initial commit of ebook 3461HEADmain

1 files changed, 6805 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/esslf10.txt b/old/esslf10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5779dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/esslf10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6805 @@
+Project Gutenberg Etext Essays on Life, Art and Science, by Butler
+#9 in our series by Samuel Butler
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission.  The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
+Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.  Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+International donations are accepted,
+but we don't know ANYTHING about how
+to make them tax-deductible, or
+even if they CAN be made deductible,
+and don't have the staff to handle it
+even if there are ways.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+
+Title: Essays on Life, Art and Science
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+Official Release Date: October, 2002  [Etext #3461]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 04/30/01]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Essays on Life, Art and Science, by Butler
+*******This file should be named esslf10.txt or esslf10.zip*******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, esslf11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, esslf10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
+from the 1908 A. C. Fifield edition.
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
+
+Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
+Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
+EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
+has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS).  Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
+permitted by law.  As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation.  Mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Avenue
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109  [USA]
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+***
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+**END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.08.01*END**
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
+from the 1908 A. C. Fifield edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS ON LIFE, ART AND SCIENCE
+
+by Samuel Butler
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Introduction
+Quis Desiderio?
+Ramblings in Cheapside
+The Aunt, The Nieces, and the Dog
+How to make the best of life
+The Sanctuary of Montrigone
+A Medieval Girl School
+Art in the Valley of Saas
+Thought and Language
+The Deadlock in Darwinism
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to apologise for the miscellaneous character
+of the following collection of essays.  Samuel Butler was a man of
+such unusual versatility, and his interests were so many and so
+various that his literary remains were bound to cover a wide field.
+Nevertheless it will be found that several of the subjects to which
+he devoted much time and labour are not represented in these pages.
+I have not thought it necessary to reprint any of the numerous
+pamphlets and articles which he wrote upon the Iliad and Odyssey,
+since these were all merged in "The Authoress of the Odyssey," which
+gives his matured views upon everything relating to the Homeric
+poems.  For a similar reason I have not included an essay on the
+evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which he printed in
+1865 for private circulation, since he subsequently made extensive
+use of it in "The Fair Haven."
+
+Two of the essays in this collection were originally delivered as
+lectures; the remainder were published in The Universal Review
+during 1888, 1889, and 1890.
+
+I should perhaps explain why two other essays of his, which also
+appeared in The Universal Review, have been omitted.
+
+The first of these, entitled "L'Affaire Holbein-Rippel," relates to
+a drawing of Holbein's "Danse des Paysans," in the Basle Museum,
+which is usually described as a copy, but which Butler believed to
+be the work of Holbein himself.  This essay requires to be
+illustrated in so elaborate a manner that it was impossible to
+include it in a book of this size.
+
+The second essay, which is a sketch of the career of the sculptor
+Tabachetti, was published as the first section of an article
+entitled "A Sculptor and a Shrine," of which the second section is
+here given under the title, "The Sanctuary of Montrigone."  The
+section devoted to the sculptor represents all that Butler then knew
+about Tabachetti, but since it was written various documents have
+come to light, principally owing to the investigations of Cavaliere
+Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, which negative some of
+Butler's most cherished conclusions.  Had Butler lived he would
+either have rewritten his essay in accordance with Cavaliere Negri's
+discoveries, of which he fully recognised the value, or incorporated
+them into the revised edition of "Ex Voto," which he intended to
+publish.  As it stands, the essay requires so much revision that I
+have decided to omit it altogether, and to postpone giving English
+readers a full account of Tabachetti's career until a second edition
+of "Ex Voto" is required.  Meanwhile I have given a brief summary of
+the main facts of Tabachetti's life in a note (page 154) to the
+essay on "Art in the Valley of Saas."  Any one who wishes for
+further details of the sculptor and his work will find them in
+Cavaliere Negri's pamphlet, "Il Santuario di Crea" (Alessandria,
+1902).
+
+The three essays grouped together under the title of "The Deadlock
+in Darwinism" may be regarded as a postscript to Butler's four books
+on evolution, viz., "Life and Habit," "Evolution, Old and New,"
+"Unconscious Memory" and "Luck or Cunning."  An occasion for the
+publication of these essays seemed to be afforded by the appearance
+in 1889 of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace's "Darwinism"; and although
+nearly fourteen years have elapsed since they were published in the
+Universal Review, I have no fear that they will be found to be out
+of date.  How far, indeed, the problem embodied in the deadlock of
+which Butler speaks is from solution was conclusively shown by the
+correspondence which appeared in the Times in May 1903, occasioned
+by some remarks made at University College by Lord Kelvin in moving
+a vote of thanks to Professor Henslow after his lecture on "Present
+Day Rationalism."  Lord Kelvin's claim for a recognition of the fact
+that in organic nature scientific thought is compelled to accept the
+idea of some kind of directive power, and his statement that
+biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of a vital
+principle, drew from several distinguished men of science retorts
+heated enough to prove beyond a doubt that the gulf between the two
+main divisions of evolutionists is as wide to-day as it was when
+Butler wrote.  It will be well, perhaps, for the benefit of readers
+who have not followed the history of the theory of evolution during
+its later developments, to state in a few words what these two main
+divisions are.  All evolutionists agree that the differences between
+species are caused by the accumulation and transmission of
+variations, but they do not agree as to the causes to which the
+variations are due.  The view held by the older evolutionists,
+Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, who have been followed by many
+modern thinkers, including Herbert Spencer and Butler, is that the
+variations occur mainly as the result of effort and design; the
+opposite view, which is that advocated by Mr. Wallace in
+"Darwinism," is that the variations occur merely as the result of
+chance.  The former is sometimes called the theological view,
+because it recognises the presence in organic nature of design,
+whether it be called creative power, directive force, directivity,
+or vital principle; the latter view, in which the existence of
+design is absolutely negatived, is now usually described as
+Weismannism, from the name of the writer who has been its principal
+advocate in recent years.
+
+In conclusion, I must thank my friend Mr. Henry Festing Jones most
+warmly for the invaluable assistance which he has given me in
+preparing these essays for publication, in correcting the proofs,
+and in compiling the introduction and notes.
+
+R. A. STREATFEILD.
+
+
+
+
+QUIS DESIDERIO . . . ? {1}
+
+
+
+Like Mr. Wilkie Collins, I, too, have been asked to lay some of my
+literary experiences before the readers of the Universal Review.  It
+occurred to me that the Review must be indeed universal before it
+could open its pages to one so obscure as myself; but, nothing
+daunted by the distinguished company among which I was for the first
+time asked to move, I resolved to do as I was told, and went to the
+British Museum to see what books I had written.  Having refreshed my
+memory by a glance at the catalogue, I was about to try and diminish
+the large and ever-increasing circle of my non-readers when I became
+aware of a calamity that brought me to a standstill, and indeed bids
+fair, so far as I can see at present, to put an end to my literary
+existence altogether.
+
+I should explain that I cannot write unless I have a sloping desk,
+and the reading-room of the British Museum, where alone I can
+compose freely, is unprovided with sloping desks.  Like every other
+organism, if I cannot get exactly what I want I make shift with the
+next thing to it; true, there are no desks in the reading-room, but,
+as I once heard a visitor from the country say, "it contains a large
+number of very interesting works."  I know it was not right, and
+hope the Museum authorities will not be severe upon me if any of
+them reads this confession; but I wanted a desk, and set myself to
+consider which of the many very interesting works which a grateful
+nation places at the disposal of its would-be authors was best
+suited for my purpose.
+
+For mere reading I suppose one book is pretty much as good as
+another; but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter.  It
+must be neither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough to
+make a substantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not to
+yield or give; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards and
+forwards; and it must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there need
+be no stooping or reaching too high.  These are the conditions which
+a really good book must fulfil; simple, however, as they are, it is
+surprising how few volumes comply with them satisfactorily;
+moreover, being perhaps too sensitively conscientious, I allowed
+another consideration to influence me, and was sincerely anxious not
+to take a book which would be in constant use for reference by
+readers, more especially as, if I did this, I might find myself
+disturbed by the officials.
