+to shine dimly enough in many actual institutions, but it is the only
+light which shines in them at all, and only in that light can their
+meaning and reality be understood.
+
+The main principles of this idealistic school may be safely said to have
+by this time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years
+Social Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the
+contemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has
+given precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which
+strengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that
+economic relations are possible only within the framework of a society
+which has its root in moral and political purpose, although within that
+framework they may be theoretically isolated and studied by themselves.
+Sociology, after many false starts, inspired by the mistaken belief that
+a scientific treatment of society should interpret higher forms in the
+light of lower, has now found it possible to study the manifold variety
+of institutional and social life on the basis provided by idealistic
+philosophy.
+
+As a theory of society, in short, this philosophy holds the field. It
+has been criticized of late years as a theory of the state, and as these
+criticisms show both where the idealistic theory was in some respects
+defective and also where the chief problems for political philosophy in
+the future are to be found, I shall devote the greater part of my
+lecture to these considerations.
+
+The idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the
+Greek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state
+they assumed an essential identity between the Greek city state and the
+modern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the
+most self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have
+therefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all
+society, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far,
+however, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state
+the definite political or governmental organization should play the same
+function as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been
+mistaken.
+
+The Greek city state failed conspicuously to solve the problem of
+inter-state relations, and its philosophers, instead of recognizing the
+failure and trying to remedy it, made their ideal state even more
+self-centred and autonomous than the existing states around them. Modern
+Idealism, just because it glorifies the state as the necessary upholder
+of moral relations, has often found it hard to regard the state as in
+its turn a member of a moral world.
+
+Again, the Greek city state, just because it was small, could take up
+into itself all the various social activities of its members. The state,
+in the sense of the Community in its political organization, directed
+and inspired Society, and the distinction between society and the state
+was not of great importance. In the modern world the boundaries of
+political organization are not nearly as definite boundaries in society
+as are the boundaries of the Greek city state. There are all manner of
+associations whose members are of different states and whose purposes
+are but to a small degree inspired or controlled by political
+organizations. Modern states are not all or completely nation states,
+and the nation is not as pervading and dominating an entity as was the
+Greek _polis_. This is not to say that the non-political associations
+could do without the state, as some recent writers have contended.
+Churches, e.g., could not exist were there not law and government. Yet
+it is impossible to maintain that in any real sense they are upheld by
+the state. They clearly get their inspiration from other sources. The
+difficulty is not evaded if we go behind both political and
+non-political organization to the community in which both exist and
+which upholds them both. For what in this reference is 'the community'?
+In regard to the political association it is the special solidarity of
+people living in a certain area; in regard to the non-political
+organization it is the solidarity of a section of the world-wide
+society, marked off from the rest on a non-territorial basis. The
+community in the two cases is not the same. Hence there arises in the
+modern state, as there arose in the mediaeval, a conflict of loyalties
+between the state and non-political associations. If we divide the world
+into states whose lines of division follow the divisions of the
+organization of force, we are faced with a host of problems concerning
+the proper place in society of these force-bearing organizations, and
+their relation to other associations.
+
+In considering both sets of problems, international and internal, we may
+either begin with the division of the world into states, each of which
+will be an approximation of _the_ State which we are studying, or we may
+regard the whole world as in some sort one society, covered with a
+network of overlapping associations of all kinds. On the former view the
+world is thought of as consisting of a number of independent
+communities, each shaping and controlling the various forms of social
+life within its own borders, upholding their moral world, and each being
+as a whole single entity a member of the community of states. On the
+latter we start with the solidarity and will to co-operate which
+pervades in all manner of degrees the whole world society, and regard
+the organization of force which marks the state as being the mark of a
+settled and determined form of that will to co-operate which is
+characteristic of all forms of human association. How dominant and
+determinant over other forms of association is that special form which
+controls organized force--that is the problem before us. We are
+concerned in technical language with the problem of sovereignty.
+
+Let us consider first the problem of international relations. The
+doctrine of sovereignty, formulated in the seventeenth century and
+crystallized by Austin at the beginning of the nineteenth, made
+sovereignty the hallmark of the state. The person or persons, to whom
+the bulk of a given society render habitual obedience, either do or do
+not render habitual obedience in turn to some other person or persons.
+If they do not, the society constitutes a sovereign state; if they do,
+it is only part of a sovereign state. The world therefore was regarded
+as containing a number of sovereign independent states. As sovereignty
+and law necessarily went hand in hand, there could be no law between
+sovereign states. There could only be world-wide law if there were one
+world-wide state. So long as there are more states than one, there are
+communities between whom there is no law. The doctrine of sovereignty
+was in its inception individualist, but in so far as concerns the
+implications, though not the basis of sovereignty, it was taken over by
+Hegel and by the English idealist school with the exception of T.H.
+Green. Idealism, indeed, always insisted that will, not force, was the
+basis of the state, but whereas in Green the state is constituted by the
+moral willing of individuals for a general good, in Hegel and in
+Bosanquet the conflicting willings of individuals are reconciled by
+their being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state. With the
+former therefore the morality of individuals is the primary fact, the
+existence of the state the secondary; with the latter on the whole the
+existence of the state is the primary moral fact, the moral willing of
+individuals secondary. Just because the wills of individuals are
+reconciled, not by each recognizing certain abstract principles of duty,
+but by being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state, where
+there is no such supra-personal will there is no reconciliation of
+conflicting wills and no morality beyond and outside the boundaries of
+communities. Hence arises a conception of the state which fits into the
+absolutist doctrine of sovereignty which we have described.
+
+The first thing to be said about this doctrine of the independent
+sovereign state is that political facts have obviously outrun it. It was
+derived from a study of the unitary state and will hardly fit any
+federal state. It is manifestly absurd when applied to the British
+Empire. If we disregard, as we must, the superficial legal facts and
+look at the real nature of the British Empire, we must admit that the
+Dominions are neither separate sovereign states nor parts of one
+sovereign state, and that the unity of the Empire is a unity of will--a
+willingness to co-operate which has not yet clothed itself in legal
+forms, and which is not, for geographical and other reasons, as intense
+as that will to co-operate which must be at the basis of a unitary
+sovereign state. This must suggest to us that the willingness to
+co-operate admits of degrees, and the relations of communities to one
+another to have stability must reflect these degrees. The importance of
+these considerations is obvious if we think of the problems with which
+we are confronted at the present moment, when we are attempting to form
+an international organization. The problems which have confronted the
+Peace Conference have brought two things clearly to light. The first,
+that the nation state is far too simple a solution of modern
+difficulties. Self-determination will not carry us very far. There are
+many cases where the boundaries dictated by nationality on the one hand
+and by the need for common organization on the other do not coincide,
+and where the only solution is one which impairs sovereignty in the old
+sense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean
+anything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which
+join it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of
+the opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied
+impairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us
+will depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the
+be-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact
+to be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common
+purposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what
+was the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching
+that the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the
+matter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes
+we are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize
+and give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The
+political organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral
+facts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the
+Hegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the
+great achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents,
+and the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without
+making one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and
+absolute.
+
+Let us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state
+to associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders.
+Here again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist
+theory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern political
+theory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state
+was the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state
+that was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the
+hard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution
+made no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born
+democracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of
+religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had
+become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster
+within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or
+liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against
+the people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very
+different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian,
+organizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of
+the state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral
+institution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of
+morality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern
+idealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same
+principle of state absolutism over associations within the state. The
+principle was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a
+supra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.
+
+Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself
+more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the
+extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an
+increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities
+to the political organization. The ideal of the _Kulturstaat_ is now
+sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the
+part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the
+importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control
+of such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their
+associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their
+loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such
+cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.
+
+Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school,
+the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the
+doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person,
+may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from
+Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce
+for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that
+associations within the state may claim from the state a greater
+independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as
+it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their
+members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and
+complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall
+not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of
+the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and
+the state, be they personalities or not.
+
+Recent writers have mainly attempted to solve the problem by the
+principle of differentiation of function. This will certainly help us in
+considering the relation of church and state. For we can say that the
+task of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the
+good life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life,
+the fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The
+state will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the
+more delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and
+voluntary associations. This will not always provide a clean-cut and
+sufficient differentiation. The state must make up its own mind what is
+essential to the maintenance of the good life, the voluntary
+associations may hold that what the state ordains is flatly evil, as the
+state may hold that what a voluntary association teaches is subversive
+of all that makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true
+to the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has
+arisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old
+answer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early
+Christians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are
+farther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work
+that the other has to do.
+
+When we come to the problem raised by the present position and claims of
+Trade Unions, differentiation of functions is less satisfactory. Let us
+first look at the problem as it confronts us to-day. There was a time
+when the state was doubtful whether it should allow trade unions to
+exist. The Political Economy prevalent in the earlier part of the
+nineteenth century taught that trade unions were either unnecessary or
+useless--unnecessary in so far as economic relations, if unhindered by
+regulations from the state or from combinations, were regarded by
+economic optimism as themselves producing satisfactory social
+conditions; useless where Political Economy had substituted for optimism
+a belief in 'iron laws' whose results no combination or government
+regulation could affect. We now see that economic relations, just
+because they are possible between men who have no common purpose, need
+regulation inspired by a common purpose, and can be affected by such
+regulation. The growth of governmental interference with industry and of
+trade unionism are part of the same movement to control the working of
+economic relations with a view to maintaining the conditions of the good
+life. Trade unions have grown and are still steadily growing in size and
+importance. For a large portion of the nation loyalty to a trade union
+has become the most obvious form of collective loyalty or general will.
+This has been accompanied by an inevitable decrease in what we may call
+territorial loyalty. The result of the increase in means of
+communication and the growth of large towns has been that men's common
+interests as members of the same trade or as employees in the same
+workshop are coming to mean more and to constitute a greater common bond
+between men than their common interests as dwellers in the same
+locality. The trade union has often a more live and real general will
+than the Parliamentary constituency. Men's aspirations and ideals for
+their common life are being expressed more truly through trade union
+organizations than through Parliament. The growth in the prestige of
+organized labour is therefore coincident with a decay in the prestige of
+Parliament. Parliament, however, based on a local sub-division of the
+nation, is at present the only political organization of the nation.
+Trade union organization, as a political organization, has no
+constitutional authority, and all the general will which it represents
+can find no regular national expression. The result is that it either
+uses the territorial organization by getting men who really represent
+their Trade Union elected as members for Parliamentary local
+constituencies, to the detriment of both the territorial and the trade
+union organization, or acts as an _imperium in imperio_ by making
+demands on and issuing ultimata to Parliament. We seem to be approaching
+a crisis where the trade unions are asking whether they will allow the
+state to exist.
+
+This is obviously an unsatisfactory state of affairs. What is the cure
+for it? Differentiation of functions, as I have said, will not help us
+here. Some writers have maintained that vocational organization should
+concern itself with industrial or economic matters, the state, as we
+know it, with political matters. But can we possibly distinguish between
+industrial and political matters? If the aim of politics is to regulate
+men's actions in the light of men's common interests, the action of a
+trade union is in its essence political. Its differentiation from
+government is that it is concerned with the common interests of a few
+rather than the common interests of all. The difference between a trade
+union and a parliamentary constituency is that the sub-division of the
+general common interest which each represents rests on a different basis
+of division. The whole community might as well be organized by vocations
+as it now is by localities. There would seem to be certain advantages in
+both principles of differentiation, and one obvious practical solution
+of our present difficulties is that the supreme organ of government
+should in its two chambers represent the nation as organized on both
+principles, vocational and territorial.
+
+We seem to have come now to the discussion of political machinery, but,
+as in our discussion of the League of Nations, we can see that our
+attitude to such questions of machinery will vary as we regard the
+force-bearing organization with its national and territorial basis as
+the primary fact in the community, to be distinguished sharply from all
+other organizations, or regard the possession of organized force as the
+expression of men's settled and permanent will to maintain their common
+interests and safeguard the conditions of the good life. If we
+consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the
+basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization
+to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of
+common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall
+recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents
+only one form of such ramification.
+
+The view that political action is not confined to constitutional and
+governmental channels will not imply that we must give up the
+distinction between society and the state. For, on the one hand, trade
+unions have only arisen because of the special need for a _common_
+safeguarding of common interests produced by economic relations.
+Economic relations need to be controlled by, but cannot be superseded
+by, politics. On the other hand, as we have seen, the work of such
+associations as churches is different in kind from the work done by
+political organizations. The inculcation and development of moral ideals
+and the safeguarding of the conditions of the good life are
+complementary functions. Each is impossible without the other. But that
+does not make them identical, however closely interfused they may be.
+
+If, then, we accept the political theory of idealism as a theory of
+society, we must recognize in social life the distinction between
+ethical, economic, and political relations, and the task before
+Political Theory is to define the relations between politics and
+economic activities on the one side and ethical activities on the other,
+and that in a society which is not confined within the bounds of a
+single nation state. The intricate ramifications of vast economic
+undertakings and the common aspirations and ideals of humanity are but
+signs of a solidarity of mankind that political philosophy must
+recognize in all the problems it has to face.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_.
+
+Bosanquet, _Philosophical Theory of the State_.
+
+Barker, _Political Thought in England from Spencer to to-day_.
+
+Hobhouse, _The Metaphysical Theory of the State_.
+
+Figgis, _Churches in the Modern State_.
+
+Cole, _Labour in the Commonwealth_.
+
+Cole, _Self Government in Industry_.
+
+Delisle Burns, _The Morality of Nations_.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT[20]
+
+C.R. FAY
+
+
+I. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842
+
+1. Let us hover in fancy over the industrial scene in 1842, and
+photograph a stage of the economic conflict which the people of England
+were waging then with the forces which held them in thrall.
+
+Our photograph shows us great white lines, continuous or destined to
+become continuous; they are numerous in Durham and Lancashire, and the
+newest lead up to and away from London. These white lines are the new
+railroads of England, and the myriad ant-heaps along them are the
+navvies. In the year 1848 their numbers had risen to 188,000.[21]
+
+What is a navvy and how does he live? The navvy is an inland navigator
+who used to dig dykes and canals and now constructs railroads. In the
+forties the navvies are getting 5_s._ a day, and for tunnelling and
+blasting even more, but they are a rowdy crowd, and many of them are
+Irish. Said the Sheriff substitute of Renfrewshire in 1827: 'If an
+extensive drain, or canal, or road were to make that could be done by
+piecework, I should not feel in the least surprised to find that of 100
+men employed at it, 90 were Irish.'[22] In 1842 they are building
+railroads, and when they and the Highlanders are on the same job, it is
+necessary to segregate them in order to avoid a breach of the peace. The
+Irish sleep in huts and get higher pay than the natives who are lodged
+in the neighbouring cottages. The English navvy too keeps out the
+Irishman if he can. On a track in Northamptonshire, 'There is only one
+Irishman on the work, for they would not allow any other Irishman.'[23]
+
+In the South of England wages are lower and the navvies are less expert.
+In South Devon 'very few North countrymen; they are men who have worked
+down the line of the Great Western; that have followed it from one
+portion to another'.[24] The riff-raff from the villages cannot work
+stroke for stroke with the navvy. 'In tilting the waggons they could,
+but in the barrow runs it requires practice and experience.'[25]
+
+The high wages of the navvy are offset by the disadvantages of his
+employment. He is lucky if he gets the whole of his earnings in cash. In
+the Trent Valley they are paid once a month, 'but every fortnight they
+receive what is called "sub" that is subsistence money, and between the
+times of subsistence money and times of the monthly payment, they may
+have tickets by applying to the time-keeper, or whoever is the person to
+give them out, for goods; and those tickets are directed to a certain
+person; they cannot go to any other shop.'[26]
+
+The huts in which they live are little better than pigsties, and
+especially bad for regular navvies, who take their families about with
+them. In South Devon, 'man, woman, and child all sleep exposed to one
+another.'[27] On a section of the London and Birmingham Railway fever
+and small-pox broke out. 'I have seen', says an eye-witness, 'the men
+walking about with the small-pox upon them as thick as possible and no
+hospitals to go to.'[28] The country people, the witness continues, make
+money by letting rooms double. When one lot came out, another lot went
+in.
+
+Such is the navvy's life at work and at rest.
+
+
+2. If we can suppose that our camera is capable of distinguishing
+centres of industrial activity, then our picture will give us 'vital'
+patches, which stand out against a background of deadness. This deadness
+is rural England.
+
+What is the condition of the rural counties of Wessex? 'Everywhere the
+cottages are old, and frequently in a state of decay.' 'Ignorance of the
+commonest things, needle-work, cooking, and other matters of domestic
+economy, is ... nearly universally prevalent.'[29] To make both ends
+meet the wife has abandoned her now useless spinning-wheel and hired
+herself out to hoe turnips or pick stones.
+
+On the little farms inside the factory districts of Lancashire and
+Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable
+livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more
+acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by
+exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern
+peasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very
+intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in
+Northumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive
+to the advantages of knowledge, and eager to acquire it; it is a rare
+thing to find a grown-up labourer who cannot read and write and who is
+not capable of keeping his own accounts.'[30] The same sort of thing was
+said of Northumberland in 1869: 'If all England had been like
+Northumberland, this commission ought never to have been issued.' The
+Commissioner found that though the labourers worked harder and longer
+than in the South they were not working against starvation. They were
+enjoying a rough plenty, which included fresh milk. The rest of the
+family earned sufficient to leave the married woman in her home and no
+children under twelve were employed in field labour.[31]
+
+Here then in Northumberland there is a decent country life, but
+elsewhere there is an atmosphere of deadness; and it is this deadness of
+the countryside which explains the horror that new comers to industrial
+regions frequently expressed at the prospect of a forcible return to the
+parish of their origin.
+
+'I was told,' says a visitor to Lancashire in 1842, 'that there had been
+several instances of death by sheer starvation. On asking why
+application had not been made to the commissioner of the parish for
+relief, I was informed that they were persons from agricultural
+districts who, having committed an act of vagrancy, would be sent to
+their parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of
+some manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm
+labourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to
+me, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours
+in two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the
+story, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of
+prejudice or ignorance.'[32]
+
+
+3. Though there is little peasant life in England, there is life of a
+feverish desperate order for many who live in country places. These
+people are not farm workers nor yet are they craftsmen who supply the
+industrial needs of the village. They are feeders to the towns, engaged
+in what is misnamed 'domestic industry'. The life they lead is a sordid
+replica of an all too sordid original.
+
+Cobbett in a tirade against the Lords of the Loom[33] idealized the
+old-time union of agriculture and manufacture. The men should work in
+the fields, while the women and children stayed at home at their
+spinning wheels, making homespun for the family garments. But the
+picture was a vanishing one even in his day. Domestic industry does not
+mean this. The rural distress revealed in the Hand-loom Weavers
+Commission is the distress of specialized hand-workers, male and female,
+who are clinging desperately to the worst-paid branch of a dying trade.
+The worsted industry of East Anglia is perishing, defeated by the
+resources of Yorkshire, of which the power-loom is only one. The cloth
+trade in the Valley of Stroud (Gloucester) is a shadow of its former
+self. It has lost the power of recovering from a depression. The next
+period of slackness that comes along may bankrupt the business and rob a
+village of specialized hand-workers of their main employment.
+
+In Devonshire, the serge trade, which used to give employment to looms
+in almost every town and village, has become so unremunerative that it
+has passed into the hands of the wives and daughters of mechanics and
+agricultural labourers. In Oxfordshire in 1834, we are told by the Poor
+Law Commissions of that year, glove and lace making were vanishing
+occupations. In the neighbourhood of Banbury 'some make lace and gloves
+in the villages. Formerly spinning was the work for women in the
+villages, now there is scarcely any done.'[34]
+
+Since 1834 the process of disintegration had proceeded apace.
+
+We must not, however, convey the impression that domestic industry in
+1842 had all but vanished from the countryside. In its ancient
+strongholds it still endures, but it is in an unhealthy condition, and
+the towns are sucking its life-blood away.
+
+To illustrate this, let us describe the course of a boom in domestic
+industry and study how the trade boom of 1833-7 reached through to the
+country silk weavers in Essex and other places all around London. The
+terms which we usually apply to the cultivation of land are apposite.
+The town workers represent the intensive margin of cultivation, the
+country workers the extensive margin. First of all the Spitalfield
+weavers, who have been short of work, have more work given to them. The
+weavers' wives also get work, and their boys and girls who never were on
+a loom before are now put to the trade. Fresh hands are introduced. From
+the Metropolis the demand for labour pushes outwards over the country.
+Recourse is had to 'inferior soils'. Old weavers in the villages get
+work, together with their wives and families. Even farm labourers are
+impressed. Blemishes for which at other times deductions would be
+claimed are now over-looked. Carts are sent round to the villages and
+hamlets with work for the weavers, so that time may not be lost in going
+to the warehouses to take back or carry home work. Then comes the ebb:
+'the immediate effect is that all the less skilful workmen, the
+dissolute and disorderly, are denied work; the third and fourth looms,
+those worked by the sons and daughters of the weavers, are all thrown
+out of use'. The intensiveness of cultivation has been reduced in the
+towns, the least remunerative no longer pays.
+
+The ebb of the tide, which reduces the quantity of employment in the
+towns, leaves the country districts high and dry. 'At such times the
+country towns and villages to which work is liberally sent, when there
+is a demand for goods, suffer still more. A staff or skeleton only is
+kept in pay, and that chiefly with a view to operations when a demand
+returns.'[35] A skeleton--well said.
+
+Occasional cultivation is bad for land, and worse for human beings. The
+ribbon-weaving villages north of Coventry are a disorderly eruption from
+the town. Coventry itself has the better-paid 'engine weaving'; the
+rural districts have the 'single hand trade'. The country workers, say
+the Commissioners, 'retain most of their original barbarism with an
+accession of vice'. The yokels who went out to the French wars innocent
+boys returned confirmed rogues. Bastardy is greater than ever, despite
+the new Poor Law. 'It may surprise the denouncers of the factory system
+to find all the vices and miseries which they attribute to it,
+flourishing so rankly in the midst of a population not only without the
+walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large
+town.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise
+us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the
+rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of
+domestic industry marks the half-way house to full capitalism.
+
+
+4. Let us now journey to the factory districts of Lancashire and the
+West Riding of Yorkshire where town lies close upon town, and the tall
+chimneys envelop in smoke the cottages in which hand-loom weavers work
+and the children of hand-loom weavers sleep. Let us suppose that we have
+found our position by Leeds. We should like to follow the track of the
+new railroads, for we have in our pocket a small green book:
+
+  'Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to
+                  Railway Travelling'.
+
+  '10th Mo. 19th, 1839.         Price Sixpence.'
+
+Bradshaw tells us that we can get from Littleborough to Manchester in 11
+hours--via Rochdale, Heywood, and Millshill--but it is not clear how we
+are to get to Littleborough. So we follow an alternative route, the
+canal. It is a fashionable method of transit for mineral traffic and
+paupers. Mr. Muggeridge, the emigration agent, tells us how he
+transported the southern paupers in 1836. 'The journey from London to
+Manchester was made by boat or waggon, the agents assisting the
+emigrants on their journey.'[37] When we got up our geography for the
+tour out of Thomas Dugdale's 'England and Wales' this is what we read at
+every turn: 'Keighley: in the deep valley of the Aire, its prosperity
+had been much increased by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which passes
+within two miles.' 'Skipton: in a rough mountainous district. The trade
+has been greatly facilitated by the proximity of the town to the Leeds
+and Liverpool Canal.' So the Leeds and Liverpool canal shall be our
+guide.
