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diff --git a/19110.txt b/19110.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c7c4924 --- /dev/null +++ b/19110.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5922 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arena, 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: The Arena + Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 + +Author: Various + +Editor: B. O. Flower + +Release Date: August 24, 2006 [EBook #19110] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARENA *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +THE ARENA. + +EDITED BY B. O. FLOWER. + +VOL. IV. + + +PUBLISHED BY +THE ARENA PUBLISHING CO., +BOSTON, MASS. + +1891. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +June, 1891 + + The New Columbus JULIAN HAWTHORNE + + The Unknown (Part I) CAMILLE FLAMMARION + + The Chivalry of the Press JULIUS CHAMBERS + + Society's Exiles B. O. FLOWER + + Evolution and Christianity PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, Ph.D. + + The Irrigation Problem in the Northwest JAMES REALF, JR. + + Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN + + Spencer's Doctrine of Inconceivability REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN + + The Better Part WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE + + The Heiress of the Ridge NO-NAME PAPER + + The Brook P. H. S. + + Optimism, Real and False EDITORIAL + + The Pessimistic Cast of Modern Thought EDITORIAL + + +July, 1891 + + Oliver Wendell Holmes GEORGE STEWART, D.C.L., LL.D. + + Plutocracy and Snobbery in New York EDGAR FAWCETT + + Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS + + The Unknown (Part II) CAMILLE FLAMMARION + + The Swiss and American Constitutions W. D. MCCRACKAN + + The Tyranny of All the People REV. FRANCIS BELLAMY + + Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes, + (Part 2d) PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN + + AEonian Punishment REV. W. E. MANLEY, D.D. + + The Negro Question PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH + + A Prairie Heroine HAMLIN GARLAND + + An Epoch-Marking Drama EDITORIAL + + The Present Revolution in Theological Thought EDITORIAL + + The Conflict Between Ancient and Modern Thought in the + Presbyterian Church EDITORIAL + + +August, 1891 + + The Unity of Germany MME. BLAZE DEBURY + + Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS + + Where Must Lasting Progress Begin? ELIZABETH CADY STANTON + + My Home Life AMELIA B. EDWARDS + + The Tyranny of Nationalism REV. MINOT J. SAVAGE + + Individuality in Education PROF. MARY L. DICKINSON + + The Working-Women of To-day HELEN CAMPBELL + + The Independent Party and Money at Cost R. B. HASSELL + + Psychic Experiences SARA A. UNDERWOOD + + A Decade of Retrogression FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY + + Old Hickory's Ball WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE + + The Era of Woman EDITORIAL + + +September, 1891 + + The Newer Heresies REV. GEO. C. LORIMER, D.D. + + Harvest and Laborers in the Psychical Field FREDERIC W. H. MYERS + + Fashion's Slaves B. O. FLOWER + + Un-American Tendencies REV. CARLOS D. MARTYN, D.D. + + Extrinsic Significance of Constitutional + Government in Japan KUMA OISHI, A.M. + + University Extension PROF. WILLIS BOUGHTON + + Pope Leo on Labor THOMAS B. PRESTON + + The Austrian Postal Banking System SYLVESTER BAXTER + + Another View of Newman WILLIAM M. SALTER + + Inter-Migration Rabbi SOLOMON SCHINDLER + + He Came and Went Again W. N. HARBEN + + O Thou Who Sighest for a Broader Field JULIA ANNA WOLCOTT + + An Evening at the Corner Grocery HAMLIN GARLAND + + +October, 1891 + + James Russell Lowell GEORGE STEWART, D.C.L., LL.D. + + Healing Through the Mind HENRY WOOD + + Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne HAMLIN GARLAND + + Some Weak Spots in the French Republic THEODORE STANTON + + Leaderless Mobs H. C. BRADSBY + + Madame Blavatsky at Adyar MONCURE D. CONWAY + + Emancipation by Nationalism THADDEUS B. WAKEMAN + + Recollections of Old Play-Bills CHARLES H. PATTEE + + The Microscope DR. FREDERICK GAERTNER + + A Grain of Gold WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE + + Religious Intolerance To-day EDITORIAL + + Social Conditions Under Louis XV EDITORIAL + + +November, 1891 + + Pharisaism in Public Life EDITORIAL + + Cancer Spots in Metropolitan Life EDITORIAL + + The Saloon EDITORIAL + + Hot-beds of Social Pollution EDITORIAL + + The Power and Responsibility of the Christian Ministry EDITORIAL + + What the Clergy Might Accomplish EDITORIAL + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS. + + +June, 1891 + + B. O. Flower + + Julius Chambers + + Out of Work + + Invalid in Chair + + Cellarway Leading to Under-Ground Apartments + + Sick Man in Under-Ground Apartment + + Constance and Maggie + + Exterior of a North End Tenement House + + Under-Ground Tenement with Two Beds + + Widow and two Children in Under-Ground Tenement + + Portuguese Widow in Attic + + Portuguese Widow and Three Children + + The Victoria Square Apartment House, Liverpool, Eng. + + Rev. T. Ernest Allen + + +July, 1891 + + Oliver Wendell Holmes + + +August, 1891 + + Elizabeth Cady Stanton + + Amelia B. Edwards + + +September, 1891 + + Rev. Geo. C. Lorimer + + Illustrations of "Fashion's Slaves" + + Prominent Actresses in Costume + + Kuma Oishi + + +October, 1891 + + James Russell Lowell + + Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne + + Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne Illustrated in Character + + +November, 1891 + + Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge + + Noted Members of the South Dakota Divorce Colony + + + + +[Illustration: (signed) Cordially Yours B. Orange Flower] + + + + +THE ARENA. + +No. XIX. + +JUNE, 1891. + + + + +THE NEW COLUMBUS. + +BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE. + + +History repeats itself, but on new planes. Often, a symbol appears in +one age, and the spirit of which it is the expression is revealed in +another. Each answers the need of its own time. From the creative +standpoint, which is out of time, spirit and symbol are one; but to us, +who see things successively, they seem as prior and posterior. + +If this be so, it should be possible for a thoughtful and believing mind +in some measure to forecast the future from the record of the past. No +doubt, past and present contain the germs of all that is to be, were the +analyst omniscient. But it needs not omniscience roughly to body-forth +the contours of coming events. It is done daily, on a smaller or larger +scale, with more or less plausibility. All theories are grounded in this +principle. And it is noticeable that, at this moment, such tentative +prophesies are more than frequent, and more comprehensive than usual in +their scope. + +The condition of mankind, during the last quarter of the fifteenth +century, bore some curious analogies to its state at present. A certain +stage or epoch of human life seemed to have run its course and come to a +stop. The impulses which had started it were exhausted. In the political +field, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous and +stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, +beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old +methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading +scientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisen +worthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion, +the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the +monasteries and of the priesthood generally, had brought it down from a +region of sublime and self-abnegating faith, to a commodity for raising +money, and a cloak to hide profligacy. Martin Luther was still in the +womb of the future; and so were Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, +and Oliver Cromwell. Pessimists were declaring, according to their +invariable custom, that what was bad would get worse, and that what was +good would disappear. But there were, scattered here and there +throughout Christendom, a number of men of the profounder, optimistic +tendency, who saw in existing abuses but the misuse or misapprehension +of elements intrinsically good; who knew that evils bear in themselves +the seeds of their own extirpation; and who believed that Providence, +far from having failed in its design to secure the ultimate happiness of +the human race, was bringing the old order of things to a close in order +to provide place for something new and higher. + +But that obstacle in the way of improvement which was apparently the +most immovable, was the geographical one. The habitable earth was used +up. Outside of Europe there was nothing, save inaccessible wilderness, +and barren, boundless seas. There was nothing for the mass of men to do, +and yet their energy and desire were as great as ever; there was nowhere +for them to go, and yet they were steadily increasing in numbers. The +Crusades had amused them for a while, but they were done with; the +plague had thinned them out, and war had helped the plague; but the +birth-rate was more than a match for both. A new planet, with all the +fresh interests and possibilities which that would involve, seemed +absolutely necessary. But who should erect a ladder to the stars, or +draw them down from the sky within man's reach? The one indispensable +thing was also the one thing impossible. + +If, next year, we were to learn that some miraculous Ericsson or Edison +had established a practicable route to the planet Mars, and that this +neighbor of ours in the solar system was found to be replete with all +the things that we most want and can least easily get,--were such news +to reach us, we might comprehend the sensation created in the Europe of +1492, four centuries ago, when it received the information that a +certain Christopher Columbus had discovered a brand new continent, +overflowing with gold and jewels, on the other side of the Atlantic. The +impossible had happened. Our globe was not the petty sphere that it had +been assumed to be. There was room in it for everybody, and a fortune +for the picking up. And all the world, with Spain in the van, prepared +to move on El Dorado. A whiff of the fresh Western air blew in all +nostrils, and re-animated the moribund body of civilization. The +stimulus of Columbus' achievement was felt in every condition of human +life and phase of human activity. Mankind once more saw a future, and +bound up its loins to take advantage of it. Literature felt the electric +touch, and blossomed in the unmatched geniuses of the Elizabethan age. +Science ceased to reason _a priori_, and began to investigate and +classify facts. Human liberty began to be conscious of thews and sinews, +soon to be tested in the struggle of the Netherlands against Philip II. +of Spain, and, later, in that of the people of England against their own +Charles Stuart. Religion was heard to mutter something about the rights +of private conscience, and anon the muttering took form in the heroic +protest of the man of Eisleben. It was like the awakening in the palace +of the Sleeping Beauty, in the fairy-tale. Columbus had kissed the lips +of the Princess America, and at once the long-pent stream of old-world +life dashed onward like a cataract. + +A new world! Four hundred years have passed, and the New World is less a +novelty than it was. We have begun to suspect that no given number of +square miles of land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles and +declarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness of +communication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society, +no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy,--none of these and +a hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. _Non tali +auxilio, nec defensoribus istis!_ The elements of true life lie deeper +and are simpler. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of a +dispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible way +over it, nor around it. We cannot stand still; still less can we turn +back. What is to happen? What happens when an irresistible force +encounters an impenetrable barrier? + +That was the question asked in Columbus' day; and he found an answer to +it. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer it +again? To unimaginative minds it looks as if there were no career for a +new Columbus. In the first place, population is increasing so fast that +soon even the steppes of Russia and the western American plains will be +overcrowded. Again, land, and the control of industries, are falling +into the possession of a comparative handful of persons, to whom the +rest of the population must inevitably become subject; or, should the +latter rebel, the ensuing period of chaos would be followed, at best, by +a return of the old conditions. Religion is a lifeless letter, a school +of good-breeding, a philosophical amusement; the old unreasoning faith +that moved mountains can never revive. Science advances with ever more +and yet more caution, but each new step only confirms the conviction +that the really commanding secrets of existence will forever elude +discovery. Literature, rendered uncreative by the scientific influence, +has fallen to refining upon itself, and photographing a narrow +conception of facts. The exhausting heats of Equatorial Africa, and the +paralyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonization +of those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior which +has no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlying +spirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. There +are no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We have +reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast +cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the +slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every +man against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such a +predicament? + +Such is the refrain of the nineteenth century pessimist. But, as before, +the sprouting of new thought and belief is visible to the attentive eye +all over the surface of the sordid field of a decaying civilization. The +time has come when the spirit of Columbus' symbol shall avouch itself, +vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from the +seed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nor +too late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not till +then, the rock opens, and the spring gushes forth. Who that has +considered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitely +minute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature but +the characteristic echo, in sense, of the spirit of man? + +Even on the material plane, there are numberless opportunities for the +new Columbus. Ever and anon a canard appears in a newspaper, or a +romance is published, reporting or describing some imaginary invention +which is to revolutionize the economical situation. The problem of +air-navigation is among the more familiar of these suggestions, though +by no means the most important of them. No doubt we shall fly before +long, but that mode of travel will be, after all, nothing more than an +improvement upon existing means of intercommunication. After the +principle has been generally adopted, and the novelty has worn off, we +shall find ourselves not much better, nor much worse off than we were +before. Flying will be but another illustration of the truth that +competition is only intensified by the perfecting of its instruments. +Men will still be poor and rich, happy and unhappy, as formerly. If I +can go from New York to London in a day, instead of in a week, so also +can those against whom I am competing. The idea that there is any real +gain of time is an illusion; the day will still contain its +four-and-twenty hours, and I shall, as before, sleep so many, play so +many, and work so many. Relatively, my state will be unchanged. + +More promising is the idea of the transformation of matter. Science is +now nearly ready to affirm that substances of all kinds are specific +conditions of etheric vortices. Vibration is the law of existence, and +if we could control vibrations, we could create substances, either +directly from the etheric base, or, mediately, by inducing the atoms of +any given substance so to modify their mutual arrangement, or +characteristic vibration, as to produce another substance. It is evident +that if this feat is ever performed, it must be by some process of +elemental simplicity, readily available for every tyro. A prophet has +arisen, during these latter days, in Philadelphia, who somewhat +obscurely professes to be on the track of this discovery. He is commonly +regarded as a charlatan; but men cognizant of the latest advances of +science admit themselves unable to explain upon any known principles the +effects he produces. It need not be pointed out that if Mr. Keely, or +any one else, has found a way to metamorphose one substance into +another, the consequences to the world must be profound. Labor for one's +daily bread will be a thing of the past, when bread may be made out of +stones by the mere setting-up of a particular vibration. The race for +wealth will cease, when every one is equally able to command all the +resources of the globe. The whole point of view regarding the material +aspects of life will be vitally altered; leisure (so far as necessary +physical effort is concerned) will inevitably be universal. For when we +consider what have been the true motives of civilization and its +appurtenances during the greater part of the historical period, we find +it to be the desire to better our physical condition. It is commerce +that has built cities, made railroads, laws, and wars, maintained the +boundaries of nations, and kept up the human contact which we are +accustomed to call society. When commerce ceases--as it will cease, when +there is no longer any reason for its existence--all the results of it +that we have mentioned will cease also. In other words, civilization and +society, as we now know them, will disappear. Human beings will stay +where they are born, and live as the birds do. There will be no work +except creative or artistic work, done for the mere pleasure of the +doing, voluntarily. Society will no longer be based upon mutual +rivalries and the gain of personal advantage. Science will not be +pursued on its present lines, or for its present ends; for when the +human race has attained leisure and the gratification of its material +wants, it would have no motives for further merely physical +investigation. + +This would seem to involve a new kind of barbarism. And so, no doubt, it +would, were the discoveries of our Columbus to be limited to the +material plane. But it is far more probable that material +transubstantiation will be merely the corollary or accompaniment of an +infinitely more important revelation and expansion in the spiritual +sphere. What we are to expect is an awakening of the soul; the +re-discovery and re-habilitation of the genuine and indestructible +religious instinct. Such a religious revival will be something very +different from what we have hitherto known under that name. It will be a +spontaneous and joyful realization by the soul of its vital relations +with its Creator. Ecclesiastical forms and dogmas will vanish, and +nature will be recognized as a language whereby God converses with man. +The interpretation of this language, based as it is upon an eternal and +living symbolism, containing infinite depths beyond depths of meaning, +will be a sufficient study and employment for mankind forever. Art will +receive an inconceivable stimulus, from the recognition of its true +significance as a re-humanization of nature, and from the perception of +its scope and possibilities. Science will become, in truth, the handmaid +of religion, in that it will be devoted to reporting the physical +analogies of spiritual truths, and following them out in their subtler +details. Hitherto, the progress of science has been slow, and subject to +constant error and revision, because it would not accept the inevitable +dependence of body on soul, as of effect on cause. But as soon as +physical research begins to go hand-in-hand with moral or psychical, it +will advance with a rapidity hitherto unimagined, each assisting and +classifying the other. The study of human nature will give direction to +the study of the nature that is not human; and the latter will +illustrate and confirm the conclusions of the former. More than half the +difficulties of science as now practised is due to ignorance of what to +look for; but when it can refer at each step to the truths of the mind +and heart, this obstacle will disappear, and certainty take the place of +experiment. + +The attitude of men towards one another will undergo a corresponding +change. It is already become evident that selfishness is a colossal +failure. Viewed as to its logical results, it requires that each +individual should possess all things and all power. Hostile collision +thus becomes inevitable, and more is lost by it than can ever be gained. +Recent social theorists propose a universal co-operation, to save the +waste of personal competition. But competition is a wholesome and vital +law; it is only the direction of it that requires alteration. When the +cessation of working for one's livelihood takes place, human energy and +love of production will not cease with it, but will persist, and must +find their channels. But competition to outdo each in the service of all +is free from collisions, and its range is limitless. Not to support +life, but to make life more lovely, will be the effort; and not to make +it more lovely for one's self, but for one's neighbor. Nor is this all. +The love of the neighbor will be a true act of Divine worship, since it +will then be acknowledged that mankind, though multiplied to human +sense, is in essence one; and that in that universal one, which can have +no self-consciousness, God is present or incarnate. The divine humanity +is the only real and possible object of mortal adoration, and no genuine +sentiment of human brotherhood is conceivable apart from its +recognition. But, with it, the stature of our common manhood will grow +towards the celestial. + +Obviously, with thoughts and pursuits of this calibre to engage our +attention, we shall be very far from regretting those which harass and +enslave us to-day. Leaving out of account the extension of psychical +faculties, which will enable the antipodes to commune together at will, +and even give us the means of conversing with the inhabitants of other +planets, and which will so simplify and deepen language that audible +speech, other than the musical sounds indicative of emotion, will be +regarded as a comic and clumsy archaism,--apart from all this, the +fathomless riches of wisdom to be gathered from the commonest daily +objects and outwardly most trivial occurrences, will put an end to all +craving for merely physical change of place and excitement. Gradually +the human race will become stationary, each family occupying its own +place, and living in patriarchal simplicity, though endowed with power +and wisdom that we should now consider god-like. The sons and daughters +will go forth whither youthful love calls them; but, with the perfecting +of society, those whose spiritual sympathies are closest will never be +spatially remote; lovers will not then, as now, seek one another in the +ends of the earth, and probably miss one another after all. Each member +of the great community will spontaneously enlist himself in the service +of that use which he is best qualified to promote; and, as in the human +body, all the various parts, in fulfilling their function, will serve +one another and the whole. + +Perhaps the most legitimately interesting phase of this speculation +relates to the future of these qualities and instincts in human nature +which we now call evil and vicious. Since these qualities are innate, +they can never be eradicated, nor even modified in intensity or +activity. They belong with us, nay, they are all there is of us, and +with their disappearance, we ourselves should disappear. Are we, then, +to be wicked forever? Hardly so; but, on the contrary, what we have +known as wickedness will show itself to be the only possible basis and +energy of goodness. These tremendous appetites and passions of ours were +not given us to be extinguished, but to be applied aright. + +They are like fire, which is the chief of destroyers when it escapes +bounds, or is misused; but, in its right place and function, is among +the most indispensable of blessings. But to enlarge upon this thought +would carry us too far from the immediate topic; nor is it desirable to +follow with the feeble flight of our imagination the heaven-embracing +orbit of this theme. A hint is all that can be given, which each must +follow out for himself. We have only attempted to indicate what regions +await the genius of the new Columbus; nor does the conjecture seem too +bold that perhaps they are not so distant from us in time as they appear +to be in quality. They are with us now, if we would but know it. + + + + +THE UNKNOWN. + +PART I. + +BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION. + +_Translated from the author's manuscript, by G. A. H. Meyer and +J. H. Wiggin._ + + + Croire tout decouvert est une erreur profonde: + C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde. + + (To fancy all known is an error profound,-- + The sky-line mistaking for earth's utmost bound.) + +The idea expressed in this distich is so self-evident that we might +almost characterize it as trite. Yet the history of every science marks +many eminent men, of superior intelligence, who have been arrested in +the way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have very +innocently supposed that science had uttered to them her last word. In +astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in optics, in natural history, in +physiology, in anatomy, in medicine, in botany, in geology, in all +branches of human knowledge, it would be easy to fill several pages with +the names of celebrated men who believed science would never pass the +limits reached in their own time, and that nothing remained to be +discovered thereafter. In the army of wise men now living it would not +be difficult to name many distinguished scholars who imagine that, in +the spheres whereof they are masters, it is needless to search for +anything new. + +It may be unbecoming to talk about one's self, but as, on the one side, +some have done me the honor to ask what I think of certain +problems,--while, on the other side, I have been more than once accused +of busying myself, in a rather unscientific way, with certain vague +investigations,--I will begin by acknowledging that the maxim contained +in the two verses of my motto has been the conviction of my whole life; +and if, from my callow youth until this very day, I have been interested +in the study of phenomena pertaining to the domain of inquiries called +occult, such as magnetism, spiritualism, hypnotism, telepathy, +ghost-seeing, it is because I believe we know next to nothing of what +may be known, and that nearly everything still remains to be +apprehended; for I believe the thirst for knowledge is one of our best +faculties, the one most prolific, without which we should still be +dwelling in an Age of Stone, inasmuch as it is our right, if not our +duty, to seek the truth by all the methods accessible to our +intellectual powers. + +It is for this reason that I published among other things, in the course +of the year 1865,--now a quarter-century past,--a treatise entitled +Unknown Natural Forces, and touching certain questions analogous to +those which are to occupy our attention in this paper; and so I ask my +readers to note the following quotations therefrom, as an introduction +to our present investigation: + + It is foolish to suppose that all things are known to us. + + True wisdom involves continual study. + + In the month of June, 1776, a young man, the Marquis de + Jouffroy, was experimenting upon the Doubs,[1] with a steamboat + forty feet long by six feet wide. For two years he had been + inviting scientific attention to his invention; for two years he + had insisted that steam was a powerful force, heretofore + unappreciated. All ears remained deaf to his voice. Complete + isolation was his sole recompense. When he walked through the + streets of Beaume-les-Dames, a thousand jests greeted his + appearance. They nicknamed him Jouffroy the Pump. Ten years + later, having constructed a _pyroscaphe_ [steamboat] which + voyaged along the Saone, from Lyons to Isle Barbe, Jouffroy + presented a petition to Cabinet Minister Calonne and to the + Academy of Sciences. They refused even to look at his invention. + + [1] The Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern + Departments of France is named. Its principal city is + Besancon, the birthplace of Victor Hugo. + + On August 9, 1803, Robert Fulton, the American, ascended the + Seine in a novel steamboat, at a speed of six kilometers per + hour. The Academy of Sciences and the government officials + witnessed the experiment. On the tenth they had forgotten him, + and Fulton departed to try his fortunes with his own countrymen. + + In 1791 an Italian, named Galvani, suspended from the bars of + his window at Bologna some flayed frogs, which he that morning + had seen in motion on a table, although they had been killed the + night before. This incident seemed incredible, and was + unanimously rejected by those to whom he related it. Learned men + would have considered it below their dignity to take any pains + to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility. + Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was + produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought + into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a + frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer + believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the + advantage of his observations. It was reserved for Volta to + really discover electricity. + + Yet already Europe is furrowed by wagons drawn by flame-mouthed + dragons. Distances have vanished before the patience of the + humble workers of the world, which is reduced to pettiness by + the genius of man. The longest journeys have become well-trodden + promenades; the most gigantic tasks are accomplished under the + potential and tireless hand of this unseen force; a telegraphic + despatch flies, in the twinkling of an eye, from one continent + to the other; without leaving our armchairs, we converse with + the inhabitants of London and Saint Petersburg; yet these + miracles pass unnoticed. We do not dream to what struggles, to + what mortifications, to what persecutions, these wonders are + due; and we do not reflect that the impossible of yesterday has + become the actual of to-day. + + There are men who call to us: "Halt, ye small scientists! We do + not understand you! Consequently, you cannot yourselves + comprehend what you are talking about!" We may reply: However + narrow your judgment, your myopia does not afflict all mankind. + It must be declared to you, gentlemen, that in spite of + yourselves, despite your ravings, the chariot of human knowledge + advances further than ever before, and will continue its + triumphal march towards the conquest of new powers. + + Like the spasms of Galvani's frog, certain crude facts, about + which you are skeptical, reveal the existence of natural forces + as yet unknown. There is no effect without a cause. The human + being is the least known of all beings within our ken. We have + learned how to measure the sun, to traverse celestial distances, + to analyze starlight; yet we are ignorant as to what we + ourselves are. Man is a double being, _homo duplex_; and this + double nature remains a mystery to himself. We think; but what + is thought? Nobody can say. We walk; but what is this organic + action? Nobody knows. My will is an immaterial force; all the + faculties of my soul are immaterial; nevertheless, if I will to + raise my arm, this volition overcomes matter. How does this + power act? What mediation serves for the conveyance of the + mental command, in order to produce a physical effect? As yet no + one can answer. + + Tell me how the optic nerve transmits to our mentality a vision + of external objects! Tell me how thought conceives and where it + resides, and of what nature is cerebral activity! Tell me...! + But no! I could question you for ten years, without the greatest + among you being able to solve the least of my riddles. + + In this, as in the cases before adduced, we have the unknown for + our problem. I am far from saying that the force brought into + play in these phenomena can some day be employed like + electricity or steam. Such a notion would be neither more nor + less than absurd! Nevertheless, though differing essentially + from those, occult force is not the less real. + + Several years ago I designated this unknown force by the title + _psychical_. This designation may well be retained. + + Can we not find the happy medium between absolute negation and + dangerous credulity? Is it reasonable either to deny everything + we do not comprehend, or to accept all the fantasies engendered + in the vortex of disordered imaginations? Can we not achieve at + the same time the humility which becomes the weak and the + dignity which befits the strong? + + I conclude this statement as I began it, by declaring that it is + not in favor of the Davenport Brothers that I plead; nor do I + take up the gauntlet for any sect, for any group of people, or + for any person whatsoever; but I contend in behalf of certain + facts, of whose validity I was convinced years ago, though + without understanding their cause. + +I beg the reader to excuse the length of this citation; but it seems to +me to serve so naturally as an introduction to this present inquiry that +even to-day, after a lapse of a quarter-century, I really see no +important changes to be made in this old declaration, except to add that +it now appears to me to have been rather audacious on the part of a man +so very young, and that it forthwith won him many hearty enemies among +the elect of science. + +The experimental method is bound to conquer here, as everywhere. Let us, +then, without partisanship, study the question under its divers aspects. + + +1 + +"The immortality of the soul is a matter so important," writes Pascal, +"that one must have lost all moral sensibility if he remains indifferent +as to its nature." + +Why should we give up the hope of ever arriving at a knowledge of the +nature of the thinking principle which animates us, and of ascertaining +whether or not it outlives the destruction of the body? It must be +admitted that hitherto science has taught us nothing on this fundamental +subject. Is this any reason for renouncing the study of the problem? On +this, as on many other points, we are not of the same mind as those +material Positivists who declare themselves satisfied with not knowing +anything. We think, on the contrary, that we should attack the problem +by all methods, and not neglect a single hint which may aid the +solution. + +Personally, I declare that I have not yet discovered for myself one fact +which proves with certainty the existence of soul as separate from body. +Otherwise, however sublime astronomical science may be,--though it stand +at the head of human researches, as the first, the most important, and +the most widespread of all sciences,--I avow that, if the inductive +method had permitted me to penetrate secrets of existence, I should +inevitably have abandoned the science of the firmament, for that which +would have dethroned the other through its prime and unequalled +importance; since it would be superfluous for us to evade the fact that +the gravest and most interesting of all questions, to ourselves, is that +of our continuous personal existence. The existence of God, of the +entire universe, touches us far less intimately. If we ever cease to +live (for what is the span of a human life in the light of eternity!) it +is a matter of utter indifference to us whether other things exist or +not. Doubtless this reasoning is severely egotistic! Ah, how can it be +otherwise? + +If we have no clear and irrefutable proofs, we have still the aid of a +goodly number of observations, establishing the conclusion that we are +compassed about by a set of phenomena, and by powers differing from the +physical order commonly observed day by day; and these phenomena urge us +to pursue every line of investigation, having for its end a psychical +acquaintance with human nature. + +Let us begin at the beginning, with a recital of observations which, +from their very nature, have the disadvantage of being very personal. + + +2 + +At the age of sixteen, on my way home one day from the Paris +Observatory, I noticed, on the bookseller's stand in the Galeries de +l'Odeon, a green-covered volume entitled Le Livre des Esprits (Book of +Spirits), by Allan-Kardec. I bought it, and read it through at a +sitting. There was in it something unexpected, original, curious. Were +they true, the phenomena therein recounted? Did they solve the great +problem of futurity, as the author contended? In my anxiety to ascertain +this I made the acquaintance of the high-priest, for Allan-Kardec had +made of Spiritism a veritable religion. I assisted at the seances. I +experimented and became myself a medium. In one of Allan-Kardec's works, +called Genesis, over the signature of Galilee, may be read a whole +chapter on Cosmogony, which I wrote in a mediumistic condition. + +I was at that time connected with the principal circles in Paris where +these experiments were tried, and for two years I even filled the +exacting position of secretary to one of these circles, an office which +morally bound me not to be absent from a single seance. + +Communications were received in three different ways: by writing with +our own hands; by placing our hands upon planchette, in which a pencil +was placed which did the writing; by raps beneath the table, or by +movements which indicated certain letters, when the alphabet was +repeated aloud by one of the sitters. + +The first method was the only one in use in the Society for Spiritualist +Study presided over by Allan-Kardec; but it is the method leaving the +widest margin for doubt. Indeed, at the end of several years of +experimenting in this fashion, the result was that I became skeptical +even of myself, and for the reasons following. + +It cannot be denied that, under mediumistic conditions, one does not +write in his usual fashion. In the normal state, when we wish to write a +sentence, we mentally construct that sentence--if not the whole of it, +at least a part of it--before writing the words. The pen and