+
+For weeks I made experiments upon sundry poetical and philosophical
+works, whose names I have forgotten, but could not succeed in
+finding my ideal desk, until at length, more by luck than cunning, I
+happened to light upon Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians," which
+I had no sooner tried than I discovered it to be the very perfection
+and ne plus ultra of everything that a book should be.  It lived in
+Case No. 2008, and I accordingly took at once to sitting in Row B,
+where for the last dozen years or so I have sat ever since.
+
+The first thing I have done whenever I went to the Museum has been
+to take down Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians" and carry it to
+my seat.  It is not the custom of modern writers to refer to the
+works to which they are most deeply indebted, and I have never, that
+I remember, mentioned it by name before; but it is to this book
+alone that I have looked for support during many years of literary
+labour, and it is round this to me invaluable volume that all my own
+have page by page grown up.  There is none in the Museum to which I
+have been under anything like such constant obligation, none which I
+can so ill spare, and none which I would choose so readily if I were
+allowed to select one single volume and keep it for my own.
+
+On finding myself asked for a contribution to the Universal Review,
+I went, as I have explained, to the Museum, and presently repaired
+to bookcase No. 2008 to get my favourite volume.  Alas! it was in
+the room no longer.  It was not in use, for its place was filled up
+already; besides, no one ever used it but myself.  Whether the ghost
+of the late Mr. Frost has been so eminently unchristian as to
+interfere, or whether the authorities have removed the book in
+ignorance of the steady demand which there has been for it on the
+part of at least one reader, are points I cannot determine.  All I
+know is that the book is gone, and I feel as Wordsworth is generally
+supposed to have felt when he became aware that Lucy was in her
+grave, and exclaimed so emphatically that this would make a
+considerable difference to him, or words to that effect.
+
+Now I think of it, Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians" was very
+like Lucy.  The one resided at Dovedale in Derbyshire, the other in
+Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.  I admit that I do not see the
+resemblance here at this moment, but if I try to develop my
+perception I shall doubtless ere long find a marvellously striking
+one.  In other respects, however, than mere local habitat the
+likeness is obvious.  Lucy was not particularly attractive either
+inside or out--no more was Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians";
+there were few to praise her, and of those few still fewer could
+bring themselves to like her; indeed, Wordsworth himself seems to
+have been the only person who thought much about her one way or the
+other.  In like manner, I believe I was the only reader who thought
+much one way or the other about Frost's "Lives of Eminent
+Christians," but this in itself was one of the attractions of the
+book; and as for the grief we respectively felt and feel, I believe
+my own to be as deep as Wordsworth's, if not more so.
+
+I said above, "as Wordsworth is generally supposed to have felt";
+for any one imbued with the spirit of modern science will read
+Wordsworth's poem with different eyes from those of a mere literary
+critic.  He will note that Wordsworth is most careful not to explain
+the nature of the difference which the death of Lucy will occasion
+to him.  He tells us that there will be a difference; but there the
+matter ends.  The superficial reader takes it that he was very sorry
+she was dead; it is, of course, possible that he may have actually
+been so, but he has not said this.  On the contrary, he has hinted
+plainly that she was ugly, and generally disliked; she was only like
+a violet when she was half-hidden from the view, and only fair as a
+star when there were so few stars out that it was practically
+impossible to make an invidious comparison.  If there were as many
+as even two stars the likeness was felt to be at an end.  If
+Wordsworth had imprudently promised to marry this young person
+during a time when he had been unusually long in keeping to good
+resolutions, and had afterwards seen some one whom he liked better,
+then Lucy's death would undoubtedly have made a considerable
+difference to him, and this is all that he has ever said that it
+would do.  What right have we to put glosses upon the masterly
+reticence of a poet, and credit him with feelings possibly the very
+reverse of those he actually entertained?
+
+Sometimes, indeed, I have been inclined to think that a mystery is
+being hinted at more dark than any critic has suspected.  I do not
+happen to possess a copy of the poem, but the writer, if I am not
+mistaken, says that "few could know when Lucy ceased to be."
+"Ceased to be" is a suspiciously euphemistic expression, and the
+words "few could know" are not applicable to the ordinary peaceful
+death of a domestic servant such as Lucy appears to have been.  No
+matter how obscure the deceased, any number of people commonly can
+know the day and hour of his or her demise, whereas in this case we
+are expressly told it would be impossible for them to do so.
+Wordsworth was nothing if not accurate, and would not have said that
+few could know, but that few actually did know, unless he was aware
+of circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in the
+crime of her death from knowing the precise moment of its
+occurrence.  If Lucy was the kind of person not obscurely pourtrayed
+in the poem; if Wordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting her
+throat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends
+Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself released
+from an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly from
+the threat of an action for breach of promise, then there is not a
+syllable in the poem with which he crowns his crime that is not
+alive with meaning.  On any other supposition to the general reader
+it is unintelligible.
+
+We cannot be too guarded in the interpretations we put upon the
+words of great poets.  Take the young lady who never loved the dear
+gazelle--and I don't believe she did; we are apt to think that Moore
+intended us to see in this creation of his fancy a sweet, amiable,
+but most unfortunate young woman, whereas all he has told us about
+her points to an exactly opposite conclusion.  In reality, he wished
+us to see a young lady who had been an habitual complainer from her
+earliest childhood; whose plants had always died as soon as she
+bought them, while those belonging to her neighbours had flourished.
+The inference is obvious, nor can we reasonably doubt that Moore
+intended us to draw it; if her plants were the very first to fade
+away, she was evidently the very first to neglect or otherwise
+maltreat them.  She did not give them enough water, or left the door
+of her fern-ease open when she was cooking her dinner at the gas
+stove, or kept them too near the paraffin oil, or other like folly;
+and as for her temper, see what the gazelles did; as long as they
+did not know her "well," they could just manage to exist, but when
+they got to understand her real character, one after another felt
+that death was the only course open to it, and accordingly died
+rather than live with such a mistress.  True, the young lady herself
+said the gazelles loved her; but disagreeable people are apt to
+think themselves amiable, and in view of the course invariably taken
+by the gazelles themselves any one accustomed to weigh evidence will
+hold that she was probably mistaken.
+
+I must, however, return to Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians."  I
+will leave none of the ambiguity about my words in which Moore and
+Wordsworth seem to have delighted.  I am very sorry the book is
+gone, and know not where to turn for its successor.  Till I have
+found a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how to
+find even a tolerable one.  I should try a volume of Migne's
+"Complete Course of Patrology," but I do not like books in more than
+one volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never can
+remember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede in
+Giles's "Anglican Fathers" are not open to this objection, and I
+have reserved them for favourable consideration.  Mather's
+"Magnalia" might do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's
+"Corpus Ignatianum" might also do if it were not too thin.  I do not
+like taking Norton's "Genuineness of the Gospels," as it is just
+possible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are
+genuine or not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr.
+Norton's book.  Baxter's "Church History of England," Lingard's
+"Anglo-Saxon Church," and Cardwell's "Documentary Annals," though
+none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but
+on the whole I think Arvine's "Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious
+Anecdote" is perhaps the one book in the room which comes within
+measurable distance of Frost.  I should probably try this book
+first, but it has a fatal objection in its too seductive title.  "I
+am not curious," as Miss Lottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but
+I like to know," and I might be tempted to pervert the book from its
+natural uses and open it, so as to find out what kind of a thing a
+moral and religious anecdote is.  I know, of course, that there are
+a great many anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling
+them either moral or religious, though some of them certainly seem
+as if they might fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work.  There
+are some things, however, which it is better not to know, and take
+it all round I do not think I should be wise in putting myself in
+the way of temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my
+beloved and lamented Frost.