+
+We leave Bradford, Halifax, and the worsted districts to the left of us,
+and passing by Shipley, approach the cotton district near the Lancashire
+border. 'The township of Shipley is the western-most locality of the
+Leeds clothing districts; it runs like a tongue into the worsted
+district. In like manner the worsted district blends with the cotton
+district at Steeton, Silsden, and Addingham.' We are passing, the
+Commissioner tells us, from high wages to low. 'The cloth weavers of
+Shipley work for wages little, if any, higher than those of the worsted
+weavers; while the worsted weavers north-west of Keighley are reduced
+down to the cotton standard.'[38]
+
+At Keighley we bend sharply south and soon reach Colne in Lancashire.
+Dr. Cook Taylor describes the conditions there in the early part of
+1842:
+
+     'I visited eighty-eight dwellings, selected at hazard. They were
+     destitute of furniture save old boxes for tables or stalls, or
+     even large stones for chairs; the beds are composed of straw and
+     shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and
+     water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water
+     again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the
+     markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, 'all the
+     places and persons I visited were scrupulously clean. Children
+     were in rags, but they were not in filth. In no single instance
+     was I asked for relief.... I never before saw poverty which
+     inspired respect, and misery which demanded involuntary homage.'
+
+From Colne we journey to Accrington. Of its 9,000 inhabitants not more
+than 100 were fully employed. Numbers kept themselves alive by
+collecting nettles and boiling them. Some were entirely without food
+every alternate day, and many had but one meal in the day and that a
+poor one.[39]
+
+Our last stage is Burnley, where the weavers--to quote again from Dr.
+Cook Taylor--'were haggard with famine, their eyes rolling with that
+fierce and uneasy expression common to maniacs. "We do not want
+charity," they said, "but employment." I found them all Chartists, but
+with this difference, that the block-printers and hand-loom weavers
+united to their Chartism a hatred of machinery which was far from being
+shared by the factory operatives.'
+
+What a comment on England's industrial supremacy--England with her
+virtual monopoly of large-scale manufacture in Europe! It must have been
+a puzzle, too, for the Poor Law Commissioners, who were then building
+workhouses in these parts for the purpose of depauperizing hand-loom
+weavers on the less eligibility principle.
+
+But how was it, with such a Poor Law, that the hand-loom weavers did not
+die of starvation by the thousand? If we enter a cotton mill we shall
+see why. Within these gaunt walls, which are illumined at night by
+sputtering gas-light, the factory children work, earning twice as much
+as their parents, who were too old and too respectable to become factory
+hands.
+
+By this time, perhaps, it is evening, but this matters nothing to the
+'melancholy mad engines', which feed on water or burning coals. The
+young people will still be there, with eight hours work to their credit
+and more to do--'kept to work by being spoken to or by a little
+chastisement'.[40]
+
+'I have seen them fall asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they
+have been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep,
+after the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they
+were clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of
+bed. Half asleep they stumbled or were carried to the mill, to begin
+again the ceaseless round.'
+
+'It keeps them out of mischief', said the opponents of shorter hours.
+Besides, the conditions were no worse than any other industries! Factory
+work, however, as the doctors show, was different from work in the
+mines. The heat and confinement of the mill caused precocious sexual
+development, whilst in the mines the result of exaggerated muscular
+development was to delay maturity.
+
+In 1842 conditions are better than they were in 1833--thanks to the
+factory inspectors. There is little positive cruelty, and the sight of
+deformity--enlarged ankle bones, bow legs, and knock knees, caused by
+excessive standing as a child--is rare. The problem now is one of
+industrial fatigue. The children are 'sick-tired'.
+
+
+5. The Midlands of Leicestershire, Notts, and Derbyshire are a region of
+red bricks and pantiles, dotted over valleys of exquisite green. So let
+us leave the smoke of Lancashire and hover here for a while. Here dwell
+the stocking workers or frame-work knitters--the people who knit on
+frames stockings, gloves, and other articles of hosiery. It does not
+look like a region of industry. There are only a few towns, such as
+Nottingham, Leicester, and Loughborough; and except for a few lace
+factories in Nottingham, large buildings are rare. The town knitters
+either work in their own homes or in shops with standings for perhaps as
+many as fifty frames. In the villages the knitting is nearly all done in
+the cottages, opposite long low windows, or in a small out-house which
+might well be a fowl-house.
+
+But in the streets of Leicester we can see 'life' of a sort. We can
+watch the procession to the pawnbrokers. Some of the knitters pawn their
+blankets for the day, and most lodge their Sunday clothing during the
+week. Says a Leicester pawnbroker:
+
+     'We regularly pay away from L40 to L50 (to some 300 persons)
+     every Monday morning or on the Tuesday. They will, perhaps, wash
+     on the Monday and get their linen clean preparatory to the next
+     Sunday, and in the course of the week they bring all the linen
+     things they can spare. Friday is the worst; they will then bring
+     their small trifling articles, such as are scarcely worth a
+     penny, and we lend on them, to enable them to buy a bit of meat
+     or a few trifles for dinner.'[41]
+
+They are too poor to indulge in church-going or alcohol. They have no
+clothes to go to church in. Their publican is the druggist, where they
+buy opium for themselves and Godfrey's cordial, a preparation from
+laudanum, for their children. In the whole of Leicester, with its
+population of 50,000, there are but nine gin-houses. And only on Sundays
+do they get a bit of schooling. 'We have only one bit of a cover lid to
+cover the five of us in winter ... we are all obliged to sleep in one
+bed.'[42]
+
+A frame smith, making his usual inspection of hosiers' frames at
+workmen's dwellings in Nottingham, after thus spending a fortnight,
+found his health had begun to suffer from the squalid wretchedness of
+their abodes. Thinking to improve it, he went on the same errand into
+the country, but found the frame-work knitters there in a still more
+deplorable state. From the bad air and other distressing influences in
+their condition and that of their dwellings, in another fortnight he
+returned, too ill to attend to his business for some weeks afterwards.
+This occurred in 1843.[43]
+
+Nottingham, however, with its up-to-date lace trade was usually better
+off than this. The lace factories, like the cotton mills in Lancashire,
+eased the position of the hand-workers. In Leicestershire the knitters
+had no such alternative. The more their earnings were reduced, the more
+helplessly they were bound to their only trade.
+
+
+6. 1842 is a long while ago! Let us go to sleep for thirty years and
+wake up in 1871, when the Truck Commissioners are publishing their
+report.
+
+West of Birmingham lies the black country, an area of some twenty square
+miles. Here, if we have read the evidence of the Truck Commissioners, we
+can interpret a dumb-show in Dudley, where the nail-makers dwell.
+
+On Monday mornings the nail-maker emerges from a small hovel containing
+a smithy and walks into Dudley to call on a gentleman known as a fogger,
+a petty-fogger if he is a middleman, a market-fogger if he is a master.
+The nailer comes out with a bundle of metal which he takes to a second
+house and changes for a second bundle of metal, and with this he walks
+away. (The next nailer, not so lucky, hangs about till Wednesday
+morning, waiting for his metal.) On Saturday the nailer comes back with
+his nails, enters the fogger's shop, and emerges with 12_s._ in his
+hand. But he does not go home. He slips into a shop close by and parts
+company with the shillings. In return he gets a parcel, the contents of
+which are obviously displeasing to him. What has happened?
+
+The nailer is a Government servant. But the Government only employs him
+indirectly. It puts out contracts for rivets and nails to contractors
+who sublet their contract, so that the work reaches the nailer at third
+or fourth hand. The Government, in the interest of public economy
+(Victorian England is famous for retrenchment), gives its contract to
+the lowest tenderer; and the policy of the lowest tender is responsible
+for the dumb-show we have watched.
+
+To begin with, the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has
+to change it, and this he does at the price of 2_d._ per 10_d._ bundle,
+at a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to
+wait till Wednesday for his bundle is kept idling about in order that
+he may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop'
+which is owned by yet another branch of the family of fogger.)
+
+When the nailer and his family have worked fourteen hours a day
+throughout the week, the nailer returns on Saturday with the nails, and
+receives 12_s._ for them. These shillings he takes to the fogger's store
+and exchanges for tea and other articles. The shillings are 'nimble'; we
+commend the rapidity of their circulation to Mr. Irving Fisher. A fogger
+who pays out the shillings from his warehouse receives them back again
+in a few minutes over the counter of his store. 'He will perhaps reckon
+with seven or eight at one time, and when he has reckoned with them, and
+perhaps paid them six, seven, or eight pounds, he will wait until they
+have gone to the shop and taken the money there as they leave the
+warehouse. Then he goes into the shop himself for it, as he cannot go on
+paying without it.'[44]
+
+But surely this is truck! Certainly not. There may be 'fearful cheating'
+with tea, but the nailer is not bound to go there. He is perfectly free.
+The only trouble is this: it is a case of tea or no work the week
+following. This is why, despite the Truck Act of 1831 and despite the
+known existence of the abuse, these practices are rife among the nailers
+as late as 1871, the year in which the Truck Commissioners issued the
+Report from which this scene is compiled. The plight of the nailers is
+not the plight of factory operatives or miners; it is the plight of the
+frame-work knitters, of men who are bound by the intangible fetters of
+economic need to the uncontrollable devil of 'semi-capitalism'.
+
+
+2. MINING OPERATIONS
+
+1. Coal was king of the nineteenth century. The first steam-engine was
+built to pump water out of coal mines, the first canal was cut to carry
+the Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first
+railroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit
+mouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive,
+began life as a trapper on a Tyneside colliery.
+
+Where would English industry have been without its king? In 1780 (in
+round figures) 5,000,000 tons of coal were raised in the United Kingdom:
+in 1800, 10,000,000; in 1865, 100,000,000; and in 1897, 200,000,000.
+Coal enticed the cotton factories from the dales of the Pennines to the
+moist lowlands of West Lancashire. At every stage of their work the
+iron-makers depended on coal; and the great inventions in the iron and
+steel industry are land-marks in the expansion of the demand for
+coal--Cort's puddling process 1783, Watt's steam-engine 1785, Neilson's
+hot blast 1824, Naysmith's steam-hammer 1835, Bessemer's steel-converter
+1855, Siemen's open hearth 1870, Thomas' basic process for the treatment
+of highly phosphoric ores 1878. The steamship, a novelty in 1820, ruled
+the seas in 1870; and ironclads followed steamships. The smokeless
+steam-coal of South Wales guarded the heritage of Trafalgar. By the end
+of the nineteenth century, coaling stations were an important item in
+international politics.
+
+Meanwhile, the people of England, heedless of Malthusian forebodings,
+multiplied exceedingly. They lighted their streets and buildings with
+coal-gas, and burnt coal in their grates. With coal they paid for the
+food and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw
+materials were offset by exports of coal and of textiles and hardware
+produced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity
+and oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce.
+And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us
+look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they
+think about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?
+
+
+2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In
+Scotland they had just been emancipated from the status of villeinage.
+In Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere
+they were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the
+Tyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in general are making 20_s._ to
+30_s._ per week (_sic_) the pitmen here are only making 13_s._ 6_d._ and
+from this miserable pittance deductions are made.'[45]
+
+In 1839, during the Chartist disturbances, a Welsh M.P. wrote to the
+Home Secretary begging for barracks and troops: 'A more lawless set of
+men than the colliers and miners do not exist ... it requires some
+courage to live among such a set of savages.'[46] When the miners came
+out in 1844, there were thousands of cottages tenantless in
+Northumberland and Durham. For the colliery proprietors owned the
+cottages, and when the miners struck evicted them. So the miners set up
+house in the streets. 'In one lane ... a complete new village was built,
+chests-of-drawers, deck beds, etc., formed the walls of the new dwelling;
+and the top covered with canvas or bedclothes as the case might be.'[47]
+Yet, for all their griminess, they had human hearts and voices. During
+the strike they obtained permission to hold a meeting at Newcastle; and
+the wealthy citizens who made their fortunes out of the coal trade
+trembled before the invasion of black barbarians. But the meeting passed
+off in rain and peace. Thirty thousand miners marched in procession,
+'for near a mile flags in breeze, men walking in perfect order'; and as
+they marched, they sang, as only miners sing, songs and hymns and
+topical ditties:
+
+    'Stand fast to your Union
+      Brave sons of the mine,
+    And we'll conquer the tyrants
+      Of Tees, Wear, and Tyne!'
+
+Up and down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after
+life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name
+Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from
+house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He had only one message:
+
+    'Lads, unite and better your condition.
+    When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear;
+    When men are scarce, men are dear.'[48]
+
+Such blasphemy appalled the Government's Commissioners. But the miners
+had a zest for religion as well as for strikes. During the strike of
+1844, 'frequent meetings were held in their chapels (in general those of
+the Primitive Methodists or Ranters as they are commonly called in that
+part of the country), where prayers were publicly offered up for the
+successful result of the strike.' They attended their prayer meeting 'to
+get their faith strengthened'.[49]
+
+Such ignorance could only be cured by education. Some worthy members of
+society had already recognized the fact. In 1830 a Cardiff 'Society for
+the improvement of the working population in the county of Glamorgan'
+issued improving pamphlets:
+
+No. 9. Population, or Patty's Marriage.
+
+No. 10. The Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend.
+
+No. 11. Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown.[50]
+
+But the northern miners were perverse people. In Scotland, according to
+one Wesleyan minister,[51] the miners read Adam Smith. In
+Northumberland, with still greater perversity, they preferred Plato. 'A
+translation of Plato's _Ideal Republic_ is much read among those
+classes, principally for the socialism and unionism it contains; in pure
+ignorance, of course, that Plato himself subsequently modified his
+principles and that Aristotle showed their fallacy.'[52]
+
+
+3. The Royal Commission of 1842 on the Employment and Condition of
+Children and Young Persons in Mines disclosed facts which made Cobdenite
+England gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancashire, Cheshire, the
+West Riding of Yorkshire, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these
+districts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an
+irresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves
+disliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a
+contributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancashire, were pushing
+their children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the
+legal restrictions upon sending them to the neighbouring factories.
+
+A Lancashire woman said in evidence:
+
+     'I have a belt round my waist and a chain passing between my
+     legs, and I go on my hands and feet.... The pit is very wet where
+     I work and the water comes over our clog tops always, and I have
+     seen it up to my thighs.... I have drawn till I have had the skin
+     off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family
+     way.'[53]
+
+The children's office was a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but
+being little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and
+close the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William
+Richards, aged seven-and-a-half, said in evidence:
+
+     'I been down about three years. When I first went down, I could
+     not keep my eyes open; I don't fall asleep now; I smokes my pipe,
+     smokes half a quartern a week.'[54]
+
+Except in the northern mining districts, where there were good day and
+Sunday schools and Methodism was powerful, a pagan darkness prevailed.
+As a Derbyshire witness put it:
+
+     'When the boys have been beaten, knocked about, and covered with
+     sludge all the week, they want to be in bed all day to rest on
+     Sunday.'[55]
+
+In the hope of startling a religiously-minded England, the Commissioners
+reproduced examples of working-class ignorance. James Taylor, aged
+eleven,
+
+     'Has heard of hell in the pit, when the men swore; has never
+     heard of Jesus Christ; has never heard of God; he has heard the
+     men in the pit say, "God damn thee ".'
+
+A Yorkshire girl, aged eighteen, said:
+
+     'I do not know who Jesus Christ was; I never saw him, but I have
+     seen Foster, who prays about him.'[56]
+
+
+4. Just as in the East Midlands the frame-work knitters worked for
+middlemen or master middlemen, and just as the Dudley nailers worked for
+petty-foggers and market-foggers, so too the Staffordshire miners worked
+for 'butties'. Here again the workers were exposed to the petty
+tyrannies of semi-capitalism; and here again the middlemen, in this case
+the butties, incurred the odium of a system for which their superiors,
+the coal-owners and coal-masters, were responsible.
+
+Why the butty system prevailed in the Midlands--and in a modified form
+it prevails to-day--is not clear. In some places it seems to be
+connected with the smallness of the mining concerns or of the metal
+trades which they supplied. In South Staffordshire a contributing factor
+was the ancient and allied industry of nail-making.
+
+The conditions in South Staffordshire in 1843 are fully described in the
+Midland Mining Commission of that year.
+
+The butty was a contractor who engaged with the proprietor or lessee of
+the mine to deliver the coal or iron-stone at so much per ton, himself
+hiring the labourers, using his own horses, and supplying the tools
+requisite for the working of the mine. The contract price was known as
+the 'charter price' or 'charter'. Thus by a freak of language the
+Staffordshire miner knew by the same word the 'butty's charter' which
+was the symbol of his oppression, and the 'people's charter' which was
+the goal of his desire.
+
+'The butties', said the miners and their wives, 'are the devil: they are
+negro drivers: they play the vengeance With the men.'[57] The men
+kicked when, after working a couple of hours, they were fetched up,
+without pay, on the excuse that there were no waggons to take away the
+coal. But the butty comforted them with a bottle of pit drink, and all
+was smooth again.
+
+A collier related a case where 'a pike man had worked only one half-day
+in the week and got 2_s._ for it, and because he did not spend 6_d._ of
+this at the butty's shop, the latter told the doggy (the under man) to
+let the man play for it.'[58]
+
+The miners recognized that often the butty was not to blame. In the
+district north and east of Dudley, the butties got their 'charter price'
+from the coal-owners in the form of tickets on the coal-owners'
+truck-shop. What else could they do but hand them on to the men? 'He
+used to be a very good butty,' said one miner's wife, 'till they haggled
+him and dropped his "charter", so that he cannot pay his men.'[59]
+
+West and south of Dudley the butties, though they did not truck their
+men, kept public-houses; and being employer and publican in one, they
+had a tight hold on the men.
+
+Was the compulsion to drink an oppression? To our minds, yes; as also to
+the minds of the teetotal Chartists whom the Government imprisoned, and
+of the strike leaders whom the Government's Commissioners denounced. But
+to the majority of the miners the abundance of beer was a delight. They
+objected to the butty's bullying, but they loved his beer, especially
+the feckless ones, for when wives were importunate the drunkards pleaded
+necessity.
+
+However, all the beer-drinking could not be charged to the butties. The
+miners themselves, in their own fellowships, were devoted to it; and
+the compulsion of friends was as severe as the compulsion of butties.
+Every approach to recreation, every act of mutual providence against
+accident or disease, began and ended in beer. The day a man entered the
+pit's company, he paid 1_s._ for footing-ale, and the doggy saw that no
+churl escaped. When a lad was old enough to have a sweetheart he was
+toasted with the 'nasty' shilling. The sins of the married men were
+washed away in half-a-crown's worth of ale. The beer-shop was the
+head-quarters of the Burial and Savings Clubs. The first charge on a
+Burial Club was a good oak coffin, the second charge drinks for the
+pall-bearers, and then a glass or two for the rest of the company.
+
+They had lotteries to which each man contributed 20 fortnightly
+shillings. Each week a name was drawn, and the lucky man stood a feast;
+while every member, in addition to a shilling for the box, produced
+6_d._ for drinks.
+
+In all these festivities the butty was in the offing. When they would
+have him he presided; and so at his worst an obnoxious bully, at his
+best he was an accommodating landlord.
+
+Direct employment, such as prevailed in the north of England, would have
+averted much of this evil. There were no structural difficulties in the
+way of change. Direct employment would not have meant a change to
+another class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters
+and hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through
+slackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for
+accidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They
+paid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The
+system made temperance impossible for the individual; and the masters,
+with the full approval of the Government, did their best to destroy the
+'pernicious combinations' by which alone a standard of sober decency
+could be promoted.
+
+
+5. The Report of the Truck Commissioners (1871-2) enables us to complete
+the picture. It also enables us to understand why, at this late day,
+truck was still rife in certain districts.
+
+Truck and Tommy, truck-shop and Tommy-shop, are convertible terms. Truck
+is from the French 'troc' = barter. Cobbett tells us how the word
+'Tommy' was used. In his soldiering days the rations of brown bread,
+'for what reason God knows', went by the name of Tommy. 'When the
+soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in
+England, the name of Tommy went down by tradition, and, doubtless, it
+was taken up and adapted to the truck-system in Staffordshire and
+elsewhere.'[60] From the textile districts it had all but disappeared in
+1871. When the cotton manufactures went to outlying dales for water
+power, they were almost compelled to open stores for their workpeople.
+Owen's store at New Lanark was, in effect, a well-managed truck-shop;
+and the Truck Commissioners of 1871 reported that the New Lanark Company
+of that day was breaking the law. But when the cotton industry was
+gathered in the towns, the need for company stores ceased. Consequently,
+after the passing of the Act of 1831, which prohibited truck altogether,
+the masters very generally abolished the stores of their own accord; and
+survivals were jealously watched.
+
+A collection of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in
+London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil
+notes in Ostler's handwriting which run:
+
+     _Cragg Dale Facts_
+
+     _Truck System_: Little altered: men knew they were imposed. They
+     pay in money now--but compel them to buy at their own shops....
+     Wholesale warehouses at Rochdale say, 'Oh! put it sideways: it
+     will do for Cragg Dale masters to sell among their people.'
+
+     _Song_: 'Lousy butter and burnt bread.'
+
+About 1842 a curious perversion of truck was prevalent in parts of
+Yorkshire. The trade depression in the Bradford district tempted
+disreputable woollen manufacturers to force on their operatives the
+products of the factory as part payment of wages. Combers were given
+pieces of cloth, workers in shoddy mills bundles of rags. But this
+utterly inexcusable fraud, no less than its more specious complement,
+the employer's store, was rooted out by inspectors and factory
+reformers. Therefore in 1854 the Government's Commissioner was able to
+say that in a factory district like Lancashire truck was not only
+non-existent but 'impossible'.[61]
+
+He was right as to the factory districts, but not quite right as to
+Lancashire. In Prescot, a small Lancashire town on the fringe of the
+factory district, the watchmakers in 1871 were being paid in watches.
+The masters alleged that they only gave watches to the workers when the
+latter had orders for them, but the evidence showed that these orders
+only came to hand when the men were asking for fresh work. The
+pawnbrokers explained what happened. 'Watches', said a pawnbroker's
+clerk, 'pass from hand to hand as a circulating medium until they get
+very low in the market and are pawned.'[62] The pawnshop in question
+had 700 watches on pledge, most of them belonging to workmen in the
+town.
+
+In railway contracting truck was prevalent in the forties. In roving
+employment of this type it is difficult to see how some form of
+contractor's shop could have been avoided. The navvy needed canteens or
+Y.M.C.A. huts, but such things had not been thought of then. However,
+when the big period of railway construction came to an end, the question
+lost its importance.
+
+South Staffordshire and the Black Country were the ancient strongholds
+of truck. The campaigns against truck originated here. The nailers, the
+cash-paying masters, and the respectable ratepayers joined together to
+promote the Truck Act of 1820. Lord Hatherton, a Staffordshire nobleman,
+after three years hammering at the House of Commons, obtained the Truck
+Act of 1831. But in 1843, the year of the Midland Mining Commission,
+truck was still rife in the coalfields. The well-known Tommy-shop scene
+in Disraeli's novel _Sybil_, which was published in 1845, is taken
+direct from the Commissioners' Report. Diggs, the butty of the novel, is
+Banks, the coal proprietor of the Report. In the novel the people say of
+Master Joseph Diggs, the son: 'He do swear at the women, when they rush
+in for the first turn, most fearful; they do say he's a shocking little
+dog.' In the Report, page 93, the miner's wife says: 'He swears at the
+women when the women are trying to crush in. He is a shocking little
+dog.' One touch is Disraeli's own. He makes the miners keen to purchase
+'the young Queen's picture'. 'If the Queen would do something for us
+poor men, it would be a blessed job.' In the Report there is nothing
+about this, but there is a section dealing with Chartism.