hand obey +the creative thought. It is not so when one writes mediumistically. One +rests one's hand, motionless but docile, on a sheet of paper, and then +waits. After a little while the hand begins to move, and to form +letters, words, and phrases. One does not create these sentences, as in +the normal state, but waits for them to produce themselves. Yet the mind +is nevertheless associated therewith. The subject treated is in unison +with one's ordinary ideas. The written language is one's own. If one is +deficient in orthography, the composition will betray this fault. +Moreover, the mind is so intimately connected with what is written, that +if it ponders something else, if the thoughts are allowed to wander from +the immediate subject, then the hand will pause, or trace incoherent +signs. + +Such is the state of the writing-medium,--at least, so far as I have +observed it in myself. It is a sort of auto-suggestive state. We are +assured there are mediums who write so mechanically that they know not +what they are writing, and record theses in strange tongues, on subjects +concerning which they are ignorant; but this I have never been able to +verify with any certainty. + +A few years previous to my commencement of these studies, my illustrious +friend Victorien Sardou had undergone similar experiences. As a medium +he wrote descriptions of divers planets in our system, principally of +Jupiter, and drew very odd pictures, representing the habitations of +that planet. One of these pictures depicted the house of Mozart, while +others represented the dwellings of Zoroaster and of Bernard Palissy, +who seemed to be country neighbors in that immense planet. These +habitations appeared to be aerial and of marvellous lightness. The first +of them, Mozart's, was essentially formed of musical instruments and +indications, such as the staff, notes, and clefs. The second was +principally bucolic. There were to be seen flowers, hammocks, swings, +flying men; while underneath were intelligent animals, engaged in +playing a novel game of tenpins, in which the sport did not lie in +bowling the pins over, but in crowning their heads, as in the childish +game of cup-and-ball. I reproduced this last design in the work +entitled, Les Terres du Ciel (Heavenly Globes), page 180. + +These curious drawings prove, beyond a peradventure, that the signature, +_Bernard Palissy in Jupiter_, is apocryphal, and that it was not a +spirit inhabitant of Jupiter who guided Victorien Sardou's hand. Neither +did the gifted author conceive these sketches beforehand, and execute +them in pursuance of a deliberate purpose; but at that time he found +himself in a mental condition similar to that above described. We may +neither be magnetized nor hypnotized, nor put to sleep in any fashion, +and yet the brain may remain alien to our mechanical productions. Its +cells are functionally agitated, and doubtless act by a reflex impulsion +on the motor nerves. We all then believed that Jupiter was inhabited by +a superior race. These communications were the reflections of opinions +generally held. In these days, however, nobody imagines anything of the +kind about Jupiter. Moreover, spirit seances have never taught us the +least thing in astronomy. Such manifestations in nowise prove the +intervention of spirits. Have writing-mediums given us other proofs, +more convincing? This question we will examine later. + + +3 + +The second method, planchette, is more independent. This little wooden +writer became the fashion chiefly through Madame de Girardin. Its +communications soothed her last days, and prepared her for a death +fragrant with hope. She believed she was in communication with the +spirits of Sappho, Shakespeare, Madame de Sevigne, and Moliere; and +amidst these convictions she died, without disquietude, without +rebellion, without regret. She had introduced a taste for such +experiments into the home of Victor Hugo, in Jersey. Nine years later, +Auguste Vacquerie, in Les Miettes de l'Histoire (Crumbs of History), +wrote as follows: + + Madame de Girardin's departure [from Jersey] did not abate my + desire for experimenting with the tables. I pressed eagerly + forward into this great marvel,--the half-opened door of death. + + No longer did I wait for the evening. At midday I began my + investigations, and forsook them only with the dawn. If I + interrupted myself at all during that time, it was only to dine. + Personally I had no effect upon the table, and did not touch it; + but I asked questions. The mode of communication was always the + same, and I had accustomed myself to it. Madame de Girardin sent + me two tablets from Paris,--a little tablet, one of whose legs + was a pencil, for writing and drawing. A few trials proved that + this tablet designed poorly and wrote badly. The other was + larger, and consisted of a disk, or dial, whereon was inscribed + the alphabet, the letters being designated by a movable pointer. + This apparatus also was rejected after an unsuccessful trial, + and I finally resumed the primitive process, which--simplified + by familiarity and sundry convenient abbreviations--soon + afforded all desirable rapidity. I talked fluently with the + table, the murmur of the sea mingling with our conversation, + whose mysteriousness was increased by the winter, at night, + amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer + responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It + was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be + witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler. + More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it + irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had + obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose + the interlocutors it preferred. It wished sometimes to be + questioned in verse, and was obeyed; and then it would answer in + verse. All these dialogues were collected, not at the close of + the seance, but at the moment, and under the dictation of the + table. They will some day be published, and will propound an + imperious problem to all intelligent minds thirsting for new + truths. + + If now asked for my explanation of all this, I hesitate to + reply. I should not have hesitated in Jersey. I should have + unhesitatingly affirmed the presence of spirits. It is not the + opinion of Paris which now retards me. I know what respect is + due to the opinion of the Paris of to-day, of that Paris so + wise, so practical, and so positive, which believes in nothing + but dancing skirts and brokers' bulletins; but the capital's + shrugging shoulders would not compel me to lower my voice. I am + even happy to say, in the face of Paris, that as to the + existence of what are called _spirits_, I have no doubts. I have + never had that fatuous vanity as to our race, which declares + that the ascending ladder of being ends with man. I am persuaded + that we have at least as many rounds above us as there are + beneath our feet, and I believe as firmly in spirits above as I + do in donkeys beneath. The existence of spirits once admitted, + their intervention becomes merely a question of details. Why + could they not communicate with man by some means, and why may + not that means be a table? Because immaterial beings cannot move + a table? But who can say these beings _are_ immaterial? They + also may have bodies, but more subtile than ours,--bodies as + imperceptible to our sight, as light is to our touch. It is + fairly presumable that there are transitional states between the + human condition and the immaterial. Death comes after life, as + man supersedes the animal. The inferior animals are men, with + less soul. Man is an animal with more equipoise and + self-direction. Death brings a condition of less materiality, + but still with some matter left. I know therefore no reasonable + argument against the reality of the table phenomena. + + Nine years, however, have passed away since all this occurred. I + gave up my daily interviews after a few months, for the sake of + a friend whose insufficient mind could not bear these breaths + from the unknown. I have never reperused the sheets whereon + sleep the words which moved me so profoundly. I am no longer in + Jersey, upon that rock lost among the waves, where the exile was + torn from his native soil, away from life. Myself a living + corpse, it did not astonish me to encounter the dead alive; and + so little is certainty natural to man, that one may doubt even + the things he has seen with his eyes and touched with his hands. + + Finally, Victor Hugo, who assisted at these experiments, has + said: "The moving and speaking table has been greatly ridiculed. + Let us speak plainly! This ridicule is misplaced. It is the + bounden duty of science to sound the depths of all phenomena. To + ignore spiritualistic phenomena, to leave them bankrupt by + inattention, is to make a bankrupt of truth itself." (Les Genies + [The Geniuses]: Shakespeare.) + +It is table movements which are here spoken of, dictations by tipping or +rapping; that is to say, by the third method heretofore referred to. +This method has always appeared to be the most independent. In placing +our fingers on a planchette, armed with a pencil, and in aiding its +motions, we are brought into direct personal association with the +results. We may be under the illusion that an outside spirit is guiding +the hand, when we are unintentionally controlling it ourselves. We put +questions relating to subjects which specially interest us. Passively we +write things which we already know more or less about, and unconsciously +inspire ourselves with the name of the personage invoked. Far more +reliable are the answers given by a table. + + +4 + +Several persons place themselves around a table, their hands resting +thereupon and await results. After a given time, if the required +conditions for the production of the phenomena have been complied with, +raps are heard, apparently within the table, and there are certain +motions of the furniture. Sometimes the table tips on one or two legs, +and slowly oscillates. Sometimes it rises entirely from the floor, and +remains suspended, as if adhering to the palms lying upon it; and this +lasts during ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Sometimes the table fastens +itself to the floor with such tenacity that its weight seems to be +doubled or tripled. At other times, and almost always when so requested +by one of the sitters, a noise is heard like that of a saw, a hatchet, +or a pencil at work. These are physical effects, which have been +observed, and prove undeniably the existence of an unknown force. + +This force is physical. If one perceived only movements devoid of +purpose, blind and irrelevant, or movements only in sympathy with the +will of the assistant, one might rest in the conclusion that there is a +new and unknown force, which, mayhap, is a transmutation of one's own +nervous energy, derived from organic electricity, and this fact in +itself would be important; but the blows are apparently struck inside +the wooden substance of the table, and the movements are in response to +questions put to invisible beings. + +In this way did the phenomena begin in 1848, in the United States, when +the Misses Fox heard, in their chamber, the noise of raps within the +walls and furniture. When their father, after several months of +vexatious inquiry, at last bethought himself of old ghost stories, and +appealed to the cause of these noises, the cause answered the questions +asked, by means of certain raps agreed upon, and declared itself to be +the soul of a former proprietor, killed in that very house. This soul +asked for their prayers, and for the burial of its former body. + +Is this invisible cause within us, or is it outside of ourselves? Are we +capable of doubling ourselves in some way, yet without knowing it,--of +unconsciously giving, by mental suggestion, the answers to our own +questions, and of so producing certain physical effects without being +aware of it? Again, is there around us an intelligent atmosphere, a sort +of spiritual cosmos? or are there invisible beings, who are not human, +but so many gnomes, hobgoblins, or imps?--for such an invisible world +may exist around us. Finally can these effects really come from the +souls of the departed, who are able to return from the other world? And +where is this other world? Four hypotheses thus present themselves. + +The lifting of a table, the displacement of an object, might be +attributed to an unknown force, developed by our nervous systems, or by +some other means; at any rate, these movements do not prove the +existence of an outside spirit. But when--by naming the letters of the +alphabet or by pointing to them on a tablet--the table, by certain +sounds in the wood, or by certain tips, composes an intelligent +paragraph, we are compelled to attribute this intelligent effect to an +intelligent cause. The medium himself may be the cause; and the easiest +way would evidently be to admit that he is tricking us, either by simply +striking the leg of the table with his foot, if he operates by raps, or +by directing the movements of the table, through bearing upon it more or +less heavily. + +This, indeed, happens very often, and is what discourages so many +inquirers. + +There are conditions, however, in which fraud is not supposable. The +fact that phenomena can be counterfeited is no reason for concluding +they do not exist. In experiments with magnetism and hypnotic +suggestion, many delusions beset the experimenters, and there is more or +less intentional foolery on the part of the subjects. Thus have I seen, +at the prison-hospital of Salpetriere and elsewhere, young women +outrageously deceiving the most serious investigators, who did not in +the least suspect such insincerity. At market fairs there may often be +seen booths where sleepwalkers are exhibited, who simulate genuine +somnambulism more or less cleverly. Yet one would palpably err who +should deny the existence of real magnetism, somnambulism, or hypnotic +suggestion, because of these humbugs and mockeries. + +Let us, therefore, pass by fraud, and examine cases where all the +experimenters knew one another, and did not knowingly deceive, and thus +let us consider a series of observed facts. Here are some communications +for which I can vouch. They are sentences, dictated by raps: + + God does not enlighten the world with thunder and meteors. He + controls peacefully the stars which shine. Thus do divine + revelations follow one another, with order, reason, and harmony. + + Religion and Friendship are two companions, who help us along + life's painful road. + + My brother: in the Law [this communication was addressed to an + Israelite] revive thy memory! Saul came to the Pythoness of + Endor, and begged her to raise the spirit of Samuel; and the + spirit of Samuel appeared, announcing to the King the nation's + destiny and his own. (1 Samuel xxviii.) "The spirit [wind] + bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, + but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth: so is + everyone that is born of the Spirit." (John iii. 8.) + +This New Testament text was the more remarkable because it was written +in Latin. Here, therefore, are intelligible sentences and accurate +quotations. Could blind chance have composed them? Without forgetting +possible imposition, our hypotheses still await explication. + +Here are other specimens which demand a certain astuteness and decided +mental struggle for their dictation. One paragraph begins thus: _Suov +imrap enger_. The other: _Arevele suov neib_. It is necessary to spell +these two phrases backward, commencing at the end. Here the hypothesis +of mental suggestion becomes very complicated, as also the theory of +environment, and would imply special adroitness in the medium. Someone +asked: "Why have you dictated thus?" The power replied: "In order to +give you marvellous and unexpected evidence." + +Here is another communication of a different kind, beginning, _Aimairs +vn oo uu ssevt_. To the demand what this bizarre assemblage of letters +signified, the answer came: "Read every alternate letter!" This +arrangement brought out these four lines:-- + + Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous, + Car vous etes bons et fideles. + Soyez unis en Dieu; sur vous + L'Esprit Saint etendra ses ailes. + +This stanza may be translated thus: + + You one and all, oh friends, we love, + For you are good, and faithful tread. + Be one in God; and then above + The Holy Ghost his wings will spread. + +Surely this is sufficiently innocent of poetic pretension; but the mode +of dictation was decidedly difficult. This somewhat reduced, as it +seemed to us, the supposition of fraud, but did not altogether destroy +it. + +A communication of a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, +which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, +because of its grotesque and idiomatic character. + +As to the identity of spirits, even if it could be demonstrated that the +preceding quotations emanated from disembodied minds, this would not be +a sufficient reason for admitting that the signatures are not entirely +apocryphal. + + +5 + +In a great many cases, too long to be reported in this essay, where the +communicating cause has declared itself to be the soul of a certain dead +person,--of a father, a mother, a child, or a kinsman,--names, dates, +and details were given, which were absolutely in accordance with facts +whereof the medium was ignorant; but in the cases where the identity +appeared to be best indicated, the questioner had his hands resting on +the table, repeated the alphabet, and might have unconsciously induced +the result. You try to invoke a man who bore, let us suppose, the name +of Charles. When the letter _c_ is pronounced, you exercise your +influence without knowing it. If the experiment is made by rocking the +table; you exercise a different pressure at that particular moment. If +the communication is by raps, and the letter passes without the expected +sound, you naturally allow it to be seen that there is a mistake. We +deceive ourselves without being aware of it. This frequently happened to +me during two years with this word Charles, which was the name of my +mother's brother, living in New Orleans. During those two years he told +me how he died; yet at that very time he was in the vigor of life. This +was in 1860 and 1861, and he did not pass away till 1864. We had, +therefore, been the dupes of an illusion. + +Auto-suggestion, or self-suggestion, is also extremely frequent in these +experiments, as well as with writing mediums. I have before my eyes some +charming fables, published by Monsieur Jaubert, President of the Civil +Tribunal of Carcassonne, and some delicate poems, obtained through +planchette, by P. F. Mathieu,--besides some historic and philosophical +works,--all leading to the conclusion that these mediums have written +under their own influence; or, at best, affording no scientific proof of +a foreign influence. + +There remain still unexplained the raps, and the motion of objects more +or less heavy. On this point I fully share the opinion of the great +chemist, Mr. Crookes, who says: + + When manifestations of this kind are exhibited, this remark is + generally made: "Why do tables and chairs alone show these + effects? Why is this the peculiar property of furniture?" + + I might reply that I am simply observing and reporting facts, + and that I need not enter into the _whys_ and _wherefores_. + Nevertheless it seems clear that if, in an ordinary dining-room, + any heavy inanimate body is to be lifted from the floor, it + cannot very well be anything except a table or a chair. I have + numerous proofs that this property does not appertain alone to + articles of furniture; but in this, as in other experimental + demonstrations, the intelligence or force--whichever it be that + produces these phenomena,--cannot choose but use objects + appropriate to its ends. + + At different times during my researches I have heard delicate + raps, which sounded as if produced by a pin's point; a cascade + of piercing sounds, like those of a machine in full motion; + detonations in the air; light and acute metallic taps; cracking + noises, like those produced by a floor-polishing machine; sounds + which resembled scratching; warbling, like that of birds. + + Each of these noises, which I have tested through different + mediums, had its special peculiarity. With Mr. Home they were + more varied; but, in strength and regularity, I have heard no + sounds which could approach those which came through Miss Kate + Fox. During several months I had the pleasure, on almost + innumerable occasions, of testing the varying phenomena which + took place in the presence of this lady, and it was the sounds + which I specially studied. It is usually necessary with other + mediums, in a regular seance, to sit awhile before anything is + heard; but with Miss Fox it seems to be merely necessary to + place her hand on something, no matter what, for the sounds to + manifest themselves like a triplicated echo, and sometimes loud + enough to be noticeable across several intervening rooms. + + I have heard some of these noises produced in a living tree, in + a large pane of glass, on a stretched wire, on a tambourine, on + the roof of a cab, and in the box of a theatre. Moreover, + immediate contact is not always necessary. I have heard these + noises proceeding from the flooring and walls, when the medium's + hands and feet were tied, when he was standing on a chair, when + he was in a swing suspended from the ceiling, when he was + imprisoned in an iron cage, and when he lay in a swoon on a + sofa. I have heard them proceed from musical glasses. I have + felt them on my own shoulders, and under my own hands. I have + heard them on a piece of paper, fastened between the fingers by + a string through the corner of the sheet. With a full knowledge + of the numerous theories which have been brought forward to + explain these sounds, especially in America, I have tested them + in every way I could devise, until it was no longer possible to + escape the conviction that these sounds were real, and produced + neither by fraud nor by mechanical means. + + An important question forces itself upon our attention: Are + these movements and noises governed by intelligence? From the + very beginning of my investigations I have satisfied myself that + the power producing these phenomena was not simply blind force, + but that some intelligence directed it, or at least was + associated with it. The noises, whereof I have spoken, were + repeated a determinate number of times. They became either + strong or feeble, at my request, and came from different places. + By a vocabulary of signals previously agreed upon, the power + answered questions, and gave messages with more or less + accuracy. + + The intelligence governing these phenomena is sometimes + obviously inferior to that of the medium, and is often in direct + opposition to his wishes. When a determination has been reached + to do something which could not be regarded as quite reasonable, + I have seen communications urging a reconsideration of the + matter. This intelligence is at times of such a character that + one is forced to believe it does not emanate from any person + present. (Researches in Spiritualism, by William Crookes.) + +This last sentence might be slightly modified, and the words _forced to +believe_ might be replaced by the words _disposed to believe_; for human +nature is complex, and we are not perpetually the same, even to +ourselves. What uncertainty we often find in our own opinions, upon +points not yet elucidated; and this we feel, even when called upon to +judge actions or events! Are we not sometimes contradictions to +ourselves? + +Among the experiments made with these physical and psychical +manifestations of the tables, I will mention, as among the best, those +of Count de Gasparin, and of my sympathetic friend, Eugene Nus. The +Count has obtained rotations, upliftings, raps, revelations of numbers +previously thought of, movements without any human contact, and so on. +He concludes that human beings are endowed with a fluid, with an unknown +force, with an agency capable of impressing objects with the action +determined by our wills. (On Table-turning, Supernaturalism in General, +and Spirits.) + +Eugene Nus has obtained, besides sentences dictated by the table, +certain philosophic definitions given almost invariably in exactly a +dozen words each. Here are some of them: + + Geology: Studies in the transformation of the planets in their + periods of revolution. + + Astronomy: Order and harmony of the external life of worlds, + individually and collectively. + + Love: The pivot of mortal passion; attractive sexual force; the + element of continuity. + + Death: Cessation of individuality, disintegration of its + elements, a return to universal life. + +Let us note, in passing, the strangely singular fact of a departed soul +declaring that death is always the cessation of individuality! + +There are whole pages of this kind. Eugene Nus had, as companions in his +experiments, Antony Meray, Toussenel, Franchot, Courbebaisse, a whole +group of transcendental socialists. Well, this is absolutely the +language of Fourier. The words _aroma_, _passional_, _solidarity_, +_clavier_, _composite_, _association_, _harmony_, _pivotal force_, are +in the vocabulary of the table. The author therefore inclines towards +the following explanation, as given in his Choses de l'Outre Monde +(Things of the Other World), Volume I. Paris, 1887. + + Mysterious forces residing in human nature; emanations from + inmost potentiality, unknown till our day; the duplication of + our experimental power, which gives ability to think and act + outside ourselves. + +(_To be concluded in July Arena._) + + + + +THE CHIVALRY OF THE PRESS. + +BY JULIUS CHAMBERS. + +[Illustration: (signed) Yours sincerely: Julius Chambers] + + +In the splendid days of Rome, the editor was he who introduced the +gladiators as they entered the arena to fight the tigers. + +To-day, the editor directs the newspaper and he often affects to believe +that his mission on earth is to fight the tiger himself. + +The editor of this class is a barbarian who forgets that Rome is only a +memory. + +The successful editor of to-day recognizes the fact that the newspaper +exists to amuse and instruct, to uphold public honor and private virtue +quite as much as to denounce fraud or expose official corruption. The +newspaper is powerful exactly in proportion as it is successful in +representing the people who read it; in following, rather than +dictating, their line of policy; and, whether it exists for the people +or not, it certainly endures only by their sufferance and good-will. +Therefore, it is well that we consider the relations of the people at +large to the newspaper; then, the editor's relation to his neighbors, +the public; and, finally, the chivalry of editors toward each other. + +The newspaper is so large a part of our modern life that it would be +trivial to argue the question whether it can be dispensed with. Men who +live abreast of the age cannot consent to miss a single day's communion +with the news of the world. The non-arrival of the mail will render an +active man absent from town utterly miserable. The purchaser of the +daily newspaper of to-day receives for the price of a half yard of +calico a manufactured article that has required the employment of +millions of capital to produce,--to say nothing of genius to sustain. + +And he is often somewhat grateful. + +But the chivalry of the public toward the newspaper is peculiar. The +public would appear to believe that anything it can coax, wheedle, or +extort from the newspaper is fair salvage from the necessary +expenditures of life. + +Recently I listened in amazement to the Rev. Robert Collyer boast at a +Cornell University dinner of having beguiled the newspapers of the +country. He told how he had schemed and got money to build a new church +after the Chicago fire. He did not make it very clear that the civilized +members of his race clamored for the new edifice, but he made painfully +apparent his ideas of chivalry to the press. + +"In this matter," he began, "I have always been proud of the way in +which I 'worked the newspapers.' I succeeded in raising the money, +because I coaxed the editors into cooeperating with me. I wrote long +puffs about the congregation and its pastor, and got them printed. Then +I hurried 'round with the subscription list and a copy of the paper." + +Of course, this was all said good-naturedly, was meant to be funny, and +was uttered from a public rostrum with an utter obliviousness to the +mental obliquity that a moment's thought will disclose. It left upon my +mind much the same impression as that once made by hearing an apparently +respectable man boast of having stolen an umbrella out of a hotel rack. + +Later in the evening, when the reverend gentleman occupied a seat near +mine, I asked, with as much naivete as I could command, if he had +"worked" the plumbers, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, and +the bell-founders? To each of these questions he returned a regretful, +"No." + +Despite his apparent innocence regarding the purport of my inquiry, I +doubt if this gentleman would have boasted that he secured his clothes +for nothing, that he wheedled his chops from his butcher, or coaxed his +groceries from the shopkeeper at the corner of his street. + +And yet, he spoke with condescension of the editor and his means of +livelihood! + +Theoretically, the editor is the public's mutton. Men who know him boast +of their influence with him, and over him. They dictate his policy for +him--or say they do, which, of course, is the same thing. Men who never +saw him claim to own him. Strangers, casually introduced, ask him +questions about his personal affairs that would be instantly resented in +any other walk of life. + +An experience of my own will illustrate what I mean. At a country house, +near Philadelphia, I was introduced to a respectable-looking old man. In +the period following dinner, as we sat on the porch to enjoy a smoke, +this stranger interrogated me in the most offensive way. When he had +paused for breath I gave him a dose of his own medicine. "The deadly +parallel" column will tell the story. + + WHAT HE ASKED. WHAT I ASKED. + + I hear you are an editor? I am told you are a hatter? + + Do most newspapers pay? Is hat-making profitable? + + How much do editors earn? How much does your business net + you yearly? + + You began as a reporter? Grew up in the trade? + + Does it require any You can "block a hat while I wait"? + education to be a reporter? + + Do you write shorthand? You can handle a hot goose? + + Eh? used to? Could once? + + Please write some: let's Please take this hat and show me how + see how it looks? it is put together. + + Curious-looking Have seen a great many queerly shaped + characters, aren't they? hats in your time, no doubt? + + How many columns can you How many hats can you make in a day? + write a day? + + Do you write by the column? Do you work by the piece? + + What? Don't write at all? Ah? Don't work any longer? Supposed every + How strange!--and so on. hatter made his own hats!--and so on. + +The editor may be to blame for this state of things; but if so, his +good-nature is responsible. He endures more than other men. He is often +worried by the troubles of other people; but he never has been weaned +from the milk of human kindness. He may be over-persuaded, he may be +deceived, and editors have been fooled, like judge and jurors, by the +perjured affidavit of apparently honorable men--but he still continues +to believe in mankind. + +The chivalry of the politician toward the press is comprehended to a +nicety by every man who has served as a newspaper correspondent at +Washington. + +The average congressman thinks it clever to deceive a newspaper editor +or correspondent. He believes they are to be "used," whenever possible, +for the congressman's advantage. A correspondent is to be tricked or +cajoled into praising the statesman, revising the bad English in his +speeches, "saving the country and--the appropriations." All the +charities require and demand his aid, and, I am ashamed to say (knowing +as I do what a hollow mockery some of the alleged charities really are), +generally get the assistance they ask. + +The chivalry of the press toward the public is unquestionable. The +editor keeps awake nearly all night to serve it, and the facts are not +altered because in best serving the public he serves himself. + +Journalism, I regret to say, is often spoken of as a "profession," and +while we may accept the plebeian word "journalism," as describing a +daily labor, I sincerely desire to enter a protest against its +designation as a profession. It seems entirely proper to me that this +word be relegated to the pedagogue, the chiropodist, and the +barn-storming actor who so boldly assert a right to its use. + +The making of the newspaper is a mechanical art. It matters very little +how much intelligence--or genius, if you prefer the word--enters into +its production, the inter-dependence of the so-called "intellectual" +branch of the paper upon its mechanical adjuncts is so great that it +cannot be maintained that the manufactured article offered to purchasers +in the shape of a newspaper is the product of any one lobe of brain +tissue. Of what value are a hundred thousand copies of the best +newspaper in this land, edited, revised and printed, if its circulation +department break down at the critical moment? And what about the +newsman? Who shall say that he does not belong to journalism? He's to +the service what the Don Cossack is to the Russian hosts. He's the +Cossack of journalism--our Cossack of the dawn! + +While it is easy to determine the point at which the newspaper begins +its existence, it would be very difficult indeed to decide exactly where +it receives its finishing touches. For years, geographers wrangled +regarding the point at which the day began. In other words, this being +Monday, they quarrelled regarding the point at which the sun ceased to +shine on Monday, and began to shine on Tuesday. + +Philosophers who have discussed the nice points of the daily newspapers +have claimed that it dates its origin from the paper mill; but I fail to +see why, if we are to go back to the paper mill, we shall not go much +further and seek the component parts from which the paper is originally +made, showing at once the absurdity of any such an assumption. While not +inclined to argue this point, it is my humble judgment that the +newspaper begins its existence the moment the managing editor opens his +desk for the day's work. He is its main-spring! Whatever of distinctive +character it possesses in methods of handling the news of the day it +owes to him, and it is these very features that render one journal +better or worse than others. He it is, as a rule, who establishes the +chivalry of the press toward the public. It is he who decides the line +of attack or defense when the vast interests which he represents are +assailed. + +The peculiar kind of mind required for such a post is probably not +developed in any other known business. The longer a man has served the +art, the more confidently he trusts to intuition and distrusts a +decision based wholly upon experience. Several of the worst blunders +ever made in American journalism have been committed after a careful +study of the historical precedents. Throughout all his troubles, +however, all his anxieties by day and by night--because his +responsibilities never end--the managing editor's thoughts are +constantly dwelling upon the public service that may be rendered to the +reading constituency behind him. + +The executive head of a newspaper, great or small, lives in a glass +house, with all the world for critics. Every act, no matter how suddenly +forced upon him, no matter how careful his judgment, is open to the +criticism of every person who reads his paper. The columns of printed +matter are the windows of his soul. + +These thoughts are all in the line of duty, somewhat selfish in their +character, perhaps (because fidelity to the public is the only secret of +success); but the sense of chivalry is there,--should be there and seen +of all men, on every page of the printed sheet. + +This idea of the newspaper's duty to the public is a comparatively new +phase of the journalistic art. It has arisen since the brilliant Round +Table days of Bennett, Greeley, Webb, Prentice, and Raymond. Their +standards were high. Their energy was tremendous. And when they came to +blows the combat was terrific. But Greeley, the last survivor, found his +Camlan in 1872. He was ambushed and came to his end much as King Arthur +from a race that he had trusted and defended. In Greeley's defeat for +the Presidency all theorists who had dwelt upon the so-called "Power of +the Press" received a shuddering blow. The men who had affected to +believe that the press could make and unmake destinies began to count on +their fingers the few newspapers that had opposed Horace Greeley. To +their amazement they found that, excepting one journal in the +metropolis, every daily paper in the land whose editor or chief +stockholder did not hold a public office was marshalled in his support. +The echoes of their enthusiasm can be heard even to this day. Some of +those editors ranted and roared like Sir Toby Belch; but the +professional politicians, serene and complacent as gulligut friars, saw +their editorial antagonists routed--cakes, ale, and wine-coolers. + +To the believers in printer's ink, that presidential campaign was a +revelation. Mr. Greeley was the most thoroughly defeated candidate this +country has ever known. + +I remember the period well, for I was a reporter on the _Tribune_, and +as a correspondent travelled from Minnesota to Louisiana. It seemed +utterly impossible in May that Mr. Greeley could fail of election; in +September, his defeat was assured. That revolt of the people against the +dictation of the newspapers was momentous in its results. The +independent voter thoroughly asserted himself, and those editors who +could be taught by the incident knew that the people resented their +leadership. The one sad and pitiful thing about the affair was the +ingratitude of the negro race. They deserted their apostle and champion. +(I speak frankly, for I was born an abolitionist.) + +Throughout the Civil War, the newspapers had harangued, badgered, and +dictated; had bolstered up or destroyed men, character, and measures. It +was well, perhaps, that the men who directed these same newspapers +should be taught a severe lesson. + +Without doubt, the stormy period in which Greeley, Bennett, Prentice, +Webb, and Raymond tilted, was necessary as a preparatory era to the more +brilliant age of chivalry that succeeded! We as a people were younger in +journalism than in any other intellectual or mechanical art. Great +statesmen had been grown in plenty--the very birth of the nation had +found them full-fledged. A constellation of brilliant preachers of the +Gospel and expounders of the law are remembered. We can all name them +over from Jonathan Edwards to Theodore Parker and from John Marshall to +Rufus Choate. Great mercantile families had been created, such as the +Astors, the Grinells, the Bakers, Howlands, Aspinwalls, and Claflins. + +Large fortunes had been amassed in commerce; but not an editor had been +able to accumulate money enough to keep his own carriage! + +Journalism languished until about 1840. The great public did not seem to +require editors. The people of New York, possibly, persisted in +remembering that the first man in this country to write an editorial +article had been hanged in the City Hall Park. He had died heroically, +immortalizing the occasion when he said: "I regret that I have only one +life to give for my country." But some people believed he had suffered +death because he wrote editorial articles. + +The art of making the newspaper steadily gained in public appreciation. +To employ the simile chivalric, its young squires were changed into +full-fledged knights by the propagation of a new idea, a new aim--the +rendering of public service! True enough, the motto of the noblest +English princedom, "_Ich dien!