+
+Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether,
+and this I should be sorry to do.  I have only as yet written about
+a third, or from that--counting works written but not published--to
+a half, of the books which I have set myself to write.  It would not
+so much matter if old age was not staring me in the face.  Dr. Parr
+said it was "a beastly shame for an old man not to have laid down a
+good cellar of port in his youth"; I, like the greater number, I
+suppose, of those who write books at all, write in order that I may
+have something to read in my old age when I can write no longer.  I
+know what I shall like better than any one can tell me, and write
+accordingly; if my career is nipped in the bud, as seems only too
+likely, I really do not know where else I can turn for present
+agreeable occupation, nor yet how to make suitable provision for my
+later years.  Other writers can, of course, make excellent provision
+for their own old ages, but they cannot do so for mine, any more
+than I should succeed if I were to try to cater for theirs.  It is
+one of those cases in which no man can make agreement for his
+brother.
+
+I have no heart for continuing this article, and if I had, I have
+nothing of interest to say.  No one's literary career can have been
+smoother or more unchequered than mine.  I have published all my
+books at my own expense, and paid for them in due course.  What can
+be conceivably more unromantic?  For some years I had a little
+literary grievance against the authorities of the British Museum
+because they would insist on saying in their catalogue that I had
+published three sermons on Infidelity in the year 1820.  I thought I
+had not, and got them out to see.  They were rather funny, but they
+were not mine.  Now, however, this grievance has been removed.  I
+had another little quarrel with them because they would describe me
+as "of St. John's College, Cambridge," an establishment for which I
+have the most profound veneration, but with which I have not had the
+honour to be connected for some quarter of a century.  At last they
+said they would change this description if I would only tell them
+what I was, for, though they had done their best to find out, they
+had themselves failed.  I replied with modest pride that I was a
+Bachelor of Arts.  I keep all my other letters inside my name, not
+outside.  They mused and said it was unfortunate that I was not a
+Master of Arts.  Could I not get myself made a Master?  I said I
+understood that a Mastership was an article the University could not
+do under about five pounds, and that I was not disposed to go
+sixpence higher than three ten.  They again said it was a pity, for
+it would be very inconvenient to them if I did not keep to something
+between a bishop and a poet.  I might be anything I liked in reason,
+provided I showed proper respect for the alphabet; but they had got
+me between "Samuel Butler, bishop," and "Samuel Butler, poet."  It
+would be very troublesome to shift me, and bachelor came before
+bishop.  This was reasonable, so I replied that, under those
+circumstances, if they pleased, I thought I would like to be a
+philosophical writer.  They embraced the solution, and, no matter
+what I write now, I must remain a philosophical writer as long as I
+live, for the alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I must
+be something between "Bis" and "Poe."  If I could get a volume of my
+excellent namesake's "Hudibras" out of the list of my works, I
+should be robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say
+nothing about this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should
+happen to me.  Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and
+always say that if "Erewhon" had been a racehorse it would have been
+got by "Hudibras" out of "Analogy."  Some one said this to me many
+years ago, and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating
+the remark as my own ever since.
+
+But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured
+without a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than
+myself.  When I see the scores and hundreds of workers in the
+reading-room who have done so much more than I have, but whose work
+is absolutely fruitless to themselves, and when I think of the
+prompt recognition obtained by my own work, I ask myself what I have
+done to be thus rewarded.  On the other hand, the feeling that I
+have succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto, makes it all the
+harder for me to acquiesce without complaint in the extinction of a
+career which I honestly believe to be a promising one; and once more
+I repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me back my Frost,
+or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be extinguished.
+Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, I will write
+another dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle--if so
+serious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned.  I know from long
+experience how kind and considerate both the late and present
+superintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt how
+far either of them would be disposed to help me on this occasion;
+continue, however, to rob me of my Frost, and, whatever else I may
+do, I will write no more books.
+
+Note by Dr. Garnett, British Museum.--The frost has broken up.  Mr.
+Butler is restored to literature.  Mr. Mudie may make himself easy.
+England will still boast a humourist; and the late Mr. Darwin (to
+whose posthumous machinations the removal of the book was owing)
+will continue to be confounded.--R. GANNETT.
+
+
+
+RAMBLINGS IN CHEAPSIDE {2}
+
+
+
+Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr.
+Sweeting's window, and was tempted to stay and look at them.  As I
+did so I was struck not more by the defences with which they were
+hedged about, than by the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at
+all which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its own defencefulness.
+The holes for the head and feet through which the turtle leaks out,
+as it were, on to the exterior world, and through which it again
+absorbs the exterior world into itself--"catching on" through them
+to things that are thus both turtle and not turtle at one and the
+same time--these holes stultify the armour, and show it to have been
+designed by a creature with more of faithfulness to a fixed idea,
+and hence one-sidedness, than of that quick sense of relative
+importances and their changes, which is the main factor of good
+living.
+
+The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so
+widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word
+occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its
+body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to
+comprehend its mind with any thoroughness.  For unity of mind can
+only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be
+in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten
+it, or by which it has not been eaten.  As long as the turtle was in
+the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our
+comprehending one another.
+
+Nevertheless I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could
+so effectually button-hole and fasten on to it as to eat it.  Most
+men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but
+that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the
+better reasoner.  My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I
+had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting
+think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles--I mean I
+had no money in my pocket.  No missionary enterprise can be carried
+on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half-a-crown
+would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round,
+and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot,
+for the turtle needs must go where the money drives.  If, as is
+alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money.
+No money no turtle.  As for money, that stands on opinion, credit,
+trust, faith--things that, though highly material in connection with
+money, are still of immaterial essence.
+
+The steps are perfectly plain.  The men who caught the turtles
+brought a fairly strong and definite opinion to bear upon them, that
+passed into action, and later on into money.  They thought the
+turtles would come that way, and verified their opinion; on this,
+will and action were generated, with the result that the men turned
+the turtles on their backs and carried them off.  Mr. Sweeting
+touched these men with money, which is the outward and visible sign
+of verified opinion.  The customer touches Mr. Sweeting with money,
+Mr. Sweeting touches the waiter and the cook with money.  They touch
+the turtle with skill and verified opinion.  Finally, the customer
+applies the clinching argument that brushes all sophisms aside, and
+bids the turtle stand protoplasm to protoplasm with himself, to know
+even as it is known.
+
+But it must be all touch, touch, touch; skill, opinion, power, and
+money, passing in and out with one another in any order we like, but
+still link to link and touch to touch.  If there is failure anywhere
+in respect of opinion, skill, power, or money, either as regards
+quantity or quality, the chain can be no stronger than its weakest
+link, and the turtle and the clinching argument will fly asunder.
+Of course, if there is an initial failure in connection, through
+defect in any member of the chain, or of connection between the
+links, it will no more be attempted to bring the turtle and the
+clinching argument together, than it will to chain up a dog with two
+pieces of broken chain that are disconnected.  The contact
+throughout must be conceived as absolute; and yet perfect contact is
+inconceivable by us, for on becoming perfect it ceases to be
+contact, and becomes essential, once for all inseverable, identity.
+The most absolute contact short of this is still contact by courtesy
+only.  So here, as everywhere else, Eurydice glides off as we are
+about to grasp her.  We can see nothing face to face; our utmost
+seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded
+pocket.
+
+Presently my own blind finger-ends fished up the conclusion, that as
+I had neither time nor money to spend on perfecting the chain that
+would put me in full spiritual contact with Mr. Sweeting's turtles,
+I had better leave them to complete their education at some one
+else's expense rather than mine, so I walked on towards the Bank.
+As I did so it struck me how continually we are met by this melting
+of one existence into another.  The limits of the body seem well
+defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.