+
+However, the truck-shop was gradually disappearing. Every year it
+became easier to expose evasions, and in good times the workers used
+their prosperity to slip away from the Company store. In 1850 a final
+campaign was initiated by five local Anti-Truck Associations, backed by
+the National Miners' Association under Alexander MacDonald.
+Truck-masters were prosecuted and truck was steadily dislodged from the
+coalfields and adjacent ironworks. Only in the nail trade did it
+survive, for the reason that the complete subjection of the nailers made
+it possible to practise the essentials of truck without a formal
+violation of the law.
+
+In the remaining colliery districts in 1871 truck was prevalent only in
+West Scotland and South Wales.
+
+In West Scotland it was yielding ground before the pressure of the
+unions. The companies only maintained it by active coercion. If a miner
+held out for money, they had to yield; and if they were malicious, they
+marked him as a sloper and dismissed him the first when a depression
+came. 'Black lists', said the Truck Commissioners, 'are often kept of
+slopers; threats of dismissal were repeatedly proved; and cases of
+actual dismissal for not dealing at the store are not rare.'[63]
+However, the masters themselves were getting tired of it, since it led
+so frequently to strikes.
+
+Truck in South Staffordshire was bound up with the butty system; in
+railway construction with the system of contracting and sub-contracting,
+and similarly in South Wales, as also in the west of Scotland, it was
+bound up with and dependent on the system of long pays. In order to
+carry on from one pay day to the next, the men got advances on the
+company's store. In this way many lived permanently ahead of their
+wages. The thriftless and drunkards were always 'advance men, but the
+provident miners hated it and only dealt there on compulsion'.
+
+The Commissioners drew a vivid picture of Turn Book morning in South
+Wales at the close of the pay month.
+
+At 1 or 2 a.m. the women and children begin to arrive with their Advance
+Books. Perhaps one hundred would be there, wet or fine, sleeping on the
+doorsteps or singing ballads until morning.
+
+At 5.30 a.m. the doors opened, and the waiters made a rush for the
+counter. Advance Books were produced, and goods handed over up to the
+amount of wages which would shortly fall due. Women took their pick of
+the articles, groceries, tobacco, occasionally a few shillings.
+
+     'It is quite usual', say the Commissioners, 'for shoemakers and
+     other small tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Abersychan to be
+     paid by the workmen in goods.... Tobacco in several districts of
+     South Wales has become nothing less than a circulating medium. It
+     is bought by the men and resold by them for drink, and finds its
+     way back again to some of the Company's shops. Packets of tobacco
+     pass unopened from hand to hand. An Ebbw Vale grocer who took the
+     Company's tobacco at a discount declared: "For years, when they
+     were selling it for 1_s._ 4_d._ a lb. I used to give 1_s._; but I
+     was so much over-flooded with it that I was obliged to reduce the
+     price to 11_d._ That would not do still, and I had to reduce it
+     to 10_d._ I told the men to take it to some other shop if they
+     could get 11_d._ or 1_s._ for it. I was obliged to do that many a
+     time, in order to get rid of the large stocks I held in hand.
+     Tobacco will not keep for many months without getting worse."'
+
+Weekly pays, therefore, were the constant demand of the miners' unions.
+In Northumberland and Durham, whence truck had disappeared long ago,
+pays were fortnightly, and the only objection advanced by the owners
+against weekly pays was the practical inconvenience of the pressure on
+the pay staff. In the North of England Iron Trade, weekly pays, the
+Commissioners found, had just been introduced. In West Scotland some of
+the coal-owners were trying to recoup themselves for the loss of their
+truck-shop by charging poundage on the men's wages. But this dodge, like
+the bigger grievance of truck, was stoutly resisted by the local union.
+Indeed, in one coalfield after another the disappearance of truck and
+kindred evils coincides with the appearance of strong County Unions.
+
+
+6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on
+economics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few
+suggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from
+the worker's point of view.
+
+     i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise.
+     Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their
+     bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable
+     copper coin forged in Birmingham (_vide_ Patrick Colquhoun, _A
+     Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_, 1800, Chapter VII).
+     The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing
+     to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk
+     with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest
+     public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in
+     notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about
+     cheques--an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their
+     Bank Act of 1844.
+
+     ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency
+     led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour
+     Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against
+     time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The
+     originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was
+     probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart a capitalist.
+     The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a
+     business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after
+     this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of
+     hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange
+     in consequence had to close its doors.
+
+     iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and
+     the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The
+     currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to
+     excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were
+     therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker[64] said that he had in
+     pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought
+     from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their
+     house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.
+
+     iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the
+     currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.
+
+     v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the
+     world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no
+     Cobbett to denounce the resumption.
+
+We shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history
+with the motto:
+
+'_In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone
+made the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality_.'
+
+
+3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION
+
+1. The student of Dicey's Law and Opinion in England is invited to
+distinguish three periods:
+
+     i. The period of old Toryism or legislative quiescence (1800-38).
+
+     ii. The period of Benthamism or individualism (1825-70).
+
+     iii. The period of collectivism (1865-1900).
+
+Bentham lived during the first period and his name is rightly given to
+the second period.
+
+The student, therefore, comes to wonder if there is anything which is
+not Benthamism. Benthamism, he says to himself, stands for
+individualism. How then can the period of Benthamism include the
+humanitarian legislation which begins with the first Factory Act of 1802
+and broadens out during the middle of the century into the elaborate
+code regulating from then onwards the conditions of employment in
+workshops, factories, and mines? How can a monster beget an angel?
+
+We may perhaps throw light on this difficulty by suggesting that the
+_social_ trend from 1825-70 cannot be compressed into a single word.
+Individualism may suffice to define the dominant _legal_ trend, but it
+conceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from
+below by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary
+association coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism.
+
+
+2. What Bentham was to individualism, Robert Owen was to voluntary
+association. Bentham himself was an admirer of Owen and supported his
+philanthropy, but, as expressions of a social attitude, Benthamism and
+Owenism were poles asunder. The contrast between the two is admirably
+displayed in the evidence given before the Factory Committee of 1816 by
+two representatives of the employing class, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery
+fame and Robert Owen himself.
+
+'In the state of society,' said Wedgwood, 'in which there is evidently a
+progressive movement, it is much better to leave things as they are than
+to attempt to amend the general state of things in detail. The only
+safe way of securing the comfort of any people is to leave them at
+liberty to make the best use of their time, and to allow them to
+appropriate their earnings in such way as they think fit.'[65]
+
+Robert Owen thought otherwise. In a couple of answers he exposed the
+fallacy of enlightened self-interest. They seem obvious enough to-day,
+but in 1816 they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was
+asked whether he believed that 'there is that want of affection and
+feeling on the part of parents, that would induce them to exact from
+their children more labour than they could perform without injury to
+their health;' and he replied:
+
+'I do not imagine that there is the smallest difference between the
+general affection of the lower order of the people, except with regard
+to that which may be produced by the different circumstances in which
+they are placed.'[66]
+
+Another question was: 'Do you conceive that it is not injurious to the
+manufacturer to hazard, by overwork, the health of the people so
+employed?' He replied:
+
+'If those persons were purchased by the manufacturers I should say
+decisively, yes; but as they are not purchased by the manufacturer and
+the country must bear all the loss of their strength and their energy{;}
+it does not appear, at first sight, to be the interest of the
+manufacturer to do so.'[67]
+
+Owen had grasped the meaning of social responsibility, and he devoted
+his life to social service. But he was too wayward to observe the
+conventions of society, and passed beyond the social pale. The factory
+reformer became the Socialist. Whether his disciples comprehended his
+philosophy we may doubt, but he understood better than any one else
+their instinct for association, and he gratified it.
+
+It is not contended that Owen was responsible for all the associative
+effort of his generation; for with political and religious associations
+he had no sympathy. But the spirit which infected him infected others
+after him, rousing them to associate now for this, and now for that
+social or religious or political purpose.
+
+
+3. We may divide associations for social purposes into two classes.
+
+To the first class belong associations formed to secure the abolition of
+some abuse. These naturally disappear when their object is attained.
+
+For example, there was the Anti-slavery Campaign in which Joseph Sturge
+and other Quakers played so prominent a part. By an organized crusade of
+political education the Abolitionists induced an originally hostile
+Parliament to emancipate the West Indian negroes in 1833, and to shorten
+the period of semi-servile apprenticeship in 1838. Yorkshire was the
+home of the Short Time Committees, which organized the campaign against
+White Slavery at home. The Ten Hours Movement caused the Ten Hours Bill
+to become the law of the land. From Lancashire came the Anti-Corn Law
+League, whose story is told in another chapter.
+
+The second class of association was the association for economic
+betterment--the Friendly Society, the Co-operative Society, the Trade
+Union. Conceived in enthusiasm and self-inspired, these associations
+asked only of the State a legal framework in which to develop, but they
+did not win it without struggle and delay.
+
+The Government was anxious to encourage thrift, but the development of
+the Friendly Societies was impeded for a time by legislation aimed at
+political conspiracy. The Corresponding Societies Act of 1799 prevented
+the Friendly Societies from forming a central organization with
+branches, and the Dorchester Labourers of 1834 discovered the peril into
+which the ritual of oaths might lead innocent men.
+
+These deterrents were removed by enabling legislation. In 1829 a central
+authority, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, was appointed to
+supervise Friendly Societies, and between 1829 and 1875 further
+privileges and safeguards were conferred. But the Friendly Society
+Movement throughout the nineteenth century was wholly voluntary. In 1911
+the situation was suddenly reversed by the passing of the National
+Insurance Act.
+
+The Co-operative Societies were more suspect. They crept into legal
+recognition as the children of the Friendly Society, under the 'frugal
+investments' clause of the Act of 1846, being compelled by the legal
+prejudice against association in restraint of trade to adopt this
+unnatural mother. Their real nature was recognized in 1852, when they
+were brought under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, and in
+1862, when they were granted the boon of limited liability. But the
+accident of their legal origin still survives; for they are regulated
+to-day by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1893. The
+Co-operative Movement is now drawing closer to politics, following the
+lead of most of the continental countries, notably Belgium and Germany.
+Though we cannot say that there is any indication of the State taking
+over the movement, we may note that the growth of municipal trading in
+the 'nineties was, in principle, an application of the consumers'
+association to monopolies of distribution such as tramways, water,
+electricity, and gas.
+
+The State was altogether hostile to the growth of the Trade Union. The
+Charter of Emancipation, won by the guile of Francis Place in 1824, was
+severely curtailed in 1825. Huskisson[68] depicted in lurid terms the
+tyranny of a military trades unionism, 'representing a systematic union
+of the workers of many different trades'. It was a 'kind of federal
+republic', whose mischievous operations, if not checked, would keep the
+commercial classes 'in constant anxiety and fear about their interests
+and property'. Arnold, of Rugby, a decade later wrote of them in the
+same strain: 'you have heard, I doubt not, of the trades unions; a
+fearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or assassinate; and I see no
+counteracting power.'[69]
+
+The counteracting power was their own weakness. The early militancy
+burnt itself out, and was succeeded at the turn of the century by a 'New
+Spirit and a New Model'. The new spirit was anti-militant, and the new
+model was a trade union representing the _elite_ of the skilled trades.
+The Amalgamated Society of Engineers was founded in 1850 and served as a
+model to the Carpenters, Tailors, Compositors, Iron-founders,
+Brick-layers, and others. The Trades Unions were now respectable, and in
+1867 the State recognized the fact.
+
+The period of collectivism is denoted by the growth of the Labour Party
+in Parliament, and the increasing part played by the State in industrial
+disputes and the regulation of wages. The nationalization of railways
+and the nationalization of mines are burning questions.
+
+
+4. In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the
+initial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary
+association. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a
+notion is the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the
+insistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal
+recognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of
+English social development in the nineteenth century.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Dicey, _Law and Opinion_.
+
+Robinson, _The Spirit of Association_.
+
+Hovell, _The Chartist Movement_.
+
+Sombart (tr. Epstein), _Socialism and the Socialist Movement_.
+
+[Cd. 9236], _Report of Committee on Trusts_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: From the writer's forthcoming book _Life and Labour in the
+Nineteenth Century_, to be published by the Cambridge University Press.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Tooke and Newmarch, _History of Prices_, v. 356.]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Commons Committee on Emigration_, 1827, Q. 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Commons Committee on the Condition of Labourers employed
+in the Construction of Railways_, 1846, Q. 866.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Ibid., Q. 217.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Ibid., Q. 897.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Ibid., Q. 733.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Ibid., Q. 193.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ibid., Qs. 869-78.]
+
+[Footnote 29: _Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of
+Women and Children in Agriculture_ (1843), pp. 20, 25.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Ibid., pp. 299-300.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Report of Commissioners on the Employment of Young
+Persons in Agriculture_, p. 64.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Dr. Cook Taylor, Letter to the _Morning Chronicle_, dated
+from Rossendale Forest (Lancashire), June 20, 1842.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Rural Rides_, i. 219.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Poor Law Commission of 1834_, Appendix.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Final Report, 1841_, p.
+18.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report, 1840_, Part IV, pp. 76-81.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners_,
+1836.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's
+Report_, Part III, p. 551.]
+
+[Footnote 39: _Anti-bread Tax Circular_, No. 91, June 16, 1842.]
+
+[Footnote 40: _First Report of the Factory Commissioners_, 1833, p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Report of Commissioner on the Condition of the Framework
+Knitters_ (1845), p. 109.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Ibid., p. 115.]
+
+[Footnote 43: William Felkin, _History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery
+and Lace Manufactures_ (1867), p. 458.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_ (1871), Q.
+37,500.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Pamphlet of 1825, p. 14.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Home Office Papers_, 40, Letter from R.J. Blewitt, Esq.,
+M.P., November 6, 1839.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Richard Fynes, _Miners of Northumberland and Durham_, p.
+72.]
+
+[Footnote 48: John Wilson, _History of the Durham Miners' Association_
+(1870-1904), p. 40.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population_ (1846).]
+
+[Footnote 50: These pamphlets are in the British Museum.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining
+Population_ (1850).]
+
+[Footnote 52: Ibid. (1852).]
+
+[Footnote 53: _Royal Commission, First Report_ (_Mines_), p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Ibid., p. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Royal Commission, Second Report_ (_Trades and
+Manufactures_), p. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Ibid., pp. 155-6.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Midland Mining Commission, First Report_, p. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Ibid., p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Rural Rides_, ii. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 61: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages_ (_Hosiery, 1854_).
+Evidence of Mr. Tremenheere.]
+
+[Footnote 62: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_, Q. 33,670.]
+
+[Footnote 63: _Truck Commission, 1871. Report_, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 64: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages in the Hosiery
+Manufacture_ (1854), Q. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Commons Committee of_ 1816, pp. 64 and 73.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Ibid., p. 38.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Ibid., p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Speech, March 29, 1825.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Letter to the Chevalier Bunsen, 1834, quoted in Strachey,
+_Eminent Victorians_, p. 197.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ATOMIC THEORIES
+
+PROFESSOR W.H. BRAGG, C.B.E., D.SC., F.R.S.
+
+
+When a lecture on the progress of Science is given before a conference
+concerned largely with historical subjects, it is not inappropriate to
+point out that Science has a history of its own and that its progress
+makes a connected story. The discovery of new facts is not made in an
+isolated fashion, nor is it a matter of pure chance, unaffected by what
+has gone before. On the contrary, scientific progress is made step by
+step, each new point that is reached forming a basis for further
+advances. Even the direction of discovery is not entirely in the
+explorer's control; there is always a next step to be taken and a
+limited number of possible steps forward from which a choice can be
+made. The scientific discoverer has to go in the direction in which his
+discoveries lead him. When discoveries have been made it is possible to
+think of uses to which they may be put, but in the first instance all
+discoveries are made without any knowledge whatever of what use may
+afterwards be made of them.
+
+Consequently scientific progress is a quite orderly advance, not a
+spasmodic collection of facts, and in the truest sense of the word it
+has a history. In order that opportunities for this steady progress may
+be provided it is very important that this point should be fully
+appreciated. Every one, for example, is vaguely conscious that science
+played a great part in the War. As a consequence the number of students
+of science has greatly increased; manufacturing firms are awakening to
+the fact that they must pay more attention to scientific development
+and are founding research laboratories. It is very important that this
+awakened attention should be well informed, and for that reason it
+cannot be pointed out too often that the scientific work which has been
+the basis of all material progress can only be turned to definite
+material ends in the last stages of its development. Fundamentally
+everything rests on the pure attempt to gain knowledge without any idea
+of the use to which it may subsequently be put. Without pure science
+there is no applied science at all. It is quite right in my opinion that
+the researcher in pure science should have with him the hope that what
+he does may one day be of direct benefit to others. But it is probable
+that he does not in his own mind confine the idea of possible uses to
+such material matters as I have mentioned above and as are so prominent
+at present. He believes that his work has a less material side whose
+value need not be explained to the present audience.
+
+In the general line of progress it is natural to find that there are
+certain broad roads along which the main advance has been directed.
+Students of physics and chemistry and the subjects which are allied to
+them find that they are in general considering either matter, or
+electricity, or energy. I make this classification, not from any
+philosophical point of view, but simply for present convenience. The
+first important principle to which I would like to draw your attention
+is that each of these things can be measured quantitatively. If we
+accept the weight of a substance as an indirect measure of the amount of
+matter present, then we all know we can express the amount of matter in
+any given body in terms of a fundamental unit, like a pound or a gramme;
+and the idea has been put to immemorial use. In later years we have
+learnt that electricity itself is also a quantity and that the amount of
+electricity which stands on an electrified body, or flows past a given
+point in an electric conductor, as for example the wire connected to an
+electric light, can be expressed arithmetically in terms of some unit.
+Instruments are made for the purpose of measuring quantities of
+electricity in terms of the legal standard. It is one of the functions
+of a Government Institution, like the National Physical Laboratory, to
+test such instruments and report on their accuracy. International
+conferences have been held for the purpose of reducing these units to as
+small a number as possible so that people may be able to trade less
+wastefully and more conveniently, so that also the barriers between
+peoples may be broken down and the interchange of ideas as well as of
+materials may be made more easily. Without an arrangement of this kind
+it would be impossible to carry on industrial life in which use is made
+of electricity. It would be as difficult as to hold a market without the
+use of weights and scales, more difficult, in fact, since anyone can
+estimate the size of a piece of cloth or the amount of corn in a sack,
+but no one has a natural sense by which he can estimate an amount of
+electricity.
+
+In just the same way energy can be measured as a quantity in terms of a
+fundamental unit. The discovery that this was so was made by Joule and
+others towards the middle of the nineteenth century, and lit the road
+for further advance as a dark street is lit by the sudden turning-up of
+the lamps. All modern industry rests on this principle. We are now so
+accustomed to the idea that energy is a quantity that we can hardly
+realize a time when it was merely a vague term. If we want an
+illustration of how thoroughly we have grasped this idea let us remember
+that when we pay our electric-light bill we pay so much money for so
+many units of energy supplied; for so much energy, let us note, not for
+so much electricity, since we take into account not only the actual
+amount of electricity driven through our house wires, but also the
+magnitude of the force which is there to drive it. Energy exists in many
+forms: energy of motion, heat, gravitational energy, chemical energy,
+radiation, and so on. In the transformations of energy which are
+continually occurring in all natural processes, there is never any
+change in the total amount of energy. This is the famous principle of
+the Conservation of Energy. Sometimes it is stated in the form
+'Perpetual motion is impossible'.
+
+One of the most important forms of energy is radiation. The constant
+outpouring by the sun of energy in this form is vital to us. The fact
+was obvious long ago and that is one of the reasons why light and heat
+have interested students of science in all ages.
+
+There exist then three main subjects of study--matter, electricity, and
+energy. These themselves and their mutual relations have been, and are,
+the principal objects of interest to the scientific student, and from
+our strivings to understand them we have learnt most of what we know.
+All three are quantities and all are expressible in terms of units.
+
+Now there is one point which I have thought would especially interest
+you. A very remarkable tendency of modern discovery shows more and more
+clearly that not only are these things quantities which we can express
+in units of our own choosing, but that Nature herself has already chosen
+units for them. The natural unit does not, of course, bear any exact
+connexion with our own. This being so, it must be of the utmost
+importance that we should know what these natural units are and so be
+able to understand what Nature is ready to tell us. Nature has chosen to
+speak in a certain language; we must get to know that language.
+
+In the first place we know surely that there are natural units of
+matter. This was the great discovery made by Dalton in the beginning of
+the nineteenth century. When he found that each of the known elements,
+such as copper or oxygen or carbon, consisted ultimately of atoms, all
+the atoms of any one element being alike, he laid the foundation on
+which the huge structure of modern chemistry has been raised. The
+chemist takes one or more atoms of one element, one or more of another,
+and may be of a third or fourth, and he puts them together into a
+compound which we call a molecule. The molecule for example of ordinary
+salt contains always one atom of chlorine and one of sodium. Chlorine
+and sodium are elements, salt is a compound. Six atoms of carbon and six
+of hydrogen put together in a certain way make benzene. In the same way
+every substance that we meet is capable of analysis, showing ultimately
+the molecules as made up, according to a definite plan, of so many atoms
+of the various elements. In analytical chemistry molecules are dissected
+in order to discover the mode of their building; in synthetic chemistry
+the atoms are put together to make a molecule which is already known to
+have, or even may be anticipated to have, certain properties. This is
+the work of the chemist. Sometimes enormous forces are concerned in this
+pulling apart and putting together, witness the terrific power of modern
+explosives. But the same kind of handling by the chemist may be devoted
+to the delicate construction of a molecule which gives a certain colour
+to the dyer's vat and so pleases the eye that the great cloth industries
+feel the consequence, and nations themselves are affected by the flow of
+trade. After all, since the processes of the physical world operate
+ultimately through the power and properties of molecules, it is not
+surprising that the chemist's work in these and numberless other ways
+has such tremendous influence in the world.
+
+Here then by the recognition of the units of matter which Nature has
+chosen for herself it has been possible to do great things.
+
+It should be observed that the atom, in spite of its name, is not
+something which is incapable of all further division; it is only
+incapable of retaining its properties on division. When an atom of
+radium breaks down in the unique operation during which its singular
+properties are manifested, it dies as radium and becomes two atoms, one
+of helium, the other of a different and rare substance. It will interest
+you to know that the airships of the future are expected to be filled
+with this non-inflammable helium.
+
+The discovery of the atomic nature of electricity came later. Faraday
+established the fact that in certain processes there was more than a
+hint that electricity was always present in multiples of a definite
+unit. In the process called electrolysis the electric current is driven
+across a cell full of liquid containing molecules of some substance.