_" acknowledges the high duty of service; +but, when proclaimed as a journalistic duty it took the form of a new +tender of fidelity from the best men at court to the people at large. It +was so accepted, and has drawn the people and the press closer together. +It was as if these true knights drew their weapons before the public eye +and offered a new pledge of fidelity in the thrilling old Norman usage +of the word "_Service!_" + +A gleam of something higher and nobler than mere swashbuckling was in +every editorial eye. The idea developed, as did the nobility and purity +of Chivalry under Godfrey, the Agamemnon of Tasso. In all truly +representative editorial minds the feeling grew that any power which +their arms or training gave them should be exercised in the defense of +the weak and oppressed. They renewed the old vow: "To maintain the just +rights of such as are unable to defend themselves." It was a great +step--as far-reaching in its results as was the promulgation of that +oath in the age of Chivalry. + +At this point rose the reporter. He had been recognized for years as the +coming servitor of the press. But a few of him in the early days had +been dissolute, had written without proper regard to facts, and had +brought discredit not only on himself but the chivalry which others +believed in. He began to brace up, to pull himself together, to be +better educated, to dress in excellent taste, and, above all, to write +better copy. Henry Murger had published a series of sketches under the +title "_Scenes de La Vie de Boheme_." These few pictures described the +Paris life of that period, beyond a doubt; but here in New York a few +bright men sought to revive the spirit and the _couleur de rose_ of the +Quartier Latin. It was a clever idea, but it didn't last. + +In one of the bleakest corners of the old graveyard at Nantucket stands +a monument to Henry Clapp, the presiding genius of the Bohemian Club +that sat for so many years in Phaff's cellar on Broadway. Its roll +contained many of the brightest names known in the history of the +American press. They were true Bohemians,--once defined by George +William Curtis as the "literary men who had a divine contempt for +to-morrow." How cleverly those choice spirits wrote and talked about +their lives away back in the fifties. Get a file of the New York +_Figaro_, or some of the Easy Chair papers in _Harper's_ of that period, +and enjoy their cloud-land life! I only quote one sentence and it is +from "the Chair," though I half suspect Fitz James O'Brien, rather than +George William Curtis, penned it:-- + + "Bohemia is a roving kingdom--a realm in the air, like Arthur's + England. It sometimes happens that, as a gipsy's child turns out + to be a prince's child, who, perforce, dwells in a palace, so + the Bohemian is found in a fine house and high society. Bohemia + is a fairyland on this hard earth. It is Arcadia in New York." + +Ah! yes, this is all very beautiful, but rent had to be paid; and the +literary workers of to-day never forget that journalism is the only +branch of literature that from the outset enables a man to live and pay +his way. And yet when we remember Henry Clapp, Fitz James O'Brien, N. G. +Shepherd, and Ned Wilkins, we feel that every working newspaper man is +better to-day because they struggled and starved; because they lived in +the free air of Bohemia. + +With the worker in the art, "the struggle for existence" begins with his +first day's apprentice task as a reporter. No man ever became a +journalist who did not serve that apprenticeship. There is no hope for +him outside of complete success. It requires several years for him to +learn to get news and to properly write it. One failure will blight his +entire career. Unlike any other commercial commodity, news once lost +cannot be recouped. + +Dr. Samuel Johnson was the first Parliamentary reporter. He got a list +of the speakers, then went to his lodgings in a dingy court off Fleet +Street and wrote out speeches for the Lords and the Commons. He did this +for years and not one of the men so honored is on record as having +denied the accuracy of the report(?). Dr. Johnson made the reputations +of half a dozen men who are to-day mentioned among the great English +orators. They were honorable men, as the world goes, but not one of +them, except Edmund Burke, ever acknowledged his indebtedness to Samuel +Johnson. I never have known a senator or congressman to thank a +Washington correspondent for making his speech presentable to educated +eyes. He has been known to grow warm in praise of all classes of +humanity, from Tipperary to Muscovy, but never a word of commendation +escapes his lips for a newspaper man. He believes in philanthropy, but +as Napoleon said to Talleyrand, he "wants it to be a long way off!" (_Je +veux seulement que ce soit de la philanthropie lointaine._) + +With the rise of journalistic chivalry came the search for news. It +became a precious prize. The special correspondent and reporter sought +it. Truth was to be rescued from oblivion! Facts began to be hunted for +like the ambergris and ivory of commerce. At first the search resembled +the quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle,--a test as to the public's +opinion of news. What kind of service did the public want? Adventure +followed, as a matter of course, but love of adventure was not the +impelling motive. + +The American newspaper, like the American railroad, developed along new +lines. Girardin, who had created all that is worth considering in the +French press, had pinned his faith to the _feuilleton_ and the snappy +editorial article, with its "one idea only." News was of no account. In +the English journal, the supremacy of the editorial page was asserted +and maintained. News was desirable but secondary; and there was no hurry +about obtaining it. In the Spanish press blossomed--and has ever since +bloomed--the paragraph. News was a good thing, if it could be told in a +few lines, but generally, alas, dangerous. A paragraph must only be long +enough to allow a cigarette to go out while you were reading it. Wax +matches cost only a cuarta per box, but cigarettes were expensive. +Beaumarchais understood the Spanish press when he put the famous epigram +into "Figaro's" lips: "So long as you print nothing, you may print +anything." + +The chivalry of the editor toward his "esteemed contemporary" is a sad +and solemn phase of this true commentary. + +After you have carefully reread the "editorial" pages of two +metropolitan journals from 1841 to date, and remember that the +contemporaries of Guttenberg called printing "the black art," you will +marvel that public opinion has ever changed. If the contemporaries of +the old Nuremberg printer had lived in 1882, and taken in the _Tribune_ +of February 25th, they would have gone out to gather faggots to roast an +editor. The excuse for one of the most savage attacks ever made by one +American editor upon another was that a rival had printed a private +telegram, sent by an editor to the chief magistrate of the nation, which +had found its way into wrong hands or had been "taken off the wires," as +many other messages had been before. And yet, young as I am, I remember +that in 1871, the treaty of Washington was "acquired" by means even more +questionable and printed entire, to the confusion and indignation of the +United States Senators. The very same editor laid down a dictum that was +thought to be very clever at the time: "It is the duty of our +correspondents to get the news; it is the business of other people to +keep their own secrets." This was all very well in 1871, but in 1882, +the moral "lay in the application on it." + +From the very moment in which the American newspaper attained a definite +policy and impulse, its direction has been forward, and it has daily +grown in wealth and popular respect. + +I have called the special correspondent the knight errant of the +newspaper. Let me prove it. The greatest, noblest of them all was J. A. +MacGahan, of Khiva and San Stefano. He was an American, born in Perry +County, Ohio. I can sketch his career in a few brief sentences: He was +at law-school in Brussels when the Franco-Prussian war burst upon +Europe, in 1870. Having had some experience as a writer for the press, +he entered the field at once. Danger and suffering were his, though he +did not achieve renown in that brief campaign. He then made his +memorable ride to Khiva, and wrote the best book on Central Asia known +to our language. Another turn of the wheel found him in Cuba describing +the Virginius complications. There I first met him. Thence he returned +to England, and sailed with Captain Young in the Pandora to the Arctic +regions, making the last search undertaken for the lost crew of Sir John +Franklin's expedition. MacGahan returned to London in the spring of 1876 +in time to read in the newspapers brief despatches from Turkey +recounting the reported atrocities of the Bashi-Bazouks. He determined +at once to go to Bulgaria. In a month's time, he had put a new face on +the "Eastern Question." The great trouble between Christian and Turk was +no longer confined to "the petty quarrel of a few monks over a key and a +silver star," as defined by the late Mr. Kinglake, but assumed +proportions that could be discerned in every club and in every +drawing-room of Imperial London. MacGahan had begun his memorable ride, +the results of which will endure as long as Christianity! He visited +Batak and painted in cold type what he saw. He caused the shrieks of the +dying girls in the pillaged towns of Bulgaria to be heard throughout +Christian Europe. A Tory minister, stanch in his fidelity to the +"unspeakable Turk," sent its fleet to the Dardanelles, but dared not +land a man or fire a single gun. Popular England repudiated its old +ally. And MacGahan rode onward and wrote sheaves of letters. In every +hamlet he passed through, he said: "The Czar will avenge this! Courage, +people; he will come!" + +From that time history was made as by a cyclone. The Russian hosts were +mobilized at Kischeneff, and the Czar of all the Russias reviewed them. +Then the order to cross the Pruth was given, as MacGahan had foretold; +our Knight Errant rode with the advanced guard. Through the changing +fortune of the war, grave and gay, he passed. Much of his work, now +preserved in permanent form, is the best of its kind in our language. +The assault of Skobeleff on the Gravitza redoubt was immortalized by +MacGahan's pen. When Plevna fell, our hero was in the van during the mad +rush toward the Bosphorus. The triumphant advance was never checked +until the spires and minarets of Constantinople were in sight. Bulgaria +was redeemed, the power of the Turk in Europe was broken, the +aggrandizement of Russia was complete--and all because J. A. MacGahan +had lived and striven. + +At San Stefano, a suburb of the capital, on the Sea of Marmora, our hero +died of fever. Skobeleff, whose friendship dated back to the Kirgitz +Steppe and the Khivan conquest, closed his eyes and was chief mourner at +his grave. To-day on the anniversary of his death, prayers for the +repose of his soul are said in every hamlet throughout Bulgaria. His +service to the newspaper and to the civilized world extended over less +than eight years, but he accomplished for the public the work of a +lifetime. + +Hail to his memory! His was the chivalry of the press! + +For years the name of Latour d'Auvergne, "first grenadier of France," +was called at nightfall in every regiment of the Imperial Grenadier +Guard. When the name was heard, the first grenadier in the rank would +answer, "_Mort--sur le champ de bataille_." + +So, when the roll is called of those that have added to the chivalry and +glory of the American press, every fellow-laborer who knew "MacGahan of +Kiva and San Stefano" will salute and answer: "Dead--and glorious!" + +Philogeny, the new and brilliant science that treats of the development +of the human race from the animal kingdom, teaches that the history of +the germ is an epitome of the history of the descent. It is equally true +in journalism, that the various forms of discouragement, hope, and final +success through which the individual worker in the art passes, during +his progress from the reportorial egg-cell to the fully developed +executive-editorial organism, is a compressed reproduction of the long +series of misfortunes and interferences through which the ancestors of +the American newspaper of to-day have passed. The simile is true, aye, +to the supreme part played by "the struggle for existence!" Under its +influence, through the "natural selection" of the public, a new and +nobler species of journalism has arisen and now exists. The newspaper of +to-day, evolved from rudimentary forms, is a splendid and heroic +organism; and the last upholder of the dogma of its miraculous creation +and infallible power is dead. + + + + +SOCIETY'S EXILES. + +BY B. O. FLOWER. + + +It is difficult to over-estimate the gravity of the problem presented by +those compelled to exist in the slums of our populous cities, even when +considered from a purely economic point of view. From the midst of this +commonwealth of degradation there goes forth a moral contagion, +scourging society in all its ramifications, coupled with an atmosphere +of physical decay--an atmosphere reeking with filth, heavy with foul +odors, laden with disease. In time of any contagion the social cellar +becomes the hotbed of death, sending forth myriads of fatal germs which +permeate the air for miles around, causing thousands to die because +society is too short-sighted to understand that the interest of its +humblest member is the interest of all. The slums of our cities are the +reservoirs of physical and moral death, an enormous expense to the +State, a constant menace to society, a reality whose shadow is at once +colossal and portentous. In time of social upheavals they will prove +magazines of destruction; for while revolution will not originate in +them, once let a popular uprising take form and the cellars will +reinforce it in a manner more terrible than words can portray. +Considered ethically, the problem is even more embarrassing and +deplorable; here, as nowhere else in civilized society, thousands of our +fellowmen are exiled from the enjoyments of civilization, forced into +life's lowest strata of existence, branded with that fatal word scum. If +they aspire to rise, society shrinks from them; they seem of another +world; they are of another world; driven into the darkness of a hopeless +existence, viewed much as were lepers in olden times. Over their heads +perpetually rests the dread of eviction, of sickness, and of failure to +obtain sufficient work to keep life in the forms of their loved ones, +making existence a perpetual nightmare, from which death alone brings +release. Say not that they do not feel this; I have talked with them; I +have seen the agony born of a fear that rests heavy on their souls +stamped in their wrinkled faces and peering forth from great pathetic +eyes. For them winter has real terror, for they possess neither clothes +to keep comfortable the body, nor means with which to properly warm +their miserable tenements. Summer is scarcely less frightful in their +quarters, with the heat at once stifling, suffocating, almost +intolerable; heat which acting on the myriad germs of disease produces +fever, often ending in death, or, what is still more dreaded, chronic +invalidism. Starvation, misery, and vice, trinity of despair, haunt +their every step. The Golden Rule,--the foundation of true civilization, +the keynote of human happiness,--reaches not their wretched quarters. +Placed by society under the ban, life is one long and terrible night. +But tragic as is the fate of the present generation, still more +appalling is the picture when we contemplate the thousands of little +waves of life yearly washed into the cellar of being; fragile, helpless +innocents, responsible in no way for their presence or environment, yet +condemned to a fate more frightful than the beasts of the field; human +beings wandering in the dark, existing in the sewer, ever feeling the +crushing weight of the gay world above, which thinks little and cares +less for them. Infinitely pathetic is their lot. + +The causes that have operated to produce these conditions are numerous +and complex, the most apparent being the immense influx of immigration +from the crowded centres of the old world; the glamor of city life, +which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afar +much as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the +vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh +impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful +labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, +instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented +them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by the +government through grants, special privileges, and protective measures +for rapid accumulation of wealth by the few; the power which this wealth +has given its possessors over the less fortunate; the spread of that +fevered mental condition which subjects all finer feelings and holier +aspirations to the acquisition of gold and the gratification of carnal +appetites, and which is manifest in such a startling degree in the +gambler's world, which to dignify we call the realm of speculation; the +desire for vulgar ostentation and luxurious indulgence, in a word the +fatal fever for gold which has infested the social atmosphere, and taken +possession of hundreds of thousands of our people, chilling their +hearts, benumbing their conscience, choking all divine impulses and +refined sensibilities; the cowardice and lethargy of the Church, which +has grown rich in gold and poor in the possession of moral energy, which +no longer dares to denounce the money changers, or alarm those who day +by day are anaesthetizing their own souls, while adding to the misery of +the world. The church has become, to a great extent, subsidized by gold, +saying in effect, "I am rich and increased in goods and have need of +nothing," apparently ignorant of the fact that she "is wretched, poor, +blind, and naked," that she has signally failed in her mission of +establishing on earth an ideal brotherhood. Instead of lifting her +children into that lofty spiritual realm where each feels the misery of +his brother, she has so far surrendered to the mammon of unrighteousness +that, without the slightest fear of having their consciences disturbed, +men find comfort in her soft-cushioned pews, who are wringing from ten +to thirty per cent. profit from their fellowmen in the wretched tenement +districts, or who refuse to pay more than twelve cents a pair for the +making of pants, forty-five cents a dozen for flannel shirts, +seventy-five cents a dozen for knee pants, and twenty-five cents a dozen +for neckties. I refer not to the many noble exceptions, but I indict the +great body of wealthy and fashionable churches, whose ministers do not +know and take no steps to find out the misery that is dependent upon the +avarice of their parishioners. Then again back of all this is the +defective education which has developed all save character in man; +education which has trained the brain but shriveled the soul. Last but +by no means least is land speculation which has resulted in keeping +large tracts of land idle which otherwise would have blossomed with +happy homes. To these influences we must add the general ignorance of +the people regarding the nature, extent, and growing proportions of the +misery and want in the New World which is spreading as an Eastern plague +in the filth of an oriental city. + +It is not my present purpose to dwell further on the causes which have +produced these conditions. I wish to bring home to the mind and heart of +the reader a true conception of life in the slums, by citing typical +cases illustrating a condition prevalent in every great city of the +Union and increasing in its extent every year. I shall confine myself to +uninvited want as found in civilized Boston, because I am personally +acquainted with the condition of affairs here, and because Boston has +long claimed the proud distinction of being practically free from +poverty. + +I shall briefly describe scenes which fell under my personal observation +during an afternoon tour through the slums of the North End, confining +myself to a few typical cases which fairly represent the condition of +numbers of families who are suffering through uninvited poverty, a fact +which I have fully verified by subsequent visits to the wretched homes +of our very poor. I purposely omit in this paper describing any members +of that terrible commonwealth where misery, vice, degradation, and crime +are inseparably interwoven. This class belongs to a lower stratum; they +have graduated downward. Feeling that society's hand is against them, +Ishmael-like they raise their hand against society. They complement the +uninvited poor; both are largely a product of unjust and inequitable +social conditions. + +The scenes I am about to describe were witnessed one afternoon in April. +The day was sunless and dreary, strangely in keeping with the +environment of the exiles of society who dwell in the slums. The sobbing +rain, the sad, low murmur of the wind under the eaves and through the +narrow alleys, the cheerless frowning sky above, were in perfect harmony +with the pathetic drama of life I was witnessing. Everything seemed +pitched in a minor key, save now and then there swelled forth splendid +notes of manly heroism and womanly courage, as boldly contrasting with +the dead level of life as do the full rich notes of Wagner's grandest +strains with the plaintive melody of a simple ballad sung by a shepherd +lad. I was accompanied in this instance by the Rev. Walter Swaffield, of +the Bethel Mission, and his assistant, Rev. W. J. English. + +[Illustration: INVALID IN CHAIR (SEE NOTE).] + +The first building we entered faced a narrow street. The hallway was as +dark as the air was foul or the walls filthy. Not a ray or shimmer of +light fell through transoms or skylight. The stairs were narrow and +worn. By the aid of matches we were able to grope our way along, and +also to observe more than was pleasant to behold. It was apparent that +the hallways or stairs were seldom surprised by water, while pure, fresh +air was evidently as much a stranger as fresh paint. After ascending +several flights, we entered a room of undreamed-of wretchedness. On the +floor lay a sick man.[2] He was rather fine-looking, with an intelligent +face, bright eyes, and countenance indicative of force of character. No +sign of dissipation, but an expression of sadness, or rather a look of +dumb resignation peered from his expressive eyes. For more than two +years he has been paralyzed in his lower limbs, and also affected with +dropsy. The spectacle of a strong man, with the organs of locomotion +dead, is always pathetic; but when the victim of such misfortune is in +the depths of abject poverty, his case assumes a tragic hue. There for +two years he had lain on a wretched pallet of rags, seeing day by day +and hour by hour his faithful wife tirelessly sewing, and knowing full +well that health, life, and hope were hourly slipping from her. This +poor woman supports the invalid husband, her two children, and herself, +by making pants at twelve cents a pair. No rest, no surcease, a +perpetual grind from early dawn often till far into the night; and what +is more appalling, outraged nature has rebelled; the long months of +semi-starvation and lack of sleep have brought on rheumatism, which has +settled in the joints of her fingers, so that every stitch means a throb +of pain. The afternoon we called, she was completing an enormous pair of +_custom-made_ pants of very fine blue cloth, for one of the largest +clothing houses in Boston. The suit would probably bring sixty or +sixty-five dollars, yet her employer graciously informed his poor white +slave that as the garment was so large, he would give her an _extra +cent_. Thirteen cents for fine custom-made pants, manufactured for a +wealthy firm, which repeatedly asserts that its clothing is not made in +tenement houses! Thus with one of the most painful diseases enthroned in +that part of the body which must move incessantly from dawn till +midnight, with two small dependent children and a husband who is utterly +powerless to help her, this poor woman struggles bravely and +uncomplainingly, confronted ever by a nameless dread of impending +misfortune. Eviction, sickness, starvation,--such are the ever-present +spectres, while every year marks the steady encroachment of disease, and +the lowering of the register of vitality. Moreover, from the window of +her soul falls the light of no star athwart the pathway of life. + + [2] NOTE ON PICTURE OF INVALID IN CHAIR. The picture given in + this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid + placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be + made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing + that it would bring out the strong face better than if + taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he + has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been + enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as + many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is + provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft + mattress, and furnished with many other things which + contribute to life's comfort. When the bed, mattress, and + other articles were being brought into this apartment, the + tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the + eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their + obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them. + +[Illustration: CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE (SEE NOTE).] + +The next place we visited was in the attic of a tenement building even +more wretched than the one just described. The general aspects of these +houses, however, are all much the same, the chief difference being in +degrees of filth and squalor present. Here in an attic lives a poor +widow with three children, a little boy and two little girls, Constance +and Maggie.[3] They live by making pants at twelve cents a pair. Since +the youngest child was two and a half years old she has been daily +engaged in overcasting the long seams of the garments made by her +mother. When we first called she had just passed her fourth birthday, +and now overcasts from three to four pairs of pants every day. There +seated on a little stool she sat, her fingers moving as rapidly and in +as unerring manner as an old experienced needlewoman. These three +children are fine looking, as are most of the little Portuguese I +visited. Their large heads and brilliant eyes seem to indicate capacity +to enjoy in an unusual degree the matchless delight springing from +intellectual and spiritual development. Yet the wretched walls of their +little apartment practically mark the limit of their world; the needle +their inseparable companion; their moral and mental natures hopelessly +dwarfed; a world of wonderful possibilities denied them by an inexorable +fate over which they have no control and for which they are in no way +responsible. We often hear it said that these children of the slums are +perfectly happy; that not knowing what they miss life is as enjoyable to +them as the young in more favorable quarters. I am satisfied, however, +that this is true only in a limited sense. The little children I have +just described are already practically machines; day by day they engage +in the same work with much the monotony of an automatic instrument +propelled by a blind force. When given oranges and cakes, a momentary +smile illumined their countenances, a liquid brightness shot from their +eyes, only to be replaced by the solemn, almost stolid, expression which +has become habitual even on faces so young. This conclusion was still +more impressively emphasized by the following touching remark of a child +of twelve years in another apartment, who was with her mother busily +sewing. "I am forty-three years old to-day," remarked the mother, and +said Mr. English, "I shall be forty-two next week." "_Oh, dear_," broke +in the child, "_I should think people would grow SO TIRED of living so +MANY YEARS._" Was utterance ever more pathetic? She spoke in tones of +mingled sadness and weariness, revealing in one breath all the pent-up +bitterness of a young life condemned to a slavery intolerable to any +refined or sensitive nature. Is it strange that people here take to +drink? To me it is far more surprising that so many are sober. I am +convinced that, in the slums, far more drunkenness is caused by abject +poverty and inability to obtain work, than want is produced by drink. +Here the physical system, half starved and often chilled, calls for +stimulants. Here the horrors of nightmare, which we sometimes suffer +during our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressive +fear weighs forever on the mind. Drink offers a temporary relief and +satisfies the craving of the system, besides the environment invites +dissipation and human nature at best is frail. I marvel that there is +not more drunkenness exhibited in the poverty spots of our cities. + + [3] NOTE ON PICTURE OF CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE. When Mr. Swaffield + first visited this little family he found them in the most + abject want; a pot of boiling water, in which the mother + was stirring a handful of meal, constituting their only + food. Their clothing was thin and worn almost to shreds; + their apartment but slightly heated; half of all they could + earn, even when all were well and work good, had to go for + their rent, leaving only one dollar and twenty-five cents a + week to feed and clothe four persons. The day we first + called they were poorly clothed, with sorry apologies for + dresses and shoes laughing at the toes. In the picture we + reproduce, they are neatly dressed and well shod from money + contributed by liberal-hearted friends to The Arena Relief + Fund. + +[Illustration: CELLARWAY LEADING TO UNDER-GROUND APARTMENTS (SEE NOTE).] + +[Illustration: SICK MAN IN UNDER-GROUND APARTMENT (SEE NOTE).] + +[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND THREE CHILDREN (SEE NOTE).] + +[Illustration: WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT (SEE NOTE).] + +[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE (SEE NOTE).] + +Among the places we visited were a number of cellars or burrows. We +descended several steps into dark, narrow passage-ways,[4] leading to +cold, damp rooms, in many of which no direct ray of sunshine ever +creeps. We entered a room filled with a bed, cooking stove, rack of +dirty clothes and numerous chairs, of which the most one could say was +that their backs were still sound and which probably had been donated by +persons who could no longer use them. On the bed lay a man who has been +ill for three months with rheumatism. This family consists of father, +mother, and a large daughter, all of whom are compelled to occupy one +bed. They eat, cook, live, and sleep in this wretched cellar and pay +over fifty dollars a year rent. This is a typical illustration of life +in this underground world. + + [4] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF CELLARWAY LEADING INTO PARTIALLY + UNDERGROUND APARTMENT. This passage-way is several steps + down from the court or alley-way, and leads to the + apartment seen in accompanying picture. There are many of + these dark cellarways leading to underground tenements. + + NOTE ON PICTURE OF A SICK MAN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. + Leading off the cellar-way shown above, is a tenement shown + in this illustration. It consists of one room, over the bed + the ceiling slants toward the street, and above the ceiling + are the steps leading to the tenements above. In this one + room lives the sick man, who for a long time, has been + confined to his bed with rheumatism; his wife and a + daughter are compelled to occupy the one bed with him, + while the small sunless room is their only kitchen, + laundry, living room, parlor, and bedroom. + + NOTE ON PORTUGUESE FAMILY, WIDOW, TWO DAUGHTERS, AND LITTLE + BOY. This illustration is a fair type of a number of + lodgings. The photograph does not begin to reveal the + extent of the wretchedness of the tenement. A little + cubby-hole leads off from this room, large enough for a + three quarters bed, in which the entire family of four + sleep. The girls are remarkably bright and lady-like in + their behavior, carrying with them an air of refinement one + would not expect to find in such a place. They make their + living by sewing; their rent is two dollars a week. + + NOTE ON WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. + This picture of a squalid underground apartment is typical + of numbers of tenements in this part of the city. The widow + sews and does any other kind of work she can to meet rent + and living expenses; the children sew on pants. + + NOTE ON PICTURE OF EXTERIOR OF TENEMENT HOUSE. This picture + is from a photograph of one of the many tenements in the + North End which front upon blind alleys. The illustration + gives the front of the house and the only entrance to it. + In this building dwell twenty families. The interior is + even more dilapidated and horrible than the entrance. Here + children are born, and here characters are moulded; here + the fate of future members of the Commonwealth is stamped. + Taxes on such a building are relatively low under our + present system so the landlord realizes a princely revenue, + and while such a condition remains, it is not probable that + he will tear down the wretched old and erect a commodious + new building, on which he would be compelled to pay double + or triple the present taxes, merely for the comfort and + moral and physical health of his tenants. + +[Illustration: UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS (SEE NOTE).] + +In another similar cellar or burrow[5] we found a mother and seven boys +and girls, some of them quite large, all sleeping in two medium-sized +beds in one room; this room is also their kitchen. The other room is a +storehouse for kindling wood the children gather and sell, a little +store and living room combined. Their rent is two dollars a week. The +cellar was damp and cold; the air stifling. Nothing can be imagined more +favorable to contagion both physical and moral than such dens as these. +Ethical exaltation or spiritual growth is impossible with such +environment. It is not strange that the slums breed criminals, which +require vast sums yearly to punish after evil has been accomplished; but +to me it is an ever-increasing source of wonder that society should be +so short-sighted and neglectful of the condition of its exiles, when an +outlay of a much smaller sum would ensure a prevention of a large +proportion of the crime that emenates from the slums; while at the same +time it would mean a new world of life, happiness, and measureless +possibilities for the thousands who now exist in hopeless gloom. + + [5] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF UNDERGROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS. + These miserable quarters are four steps down from the + street. There are two small rooms, one a shop in which + kindling wood is stowed, which is gathered up by the + children, split and tied in bundles. The mother also sells + peanuts and candy. The back room contains a range and two + beds which take almost the entire area of the room. In + these two rooms several people sleep. One can readily see + how unfortunate such a life is from an ethical, no less + than social point of view. + +[Illustration: OUT OF WORK (SEE NOTE).] + +In a small room fronting an interior court we found a man[6] whose face +bore the stamp of that "hope long deferred which maketh the heart sick." +He is, I am informed, a strictly temperate, honest, and industrious +workman. Up to the time of his wife's illness and death, which occurred +last summer, the family lived in a reasonably comfortable manner, as the +husband found no difficulty in securing work on the sea. When the wife +died, however, circumstances changed. She left six little children, one +almost an infant. The father could not go to sea, leaving his little +flock without a protector, to fall the victims of starvation, and since +then he has worked whenever he could get employment loading vessels, or +at anything he could find. For the past six weeks he has been +practically without work, and the numerous family of little ones have +suffered for life's necessities. His rent is two dollars and a quarter a +week. + + [6] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OUT OF WORK. The young man + photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six + small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, + but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and + death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably + well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed + to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife's + sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he + had saved, while being left with so many little children + and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to + engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which + would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has + been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to + obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which + is two dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost + all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist + Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has + been provided with food and clothes. + +[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC (SEE NOTE).] + +In the attic in another tenement we found a widow[7] weeping and working +by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large +luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great +cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, +soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so +that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how +terrible the emaciation of the body, which was little more than skin and +bones, speaking more eloquently than words of the ravages of slow +starvation and wasting disease. The immediate cause of the poor woman's +tears was explained to us in broken English, substantially as follows: +She had just returned from the dispensary where she had been +unsuccessful in her effort to have a physician visit her child, owing to +her inability to pay the quarter of a dollar demanded for the visit. +After describing as best she could the condition of the invalid, the +doctor had given her two bottles of medicine and a prescription blank on +which he had written directions for her to get a truss that would cost +her two dollars and a half at the drug store. She had explained to the +physician that owing to the illness of her child she had fallen a week +and a half in arrears in rent; that the agent for the tenement had +notified her that if one week's rent was not paid on Saturday she would +be evicted, which meant death to her child, so she could not buy the +truss. To which the doctor replied, "You must get the truss and put it +on before giving anything from either bottle, or the medicine will kill +your child." "If I give the medicine," she repeated showing us the +bottles, "before I put the truss on, he says it will kill my child," and +the tears ran swiftly down her sad but intelligent face. The child was +so emaciated that the support would inevitably have produced terrible +sores in a short time. I am satisfied that had the physician seen its +condition, he would not have had a heart to order it. + + [7] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC. In an + attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor + widow with her little family of four, a full description of + which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of + the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread + very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered + at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have + resulted. This woman and her children are sober, + industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no + means rare in this city which claims to be practically free + from poverty. + +I thought as I studied the anxious and sorrowful countenance of that +mother, how hard, indeed, is the lot of the very poor. They have to buy +coal by the basketful and pay almost double price, likewise food and all +life's necessities. They are compelled to live in frightful +disease-fostering quarters, and pay exorbitant rents for the +accommodations they receive. When sick they are not always free from +imposition, even when they receive aid in the name of charity, and +sometimes theology under the cloak of religion oppresses them. This last +thought had been suggested by seeing in our rounds some half-starved +women dropping pennies into the hands of Sisters of Charity, who were +even here in the midst of terrible want, exacting from the starving +money for a church whose coffers groan with wealth. O religion, +ineffably radiant and exalting in thy pure influence, how thou art often +debased by thy professed followers! How much injustice is meted out to +the very poor, and how many crimes are still committed under thy cloak +and in thy holy name! Even this poor widow had bitterly suffered through +priests who belong to a great communion, claiming to follow Him who +cried, "Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will +give you rest," as will be seen by the following, related to me by Rev. +Walter Swaffield, who was personally cognizant of the facts. The husband +of this widow was out of work for a time; being too ill to engage in +steady work, he found it impossible to pay the required ten cents for +seats in the church to which he belonged, and was consequently excluded +from his sitting. Shortly after he fell sick, his wife sought the +priest, imploring him to administer the sacrament, and later extreme +unction, which he positively refused, leaving the poor man to die +without the consolation of the Church he had from infancy been taught to +love and revere. + +It is not strange that many in this world of misery become embittered +against society; that they sometimes learn to hate all who live in +comfort, and who represent the established order of things, and from the +rank of the patient, uncomplaining struggler descend to a lower zone, +where the moral nature is eclipsed by degradation and crime, and life +takes on a deeper shade of horror. This class of people exist on the +brink of a precipice. Socially, they may be likened to the physical +condition of Victor Hugo's Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled him +from the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensation +produced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting the +false priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feeling +the leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His hands +send momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance is +almost exhausted. Below he sees the sharp formidable spires of +Saint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet from +where he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies. +Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeed +in climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below them +starvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the form +of a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master who +pays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of the +wretched squalor permitted by the one, and the slow starvation +necessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is even +more terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it the +fate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemned +to suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook before +them, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of real +distress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly because +they are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they ask +for aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration of +this character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with a +babe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean, +something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weak +from illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Her +husband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shipped +on board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman did +not intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon be +enabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband's wages she +was allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girl +came to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. "We have had +nothing to eat since Monday morning," she said, "and the little baby +cries all the time because mamma can give it no milk." It was Wednesday +evening when the child visited the Mission. An investigation +substantiated the truth of the child's words. The mother, too proud to +beg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeed +without asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, she +yielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridges +over a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able, +in a measure, to take care of themselves. + +I find it impossible in this paper to touch upon other cases I desired +to describe. The above illustrations however, typical of the life and +environment of hundreds of families, are sufficient to emphasize a +condition which exists in our midst and which is yearly growing, both in +extent and in intensity of bitterness; a condition that is little +understood by those who are not actually brought in contact with the +circumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appalling +to every sense of humanity and justice. We cannot afford to remain +ignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we can +afford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with some +to make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the suffering +experienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. This +may be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause of +reform. It is our duty to honestly face the deplorable conditions, and +courageously set to work to ameliorate the suffering, and bring about +radical reformatory measures calculated to invest life with a rich, new +significance for this multitude so long exiles from joy, gladness, and +comfort. + +We now come to the practical question, What is to be done? But before +viewing the problem in its larger and more far-reaching aspects, I wish +to say a word in regard to the direct measures for immediate relief +which it is fashionable among many reformers to dismiss as unworthy of +consideration. It is very necessary in a discussion of this character to +view the problem in all its bearings, and adjust the mental vision so as +to recognize the utility of the various plans advanced by sincere +reformers. I have frequently heard it urged that these palliative +measures tend to retard the great radical reformative movements, which +are now taking hold of the public mind. This view, however comfortable +to those who prefer theorizing and agitation to putting their shoulder +to the wheel in a practical way, is, nevertheless, erroneous. There is +no way in which people can be so thoroughly aroused to the urgent +necessity of radical economic changes as by bringing them into such +intimate relations with the submerged millions that they hear the +throbbing of misery's heart. The lethargy of the moral instincts of the +people is unquestionably due to lack of knowledge more than anything +else. The people do not begin to realize the true condition of life in +the ever-widening field of abject want. When they know and are +sufficiently interested to personally investigate the problem and aid +the suffering, they will appreciate as never before the absolute +necessity for radical economic changes, which contemplate a greater meed +of justice and happiness than any measures yet devised. But aside from +this we must not forget the fact that we have a duty to perform to the +living no less than to the generations yet unborn. The commonwealth of +to-day as well as that of to-morrow demands our aid. Millions are in the +quicksands: yearly, monthly, daily, hourly they are sinking deeper and +deeper. We can save them while the bridges are being built. To withhold +the planks upon which life and happiness depend is no less criminal than +to refuse to face the question in its broader aspects and labor for +fundamental economic changes. A great work of real, practical, and +enduring value, however, is being wrought each year by those in charge +of local missions work in the slums and by individuals who mingle with +and study the actual condition of the very poor. The extent of good +accomplished by these few who are giving their lives to uplifting +society's exiles is little understood, because it is quiet and +unostentatious; yet through the instrumentality of the silent workers, +thousands of persons are annually kept from starvation and crime, while +for many of them new, broad, and hopeful horizons are constantly coming +in view.[8] + + [8] The extent and character of this work will be more readily + understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel + Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any + other single organization in that section of the city for + the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient + management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev. + W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring + zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social + and humanitarian point of view, their work may be + principally summed up in the following classifications: + [1.] _Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of + those who are really suffering._ Here cases are quietly and + sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the + rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where + they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants + are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between + one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion + of each month's work. [2]. _The sailors' boarding house._ A + large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors. + Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a + member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at + this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly + escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors' + boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still + more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and + disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy. + [3]. _Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the + young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and + oppression of this terrible existence._ This, it is + needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the + fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will + give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the + slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for + several of these children of adversity. [4]. _The + children's free industrial school in which the young are + taught useful trades, occupations, and means of + employment._ In this training school the little girls are + taught to make themselves garments. The material is + furnished them free and when they have completed the + garment it is given them. [5]. _Summer vacations in the + country for the little ones_ are provided for several + hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two + weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited + funds permit. These little oases in the children's dreary + routine life are looked forward to with even greater + anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the + rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have + personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense + good that is being done with the very limited funds at the + command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration + how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of + the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and + money. It is not enough for those who live in our great + cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these + quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who + to-day are indifferent into active missionaries. + +Let us now examine a broader aspect of this problem. So long as the +wretched, filthy dens of dirt, vermin, and disease stand as the only +shelter for the children of the scum, so long will moral and physical +contagion flourish and send forth death-dealing germs; so long will +crime and degradation increase, demanding more policemen, more numerous +judiciary, and larger prisons. No great permanent or far-reaching +reformation can be brought about until the habitations of the people are +radically improved. The recognition of this fact has already led to a +practical palliative measure for relief that must challenge the +admiration of all thoughtful persons interested in the welfare of +society's exiles. It is a step in the direction of justice. It is not +merely a work of charity; it is, I think, the most feasible immediate +measure that can be employed which will change the whole aspect of life +for tens of thousands, making existence mean something, and giving a +wonderful significance to the now meaningless word home. I refer to the +erection of model tenement apartments in our overcrowded sections, such, +for example, as the Victoria Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on the +former site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than a +thousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around a +hollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a large +shrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways of +the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary +arrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and +three rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 x 8 feet 6 inches; most of +them are 12 x 13 feet 4 inches. All the ceilings are 9 feet high. A +superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be +orderly, and to keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of +halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two +hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns +on the total expenditure of the building, which was $338,800.00, it is +estimated will be at least 4-1/2 per cent, while the rents are as +follows: $1.44 per week for the three-room tenement, $1.08 per week for +those containing two large rooms, and 54 cents for the one-room +quarters. In Boston, the rents for the dreadful one-room cellar are +$1.00 a week; for the two-room tenements above the cellars, the rent, so +far as I heard, ranged from $1.50 to $2.50; three rooms were, of course, +much higher. The rooms also are far smaller here than those in the +beautiful, healthful, and inviting Victoria Square apartments. Yet it +will be observed that the Shylock landlords receive _more than double_ +the rental paid in this building for dens which would be a disgrace to +barbarism. A similar experiment, in many respects even more remarkable +than that recently inaugurated by the Liverpool co-operation, is +exhibited in the Peabody dwellings in London. These apartments have been +in successful operation for so many years, while the results attending +them have been so marked and salutary, that no discussion of this +subject would be complete that failed to give some of the most important +facts relating to them. I know of no single act of philanthropy that +towers so nobly above the sordid greed of the struggling multitude of +millionaires, as does this splendid work of George Peabody, by which +to-day twenty thousand people, who but for him would be in the depths of +the slums, are fronting a bright future, and with souls full of hope are +struggling into a higher civilization. It will be remembered that Mr. +Peabody donated at intervals extending over a period of eleven years, or +from 1862 to 1873, L500,000 or $2,500,000 to this project of relieving +the poor. He specified that his purpose was to ameliorate the condition +of the poor and needy of London, and promote their comfort and +happiness, making only the following conditions:-- + + "_First_ and foremost amongst them is the limitation of its + uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be + calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the + comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established + residence, form a recognized portion of the population of + London. + + "_Secondly_, it is my intention that now, and for all time, + there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this + fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character + either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation + to party politics. + + "_Thirdly_, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a + participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an + ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the + individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the + word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and + good conduct as a member of society." + +[Illustration: THE VICTORIA SQUARE APARTMENT HOUSE, LIVERPOOL, ENG.] + +Realizing that little could be hoped for from individuals or their +offspring, who were condemned to a life in vile dens, where the squalor +and wretchedness was only equalled by the poisonous, disease-breeding +atmosphere and the general filth which characterized the tenement +districts, the trustees Mr. Peabody selected to carry forward his work, +engaged in the erection of a large building accommodating over two +hundred, at a cost of $136,500. This apartment house, which is +substantially uniform with the seventeen additional buildings since +constructed from the Peabody fund, is five stories high, built around a +hollow square, thus giving plenty of fresh air and sunshine to the rear +as well as the front of the entire building. The square affords a large +playground for the children where they are in no danger of being run +over by vehicles, and where they are under the immediate eye of many of +the parents. The building is divided into tenements of one, two, and +three room apartments, according to the requirements of the occupant. +There are also nine stores on the ground floor, which bring a rental of +something over $1,500 a year for each of the buildings. By careful, +honest, and conscientious business management, the original sum of +$2,500,000 has been almost doubled, while comfortable, healthful homes +have been procured for an army of over 20,000 persons. Some of the +apartments contain four rooms, many three, some two, others one. The +average rent is about $1.15 for an apartment. The average price for +three-room apartments in the wretched tenements of London, is from $1.45 +a week. In the Peabody dwellings, the death rate is .96 per one thousand +below the average in London. Thus it will be seen that while large, +healthful, airy, and cheerful homes have been provided for over 20,000 +at a lower figure than the wretched disease-fostering and crime-breeding +tenements of soulless Shylocks, the Peabody fund has, since 1862, grown +to nearly $5,000,000, or almost twice the sum given for the work by the +great philanthropist. No words can adequately describe the magnitude of +this splendid work, any more than we can measure the good it has +accomplished, the crime prevented, or the lives that through it have +grown to ornament and bless society. In the Liverpool experiment, the +work has been prosecuted by the municipal government. In the Peabody +dwellings, it has, of course, been the work of an individual, carried on +by a board of high-minded, honorable, and philanthropic gentlemen. To my +mind, it seems far more practicable for philanthropic, monied men to +prosecute this work as a business investment, specifying in their wills +that rents shall not rise above a figure necessary to insure a fair +interest on the money, rather than leave it for city governments, as in +the latter case it would be in great danger of becoming an additional +stronghold for unscrupulous city officials to use for political +purposes. I know of no field where men with millions can so bless the +race as by following Mr. Peabody's example in our great cities. If, +instead of willing every year princely sums to old, rich, and +conservative educational institutions, which already possess far more +money than they require,--wealthy persons would bequeath sums for the +erection of buildings after the manner of the Victoria Square or the +Peabody Dwellings, a wonderful transformation would soon appear in our +cities. Crime would diminish, life would rise to a higher level, and +from the hearts and brains of tens of thousands, a great and terrible +load would be lifted. Yet noble and praiseworthy as is this work, we +must not lose sight of the fact, that at best it is only a palliative +measure: a grand, noble, beneficent work which challenges our +admiration, and should receive our cordial support; still it is only a +palliative. + +There is a broader aspect still, a nobler work to be accomplished. As +long as speculation continues in that great gift of God to man, _land_, +the problem will be unsettled. So long as the landlords find that the +more wretched, filthy, rickety, and loathsome a building is, the lower +will be the taxes, he will continue to make some of the ever-increasing +army of bread winners dwell in his foul, disease-impregnated dens. + +The present economic system is being rapidly outgrown. Man's increasing +intelligence, sense of justice, and the humanitarian spirit of the age, +demand radical changes, which will come immeasurably nearer securing +equal opportunities for all persons than the past dreamed possible. No +sudden or rash measure calculated to convulse business and work great +suffering should be entertained, but our future action should rest on a +broad, settled policy founded upon justice, tempered by moderation, +keeping in view the great work of banishing uninvited poverty, and +elevating to a higher level the great struggling millions without for a +moment sacrificing individualism. Indeed, a truer democracy in which a +higher interpretation of justice, and a broader conception of individual +freedom, and a more sacred regard for liberty, should be the watchword +of the future. + + + + +EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY. + +BY PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, PH. D. + + +In the life and letters of Charles Darwin there is a memorandum, copied +from his pocket note-book of 1837, to this effect:--"In July, opened +first notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck with +the character of the South American fossils and the species on Galapagos +Archipelago." + +These facts, he says, were the origin of all his epoch-making views as +to the development of life and the work of natural selection in evolving +species. + +His suspicions that species were not immutable and made at one cast, +directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he says, +almost like murder. + +To the greater part of the church, when in 1859, after twenty years of +work in accumulating the proofs of his theory, he at last gave it to the +world, it seemed quite as bad as murder. + +It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career of +the Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first the +fierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradual +accumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor; +the accession of one scientific authority after another to the new +views; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition; +its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological and +scientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of the +new theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter, +force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless the +modern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicated +by all the priests of the new dogmatism. + +In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. +Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow +conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the +cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the +Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, +one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has +recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for +the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are +frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a +Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) +a contradiction in terms. + +I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It is +too late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is, +therefore, a vital question, "Can belief in God, and the soul, and +divine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Or +must Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to the +chilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?" + +Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, there +is no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution and +Christianity. + +There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, which +are mutually contradictory. + +There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. It +dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and +physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. +Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy +combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of +the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears +and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of +the childish fancy of humanity's infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with +all the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands a +school of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation of +species by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and His +angels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound. +According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, and +Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiah +turned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born without +human father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with the +regular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of cause +and effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then, +the very foundations of religion are destroyed. + +Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort, +there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them +is a fair, rational, or true form of thought. + +When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded; +when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and +philosophy require,--the two will be found to have no difficulty in +joining hands. + +Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely +supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural +religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a +higher and more fruitful marriage. + +Let us only recognize _Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process of +God's working in the world_, and we have then a theory which has a place +and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and +the most venerable faith needs to retain. + +In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force in +itself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law of +the occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed, +little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher ever +proceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the more +simple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor or +natural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has been +derived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment, +sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of the +organism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditions +of this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be first +causes or originating powers. What these are, science itself does not +claim the right as yet to declare. + +Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, this +omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories +of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of +faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and +philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be +accepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight that +reverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from the +outset to demand such changes of plan and order of working. The great +miracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providence +needs no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans. + +But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the universe thus grinds on +and has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closely +bound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, man +to his animal ancestry and bodily conditions,--what other result will +there be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was +asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular +hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here no +mention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, I +have no need of that hypothesis." + +Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is a +hypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought, +therefore, better dismiss? + +I do not think so. Old time materialism dismissed the idea of God +because it dismissed the idea of a beginning. The forces and phenomena +of the world were supposed eternal; and therefore a Creator was +unnecessary. But the conception of Evolution is radically different. It +is a movement that demands a motor force behind it. It is a movement, +moreover, that according to the testimony of modern science cannot have +been eternal. The modern theory of heat and the dissipation of energy +requires that our solar system and the nebula from which it sprang +should have had a beginning in some finite period of time. The +evolutionary process cannot have been going on forever; for the amount +of heat and the number of degrees of temperature and the rate of +cooling, are all finite, calculable quantities, and therefore the +process cannot have been going on for more than a certain finite number +of years, more or less millions, say. Moreover, if the original +fire-mist was perfectly homogeneous, and not impelled into motion by any +external force, it would never have begun to rotate and evolve into +planets and worlds. If perfectly homogeneous, it would have remained, +always balanced and always immobile. To start it on its course of +rotation and evolution, there must have been either some external +impelling power, or else some original differentiation of forces or +conditions; for which, again, some other cause than itself must be +supposed. For the well-known law of inertia forbids that any material +system that is in absolute equilibrium should spontaneously start itself +into motion. As John Stuart Mill has admitted, "the laws of nature can +give no account of their own origin." + +In the second place, notice that the materialistic interpretation of +Evolution fails to account for that which is most characteristic in the +process, the steady progress it reveals. Were Evolution an aimless, +fruitless motion, rising and falling alternately, or moving round and +round in an endless circle, the reference of these motions to the blind +forces of matter might have, perhaps, a certain plausibility. But the +movements of the evolution process are of quite a different character. +They are not chaotic; no barren, useless circlings back to the same +point, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seem +to return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, +that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, +ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressive +motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account +for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no +such intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. +Or if some day, chance builds a structure with some show of order in it, +to-morrow it pulls it down. It does not move steadily forward with +permanent constructiveness. + +The further Science penetrates into the secrets of the universe the more +regular seems the march of thought presented there; the more harmonious +the various parts; the more rational the grand system that is +discovered. "How the one force of the universe should have pursued the +pathway of Evolution through the lapse of millions of ages, leaving +traces so legible by intelligence to-day, unless from beginning to end +the whole process had been dominated by intelligence," this is +something, as Francis Abbot well says, that passes the limits of +conjecture. The all-luminous intelligibility of the universe is the +all-sufficient proof of the intelligence of the cause that produced it. +In the annals of science there is nothing more curious than the +prophetic power which those savans have gained who have grasped this +secret of nature--the rationality of the universe. It was by this +confidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what +reason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalian +skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William +Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, +led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is +told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zooelogist, the +other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the +formation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable to +three different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, without +informing him of his discovery, how to execute all the variations +possible, conformed to the fundamental idea of a radiated structure +around a central axis. Prof. Pierce, although quite ignorant of natural +history, at once devised the very three plans discovered by Agassiz, as +the only fundamental plans which could be framed in accordance with the +given elements. How significantly do such correspondences speak of the +working of mind in nature, moulding it in conformity with ideas of +reason. Thus to see the laws of thought exhibiting themselves as also +the laws of being seems to me a fact sufficient of itself to prove the +presence of an over-ruling mind in nature. + +Is there any way of escaping this obvious conclusion? The only method +that has been suggested has been to refer these harmonies of nature back +to the original regularity of the atoms. As the drops of frozen moisture +on the window pane build up the symmetrical frost-forms without design +or reason, by virtue of the original similarity of the component parts, +so do the similar atoms, without any more reason or plan, build up the +harmonious forms of nature. + +But this answer brings us face to face with a third still more +significant problem, a still greater obstacle to materialism. Why are +the atoms of nature thus regular, thus similar, one to another? Here are +millions on millions of atoms of gold, each like its fellow atom. +Millions and millions of atoms of oxygen, each with the same velocity of +movement, same weight and chemical properties. All the millions on +millions on millions of atoms on the globe are not of infinitely varied +shape, weight, size, quality; but there are only some seventy different +kinds, and all the millions of one kind, just as like one another as +bullets out of the same mould, so that each new atom of oxygen that +comes to a burning flame does the same work and acts in precisely the +same way as its fellows. Did you ever think of that? If you have ever +realized what it means, you must recognize this uniformity of the atoms, +billions and billions of them as like one another as if run out of the +same mould--as the most astonishing thing in nature. + +Now, among the atoms, there can have been no birth, no death, no +struggle for existence, no natural selection to account for this. What +other explanation, then, in reason is there, than to say, as those great +men of science, Sir John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell, who have, in our +day, most deeply pondered this curious fact, have said, that this +division of all the infinity of atoms in nature into a very limited +number of groups, all the billions of members in each group +substantially alike in their mechanical and chemical properties, "gives +to each of the atoms the essential characters at once of a manufactured +article and a subordinate agent." + +Evolution cannot, then, be justly charged with materialism. On the +contrary, it especially demands a divine creative force as the starter +of its processes and the endower of the atoms with their peculiar +properties. The foundation of that scientific system which the greatest +of modern expositors of Evolution has built up about that principle +(Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy) is the persistence of an +infinite, eternal, and indestructible force, of which all things that we +see are the manifestations. + +To suppose, as many of the camp-followers of the evolution philosophy +do, that the processes of successive change and gradual modification, +which have been so clearly traced out in nature, relieve us from the +need or right of asking for any anterior and higher cause of these +processes; or that because the higher and finer always unfolds from the +lower and coarser, therefore there was really nothing else in existence, +either at the beginning or at present, than these crude elements which +alone disclose themselves at first; and that these gross, sensuous facts +are the only source and explanation of all that has followed them,--this +is a most superficial and inadequate view. For this explanation, as we +have already noticed, furnishes no fountain-head of power to maintain +the constant upward-mounting of the waters in the world's conduits. It +furnishes no intelligent directions of these streams into ever wise and +ordered channels. To explain the higher life that comes out of these low +beginnings, we must suppose the existence of spiritual powers, unseen at +first, and disclosing themselves only in the fuller, later results, the +moral and spiritual phenomena that are the crowning flower and fruit of +the long process. When a thing has grown from a lower to a higher form, +its real rank in nature is not shown by what it began in, but by what it +has become. Though chemistry has grown out of alchemy, and astronomy out +of astrology, this does not empty them of present truth or impair at all +their authority and trustworthiness to-day. Though man's mind has grown +out of the sensations of brutish ancestors, that does not take away the +fact that he has now risen to a height from which he overlooks all these +mists and sees the light which never was on sea or land. The real +beginning of a statue is not in the rough outline in which it first +appears, but in the creative idea of the perfect work which regulates +its whole progress. The real nature of a tree is not to be discovered in +the first swellings of the acorn, or the first out-pushing of its +rootlets, but rather are acorn and rootlet themselves parts of that +generic idea, that _evolutive potentiality_, which is only to be +understood when manifested in its completer form in the full-grown +monarch of the forest. So to discern the real character and motor-power +of the world's evolution, we must look, not to its beginnings, but to +its end, and see in the latest stages, and its highest moral and +spiritual forms and forces, not disguises of its earlier stages, but +ampler manifestations of that Divine power and purpose which is the +ever-active agent, working through all the varied levels of creation. + +The evolution theory is, also, it must be acknowledged, hostile to that +phase of theology which conceives of God as a being outside of nature; +which regarded the universe as a dead lump, a mechanical fabric where +the Creator once worked, at the immensely remote dawn of creation; and +to which again, for a few short moments, this transcendental Power +stooped from His celestial throne, when the successive species of living +beings were called into being in brief exertions of supernatural energy. +But this mechanical view of God who, as Goethe said, "only from without +should drive and twirl the universe about," what a poor conception of +God, after all, was that; not undeserving the ridicule of the great +German. + +Certainly, the idea of God which Wordsworth has given us, as a Power not +indefinitely remote, but ever present and infinitely near, + + "A motion and a spirit that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, + And rolls through all things," + +is a much more inspiring and venerable thought. This is the conception +of God that Paul has given us, "the God in whom we live and move and +have our being;" this is the conception that the book of Wisdom gives +us, "as the Divine Spirit who filleth the world." + +And to this conception of God, Evolution has no antagonism, but on the +contrary, throws its immense weight in its favor. Evolution, in fact, +instead of removing the Deity from us, brings him close about us; sets +us face to face with his daily activities. The universe is but the body +of which God is the soul; "the Interior Artist," as Giordano Bruno used +to say, who from within moulds his living shapes of beauty and power. +What else, in fact, is Evolution but the secular name for the Divine +Indwelling; the scientific alias for the growth and progressive +revelation of the Holy Spirit, daily putting off the old and putting on +the new; constantly busy from the beginning of time to this very day +moulding and forwarding his work? + +Not long ago I came across the mental experience of a working geologist +which well illustrates this. "Once in early boyhood," says Mr. James E. +Mills, "I left a lumberman's camp at night to go to the brook for water. +It was a clear, cold, moonlight night and very still, except the distant +murmuring of the Penobscot at some falls. A sense of the grandeur of the +forest and rivers, the hills, and sky, and stars came over the boy, and +he stood and looked around. An owl hooted, and the hooting was not a +cheerful sound. The men were all asleep, and the conditions were lonely +enough. But there was no feeling of loneliness; for with the sense of +the grandeur of creation, came the sense, very real and strong, of the +Creator's presence. In boyish imagination, I could see His almighty hand +shaping the hills and scooping out the valleys, spreading the sky +overhead, and making trees, animals, and men. Thirty years later I +camped alone in the open air on the bank of the Gila. It was a clear, +cold, moonlight night. The camp-fire was low, for the Apaches were on +the warpath. An owl again hooted; but again all loneliness was dispelled +by a sense of the Creator's presence, and the night of long ago by the +Penobscot came into my mind, and with it the question: What is the +difference to my mind between the Creator's presence now and then? To +the heart, it was very like, but to the mind very different. Now, no +great hand was shaping things from without. But God was everywhere, +reaching down through long lines of forces, and shaping and sustaining +things from within. I had been travelling all day by mountains of lava +which had cooled long ages ago, and over grounds which the sea, now far +off, had left on its beaches; and with the geologist's habit recalled +the lava still glowing and flowing, and the sea still rolling its +pebbles on the beaches. But now I knew it was by forces within the earth +that the lava was poured out, and that the waves which rolled the +pebbles were driven by the wind and the wind by the sun's heat. And the +forces within the earth and the heat within the sun come from still +further within. Inward, always inward, the search for the original +energy and law carried my mind, for He whose will is the source of all +force, and whose thought is the source of all law is on the inside of +the universe. The kingdom of God is within you." + +"Now this change from the boyish idea of God creating things from +without, to the manhood's view of God creating and sustaining all things +from within," is indeed as this working geologist so well says, "the +essential change which modern science has wrought in the habit of +religious thought. From Copernicus to Darwin, every important step in +the development of science has cost the giving up of some idea of a God +creating things as man shapes them from without, and has illustrated the +higher idea of God reaching His works from within. Every step has led +toward the truth that life and force come to the forms in which they are +clothed from God by the inner way; and by the same way, their law comes +with them; and that the forms are the effects of the force and life, +acting according to the law." + +This is certainly a most noble, uplifting conception of the world. But +how, perhaps it will be asked, can we find justification for such a view +of the Divine Spirit as indwelling in nature? It is a question worth +dwelling upon, and when we carefully ponder it, we find that one of the +phases of the evolution philosophy that has been a chief source of alarm +is precisely the one that lends signal support to this doctrine of +Divine Indwelling. + +Evolution is especially shrunk from, because it connects man so closely +with nature; our souls are traced back to an animal origin; +consciousness to instinct, instinct to sensibility, and this to lower +laws and properties of force. By the law of the correlation of forces, +our mental and spiritual powers are regarded as but transformed phases +of physical forces, conditioned as they are on our bodily states and +changes; and the soul, it is said, is but a child of nature, who is most +literally its mother. + +To many minds this is appalling. But let us look it candidly in the face +and see its full bearing. We will recall in the first place, the +scientific law, no life but from proceeding life. Let us recollect next +the dictum of mechanics, no fountain can rise higher than its source. +The natural corollary and consequence of this is "no evolution without +preceding involution." If mind and consciousness come out of nature, +they must first have been enveloped in nature, resident within its +depths. If the spirit within our hearts is one with the force that stirs +the sense and grows in the plant, then that sea of energy that envelops +us is also spirit. + +When we come to examine the idea of force, we find that there is only +one form in which we get any direct knowledge of it, only one place in +which we come into contact with it, and that is, in our own conscious +experiences, in the efforts of our own will. According to the scientific +rule, always to interpret the unknown by the known, not the known by the +unknown, it is only the rational conclusion that force elsewhere is also +will. Through this personal experience of energy, we get, just once, an +inside view of the universal energy, and we find it to be spiritual; the +will-force of the Infinite Spirit dwelling in all things. That the +encircling force of the universe can best be understood through the +analogy of our own sense of effort, and therefore is a form of will, of +Spirit, is a conclusion endorsed by the most eminent men of +science,--Huxley, Herschel, Carpenter, and Le Conte. There is, +therefore, no real efficient force but Spirit. The various energies of +nature are but different forms or special currents of this Omnipresent +Divine Power; the laws of nature, but the wise and regular habits of +this active Divine will; physical phenomena but projections of God's +thought on the screen of space; and Evolution but the slow, gradual +unrolling of the panorama on the great stage of time. + +In geology and paleontology, as is admitted, Evolution is not directly +observed, but only inferred. The process is too slow; the stage too +grand for direct observation. There is one field and only one where it +has been directly observed. This is in the case of domestic animals and +plants under man's charge. Now as here, where alone we see Evolution +going on, it is under the guidance of superintending mind, it is a +justifiable inference that in nature, also, it goes on under similar +intelligent guidance. Now, it is the observation of distinguished men of +science that we see precisely such guidance in nature. There is nothing +in the Darwinian theory, as I said, that would conduct species upward +rather than downward. To account for the steady upward progress we must +resort to a higher Cause. We must say with Asa Gray, "Variation has been +led along certain beneficial lines, like a stream along definite and +useful lines of irrigation." We must say with Prof. Owen, "A purposive +route of development and change, of correlation and inter-dependence, +manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession of +races as in the development and organization of the individual. +Generations do not vary accidentally in any and every direction, but in +pre-ordained, definite, and correlated courses." This judgment is one +which Prof. Carpenter has also substantially agreed with, declaring that +the history of Evolution is that of a consistent advance along definite +lines of progress, and can only be explained as the work of a mind in +nature. + +The old argument from Design, it has been frequently said of late, is +quite overthrown by Evolution. In one sense it is: _i.e._ the old idea +of a special purpose and a separate creation of each part of nature. But +the divine agency is not dispensed with, by Evolution; only shifted to a +different point of application; transferred from the particular to the +general; from the fact to the law. Paley compared the eye to a watch; +and said it must have been made by a divine hand. The modern scientist +objects that the eye has been found to be no hand-work; it is the last +result of a complicated combination of forces; the mighty machine of +nature, which has been grinding at the work for thousands of years. Very +well; but the modern watch is not made by hand, either, but by a score +of different machines. But does it require less, or not more +intelligence to make the watch in this way? Or if some watch should be +discovered that was not put together by human hand, but formed by +another watch, not quite so perfect as itself, and this by another +watch, further back, would the wonder, the demand for a superior +intelligence as the origin of the process be any the less? It strikes me +that it would be but the greater. The farther back you go, and the more +general, and invariable, and simple the fundamental laws that brought +all things into their present form, then, it seems to me, the more +marvellous becomes the miracle of the eye, the ear, each bodily organ, +when recognized as a climax to whose consummation each successive stage +of the world has contributed. How much more significant of purposive +intelligence than any special creation is this related whole, this host +of co-ordinated molecules, this complex system of countless interwoven +laws and movements, all driven forward, straight to their mark, down the +vistas of the ages, to the grand world consummation of to-day? What else +but omniscience is equal to this? + +All law, then, we should regard as a divine operation; and all divine +operation, conversely, obeys law. Whatever phenomena we consider as +specially divine ought, then, to be most orderly and true to nature. +Religion, as far as it is genuine, must, therefore, be natural. It +should be no exotic, no foreign graft, as it is often regarded, but the +normal outgrowth of our native instincts. Evolution does not banish +revelation from our belief. Recognizing in man's spirit a spark of the +divine energy, "individuated to the power of self-consciousness and +recognition of God," as Le Conte aptly phrases it; tracing the +development of the spirit-embryo through all geologic time till it came +to birth and independent life in man, and humanity recognized itself as +a child of God, the communion of the finite spirit with the infinite is +perfectly natural. This direct influence of the spirit of God on the +spirit of man, in conscience speaking to him of the moral law, through +prophet and apostle declaring to us the great laws of spiritual life and +the beauty of holiness,--this is what we call revelation. The laws which +it observes are superior laws, quite above the plane of material things. +But the work of revelation is not, therefore, infallible or outside the +sphere of Evolution. On the contrary, one of the most noticeable +features of revelation is its progressive character. In the beginning, +it is imperfect, dim in its vision of truth, often gross in its forms of +expression. But from age to age it gains in clearness and elevation. In +religion, as in secular matters,--it is the lesson of the ages, that +"the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." + +How short-sighted, then, are they who seek to compress the broadening +vision of modern days within the narrow loopholes of mediaeval creeds. +"There is still more light to break from the words of Scripture," was +the brave protest of Robinson to the bigots of his day. And as we say +Amen to that, we may add: "Yes, and more light still to come from the +whole heavens and the whole earth." If we wish to see that light and +receive the richest rewards of God's revealing word, we must face the +sun of truth and follow bravely forward. + +As we look back upon the long path of Evolution up which God's hand has +already led humanity; as we see from what lowliness and imperfection, +from what darkness and grossness God has led us to our present heritage +of truth and spiritual life, can we doubt, that, if we go forward +obediently, loyal to reason, we shall not find a new heavens and more +glorious, above our head, a new earth and a nobler field of work beneath +our feet? + + + + +THE IRRIGATION PROBLEM IN THE NORTHWEST. + +BY JAMES REALF, JR. + + +Unless artesian irrigation is introduced extensively in the central part +of both Dakotas, their future, unlike their skies, will be heavily +clouded. True, the valley of the Sioux, a strip about seventy-five miles +wide from the eastern border, of which Sioux Falls is the chief city, +and the valley of the lower Missouri about the same extent south of +this, of which Yankton is the metropolis, have never had a crop failure. +Also, the Red River Valley in North Dakota, about ten thousand square +miles, which contains the famous Dalrymple farm and produces the best +wheat in the world, has the same unblemished record as an agricultural +area. But these fertile and fortunate sections suffer from the general +effect on the country of the drouths in the Jim Valley adjacent, which +have been severe for four years and are increasing in severity. In the +James or Jim Valley, as it is generally called, the year 1887 showed a +partial crop failure, 1888 a little more, 1889 and 1890, a total loss. + +Of course, every country is liable to crop failure at times, and must be +till man makes his own weather, which will, no doubt, some day be done +to an extent now unguessed. Nor is the record of three grievous years +out of ten in the agricultural history of a section so very bad, except +just in the way it has happened here, with a continuous and cumulative +effect. But the central Dakotans have been disheartened, and the +cumulative and often, perhaps, exaggerative, reports of their condition +spread over the country have checked immigration into the States for the +past two years, and thus retarded the growth of the fortunate valleys. + +This deplorable condition lately attracted the attention of a young Yale +graduate, who is editing an evening paper in Sioux Falls, and he began +to collect the views of experts on the question of artesian irrigation. + +Mr. Tomlinson, of the _Argus Leader_, had, probably, no idea of the mass +of literature with which the theme was potential, and the way the +papers, even outside the State, have followed his lead must be +flattering to him both as an editor and public-spirited citizen. My +indebtedness to Mr. Tomlinson for some of my facts being thus cheerfully +acknowledged, let me plunge _in medias res_ into the turbid waters of +the irrigation problem. + +Shall we make it "rain from the earth, when the sky fails"? is now, +thanks to an editor, the great Dakotan question. It is a question of +many facets. What does it cost, will it pay, is it safe, or must it +ultimately poison the ground by sowing the land with salt like a vandal +conqueror, and creating a Sahara for immediate posterity? Finally, if it +is to be done on a proper scale, how shall the burden of the +introduction be borne; by the township, the county, the State, the +nation, or by private enterprise? Let us take up these points +_seriatum_. Professor Upham, of the United States Geologic Survey, a man +of unquestionable honesty and no mean authority generally, thinks that +the cost alone demonstrates the futility of attempting the artesian +system. He bases his opinion on the Jamestown well, which cost $7,000. +Yet if, as there seems to be no doubt, irrigation will increase the +wheat crop by at least ten bushels an acre, even this large expense +would be warranted by the increase in land value. But it is probably not +known to Professor Upham that wells between Jamestown and Huron are +being sunk now for half, in some cases one-third, and in a few cases +one-tenth of his reckoning. So with this change of former figures, the +question of cost may be said to cut no figure. But will it pay +permanently, and to what extent? Prof. G. E. Culver answers this +question with great ability. He says positively that it will not +materially change climate nor by attraction increase appreciably the +annual rainfall, though he thinks it may tend to equalize the +distribution of the rainfall. As to climate one might be inclined to +disagree with him. There has certainly been a great change in the +climate of Utah since irrigation was begun there, and an appreciable +change in some parts of Southern California, though not in Colorado, as +far as can be learned. It is a well-known fact that rain storms follow +the course of streams, and as a system of irrigation multiplies +universally the evaporation of a region, besides multiplying small +streams and enlarging others, and as hollows would often be ponded by +the waste water, an increase in the area watered by local showers is +naturally to be expected. Moreover, the burning winds that so often +scorch the crops will be somewhat softened by traversing so much moist +ground and so many streams. Trees, too, grow more readily in the +moistened land, and in turn protect the land from the hot winds. Given a +proper system of irrigation in operation for twenty-five years, and the +epithet, treeless, need not be applied to Dakota. + +Let us consider irrigation a moment historically. Certainly half of the +world's population depend on it to-day. Modern Egypt has the most +extensive system ever known, except the one recently unearthed in India, +so massive in construction and vast in stretch that one writer has +declared it would take the entire wealth of the British Empire to put it +again in order. The Egyptian system cost $200,000,000, and two, +sometimes three crops, are raised for one of former times. + +No division of the United States has a better credit in commercial +circles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution of +polygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The careful +husbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, +has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what most +travellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appears +symbolically a Paradise. + +Senator Stewart, of the United States Irrigation Committee, stated that +he had inspected nearly every irrigated region of the world, and knew of +no place supplied by so vast a reservoir of water, with either the +volume or the pressure of the artesian belt of Dakota. Much of the land +in the Jim River Valley is comparatively level and susceptible of sub +soil irrigation. It would take from two to three years to put the land +in prime condition and to make each acre that is now valued at from +three to ten dollars, worth fifty, at least, and probably seventy-five. + +Now, $5,000,000 would more than cover the cost of the suggested +irrigation in the Northwest--a mere trifle, if the certainty of crops is +thereby guaranteed. Nor is the certainty of crops the only object to be +considered. According to dealers in Sioux City, Iowa, the quality of +cattle, shipped from some places in Clay and Yankton Counties since the +introduction of irrigation, has increased twenty-five per cent., which +appears not improbable when we note the difference between the warm, +sweet flow of artesian water and the icy, brackish stuff of a prairie +slough. + +The next and really the most important question--for man should not work +for the present and immediate future without the keenest regard to the +rights of posterity--is whether, under Dakotan conditions, artesian +irrigation is safe; whether there is not danger of its poisoning the +ground. Professor Upham unhesitatingly declares that on account of the +alkaline and saline properties in these artesian waters a continued use +of them for many years would render the land worthless. The assertion is +a rounder one than scientific men generally make, and must be received +with caution, though emanating from so high a source, for many samples +of South Dakotan waters, tested at Brookings, have shown no alkaline +reaction at all, and the professor's reasoning seems to rest chiefly +upon the North Dakotan waters, which for some reason show larger saline +percentages than the South. Then, too, he proceeds on the theory that a +yearly supply of one foot of water is necessary, whereas half that +amount during the dryest year, supplied through the five growing months, +would insure good crops. Four inches last July would have saved the +harvest. But anyway the entire amount of saline matter in South Dakotan +waters, according to Prof. Lewis McLouth, does not, on the average, +exceed one fifth of one per cent. after substracting all inert +substances, such as sand, clay, limestone, and iron ores; so that, if +six inches of water were applied to the lands, and all evaporated on the +surface, the salty crust would be one 1/160 of an inch thick. But as a +part of the water would run off into the streams, and much of it, +diluted with rain-water, would soak into the ground, the salty +ingredients would be mixed at once with at least a foot of the surface +earth, and would form less than one fifteenth of one per cent. of the +weight of that soil. These ingredients are salts of lime, magnesia, +potash, and soda. Now Dr. Bruckner, in an analysis of some soil in +Holland, which he pronounces remarkably rich, says that it contains over +fifteen per cent. of these same ingredients, or two hundred and +twenty-five times as much as six inches of artesian water would give to +a foot of Dakotan soil within a year. So it would take two hundred and +twenty-five years for this soil to acquire as much of these saline +ingredients as the rich soil of Holland already possesses. + +We might go further into this subject and show that every ingredient of +these artesian well salts is a necessary food for many plant tissues; +but even if the accumulation of salty substances were thought dangerous, +it is to be remembered that during five of the ten years since the +settlement of the Jim Valley, the rainfall has been ample, and if this +average should continue, the land could be allowed to rest from +irrigation for one half of the time so that the floods of rain-water +would wash away the surplus saline matter. + +Enough has now been said to show that in South Dakota, at least, no harm +is likely to accrue to the soil under five hundred years, if South +Dakota chemists are to be trusted. By that time chemistry will have +advanced from an analytic to a creative science, and if what was once +ignorantly termed "The Great American Desert" should suddenly lapse into +a saline state, a speedy cure for that condition may be counted on with +confidence. + +Dismissing, then, this danger as something too dim in the distance to be +regarded even as ultimately certain, we are confronted with a really +grave question--a question fraught with serious immediate peril, if +answered practically in the way it seems likely to be, unless patriotic +Dakotans cooeperate to prevent it. How shall the burden of the cost be +borne? The farmers individually are mostly too poor, and in the +Northwest, which the oppressions of the railroads and the teachings of +Donelly have honeycombed with tendencies to State socialism, the first +answer is, "By the State, of course." But the need of action in this +matter is pressing, and the State of South Dakota certainly is too poor +at present, for her debt-limit, under her constitution, is already +reached. + +For the counties to attempt it would be equally difficult, for many +persons not directly benefited would be forced to share the expense, and +under the pressure of continued hard times an irrigation rebellion might +result and most certainly dissatisfaction as to the location of the +wells would ensue. There is another plan against which none of these +objections can be raised. A bill has been introduced in the legislature, +providing that when thirty voters shall so petition, the State engineer +of irrigation shall select proper sites for nine six-inch or sixteen +four and one half inch wells. An election shall then be held to vote +bonds of the township. If they carry, the supervisors shall have these +wells sunk, and shall rent the water to such farmers as wish it, at a +sum in no case exceeding a _pro-rata_ share of seven per cent. of the +value of the bonds, the title to the water to go with the title to the +land so long as the rent is paid. + +The details of the bill are carefully worked out, and it would seem that +this plan is feasible. It will enable the present owners to retain their +land, and to water it at reasonable cost, while those benefited will +bear the expense. + +But the great danger is that what is known as private enterprise, which +in the West has been as a rule simply the legal twin of highway robbery, +will seize the situation which this irrigation problem so temptingly +presents. Some of the investment companies are already becoming aware of +the possibilities, and are taking advantage of the farmers by buying +their land at a nominal price, and it is not improbable that speculators +within a year will appropriate ("convey" the wise it call) vast +stretches in the Jim Valley, crowding out the present owners and keeping +the land comparatively idle for years. This is the peculiar peril of the +Dakotas, and the Farmers' Alliance would do well to spend some of their +superfluous energy on a co-operative plan of introducing irrigation, +else they will be at the mercy of a greedy crowd of embryo Jay Goulds. +There is, indeed, no reason why the nation, if it can appropriate money +for river and harbor bills, should not appropriate so small a sum as +$5,000,000 to an enterprise of such moment as this, and if the +Republican party had a dying glimmer of their olden shrewdness, they +would have tightened their relaxing hold on the affections of the +Dakotans by a measure of this kind. But so cumbersome is our present +system of republican government, that it would take too long in this +case to set governmental aid in motion. So, as it is, the Dakotas are +between the devil of drouth and the deep sea of further capitalistic +oppression, their only hope of a fair solution lying in the township +scheme. + +Before parting with this theme, as indicative of what might be done with +the drouth belt of the Dakotas, the following table deserves a +comparative glance. It consists of the tax lists of several California +counties before and after the application of irrigation. + + COUNTIES. 1879. 1889. + + Fresno $6,354,596 $25,387,173 + Los Angeles 16,368,649 84,376,310 + Merced 5,208,245 14,146,845 + Orange 2,817,700 9,270,767 + San Bernardino 2,576,973 23,267,955 + San Diego 8,525,253 31,560,918 + Stanislaus 6,232,368 15,594,003 + Solano 2,651,367 6,966,007 + Tulare 5,204,777 24,343,013 + ---------- ------------ + Total $55,939,928 $234,912,991 + +A few words more on the first question of cost, which is one a practical +mind is always asking and re-asking. The Aberdeen _Daily News_, which +ought to know, for there are several wells in its neighborhood easy to +study, states that a six-inch well can be put down for less than $2,300, +and that any of the principal wells at Aberdeen, Hitchcock, Redfield, +Woonsocket, Huron, or Yankton will irrigate six hundred and forty acres, +which would bring the cost to less than $4.00 per acre for twelve inches +of depth during the growing season. Mr. Hinds, of the Hinds ranch, has +been charging adjacent farmers, however, only $1.00 per acre for water +from his well, and considers it a paying investment. I cannot resist the +temptation of closing this brief inquiry into and commentary upon this +most important question by citing a picturesque passage from the +Aberdeen _Daily News_:-- + + "The power of these wells is almost inconceivable. An iron bar + eight feet long and two inches in diameter was accidentally + dropped into the tubing of one of them, decreasing the flow for + a short time, but it was soon ejected by the water with such + force as to break the elbow of a strong iron pipe. When the well + at Huron was first put down, no make of water mains was strong + enough to withstand the full pressure of the water. The same may + be said of nearly all the wells. The fact is that the artesian + wells of this valley furnish _the mechanical power of the + world_. This power requires no fuel, no engines, no repairs, no + extra insurance. It never freezes up, nor blows up, nor dries + up. _It can be managed by a girl baby_; $1,500 will furnish + everlasting fifty horse-power. The wonder is that all the + woolen, cotton, silk, and linen mills of the world do not rush + to take possession of it. _It is a Niagara Falls already + harnessed for use._ All the textile fabrics could be + manufactured here _cheaper than in any other part of the + universe_. The time will come when this will be recognized, and + natural gas will be extinguished by _the giant gushing wells in + Dakota_." + +This vivid writing, this rhetoric of artesian force, may be the result +of an editorial fancy that has long bestridden a western boom, instead +of tame old Pegasus; but, leaving out the manufacturing prospectus, +there can be no gainsay of the statement that, with a million acres of +the opulent Dakotan soil under the brilliant Dakotan sun, tended by two +thousand artesian wells, the great drouth belt of the Northwest would be +the richest agricultural area in the world. + + + + +REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES. + +BY PROF. JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN. + + +There is a crime which has run in wild unbridled career around the +globe, from the most ancient recorded time, beginning in barbaric +tyranny and robbery of the toiler, advancing with the power and wealth +of nations, and flourishing unchecked in modern civilization, sapping +the strength of nations, paralyzing the conscience of humanity, +impoverishing the spirit and power of benevolence, stimulating with +alcoholic energy the mad rush for wealth and power, and making abortive +the greater part of what saints, heroes, and martyrs might achieve for +human redemption. But alas! such has been its insinuating and blinding +power, that it has never been opposed by legislation, and never arrested +by the Church, which assumes to obey the sinless martyr of Jerusalem, +and to war against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, +but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and +conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of +its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall +pour their hot indignation upon the crime and the unconscious criminals. + +This crime which the world's dazzled intellect and torpid conscience has +so long tolerated without resistance, and which antiquity admired in its +despotic rulers, splendid in proportion to the people's misery, is that +misleading form of intense and heartless selfishness, which grasps the +elements of life and happiness, the wealth of a nation, to squander and +destroy it in that OSTENTATION which has no other purpose than to uplift +the man of wealth and humiliate his humbler brother. That purpose is a +_crime_; a crime incompatible with genuine Christianity; a crime which +was once checked by the religious fervor of Wesley, but checked only for +a time. Its criminality is not so much in the heartless motive as in its +_wanton destruction of happiness and life_ to achieve a selfish purpose. + +This feature of social ostentation, its _absolute cruelty_, has not +attracted the investigation of moralists and pietists. On the contrary, +the crime is cherished in the _higher_ ranks of the clergy, and an +eminent divine in Cincinnati occupying an absurdly expensive church, +actually preached a sermon in vindication of LUXURY--defending it on the +audacious assumption that it was right because some men had very +expensive tastes and it was proper that such tastes should be gratified. +A private interview with John Wesley would have been very edifying to +that clergyman, as the more remote example of the founder of +Christianity had been forgotten. + +That squandering wealth in ostentation and luxury is a crime becomes +very apparent by a close examination of the act. There would be no harm +in building a $700,000 stable for his horses, like a Syracuse +millionaire, or in placing a $50,000 service on the dinner table, like a +New York Astor, if money were as free as air and water; but every dollar +represents an average day's labor, for there are more toilers who +receive less than a dollar than there are who receive more.