+What, for example, can seem more distinct from a man than his banker
+or his solicitor?  Yet these are commonly so much parts of him that
+he can no more cut them off and grow new ones, than he can grow new
+legs or arms; neither must he wound his solicitor; a wound in the
+solicitor is a very serious thing.  As for his bank--failure of his
+bank's action may be as fatal to a man as failure of his heart.  I
+have said nothing about the medical or spiritual adviser, but most
+men grow into the society that surrounds them by the help of these
+four main tap-roots, and not only into the world of humanity, but
+into the universe at large.  We can, indeed, grow butchers, bakers,
+and greengrocers, almost ad libitum, but these are low developments,
+and correspond to skin, hair, or finger-nails.  Those of us again
+who are not highly enough organised to have grown a solicitor or
+banker can generally repair the loss of whatever social organisation
+they may possess as freely as lizards are said to grow new tails;
+but this with the higher social, as well as organic, developments is
+only possible to a very limited extent.
+
+The doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls--a
+doctrine to which the foregoing considerations are for the most part
+easy corollaries--crops up no matter in what direction we allow our
+thoughts to wander.  And we meet instances of transmigration of body
+as well as of soul.  I do not mean that both body and soul have
+transmigrated together, far from it; but that, as we can often
+recognise a transmigrated mind in an alien body, so we not less
+often see a body that is clearly only a transmigration, linked on to
+some one else's new and alien soul.  We meet people every day whose
+bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose
+appearance we know through their portraits.  We see them going about
+in omnibuses, railway carriages, and in all public places.  The
+cards have been shuffled, and they have drawn fresh lots in life and
+nationalities, but any one fairly well up in mediaeval and last
+century portraiture knows them at a glance.
+
+Going down once towards Italy I saw a young man in the train whom I
+recognised, only he seemed to have got younger.  He was with a
+friend, and his face was in continual play, but for some little time
+I puzzled in vain to recollect where it was that I had seen him
+before.  All of a sudden I remembered he was King Francis I. of
+France.  I had hitherto thought the face of this king impossible,
+but when I saw it in play I understood it.  His great contemporary
+Henry VIII. keeps a restaurant in Oxford Street.  Falstaff drove one
+of the St. Gothard diligences for many years, and only retired when
+the railway was opened.  Titian once made me a pair of boots at
+Vicenza, and not very good ones.  At Modena I had my hair cut by a
+young man whom I perceived to be Raffaelle.  The model who sat to
+him for his celebrated Madonnas is first lady in a confectionery
+establishment at Montreal.  She has a little motherly pimple on the
+left side of her nose that is misleading at first, but on
+examination she is readily recognised; probably Raffaelle's model
+had the pimple too, but Raffaelle left it out--as he would.
+
+Handel, of course, is Madame Patey.  Give Madame Patey Handel's wig
+and clothes, and there would be no telling her from Handel.  It is
+not only that the features and the shape of the head are the same,
+but there is a certain imperiousness of expression and attitude
+about Handel which he hardly attempts to conceal in Madame Patey.
+It is a curious coincidence that he should continue to be such an
+incomparable renderer of his own music.  Pope Julius II. was the
+late Mr. Darwin.  Rameses II. is a blind woman now, and stands in
+Holborn, holding a tin mug.  I never could understand why I always
+found myself humming "They oppressed them with burthens" when I
+passed her, till one day I was looking in Mr. Spooner's window in
+the Strand, and saw a photograph of Rameses II.  Mary Queen of Scots
+wears surgical boots and is subject to fits, near the Horse Shoe in
+Tottenham Court Road.
+
+Michael Angelo is a commissionaire; I saw him on board the Glen
+Rosa, which used to run every day from London to Clacton-on-Sea and
+back.  It gave me quite a turn when I saw him coming down the stairs
+from the upper deck, with his bronzed face, flattened nose, and with
+the familiar bar upon his forehead.  I never liked Michael Angelo,
+and never shall, but I am afraid of him, and was near trying to hide
+when I saw him coming towards me.  He had not got his
+commissionaire's uniform on, and I did not know he was one till I
+met him a month or so later in the Strand.  When we got to Blackwall
+the music struck up and people began to dance.  I never saw a man
+dance so much in my life.  He did not miss a dance all the way to
+Clacton, nor all the way back again, and when not dancing he was
+flirting and cracking jokes.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I
+reflected that this man had painted the famous "Last Judgment," and
+had made all those statues.
+
+Dante is, or was a year or two ago, a waiter at Brissago on the Lago
+Maggiore, only he is better-tempered-looking, and has a more
+intellectual expression.  He gave me his ideas upon beauty:  "Tutto
+ch' e vero e bello," he exclaimed, with all his old self-confidence.
+I am not afraid of Dante.  I know people by their friends, and he
+went about with Virgil, so I said with some severity, "No, Dante, il
+naso della Signora Robinson e vero, ma non e bello"; and he admitted
+I was right.  Beatrice's name is Towler; she is waitress at a small
+inn in German Switzerland.  I used to sit at my window and hear
+people call "Towler, Towler, Towler," fifty times in a forenoon.
+She was the exact antithesis to Abra; Abra, if I remember, used to
+come before they called her name, but no matter how often they
+called Towler, every one came before she did.  I suppose they spelt
+her name Taula, but to me it sounded Towler; I never, however, met
+any one else with this name.  She was a sweet, artless little hussy,
+who made me play the piano to her, and she said it was lovely.  Of
+course I only played my own compositions; so I believed her, and it
+all went off very nicely.  I thought it might save trouble if I did
+not tell her who she really was, so I said nothing about it.
+
+I met Socrates once.  He was my muleteer on an excursion which I
+will not name, for fear it should identify the man.  The moment I
+saw my guide I knew he was somebody, but for the life of me I could
+not remember who.  All of a sudden it flashed across me that he was
+Socrates.  He talked enough for six, but it was all in dialetto, so
+I could not understand him, nor, when I had discovered who he was,
+did I much try to do so.  He was a good creature, a trifle given to
+stealing fruit and vegetables, but an amiable man enough.  He had
+had a long day with his mule and me, and he only asked me five
+francs.  I gave him ten, for I pitied his poor old patched boots,
+and there was a meekness about him that touched me.  "And now,
+Socrates," said I at parting, "we go on our several ways, you to
+steal tomatoes, I to filch ideas from other people; for the rest--
+which of these two roads will be the better going, our father which
+is in heaven knows, but we know not."
+
+I have never seen Mendelssohn, but there is a fresco of him on the
+terrace, or open-air dining-room, of an inn at Chiavenna.  He is not
+called Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs.  He is in the
+costume of a dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a
+cigar, and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook.
+Beethoven both my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the
+good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one
+note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and
+is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that
+he always had.  It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones
+remarked that before the end of dinner he had become positively
+posthumous.  One morning I was told the Beethovens were going away,
+and before long I met their two heavy boxes being carried down the
+stairs.  The boxes were so squab and like their owners, that I half
+thought for a moment that they were inside, and should hardly have
+been surprised to see them spring up like a couple of Jacks-in-the-
+box.  "Sono indentro?" said I, with a frown of wonder, pointing to
+the boxes.  The porters knew what I meant, and laughed.  But there
+is no end to the list of people whom I have been able to recognise,
+and before I had got through it myself, I found I had walked some
+distance, and had involuntarily paused in front of a second-hand
+bookstall.
+
+I do not like books.  I believe I have the smallest library of any
+literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it.  I keep
+my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very
+angry if any one gives me one for my private library.  I once heard
+two ladies disputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of them
+had or had not been wasting money.  "I spent it in books," said the
+accused, "and it's not wasting money to buy books."  "Indeed, my
+dear, I think it is," was the rejoinder, and in practice I agree
+with it.  Webster's Dictionary, Whitaker's Almanack, and Bradshaw's
+Railway Guide should be sufficient for any ordinary library; it will
+be time enough to go beyond these when the mass of useful and
+entertaining matter which they provide has been mastered.
+Nevertheless, I admit that sometimes, if not particularly busy, I
+stop at a second-hand bookstall and turn over a book or two from
+mere force of habit.