+When the electricity passes there is a loosening of the bonds that bind
+together the atoms of the molecule, and a separation; atoms of one kind
+travel with the electricity across the cell and are deposited where the
+current leaves the cell; the other kind travel the opposite way. In this
+way for example we deposit silver on metal objects in electro-plating
+processes, or separate out the purest copper for certain electrical
+purposes. The striking thing which Faraday discovered was that the
+number of atoms deposited always bore a very simple relation to the
+quantity of electricity that passes. The same current passing in
+succession through cells containing different kinds of molecules broke
+up the same number of molecules in each cell. It was as if in each
+electrolytic cell atoms of matter and atoms of electricity travelled
+together. The movement of an atom meant the simultaneous movement of a
+definite quantity of electricity. Electricity was, so to speak, done up
+in little equal parcels, and an atom of matter on the move, which was
+termed an ion, or wanderer, carried, not a vaguely defined amount of
+electricity, but one of these definite parcels.
+
+It was not, however, until the later years of the nineteenth century
+that the natural unit of electricity was manifested by itself and
+without a carrier. At a famous address to the British Association at
+York in 1881 Sir William Crookes described the first marvellous
+experiments in which this feat had been accomplished, though there was
+still to come a long controversy before the interpretation was clearly
+accepted. It is now definitely established that there is a fundamental
+atom of electricity which we now call the electron. As we all know
+electrification is of two kinds--a positive and a negative. The electron
+is of the negative kind. There does not appear to be a corresponding
+positive atom of electricity, or at least not one that is so singular in
+its properties as the electron. Electrons go to the making of all atoms,
+just as atoms go to the making of molecules. The atom which is neutral,
+that is, shows neither positive nor negative electrification, must
+contain positive electricity in some form to balance the electrons which
+we know it contains. When we strip an atom, as we know how to do, of one
+or more of these electrons, the remainder is positively charged. The
+positive ion is any sort of an atom or molecule which has become
+positively electrified in this way. An atom which has become positive by
+the loss of one or more of its electrons exercises a force on any spare
+electrons in its neighbourhood or on any atom carrying a spare electron.
+When there are large numbers of atoms seeking in this way to become
+neutral once more, as occurs often in Nature, the forces generated may
+be tremendous. They are shown, for example, in the lightning-stroke. But
+indeed it would seem that all the chemical forces of which we have
+already spoken depend ultimately upon the electric state of the atom
+concerned.
+
+It is because the force which a positively-charged atom exerts on an
+electron is so great and because the electron is so light and easily
+moved compared to an atom that the electron has not been isolated at
+will until recent years. The isolation in fact depends upon the electron
+being endowed with a sufficient speed to carry it through or past the
+action of an atom which is seeking to absorb it into its system. A lump
+of matter flying in space might enter our solar system with such speed
+as to be able to pass through and go on its way almost undeflected. Or
+again, it might have a much lower speed and go so much nearer the sun
+that it was seriously deflected in its course, as we see in the case of
+comet visitors. But if for some reason or other the lump of matter found
+itself inside the solar system without the endowment of high velocity it
+would certainly be absorbed. Just so an electron can pass through an
+atom with or without serious deviation from its line of motion, provided
+that motion is rapid enough. Only recently have we been able to exert
+electric forces of sufficient strength to set an electron in motion with
+the speed it must have if it is to maintain an individual existence Now
+we can gather electrons at will, dragging them from the interior of
+solid bodies, and hurl them with tremendous speed like a stream of
+projectiles. Since in the open air the speed is soon lost by innumerable
+collisions with the air-molecules, the effect can only be studied
+satisfactorily in a glass bulb from which the air has been evacuated.
+Crookes made great improvements in air-pumps during an investigation on
+thallium, and consequently was able to obtain the high vacuum required
+for the experiment with the electron streams. It was afterwards found by
+Roentgen that when an electron stream in an evacuated bulb was directed
+upon a target placed within the bulb, a remarkable radiation issued
+from the target. Thus arose the so-called X or Roentgen rays. As you all
+know they have for many years played a most important part in surgery
+and medicine. You may have heard that during the war they were also used
+to examine the interior of aeroplane constructions and to look for flaws
+invisible from without. Although X-Rays are of the same nature as light
+rays they can penetrate where light rays cannot, passing in greater or
+less degree through materials which are opaque to visible light and
+allowing us to examine the interior which is hidden from the eye.
+
+Every electric discharge is essentially a hurried rush of electrons.
+When we rub two bodies together and they become electrified we have in
+some way or other torn electrons from one of the bodies and piled them
+on the other. The former becomes the positively charged body and the
+latter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is
+spun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process
+too dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as
+it passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin
+the threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute
+hooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. The spinning operation
+would come to an end were there not means provided by which the air can
+be so filled with moisture that the fibres become damp and the action
+ceases. So in some cases a stream of air filled with positive and
+negative ions is made to play upon the fibres; the fibres select what
+ions they want, and so neutralizing themselves, spinning can proceed
+again.
+
+When a current of electricity runs along a wire there is in fact nothing
+more than a procession of electrons. The stream of electrons that runs
+through the filaments in the lamps that light this room, raising the
+filaments to a white heat, are set in motion by the dynamos in the city.
+There is a complete wire circuit, including the dynamo, the conductors,
+and the lamps. When the dynamos are not working the electrons do not as
+a whole move either way, though they are always there. When the dynamo
+begins to turn, the electrons set out on their continuous journey.
+
+Electrons are involved in the emission of wireless signals, and in their
+receipt. The so-called 'valve', which multiplies minute electric signals
+and was so greatly improved during the war, depends entirely on the
+action of electrons, and the brilliant experimental work was based on
+the newly-acquired knowledge of their properties.
+
+I have told you that under certain circumstances a stream of electrons
+may generate X-Rays, in reality a form of light rays. This action is a
+very common one, and it is curious that the faster the electron goes the
+shorter is the wave-length of the radiation. A very fast electron
+generates an X-Ray of so short a wave-length that the penetrating power
+of the ray, which goes with the shortness of the wave, is excessive, and
+in this way we may have rays which go right through the human body or
+even through inches of steel. As the speed of the exciting electron
+becomes less, the X-Rays are less penetrating. With still slower
+electrons we may generate ordinary light, and it will take a slower
+electron to generate red than to generate blue. The slowest electrons we
+use in this way have a speed of many hundred miles per second; the
+fastest have a speed which nearly approaches that of light, or 186,000
+miles a second.
+
+And conversely radiation can set electrons in motion. When X-Rays are
+driven into a patient's body electrons are set in motion within, and
+moving over certain minute distances, initiate chemical actions which
+are necessary to some cure. Or they may go right through the body and
+fall on a photographic plate, setting in operation chemical action which
+forms a picture on the plate.
+
+There is another occasion of an entirely different kind when the
+electron is greatly in evidence and displays effects which are most
+astonishing and significant. Every atom of radium or other radio-active
+substances sooner or later meets with the catastrophe in which its life
+as radium ends and atoms of other substances are formed. At that moment
+occurs the emission which is the characteristic property of the
+substance. One of the radiations emitted consists of high-velocity
+electrons, moving, some of them, nearly as fast as light.
+
+Now it is found that when the speed approaches that of light, 186,000
+miles or 3 x 10^{10} centimetres per second, the energy is higher than
+it should be if it followed the usual rule, viz. energy is equal to half
+the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity. It would seem that an
+electron moving with the velocity of light would have infinite energy;
+or, to put the matter in another way, the experimenter in his laboratory
+can never hope to observe an electron moving so fast; it would be the
+end of his laboratory and of himself if ever it turned up.
+
+Linked up with this result is the very strange fact that no one has ever
+been able to find any direct evidence of the existence of the ether,
+which is postulated in order to carry light-waves. It has been pictured
+as a medium through which the heavenly bodies move, and to which their
+motions may be referred. But when light is launched into the ether, its
+apparent velocity must depend on whether it travels with or against the
+drift of the ether through the laboratory where the measurement is made.
+The experiment has been performed without the discovery of any such
+difference, although the method was amply accurate enough to detect the
+effect that might be expected. It was afterwards shown that the negative
+result might be explained by supposing that a measure of length varied
+in length according to whether it was travelling with or against the
+ether. But the continual failure of all such experiments has led to a
+remarkable hypothetical development with which the name of Einstein is
+firmly connected. It is supposed that some flaw must exist in our
+fundamental hypotheses, and that if this were corrected we should then
+find that we ought to get the same value for the velocity of light
+however and whenever we measured it, and at the same time we should find
+that no measurement of the velocity of a body moving relative to the
+observer would ever equal the velocity of light. The hypothesis denies
+the existence of an absolute standard to which motions can be referred,
+and insists that they must all be considered relatively to the observer.
+It is called the principle of relativity. Calculations of its
+consequences begin with the necessary changes in the fundamentals, such
+as Einstein has introduced.[70]
+
+Time does not allow me to say more of the innumerable ways in which
+electrons play an essential part in all the processes in the world. We
+have long believed that this is so, but the picture has never been so
+clear to us as it is now; and with our understanding our power is
+increased. Yet once more the illumination of our understanding comes
+from our recognition that Nature has preferred the discrete to the
+continuous and that electricity is not infinitely divisible but is, like
+matter, and even more simply than matter, of an atomic structure. And we
+have found the unit and learnt how to handle it.
+
+It is even more strange that it may now be said of energy that there are
+signs of atomicity. It may seem absurd to think that the energy which is
+transformed in any operation is transformed in multiples of a universal
+unit or units, so that the operation cannot be arrested at any desired
+stage but only at definite intervals. Indeed we have no right to assert
+that this is always true. But undoubtedly there are cases in which the
+atomicity of energy is clear enough, as for example in the interchange
+of energy between electrons in motion and radiation. It is remarkable
+that when radiation sets an electron in motion, the electron acquires a
+perfectly definite speed depending only on the wave-length of the
+radiation and not on its intensity, and has apparently absorbed from the
+radiation a definite unit of energy. Radiation of a particular
+wave-length cannot spend its energy in this way except in multiples of a
+certain unit, because each of the electrons which it sets in motion has
+the same initial energy, which it must have got from the radiation. In
+other words, energy of radiation of the particular wave-length can only
+be transformed into energy of movement of electrons in multiples of a
+certain 'quantum' peculiar to that wave-length. The intensity of the
+radiation, that is to say, the amount of energy moving along the beam,
+can only affect the number of electrons set in motion and not the speed
+of any one of them. During the last few years a very extraordinary
+theory has been developed on the basis of these and similar facts. I
+doubt if it would be more profitable to give further instances at
+present, but I have mentioned it because it seems to show looming on the
+horizon of our knowledge another tendency of Nature to make use of the
+atomic principle.
+
+I will only add that the whole position of physics is indeed at this
+time of extraordinary interest, and at any moment there may be some
+great discovery or illuminating thought which will explain the present
+startling difficulties and open up new worlds of thought.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Bragg, _Rays and Crystals_ (Ball & Sons).
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 70: Since this address was given, the results of the Eclipse
+Expedition to Brazil are considered to have confirmed in a satisfactory
+manner one of the most remarkable deductions made by Einstein from the
+principles which he maintains. The matter has roused so much interest
+that some of the leading exponents of the relativity principle have
+published careful accounts intended for students not familiar with it:
+it would therefore be superfluous to discuss the matter here.]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY DURING THE LAST SIXTY YEARS
+
+PROFESSOR LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.
+
+
+On November 24, 1859, _The Origin of Species_ was published, and this
+date marks the beginning of an epoch in every branch of biology. Before
+it, Biology had been almost entirely a descriptive science, but within a
+few years after the publication of the _Origin_ its effects began to
+colour all aspects of biological research. A co-ordinating and unifying
+principle had been found, and the leading idea of biologists ceased to
+be to describe living things as they are, and became transformed into
+the attempt to discover how they are related to one another. The first
+effect of this change of attitude was chiefly to turn biologists towards
+the task of tracing phylogenetic or evolutionary relationships between
+different groups of animals--the drawing up of probable or possible
+genealogical trees and the explanation of natural classification on an
+evolutionary basis. When once, however, the notion of cause and effect,
+or more correctly of relationship, between the phenomena seen in living
+beings had become familiar to biologists, it spread far beyond the
+limits of tracing genealogical connexions between different animals and
+plants. It made possible the conception of a true Science of Life, in
+which every phenomenon seen in a living organism should fall into its
+true place in relation to the rest, and in which also the phenomena of
+life should be correlated with those discovered in the inorganic
+sciences of Chemistry and Physics.
+
+The history of the various branches of biological science in the past
+sixty years reflects the general course of these tendencies. Until
+shortly after 1859, the study of morphology, or the comparative
+structure of animals (and of plants) was intimately related with that of
+physiology, that is, with the study of function. In the years following
+the appearance of the _Origin_, however, anatomists and morphologists
+were seized with a new interest. For the time at least, the chief aim in
+studying structure was no longer to explain function, but rather to
+explain how that structure had come into being in the course of
+evolution, and how it was related with homologous but different
+structures in other forms. The result was a tendency to a divorce
+between morphology and physiology, or at least between morphologists and
+physiologists, which led to the division into two more or less distinct
+sciences of what had hitherto been regarded as closely inter-related
+branches of one. The greater men of the early part of the period, such
+as Huxley, remained both morphologists and physiologists, but most of
+their followers fell inevitably into one or the other group, and in
+discussing the later phases of biological progress it will be necessary
+to keep them separate.
+
+Apart from its effect on the systematic and anatomical side of Biology,
+the idea of Evolution, and especially of Darwin's theory of Natural
+Selection, had important consequences on that side of the science which
+may be described as Natural History. Before the appearance of Darwin's
+work, Natural History consisted chiefly in the observation and
+collection of facts about the habits and life-history of animals and
+plants, which as a rule had no unifying principle unless they were used,
+as in the Bridgewater Treatises, to illustrate 'the power, wisdom, and
+goodness of God'. Now, however, a new motive was provided--that of
+discovering the uses to the organism of its various colours,
+structures, and habits, and the application of the principle of natural
+selection to show how these characters conduced to the preservation and
+further evolution of the species. And out of this interest in the theory
+of natural selection grew in the last twenty years of the nineteenth
+century the greatly increased attention to the facts and theories of
+heredity, which was stimulated by Darwin's hypothesis of Pangenesis and
+especially by Weismann's speculations about the nature and behaviour of
+the 'germ-plasm'. Before the appearance of Weismann's work, the
+germ-cells, which bear somehow or other the hereditary characters that
+appear in the offspring, were supposed to be produced directly from the
+body of the parent. Darwin provisionally suggested that every cell of
+every organism gives off minute particles which become congregated in
+the germ-cells, and that these cells thus contain representative
+portions of all parts of the parent's body. Weismann, on the basis of
+his work on the origin of the germ-cells in Medusae and Insects,
+maintained that these cells are not derived from the body, but only from
+pre-existing germ-cells stored within it--that, in fact, although an egg
+gives rise to a hen, a hen does not give rise to an egg, but only keeps
+inside her a store of embryonic eggs which mature and are laid as the
+time comes round. The theory had to be modified to suit the facts of
+regeneration and vegetative reproduction, but in essence it was accepted
+by the biological world and is the orthodox opinion (if such a word may
+be used in Science) at the present day. The difference between the two
+views is not only of theoretical interest, for it involves the whole
+question of whether characteristics acquired by an individual during its
+life in response to external conditions can or cannot be transmitted to
+offspring. If the germ-cells contain representatives of all parts of the
+body, modifications impressed on the body during its life may at least
+possibly be transmitted to offspring born after the modifications have
+taken place. If, however, the germ-cells are independent of the rest of
+the body, and only stored within it for safe-keeping like a deed-box in
+the vaults of a bank, it would seem impossible for any environmental
+influence, whether for good or ill, to take effect on the offspring.
+This controversy on the heritability of 'acquired characters' was one of
+the most important towards the end of last century, and although the
+majority of biologists now follow Weismann in so far as they deny that
+'acquired' characters are transmissible, the question is not yet
+completely settled; all that can be said is that, in spite of many
+attempts to prove the contrary, there is no satisfactory evidence of the
+transmission to offspring of effects impressed on the body of the
+parent, unless the germ-cells themselves have been affected by the same
+cause--as for example in some cases of long-continued poisoning by
+alcohol or similar drugs.
+
+While the problem of the transmission of acquired characters, and of the
+cause of variation and its relation to evolution, was occupying much of
+the attention of biologists, the whole problem entered upon a new phase
+in the year 1900 with the re-discovery of Mendel's work on heredity.
+Mendel worked with plants, and published his results in 1865, but at
+that time the biological world was too much occupied with the fierce
+controversy which raged over _The Origin of Species_ to take much notice
+of a paper the bearing of which upon it was not appreciated. Mendel's
+discovery never came to the notice of Darwin, was buried in an obscure
+periodical, and remained unknown until many years after the death of its
+author. In 1900 it was unearthed, and, largely owing to the work of
+Bateson, it rapidly became known as one of the most important
+contributions to Biology made during the period under review.
+
+This is not the place to describe in detail the nature of Mendel's
+theory. Its essence is, firstly, that the various characteristics of an
+organism are in general inherited quite independently of one another;
+and, secondly, that the germ-cells of a hybrid are pure in respect of
+any one character, that is to say, that any one germ-cell can only
+transmit any unit character as it was received from one parent or the
+other, and not a combination of the two. This leads to a conception of
+the organism as something like a mosaic, in which each piece of the
+pattern is transmitted in inheritance independently of the rest, and in
+which any piece cannot be modified by association with a different but
+corresponding piece derived from another ancestor. It is impossible to
+say as yet whether this conception at all completely represents the
+nature of the living organism, but it is one which is exercising
+considerable influence in biological thought, and if established it will
+mark a revolution in Biology hardly inferior to that brought about in
+Physics and Chemistry by the discovery of radio-activity.
+
+An important consequence of the advance in our knowledge of heredity
+associated with the work of Mendel and his successors is a tendency to
+doubt whether natural selection is of such fundamental importance in
+shaping the course of evolution as was supposed in the years of the
+first enthusiasm which followed the publication of the _Origin_.
+
+Darwin based his theory of Natural Selection on the belief which he
+derived from breeders of plants and animals, that the kind of variation
+used by them to produce new breeds was the small and apparently
+unimportant differences which distinguish a 'fine' from a 'poor'
+specimen. He supposed that the skilled breeder picked out as parents of
+his stock those individuals which were slightly superior in one feature
+or another, and that by the accumulative effect of these successive
+selections not only was the breed steadily improved, but also, by
+divergent selection, new breeds were produced. Experience shows,
+however, that although this method is used to keep breeds up to the
+required standard, it is rarely, if ever, the means by which new breeds
+arise. New breeds commonly come into existence either by a 'sport' or
+mutation, or by crossing two already distinct races, and by selecting
+from among the heterogeneous descendants of the cross those individuals
+which show the required combination of characters. And it is further
+found that most of the distinguishing features of various breeds of
+domestic animals and plants are inherited according to Mendel's Law,
+suggesting that each of these characters is a unit, like one piece of a
+mosaic, independent of the rest. Now it is easy to see how the selection
+of small, continuously varying characters could take place in Nature by
+the destruction of all those individuals which failed to reach a certain
+standard, but it is much more difficult to understand how natural
+selection could act on comparatively large, sporadic, unco-ordinated
+'sports'. There is thus a distinct tendency at present to regard natural
+selection as less omnipotent in directing the course of evolution than
+was formerly supposed, but it must be admitted that no very satisfactory
+alternative hypothesis has been suggested. Some have supposed that there
+is a kind of organic momentum which causes evolution to continue in
+those directions in which it has already proceeded, while others have
+postulated, like Bergson, an _elan vital_ as a kind of directive agency.
+Others again have reverted towards the older belief in the inherited
+effects of environment--a belief which, in spite of the arguments of
+Weismann and his followers, has never been without its supporters. The
+present condition of this part of biology, as of many others, is one of
+open-mindedness approaching agnosticism. There is dissatisfaction with
+the beliefs which satisfied the preceding generation, and which were
+held up almost as dogmas, but there is no clear vision of the direction
+in which a truer view may be sought.
+
+Before leaving this side of the subject, reference must be made to one
+important aspect of modern work on heredity--that of the inheritance of
+'mental and moral' characteristics. As a result of the work of the
+biometric school founded by Galton and Pearson, it has been shown that
+the so-called mental and moral characteristics of man are inherited in
+the same manner and to the same extent as his physical features. Of the
+theoretical importance of this demonstration this is not the place to
+speak; its practical value is unquestionable, and may in the future have
+important effects on sociological problems.
+
+Another notable line of advance, entirely belonging to the period under
+review, and chiefly the product of the present century, is seen in the
+science of Cytology--the investigation of the microscopic structure of
+the cells of which the body is composed. The marvellous phenomena of
+cell and nuclear division have revealed much of the formerly unsuspected
+complexity of living things, while the universality of the processes
+shows how fundamentally alike is life in all its forms. In recent years
+great progress has been made in correlating the phenomena of heredity
+and of the determination of sex with the visible structural features of
+the germ-cells. Weismann attempted a beginning of this over thirty years
+ago, but the detailed knowledge of the facts was then insufficient.
+Since the discovery of Mendel's Law, a great amount of work has been
+done, chiefly in America, by E.B. Wilson and T.H. Morgan and their
+pupils, on tracing the actual physical basis of hereditary transmission.
+Although the matter is far from being completely known, the results
+obtained make it almost indubitable that inherited characters are in
+some way borne by the _chromosomes_ in the nuclei of the germ-cells.
+The work of Morgan and his school has shown that the actual order in
+which these inherited 'factors' are arranged in the chromosomes can
+almost certainly be demonstrated, and his results go far to support the
+conception of the organism, referred to above, as a combination or
+mosaic of independently inherited features.
+
+It was said at the beginning of this sketch that most of the more
+notable lines of advance in Biology could be traced back to the impetus
+given by the acceptance of the theory of Evolution, and the desire to
+test and prove that theory in every biological field. It is most
+convenient, therefore, to take this root-idea as a starting-point, and
+to see how the various branches of study have diverged from it and have
+themselves branched out in various ways, and how these branches have
+often again become intertwined and united in the later development of
+the science.
+
+Perhaps the most obvious method of testing the theory of evolution is by
+the study of fossil forms, and our knowledge of these has progressed
+enormously during the period under review. Not only have a number of new
+and strange types of ancient life come to light, but in some cases, e.g.
+in that of the horse and elephant, a very complete series of
+evolutionary stages has been discovered. In this branch, however, as in
+almost all others, the results have not exactly fulfilled the
+expectations of the early enthusiasts. On the one hand, evolution has
+been shown to be a much more complex thing than at first seemed
+probable; and on the other, many of the gaps which it was most hoped to
+fill still remain. A number of most remarkable 'missing links' have been
+discovered, such as, for example, _Archaeopteryx_, the stepping-stone
+between the Reptiles and the Birds, and the faith of the palaeontologist
+in the truth of evolution is everywhere confirmed. But the hope of
+finding all the stages, especially in the ancestry of Man, has not been
+realized, and it has been found that what at one time were regarded as
+direct ancestors are collaterals, and that the problem of human
+evolution is much less simple than was once supposed.
+
+A second important piece of evidence in favour of evolution is provided
+by the study of the geographical distribution of animals, on which much
+work was done in the earlier part of the period under review. And in
+this connexion mention must be made of the science of Oceanography, for
+our whole knowledge of life in the abysses of the ocean, and almost all
+that we know of the conditions of life in the sea in general, has been
+gained in the last fifty years.