[9] Hence the +$700,000 stable represents the labor of a thousand men for two years and +four months. It also represents seven hundred lives; for a thousand +dollars would meet the cost of the first ten years of a child, and the +cost of the second ten years would be fully repaid by his labor. The +fancy stable, therefore, represents the physical basis of seven hundred +lives, and affirms that the owner values it more highly, or is willing +that seven hundred should die, that his vanity may be gratified. + + [9] According to J. R. Dodge, there are five million + agricultural laborers in this country whose wages do not + average over $194 a year. + +This is not an imaginative estimate. A thousand dollars would save not +one but many lives in the Irish famine. It would save more than a score +of lives in New York, if diligently used among those who are approaching +the Potter's Field, which annually receives eight thousand of the dead +of New York. It would establish, if invested at seven per cent., an +institution that would permanently sustain educating to a virtuous +manhood, two hundred and fifty of the waifs gathered in from the +pollution of the streets, sending forth fifty redeemed ones every year. +When $700,000 is squandered, such is the amount of human life destroyed, +by destroying that for want of which the benevolent are unable to stay +the march of disease, of crime, and of death. + +The thought of snatching food from the starving, or turning out +half-clad men and women to perish in the wintry snow, excites our +horror, but which is the greater criminal, he who for avarice thus +destroys one family, or he who in riotous ostentation destroys the means +that would save a hundred lives? Does the fact that they are not in his +presence, or may be a mile or two away, change the nature or results of +his act? And does his accidental possession of the basis of life +authorize him to destroy it? + +It is not unreasonable to say that every thousand dollars wantonly +wasted, represents the destruction of the one human life that it would +have saved, and while this slaughter of the innocents proceeds, society +is cursed with the presence of over 100,000 criminals, paupers, tramps, +and vagrants in the State of New York, who might have been reared into +respectable citizenship with a small fragment of the wealth that is +squandered in the hurtful ostentation that panders to a vicious taste. +While poor women in New York are fighting hunger at arm's length, or +looking through ash barrels and offal buckets, their wealthy sisters +think nothing of spending ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars on +their toilet, or wearing a $130,000 necklace, or half a million in +diamonds in a Washington court circle,--all of which I hope to see in +time condemned by a purer taste as _tawdry and offensive vulgarity_, +even if it were not done in the presence of misery as it is. +"Twenty-four hours in the slums" (says Julia H. Percy, in the New York +_World_)--"just a night and a day--yet into them were crowded such +revelations of misery, and depravity, and degradation as having once +been gazed upon, life can never be the same afterwards." Such is life in +New York. What it is in "Darkest England," as portrayed by General +Booth, is too wretched and loathsome to be reproduced here. But we must +not fail to understand that five sixths of the people of the +millionaire's metropolis, New York, live in the tenement-house region, a +breeding centre of intemperance, pestilence, crime, and future mobs, +where wretched life is crushed to deeper wretchedness by the avaricious +exaction of unfeeling landlords[10] worse than those against whom the +Irish rebel. Is not the splendor of such a city like the hectic flush on +the consumptive's cheek? The statistics of the past year reveal the +startling fact that New York is a decaying city; that its population has +no natural growth, but had 853 more deaths than births. + + [10] Fifteen to forty per cent. is the usual profit exacted on + tenement-house property, according to witnesses before a + Senate Committee,--forty per cent. being common. Is not + this the plunder of poverty by wealth? Has Ireland anything + approaching this or resembling the horrid conditions in New + York? "All previous accounts and descriptions" (says + Ballington Booth) "became obliterated from my memory by the + surprise and horror I experienced when passing through some + of the foul haunts and vicious hotbeds which make up the + labyrinth of this modern Sodom." "How powerless" (said Mr. + Booth) "are lips to describe or pens to write scenes which + baffle description, and which no ink is black enough to + show in their true colors." + +The desire for ostentation as one of the great aims of life is inwoven +into the whole fabric of society to the exclusion of nobler motives, for +ostentation is death to benevolence. How many bankruptcies, how many +defalcations, and frauds, how many absconding criminals, how many +struggles ending in broken-down constitutions, how many social wrecks +and embittered lives are due to its seductive influence, because the +Church and the moral sentiment of society have not taken a stand against +it, and education has never checked it, for it runs riot at the +universities patronized by the wealthy. + +New York has been said to spend five millions annually on flowers, which +is far more a matter of ostentation than of taste, for as a rule +"whatever is most costly is most fashionable." Nor is the cost the only +evil, for the costly dinners and parties of the ostentatious are not +only characterized by an absence of serious and elevated sentiment, but +by intellectual poverty and frivolous chatter. To waste $5,000 for an +evening's lavish display of flowers to a thoughtless and crowded throng, +almost within hearing of the never-ending moan of misfortune in a city +in which police stations shelter 150,000 of the _utterly destitute_ +every year, is a picturesque way of ignoring that brotherhood of +humanity, which is gently and inoffensively referred to on Sunday. + +Moralists and pietists have been so utterly blind to the nature of +CRIMINAL OSTENTATION, that society is not shocked to read in parallel +columns the crushing agonies of famine and pestilence, and the costly +revels of aristocracy, or the millions wasted on royal families, that +manifest about as much concern for the suffering million as a farmer +feels for the squealing of his pigs in cold weather. No one is surprised +or shocked to hear that in India, a land famed for poverty, famine, and +pestilence, the maharajah of Baroda could offer a pearly and jewelled +carpet, ten feet by six, costing a million of dollars, as a present to +the woman who had pleased his fancy.[11] How many lives and how much of +agony did that carpet represent in a country where five cents pays for a +day's labor? Twenty million days' labor is a small matter to a petty +prince. + + [11] This love of ostentation has much to do with the + degradation of India. The silver money which should be in + circulation is hoarded up or used for silver ornaments. A + wedding in that country is not marked by proper preparation + for the duties and expenses of conjugal life, but by a + display of jewelry and silver. A thousand rupees' worth + must be furnished by the bride, and two thousand by the + bridegroom, if they are able to raise so much, and + sometimes they raise it by going in debt beyond their + ability to pay. This love of ostentation marks an inferior + type of human development. + +CRIMINAL OSTENTATION stands ever in the way of man's progress to a +higher condition, like a wasting disease that comes in to arrest the +recovery of a patient. All schemes of benevolence, all efforts to gain a +greater mastery of nature's forces, and thus emancipate the race from +poverty and pestilence, languish feebly, or totally fail, for want of +the resources consumed in the blaze of ostentation. The resources of a +Church that might abolish ignorance and pauperism must be given to +uphold the royal state of lord bishops, who sit in parliament, and make +a heavy incubus on all real progress, obstructing the measures which +might uplift into comfort, decency, and intelligence, England's _three +millions_ of submerged classes who live in destitution and misery.[12] + + [12] These suggestions are not offered in a hostile spirit. The + writer fully realizes the large amount of moral sentiment + and fervent piety assembled in the Church to uplift society + in this country, but he deeply regrets that it is not more + enlightened in ethics and in doctrine, and that the Church + has never got rid of its ancient taint, mentioned by the + Apostle James, that the brethren paid more respect to the + man with a gold ring than a man in cheap clothing. + +The upward progress of humanity is foreign to their thoughts, and the +grandest problems of human life and destiny that ever interested the +mind of man are investigated not by the aid of the millions that +ostentation wastes, but by the heroic labors of the impoverished +scholar, thankless until his only reward can be but a monumental stone. +How seldom do we hear from the pulpit so bright a remark as that of the +Rev. S. R. Calthrop, "If the governments of the world would spend on +scientific discovery a hundredth part of what they spend on killing men, +or rather in making preparation for killing men and then not doing it, +the secrets of the earth would be laid bare in a time inordinately +short." But this very warlike ambition is a matter of CRIMINAL +OSTENTATION, like that of the bullying pugilist, seeking the belt--the +desperate determination to shine and boast as the master power in the +field of war, which is to-day the insane ostentation fostered by the +leading powers of Europe. Vanity, literally meaning emptiness, is the +antithesis of wisdom, and military vanity is a half-way station on the +road to insanity. + +The profligacy of private ostentation extends in this country to public +life, as was scandalously displayed in the twenty million State House +job at Albany (which our arithmetic makes equivalent to twenty thousand +lives) and renders all governmental affairs needlessly expensive[13] +(except in that admirable republic Switzerland), nor is it arrested by +the solemnity of death, for a prodigal funeral and a hundred thousand +dollar tomb for an individual eminent only by wealth is but a +fashionable matter of course to-day. Against this my moral sense +revolts. Had I the wealth of Croesus, or the power of Napoleon, I could +not consent to the evil record that my last act in life, in ordering a +funeral and monument, was the effort to destroy as much as possible, and +take from the resources of benevolence that which might gladden a +thousand lives. To look back from the enlightened upper world upon such, +a monument of base selfishness, would be the hell of conscience; but a +simple rose or hawthorn over the couch of the abandoned form would +harmonize well with the sentiments of heaven. + + [13] The salary that was sufficient for the commanding dignity + and ability of Washington is not sufficient for the + third-rate politician who occupies the White House to-day. + The numerous allowances which are added to his $50,000 + salary raise it to $114,865. But why should he have any + salary at all? Would any man require the bribe of salary to + induce him to accept the Presidency? The honor of the + office would be more than sufficient pay for the third-rate + men that are accidentally chosen to a far higher rank than + nature gave them. We have too many ideas and fashions + inherited from old-world kingdoms, and the ridiculous rules + and etiquette of precedence and punctilio are as carefully + enforced in the court circle of Washington as in the old + world which still rules our fashions. But far worse than + they, we have the criminal ostentation of a funeral for a + Congressman, costing from fifty to a hundred thousand + dollars, which is simply an unconstitutional and shameful + robbery of the people to imitate the style of royalty. + +What is it but a matter of course, and fashionably proper for a minister +representing the moneyless and homeless saint of Jerusalem, to spend in +various ways ten or twenty times the average income of an American +citizen. But _has any man a right to indulge in needless and therefore +profligate expenditure for himself, while misery unrelieved surrounds +him_?[14] Could he, if he had an occasional throb of the sentiment of +brotherhood, the divine love enforced by Jesus? Suffering, intense +suffering of mind and body, is ever present in society, and _we cannot +ignore it_ or disregard it. Has any human being a right to look on at +human suffering, and turn away contemptuously? to see men drowning and +refuse to throw them the plank which lies conveniently by? to pass by +the chamber of dying, with loud, unseemly revels? to titter and laugh +alongside of the grave where an unrecognized brother is being buried? to +feast upon costly wines and far-fetched elaborate viands at tables +overloaded with fresh flowers and artistic gold, while the pallid faces +of a hundred hungry ones are looking on, and who are not even recognized +so much as the dog that receives a bone? To know that the city is +attacked by a powerful army and refuse either to enlist for its defence, +or to contribute means to help the defenders, would not be tolerated; +but to do such things is precisely what selfish and unfeeling wealth +demands, and what the aroused conscience of humanity will, ere long, +forbid. It refuses to establish the industrial and moral education for +all which would protect society from the invading forces of pauperism, +crime, and pestilence. It refuses to suspend its costly royal revels +until the voices of hunger and despair are silenced. It refuses to +moderate its giddy round of fashionable frivolity and ostentation in the +very presence of death, in the tenements where human life is reduced to +less than half its normal length, so that death and revelry confront +each other in the city. + + [14] The writer once started a society upon this principle, to + be called the BROTHERHOOD OF JUSTICE. Its principle was the + abnegation of selfishness by strictly limiting the + expenditure of every member to the amount really necessary + to his comfort, dedicating the rest to humanity. It did not + appear difficult to gather members, and an able apostle of + this principle would be a world's benefactor. + +I can imagine the voice of the million which says to the millionaire, we +do not ask you to be a hero and leap in to save the drowning; we do not +even require you to be a manly man and bestir yourself before a life is +lost; but we do say that the drowning man shall not be doomed to drown +by your indifference? but if there is a rope which may be thrown to him, +or a plank to uphold him, that rope or that plank shall be used, even if +you forbid and claim them as your vested rights. You have no vested +rights paramount to the rights of the commonwealth. It can order you in +times of danger to all to place your body for the protection of the city +in the path of the cannon ball, and if the commonwealth can demand your +life for the benefit of all, do you think it will allow its members to +be slaughtered in order to sustain your revelry, and leave your piles of +hoarded gold and silver to accumulate as a magazine of corruption and +danger to society? No, Mr. Millionaire, poverty, pestilence, and crime, +are making war upon society and tumbling their slaughtered thousands +into Potter's Fields. And if the commonwealth does not demand your +personal service, but simply demands that you shall not make perpetual +for the sake of ostentation all of the present unnatural inequality, you +are surely treated justly and kindly. + +When the planter objected to General Jackson's using his cotton bales as +a rampart for the defence of New Orleans, tradition says the General +ordered him to take a musket and stand behind them as a common soldier. +At present we ask only your _superfluous_ cotton bales, and it would not +be wise for you to oppose our demand. The people remember the unholy +distinction of classes thirty years ago, which enabled a favored few +patricians to flourish as vampires on the commonwealth, while the +plebeians were giving it their sufferings, their blood, and their lives, +and hence they seek justice through our enormous system of pensions. + +Patricians would retain commanding superiority of wealth for power and +ostentation, but the people object to this power and scorn the +ostentation. + +The immense concentration of wealth by syndicates, corporations, and +trusts alarms us all, because we see in it a formidable danger to the +republic.[15] Colonel Higginson admits the evil, but denies that any +method of counteracting it is known, yet it may easily be shown that we +have several effective methods. + + [15] It is not only in the strong language of many political + meetings, conventions, and the independent press, that this + danger is recognized, but in that wealthy and conservative + body, the United States Senate, it is distinctly recognized + and frequently expressed; the language of Senators Ingalls, + Stewart, Call, Gorman, Vest, Berry, and others, shows that + they are alarmed and would warn their colleagues. + + Senator Call, of Florida, said:--"It is well for the people + to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the + government are becoming subject to the control of a very + small number of people, and the extent to which these + powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost + as much so as the Czar of Russia. + + "The present system places the control of the wealth of + this country in the hands of a very small number of + persons, an almost infinitesimal portion of the people; + gives them money to buy those who represent the people." + + Senator Berry said:--"So much injustice has been done to + the people, so many wrongs have been perpetrated in the + interests of wealth and capital by the passage of unjust + laws, that the people are in open revolt to-day, and they + have a right to be; they have determined to have relief, + and they are entitled to it." + + Senator Stewart said:--"If there is no reason nor humanity + in the possessors of accumulated capital there is power in + revolution." + + Senator Gorman, the Democratic leader in the Senate, + said:--"We stand to-day, Mr. President, upon a financial + volcano. The labor of the country appeals through every + channel it can to this administration and this Congress to + stay the awful wreck that is threatened." + + The eloquent address of Senator Ingalls presented still + more forcibly and fully the evils of plutocracy, which is + "threatening the safety if it does not endanger the + existence of the republic," by "the tyranny of combined, + concentrated, centralized, and incorporated capital." "The + conscience of the nation is shocked at the injustice of + modern society. The moral sentiment of mankind has been + aroused at the unequal distribution of wealth, at the + unequal diffusion of the burdens, the benefits, and the + privileges of society." "At this time there are many scores + of men, of estates, and of corporations, in this country, + whose annual income exceeds, and there has been one man + whose monthly revenue since that period exceeds the entire + accumulations of the wealthiest citizen of the United + States at the end of the last century." "By some means, + some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or + otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a + two-thousandth part of our population have obtained + possession and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite + of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than + one half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country. + That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly + acquired by men who have contributed little to the material + welfare of the country, and by processes that I do not care + in appropriate terms to describe." "The people of this + country are generous and just, they are jealous also, and + when discontent changes to resentment, and resentment + passes into exasperation, one volume of a nation's history + is closed and another will be opened." + + This feeling of resentment must arise in a community which + is deeply in debt, and is not prospering. The last census + shows in Iowa a mortgage indebtedness equivalent to over + five hundred dollars upon every head of a family. + +Our wealthiest are beginning to have incomes of over $5,000,000 a year, +and it is very plain from the concentration of this wealth that a few +wealthy men who could easily form themselves into close and secret +corporation, will in time outweigh the entire republic, as Mr. Shearman +says that 250,000 families are already a three fourths financial +majority. + +It was thought that this was impossible in our republic because we had +no law of _primogeniture_, but we have another kind of geniture that is +very effective. Recent statistics have shown that the very wealthy +inhabitants of Fifth Avenue, New York, have in one year but one +eighteenth as many children as the same number of families in the poorer +neighborhood of Cherry Hill. Thus poverty multiplies itself rapidly, +while wealth concentrates and needs no primogeniture to hold it +together, _because its numbers do not increase_; and a similar fact, but +not so extreme, appears in the reference to our Back Bay region in our +own statistics, and in the statistics of Philadelphia. Thus it seems +that we are destined to have the richest aristocracy by far that the +world has ever dreamed of. + +We know that concentrated wealth is power--and that great power is +always dangerous to its neighbors. Like the slumbering power of +dynamite, we are unwilling to have it near us, no matter how well +guarded. I hold, therefore, that a republic has a right to guard itself +against such dangers as much as the city has a right to prohibit the +establishment of powder magazines in the centre of its population. + +The profound and prophetic mind of Abraham Lincoln presaged this, and he +said: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me +and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of +the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in +high places will follow, and the money power of the country will +endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the +people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic +is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my +country than ever before, even in the midst of the war. God grant that +my suspicion may prove groundless." + +Wealth has a natural tendency to grow into an overwhelming power, for a +million of dollars well managed will become $1,000,000,000 in a century +and a half, and there are millionaires to-day who may become +billionaires in forty or fifty years. But this growth has always been +kept down by a generous or prodigal consumption, by ostentatious luxury, +by profligacy, by pestilence, and by war. Yet when these checks are +diminished; when, as in our republic, the danger of war is removed; when +the generous consumption is hindered by wide-spread poverty; when +pestilence is checked by sanitary improvements, and industry is enforced +on the millions by daily necessity, then that growth of wealth which has +been interrupted every few years in the old world by war, tyranny, +taxation, standing armies, ignorance, and disease, will advance in our +country as a mighty flood, impelled by the rains from heaven. The flood +from heaven which is enriching us is the inspiration of genius in every +form of science, art, and mechanical progress, which doubles and +redoubles our productive power. We must look to human wisdom for the +means of regulating the flow that it may act as a fertilizing rain, and +not as a devastating flood, wasting the hillsides into barrenness, and +sweeping away the bulwarks that the wise have erected. + +It is no rhetorical exaggeration to speak of accumulated and unequal +wealth as a dangerous flood. All ancient history proves it to be a +danger. Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and India, have shown by their +terrible record how wealth in a few hands has ever proved a curse +instead of a blessing to society. The pyramids of Egypt, an awful +monument of the blood and toil of slaves, are a gloomy record of the +senseless ostentation of despots, yet who ever speaks of the pyramids as +the monuments of a crime? + +Immense wealth for personal use is not a normal desire. It is an +unsound, unhealthy appetite, resembling that of gluttony and +darkness--an appetite that grows by what it feeds on and becomes +insatiable. + +It is an unsound appetite, for the increase of wealth already beyond all +human wants, adds nothing to a man's comforts or happiness--it adds only +to his cares, which it increases, to his selfishness, which it +intensifies, and to his power of indulging arrogance and ostentation. It +impairs his sympathy with his fellowman, and inflames his egotism. + +The superfluous mass of wealth serves only to supply an overruling power +destructive to the social rights of others, and a haughty ostentation +that humiliates fellow-citizens. It is, therefore, a hostile and +dangerous element in a republic, although a few may hold great wealth +and resist its insidious influence. + +Both extreme wealth and extreme poverty are injurious to man and +injurious to society, and if it is the law of nature that the fittest +shall survive, the extremely wealthy are not the fittest, for through +the centuries they do not survive. The extremely wealthy are dying out, +for they do not have children enough to maintain their numbers. It is +our duty so to shape our policy as to relieve the commonwealth of +possible dangers from both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. They are +twin evils; extreme wealth indicates extreme poverty, as mountains +indicate valleys. Wealth, corruption, and despotism, are grouped +together in history, as liberty has been grouped with equality, +simplicity, hardihood, the mountain and the wilderness. + +Great wealth is timid, narrow-minded, and opposed to reform, its method +of opposition being corruption, and these characteristics are +intensified in hereditary wealth. Wealth everywhere gives power to +monopolize the face of the earth, and thus establish a hereditary +nobility; for the landlords of millions of acres are the most +substantial and formidable lords that society knows, and nowhere in the +world have there been greater opportunities to establish such an +aristocracy, which may be able to buy and sell the aristocracy of +Europe. Our present national wealth, which is about one thousand dollars +per capita, represents not the increased wealth of the masses but the +enormous accumulations of a few. Our gain of about two thousand millions +annually, does it represent the prosperity or the decline of the +republic? If it is but aggregation of wealth, it is a decline, it is +corpulence instead of strength. + +Our social system has the elements of decay already as conspicuous as in +the tuberculous patient. Invention increases the power of wealth instead +of increasing the resources of manhood, for wealth absorbs and uses +machinery and diminishes the relative value of the man by making him a +machine attendant. In leather work he sinks from the independent +shoemaker, safe in the patronage of his neighbors, to the mere tenth of +a shoemaker who if dislodged from the factory is helpless. The +independence of the hunter and the farmer is fast disappearing. +Population is gathering in cities, and the country becoming the home of +tenant farmers or day laborers on large estates. The middle class is +declining, and society becoming slowly an aggregation of capitalists and +employers, an unhealthy social condition, premonitory of struggles and +conflicts that were not possible fifty years ago. At this moment a +strike of 150,000 is threatened. But it is not merely the laboring +classes, for all classes are threatened by our present dangerous system +which is running on to sure destruction, like a locomotive let loose and +flying wildly over the railroad. If there were no other formidable +danger, the trust or syndicate is in itself a fatality. When a thousand +millions enter the field they enter as master, in the Standard Oil +fashion. They can buy out or crush out, as they may choose, every +competitor in the field they may seize. There is _not a single form of +industry_ which they cannot monopolize, and where the monopoly is +established, demand what prices they please for that which they alone +can supply. Can we imagine the conventional brother Jonathan held down +by the throat with iron grip, and his pockets open to the holder, or +will he rebel before the grip is fastened? He does not seem aware how +well it is fastened upon him already; but something decisive will be +done long before a syndicate senate can rule the entire country. Ten +years more will introduce the struggle. The struggle must come, for +plutocracy is advancing to universal absorption, and labor is becoming +defiant, and well it may, for the COMMONWEALTH represents _not money but +man_, and when plutocracy, absorbing ninety-five per cent. of the +nation's wealth, assumes the practical government, the commonwealth with +a firm hand will thrust it aside; but will it be a peaceful change, will +the conquerors yield to the conquered? As the vampire bat fans its +sleeping victims while absorbing their life blood, the advocates of +capital deny that there is any such thing as plutocracy, or anything +going on but the natural legitimate and healthful development of trade; +and the medical corporations called colleges in seizing a stern monopoly +of the healing art, assure us that it is only for the benefit and +protection of the dear people who have not sense enough to distinguish +between a successful and an unsuccessful doctor, and have so +unpardonable a partiality for those who cure them cheaply without +college permission. There is nothing too small for monopoly to grasp, +not even the cheap dispensing of established remedies from the +druggist's counter. + +It is a just and patriotic sentiment which looks with apprehension upon +the great and irresponsible power developed by extreme wealth, which +lifts the wealthy far above society, enabling them to indulge in +profligate luxury, and to squander in a single evening's pleasure (or +display without pleasure) an amount that would make life prosperous to a +hundred suffering families, or on a single piece of architectural +splendor, enough to complete the education of the entire youth of a +city--wealth enabling them to rival the despots of Europe in social +ostentation, while almost within hearing of their revelry, ten or twenty +thousand are suffering from want of employment, want of health, want of +education, want of industrial skill, which society did not give them, +suffering the slow death that comes through debility, emaciation, and +disease, from toil and poverty, the sufferer being sometimes a woman in +whom all the virtues have blossomed only to perish in the chilling +atmosphere of poverty.[16] This may be utterly senseless talk to those +in whom the sentiment of brotherhood is dead, but it expresses +sentiments to which millions respond, and it is refreshing to see that +these statements, which at last have found free expression through THE +ARENA, are also beginning to find a home in the minds of public leaders, +whose voices will compel attention. I allude to the philanthropic +expressions of the Emperor of Germany, and to the language of Mr. +Gladstone, who shows that the necessity of philanthropic action on the +part of the wealthy is increased by their changed attitude, as they are +becoming more isolated from the people, and no longer take that friendly +personal interest in their tenants and employes of every grade, which +was formerly common. In this country, social ostentation is a great +power to increase this separation of ranks, and the book of Jacob A. +Riis, "How the Other Half Lives," ought to be studied by every wealthy +citizen as well as by reformers. Herbert Spencer, in a recent thoughtful +essay, refers to this increasing interest in social welfare thus: "He is +struck, too, by the contrast between the small space which popular +welfare then occupied in the public attention, and the large space it +now occupies, with the result that outside and inside Parliament, plans +to benefit the millions form the leading topics, and every one having +means is expected to join in some philanthropic effort." This is because +the millions demand it, and they who, like the writer, have for half a +century been interested in behalf of the millions, may now be listened +to. + + [16] And society is still organized to ensure the perpetuation + of this poverty, no matter what the bounties of nature, or + what the increase of wealth by art and invention. The army + of the dissatisfied, the hungry, and the demoralized, + continually grows and becomes more dangerous. The President + of the National Home Association at Washington stated a few + months since that there were _sixty thousand boy tramps_ in + the United States. + +The enormous wealth developed in our republic, in which a single city +holds a thousand millionaires, controls the press, controls legislation, +and teaches the ambitious to sell themselves to the wealthy who are the +controlling power. Under such influences arises that moral insensibility +which, in New York, could squander twenty millions on one building, +while half the children were out of school, and a large portion of the +insane were left wallowing in indecent filth, worse than that of a hog +pen, as shown in the Albany _Law Journal_. + +In presenting these views, I am not assailing millionaires as men more +objectionable or censurable than any other class. It is not true that +the mere ability to gain wealth implies moral inferiority, for it +implies many substantial and honorable qualities. Reverse the social +ranks, give the wealth to the poor, and our condition would not be +improved, perhaps it would be much worse. The fault lies in our social +system of struggle and rivalry, and while that system generates, as it +always has, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, we must combat these two +evils, and to control them is the purpose of this essay. Whether a +better social system is possible that would PREVENT them, is not now +under consideration, but surely there must be a system which will make +unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty impossible, for such conditions +are incompatible with a permanent, peaceful, and prosperous republic. As +well might we expect a successful voyage from a ship with four-fifths of +its cargo on the upper deck, as from a republic top heavy with +millionaire capital. Can we believe that republics are forbidden by the +laws of progress and evolution; that they must, as Macaulay maintained, +come to a fatal crisis? I trust not. But does not our social system, +inherited from barbarism, built up on the hot ashes left where the fires +of war have desolated, necessarily develop that inequality which has +swept the great empires of antiquity to their doom. When all the wealth +of the nation has fallen into the possession of two per cent. of the +population, the period of danger has arrived. Five per cent. of our +population had, in 1880, absorbed four fifths of the national wealth, +and at present, according to the careful statistics of Mr. Shearman, +less than two per cent. hold seven tenths of our wealth, and are rapidly +advancing to nine tenths, their progress being assisted by the indirect +taxation which places the burden of government on the shoulders of +poverty. Popular ignorance of public affairs has tolerated this, and has +tolerated a financial system far worse, which has given capital all +possible advantage of labor. We are drifting in the rapids; how far off +is our Niagara? But labor is roused, and a change in our system of +taxation is imminent. + +Unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty are the necessary results of the +warlike stage of progress, which develops the conquerors and the +conquered in the great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribal +and international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish and +tigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state of +financial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find the +wolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot; +the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and +streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 +homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only +thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result +is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning +a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not +if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany, +who has so recently passed away, considered war a _permanent_ +institution. + +In this wolfish stage of human development, altruism is almost unknown, +except as an eccentricity. It is safe to say, as a general rule to which +there are not many exceptions, that _no man is fit to be entrusted with +any more than he needs for his own comfortable existence_. Every dollar +beyond that sum is wasted in his hands. He has not the faintest +conception that he is a trustee of all such wealth, responsible to +heaven for its use. As he cannot consume it, he can but squander it to +gratify his vanity, and lift himself to a position from which he can, or +thinks he can, look down upon his fellows. The leading idea of the +average citizen is to construct a palace that will cost ten, twenty, +fifty, or a hundred times as much as the residence that would be amply +sufficient and pleasant.