+
+I know not what made me pick up a copy of AEschylus--of course in an
+English version--or rather I know not what made AEschylus take up
+with me, for he took me rather than I him; but no sooner had he got
+me than he began puzzling me, as he has done any time this forty
+years, to know wherein his transcendent merit can be supposed to
+lie.  To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all ages
+and countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-
+fed immortal.  There are true immortals, but they are few and far
+between; most classics are as great impostors dead as they were when
+living, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, only
+Struldbrugs.  It comforts me to remember that Aristophanes liked
+AEschylus no better than I do.  True, he praises him by comparison
+with Sophocles and Euripides, but he only does so that he may run
+down these last more effectively.  Aristophanes is a safe man to
+follow, nor do I see why it should not be as correct to laugh with
+him as to pull a long face with the Greek Professors; but this is
+neither here nor there, for no one really cares about AEschylus; the
+more interesting question is how he contrived to make so many people
+for so many years pretend to care about him.
+
+Perhaps he married somebody's daughter.  If a man would get hold of
+the public ear, he must pay, marry, or fight.  I have never
+understood that AEschylus was a man of means, and the fighters do
+not write poetry, so I suppose he must have married a theatrical
+manager's daughter, and got his plays brought out that way.  The ear
+of any age or country is like its land, air, and water; it seems
+limitless but is really limited, and is already in the keeping of
+those who naturally enough will have no squatting on such valuable
+property.  It is written and talked up to as closely as the means of
+subsistence are bred up to by a teeming population.  There is not a
+square inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freehold
+any part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the
+usual way--and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure.  The
+public itself has hardly more voice in the question who shall have
+its ear, than the land has in choosing its owners.  It is farmed as
+those who own it think most profitable to themselves, and small
+blame to them; nevertheless, it has a residuum of mulishness which
+the land has not, and does sometimes dispossess its tenants.  It is
+in this residuum that those who fight place their hope and trust.
+
+Or perhaps AEschylus squared the leading critics of his time.  When
+one comes to think of it, he must have done so, for how is it
+conceivable that such plays should have had such runs if he had not?
+I met a lady one year in Switzerland who had some parrots that
+always travelled with her and were the idols of her life.  These
+parrots would not let any one read aloud in their presence, unless
+they heard their own names introduced from time to time.  If these
+were freely interpolated into the text they would remain as still as
+stones, for they thought the reading was about themselves.  If it
+was not about them it could not be allowed.  The leaders of
+literature are like these parrots; they do not look at what a man
+writes, nor if they did would they understand it much better than
+the parrots do; but they like the sound of their own names, and if
+these are freely interpolated in a tone they take as friendly, they
+may even give ear to an outsider.  Otherwise they will scream him
+off if they can.
+
+I should not advise any one with ordinary independence of mind to
+attempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung
+and out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, people
+will and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as there
+is no knowing where he may not take them.  Besides, they have staked
+their money on the wrong men so often without suspecting it, that
+when there comes one whom they do suspect it would be madness not to
+bet against him.  True, he may die before he has out-screamed his
+opponents, but that has nothing to do with it.  If his scream was
+well pitched it will sound clearer when he is dead.  We do not know
+what death is.  If we know so little about life which we have
+experienced, how shall we know about death which we have not--and in
+the nature of things never can?  Every one, as I said years ago in
+"Alps and Sanctuaries," is an immortal to himself, for he cannot
+know that he is dead until he is dead, and when dead how can he know
+anything about anything?  All we know is, that even the humblest
+dead may live long after all trace of the body has disappeared; we
+see them doing it in the bodies and memories of those that come
+after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually
+than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by
+Act of Parliament.  It is love that alone gives life, and the truest
+life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in
+others, and with which we have no concern.  Our concern is so to
+order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into
+life--although we know it not.
+
+AEschylus did so order himself; but his life is not of that
+inspiriting kind that can be won through fighting the good fight
+only--or being believed to have fought it.  His voice is the echo of
+a drone, drone-begotten and drone-sustained.  It is not a tone that
+a man must utter or die--nay, even though he die; and likely enough
+half the allusions and hard passages in AEschylus of which we can
+make neither head nor tail are in reality only puffs of some of the
+literary leaders of his time.
+
+The lady above referred to told me more about her parrots.  She was
+like a Nasmyth's hammer going slow--very gentle, but irresistible.
+She always read the newspaper to them.  What was the use of having a
+newspaper if one did not read it to one's parrots?
+
+"And have you divined," I asked, "to which side they incline in
+politics?"
+
+"They do not like Mr. Gladstone," was the somewhat freezing answer;
+"this is the only point on which we disagree, for I adore him.
+Don't ask more about this, it is a great grief to me.  I tell them
+everything," she continued, "and hide no secret from them."
+
+"But can any parrot be trusted to keep a secret?"
+
+"Mine can."
+
+"And on Sundays do you give them the same course of reading as on a
+week-day, or do you make a difference?"
+
+"On Sundays I always read them a genealogical chapter from the Old
+or New Testament, for I can thus introduce their names without
+profanity.  I always keep tea by me in case they should ask for it
+in the night, and I have an Etna to warm it for them; they take milk
+and sugar.  The old white-headed clergyman came to see them last
+night; it was very painful, for Jocko reminded him so strongly of
+his late . . . "
+
+I thought she was going to say "wife," but it proved to have been
+only of a parrot that he had once known and loved.
+
+One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which was
+enforced that year on the Italian frontier.  The local doctor had
+gone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some
+details.  "Then, perhaps, my dear," she said to her husband, "he is
+the quarantine."  "No, my love," replied her husband.  "The
+quarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people";
+but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as an
+enemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots.
+So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about the
+anthem.  She read in her prayer-book that in choirs and places where
+they sing "here followeth the anthem," yet the person with this most
+mysteriously sounding name never did follow.  They had a choir, and
+no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for
+they did sing--both chants and hymns.  Why, then, this persistent
+slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should
+follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk?  No doubt he
+would come some day, and then what would he be like?  Fair or dark?
+Tall or short?  Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, or
+would he be young and good-looking?  Anyhow, there was something
+wrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never did
+follow; therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next.
+
+I heard of the parrots a year or two later as giving lessons in
+Italian to an English maid.  I do not know what their terms were.
+Alas! since then both they and their mistress have joined the
+majority.  When the poor lady felt her end was near she desired (and
+the responsibility for this must rest with her, not me) that the
+birds might be destroyed, as fearing that they might come to be
+neglected, and knowing that they could never be loved again as she
+had loved them.  On being told that all was over, she said, "Thank
+you," and immediately expired.
+
+Reflecting in such random fashion, and strolling with no greater
+method, I worked my way back through Cheapside and found myself once
+more in front of Sweeting's window.  Again the turtles attracted me.
+They were alive, and so far at any rate they agreed with me.  Nay,
+they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was
+much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be
+mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily.  Any creature on
+getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be
+landed not in safety but annihilation.  It should have no communion
+with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the
+creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was
+to hook on to outside things.  What death can be more absolute than
+such absolute isolation?  Perfect death, indeed, if it were
+attainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we can
+reach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animal
+that is at the pains of defending itself.  For such want to have
+things both ways, desiring the livingness of life without its
+perils, and the safety of death without its deadness, and some of us
+do actually get this for a considerable time, but we do not get it
+by plating ourselves with armour as the turtle does.  We tried this
+in the Middle Ages, and no longer mock ourselves with the weight of
+armour that our forefathers carried in battle.  Indeed the more
+deadly the weapons of attack become the more we go into the fight
+slug-wise.
+
+Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to
+death as the turtles their pursuit of it.  They have hardly more
+than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every
+time they cross the road.  Yet death comes not to them more than to
+the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left
+inside to be defended.  Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long
+run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must
+be millions of slugs all the world over for every single turtle.  Of
+the two vanities, therefore, that of the slug seems most
+substantial.
+
+In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be
+found out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery
+save by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season,
+and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by
+giving everything as meat in due season to something else.  This is
+like the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the
+way of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the
+picnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangement
+could be made than the providing each race with a hereditary
+fallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but which
+shall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time.  "Do
+ut des" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and no
+creature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that would
+devour it.