+
+Another of the chief lines of evidence for the truth of the evolution
+theory is based on the study of embryology, and this also was followed
+with great vigour by the zoologists of the last thirty years of the
+nineteenth century. It is found that in many instances animals
+recapitulate in their early development the stages through which their
+ancestors passed in the course of evolution. Land Vertebrates, including
+man, have in their early embryonic life gill-clefts, heart and
+circulation, and in some respects skeleton and other organs of the type
+found in fishes, and this can only be explained on the assumption that
+they are descended from aquatic fish-like ancestors. On the basis of
+such facts as these, the theory was formulated that every animal
+recapitulates in ontogeny (development) the stages passed through in its
+phylogeny (evolution), and great hopes were founded upon this principle
+of discovering the systematic position and evolutionary history of
+isolated and aberrant forms. In many cases the search has led to
+brilliant results, but, as in the case of palaeontology, in many others
+the light that was hoped for has not been forthcoming. For it soon
+became evident that the majority of animals show adaptation to their
+environment not only in their adult stages but also in their larval or
+embryonic period, and these adaptations have led to modifications of the
+course of development which are often so great as to mask, or obscure
+altogether, the ancestral structure which may once have existed.
+Although, therefore, the results of embryological research have provided
+most convincing proof of the truth of the theory of evolution in
+general, they have not completely justified the hopes of the early
+embryologists that by this method all the outstanding phylogenetic
+problems might be solved.
+
+The detailed study of embryology, however, has led to most important
+results apart from the particular purpose for which most of the earlier
+investigations in this field were originally undertaken. For the study
+of embryology, at first purely descriptive and comparative, was soon
+found to involve fundamental problems concerning the factors which
+control development. An egg consists of a single cell, and it develops
+by the division of this cell into two, then into four, eight, and so
+forth, until a mass of cells is produced. In some cases all these cells
+are to all appearance alike, or nearly alike; in others the included
+yolk is from the first segregated more or less completely into some
+cells, leaving the other cells without it. But in any case, after this
+process of cell-division has proceeded for a certain time,
+differentiation begins to set in--some cells become modified in one way,
+others in another, and from what was a relatively homogeneous mass an
+organized embryo, with highly differentiated parts, appears. The problem
+immediately propounds itself--what are the factors which control this
+differentiation? This problem is essentially a physiological one, and
+yet, since it arises most conspicuously in a field which has been worked
+by professed zoologists rather than physiologists, it has been studied
+more by those trained in zoology and botany than by those who have
+specialized in physiology. In this way, as in many other directions,
+such as in the study of heredity, of sex, and of the effects of the
+environment on the colours and structure of animals, the trend of
+zoology in recent years has returned towards the physiological side, and
+the old division which separated the sciences (but which has never so
+seriously affected students of plant life) is being obliterated.
+
+Hence we are led back to consider the progress of Physiology as a
+whole--a subject with which the present writer hesitates to deal except
+in a very superficial manner. Physiology as an organized science has
+inevitably been deeply influenced by its close relation with medicine,
+with the result that through a large portion of the period under review
+it has concerned itself chiefly with the functions of the human body in
+particular, or at least chiefly with Vertebrates from which, by analogy,
+the human functions may be inferred. In this field it has made enormous
+progress, and a vast amount of knowledge has been gained with regard to
+the function and mechanism of all the parts and organs of the body. It
+may perhaps be suggested, however, that in the pursuit of this detailed
+(and in practice absolutely necessary) knowledge, physiologists have to
+some extent lost sight of the wood in their preoccupation with the
+trees. That is to say, while they have advanced an immense distance in
+their knowledge of organs, they have not yet got as far as might be
+hoped in the understanding of the organism--which is to say no more than
+that the great and fundamental problem of Biology, the nature and
+meaning of Life, is apparently almost as far from solution as ever. To
+this further reference will be made below.
+
+The progress of Physiology has been so great in all its branches that it
+is difficult to decide which most deserve mention; perhaps the most
+important advances are those connected with the nervous system and with
+internal secretions. Little or nothing was known fifty years ago of the
+minute structure of the nervous system, nor of the special functions of
+its different parts. Now the main functions of the various parts of the
+brain, and the relation of these parts to the activities of the other
+organs of the body, are well known, although much remains to be
+discovered with regard to the more detailed localization of function.
+The study of the microscopic structure of brain and nerve, and
+experiment on the conduction of nervous impulse, have given us some
+insight into the mechanism of the nervous system, but the fundamental
+nature of nervous action still remains unsolved.
+
+The nervous system is the chief co-ordinating link between the various
+organs of the body, but in recent years it has been discovered that the
+relations of the different parts to one another are greatly influenced
+by substances known as internal secretions or 'hormones'. These
+substances are produced by ductless glands (the thyroid, suprarenals,
+&c.), from which they diffuse into the blood-stream and exercise a
+remarkable influence either on particular organs or systems, or on the
+body as a whole. Some of these secretions act specifically on the
+involuntary muscles of the body, others control growth, others the
+development of the secondary sexual characters, such as the distinctive
+plumage of male birds, and also greatly influence the sexual instinct.
+Much still remains to be discovered with regard to them, but it seems
+clear that they are of immense importance in the economy of the body. It
+has been suggested, without much experimental support, however, that if
+a part of the body becomes modified by use or environment, it may
+produce a modified hormone, and that so, by the action of this on the
+germ-cells, the modification may be transmitted to subsequent
+generations.
+
+Before leaving the subject of physiology in the more special or
+technical application of the term, reference must be made to another
+science the growth of which has been largely under the influence of
+medicine. This is bacteriology, one of the newest branches of biology,
+and yet one which both from its practical importance and from the
+theoretical interest of its discoveries is rapidly taking a foremost
+place. Of its practical achievements in connexion with disease, and with
+the part played by bacteria and other minute organisms in the life and
+affairs of man, it is not necessary to speak. Every one knows the great
+advances that have been made in recent years in identifying (and to a
+less extent in controlling) disease-producing organisms, whether
+bacteria, protozoa (such as the organisms causing malaria, dysentery,
+etc.), or more highly organized parasites. The attempt, however, to
+combat these pathogenic bacteria has led to discoveries of the highest
+importance with regard to the production of immunity, not only against
+specific germs, but against many organic poisons such as snake venom and
+various vegetable toxins. That an attack of certain diseases leaves the
+patient immune to that disease for a longer or shorter time has of
+course been known for centuries, but it is a modern discovery that a
+specific poison induces the body to produce a specific antidote which
+neutralizes it, and the detailed working out of this principle and the
+study of the means by which the immunity is brought about promise to
+lead us a long way towards the central problem of the nature and
+activities of life itself.
+
+We have seen how zoology has been led back into physiological channels
+of research, and how the study of bacteria is opening up some of the
+deepest problems of the reaction of living things to environmental
+stimuli, and just as the various branches of these sciences interlace
+and influence one another, so all of them, in recent years, have been
+coming into contact with the inorganic sciences of chemistry and
+physics. One of the noteworthy features of science in all its branches
+in recent years has been the tendency of subjects which were at one time
+regarded as distinct to come together again and to find that the
+problems of each can only be successfully attacked by the co-operation
+of the others. In their earlier days the biological sciences were in
+most respects far removed from chemistry and physics; it was recognized,
+of course, that organisms were in one sense at least physico-chemical
+mechanisms, consisting of chemical elements and subject to the
+fundamental laws of matter and energy. With the advent of the theory of
+evolution this conception of the organism as a mechanism took more
+definite shape, and among many biologists the belief was held that in no
+very long time all the phenomena of life would be explicable by known
+physico-chemical laws. Hence arose the scientific materialism which was
+so widespread in the years following the general acceptance of Darwin's
+theory. It was recognized, of course, that our knowledge of organic
+chemistry was at the time entirely inadequate to place this belief upon
+a proved scientific basis, but the expectation of proving it gave a
+great impetus to the study of the physical and chemical phenomena of
+life. This attempt was still further stimulated by the investigation of
+the factors controlling development referred to in a preceding
+paragraph, for it is evident that to a great extent at least these
+factors are chemical and physical in nature. And concurrently, the great
+advances in organic chemistry, resulting in the analysis and in many
+cases in the artificial synthesis of substances previously regarded as
+capable of production only in the tissues of living organisms, made
+possible a much more thorough investigation of the chemical and physical
+basis of vital phenomena. The result of this has been that to a quite
+considerable extent the factors, hitherto mysterious, which control the
+fertilization, division, and differentiation of the egg, the digestion
+and absorption of food, the conduction of nervous impulses, and many of
+the changes undergone in the normal or pathological functioning of the
+organs and tissues, can be ascribed to chemical and physical causes
+which are well known in the inorganic world.
+
+As in other instances, however, some of which have been mentioned above,
+the elucidation of the organism from this point of view has turned out
+to be a much less simple process than the more sanguine of the early
+investigators supposed. The more knowledge has progressed, the more
+complex and intricate has even the simplest organism shown itself to be,
+and although the mechanism of the parts is gradually becoming
+understood, the fundamental mystery of life remains as elusive as ever.
+
+The chief reason for this failure to penetrate appreciably nearer to the
+central mystery of life appears to be the fact that an organism is
+something more than the sum of its various parts and functions. In
+tracing the behaviour of any one part or function, whether it be the
+conduction of a nervous impulse, the supply of oxygen to the tissues by
+the blood, or the transmission of inherited characters by the
+germ-cells, we may be able to give a more or less complete
+physico-chemical or mechanical account of the process. But we seem to
+get little or no nearer to an explanation of the fact that although
+every one of these processes may be explicable by laws familiar in the
+non-living, in the living organism they are co-ordinated in such a way
+that none of them is complete in itself; they are parts of a whole, but
+the whole is not simply a sum of its parts, but is in itself a unity, in
+which all the parts are subject to the controlling influence of the
+whole. An organism, alone among the material bodies which we know, is
+constantly and necessarily in a state of unstable equilibrium, and yet
+has a condition of _normality_ which is maintained by the harmonious
+interaction of all its parts. Every function of the body, if not thus
+co-ordinated with the rest, would very quickly destroy this condition of
+normality, but in consequence of the co-ordination each is subject to
+the needs of the whole, and normality is maintained. When the normality
+is artificially disturbed, all the functions of the body adapt
+themselves to the change, and, if the disturbance be not too great,
+co-operate in the restoration of the normal condition. It is in these
+phenomena of adaptation and organic unity and co-ordination that up to
+the present time the efforts to reduce the phenomena of living things to
+the operation of physico-chemical laws have most conspicuously failed.
+
+From what has been said it will be evident that, fundamentally, all
+biological research, whether its authors are conscious of it or not, is
+directed towards the solution of one central problem--the problem of the
+real and ultimate nature of life. And the main outcome of the work of
+sixty years has been that this problem has begun clearly to emerge as
+the central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem
+a reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be
+insoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it
+has led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living
+and the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem inevitably
+faces us.
+
+Many suggestions for its solution have been made. On the one hand there
+is still, as there always has been, a considerable body of opinion that
+the solution will be a mechanical one--using the word mechanical in the
+widest sense--and that the living differs from the non-living not in
+kind, but only in degree of complexity. The upholders of the mechanistic
+or materialist theory, however, are perhaps less confident than their
+predecessors of the last century, for the solution in this direction
+has to face not only the problem of organic co-ordination already
+referred to, but also that of consciousness and mind. For although the
+study of psychology on physiological lines has made similar progress to
+that of other branches of physiology, it seems to approach little nearer
+to a discovery of the nature of the relation between consciousness in
+its various aspects and the material body with which it is associated.
+So long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a
+satisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.
+
+On the other hand, there has been a revival of the ancient tendency
+towards what is called a vitalistic solution. A certain number of
+biologists, impressed by the apparent similarity between the control and
+co-ordination exercised by the organism over its functions and the
+conscious control of voluntary activity with which we are familiar in
+ourselves, have supposed that these things are not merely superficially
+similar but have a real and fundamental affinity. This does not mean
+that organic control is always conscious, but that there is a
+controlling entity, non-material in nature, which is similar in kind to
+the 'ego' of a self-conscious human being. They suppose that the
+organism is not simply material, but is a material mechanism controlled
+by a non-material entity the nature of which is more akin to what we
+mean by the word spirit than anything else of which we are accustomed to
+think. They are in fact dualists, and divide reality into the material
+and spatial on the one hand, and non-material principle or entity which
+may fairly be called spiritual on the other.
+
+And, in the third place, there are those who seek a solution which
+denies the truth of both the preceding, and which is metaphysically
+idealist or monist in character. To them, if the present writer
+understands their attitude, matter and spirit are different aspects of
+one reality. In the inorganic and non-living, phenomena appear which are
+generalized under the laws of physics and chemistry, but the phenomena
+of life fall into a different category which includes the conception of
+co-ordination or individuality, while a still higher category is
+required to include the phenomena of consciousness and mind.
+
+It is evident from this brief review that Biology in the period
+considered has passed through three main stages. The first of these was
+the acceptance of a new illuminating and unifying idea, which led to
+enthusiastic research in many directions for the purpose of proving and
+amplifying it. Very rapidly new facts, or new interpretations of facts
+already known, were shown to fall into line, and the evolution theory
+became converted from a hypothesis into something approaching a dogma.
+Not only the idea of organic evolution itself, but all the current
+beliefs about the method of evolution, and the larger speculations to
+which it gave rise, were widely regarded as almost indisputable, and
+where difficulties and inconsistencies appeared, these were supposed to
+be due solely to the insufficiency of our knowledge, which would soon be
+remedied. Then, however, as detailed knowledge increased, the voice of
+criticism and doubt was more frequently heard. The various branches of
+Biology began once more to overlap, and to join hands with chemistry and
+physics, and it became clear that the interpretation of life was very
+far from being a simple problem. And so, as with the Atomic Theory in
+chemistry, the present position is one of dissolution of the older ideas
+and of hesitation to express a fixed belief, for while Biology has a
+clearer vision of the problem before it than ever it had, its wider
+knowledge reveals the fact that the problem is far from being solved.
+Perhaps one of the chief results of the great increase of knowledge
+during the past sixty years has been to show us the immensity of the
+field still remaining to be explored.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+Centenary volume on Darwin (Cambridge University Press).
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ART
+
+A. CLUTTON-BROCK
+
+
+My subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so
+far as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely
+philosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of
+the speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as
+they seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject
+is the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to
+connect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our
+beliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we
+produce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to
+confess it has not yet appeared.
+
+Indeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or
+other of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who
+are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only
+imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation
+of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them
+and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the
+artists are often confused in their practice of it.
+
+The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great
+liveliness, by Whistler in his _Ten O'clock_, and has had great
+influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and
+upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no
+concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There
+is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental
+one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.
+
+Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.
+
+     'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.
+
+     'There never was an art-loving nation.
+
+     'In the beginning man went forth each day--some to do battle,
+     some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the
+     field--all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until
+     there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose
+     pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with
+     the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
+     gourd.
+
+     'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared
+     not for conquest and fretted in the field--this designer of
+     quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in
+     nature about him curious curvings--as faces are seen in the
+     fire--this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'
+
+     'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
+     people, they took the gourd--and drank from it.'
+
+Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had
+traced on it.
+
+     'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a
+     consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
+     was none other.'
+
+So gradually there came the great ages of art.
+
+     'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and
+     drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
+     drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'
+
+And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in
+the matter.
+
+But then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class
+
+     'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of
+     the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the
+     gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and
+     charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham
+     and Manchester arose in their might--and Art was relegated to the
+     curiosity shop.'
+
+I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the
+people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at
+all, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one
+values. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and
+you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.
+
+But Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as
+we can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had
+seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him
+starve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples,
+is not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men
+is modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive
+societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that
+reason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups
+they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we
+drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive
+societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all
+dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would
+have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In
+fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist
+because he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read
+himself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes
+in a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is
+wrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a
+relation, and a necessary relation, between the artist and his public;
+but what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to
+answer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in
+fact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ tried to put it
+right.
+
+_What is Art?_ is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but
+I believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this
+contention as shortly as I can in his own words.
+
+     'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this--that
+     one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on
+     to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people
+     are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'
+
+Now this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and
+just because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if
+art is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the
+artist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of
+people who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts
+these conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He
+judges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be
+of no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that
+few can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere
+fails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of
+art exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the
+actual words of Tolstoy:
+
+     'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and
+     diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few
+     people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it
+     will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of
+     people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious
+     life.'
+
+Now this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself.
+You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good,
+you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it
+will satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are
+situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does
+proceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony
+and about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian
+peasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked
+this question about all works of art, we should none of us ever
+experience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of
+music, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that
+is to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of
+people situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to
+decide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself
+belongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting
+of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but
+for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was
+blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy
+of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in
+the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way
+of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art
+would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of
+Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century
+in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he
+condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.
+
+We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the
+tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own
+experience of art. The fact that we _can_ enjoy and experience a work
+of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and
+experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art
+is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his
+own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,
+in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the
+primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and
+always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the
+public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.
+
+According to him the proper aim of art is to do good.
+
+     'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time
+     unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,
+     and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'
+
+The word _unjust_ implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist
+sins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I
+sin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people
+do not enjoy.
+
+But as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good
+but good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of
+art I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to
+other people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that
+is as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking
+whether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of
+it, for I have nothing else to go by.
+
+And so it is with the artist; he cannot begin by asking himself whether
+the mass of men will understand what he proposes to produce; he must
+produce it, and then trust in man, and God, for its effect. Art is
+produced by the individual artist and experienced by the individual man.
+Tolstoy holds that it is to be experienced by mankind in the mass, not
+by individuals; his audience is an abstraction. Whistler holds that it
+is produced by the individual, but for himself, and not experienced by
+mankind either in the mass or as individuals. Both are heretics. What is
+the truth?
+
+I will now turn for a moment to the high aesthetic doctrine of Benedetto
+Croce. He in his _Aesthetic_ tells us that all art is expression. True
+enough, as far as it goes; but what do we mean by expression? Croce's
+doctrine of expression is incomplete, he does not explain clearly what
+he means by expression, because he also avoids the question of the
+necessary relation between the artist and his audience; and this is the
+question which our thought about art has to deal with, just as we have
+to solve it in our practice of art and in our actual relation with the
+artist. Croce does not see that the question--What is expression?
+depends upon the question--What is the relation between the artist and
+his audience? He does see that the audience exists, which Whistler
+denies; he insists that the audience have the same faculties as the
+artist, though to a less degree--that the artist is not a dreamer apart.
+He says indeed that to experience a work of art we also must exercise
+our aesthetic faculty; our very experience of it is itself expression;
+and this is a most important point. But for Croce, as for Whistler, the
+artist, when he expresses himself, is concerned only with what he
+expresses, not with the people to whom he expresses himself. Croce does
+not see this obvious fact, that a work of art is a work of art _because
+it is addressed to some one_ and is not a private activity of the
+artist. That is why he fails to give a satisfying account of the nature
+of expression. Croce cannot distinguish between expression, or art, and
+day-dreaming; but the distinction is this, that as soon as I pass from
+day-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to
+others. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that
+it is addressed to others. A story, for instance, is a story, it has a
+plot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because
+it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical
+form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be
+heard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be
+seen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.
+When a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says--This is what I
+have seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art
+is a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an
+audience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of
+address, there could be no art, no expression, at all.
+
+In fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his
+nature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man
+does not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature
+social always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in
+isolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.
+
+But although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a
+moral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of
+doing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;
+if he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself
+incompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does
+not do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not
+trying to do good.
+
+But what is it that really happens when the artist addresses us, and why
+does he wish to address us? To answer this, we must consider our own
+experience, not merely as an audience but also as artists, for we are,
+as Croce insists, all of us to some extent artists. You have all no
+doubt been aware of some failure and dissatisfaction in those of your
+experiences which seem to you the highest. Suppose, for instance, you
+see some extreme beauty, as of a sunset. It leaves you sad with a
+feeling of your own inadequacy. You have not been equal to it, and why?
+You will say in speaking of it to others--I wish I could tell you what I
+felt or what I saw, but I can't. That wish is itself natural and
+instantly stirred in you by the experience of extreme beauty. The
+experience seems incomplete, because you cannot tell anyone else what
+you felt and saw; and you are hurt by your effort and failure to do so.
+
+It is a fact of human nature that the experience of any beauty does
+arouse in us the desire to communicate our experience; and this desire
+is instinctive. It is not that we wish to do good to others by
+communicating it. It is simply that we wish to communicate it. The
+experience itself is incomplete for us until we communicate it. The
+happiness which it gives us is frustrated by our failure to communicate
+it. We should be utterly happy if we could make others see what we see
+and feel what we feel, but we fail of happiness because we cannot.
+
+Why? One can only conjecture and express conjectures in dull language.
+This beauty is itself a universal quality or virtue which makes
+particular things more real when they have it. It speaks to the
+universal in us, to the everyman in us, and, speaking so, it makes us
+aware of the universal in all men. We too wish to speak to that
+universal, we wish to find it and the more intense reality which is to
+be seen only where it is seen, we wish ourselves to be a part of it; and
+we can do that only when all other men also are a part of it. Beauty
+seems to speak not merely to us but to the whole listening earth, and we
+would be assured that all the earth is listening to it, not to us.
+
+But we ourselves have to play our part in the realizing of this
+universal; the sense of it comes and goes; for the most part we
+ourselves are not aware of it. We are merely particulars, like other
+men, and separated from them by the fact that we are all particulars.
+Only, when for a moment we are aware of it, then we are filled with a
+passion to make it real and permanent; and it is this passion which
+causes art and the blind instinctive effort at art, at communication, at
+expression, which we have all experienced.
+
+But it follows from this that the audience to which the artist addresses
+himself is not any particular men and women: it is mankind. The moment
+he addresses himself to any particular men and women and considers their
+particular wants and desires, he is giving up that very sense of the
+universal that impelled him to expression; he is ceasing to be an artist
+and becoming something else, a tradesman, a philanthropist, a
+politician. The artist as artist speaks to mankind, not to any
+particular set of men; and he speaks not of himself but of that
+universal which he has experienced. His effort is to establish that
+universal relation which he has seen, a universal relation of feeling.
+And to him, in his effort, there is neither time nor space. Mankind are
+not here or there or of this moment or of that; they are everywhere and
+for ever. The voice in Mozart's music is itself a universal voice
+speaking to the universe of universal things. And all art is an acting
+of the beauty that has been experienced, a perpetuation of it so that
+all men may share it for ever. The artist's effort is to be the sunset
+he has seen, to eternalize it in his art, but always so that he and all
+men may be part of this universal by their common experience of it.
+
+So, as I say, the artist must not speak to any particular audience with
+the aim of pleasing them--there is that amount of truth in Whistler's
+doctrine; and he does fail if he does not communicate, since his aim is
+communication--there is that amount of truth in Tolstoy's doctrine.
+
+But the next question that arises is the attitude of ourselves to the
+artist.
+
+We have to remember that he is speaking not to us in particular, but to
+all mankind, and that he speaks, not to please us or to satisfy any
+particular demand of ours, but to communicate to us that universal he
+has experienced so that we with him may become part of it.
+
+It follows then that we must not make any particular demands upon him.