[17] His talent for the destruction of wealth +grows by indulgence, and thus the millions that the financial conquerors +have won from the conquered are thrown into the blazing flame of +ostentation, and might as well be thrown into a literal conflagration. +Such is the humanity with which we have to deal at present. Wealth, no +matter who holds it, does not restrain the destruction of the resources +of the commonwealth, but the growl of the suffering millions may, and +may lead to a recognition of the grand truth that everything beyond the +demands of human comfort is a sacred trust for humanity, and with the +millions thus aroused, I believe it may be possible to introduce laws +which will gradually change the entire condition of society, and leave +in this broad land neither an American prince nor an American beggar--a +change which will be a greater forward movement than that of 1776. + + [17] Nob Hill, in San Francisco, is crowned with five huge + buildings in imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit + for private residences, which may possibly sometime be + utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy + ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as + stated by the St. Joseph _Herald_, that "George Vanderbilt + is building a genuine old-fashioned mediaeval baronial + castle at Asheville, N. C., at a cost of $10,000,000"? + +The leading purpose of such legislation will be the controlling of that +lawless selfishness, which wantonly destroys all in which the community +is interested; which on the prairies exterminates the buffalo, in the +mountains and forests destroys the timber, bringing on as a consequence +the drouth, floods, and desolate barrenness, under which a large part of +the old world is suffering; which would exterminate the seals if +government did not interfere, and would infect every city with +pestilential odors of offensive manufactories; which would destroy the +people's national money for the benefit of private bankers, and pervert +all the powers of government for the benefit of monopoly and organized +speculation. + +May we not look to that struggle for justice which to-day assumes the +forms of Nationalism, Farmers' Alliance, People's Party, Knights of +Labor, and Land Nationalization, to accomplish this purpose and +emancipate the present from the barbarian ideas of the past? + +(_To be concluded in July Arena._) + + + + +HAS SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF INCONCEIVABILITY DRIVEN RELIGION INTO THE +UNKNOWABLE? + +BY REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN. + +[Illustration: (signed) Cordially yours, Ernest Allen] + + +The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the +elaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admiration +and gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies in +the argument by which Religion is relegated into the "Unknowable," +however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call the +reader's attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature, +unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent to +which it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards final +extinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like all +things which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again be +compelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold sway +over humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religion +upon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit, +but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager to +find the truth and anxious to "prove all things" and cast error aside. +Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threatening +its very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his "First Principles" (pp. +3-123). + +Our author's first attempt is to "form something like a general theory +of current opinions," so as neither to "over-estimate nor under-estimate +their worth." As a special case from the examination of which he hopes +to derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government from +the beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning government +is wholly true or false; "each of them insists upon a certain +subordination of individual actions to social requirements.... From the +oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced +political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete +unanimity." He speaks of this subordination as a postulate "which is, +indeed, of self-evident validity," as ranking "next in certainty to the +postulates of exact science." As the result of his search for "a +generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul +of truth in things erroneous," he concludes: "This method is to compare +all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less +discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in +which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the +discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the +remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true +throughout its divergent modifications." + +What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method to +government? A postulate which he announces to be of "self-evident +validity," an "unquestionable fact"--that is all! His method is a +statement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is in +determining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objects +of thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as he +points out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, it +cannot assist us in discriminating between true and false "discordant +constituents," for which purpose a simple method would be helpful. +Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most "advanced +political theory" of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr. +Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject under +consideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the most +primitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one point +upon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds, +between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, is +this: "That there is something to be explained." An interesting piece of +information, surely! Yes, but "the Power which the Universe manifests to +us is utterly inscrutable." Over against this, we have the magnificent +superstructure of modern Science, erected by the employment of methods +quite other than the one which he esteems competent to overthrow +Religion. + +The postulate, a straight line may be drawn between two points, while it +makes a geometry possible, reveals nothing as to the properties of +lines; so, in the present case, the proposition resulting from the +process of abstraction, "there is something to be explained," affirms +that, at least _a priori_, Religion is possible, but decides nothing as +to the truth or falsity of unnumbered statements which millions of +people have believed for centuries to belong to the domain of Religion. +This method does not and cannot discredit Religion. + +"Religious ideas of one kind or another," says Mr. Spencer, "are almost +universal.... We are obliged to admit that, if not supernaturally +derived, as the majority contend, they must be derived out of human +experiences, slowly accumulated and organized.... Considering all +faculties," under the evolutionary hypothesis, "to result from +accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism with +its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in the +environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined the +growth of the feeling in question, and so are obliged to admit that it +is as normal as any other faculty.... We are also forced to infer that +this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare.... Positive +knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible +thought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever +arise, the question--what lies beyond?... Throughout all future time, as +now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained +phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained +something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge +cannot monopolize consciousness--if it must always continue possible for +the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can +never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since +Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in +this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of +experience." Religion is "a constituent of the great whole; and being +such must be treated as a subject of Science with no more prejudice than +any other reality." + +It will suit our present purpose to divide the cognitive faculties into +intuitive and non-intuitive. If I rightly understand Mr. Spencer, when +he says of the subject matter of Religion that it "passes the sphere of +experience," he means that the content of Religion results from the +action of the non-intuitive faculties upon material furnished by the +intuitive faculties, and not from the immediate action of the latter +upon environment. For the sake of the argument, I will grant this +position. In order that mankind may build up sciences in which it +reposes such confidence, the action of the non-intuitive faculties must +be trusted, for it is only through such action that sciences can ever be +constructed from the materials of experience. Granting, then, the +general trustworthiness of mental operations, the mind cannot abstract +_out of_ human experiences what was not already in them; cannot evolve +what was not involved. The separation of the true from the false in +Religion, then, must be accomplished, as in the case of Science, by +verifying the intuitions and going repeatedly over the chains of +reasoning which lead to the conclusions farthest removed from +intuitions, to guard as much as possible against error. Thus, because +drawn out from given data, certain conclusions will embody to-day what +is true in Religion, and later, with an enlarged experience, more or +less modified conclusions will express what will then be seen to be +true. This is in accord with the general law of evolution which holds +for Science. From the present point of view, Mr. Spencer seems to concur +in the above, since he says of religious ideas, that "to suppose these +multiform conceptions" to "be one and all _absolutely_ groundless, +discredits too profoundly that average human intelligence from which all +our individual intelligences are inherited." + +To the statement that the mind cannot abstract _out of_ human +experiences what was not already in them, Mr. Spencer could make, I +think, but one answer, to wit: that while the operations of the mind are +generally reliable, and while there has been an element in human +experience which seemed to warrant conclusions derived from them, +nevertheless, mankind has egregiously erred in thinking that it had the +power to build up a valid content to Religion, since the very nature of +Religion is such, that the mental operations which are reliable in the +realm of Science cannot be so in the realm of Religion. To answer this, +we must consider the argument for conceivability as the touchstone which +is to separate the "Knowable" from the "Unknowable." Corresponding to +small objects, a piece of rock for example, where the sides, top, and +bottom can be considered as practically all present in consciousness at +once, and large ones, like the earth, where they cannot, our author +divides conceptions into complete and symbolic. Great magnitudes and +classes of objects also produce symbolic conceptions which, while +indispensable to reasoning, often lead us into error. "We habitually +mistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones." The former "are +legitimate, provided that by some cumulative or indirect process of +thought, or by the fulfilment of predictions based upon them, we can +assure ourselves that they stand for actualities," otherwise "they are +altogether vicious and illusive" and "illegitimate" and here belong +religious ideas. + +The foregoing is applied by Mr. Spencer in his argument relative to the +origin of the Universe respecting which, he asserts that "three verbally +intelligible suppositions may be made": (1) that it is self-existent, +(2) that it was self-created, (3) that it was created by an external +agency. "Which of these suppositions is most credible it is not needful +here to enquire. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, +is, whether any one of these is even conceivable in the true sense of +the word." He shows that, since the mind refuses to accept the +transformation of absolute vacuity into the existent, the theory of +self-creation forces us back to a potential Universe whose self-creation +was transition to an actual Universe, and that then, we must explain the +existence of the potential Universe and that, similarly, creation by an +external agency demands that we account for the genesis of the Creator, +so that both of these theories involve the self-existence of a +something. Therefore, I shall analyze his presentation of the first +theory only. "Self-existence necessarily means existence without a +beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a +conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can +we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies +the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility. To this +let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in +any sense be an explanation of the Universe.... It is not a question of +probability, or credibility, but of conceivability." + +In making conceivability the supreme test as to what is knowable, Mr. +Spencer sets up a criterion which he himself violates. If it can be +shown that he places at the very foundation of Science a postulate or, +what is generally conceded to be a demonstrated truth, which, equally +with the conception of the Universe as self-existent, involves the +conception of infinite past-time, it is evident that we shall have +broken down the fundamental distinguishing characteristic which +separates his "Knowable" from his "Unknowable," and thus leave Science +and Religion standing upon the same level of validity in their relation +to the human mind. In the second part of "First Principles," which +treats of the "Knowable," Mr. Spencer says (p. 180): "The +Indestructibility of Matter ... is a proposition on the truth of which +depends the possibility of exact Science. Could it be shown, or could it +with any rationality be even supposed, that Matter, either in its +aggregates or in its units, ever became non-existent, there would be +need either to ascertain under what conditions it became non-existent, +or else to confess that Science and Philosophy are impossible. For if, +instead of having to deal with fixed quantities and weights, we had to +deal with quantities and weights which were apt, wholly or in part, to +be annihilated, there would be introduced an incalculable element, fatal +to all positive conclusions" (p. 172). Considering that in times past +men have believed in the creation of Matter out of nothing and in its +annihilation, he points out that it is to quantitative Chemistry that we +owe the empirical basis for our present belief. + +Next he inquires "whether we have any higher warrant for this +fundamental belief than the warrant of conscious induction," and writes +as follows of logical necessity (pp. 172-179): "The consciousness of +logical necessity, is the consciousness that a certain conclusion is +implicitly contained in certain premises explicitly stated. If, +contrasting a young child and an adult, we see that this consciousness +of logical necessity, absent from the one is present in the other, we +are taught that there is a _growing up_ to the recognition of certain +necessary truths, merely by the unfolding of the inherited intellectual +forms and faculties. To state the case more specifically:--before a +truth can be known as necessary, two conditions must be fulfilled. There +must be a mental structure capable of grasping the terms of the +proposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must be +such definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms as +makes possible a clear consciousness of this relation.... Along with +acquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, there +comes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before not +recognized as truths at all.... All this which holds of logical and +mathematical truths, holds, with change of terms, of physical truths. +There are necessary truths in Physics for the apprehension of which, +also, a developed and disciplined intelligence is required; and before +such intelligence arises, not only may there be failure to apprehend the +necessity of them, but there may be vague beliefs in their +contraries.... But though many are incapable of grasping physical +axioms, it no more follows that physical axioms are not knowable _a +priori_ by a developed intelligence, than it follows that logical +relations are not necessary, because undeveloped intellects cannot +perceive their necessity. + +"The terms '_a priori_ truth' and 'necessary truth' ... are to be +interpreted," he continues, "not in the old sense, as implying +cognitions wholly independent of experiences, but as implying cognitions +that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of experiences, +received partly by the individual, but mainly by all ancestral +individuals whose nervous systems he inherits. But when during mental +evolution, the vague ideas arising in a nervous structure imperfectly +organized, are replaced by clear ideas arising in a definite nervous +structure; this definite structure, molded by experience into +correspondence with external phenomena, makes necessary in thought the +relations answering to absolute uniformities in things. Hence, among +others, the conception of the Indestructibility of Matter.... Our +inability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately +consequent upon the nature of thought.... It must be added, that no +experimental verification of the truth that Matter is indestructible, is +possible without a tacit assumption of it. For all such verification +implies weighing, and weighing implies that the matter forming the +weight remains the same. In other words, the proof that certain matter +dealt with in certain ways is unchanged in quantity, depends on the +assumption that other matter otherwise dealt with is unchanged in +quantity." + +In answer to the above it can be said:-- + +First. The current explanation of the existence of Matter is that it was +created by an external agency. Mr. Spencer's lucid statement of the way +in which Matter has been proved indestructible does not go far enough. +Where he stops, logic might justly pronounce the whole procedure a +fallacious one, a begging of the whole question at issue. The binding +force of the whole argument rests upon a rational principle here +overlooked by Mr. Spencer, the principle of sufficient cause. The +chemist in making the experiment found that certain substances +counterbalanced a given weight; after combustion, the products +counterbalanced the same weight. If the weight did not change during the +experiment, then no matter had been destroyed. The weight is believed +not to have changed, because it existed under ordinary and quiescent +conditions: which, in view of past race experience, rendered it +extremely improbable that any force sufficient to vitiate the result had +come into play during the experiment. _The absence of a sufficient cause +to change the weight_, is, then, the critical point of the argument, and +the perfect trust of the mind in the principle of sufficient cause +forces us to the conclusion that Matter is indestructible. + +What has really been accomplished, however, by the experiment? I do not +object to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaning +of this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledge +of the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extreme +conditions--some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, to +annihilate it--and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matter +is indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves the +integrity of the foundation for _our_ Science and _our_ Philosophy, it +is at the same time consistent with the hypothesis that a Being +surpassing man in intelligence and power, may be able to convert Matter +into a not-matter--from the standpoint of present definitions of Matter +and Space--quantitatively correlated with it, or _vice versa_; and this +statement of the case harmonizes Science and Religion. Now, what from +the point of view of Science Mr. Spencer accepts as indestructibility, +is identical with what Religion means when it affirms self-existence, +and as he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that self-existence +in the abstract is an illegitimate conception, a conception of what by +its very nature is unknowable, because it involves the impossible +conception of infinite past-time, he is logically bound by accepting one +horn of the dilemma, to admit the conception of self-existence into the +realm of the Knowable, or by choosing the other, to transfer his +"Indestructibility," his "possibility of exact Science" into the realm +of the Unknowable! In either event, we place an ultimate religious idea +and a scientific conception whose denial he admits to be the +annihilation of exact Science, upon the same footing, and so reduce the +distinguishing characteristic which he has set up to differentiate the +Knowable from the Unknowable, to zero. + +Second. We come now to the statement of some of the consequences which +follow from Mr. Spencer's view--already explained--as to how the higher +warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an +axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "Ultimate +Scientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "wholly +incomprehensible," and that "Matter ... in its ultimate nature, is as +absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time." He affirms, as pointed +out, that no experimental verification is possible without assuming what +we set out to prove. If the chemical balance cannot demonstrate this +truth, how, then, can we know it? It is, we are told, an _a priori_ or +necessary truth which arises in our consciousness through the +"cognitions that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of +experiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by all +ancestral individuals whose nervous systems" we inherit. This is Mr. +Spencer's answer. This commits us to the absurdity, that the truth of +the doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter has come to be accepted +as axiomatic by the repetition of cognitions of an inconceivable +"absolute uniformity" of things, by an indefinite series of ancestors, +in the face of the fact that the present development of Science does not +_now_ permit us, with the aid of all its apparatus, to receive a single +logically valid cognition from the same phenomenal world which supplied +all the others; _ergo_, add together a sufficient number of cognitions +of the inconceivable, and you arrive at an axiomatic truth! To lift a +ton weight, apply a vast number of forces of one ounce intensity, acting +_successively_ in time, and the thing is done! + +Mr. Spencer cannot point out the characteristics which separate those +inconceivable things and qualities which may legitimately furnish the +raw material for the development of axioms, from those which cannot, +since this would at once remove them to the category of the conceivable, +and he cannot exhaustively catalogue the axioms, since the process of +evolution which he puts forth as the sole and sufficient explanation of +their origin and growth is still going on. We therefore see that we are +justified in saying that conceivability is worthless as a test as to +whether an object of thought lies within the domain of the Knowable or +Unknowable. Further, should a theologian say to Mr. Spencer "To me, the +existence of God and his Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Power rank as +axioms," I do not see how, consistently with the above, he could deny +that these truths were valid to the theologian, even if they were not so +to his own mind. How completely we have placed Religion and Science upon +the same level is evident from our author's statement that "a religious +creed is definable as a theory of original causation" and from the fact +that a self-existent Universe is one of the three possible hypotheses +which he mentions in his argument. + +Space forbids the criticism of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the relativity +of knowledge and of the speculations concerning the Infinite and +Absolute based upon the writings of Hamilton and Mansel. I have been +restricted, also, to the negative side of the question, but so far as +inconceivability enters as a factor into the argument against Religion, +I contend that it has broken down; that so far as that element affects +the problem, Religion has as high credentials as Science. + + + + +THE BETTER PART. + +BY WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE. + + +Some barks there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to the +shore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and go +bounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slips +into the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-hearted +Fate, are headed _up_ stream to fight--who dares call it Folly's +battle?--against the current which yields only to the invincible will +and the tireless arm. They lie who swear that life turns on mere +accident. There are no accidents in fate. The end is but a gathering of +the means; the means but byways to the end; and at the last fate is +master still, and we its victims are, as was _she_, my Claudia. + +I am an old woman, childless and loveless; I know what it is to stand +alone with life's hollow corpses,--corpses of youth, and love, and hope. +Perhaps this is why my heart turned to her in her sweet youth and +guileless innocence. I used to fancy, when I saw her, a child under the +old-fashioned locust's shade that fell about her father's modest place, +that she was unlike other children. She had a thoughtful face--not +beautiful, but soulful. I thank God now that the child was spared that +curse. Fate set snares enough without that deadliest one of beauty. Yet +she had soul; her eyes betrayed its strength and mirrored its deep +passion,--that mightiest, holiest passion which men call _genius_. Her +genius merely budded; fate set its heel against the plant and crushed +it. + +I knew her from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her +gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny +thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath +he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and +left her to his care. + +"You have said you owe me something," said the dying man; "if so, pay it +to my child, my girl-babe, in fatherly advice and guidance." + +That man had been a felon and would have met a felon's doom but for the +friend whose child had been confided to his guidance. He had saved him +by silence and by loans which had beggared him in lending. He was a +strong man, and left his daughter something of his strength for +heritage, and that was all. But from her mother, her great-souled +mother, the child received enough of courage, and of hope, and faith, +and energy, to make her life a _sure_ thing at all events. + +I lost her 'twixt the years of girl and womanhood, for both of us were +poor, and I took such scanty living here and there as offered. But one +day she found me out, and begged me to go with her to her old home under +the locust trees. All were dead but her; she was alone; needed me for +protection, and I, she argued, needed part of the old roof, too large +for one small head. + +"There's a mortgage on it, dear," she told me, "but I am young and +strong, and have some education and some little energy; and,--" she +laughed, "the note is held by that old boy-friend of my father who +promised to look out for me, you know. So I have no fears of being +turned out homeless, Gertie." + +So I went, and tried to be to her a friend. Instead, I was her +lover--her worshipper. Her soul, as it opened to me day after day, +expanding under the _vise_ of poverty, took on such strength, such +grandeur, that I almost stood in awe of her. She was so young, too, yet +strong--strong as God, I used to think--and full of hope, and courage, +and ambition. Ambition! that isn't a word often applied to women; yet I +say Claudia was ambitious. I upbraided her one day for this. She winced, +and came and knelt down at my feet, her face upon her hands, her arms +upon my knees, her sweet soul seeking mine through her eyes. + +"Gertie," said she, "I wonder why God made me a woman and fixed no place +for me in all the many niches of creation. There is no room for such +women as I am; women with bodies moulded for womanhood, and souls +measured for man's burdens." + +The words had a solemn sound--a solemn meaning likewise. I had no answer +for such awesome words, and so the child talked on. + +"I had a mother once," she said, "who loved me, and who unfitted me--God +rest her sainted memory--for my battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don't +look so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my heart +her own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room for +such, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would have +cradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler for +honest bread there is _no place_ for me. My mother was to me a creature +next to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I have +felt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came our +struggle, hers and mine. I was her idol, she my God. We clung as only +child and parent can. I could have made good money in the shops or +factories. The neighbors said so, and advised that I be 'put to work.' + +"'What need had paupers of such training as she was giving me? Poverty +was no disgrace, so it be honest poverty.' + +"Aye, that's it. How long will poverty be honest in children's untrained +keeping? My mother understood, and knew my needs, as well. + +"'The child is what the mother makes it,' was her creed. And so she set +her teeth against the factory and its damning influence, and she bade me +look higher, teaching by her own life that hunger of body is better than +a starved soul. + +"Ambition was the food she gave my young life; that she declared the one +rope thrown by God's hand to the rescue of poor women. At last my soul +took fire with hers; my heart awoke. + +"My struggles for opportunities tortured her. She sold her thimble +once,--a pretty golden one, my father's gift--that I might have a book I +needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might go +for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I +together, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were to +repay us at the last with decent independence. + +"The school days ended, the neighbors urged again the _shops_. But 'no' +again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick and +the shop-girl's meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as only +mothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius. +Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we choose +each to interpret it. + +"I had a little school some sixty miles from home. She had agreed that I +might teach; that was in the course in which she wished my life to go. +The schoolhouse was a cabin in the wood, through which flowed a river. +We cannot tell the route by which we run to fame, and mine lay through +this cabin in the woods. I scribbled bits of rhyme and broken verse, +constantly; and found it fame enough if in the hurried jingle my mother +detected 'improvement,' 'promise.' + +"But one day when the river burst its banks, the cabin, deluged, lay +under water for ten days, and I became a temporary prisoner in my +miserable boarding-house, I wrote a story, a simple, earnest little +story. It sold, and more, it won a prize. Two hundred and fifty +dollars,--it would take ten months of the little school to make so much. +When it came--Gertie, I cannot tell you how I felt!--I thought that +somehow in the darkness I had reached my hands out and found them +clasped in God's; held tight and fast, and strong and safe. I kneeled +down in that cabin schoolroom, with the awe-struck children gathered +round me, and choked with sobs and happy tears, thanked God who sent the +blessed treasure. + +"I had but one thought--Mother. I sent the children home--my work with +them was done. Now I could go to _her_, and with a sprig of laurel to +lay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietly +on at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how my +longing heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen should +cheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished to feel her arms, see her +smile, catch her heart-beat while I told her. God! I whispered His name +softly in gratitude and love. I planned my surprise well, but I was +doomed to disappointment. It was midnight when I reached the town; the +streets were silent and no one spoke to me. 'Some one must have told +her,' I said, as the hack in which I rode drew up before the door, and I +saw the house was lighted; every window was wide open; and her room, +where I, a child, had learned my woman's lesson, was filled with people. +Solemn, sitting folk; it was not a jubilee at all. 'She is sick,' I +gasped, as my trembling fingers sought the gate latch. No, I saw her +bed, the bed where I had nestled in her arms for eighteen years. It was +white and stiff in its familiar drapings. I tore the gate ajar and +bounded up the steps. My youngest sister met me in the doorway, weeping. +I brushed her aside and passed in among the friendly neighbors who had +hurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: 'I +want my mother.' Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the open +parlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long, +brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony that +not one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort. +'Merciful God! not my mother?' + +"But it was. I never saw her face again. I would not look on it in +death; that face which had been my life. But I love to think I have her +presence with me here, together with her teaching, in my bosom. And with +her help, for the dear dead always help us, I am working out my destiny +after the pattern she set me. It is a _hard_ task; grows harder every +day; but I am young yet, and strong." + +Poor child. She did not know the _dangers_ of the road she travelled; +she only knew its hardships. Day after day she toiled, hopeful even in +failure. The bloom left her cheek; but faith still fired her eye. One +day she put away her manuscript, and left the house. The next day she +returned. She had been to ask for her old place in the cabin +schoolhouse. Too late; the place was filled. She sought one of her +mother's friends and asked for work, copying. She returned with white +face and set lip, and a look of horror in her eyes. I understood. God +help the poor, the respectable poor, those starvelings who cannot rise +to independence and cannot sink to vileness. And oh, I prayed, God pity +her,--my Claudia. + +I watched her struggles with my own power palsied by that same old +curse, poverty. She did her best; her struggles were torture to me even +when she smiled and met them with sweet faith in her own strength and +God's goodness. She never once murmured, although I knew that many a +night she had gone hungry to her desk, and rose from it, hungry still, +at dawn. + +And oh, when hope began to die, I saw it all; saw it in the weary eyes; +heard it in the step that lagging past my door, climbed to its task, its +hopeless task, again. I saw it in the cheek where hunger,--the hunger of +the common herd--had set its fangs upon the delicate bloom. To ask for +bread meant to receive a stone, a stone like unto the stones cast at +her, that one in old Jerusalem. Perhaps she hungered too; who dares +judge, since Christ himself refused to condemn. + +She tried at shops at last, but no man wanted modest Quaker maids to +measure off their goods. The shop-girl's smile was part and parcel of +the bargain, and if the smile beguiled a serpent in man's clothing, why +the girl must look to that. + +One night I sought her room, her tidy little nest--my poor solitary +birdling--and found her at her work, her old task of writing. She had +gone back to it. There were rings about the eyes where tears were +forbidden visitors. I took the poor head in my arms. + +"Don't, Claudia," I cried. "The youth is all gone from your face." +"That's right," she said. "It left my heart long ago, and face and heart +should have a common correspondence." + +And then she laughed, as if to cheat my old ears with the sound of +merriment. + +"I needed stamps," she said. "The question rested, stamps _vs._ supper. +Like a true artist I made my choice for art. But see here. That +manuscript when it is finished, means _no more hunger_. Something tells +me it will succeed, and save me. So I have called it _Refuge_, and on it +I have staked my last hope." + +She playfully tapped the tidy page, and laughed again. But her words had +a solemn earnestness about them to which her pale pinched face lent +something still of awe. + +Day after day I watched her, as day after day the battle became too much +for her. Too much? I spoke too quickly when I said so. She was a mystery +to me. I felt but could not understand her life, and its grand, +heart-breaking changes. She had planned for something which she could +not reach. The doors to it were closed. Her starving woman's soul called +for food; the husks were offered in its stead; the bestial, grovelling, +brutish swine's husks. She refused them. Her soul would make no +compromise with swine. She was so strong, and _had_ been so full of hope +I could not understand her. You who have studied the tricks of the human +heart, you who have held your own while faith died in your bosom, or you +who have felt it stabbed and crushed _refuse_ to die, perhaps you can +understand that strange and fitful strength that came and went; that +outburst of hope, that silence of despair which made, in turn, my dear +one's torture. + +One night I found her sitting in the moonlight with her face dropped +forward on the windowsill. So pure, so white, so frail of body, and so +strong of soul, she might have been some marble priestess waiting there +for God's breath to move in passion through the pulseless stone. + +"Claudia, dear, are you asleep?" I whispered. + +"No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when I +shall feel no more the pangs of hunger." + +I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangely +tearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears. + +"Don't, dear," she begged. "It is all right. It is only that there is no +place for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in the +wall of this world's matters. It is God's mistake if one is made, and +God must look to it. I tell you, Gertie," and she rose up grandly in her +pride and in her wrath, "there are but two niches made for woman in this +world. There's but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refuse +still to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man's decree +is but a myth. There's no room in this world for such." + +She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatal +rock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God who +would not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud and +shrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I think +sometimes I should not like to sit in God's stead when such women come +to face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had an +answer, and so went down, still calling. + +It was thus _she_ called. + +One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a little +garden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page; +and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to his +own heart, I caught the meaning of the poet's words as they had found +interpretation by her:-- + + "'For each man deems his own sand-house secure, + While life's wild waves are lulled; yet who can say, + If yet his faith's foundations do endure, + It is not that no wind hath blown that way?'" + +She was silent a moment, then repeated the first line of the stanza +again, even more softly than before, + + "'For each man deems his own sand-house secure.'" + +Then, tossing the book aside, she burst out wildly, all the pent-up +patience, all the insulted and outraged womanhood within her, breaking +bonds at last. She lifted up her hand as if calling down from God a +curse, or offering at His register an oath. It might have been an oath, +indeed; who knows? Thinking of her since I think it _was_ an oath, made, +in that moment of her frenzy, betwixt her soul and God, and registered +with Him. + +"Gertie," she said, "to-day a man offered me money. Offered me all I +asked, offered to make me his mistress. Do you hear? Do you? or has your +soul gone deaf as mine has? His mistress! I meet it everywhere. Yet why? +Because I am respectably poor. To-morrow the roof tumbles about my ears. +The mortgage closes. You and I alike are homeless. I went to him, my +father's friend, to whom, in dying, he entrusted me for guidance. I +begged of him that guidance, or, at the least, a little longer time upon +the mortgage. He laughed. 