+
+Nor is there any statement or proposition more invulnerable than
+living forms are.  Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one
+another just like living forms.  They support one another as plants
+and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith,
+rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction.  The whole universe
+is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on
+which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse
+immediately.  Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on
+vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes
+into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh:
+it is meteoric--suspended in midair; it is the baseless fabric of a
+vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more
+broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring
+it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails a system
+based on faith fails also.
+
+Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an
+inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another
+matter.  If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable
+certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper
+money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money
+enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a
+reserve?  Probably there is not, but happily there can be no such
+panic, for even though the cultured classes may do so, the
+uncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commit such
+stupendous folly.  It takes a long course of academic training to
+educate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he can
+entertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensation
+of Providence, university training is almost as costly as it is
+unprofitable.  The majority will thus be always unable to afford it,
+and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion
+rather than on demonstration.
+
+So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on my
+way home, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than I
+could get into twelve pages of the Universal Review; I must
+therefore reserve any remark which I think might perhaps entertain
+the reader for another occasion.
+
+
+
+THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND THE DOG {3}
+
+
+
+When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-
+heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and
+sufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and
+read papers over it which people come long distances to hear.  By-
+and-by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge,
+the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after
+long ages it is re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-
+rubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-
+rubbish civilisation.  So when people are old, indigent, and in all
+respects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt as
+their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch when
+they are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime.
+Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at their
+disposal, and show no stint in our consideration for them.
+
+It is the same with all our interests.  We care most about extremes
+of importance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance are
+tainted with fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love.
+Extremes of unimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are well
+disposed towards them; the means may come to do so, therefore we do
+not love them.  Hence we pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with
+pleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under no
+conceivable circumstances will it want to borrow money from us; but
+we feel less sure about a mouse, so we show it no quarter.  The
+compilers of our almanacs well know this tendency of our natures, so
+they tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor when the temple
+of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian,
+died January 16, 1826.  This is not because they could not find so
+many as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerable interest
+since the creation of the world, but because they well know we would
+rather hear of something less interesting.  We care most about what
+concerns us either very closely, or so little that practically we
+have nothing whatever to do with it.
+
+I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerable
+knowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased him
+best.  He replied without a moment's hesitation:-
+
+
+"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
+   The cow jumped over the moon;
+The little dog laughed to see such sport,
+   And the dish ran away with the spoon."
+
+
+He said this was better than anything in Italian.  They had Dante
+and Tasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothing
+comparable to "Hey diddle diddle," nor had he been able to conceive
+how any one could have written it.  Did I know the author's name,
+and had we given him a statue?  On this I told him of the young lady
+of Harrow who would go to church in a barrow, and plied him with
+whatever rhyming nonsense I could call to mind, but it was no use;
+all of these things had an element of reality that robbed them of
+half their charm, whereas "Hey diddle diddle" had nothing in it that
+could conceivably concern him.
+
+So again it is with the things that gall us most.  What is it that
+rises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and
+again for years after it has happened?  That we spent all the best
+years of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle,
+and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money for
+misleading us?  That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us?
+That we have only come to feel our strength when there is little
+strength left of any kind to feel?  These things will hardly much
+disturb a man of ordinary good temper.  But that he should have said
+this or that little unkind and wanton saying; that he should have
+gone away from this or that hotel and given a shilling too little to
+the waiter; that his clothes were shabby at such or such a garden-
+party--these things gall us as a corn will sometimes do, though the
+loss of a limb way not be seriously felt.
+
+I have been reminded lately of these considerations with more than
+common force by reading the very voluminous correspondence left by
+my grandfather, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, whose memoirs I am
+engaged in writing.  I have found a large number of interesting
+letters on subjects of serious import, but must confess that it is
+to the hardly less numerous lighter letters that I have been most
+attracted, nor do I feel sure that my eminent namesake did not share
+my predilection.  Among other letters in my possession I have one
+bundle that has been kept apart, and has evidently no connection
+with Dr. Butler's own life.  I cannot use these letters, therefore,
+for my book, but over and above the charm of their inspired
+spelling, I find them of such an extremely trivial nature that I
+incline to hope the reader may derive as much amusement from them as
+I have done myself, and venture to give them the publicity here
+which I must refuse them in my book.  The dates and signatures have,
+with the exception of Mrs. Newton's, been carefully erased, but I
+have collected that they were written by the two servants of a
+single lady who resided at no great distance from London, to two
+nieces of the said lady who lived in London itself.  The aunt never
+writes, but always gets one of the servants to do so for her.  She
+appears either as "your aunt" or as "She"; her name is not given,
+but she is evidently looked upon with a good deal of awe by all who
+had to do with her.
+
+The letters almost all of them relate to visits either of the aunt
+to London, or of the nieces to the aunt's home, which, from
+occasional allusions to hopping, I gather to have been in Kent,
+Sussex, or Surrey.  I have arranged them to the best of my power,
+and take the following to be the earliest.  It has no signature, but
+is not in the handwriting of the servant who styles herself
+Elizabeth, or Mrs. Newton.  It runs:-
+
+
+"MADAM,--Your Aunt Wishes me to inform you she will be glad if you
+will let hir know if you think of coming To hir House thiss month or
+Next as she cannot have you in September on a kount of the Hoping If
+you ar coming she thinkes she had batter Go to London on the Day you
+com to hir House the says you shall have everry Thing raddy for you
+at hir House and Mrs. Newton to meet you and stay with you till She
+returnes a gann.
+
+"if you arnot Coming thiss Summer She will be in London before thiss
+Month is out and will Sleep on the Sofy As She willnot be in London
+more thann two nits. and She Says she willnot truble you on anny a
+kount as She Will returne the Same Day before She will plage you
+anny more. but She thanks you for asking hir to London. but She says
+She cannot leve the house at prassant She sayhir Survants ar to do
+for you as she cannot lodge yours nor she willnot have thim in at
+the house anny more to brake and destroy hir thinks and beslive hir
+and make up Lies by hir and Skandel as your too did She says she
+mens to pay fore 2 Nits and one day, She says the Pepelwill let hir
+have it if you ask thim to let hir:  you Will be so good as to let
+hir know sun:  wish She is to do, as She says She dos not care anny
+thing a bout it. which way tiss she is batter than She was and
+desirs hir Love to bouth bouth.
+
+"Your aunt wises to know how the silk Clocks ar madup [how the silk
+cloaks are made up] with a Cape or a wood as she is a goin to have
+one madeup to rideout in in hir littel shas [chaise].
+
+"Charles is a butty and so good.
+
+"Mr & Mrs Newton ar quite wall & desires to be remembered to you."
+
+
+I can throw no light on the meaning of the verb to "beslive."  Each
+letter in the MS. is so admirably formed that there can be no
+question about the word being as I have given it.  Nor have I been
+able to discover what is referred to by the words "Charles is a
+butty and so good."  We shall presently meet with a Charles who
+"flies in the Fier," but that Charles appears to have been in
+London, whereas this one is evidently in Kent, or wherever the aunt
+lived.
+
+The next letter is from Mrs. Newton
+
+
+"DER Miss --, I Receve your Letter your Aunt is vary Ill and
+Lowspireted I Donte think your Aunt wood Git up all Day if My Sister
+Wasnot to Persage her We all Think hir lif is two monopolous. you
+Wish to know Who Was Liveing With your Aunt. that is My Sister and
+Willian--and Cariline--as Cock and Old Poll Pepper is Come to Stay
+With her a Littel Wile and I hoped [hopped] for Your Aunt, and Harry
+has Worked for your Aunt all the Summer.  Your Aunt and Harry Whent
+to the Wells Races and Spent a very Pleasant Day your Aunt has Lost
+Old Fanney Sow She Died about a Week a Go Harry he Wanted your Aunt
+to have her killed and send her to London and Shee Wold Fech her 11
+pounds the Farmers have Lost a Greet Deal of Cattel such as Hogs and
+Cows What theay call the Plage I Whent to your Aunt as you Wish Mee
+to Do But She Told Mee She Did not wont aney Boddy She Told Mee She
+Should Like to Come up to see you But She Cant Come know for she is
+Boddyley ill and Harry Donte Work there know But he Go up there Once
+in Two or Three Day Harry Offered is self to Go up to Live With your
+Aunt But She Made him know Ancer.  I hay Been up to your Aunt at
+Work for 5 Weeks Hopping and Ragluting Your Aunt Donte Eat nor Drink
+But vary Littel indeed.