+We must not come with our own ideas of what he ought to give us. If we
+do, we shall be an obstruction between him and that ideal universal
+audience to which he would address himself. We shall be tempting him,
+with our egotistical demands, to comply with them. But these demands we
+are always making; and that is why the relation between the artist and
+any actual public is usually nowadays wrong. I was once looking at
+Tintoret's 'Crucifixion' in the Scuola di San Rocco with a lady, and she
+said to me--'That isn't my idea of a horse.' 'No'--I answered--'it's
+Tintoret's. If it were your idea of a horse, why should you look at it?
+You look at a picture to get the artist's idea.' But that isn't the
+truth about art either. The artist doesn't try to substitute his own
+particular for yours. He tries to communicate to you that universal
+which he has experienced, because it is to him a universal, not his own,
+but all men's, and he wishes to realize it by sharing it with all men.
+His faith, though he may never have consciously expressed it to himself,
+is in this universal which, because it is a universal, can be
+communicated to all men. His effort is based on that faith. He speaks
+because he believes all men can hear, if they will.
+
+So the effort of the audience must be to hear and not to distract him
+with their particular demands. They must not, for instance, demand that
+he shall remind them of what they have found pleasant in actual life.
+They must not complain of him that he does not paint pretty women for
+them, or compose bright cheerful tunes. They are not to him particular
+persons to be tickled according to their particular tastes, but mankind
+to whom he wishes to communicate the universal he has experienced.
+
+So, if there is an actual audience listening for that universal and
+clearing their minds of their own egotistical demands, then art will
+flourish and the artist will be encouraged to communicate that universal
+which he has experienced. But if particular audiences demand this or
+that and are not happy until they get it, if they say to him--Tickle my
+senses--Persuade me that all is for the best in the world as I like it;
+that prosperous people like myself have a right to be prosperous; that I
+am a fine fellow because I once fell in love; that all who disagree with
+me are wicked and absurd--then you will have the kind of art you have
+now, in the theatre, in the picture gallery, in the cinema, in the
+novel; yes, and in your buildings, your cups and saucers, your pots and
+pans even. For in the very arts of use you demand that the craftsman
+shall provide you with what you demand, and as cheap as possible;
+because you do not understand that he should express himself, you do not
+understand also that his expression is worth having and that he ought to
+be paid for it. In the very pattern on a tea-cup, if it is worth having
+at all, there is the communication of that universal which the artist
+has experienced. It is there to remind you of itself whenever you drink
+tea, to bring the sacrament of the universal into everything as if it
+were music accompanying and heightening all our common actions; but if
+you want a fashionable tea-cup cheap, you will get that, and you will
+not get anything expressed or communicated with it. You will be shut up
+in yourself and your own particularity and ugliness. If we want art we
+must know how we should think and feel and act so as to encourage the
+artist to produce it.
+
+But why should we want art at all? I hope I have answered that question
+incidentally. It is so that we may have life more abundantly; for we can
+have life more abundantly only when we are in communication with each
+other, mind flowing into mind, the universal expressing itself in and
+through all of us. We all more or less blindly desire this
+communication, but we seldom know why we desire it or even what exactly
+it is we desire. We make the strangest, clumsiest efforts to communicate
+with each other--I am making one now--and we are constantly inhibited by
+false shame from real communication. We are afraid to be serious with
+each other, afraid of beauty, of the universal, when we see it. On this
+point I will tell a little story from Mr. Kirk's _Study of Silent
+Minds_. At a concert behind the front, an audience of soldiers had
+listened to the ordinary items, a performance, as Mr. Kirk says, 'clean,
+bright, and amusing', which means of course silly and ugly. Then the
+orchestra played the introduction to the _Keys of Heaven_, and a gunner
+remarked--'Sounds like a bloody hymn.' That was his fear of beauty, his
+false shame. But when the _Keys of Heaven_ was ended, the whole
+audience, including the gunner, gave a sigh of content; and after that
+they went to hear it time after time. Well, the beauty of that song, and
+of all art, is the 'Key of Heaven' itself. For Heaven is a state of
+being of which we all dream, however dully, in which all have the power
+of communication with each other; in which all are aware of the
+universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body,
+all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves,
+for a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere
+nonsense.
+
+Of course if you are to believe this, you must believe in the existence
+of a universal, independent of yourself, yet also in you and in all men.
+You must believe that beauty exists as a virtue, a quality, a relation
+of things, and that it is possible for you also to produce that virtue,
+to live in that relation. But no one can prove that to you. The only way
+to believe it is to see beauty with intensity and to make the effort of
+communication in some form or other.
+
+Tolstoy believes that the very word beauty is a useless one because, he
+says, all efforts to define beauty are vain. But that is true of the
+word life, yet we have to use the word because life exists. And all
+explanations of art which refuse to believe in beauty as a reality
+independent of us, yet one of which we may become a part, do fall into
+incredible nonsense. We are told that art is play; the only answer to
+which is that it isn't. Others say that it is an expression of the
+sexual instinct, which has forgotten itself. They discover that in some
+savage tribe the male beats a tom-tom to attract the female; and they
+conclude that Beethoven's Choral Symphony is only a more elaborate
+tom-tom beaten to attract a more sophisticated female. But again the
+only answer is that it isn't; and that if all our ancestors were, not
+Whistler's dreamers apart, but beaters of tom-toms to attract females,
+then there was something in the sound of the tom-tom that made them
+forget the female. The reality of art is to be found not in its origins
+but in what it is trying to be; and what it is trying to be is always a
+communication between mind and mind; what we aim at in art is a
+fellowship not for purposes of use but for its own sake, the fellowship
+we feel when we are all together singing a great tune.
+
+But now, since we have a hundred foolish ideas about art, its nature and
+value, it is of the greatest importance that we should attain to a right
+idea of it, not only as a matter of theory to be discussed, but as a
+religion to be practised. And, if we can grasp this right idea of it, we
+shall not think of art as consisting merely of the fine arts, painting,
+poetry, music, sculpture. We shall see that it is possible for men to be
+artists, to exercise this great activity of communication, in the work
+by which they earn their living, and that a happy society is one in
+which all men do so exercise it. We are very far from that happiness
+now, and that is why Ruskin and Morris became almost desperate rebels
+against our present society. What they said about art and its nature is
+still the best that has been said about it, far nearer to philosophic
+truth than all that the professed philosophers have said, and of the
+utmost moment to us now. For if we could believe them we should change
+most of our values; we should see that the ordinary man, now being
+deprived of all the joy of art in his work, is living a mutilated life;
+we should place art among the rights of man. Whereas Rousseau said--All
+men are born free and everywhere they are in chains--we should say--All
+men are born artists and everywhere they are drudges. With our curious
+English originality, which hits on so many momentous truths and then
+makes no use of them, it is we who have found the greatest truth about
+art, but neither we nor any other people is at present making much use
+of it. Because we lack art, lack the power of communication, we lack
+fellowship; and as Morris said--Fellowship is life and the lack of it is
+death.
+
+
+FOR REFERENCE
+
+W. Morris, _Hopes and Fears for Art_.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+A GENERATION OF MUSIC
+
+DR. ERNEST WALKER
+
+
+The general subject of this course is European Thought; and, to some,
+music may perhaps seem in this connexion rather like an intruder.
+Indeed, if the musician is, in William Morris's phrase, 'the idle singer
+of an empty day', if his business is to administer alternate stimulants
+and soporifics to the nerves or, at best, the surface emotions, or to
+serve in Cinderella-like fashion any passing, shallow needs of either
+the individual or the crowd, then, obviously, he has no place worth
+self-respecting mention in the world as it exists for philosophy. But
+widespread as some such conception of the function of music is, I hope
+you will agree with me in throwing it aside as, at any rate for our
+present purpose, no more worth the trouble of even approximately patient
+argument than that other less general but more objurgated conception of
+musical composition as something like a mechanically calculated spinning
+of bloodless formulae. By the conditions of its being, music has to
+express itself through non-intellectual channels, but may we not say
+that its essence is intellectual, that it is, in Combarieu's phrase, the
+art of thinking in sound--thinking in as precise a sense as the word can
+bear? It does not express itself verbally: it is self-dependent, with a
+language available only for the expression of its own ideas and not even
+indirectly translatable by nature into a verbal medium. Yet it is
+thought none the less; perhaps all the more. Words, we have often been
+told, serve for the concealment of thought; but the language of music is
+more subtle, more comprehensive. It has been said that where words end,
+music begins; and anyhow, for musicians, there stands on record the
+serenely proud claim of one of themselves. 'Only art and knowledge',
+said Beethoven, 'raise man to the divine; and music is a higher
+revelation than all wisdom and all philosophy.'
+
+But I must not allow this little preliminary apology to stray into the
+field of abstract aesthetics. The subject proposed to me, the
+correlation of the progress of specifically musical thought during the
+last generation with the progress of European thought in general, is so
+extensive that I cannot within the necessary limits attempt to deal with
+more than some of the most salient features, and even those I shall have
+to treat in very broad outlines, with a certain disregard of detail and
+nicely balancing qualifications. I shall only attempt to put before you
+what seem to me the most prominent considerations, and to throw out
+suggestions which I hope you may perhaps, if sufficiently interested,
+develop at leisure for yourselves.
+
+In several ways the correlation of the musician with the non-musical
+world is now more intimate and conscious than ever before. Forty or
+fifty years ago--in spite of brilliant individual exceptions--musicians
+were, in the main, self-centred craftsmen; they were inclined to drift
+into a backwater, away from the chief currents of the intellectual, or
+often indeed of the general artistic life of their day, and they seem on
+the whole to have been content to have it so. In England we were
+somewhat behindhand, no doubt, in our participation in the gradual but
+steady change. But men like Parry and Stanford brought their profession
+into close touch with the general culture of their contemporaries, and
+made the universities and music understand each other; Grove, the first
+director of the Royal College, himself a man whose professional career
+(not to mention his amateur interests) had ended in music after ranging
+through civil engineering, business organization, biblical archaeology,
+and the editorship of a great literary magazine, preached with
+infectious enthusiasm the new doctrine of the larger outlook; and for
+the last thirty years, even if our practice may have occasionally seemed
+somewhat to lag behind, at any rate our theory has not looked back.
+Musicians have been granted their claim to be judged by the same
+intellectual and moral standards as other reasonable people; it is a
+modest claim, but, especially in England, it has had to be fought for.
+
+And the entry on this wider heritage, which English musicians, apart
+from an exception or two such as Pierson and Bennett, won for the first
+time a generation ago, has had in every country a definite influence on
+composition, especially (as is only natural) on the composer's attitude
+towards the musical setting of literature. I should be far from saying
+that any modern is a greater song-writer than Schubert; but it is
+obvious that the followers of Wolf and Duparc and Moussorgsky are aiming
+at something different. They may not express the general mood of the
+poem more faithfully, but they certainly attach more importance to its
+lyrical structure and to flexibly expressive diction: they accept the
+poet as an equal colleague. The serious song-writer can hardly any
+longer, like Schumann in his setting of Heine's 'Das ist ein Floeten und
+Geigen', afford to stultify great poetry by quoting from memory and
+getting the adjectives deplorably wrong. Nor can he, like Beethoven in
+'Adelaide' and the 'Entfernte Geliebte' cycle, let himself weave musical
+structures many sizes too large for the proper structure of the words,
+which have consequently to be repeated over and over again with very
+little regard for poetical or even common sense. Schumann and Beethoven,
+especially the former, were culturally very far from narrow-minded men;
+but there was not in their days any general cultural pressure
+sufficiently strong to influence them as composers. Now, the pressure is
+so strong that few can resist. Most composers have now fully learned
+their lesson of a fitting politeness towards their
+poet-colleagues--learned it in the main, so far as not intuitively, from
+the high examples set by Wolf and the modern French school--and have,
+moreover, come to recognize the duty of setting such words as may be fit
+not only to be sung but to be read, a duty shockingly neglected by many
+of the greatest geniuses in musical history.
+
+And the cultural pressure has gone farther than this. Not only has the
+increasing complexity of life broadened the musician's personal outlook,
+professional or unprofessional: it has also modified, whether for better
+or for worse, the outlook of the music itself. We may conveniently
+divide all music into two great classes: 'absolute' music, in which the
+composer appeals to the listener through the direct medium of the pure
+sound and that alone; and 'applied' music, in which the appeal is more
+or less conditioned by words, either explicit or implicit by
+association, or by bodily movement of some kind, dramatic or not, or by
+any other non-musical factor that affects the nature of the composer's
+thought and the method of its presentation. Up to the present
+generation, instrumental music, unconnected with the stage, has been
+virtually identifiable with absolute music; there are a handful of
+exceptions--sporadic pieces, usually though not invariably thrown off in
+composers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of
+serious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt--but they only serve to prove
+the rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More
+consciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its
+own special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity.
+And it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of
+particular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; or it
+may vie with the poet and the novelist in analysis of character. The
+psychology, again, may pass into the illustration of incident, whether
+partially realistic or purely imaginative, or into the illustration of
+philosophical tenets, as in Strauss's version of Nietzsche's doctrines
+in his _Also sprach Zarathustra_ or Scriabin's of theosophy in his
+_Prometheus_. Or the composer may go directly to painting, whether
+actual as in Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem on Boecklin's picture of 'The
+island of the dead', or visionary as in Debussy's 'La cathedrale
+engloutie'. There is indeed no end to such instances.
+
+All this development of instrumental music into territories more or less
+adjacent makes a very imposing show; and it is so markedly a product of
+the last generation that we easily over-estimate the novelty of its
+essential results. As I have said, instrumental music is more and more
+asking for external spurs to creative activity; but this does not mean
+that music as a whole is, so to speak, breaking loose from its moorings
+and adventurously voyaging on to uncharted seas. What it means is,
+simply, that, under the stress of modern culture, the barriers between
+vocal and instrumental, dramatic and non-dramatic, music have been to a
+great extent abolished.
+
+We may consider music as normally involving three persons: the composer,
+the performer, and the listener. Until the present generation, the role
+of the listener was normally quite passive. All that he had to do was to
+keep his ears open to the music, and further, when required, his ears
+open to words and his eyes to dramatic presentation. The composer and
+the performers did everything for him. But now they do not. The modern
+composer urges that, just as vocal music demands from the listener a
+separate knowledge of the words, so instrumental music may demand, as a
+condition of full understanding, a separate knowledge of some verbally
+expressible signification. The parallel no doubt holds well enough even
+if we answer, as we certainly may, that in much vocal music the words
+are so unimportant that it really does not musically matter if they are
+unintelligible or inaudible. But this latter-day demand on the listener
+is considerable. The listener to Strauss's _Don Quixote_, for example,
+must, in order to appreciate in full measure any section of this long
+work, have a fairly close acquaintance with Cervantes' book--whether
+derived from an analytical programme or from personal reading: there are
+neither words nor acting to give a clue, nor does the printed music
+itself give the slightest assistance, except in so far that a couple of
+themes are labelled with the names of the 'Knight of the sorrowful
+countenance' himself and Sancho Panza. Sometimes, no doubt, a composer
+helps at any rate the purchaser of his music more; but to the listener
+he gives nothing, and leaves his thought, as embodied in the mere title,
+to be reached as best it may. The modern composer makes these demands on
+the listener continually; and he does so simply because the sphere of
+the music-lover's imaginativeness and general culture has become so
+greatly enlarged that he thinks he can fairly afford to take the risk.
+
+But we may well ask whether the music of suggestion has not, in its
+restless anxiety to correlate itself with non-musical culture, reached
+or perhaps even overstepped the limits of musical possibility. It is no
+question of a composer's rights: he has a right to do anything he can,
+provided that he preserves a due proportion between essentials and
+unessentials. And judicious criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any
+rate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer's occasional realistic
+escapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are
+to him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all,
+in their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have
+occasionally allowed themselves similar little flings. It is a question
+not of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist,
+not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do
+a good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may
+personally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence,
+he has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself. The
+risk he runs may be too great. Realizing as we must that all this
+ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched
+musical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and
+feel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it. A
+composer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his
+music, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls. If he asks too
+much extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end.
+The listener will inevitably concentrate on the unessentials, and will
+as likely as not get them quite wrong; he may indeed indulge the habit
+of realistic suspicion to such an extent as to make him become
+thoughtlessly unfair and credit the composer with sins of taste, whether
+babyish or pathological, of which the objurgated culprit may be
+altogether innocent. If a composer plays with fire, he is fairly sure to
+burn some one's fingers, even if he successfully avoids burning his own.
+And anyhow it is waste of time, and worse, for us to cudgel our brains
+to fits of entirely unnecessary inventiveness when the composer has
+left his music unlabelled. We sometimes hear of children being
+encouraged to give verbal or dramatic expression of their own to
+instrumental music; that is not education--very much the reverse. It is
+merely the expense of spirit in a waste of fancifulness, the wilful
+murder of all feeling for music as such.
+
+The feeling for music as such, that is still the one thing needful. And
+by this canon, so it seems to me, we must judge all these alarums and
+excursions of modern composers. If we hold firmly by it, we shall not be
+unduly worried when we learn that the music which seems so perfectly to
+realize the composer's expressed meaning has been originally designed by
+him quite otherwise--as has happened oftener than is generally known;
+though this fact does not excuse wilful contradictions of a composer's
+definite intentions, as in the vulgar perversion of Rimsky-Korsakoff's
+_Scheherezade_ popularized by the latest fashionable toy, the Russian
+Ballet, which would do more musically unexceptionable service were it to
+confine itself to works specially designed for it, such as the
+fascinating and finely-wrought scores of Stravinsky, or concert works
+like Balakireff's _Thamar_, based on programmes that can be mimetically
+reproduced without unfaithfulness. And anyhow, in the midst of all these
+appeals to the eye or the literary memory or what not, we may call to
+mind the simple truth that music is something to be heard with either
+the inward or the outward ear, and if we are too much distracted
+otherwise, our hearing sense suffers. We shall pay too high a price for
+our latter-day correlation of music with literature and the other arts
+if the music itself has to play the part of Cinderella. 'We do it wrong,
+being so majestical.'
+
+Again, we may endeavour to correlate recent musical development with
+the development of the conceptions of nationality and race. With
+nationality in the strictly political sense music has, indeed, nothing
+to do: there is no inborn musical expression common to all the
+inhabitants of Switzerland, or the United States, or the British Empire
+(or indeed the British Islands). And if we abandon political nationality
+entirely and think of national music solely in terms of race, we still
+have to make very large deductions. Heredity counts, it would seem, for
+far less than environment in musical development--especially so in these
+days of free intercourse. Nevertheless, we may to some extent isolate
+the racial element; and within the last generation increasingly vigorous
+efforts have been made to do so--though they have perhaps neglected
+sufficiently to observe that racial ancestry is often an extremely mixed
+quantity.
+
+To the musician, this insistence on race is in the main a quite modern
+thing. It is true that, as the successive waves of Italian influence
+flowed northward in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries, they met in England, France, and Germany, and, at the end, in
+Russia, native cross-currents; and there was plenty of controversy
+between the opposing parties. But this controversy was mainly concerned
+with matters of technique; whereas the whole force of the modern
+movement consists in its reliance on the simple folk-music which is
+supposed to be characteristic of the race as a whole, and about which
+hardly any composers of the past consciously troubled themselves at all.
+Haydn and Beethoven, no doubt, used folk-tunes in their own works to
+some extent, but the former's adaptations from the uncultivated tunes of
+his own Croatian people are polished nearly out of recognition, and when
+the latter commandeers from Ireland or Russia or elsewhere, nothing but
+pure Beethovenishness remains after his masterful hand has done its
+will. We may say, indeed, that nationality, as such, was never in their
+time a conscious factor in musical composition.
+
+The modern movement seems to owe its origin to several non-musical
+causes. For example, the spread of political democracy had no little
+influence in arousing interest in the music specifically characteristic
+of at any rate the non-urban sections of the newly enfranchised classes.
+But, in the main, it was caused by the modern rise into something like
+political prominence of the smaller nations, smaller either in size or
+in historical importance. The events of 1848, for example, brought
+Hungarian folk-music before the world; Bohemian claims against Austria
+produced the work of Smetana and Dvo[vr]ak, largely based on the general
+style of their own native melodies; the Irish Question made us know the
+Irish songs; and the dominating races followed those leads, at any rate
+in so far as to take interest in their own traditional music, and try to
+evaluate its differentiating factors. Conscious connexion between
+artistic composition and folk-music has varied very much: very strong in
+Russia and other Slavonic countries, it has been very weak in Italy and
+France; in Germany we find all stages between the work of Brahms, where
+the folk-element is very notable, and of Wolf, where it is non-existent;
+in our own islands it has been very weak, but is now becoming very
+strong. But, whether this connexion has been conscious or not, still,
+sooner or later, all the insisters on the importance of the element of
+nationality have joined hands with the enthusiasts for the folk-music of
+the people. In the work of preserving the knowledge of this folk-music
+England has been one of the last of all countries: even the last edition
+of Grove's _Dictionary_, our standard authority, gives many pages to
+Scotland and Ireland and Wales, and smuggles English folk-music into an
+appendix. Only indeed in the twentieth century has anything like an
+adequate study of the varied treasures of English folk-music become
+possible, and we have learned enough to realize that great folk-music is
+no monopoly of the races that have been either politically or socially
+decentralized.
+
+This advance of the conception of racialism has widened and intensified
+music in not a few ways. It has brought to our knowledge many splendid
+melodies, infinitely varied in design and emotional range, and, at their
+best, inspirations that the greatest composers would have been proud to
+sign. And, mixed as are the feelings with which we must contemplate the
+general course of our own musical history, we can anyhow boast of some
+of the finest folk-tunes in existence in these relics of the old world
+on its last western fringes, in Ireland and the Hebrides. We have come
+to see that this great mass of traditional music--only in part, of
+course, the outpouring of sheer genius, but at its worst sincere--is,
+with its appeal alike to the child and the adult, either in years or in
+musical culture, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with
+which to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. And,
+apart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown
+the value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the
+younger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the
+Russians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the
+same, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It
+is to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before,
+to realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. And, once
+again, we have been taught the duty of being fair to the men of our own
+blood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there
+has been visible a strongly marked tendency, such as no other nation
+has shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in
+comparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse.
+But I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition
+is now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it
+was, not unnaturally, wellnigh forgotten during its sleep from the death
+of Purcell till the rise of Parry--a fairly sound sleep, during which it
+occasionally half-opened its eyes for a moment or two--but it is wide
+awake now. We are still slow to learn the lesson; but we have come to
+realize, at any rate theoretically, the duty of doing what we can, in
+the spirit not of favouritism but of justice and knowledge, to disprove
+the proverb that a prophet (and an artist also) has no honour in his own
+country and in his father's house.
+
+So much to the good. But to-day, more than ever before, many voices are
+urging us to go farther--and, I think, to fare worse. Artistic racialism
+has always been spontaneous, so far as the art is great. No composer who
+is worth anything can be dragooned into being patriotic: he will go his
+own way. Some are attracted more than others by the general types of
+phrase or the general emotional moods exemplified in the folk-music of
+their own race; but that is a matter for neither credit nor discredit.