'Don't worry,' said he, 'and don't soil your +pretty hands with ink stains any further. Leave that for the printer, or +the devil. You and I will make an _easier_ trade.' Ease! ease! I tell +you 'tis these flowery beds of ease on which poor suffocated women wake +in hell. 'Soil' my soul and leave that for the 'devil,' too, his trade +meant. He put it in plain words, that gray-haired _guardian_ of a dead +friend's honor. Ease! _I_ did not ask for ease, but work. I am strong, +and young, and willing; but my 'sand-house' trembles with the lashing of +the tide on its foundation. O my God! what fools we women be to kick +against the pricks of fate." + + "Each man deems his own sand-house secure." + +I repeated the words when she had left me there with the echo of her +bitter rebellious words still ringing in my ears. I felt no anger and no +fear for her, only sorrow, sorrow. My poor, proud darling. Her father's +house had sheltered many; his hand had been open and his bounty free. +And yet not one reached out a hand to her. She might have begged, or +held a hireling's place. She was 'not too good for it,' the old friends +said (so few are friends to poverty), but yet none found such a place +for her. + +Through my tears I saw her go down the garden walk, stopping to pluck a +handful of the large Jack roses growing near the gate and tuck them in +her belt, so that the dullish red blooms lay upon her heart, like blots +of blood against her soft white dress. I shuddered, and drew my hand +across my eyes. Blood! those old blood-roses rise before me now, in +dreams at night. I heard the latch lift and click again into its place, +and when I looked the child was gone. + + * * * * * + +She stayed a long while. Over all the garden and across the open +windows, the moon was shining when I heard her step upon the doorway. It +had a weary sound. Those feet which had begun so bravely were tired out +already. Still had I no fear for her. She might have stayed until the +gray dawn cleft the black of night and not one doubt of her could sting +my faith. She climbed the stairs wearily, as if old age had of a sudden +caught and cramped the young life in her feet; and listening thus I +swore a mighty oath against the thing called Fate. + +She so young, so strong, so willing, so full of aspiration, so loyal to +faith and honor, with _every_ door barred against her. O my God! was +there none, not one human heart open to her cry? Was there but one +resource--one opening for her pure soul and her proud heart--the +harlot's door? O my God! my God! women are driven to it every day, every +day. Is it, indeed, the only door that opens to their knock? And would +she, too, seek it at last, when faith should be quite dead? No, never! +not while my palsied fingers could find strength to draw a knife across +her throat. + +I arose, and went to find her in her room. The door stood slightly open, +and I entered, softly. Why so softly, I never could have told; only it +seemed the proper thing to do. She had thrown herself across the bed, +near by the open window. The moonlight flooded the room, showing me the +strong, pale face lying against the pillow. Her white dress fell about +her like a silverish shroud; and on the table near the window where she +had sat to finish her task lay a manuscript. The moonlight fell upon the +title page with mocking splendor. I stooped and read: + + "'_Thou art our Refuge and our Strength._'" + +Dear heart! dear, sad soul! She had sought her refuge and indeed found +strength. Strength! I brand him liar who calls it other. + +One hand lay on the coverlid beside her, and one upon her breast half +hidden by the dark blood-roses covering her heart. And that heart when I +placed my hand over it--was still. + +_Broken!_ who dares say _suicide_? I say it was the grandest blow that +weakness struck for virtue,--her life, offered in the name of outraged +womanhood. The choice lay open. Shame or suicide! and like the real +woman that she was, she made her choice for virtue. Conquered by fate, +overcome by adversity, those who should have been helpers turned +tempters. Who dares meet God in his soul and say she did not choose the +better part? + + "'Thou art our Refuge and our Strength.'" + +I whispered it above her grave and left her there, under the stars and +broken lily buds. + +But when the grand Jack roses bloom, I always think of her, and +thinking, I ponder again the same old riddle, _Fate_, whose edict +swears, "No room for honest poverty; no niche for such as she." And +thinking thus I wonder,--where shall the blame rest? Whose shall the +crime be? + + + + +THE HEIRESS OF THE RIDGE. + +NO-NAME PAPER. + + +The "Ridger" is quite a different person from the Mountaineer. He looks +upon the latter individual as a sodden and benighted unfortunate, whose +inaccessible habitation entitles him to the pity of the favored dwellers +on the "Ridge." + +That the Ridge is but a low out-put of the Mountain, that it is barren +and isolated, does not disturb the comfortable theory of its +inhabitants. To the people of the Valley the Ridger is a twin brother of +the owner of the hut on the top-most peak of the range. + +They look alike. Their bearing and habits are similar. To the Valley eye +their clothes are of the same material and cut; but to the Ridger +himself there is as wide a difference between him and his less favored +brother on the "mounting" as that to be found by the stroller on Fifth +Avenue when he gazes with profound contempt upon the egotistic biped who +plainly hopes to deceive the elect into a belief that he, also, belongs +to the charmed circle and has not simply "run over" from Jersey City, or +St. Louis, or New Bedford. + +The Mountaineer is frequently a Tunker, the Ridger rarely. Therefore the +Ridger is likely to have a shaven face, and, for the younger contingent, +a mustache is the rule, a "goatee" the fashion. To the Tunker none of +these are permissible. The beard may not be cut, a mustache may not be +worn, and, with the first of these propositions in force it will be seen +at once that "a goatee" is quite out of the question. + +When I say that the Ridger is likely to have a shaven face I do not +intend to convey the impression that he ever uses a razor. He shaves his +face with the scissors. His Tunker neighbor up the mountain performs the +same feat on his own upper lip. The result is effective and satisfactory +from both a religious and artistic outlook in the eyes of these +sticklers for fashion and dogma, albeit, it might be looked upon as more +or less disappointing by the habitues of the Union League Club or the +devotees at St. Thomas. + +If the rivet, which at some previous date had held the two halves of the +scissors together, happens to be lost, or if it has worn so loose that +these members "do not speak as they pass by," a jack knife or even a +butcher's knife is no stranger to the tonsorial process of these +followers of the elusive god of style. + +I do not know that I have ever met a Tunker so lost to a deep sense of +religious duty, or a Ridger sufficiently devoid of the pride of personal +appearance, that he would "go to town" without having first performed +this rite. + +It is a serious business. + +In the house of my old friend Jeb Hilson there had once been a "lookin' +glass" of no mean proportions, if those of his neighbors may be taken as +the standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It had +occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a +"toilet," which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. +At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail +(from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of +something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from +the same width. In front of this drab outline Jeb Hilson always stood to +shave. His memory was so tenacious that I never observed that he noticed +the absence of the glass. He gazed steadily at the wall and worked the +scissors so deftly that the stubble rained in little showers upon the +top of the "toilet" and within the open bosom of his tennis shirt. Not +that Jeb Hilson ever heard of tennis, or knew that he was clad in a +garment of so approved a metropolitan style and make; but that was the +pattern he had worn for many years, and it was the one which his women +folk were best able to reproduce. His flannel ones were gray, and his +trousers were belted about with a leather strap. For full dress +occasions he wore a white cotton shirt of the same pattern and a brown +homespun vest. This latter garment was seldom buttoned. Why hide the +glory of that shirt? If Jeb owned a coat I have never seen it. He +appeared to think it a useless garment. + +I believe I did not say that Jeb Hilson was the leader of those who +eschewed all hair upon the face. Whether this was done to show a +profounder contempt for the Tunker superstition, or whether Jeb had a +secret pride in the outline of his mouth and chin, and a desire to give +full expression to their best effects, it would be hard to say. It is +certain, however, that his motives must have been powerful, for he +underwent untold torture to achieve his results. If the blades of the +scissors clicked past each other or wabbled apart too far to even click, +Jeb would resort to his knife and proceed to saw off the offending +beard. + +"Hit air saw off er chaw off," he would remark laconically, as he tried +first one implement and then the other. "I wisht ter gracious thet theer +scisser leg'd stay whar't war put; but Lide trum the grape vines with +'em las' week an' they is wus sprung then they wus befo'. But wimmen +folks is all durn fools. I'd be right down glad ef the good Lord had a +saw fit ter give 'em a mite er sense. Some folks sez it would er spilt +'em, but I'm blame ef I kin see how they could er been wus spilt than +the way they is fixed now." + +He gazed intently at the smoked image on the wall, and collecting, +between his thumb and finger, a pinch of hair on his upper lip began to +saw at it with his knife. His large yellow teeth were displayed, and the +appearance of a beak was so effectively presented by the protruded lip +that words came from behind it with the uncanny sound of a parrot; but +it did not occur to him to cease talking. + +"I fromised" (his upper lip was drawn too far out to form the letter p, +or any with like requirements), "I fromised the young 'squire ter be at +the cote house ter day, an' I tole him thet I'd ast the jedge fer ter +'fint a gyardeen fer thet theer _de_mented widder uv Ike's." + +He grasped a fresh bunch of stubble, shifted onto the other foot, turned +the side of his face to the smoked image of the one time mirror, and +rolled his eyes so that in case a glass had hung there he might have +been able to see one inch from his left ear. The shaving went steadily +on. So did the conversation. + +"Ef I don't make considdable much hase I'm gwine ter be late, an' ef the +jedge don't 'pint a gyardeen fer thet theer Sabriny she's goin' fer ter +squander the hull uv her proppity. Thet theer wuthless Lige Tummun is +goin' fer ter git the hull uv hit. Thet's thes persisely what he's a +figgerin' fer in my erpinion. He hev thes persuaged her fer ter let him +hev the han'lin uv hit, an' she air a goin' ter live thar fer the res'er +her days; but I'd thes like ter know what's a goin' ter hinder him fum a +bouncin' her thes es soon es he onct gits holt er the hull er thet theer +proppity. An' then whose a goin' ter take keer uv her? Nobody air a +hankerin' fer ter take keer uv a _de_mented widder woman onless she air +got proppity. But I hain't a wantin' ter say much, fer they is folks +mean enough ter up an' think I mout be a try'n ter git holt er thet +proppity myse'f, an' have the han'lin uv hit; so I thes tole the young +'squire abouten hit, an' he thes rec'mended me fer ter thes go ter town +nex' cote day an' erply ter the jedge fer ter 'pint a gyardeen over +Sabriny." + +The shaving was finished at last and the homespun "weskit" donned. He +stood in front of the smoked reminder while he performed this latter +feat, and, after staring intently at the wall, appeared to be perfectly +content with the result. Then he trudged away and joined the innumerable +host which would as soon think of staying away from town on court day as +it would think of standing on its head to pray. + +All Ridgers of the masculine gender went to town on court day, and as +few Valley men failed to do the same--whether because they knew it would +be a good chance to see everybody in the county and talk politics, or +because few men were so destitute as to be without lawsuits of their +own,--certain it is that they all went and that it furnished topics of +conversation which lasted until court day rolled around again. + +As I was a guest at the "young 'squire's" house I was privileged to hear +on the following day some further conversation on the subject of +Sabriny's guardian. I was sitting on the front porch with the sweet and +simple-hearted mother of the young 'squire when Jeb Hilson's lithe form +appeared. + +Jeb was still in full dress. The fronts of his vest hung beneath his +long arms as he walked, and he wore his white cotton shirt, somewhat the +worse for its "Cote Day" experiences, it must be confessed. On his head +was one of those delightfully soft straw hats which the young men of the +valley buy by the dozen for fifty cents, wear until they get damp, or +for some other reason droop about the face and head like a "Havelock," +and then cast aside for a new one. But a Ridger does not pay out five +cents recklessly. One of these straw coverings must last him all summer. +But for all that a Ridger must see, and therefore the front of the +drooping brim is sacrificed to stern necessity when it can no longer be +kept off of the face. The effect is unique. A soft straw crown, run to a +peak; a pendant wide brim touching the back and shoulders; a few +"frazzles" of straw on the forehead which tell where a brim once was; +for the Ridger cuts the front out with the same scissors or knife with +which he shaves, and with no more accuracy of outline. The young farmers +wear these broad straw hats to protect their faces and eyes from the +down-beating sun. The Ridger appears to wear them purely for ornament, +since the only protection which they offer in their new shape is to the +back of necks already so wrinkled and tanned that even a Virginia sun +could hardly penetrate to a discomforting degree. + +Jeb nodded to me. Then he took his straw ornament by the top of the peak +and lifted it high above his head, so that he could bring it forward +without scraping his hair, and "made his manners" to the young +"'squire's" mother. He seated himself on the upper step of the wide +gallery, crossed his long legs, placed his straw ornament carefully on +his knee, with the pendant portion falling toward his foot, and began a +bit of diplomatic manoeuvring. + +"Howdy, Miss Brady, howdy. I hope yo' health is tollible. I thes thought +I'd like t' see the young 'squire. Air he in? Hit air thes a leetle +bisness matter twixt him an' me, thes a leetle matter uv mo' er _less_ +intrust' t' us both." + +But the young 'squire was not at home. His mother indicated a +willingness to convey any message to him upon his return; but Jeb, +always contemptuous of women, was in a state of elusive subtlety. +Someone in town had lent wings to his already abnormally developed +caution in the matter of the application for the appointment of the +"gyardeen" for his weak-minded sister-in-law, and had hinted that he +might have to swear to her mental condition if he became the sponsor for +such a move. Jeb was wily. He had tasted of his brother's wife's wrath +on more occasions than one, and whatever his opinion may have been of +the strength of her mind, he entertained no doubts as to the vigor of +her temper when it was aroused. Jeb wanted to be appointed her +"gyardeen." He looked upon the "proppity" as a vast and important +financial trust. If he asked the judge to appoint a guardian, and +Sabriny knew that he had said that she was of defective +intellect--well--Jeb would face much to be allowed to handle that +$134.92. (This was the "proppity" in question. It was a "back" pension +and there was to be $2.11 per month henceforth.) But Jeb was not +foolhardy, and he had trudged back from town without having done what +the young "'squire" had advised, and Sabriny's "proppity" was in +jeopardy still. + +"No," he said, wagging his head and looking slyly at the young 'squire's +mother. "No, I thes wanted ter see the young 'squire fer a leetle +private talk. I thes promised him fer ter do sompin, an' then I never +done it. Not as he'd _keer_; but I thes wanted ter make my part fa'r an' +squar'." + +He espied a straw that had straggled out from the ragged cut in the +front of his hat. He took it firmly between thumb and finger and gave it +a quick sidewise jerk, whereupon it parted company forever with its +fellows. Jeb inserted this between two of his lower front teeth at their +very base. When it was firmly established he continued his conversation, +leaving his lower lip to struggle in vain to regain a position of +horizontal dignity. The straw was tenacious, and the lip was held at +bay. He did not want to tell his story to anyone but the young 'squire; +but an opportunity to display his mental vigor and business acumen to +the 'squire's mother did not present itself every day, and might he not +tell the tale, and yet not tell it? Could he not give an outline and +still conceal his own motives and desires? Certainly. Women were very +weak minded at best, and even the young 'squire's mother would not be +able to sound the depths of his subtle nature. + +"The young 'squire, he tole me fer ter ast the jedge ter 'pint a +gyardeen over the proppity o' Sabriny, along o' her beein'--thet is ter +say--_wimmen_ bein' incompertent ter--thet is, Miss Brady, _mose_ wimmen +not havin' the 'bility fer ter hannel a large proppity--even if they +is--. I aint sayin' that Sabriny is diff'nt fum mose wimmen, you mine. +They is folks thet say her mine is--thet she aint adzackly right in her +head; but lawsy, _I_ aint sayin' thet; an' you mus' know thet wimmin' +aint in no way fit fer ter manage a proppity--a large proppity---more +especial if they is any man a-tryin' fer ter git hit away frum 'em." + +"Why, is anybody trying to get poor Sabriny's money, Jeb?" asked the +young 'squire's mother in sympathetic wonder. + +But Jeb had been warned that he would better not commit himself if he +hoped for fair sailing. He turned his straw over and put the stiff end +between his teeth again, glanced covertly about, concluded that the lady +was not setting a trap for him, and began again. + +"I aint a sayin' as they is, an' I aint a swarin' thet they aint. Mebby +you mout o' heard uv Lige Tummun?" + +"Yes, I have heard that he is a trifling fellow," said the young +'squire's mother. "I hope there is no way he can get Sabriny's little +pension." + +"I aint a sayin' nothin' agin' _Lige_," said Jeb, with wily inflection +which said all things against that luckless wight. "I aint sayin' +nothing' _agin_ Lige, an' I aint sayin' thet he wants ter git hole uv +Sabriny fer ter git her proppity; but he hev drawed up a paper, an' she +hev sign hit, fer ter live with him an' his ole 'oman the res' er her +days fer, an' in consideration, uv the hull uv thet back pension _down_, +en half--er as near half as $2.11 kin be halft,--every month whilse she +live; an' he bines hisself fer ter feed, an' cloth, an pervide fer her +so long as they both do live, by an' accordin' ter the terms uv thet +theer paper he hed draw'd up and Sabriny hev sign." + +"Too bad, too bad," said the young 'squire's mother; "but the judge will +appoint you, don't you think, since she is weak-minded, and Lige is so +unreliable? Poor Sabriny would have very little comfort in that +torn-down hut I'm afraid. Did the judge say he would see to it?" + +Jeb took the straw from between his teeth, and his lip resumed its +normal position. He turned and twisted, seated himself on the lower +step, and readjusted his hat on his knee. Then he went on:-- + +"I aint sayin' I _want_ ter be 'pinted her gyardeen. Thet air fer the +jedge ter say, pervided somebody er other fetch the needcessity ter his +mine befo' all thet proppity air squandered. I haint sayin' that Sabriny +air weak-minded, nuther--thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a--she +hev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An' +I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, +nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep' +in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corn +dodger an' shote; but what I air--that is what _some_ air thinkin' about +air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit +goin' ter be thet away? Mine you, _I_ aint asten this yer question; but +they is them thet does, an' whilse they does hit do seem only right an' +proper fer hit ter be looked inter by the proper 'thorities. Now I tole +the young 'squire thet I'd lay the hull caste befo' the jedge las' cote +day, but the fack air that whence I git theer I met up with a few er my +bisness erquaintainces an' on _re_flection I made up my mine thet I bes' +thes say nothin' to the jedge. Thet's what I kem ter tell the young +'squire so's he won't ercuse me in his mine er lyin' ter 'im whence he +fine out thet I never tole the jedge. They was reasons--numbrous and +gineral reasons--fer me ter _re_fleck an' _re_track my plan." + +He reflected for a moment now, and then lifting his hat by the peak, +turned it around, raised it high over his head, carried it back and put +it on; then from its mutilated front just above his eyebrow he snipped +off, with a deft jerk, another straw and started down the steps. + +"They is some thet say Sabriny hev a temper thet don't stop ter be lit +up, Miss Brady, but lawsy, _I_ haint sayin' nothing agin' Sabriny's +temper, ner agin' Lige, ner nobody. Some folks will talk thet away. You +can't stop 'em long es they's 'live en kickin'; but _I_ got mighty +little ter say." + +There was a long pause. Then with studied indifference of inflection he +continued:-- + +"I reckon my leetle bisness with the young 'squire kin wait without +mouldin' over night. I thes reckon hit wouldn't be edzackly bes' fer ter +discuss hit with nobody else," and he inserted the straw between his +teeth with great care and precision, and took his high stepping way +toward the Ridge, secure in his self-esteem and approbation in that not +even the wiles of a lady of the position of the young 'squire's mother +could betray him into divulging his secret. For, after all, she was but +a woman, and--well--this whole matter was a question of "proppity," and +therefore quite beyond her capacity. + +As he disappeared over the hill, his straw havelock flapping gently in +the wind, and his vest spread wide against his pendent arms, the young +'squire's mother laughed gently and said:-- + +"Poor Sabrina, she _is_ a little weaker minded than Jeb, and Jeb is a +kind soul in his way. We must let the judge know the trouble, and see if +some honest and capable person cannot be found to handle that 'proppity' +and not squander, too recklessly, the two dollars and eleven cents in +the months that are to come. The life of an heiress is, indeed, beset +with pitfalls even among the Ridgers." + + + + +THE BROOK. + +BY P. H. S. + + + I love the gentle music of the brook, + Its solitary, meditative song. + On every hill + Some stream has birth, + Some lyric rill, + To wake the selfish earth, + And smile and toss the heavens their shining look, + Repeat and every flash of life prolong. + In spite of play, + Along its cheerful way + It turns to rest beneath some sheltering tree + In richer beauty; + Or at call of duty + Leaps forth into a cry of ecstacy, + And sings that work is best, + In brighter colors drest + Runs on its way, + Nor longer wills to stay + Than but to see itself that it is fair,-- + Thou happy brook, true brother to the air. + + I fear the steady death-roar of the sea, + Its sullen, never-changing undertone; + Round all the land + It clasps its heavy strength, + A liquid band + Of world-unending length, + And ever chants a wild monotony, + A change between a low cry and a moan. + The earth is glad, + The sea alone is sad; + Its swelling surge it rolls against the shore + In mammoth anger; + Or, in weary languor, + Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more, + And sinks to treacherous rest, + While from the happy west + The sun is glad; + The sea alone is sad. + Its voice has messages nor words for me, + All, all is pitched in one low minor key. + + Then take my heart upon thy dancing stream, + O tiny brook, thou bearest my heart away. + Run gently past + The breaking of the stones, + Nor yet too fast; + And on thy perfect tones + Bear thou my discord life that I may seem + A harmony for one short hour to-day. + Why wilt thou, brook, + Not check thy forward look? + Why wilt thou, brook, not make my heart thine own? + The wild commotion + Of the frantic ocean + Will madden thee and drown thy sorry moan, + And none will hear the cry; + Then run more slowly by-- + Nay, for this nook + Was made for thee, my brook, + Stay with me here beneath this silver shade + And think this day for thee and me was made. + + Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine; + Thou'lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave. + Lovest thou the sun? + He will not know thee there. + Is't sweet to run, + Know thine own whence and where? + 'Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine; + There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have. + The mighty sea + Will blindly number thee + To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore + That thou art scorning; + Or some awful morning, + Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oar + And drink his weary life; + O fear this chance of strife! + Or what may be + Else, dead monotony. + Give o'er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me, + Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea? + + These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream, + And lay and heard it run the hours away; + And then above + The beauty and the peace, + It sang of love; + And in that glad release + I knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream, + Had seen the laboring river and the bay. + "'Tis joy to run! + Else life would ne'er be done, + I ne'er should know the triumphing of death, + Nor its revealing; + Nor the eager feeling + Of fuller life, the promise of the breath + That fleets the open sea: + All this was given to me + Once as I won + My first great leap; the sun + I knew my king, and laughed, and since that day + I run and sing; he wills, and I obey." + + + + +EDITORIAL NOTES. + + +OPTIMISM, REAL AND FALSE. + +Much has been written of late about the pessimistic spirit pervading +modern reformative literature. When an earnest writer presents a gloomy +picture of life as it really is, he is frequently judged by that most +shallow of all standards, "Is it pleasing or amusing?" His fidelity to +the ideal of truth is often overlooked or dismissed with a flippant +word. We all know that great and dangerous evils exist and menace our +civilization. They are growing under the fostering influence of the +"conspiracy of silence"; yet we are seriously informed that we must not +expose them to view; that there is so much tragedy in real life that +society should not be annoyed by sombre pictures in fiction or the +drama. "Prophesy to us smooth things or hold thy peace," is the tenor of +much of the criticism of the hour. Optimism is at present a popular +Shibboleth, hence many thoughtlessly echo the cry against every exposure +of growing evils. Writers who are popularly known as optimists belong +mainly to three classes. Those who after a general survey of life become +thorough pessimists, believing that the social, economic, religious, and +ethical problems can never be justly or equitably solved; that in the +weary age long struggle of right against might, of justice against +greed, of liberty against slavery, of truth against error, the baser +will win the battle, because there is more evil than good present in the +world, and therefore, it being useless to break with the established +order, assume a cheerful tone, crying down all efforts to unmask the +widespread and ever-increasing evils which are festering under the cover +of silence, and in substance urge us to eat, drink, and be merry, taking +no thought for the morrow or for the generations which are to follow us. + +A second class, comparing the ignorance, superstition, brutality, and +inhumanity of the past with life to-day, arrive at the conclusion that +the nineteenth century is the flower of all the preceding ages, which is +true. That the present, registering the high-tide water-mark of the +centuries, is to be extolled rather than assaulted, and all efforts to +create discontent are unwise, and should be frowned upon. The mistake of +these individuals lies in the fact that they fail to see that the chief +cause of humanity's triumphs is found in the works performed by those +thinkers who in all ages have corresponded to the persons flippantly +characterized pessimists at the present time: they who have assailed the +existing order of things, who have thrown into the congregation of the +people the shells of doubt; who have confronted the priests and +potentates of conventionalism with a disturbing "Why"; _who have +compelled the people to think_. + +A third class of writers who pitch their thoughts in a hopeful key, +appreciate the injustice of much that is accepted by conventional +thought as right, or which is tolerated by virtue of its antiquity, but +seeing the profound agitation which a thoughtful and earnest +presentation of the evils of the hour produces in the public mind, they +have become alarmed, fearing lest the rising tide of angry discontent +sweep away much that is good, true, and beautiful, in its blind attempt +to right existing wrongs, and inaugurate an era of justice. Old +institutions, ancient and revered thought, accepted lines of policy, +even when palpably unjust, are safer, they urge, than the sudden +blinding light of justice, the instantaneous widening of the horizon of +popular thought. The strong light of a new era thrown suddenly upon the +foul, monstrous and iniquitous systems in vogue, the awakening of the +public mind to the enormity of the injustice, hypocrisy, and immorality +of respectable conservatism of to-day will turn the brain of the +people--they will become mad; a second French Revolution will +ensue--such is their fear, and from a superficial view their +apprehensions seem reasonable. Their error lies in the fact that the +horrors of the French Revolution were the legitimate result of a policy +exactly analogous to what they are pursuing. It arose from _justice long +deferred; from wrongs endured for generations. It was the concentrated +wrath_ of the people who for many decades had been oppressed by Church, +by nobility, and by the crown. Though the motives are entirely +different, these writers, in striving to procrastinate the feud of +justice against entrenched power and established customs, are acting on +the lines of Louis XV., who, when told that a revolution would burst +forth in France, inquired, "How many years hence?" "Fifteen or twenty, +sire," was the reply. "Well, I shall be dead then; let my successor look +out for that." So in seeking to put off just and rightful demands, these +short-sighted philosophers lose sight of the fact that the longer +justice is exiled from the throne of power, the more terrible will be +the reckoning when it comes. Yet history teaches no lesson more +impressively, unless it be that a question involving justice once raised +will never be settled until right has been vindicated. + +Those reformers, on the other hand, who have been popularly credited +with sounding a pessimistic note in all their writings, by virtue of +their fidelity to actual conditions and prevailing customs, are chiefly +optimists in the truest sense of the word. They are men and women who +believe profoundly in the triumph of right, liberty, and justice. Their +faces are set toward the morning. The glorious ideals that float before +and beyond the present have beamed upon their earnest gaze. They have +traced the ascent of humanity through the ages; they have noted the slow +march, the weary struggle from age to age of the old against the new, of +dawn against night, of progress against conservatism, but they have also +seen that the trend has been onward and upward, and what is far more +important, they have noted that the prophets, sages, and reformers,--in +a word, the advance guard, who have blazed the pathway and opened the +vista to broader and nobler conceptions of justice and liberty, have +been those who have assailed the popular conventionality of their times; +who have been denounced as enemies to social order, as dangerous +pessimists and wreckers of civilization. But they have also observed +that these honest and far-sighted spirits have set in motion the thought +that has borne humanity upward into a more radiant estate. Furthermore, +they realize that only by a fearless denunciation of existing evils, by +faithful though gloomy pictures of life _as it is_, by raising the +interrogation point after every wrong or unjust condition sanctioned by +virtue of its antiquity and conservatism and by appealing to the reason +and conscience of the people has humanity been elevated. They have +studied the problem of human progress profoundly; they have strong faith +in the triumph of justice, but they realize that victory can never be +attained as long as conventionalism lulls to sleep the public +conscience. They know that only by bringing the truth effectively before +the people, only by raising questions and stimulating the mind can +reforms be inaugurated. The present calls for honest thought, for true +pictures, for brave and earnest agitators. Give us these, and humanity +will soon take another of those great epoch making strides which at +intervals have marked the ascent of man. + + +THE PESSIMISTIC CAST OF MODERN THOUGHT. + +Much of the best thought of to-day necessarily takes on a gloomy cast, +because the most wise and earnest reformers keenly realize the giant +wrongs that oppress humanity. They see the splendid possibilities +floating before mankind, even within the grasp of the rising generation, +if the heralds of the coming day are courageous and persistent; if they +sink all hope of popularity, all thought of self-interest; if they are +loyal to their highest impulses, regardless of what may follow. + +_The era of the questioner has arrived._ Soon mankind will refuse to +accept anything simply because others believed it. Traditions and +ancient thought, though weighed down with credentials of past ages or +dead civilizations, will be cast aside. All problems will be weighed in +the scales of the broader conception of justice which is daily growing +in the mind of man. The twilight is passing, the dawn is upon us, and +to-morrow will be indebted chiefly to these true brave men and women +whom the superficial call pessimists, for the glorious heritage which +will fall to humanity; for they are related to the manifold reforms +which crowd upon the present, as were Copernicus and Galileo related to +the science of astronomy, as Luther was to the Reformation, Jefferson to +modern Democracy, as Wilberforce in England and Garrison in America to +the overthrow of black slavery. They denounce the iniquity of the +present hour; they unmask the carefully concealed evils which are +undermining public morals; they demand a higher standard of life. If +they aim to destroy the old wooden building, it is because they see +around them not only the quarried stone, the mortar and iron beams, but +a million hands waiting to erect upon the ruins of the old a nobler +structure than humanity has yet beheld. + + + + + Transcriber's Note: The page numbers in the Table of Contents + have been converted to issues in the following way: + + Issue Pages + June, 1891 1-128 + July, 1891 129-256 + August, 1891 257-384 + September, 1891 385-512 + October, 1891 513-640 + November, 1891 641-768 + Index to 4th Volume 769-771 + + Please note that the November issue's Contents are as printed, + although the issue does have more articles than stated. + + Also, the illustrations are shown in the correct issue, but may + be in a slightly different order than that listed. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arena, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARENA *** + +***** This file should be named 19110.txt or 19110.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/1/1/19110/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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