+
+"I am Happy to Say We are Both Quite Well and I am Glad no hear you
+are Both Quite Well
+
+"MRS NEWTON."
+
+
+This seems to have made the nieces propose to pay a visit to their
+aunt, perhaps to try and relieve the monopoly of her existence and
+cheer her up a little.  In their letter, doubtless, the dog motive
+is introduced that is so finely developed presently by Mrs. Newton.
+I should like to have been able to give the theme as enounced by the
+nieces themselves, but their letters are not before me.  Mrs. Newton
+writes:-
+
+
+"MY DEAR GIRLS,--Your Aunt receiv your Letter your Aunt will Be vary
+glad to see you as it quite a greeable if it tis to you and Shee is
+Quite Willing to Eair the beds and the Rooms if you Like to Trust to
+hir and the Servantes; if not I may Go up there as you Wish.  My
+Sister Sleeps in the Best Room as she allways Did and the Coock in
+the garret and you Can have the Rooms the same as you allways Did as
+your Aunt Donte set in the Parlour She Continlery Sets in the
+Ciching. your Aunt says she Cannot Part from the dog know hows and
+She Says he will not hurt you for he is Like a Child and I can
+safeley say My Self he wonte hurt you as She Cannot Sleep in the
+Room With out him as he allWay Sleep in the Same Room as She Dose.
+your Aunt is agreeable to Git in What Coles and Wood you Wish for I
+am know happy to say your Aunt is in as Good health as ever She Was
+and She is happy to hear you are Both Well your Aunt Wishes for
+Ancer By Return of Post."
+
+
+The nieces replied that their aunt must choose between the dog and
+them, and Mrs. Newton sends a second letter which brings her
+development to a climax.  It runs:-
+
+
+"DEAR MISS --, I have Receve your Letter and i Whent up to your Aunt
+as you Wish me and i Try to Perveal With her about the Dog But she
+Wold not Put the Dog away nor it alow him to Be Tied up But She
+Still Wishes you to Come as Shee says the Dog Shall not interrup you
+for She Donte alow the Dog nor it the Cats to Go in the Parlour
+never sence She has had it Donup ferfere of Spoiling the Paint your
+Aunt think it vary Strange you Should Be so vary Much afraid of a
+Dog and She says you Cant Go out in London But What you are up a
+gance one and She says She Wonte Trust the Dog in know one hands But
+her Owne for She is afraid theay Will not fill is Belley as he Lives
+upon Rost Beeff and Rost and Boil Moutten Wich he Eats More then the
+Servantes in the House there is not aney One Wold Beable to Give
+Sattefacktion upon that account Harry offerd to Take the Dog But She
+Wood not Trust him in our hands so I Cold not Do aney thing With her
+your Aunt youse to Tell Me When we was at your House in London She
+Did not know how to make you amens and i Told her know it was the
+Time to Do it But i Considder She sets the Dog Before you your Aunt
+keep know Beer know Sprits know Wines in the House of aney Sort
+Oneley a Little Barl of Wine I made her in the Summer the Workmen
+and servantes are a Blige to Drink wauter Morning Noon and Night
+your Aunt the Same She Donte Low her Self aney Tee nor Coffee But is
+Loocking Wonderful Well
+
+"I Still Remane your Humble Servant Mrs Newton
+
+"I am vary sorry to think the Dog Perventes your Comeing
+
+"I am Glad to hear you are Both Well and we are the same."
+
+
+The nieces remained firm, and from the following letter it is plain
+the aunt gave way.  The dog motive is repeated pianissimo, and is
+not returned to--not at least by Mrs. Newton.
+
+
+"DEAR Miss --, I Receve your Letter on Thursday i Whent to your Aunt
+and i see her and She is a Greable to everry thing i asked her and
+seme so vary Much Please to see you Both Next Tuseday and she has
+sent for the Faggots to Day and she Will Send for the Coles to
+Morrow and i will Go up there to Morrow Morning and Make the Fiers
+and Tend to the Beds and sleep in it Till you Come Down your Aunt
+sends her Love to you Both and she is Quite well your Aunt Wishes
+you wold Write againe Before you Come as she ma Expeckye and the Dog
+is not to Gointo the Parlor a Tall
+
+"your Aunt kind Love to you Both & hopes you Wonte Fail in Coming
+according to Prommis
+
+MRS NEWTON."
+
+
+From a later letter it appears that the nieces did not pay their
+visit after all, and what is worse a letter had miscarried, and the
+aunt sat up expecting them from seven till twelve at night, and
+Harry had paid for "Faggots and Coles quarter of Hund.  Faggots Half
+tun of Coles 1l. 1s. 3d."  Shortly afterwards, however, "She" again
+talks of coming up to London herself and writes through her servant
+-
+
+
+"My Dear girls i Receve your kind letter & I am happy to hear you ar
+both Well and I Was in hopes of seeing of you Both Down at My House
+this spring to stay a Wile I am Quite well my self in Helth But vary
+Low Spireted I am vary sorry to hear the Misforting of Poor charles
+& how he cum to flie in the Fier I cannot think.  I should like to
+know if he is dead or a Live, and I shall come to London in August &
+stay three or four daies if it is agreable to you.  Mrs. Newton has
+lost her mother in Law 4 day March & I hope you send me word Wather
+charles is Dead or a Live as soon as possible, and will you send me
+word what Little Betty is for I cannot make her out."
+
+
+The next letter is a new handwriting, and tells the nieces of their
+aunt's death in the the following terms:  -
+
+
+"DEAR Miss --, It is my most painful duty to inform you that your
+dear aunt expired this morning comparatively easy as Hannah informs
+me and in so doing restored her soul to the custody of him whom she
+considered to be alone worthy of its care.
+
+"The doctor had visited her about five minutes previously and had
+applied a blister.
+
+"You and your sister will I am sure excuse further details at
+present and believe me with kindest remembrances to remain
+
+"Yours truly, &c."
+
+
+After a few days a lawyer's letter informs the nieces that their
+aunt had left them the bulk of her not very considerable property,
+but had charged them with an annuity of 1 pound a week to be paid to
+Harry and Mrs. Newton so long as the dog lived.
+
+The only other letters by Mrs. Newton are written on paper of a
+different and more modern size; they leave an impression of having
+been written a good many years later.  I take them as they come.
+The first is very short:-
+
+
+"DEAR Miss --, i write to say i cannot possiblely come on Wednesday
+as we have killed a pig.  your's truely,
+
+"ELIZABETH NEWTON."
+
+
+The second runs:-
+
+
+"DEAR Miss --, i hope you are both quite well in health & your Leg
+much better i am happy to say i am getting quite well again i hope
+Amandy has reached you safe by this time i sent a small parcle by
+Amandy, there was half a dozen Pats of butter & the Cakes was very
+homely and not so light as i could wish i hope by this time Sarah
+Ann has promised she will stay untill next monday as i think a few
+daies longer will not make much diferance and as her young man has
+been very considerate to wait so long as he has i think he would for
+a few days Longer dear Miss -- I wash for William and i have not got
+his clothes yet as it has been delayed by the carrier & i cannot
+possiblely get it done before Sunday and i do not Like traviling on
+a Sunday but to oblige you i would come but to come sooner i cannot
+possiblely but i hope Sarah Ann will be prevailed on once more as
+She has so many times i feel sure if she tells her young man he will
+have patient for he is a very kind young man
+
+"i remain your sincerely
+
+"ELIZABETH NEWTON."