+Individuality includes race as the greater includes the less. The only
+vital consideration is the value of the output in the general terms of
+all races; and indeed all great folk-music, like any other kind, speaks,
+for those who have ears to hear, a world-language and not a dialect. And
+there is still more at stake in this issue. Those who, as I do, hold
+that the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the
+weakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must
+needs regard very suspiciously any of these modern attempts to force
+music into channels which are deliberately designed for it by
+non-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a
+very considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. England may
+sometimes have failed in kindness to her own artistic children, living
+and dead; but at any rate we have been free from the curse of a narrow
+jealousy and have steadfastly held to the proud faith of the open door
+and the open mind. The ideal--so violently dinned into our ears
+nowadays--of a national school of composers may very easily mean a
+wilful narrowing of our artistic heritage. If an English composer with
+nothing to say for himself imitates Brahms or Debussy, it is obviously
+regrettable; but he will not mend matters by imitating Purcell. And,
+after all, the musician who (save occasionally when seeking texts for
+his own individual discourses) borrows his material from his native
+folk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other
+quarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his
+own. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about
+patriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the
+last refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the
+supreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and,
+anyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. And any
+of the world's activities would come to a strange pass if children--or
+any races or classes which, through lost opportunities or the oppression
+of others, are still virtually children--were to dictate principles of
+intolerance to those who, by no merit of their own but as a plain matter
+of fact, can possess the wider vision. Let a composer steep himself as
+much as he can in his native folk-music, as in all other great music,
+and then write in sincerity whatever is in his own marrow; but anything
+approximately like a chauvinistic attitude towards music, as towards
+any other of the things of the spirit, means either insensibility to
+spiritual ideals or unfaithfulness to them. Let me take an analogy. I
+have always felt that a philosophical and historical study of the idea
+of honour would throw more light than anything else on many great
+problems, notably the problem of war, and that in this investigation the
+conception of the duel would have a very prominent place. May we not say
+that, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members
+of the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to
+be able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will,
+if his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also?
+Neither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external
+considerations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed
+is the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the
+arts; it has not, like literature, any barriers of language, nor, like
+painting or sculpture or architecture, any local habitation. Musical
+separatism is not a natural quality; it needs careful and continuous
+fostering. And I know from personal experience that, all through the
+war, there was no difficulty at all in carrying on concerts in the
+programmes of which works by living German composers, and songs in the
+German language, were included in their due proportions just as before.
+
+Another great factor in modern European thought with which I would
+attempt to correlate music is the factor of religion. No one will deny
+that the last generation has seen profoundly important changes in
+religious thought: whatever may have been the eddies and backwaters, the
+main stream has run, and still runs, like a cataract. These changes may
+be very differently judged by different types of men, all of them
+equally firm believers in the supremacy of spiritual ideals: some may
+definitely regret, some may, with the help of such conceptions as that
+of progressive revelation, steer a middle course, some (among whom I
+would number myself) may definitely welcome. But in whatever light we
+may regard these radical refusals of the old allegiances, we shall
+naturally expect to find their influence in music, which has had in many
+ways so intimate a connexion with religion. Indeed, the conception of
+music as in some special way the handmaid of religion dies very hard. It
+is still possible, in April 1919, for distinguished musicians, when
+appealing for funds for the foundation of a professorship of
+ecclesiastical music, to put their names to the statement that 'the
+church will always be the chief home and school of music for the
+people'[71]: and this when the facts about attendances at places of
+worship have long been familiar. We must rate the influence of church
+music more modestly; it has a great influence in its own sphere, but its
+sphere is only one among many.
+
+We may, I think, envisage this religious development on its practical
+side as a process of differentiation by which the sincere standers in
+the old and the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn
+apart intellectually--but not, in societies that are happily able to
+take broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually--not
+only from each other but still more from those who, whatever their
+ostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And
+something like the same process is observable in the religious music of
+the past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped
+away, unregarded and unregretted: whatever the outlooks, and they are
+many and various, they are more clear-sighted, more sincere. Here in
+England we have somewhat lagged behind: we have had, not perhaps
+altogether fairly but indubitably, a reputation for national hypocrisy
+to sustain, and our religious music has only with difficulty shaken
+itself loose. Not very long ago, Saint-Saens's _Samson and Delilah_, now
+one of the most popular of operas, could only be performed as an
+oratorio: it dealt with biblical incidents and characters, therefore it
+was religious music, therefore it could not be given stage presentation.
+Of course this kind of attitude is never logical: for a long time we
+closed Covent Garden to Strauss's _Salome_ for the same reason, but no
+one, so far as I know, ever proposed to endow it with a religious halo.
+Now, when Sunday secular music is everywhere, its origins seem lost in
+antiquity; but the chamber-music concerts at South Place in London and
+Balliol College in Oxford, which are, I think I am right in saying, the
+twin pioneers, are both little over thirty years old. In most other
+countries, however, music has suffered far fewer checks of this kind;
+and it is of more importance to correlate musical and religious
+development on more general lines. Particularly interesting, I think, is
+the history of the decline of the oratorio, which I should myself be
+inclined to date from the production of the German Requiem of Brahms
+about half a century ago, though the real impetus has become apparent
+only during the last generation.
+
+Brahms's Requiem was indeed something of a portent: it was a definite
+herald of revolt. The mere title, 'A German Requiem', involving the
+commandeering of the name hitherto associated exclusively with the
+ritual of the Roman Church and the practice of prayers for the dead, and
+its adaptation to entirely different words, was in itself of the utmost
+significance; and the significance was enhanced by the character of the
+words themselves. In the first place, they were self-selected on purely
+personal lines; in the second place, they were, theologically, hardly so
+much as Unitarian. Brahms claimed the right to express his own
+individual view of the problem, and at a length which involved the
+corollary that the problem was regarded in its completeness. The 'German
+Requiem' cannot be considered, as an anthem might be, as an expression
+of a mere portion of a complete conception of the particular religious
+problem: in an organic work of this length, what it does not assert it
+implicitly denies or at any rate disregards. And this was at once
+recognized, both by Brahms's opponents and by himself: he categorically
+refused to add any dogmatically Christian element to his scheme.
+Similarly with his _Ernste Gesaenge_, written some thirty years later, at
+the end of his life: he balances the reflections on death taken from
+Ecclesiastes and similar sources with the Pauline chapter on faith,
+hope, and charity--not with any more definite consolation. And again,
+with the choral works, the settings of Hoelderlin's _Schicksalslied_,
+Schiller's _Naenie_, Goethe's _Gesang der Parzen_ (the first-fruits of
+the essentially modern spirit which has impelled so many composers to
+choral settings of great poetry)--they deal with the ultimate things,
+but the expression is never, so to speak, orthodox: it is imaginative,
+sometimes perhaps ironical, but never anything but intensely
+non-ecclesiastical.
+
+Brahms's Requiem represents, as I have said, the beginning of the change
+in the conception of concert-room religious music, of the abandonment of
+the old type of oratorio in favour of something much more conscious and
+individual; and in refusing to take things for granted, religious music
+has been altogether in line with general religious development. The
+change can perhaps be observed in English music more markedly than
+elsewhere. Oratorio, in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term,
+is to all intents and purposes an invention of the genius of Handel
+reacting on his English environment: the form was of course older, but
+he gave it a specific shape that set the fashion for future times. It
+had its birth in a business speculation; it was a novelty designed to
+occupy the Lenten season when the theatres were not available for opera.
+Like the opera, it supplied narrative and incident and characterization
+though without scenery or action, and it dealt with biblical history.
+The history of the oratorio is the history of this loose compromise; it
+has afforded an attractive flavour of the theatre even to those to whom
+drama may in itself have seemed disreputable, and it has had the
+advantage of possessing subjects which combined unquestioningly accepted
+literal truth with unlimited possibilities for wholesale edification,
+and at the same time made no intimately personal claims. The libretto of
+Mendelssohn's _Elijah_ is perhaps at once the most familiar and the most
+skilfully compiled example of the type; but it is now, so far as great
+music is concerned, extinct. Here in England--where, for something like
+a century and a half, the demand was so large that composers, when tired
+of writing oratorios themselves, still went on producing them out of the
+mangled fragments of other music--Parry's _Judith_ of 1888 is the last
+of the old type from the pen of a great composer; and his subsequent
+works show, in striking fashion, the direction of the newer paths. There
+is no longer the assumption that everything in the Bible or the
+Apocrypha is at one and the same time literally true and somehow or
+other edifying. _Job_ and _King Saul_ are great literature and vivid
+drama; they stand on their own merits. And the long succession of
+smaller choral works, in which Parry mingled in curious but intensely
+personal fusion his own earnest but somewhat pedestrian poetry with
+fragments of the Old Testament prophets, represent a still further
+abandonment of the old routine; they form a connected exposition of his
+philosophy of life, on the whole theistic rather than specifically
+Christian, and always transparently individual. Individual--that is the
+real issue. According to their differing temperaments, different
+composers may swing towards either the right or the left wing of thought
+in these non-ecclesiastical expressions of ultimate things: Stanford may
+join with Whitman or Robert Bridges, Vaughan-Williams with Whitman or
+George Herbert, Frank Bridge with Thomas a Kempis, Walford Davies with a
+mediaeval morality-play, Gustav Hoist with the Rig-Veda, Bantock with
+Omar Khayyam. But the essentials, for any composer worth the name, are
+that his theme shall have its birth in personal vision and shall appeal
+to personal intelligence. The routine oratorio fulfilled neither of
+these conditions; and it is dead beyond recall. It was a curious
+illustration of foreign ignorance of British musical life that
+Saint-Saens, when asked to write a choral work for the Gloucester
+Festival of 1913, should have imagined that he was meeting our national
+tastes with an oratorio on the most prehistoric lines. However, the
+unanimous chilliness with which _The Promised Land_ was received must
+have effectually disillusioned him.
+
+But the liberalisers, though the more numerous force, have no monopoly
+of sincerity: among the genuine conservatives also we can find, I think,
+signs of the correlation of musical with religious development. We have
+had, during the last generation, many works that are in the legitimate
+line of descent from the great classical settings of ritual words or (as
+with the Passions and Cantatas of Bach) words that are intended anyhow
+to appeal not as literature but as dogma. When Elgar prints on the
+title-pages of his oratorios the letters A.M.D.G.--_ad majorem Dei
+gloriam_--the personal note is, in these days, obvious. His own libretti
+to _The Apostles_ and its sequel _The Kingdom_ (and to the further
+sequels which had been sketched out twelve years ago, though none has as
+yet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so
+far as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious
+moralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things
+for granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual
+soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent
+Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was
+Perosi, the Benedictine priest, whose oratorios, tentative, childishly
+sincere mixtures of Palestrina and Wagner, were forced upon Europe in
+the late 'nineties with the full driving power of his Church, and who,
+when his musical insufficiency became palpable, was dropped in favour of
+Elgar himself, whose sudden rise into deserved fame coincides in time.
+There was again the allocution of Pius X, known as the _Motu proprio_,
+which sought to reform ecclesiastical music and has, however fruitless
+it may have been elsewhere, made the services in Westminster Cathedral,
+under Dr. Terry's direction, a Mecca for musicians of all faiths who are
+interested in the great sixteenth-century masterpieces. There are also
+the aristocratically Catholic composers of latter-day France, centring
+round Vincent d'Indy and the _Schola Cantorum_ and looking back for
+inspiration to Cesar Franck. And again, in the English communion, there
+is the marked High-Church movement for the encouragement of dignified
+music, a movement that has had great influence in the purification of
+popular taste. And the pivot round which all this turns is the dogmatic
+faith that definitely Christian expression in music is the property,
+the exclusive property, of those who by temperament and conviction are
+Christians. The attitude, like the conditions which have brought it
+about, is, I think, new: but some of its adherents go surely too far
+when they urge that those whose minds work otherwise cannot really
+appreciate this music at its due worth. Cesar Franck, that simple-minded
+childlike genius, once pronounced Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_
+'very amusing'--a surely unique criticism--simply, it would seem,
+because it was eccentric enough not to take Catholicism as a primary
+postulate: I do not myself happen to have any information about Kant's
+musicianship--perhaps, like too many great thinkers, he knew little
+about music and cared less--but I think we may venture to say, in the
+abstract, that his philosophy would have made him fairer to Franck than
+Franck was to him.
+
+And thus perhaps we may conclude that recent musical development has
+kept pace with religious development in concentrating more and more on
+individual sincerity, whether on the one side or the other, and
+abandoning the old easy-going haphazard routine. But, in reaction from
+the extreme right and the extreme left of the movement, we have also the
+sincere dislikers of stark thinking, whom their opponents call by
+dignified names of abuse, such as pragmatists or undenominationalists:
+and here again music keeps pace with religion. It is not the old routine
+again (though perhaps in practice it may at times come rather perilously
+near it); it is the more or less conscious adoption of a compromise. We
+can see its musical working best of all in the recent history of church
+music in England; it is true that the great mass of the younger
+musicians, here as in all other countries, stand outside these
+developments, and look both for ideals and practice elsewhere, but the
+developments have none the less been very significant. There have been
+three stages. A couple of generations ago there was no conflict and no
+call for compromise. The ecclesiastical musician of the time was
+expected, whether as composer, as organist, or as administrator, to do
+his best according to his lights: it was his accepted business, as
+presumably knowing more about the matter than the artistic laity, to
+lead their taste, not to follow. Then came the reign of men like Dykes
+and Stainer and Gounod, whose normal attitude involved the sacrifice by
+the musician of some of his musicianship in the supposed interests of
+religion. The supposed interests, I say; for the whole point of the
+third stage of development, the conflict in which English church music
+is now involved, is the denial by one of the opposing parties that the
+interests of religion are in any way served by such a sacrifice. It is a
+very keen conflict, in which the sympathies of the musician _qua_
+musician naturally lean towards those who uphold the inalienable dignity
+of his art: and even if he feels that ecclesiastical music, _qua_
+ecclesiastical, is outside his personal concern, influences from it are
+bound to radiate into the secular departments. But what I would more
+especially point out is that the religious and the musical developments
+proceed side by side. Just as the stricter purists in the one field are,
+in the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to
+uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is
+inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those
+whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically
+indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation
+afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music
+that is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of
+the average worshipper.
+
+And, even if there is no question of a lowered artistic standard, we
+see, I think, the same spirit of compromise, of ready acceptance of the
+more immediately obvious as the average and proper norm for all people,
+elsewhere on the boundaries of musical and religious life. It is so easy
+to turn a blind eye to logic and minorities, or even to majorities if
+they have little pressure, social or other, to back them up. To
+illustrate from one or two English examples, the transformations of
+cathedrals into secular concert-rooms are as open to blame from the one
+side as are, from the other, such assumptions as that of the 'Union of
+Graduates in Music' to take rank as a definitely ecclesiastical, indeed
+an Anglican society. Again, it so happens that a somewhat exceptional
+proportion of English musicians hold, or have held, as conditions of
+livelihood, posts to which not all of them would have aspired had other
+channels, open to their foreign fellow-artists, been open to them also;
+and, as a necessary consequence, there is more probability here than
+elsewhere of the musical profession presenting practical problems for
+the intellectual conscience to solve. So far as the musician is a
+personal non-conformer and also a teacher (even if not a church
+organist), he is often compelled into a tacit agreement with the
+Cowper-Temple clause, at the least: and so far as he is a convinced
+conformer, he is often compelled to strain, far beyond the meaning of
+the parable, the principle of letting the wheat and the tares grow
+together. This is called a practical age: and the compromisers, in
+religion and in religious music, are a powerful force. But I would
+venture to think that the future lies, in the long run, in other hands
+than theirs.
+
+To the mediaeval musician, religion and science were the twin
+foundations of his art. But while the influence of religious development
+can without difficulty be traced in musical history, the influence of
+scientific development is much more contestable. It may indeed, I
+think, be said that post-mediaeval music has gone its own way without
+considering science at all. Theorists of course there have been, and
+still are, who try to discover scientific foundations for the art of
+music as we moderns know it: they do their best to correlate
+mathematical physics with practical composition. But during the past
+generation these attempts, never very hopeful, have become much less so.
+It is only too easy to play scientific havoc with the foundations of
+modern music: but, arbitrary and scientifically indefensible though they
+may be, they are our inheritance. Music has come to be what it is by
+methods that will not bear accurate investigation: our tonal systems are
+mere makeshifts, and no composer can completely express his thoughts in
+our clumsy notation. I doubt if, throughout all this last generation
+that has seen such overwhelming scientific advance, music has really
+been scientifically affected (in the strict sense of the word) in the
+slightest degree, if we exclude some interesting experiments in
+sympathetic resonances, primary and secondary, at which some recent
+composers for the piano have, at present rather tentatively, tried their
+hands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in
+general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws
+of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to
+build a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string
+ultimately gives--mostly out of tune--all the notes of the chromatic
+scale, but composers employ them on principles the reverse of
+mathematical.
+
+The growth of music has not been scientific; but growth of some kind is
+evident enough, though it is none too easy to define it at all
+adequately. Some might say, with Romain Rolland in his _Musiciens
+d'autrefois_, that 'the efforts of the centuries have not advanced us a
+step nearer beauty since the days of St. Gregory and Palestrina'; but
+this is surely a narrow outlook. Beauty combines the many with the one:
+and plain-song and the _Missa Papae Marcelli_ show us only a few, a very
+few, of its manifestations. But artistic progress is, anyhow, very
+subtle and evasive; and musical progress, in particular, is hardly
+correctable with any other. Above all, we must recollect that, to us
+Europeans, music--which, in the only sense worth our present
+consideration, is an exclusively European product--is incalculably the
+youngest of the great arts; if we exclude some monophonic conceptions
+that have still their value for us, it is barely five hundred years old
+at the most.
+
+During the last generation an advance in material complexity is obvious,
+even though the complexity may often enough be one of accidentals rather
+than essentials. An orchestral score of Wagner is relatively simple in
+comparison with one of Delius or Ravel or Scriabin or Stravinsky or
+Schoenberg; and the demands on performers' technique and also on their
+intelligence have steadily increased to heights altogether unknown
+before. The composer has at his present disposal a vastly enlarged
+medium; the possibilities of sound have developed incalculably more than
+those of paint or stone or marble. Pheidias could, we may imagine, have
+appreciated Rodin across a gulf of over two thousand years; but it is
+difficult to see the points of contact, after little over three hundred
+years, between Palestrina and any twentieth-century work that would
+claim to be 'in the movement'. And it is not only in complexity that we
+have advanced. We have extended the limits of musical style. We have
+adopted in sober earnest methods forecasted at rare intervals in the
+past by adventurous explorers, and employ musical notes not as elements
+in any harmonic scheme but purely as points of colour, exactly as if
+the definite notes were mere clangs of indefinite instruments like
+cymbals or triangles. Wordless vocal tone, moreover, of several
+different types, is pressed into the same service. Varied tonal and
+harmonic colour, and structural freedom: those are the two battle-cries
+of the young generation. Little by little the old tonalities, based as
+they were on fixed centres, are slipping away; all the notes of the
+chromatic scale are acquiring even status; the principles of structure
+are newborn with every new work. And advance of this kind has been
+extraordinarily accelerated during the last twenty years. At no time in
+musical history have there been such express-speed modifications of
+manner as those which divide, let us say, the latest piano pieces of
+Brahms (1893) and the latest of Scriabin (1914). It is possible, indeed,
+that our standard system of keyboard tuning may require modification in
+the not very distant future. Once again, as three hundred years ago,
+music seems to be in the throes of a new birth. On the former occasion,
+the process of convalescence lasted rather more than a century, from
+Monteverde through Carissimi and Schuetz and Purcell to Bach; and it may
+perhaps take as long now.
+
+But it is plain enough that mere novelty does not involve progress; if
+it were so, the music of the casually strumming baby would demand high
+recognition. Nor is progress to be found in merely quantitative,
+Brobdingnagian expansion. And when we have taken our stand on what seems
+a sufficiently sound definition of musical progress in its material
+aspect--the combination of novelty with expansion, the new thought with
+its appropriately enlarged medium--we have yet to remember that many
+very fine composers still can, and do, express their natural and full
+selves in older idioms, and that progress of this kind, however
+widespread it may become, is not necessarily advance in the scale of
+values. There is, somewhere or other, a limit to the cubic capacity of
+things: they cannot increase indefinitely in depth and breadth at once.
+We may confidently hope that we have not yet musically come within
+hailing distance of the limit: but nevertheless it is becoming more and
+more difficult to see music steadily and see it whole, and it is useful
+to take stock of our position. Our musical minds are very much broader
+than they were: in that sense we can well, like the heroes of Homer,
+boast that we are much better than our fathers. But are they also
+deeper? We have gained access to many new rooms in the house of art,
+rooms full of strange and beautiful things, for the knowledge of which
+we must needs be profoundly and lastingly grateful; but some of the
+rooms seem rather small and their windows do not seem to have been
+opened very often, while others seem liable to be swept by hurricanes
+which upset the furniture right and left. Veterans there are, musicians
+not to be named except with high honour, who fall back for nutriment on
+the great classics and pessimism; but our notions of beauty cannot stand
+still, and in all ages of music one of the most vital tasks of criticism
+has been to distinguish between the relatively non-beautiful which has
+character and truth and its superficial imitation which has neither. All
+musicians very well recollect their first bewilderment at what has
+afterwards become as clear as daylight. But we must retain our standards
+of judgement. We have no right to criticize without familiarity, but we
+must remember that over-familiarity, mere dulled habitual acceptance,
+means equal incapacity for criticism. If, after trying our utmost, we
+still cannot see any sense in some of these modernist pages, there is no
+reason why we should not say so; it is quite possible that there really
+is no sense in them, and that the composer is perfectly aware of the
+fact. Odd stories float about the artistic world. And if the anarchists
+call us philistines and the philistines call us anarchists, it is fairly
+likely that we are seeing things pretty much as they are.
+
+Moreover, it is worth remembering that a good deal of what is loosely
+called modernism is in reality very much the reverse. There is nothing
+progressive in the confusion of processes with principles, in the
+breathless disregard of the larger issues. Take the ideal of 'direct
+expression of emotion', the attempt to give, as Pater said half a
+century ago, 'the highest quality to our moments as they pass and simply
+for those moments' sake'. Musically, it is a return to the childhood of
+our race, to the natural savage. If a musical composition is to consist
+of anything more than one isolated noise, it must inevitably have a form
+of some kind, its component parts must look backward and forward. The
+latter-day composers who speak of Form as a kind of bogey that they have
+at last exorcized remind us of those latter-day thinkers who boast that
+they have abolished metaphysics. We cannot leap off our shadows; if we
+try, we shall only find that we are left with a residuum of bad
+metaphysics or bad musical form--as thoroughly bad as the metaphysics
+and the musical form that have resulted from the confusion of the one
+with empty word-spinning and of the other with hide-bound pedantry.
+Again, much of the modern rhythmical complexity strongly resembles, in
+essence, the machine-made experiments of mediaeval times; and the
+peculiarly fashionable trick of shifting identical chords up and down
+the scale--the clothes'-peg conception of harmony, so to speak--is a
+mere throw-back still farther, to Hucbald and the diaphony of a thousand
+years ago. And the insistence, now so common, on the decorative side of
+music, the conscious preference of the sensuous to the intellectual or
+emotional elements, brings us back to our own infancy, with its
+unreflecting delight in things that sparkle prettily or are soft to the
+touch or sweet to the taste. It is a reaction from sentimentality, no
+doubt, but is a reaction to an equal extreme, a perversion of the truth
+that great art never wholly gives itself away. As Vincent d'Indy has
+justly pointed out, the 'sensualist formula'--'all for and by
+harmony'--is as much an aberration of good sense as the parallel formula
+of the ultra-melodic schools of Rossini and Donizetti: in either case it
+means the sacrifice of spaciousness to immediate effect, the supremacy
+of sensation over the equilibrium of the heart and the intelligence. Not
+of course that any music lacks the sensuous element; but it is a matter
+of proportion. And very distinguished as are many of the modern
+exponents of this side of things, history tells us, I think, that they
+are working in a blind alley. They have their supporters, no doubt. M.
+Jean-Aubry, in his very suggestive and valuable book on modern French
+musicians, has used a phrase that seems to me worth remembering; he
+speaks of the 'obsession of intellectual chastity' which, to his mind,
+disfigures the work of Cesar Franck and other great composers whom he
+therefore rejects from his latter-day Pantheon. I am glad to think that
+Franck would have gloried in this shame. He, and a very goodly company
+with him, knew that music was, at its highest, something better than an
+entertainment, however thrilling or however refined.
+
+But, whatever critics and composers may feel about musical progress, it
+is, as Wagner said, in the home of the amateur that music is really kept
+alive, and the amateur's music depends very largely on the schools. A
+generation ago music was certainly sociologically selfish. Musicians had
+not realized that all classes of the community were open to the
+influences of fine music, if only they had the opportunities for
+knowing it. But since then there have been very great advances, both
+quantitative and qualitative, in musical education. We have spread it
+broadcast, in the increasing faith that appreciation depends, not on
+technical knowledge or executive skill, but on the responsive
+temperament and the will to understand. Familiarity, familiarity at home
+if possible, is the key to this understanding; and in this connexion
+there is, I believe, an enormous educational future before pianolas and
+gramophones, if only the preparation of their records can be taken in
+hand on artistic rather than narrowly commercial lines. And our
+standards of judgement have risen: we do not worship quite so blindly
+mere names, whether of the past or of the present, nor exalt the
+performer quite so dizzily above what is performed. Nor do we quite so
+glibly disguise our indifference to vital distinctions by talking about
+differences of taste: we know that, however catholic we may rightly be
+within the limits of the good, whether grave or gay, there comes sooner
+or later, in our judgement of musical as of all other spiritual values,
+a point where we must put our foot down. We are going on, and our
+theories are sound enough: but the path of a democratically widened, and
+rightly so widened, art is by no means easy. The principle of levelling
+up slides so readily into the practice of levelling down: and the book
+of music is closed once for all if we are to accept the plenary
+inspiration of majorities.
+
+But here in England the greatest danger to musical progress is, I
+venture to think, the self-styled practical Englishman--fortified as he
+is by the consciousness that, for at any rate a couple of centuries or
+more, we have as a nation taken a low view of the arts and have been
+rather proud of it than otherwise. It is so obvious that no profession
+is economically more unsound than that of the serious composer: it is
+not so obvious that we owe all the great things of the spirit by which
+we chiefly live to those whom the world calls dreamers, among whom the
+great musicians have had, and, I hope and believe, will always have, no
+mean place. Against the 'practical Englishman', and all that his
+attitude to music involves, we can all of us fight in our respective
+spheres: and I would commend to you for useful weapons three very
+different books by very different men--Sir Hubert Parry's great book on
+_Style in Musical Art_, Mr. C.T. Smith's account of his artistic work in
+an elementary school in the East End of London which he calls _The Music
+of Life_, and a pamphlet _Starved Arts mean Low Pleasures_ recently
+written by Mr. Bernard Shaw for the British Music Society. And one
+particular line of indirect attack, easily open to all of us, is, I am
+inclined to think, specially promising. In the third and fourth verses
+of the thirty-fifth chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus we shall find
+these injunctions, which I translate as literally as Greek epigrams can
+be translated: 'Do not hinder music: do not pour out chatter during any
+artistic performance: and do not argue unseasonably.' In other words,
+conversation, however valuable, prevents complete listening to music;
+and music that is not meant to be listened to in its completeness is not
+worth calling music, and had much better not be there at all. Musical
+progress will be spiritually well on its way when we all realize this
+axiomatic truth as firmly as this Hebrew sage of two thousand years and
+more ago.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 71: _The Times_, April 17, 1919.]
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE MODERN RENASCENCE
+
+F. MELIAN STAWELL
+
+
+To understand in any degree the modern outlook on life it seems
+necessary to go back to the time of the French Revolution. For at that
+stirring epoch there flamed up in the minds of enthusiasts an ideal of
+man's life larger than had ever yet been known, and one that has
+dominated us all ever since. If we give, as I think we should give, a
+wide sense to the word 'Liberty' and make it mean all that stands for
+self-development, then one may say that this ideal was fairly well
+summed-up in the famous Revolutionary watchword, 'Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity'. It is impossible at any rate to read the idealists of that
+time and its sequel--say from 1793 to 1848--whether in France, Germany,
+England, or Italy, whether inside or outside the Revolutionary ranks,
+without feeling their buoyant hope that a fresh era was opening in which
+man, casting aside old shackles and prejudices, could advance at once
+towards knowledge, joy, splendour, both for himself and all his fellows.
+Shelley, perhaps, is most typical of what I mean. Hogg laughed at him
+for his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the
+belief was vital to the poet. To Shelley it was a damnable doctrine that
+the many should ever be sacrificed to the few: yet neither was the
+ultimate vision that inspired him the vision of the few being sacrificed
+for the many. He was anything but an ascetic seeking martyrdom. The
+martyrdom of his Prometheus is a prelude to the Unbinding when
+happiness shall flood the world:--
+
+    'The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
+     The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
+       The vaporous exultation not to be confined!'
+
+And not only happiness and love, but knowledge also: the Earth calls to
+the Sky: 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'
+Soberer spirits shared this poet's ecstasy. Wordsworth sang
+
+    'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
+     But to be young was very heaven.'
+
+And that heaven was exactly this foretaste of the Spirit of Man entering
+undisturbed into his full inheritance at last: Science welcomed as a
+dear and honoured guest, Poetry known as 'the breath and finer spirit
+that is in the countenance of all knowledge'.
+
+It is scarcely necessary even to mention the high hopes of the French
+themselves, the confident anticipation of an Age of Reason when all men
+should be brothers and the earth bring forth all her treasures, but it
+is well worth noting the attitude of Goethe, an attitude the more
+significant because, in a sense, Goethe always stood outside the French
+Revolution. But he, like the best of its votaries--and this is less
+known than it should be--desired the development of all men every whit
+as much as he desired the high culture of a few. It was for the double
+goal that he worked. 'Only through all men,' he writes in a notable
+passage, 'only through all men, can mankind be made.'[72] All good lies
+in Man, he tells us again, and must be developed, 'only not in one man,
+but in many'. Goethe, the so-called aristocrat, has given us here as
+true a formula for the democratic faith as could well be found. And to
+him, as to Shelley and to Wordsworth, Poetry and Science were not
+enemies but friends dearer than sisters. Those three, Shelley,
+Wordsworth, and Goethe, foreshadowed a new poetry of science that has
+never yet been achieved, though fine work has been done by Tennyson,
+Whitman, Sully Prudhomme, and Meredith.
+
+Goethe, moreover, again like Shelley and the French, broke with all
+ideals of mere self-abnegation. In his poem, 'General Confession', he
+makes his disciples repent of ever having missed an opportunity for
+enjoyment and resolve never so to offend again. Here, as often, Goethe
+comes into the closest touch with our modern feeling. We, too, can never
+return to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as
+the highest life for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except
+as the means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would
+call the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the world for
+our own, the tree with the knowledge of good and evil included, reacting
+even from Christian ideals if they can make no room for that. But, after
+all, the characteristic of the belief dominant a century ago was exactly
+that such room could be made, that Hellenism could be combined with
+Christianity, and self-development with self-denial.
+
+And this belief is, I think, reflected in the music of the time.
+Schubert, that sweetest soul of tears and laughter, understands every
+shade of wistfulness, and yet again and again in his music it seems as
+though the universe had become, to quote a lover of his, one immense and
+glorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to
+have recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting
+joy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened
+spirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of
+suffering and then astounds and comforts us by ineffable vistas of
+happiness. After years of personal misery he crowns the glorious series
+of his symphonies by the one that ends in a hymn of joy, freedom, and
+faith, embracing the whole world--'Diese Kuss der ganzen Welt'--that
+majestic open melody, clear as the morning, fresh as though it came from
+far oversea, greater even than any of the great harmonies that have gone
+before, larger than the tortured human heart, steadier than the sudden
+ecstasy of the spirits set free, stronger than the swansong of the
+dying, a melody content with earth because it is conscious of heaven. I
+offer no apology for weaving my own fairy-tales round such music: I see
+no harm in the practice, but only good, so long as we understand what we
+are about. Music, it is true, is something other than, in a sense more
+than, either thought or feeling or even poetry, and cannot be reduced to
+any of them (nor any of them to it). The universe would be poor indeed
+if it could be so. But none the less the truth may be, as Spinoza
+thought, that the universe is at once a unity and a unity with many
+facets, so that any one facet, while for ever unique, can bring to our
+minds all the mysteries of the rest.
+
+In any case, the high confidence that breathes in the music of a hundred
+years ago meets us again in the philosophers.
+
+Hegel, born in the same year as Beethoven and Wordsworth (1770), is sure
+that nothing can resist the onslaught of man's spirit. 'Stronger than
+the gates of Hell are the gates of Thought.' Fichte is convinced that
+there waits in man, only to be developed, a power that will unite him
+with all other men and at the same time develop his own personality to
+the full. In a sense, the deepest, each man _is_ his fellow-men, and
+they are he.
+
+How much this conception has affected modern thought can be seen in a
+recent and very remarkable book, _The New State_,[73] where the very
+basis of democracy is shown to be the faith in this essential unity, a
+unity to be worked out, not yet realized, but capable of realization, a
+faith stirring all through the modern world, in ways expected and
+unexpected, from Syndicalism to the League of Nations.
+
+Later than Hegel and Fichte, the great Positivist conception of life
+preached by Comte is instinct with this belief that man united with his
+fellows, and only as so united, can attain heights undreamt-of and
+unlimited.
+
+The flood-tide of this faith flowed far into the nineteenth century. The
+Italian Mazzini, leader of revolt in 1848, was filled with it. Prophet
+of the most generous political gospel ever preached, he lived on the
+hope that, if freedom were given to the nations and duty set before
+them, they would prove worthy of their double mission, and peace would
+come to pass between all peoples.
+
+But even Mazzini had his moments of agonizing doubt. And others beside
+him, men of lesser intellect as well as greater, were soon to raise, or
+had already raised, voices, stern or fretful, of protest and criticism.
+It became clear at last that this joyous confidence rested on a very
+definite view of life and one that might easily be challenged, the view,
+namely, that at bottom the universe meant well to man, that his greatest
+aspirations were compatible with each other and nowise beyond
+attainment. Almost from the first there were men of the modern world who
+did challenge this. Byron and Schopenhauer are significant figures, both
+born in the same year, only eighteen years later than the great Three of
+1770, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven. Byron is full of moody
+questionings, Schopenhauer of much more than questionings. Against the
+dauntless optimism of Hegel, he flatly denies that the universe is good,
+or happiness possible for man. On the contrary, at the heart of it and
+of him there lies an infinite unrest, never to be quieted until man
+himself gives up the Will to Live and sinks back into the Unconscious
+from which he came.
+
+Now after Schopenhauer came Nietzsche, and though Nietzsche's influence
+may have been exaggerated, yet undeniably it has been of immense
+importance both for Germany and Europe. He is typical of the change that
+begins to appear about the middle of the century. Reacting from the
+optimism of the idealists (which seemed to him both smug and false),
+Nietzsche welcomed Schopenhauer's more Spartan view with a kind of
+fierce delight. But his criticism of Schopenhauer was fierce too, and he
+gave a strangely different turn to such parts of the doctrine as he did
+accept. To Schopenhauer, since it was folly to hope for real happiness
+in this life or any other, the wise course would be to kill outright, so
+far as possible, the Will to Live itself. To Nietzsche the wise course
+was to assert life, to claim it more and more abundantly, to face this
+tragic show with a courage so high that it could be gay, a courage that
+could do without happiness, and yet that turned aside from none of
+life's joys simply because they were fleeting, that was more than
+content to 'live dangerously', picking flowers, as it were, clear-eyed,
+on the edge of the precipice. And this not merely in the temper of 'Let
+us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' For him the motto would have
+run, 'Let us be up and doing, for to-morrow we die', sustained by the
+belief that the heroic struggle now would lead inevitably to the
+production of a nobler type of man, a man who would be something more
+than man--the Super-man, to give him the name that every reader knows,
+if he knows nothing else about Nietzsche.
+
+Even this short statement shows how Nietzsche shared the admiration for
+life and power characteristic of what I have called the Modern
+Renascence, and how deeply he was influenced by the doctrine of
+Evolution, and that in a not unhopeful form, the hope for an advance in
+the race at least, if not in the individuals now living. And it shows
+too how mistaken those are who see in him nothing but a preacher of
+brutal egotism. If he had been only that, he would never have won the
+influence he possessed and possesses. Yet there is important truth in
+the cursory popular judgement. If his teaching has its heroic side, a
+side that has enabled him to give succour to many when other and sweeter
+gospels are spurned as flattering unctions, he has also a most ruthless
+element. And this partly because of his very sincerity. Accept the
+doctrine that men and women perish like candles blown out in the night,
+accept it really and fully, with intellect, imagination, and feeling,
+and then see how much light-heartedness can be got out of life, if we
+still allow ourselves to pity men. Nietzsche had intellect, imagination,
+and feeling, and he saw plainly enough that, while even in such a
+universe there could be a grim happiness for the lives of heroes, there
+could be nothing but infinite sadness for the countless failures who
+have never been either happy or heroic. There was no immortality; these
+wretched beings would never have another chance. If joy was to be kept
+(and Nietzsche was avid for joy), if the universe was to be accepted
+(and Nietzsche desired above all to say Yes! to the universe), then he
+must root out pity from his heart as an unmanly weakness. In this way
+was sharpened the ruthlessness and savage arrogance latent in the man, a
+ruthlessness and an arrogance that have done so much harm both to his
+country and the world.
+
+In fairness, we must add that Nietzsche could not succeed in his own
+attempt; the struggle tore him to pieces and he died in madness.
+
+But it is above all instructive to contrast him here with several of
+his contemporaries and successors. Browning in England, Walt Whitman in
+America, facing the same problems of joy and struggle, of life and
+death, of the few great and the many commonplace, of Man himself and the
+Nature that seems at once his mother and his enemy, refused to give up
+the hope of a solution, nay, they were sure they had found a solution,
+and for them it was bound up with the hope of immortality. They go even
+beyond the earlier men in their insistence on the double ideal of
+Paganism and Christianity, but they have an insistence of their own on
+the belief in unending life as alone giving man elbow-room, so to speak,
+for working out his destiny. Browning claims eternity as the due of
+every man, however mean; and if Whitman feels his foothold 'tenon'd and
+mortised in granite', it is because he can 'laugh at dissolution' and
+knows 'the amplitude of time'.
+
+But in such insistence and such conviction they have not been followed,
+speaking broadly, by our leading writers since. On the other hand, they
+have been so followed, again speaking broadly, in their loyalty to the
+twofold ideal. Here and there, no doubt, as I have said, writers like
+Nietzsche, on the one hand, have tried to be satisfied with the splendid
+development of a Few, or, on the other hand, like Tolstoy, have flung
+back in a kind of despair to the old ideal of abnegation, of sheer
+brotherly love and nothing else, turning their backs on all splendours
+of art, knowledge, or delight, that do not directly minister to the one
+thing they hold needful. But the earlier and wider ideal, the ideal of
+our Renascence, once envisaged by man, that has not been lost, and I
+believe never can be lost. Its own greatness will keep the foremost men
+true to it. Meredith is one of the men I mean. He is full of pity, but
+he does not only pity men and women--he wants them to grow, and to grow
+for themselves. His whole attitude towards Woman shows this: for the
+women's movement is nothing more and nothing less, as Ibsen also felt,
+than one big stream of the general movement towards liberty and
+self-determination. So far Meredith marches with Browning and Whitman.
+But he will never commit himself about immortality. It seems enough for
+him to take part in the struggle for a finer life, at once heroic and
+tender, not caring overmuch whether we reach it or no. 'Spirit raves not
+for a goal' is one of his hard and characteristic sayings, and here he
+seems to me typical both of modern thought in general and especially of
+English thought, and that both for good and ill. We see in him the want
+of precision, the lack of logical coherence, that have prevented us from
+ever producing a philosopher of the first rank. At the same time there
+is something true and profound in his instinct that the moment has not
+yet come in which to formulate our faith. We all feel that we are on the
+brink of tremendous, perhaps terrifying, discoveries; we resent any
+cut-and-dried solution, however pleasant, perhaps all the more if it is
+pleasant, and we resent it because we feel that at bottom our hopes
+would be travestied by any conception we, with our little intellect and
+minute knowledge, could at present frame. It was once said to me by a
+far-seeing friend[74] that the modern dislike of church-going, the
+modern incapacity to write a long coherent poem, the modern passion for
+music and for realism, even for sordid realism, all sprang from the same
+roots, from the thirst for an infinite harmony, the belief that
+everything was somehow involved in that harmony, and the conviction that
+all systems, as yet made or makeable, were entirely inadequate.
+
+And to the list we may add, I think, the modern passion for history and
+for science. We study history not merely to be warned by failures or
+inspired by shining examples: at bottom we have a belief that somehow
+the lives and struggles of those men in the distant past are still quite
+as important as our own. We follow the discoveries of science not only
+for their commercial value or because we share the excitement of the
+chase, but because, deeper than all, we suspect that the universe is a
+glorious thing.
+
+And there is another matter, perhaps the most important of all, on which
+I would dwell as I draw to a close, where Meredith leads directly to the
+dominant thought of the present day. I mean his feeling that, if the
+universe is to be proved acceptable to man's conscience, it will be
+through the effort of man himself struggling towards his own ideal. It
+is as though the world itself had to be redeemed by man. This hope is
+the real hope of our time. So far as the modern world believes the
+doctrine of the Incarnation, it is in this sense that it believes.
+
+And this belief we find everywhere in all hopeful writers, great or
+small. It gives dignity to the latest writings of H.G. Wells, this faith
+in a spirit moving in man greater than man himself, worthy to fight and
+fit to overcome all that is wrong in the universe. Bernard Shaw's creed
+is just the same, sometimes thinly disguised under respect for 'the
+Life-Force', sometimes coming boldly forward in audacious, profound
+assertions that God needs Man to accomplish His own will and is helpless
+without him. 'There is something I want to do,' Shaw imagines his God as
+saying, 'and I don't know what it is; I must make a brain, the human
+brain, to find it out.' Rodin modelled a mighty hand, the Hand of God,
+holding within it Man and Woman. Shaw, it is reported, asked the
+sculptor: 'I suppose you meant your own hand after all?' 'Yes,' said
+Rodin, 'as the tool.'
+
+The same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson,
+the idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not
+yet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to
+be born through the struggle of man's spirit with matter. This is one
+function of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material
+through which alone man's vague ideal can become definite and actual,
+just as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the
+effort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.
+
+From this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but
+ready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are
+among the makers. Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to
+the modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight. To quote
+William James, 'It _feels_ like a real fight--as if there were something
+really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and
+faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own
+hearts from atheisms and fears.' He goes on to confess that he himself
+does not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the
+redemption will surely be accomplished. Such proof, he admits, 'may not
+be clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that
+expression may serve to symbolize)'. 'But the faithful fighters of this
+hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to
+the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with
+which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been
+gained:
+
+      "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques,
+    and you were not there!"'[75]
+
+Thus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has
+sunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of
+ecstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence
+for heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after
+all lies the root of human majesty. There is deep pathos in the change,
+but maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well. The world may
+grow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called
+'desperate hope' as distinct from 'hoping hope'. The triumphant harmony
+that seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may
+have been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own large
+spirits, at least for us, their lesser readers. Mystics have spoken of
+'The Dark Night of the Soul' as the stage inevitable before the crowning
+glory, and to-day some of those who call to us out of great darkness are
+among our greatest leaders.
+
+Of such certainly is a living writer, now beginning to be acclaimed as
+he deserves, the writer Conrad. In some ways this noble novelist might
+stand as the special representative of modern feeling. A Pole by birth
+and more than half an Englishman by sympathy, his view of life is as
+wide as it is profound and grave. It has all the sternness of temper of
+which I have spoken, the determination to look facts in the face
+whatever the consequences. Conrad would echo Sartor's noble cry for
+Truth--'Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;--no
+Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of
+Apostasy!' This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism,
+but Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic. So also does his
+pitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a
+Nietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche's ardour for heroism.
+That to him is the core of life:--'to face it.' 'Keep on facing it,' so
+the old skipper tells the young mate in _Typhoon_. And facing the
+mysterious universe, peering into the Darkness with steady alert eyes,
+Conrad has at once an endless wistfulness and, or so it seems to me, a
+secret unquenchable hope. Doubt certainly he has in plenty. The sea of
+which he is always dreaming is terrible and cruel in his eyes as well as
+august and ennobling.
+
+But he is sure of one thing: it is through the struggle with it and such
+as it that man alone can become Man. It is through facing the horrors of
+a dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young
+master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the
+Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing
+the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the
+'full-powered steam-ship' in _Typhoon_ shows what he has in him,
+compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert
+seamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with
+a power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I
+should despair of conveying by mere criticism. The book must be read for
+itself, and read again and again. It is told, in one way, simply as a
+sailor's yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a
+symbol of man's life.
+
+Threatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, 'the stupid man'
+of no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to
+be done is to keep up steam and face the wind. By sheer force of
+personality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through. And
+in the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem
+unending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of
+terrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting
+madly in the hold. MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance
+for the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as most of them
+are, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship. 'Had to do what's
+fair for all,' he mumbles stolidly to his clever grumbling mate, Jukes,
+during a dead lull in the storm--'they are only Chinamen. Give them the
+same chance with ourselves' ... 'Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if
+I knew she hadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes.' He
+does not know whether the ship will be lost or not--(and we do not know
+whether mankind will be lost or not)--what he does know is how he must
+act. But also he never loses hope. 'She may come out of it yet': that is
+the kind of answer the taciturn man gives when driven to speech. The
+chief mate, locked in his captain's arms to brace himself against the
+hurricane, scarcely able to make the other hear in the terrific gale
+though he shouts close to his head, gets back such answers, and with
+them the power to endure. He tells him the boats are gone: the captain
+yells back sensibly, 'Can't be helped.'
+
+And so noble is the power with which Conrad uses our tongue, the tongue
+he has made his own by adoption and genius, that I must let him speak
+for himself, and can find no better close for my own lame words. Jukes
+has been shouting to his captain again:
+
+     'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but
+     with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of
+     noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the
+     black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man's voice--the frail
+     and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of
+     thought, resolution, and purpose, that shall be pronouncing
+     confident words on the last day, when heavens fall and justice is
+     done--again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from
+     very, very far--"All right."'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 72: _Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre_, Bk. 8, c. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 73: By M.P. Follett (Longmans).]
+
+[Footnote 74: Professor A.C. Bradley, to whom also is due the passage
+about Schubert and the parallel drawn between Beethoven, Hegel, and
+Wordsworth.]
+
+[Footnote 75: From _The Will to Believe_, quoted in Bridges' _The Spirit
+of Man_, No. 425.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Recent Developments in European Thought, by Various
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+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #15084 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15084)