+
+
+The last letter in my collection seems written almost within
+measurable distance of the Christmas-card era.  The sheet is headed
+by a beautifully embossed device of some holly in red and green,
+wishing the recipient of the letter a merry Xmas and a happy new
+year, while the border is crimped and edged with blue.  I know not
+what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished
+style that reminds me of Mendelssohn.  It would almost do for the
+words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte":
+
+
+"DEAR MISS MARIA,--I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind
+note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks.  I need
+scarcely say how glad I was to know that the volumes secured your
+approval, and that the announcement of the improvement in the
+condition of your Sister's legs afforded me infinite pleasure.  The
+gratifying news encouraged me in the hope that now the nature of the
+disorder is comprehended her legs will--notwithstanding the process
+may be gradual--ultimately get quite well.  The pretty Robin
+Redbreast which lay ensconced in your epistle, conveyed to me, in
+terms more eloquent than words, how much you desired me those
+Compliments which the little missive he bore in his bill expressed;
+the emblem is sweetly pretty, and now that we are again allowed to
+felicitate each other on another recurrence of the season of the
+Christian's rejoicing, permit me to tender to yourself, and by you
+to your Sister, mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and
+warmest wishes with respect to the coming year.  It is a common
+belief that if we take a retrospective view of each departing year,
+as it behoves us annually to do, we shall find the blessings which
+we have received to immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow.
+Speaking for myself I can fully subscribe to that sentiment, and
+doubtless neither Miss -- nor yourself are exceptions.  Miss --'s
+illness and consequent confinement to the house has been a severe
+trial, but in that trouble an opportunity was afforded you to prove
+a Sister's devotion and she has been enabled to realise a larger (if
+possible) display of sisterly affection.
+
+"A happy Christmas to you both, and may the new year prove a
+Cornucopia from which still greater blessings than even those we
+have hitherto received, shall issue, to benefit us all by
+contributing to our temporal happiness and, what is of higher
+importance, conducing to our felicity hereafter.
+
+"I was sorry to hear that you were so annoyed with mice and rats,
+and if I should have an opportunity to obtain a nice cat I will do
+so and send my boy to your house with it.
+
+"I remain,
+"Yours truly."
+
+
+How little what is commonly called education can do after all
+towards the formation of a good style, and what a delightful volume
+might not be entitled "Half Hours with the Worst Authors."  Why, the
+finest word I know of in the English language was coined, not by my
+poor old grandfather, whose education had left little to desire, nor
+by any of the admirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, but
+by an old matron who presided over one of the halls, or houses of
+his school.
+
+This good lady, whose name by the way was Bromfield, had a fine high
+temper of her own, or thought it politic to affect one.  One night
+when the boys were particularly noisy she burst like a hurricane
+into the hall, collared a youngster, and told him he was "the ramp-
+ingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the
+whole school."  Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and
+the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated?
+Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her
+thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed
+been at much pains to create it at all?  It came.  It was her [Greek
+text].  She did not probably know that she had done what the
+greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an
+hour before he could even approach.  Tradition says that having
+brought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and then
+after a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused,"
+and left them.
+
+I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a
+classical education consists in the check it gives to originality,
+and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people
+from using their own eyes.  That we will not be at the trouble of
+looking at things for ourselves if we can get any one to tell us
+what we ought to see goes without saying, and it is the business of
+schools and universities to assist us in this respect.  The theory
+of evolution teaches that any power not worked at pretty high
+pressure will deteriorate:  originality and freedom from affectation
+are all very well in their way, but we can easily have too much of
+them, and it is better that none should be either original or free
+from cant but those who insist on being so, no matter what
+hindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to see
+things through the regulation medium.
+
+To insist on seeing things for oneself is to be in [Greek text], or
+in plain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against
+general vigour and clearness of thought, with consequent terseness
+of expression, than that provided by the curricula of our
+universities and schools of public instruction.  If a young man, in
+spite of every effort to fit him with blinkers, will insist on
+getting rid of them, he must do so at his own risk.  He will not be
+long in finding out his mistake.  Our public schools and
+universities play the beneficent part in our social scheme that
+cattle do in forests:  they browse the seedlings down and prevent
+the growth of all but the luckiest and sturdiest.  Of course, if
+there are too many either cattle or schools, they browse so
+effectually that they find no more food, and starve till equilibrium
+is restored; but it seems to be a provision of nature that there
+should always be these alternate periods, during which either the
+cattle or the trees are getting the best of it; and, indeed, without
+such provision we should have neither the one nor the other.  At
+this moment the cattle, doubtless, are in the ascendant, and if
+university extension proceeds much farther, we shall assuredly have
+no more Mrs. Newtons and Mrs. Bromfields; but whatever is is best,
+and, on the whole, I should propose to let things find pretty much
+their own level.
+
+However this may be, who can question that the treasures hidden in
+many a country house contain sleeping beauties even fairer than
+those that I have endeavoured to waken from long sleep in the
+foregoing article?  How many Mrs. Quicklys are there not living in
+London at this present moment?  For that Mrs. Quickly was an
+invention of Shakespeare's I will not believe.  The old woman from
+whom he drew said every word that he put into Mrs. Quickly's mouth,
+and a great deal more which he did not and perhaps could not make
+use of.  This question, however, would again lead me far from my
+subject, which I should mar were I to dwell upon it longer, and
+therefore leave with the hope that it may give my readers absolutely
+no food whatever for reflection.
+
+
+
+HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE {4}
+
+
+
+I have been asked to speak on the question how to make the best of
+life, but may as well confess at once that I know nothing about it.
+I cannot think that I have made the best of my own life, nor is it
+likely that I shall make much better of what may or may not remain
+to me.  I do not even know how to make the best of the twenty
+minutes that your committee has placed at my disposal, and as for
+life as a whole, who ever yet made the best of such a colossal
+opportunity by conscious effort and deliberation?  In little things
+no doubt deliberate and conscious effort will help us, but we are
+speaking of large issues, and such kingdoms of heaven as the making
+the best of these come not by observation.
+
+The question, therefore, on which I have undertaken to address you
+is, as you must all know, fatuous, if it be faced seriously.  Life
+is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument
+as one goes on.  One cannot make the best of such impossibilities,
+and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of our
+two lives--the conscious or the unconscious--is held by the asker to
+be the truer life.  Which does the question contemplate--the life we
+know, or the life which others may know, but which we know not?
+
+Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their
+so-called existence here is as nothing.  Which is the truer life of
+Shakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the "Odyssey," and
+of Jane Austen--the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion
+within their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still
+palpitating in ours?  In whose consciousness does their truest life
+consist--their own, or ours?  Can Shakespeare be said to have begun
+his true life till a hundred years or so after he was dead and
+buried?  His physical life was but as an embryonic stage, a coming
+up out of darkness, a twilight and dawn before the sunrise of that
+life of the world to come which he was to enjoy hereafter.  We all
+live for a while after we are gone hence, but we are for the most
+part stillborn, or at any rate die in infancy, as regards that life
+which every age and country has recognised as higher and truer than
+the one of which we are now sentient.  As the life of the race is
+larger, longer, and in all respects more to be considered than that
+of the individual, so is the life we live in others larger and more
+important than the one we live in ourselves.  This appears nowhere
+perhaps more plainly than in the case of great teachers, who often
+in the lives of their pupils produce an effect that reaches far
+beyond anything produced while their single lives were yet
+unsupplemented by those other lives into which they infused their
+own.
+
+Death to such people is the ending of a short life, but it does not
+touch the life they are already living in those whom they have
+taught; and happily, as none can know when he shall die, so none can
+make sure that he too shall not live long beyond the grave; for the
+life after death is like money before it--no one can be sure that it
+may not fall to him or her even at the eleventh hour.  Money and
+immortality come in such odd unaccountable ways that no one is cut
+off from hope.  We may not have made either of them for ourselves,
+but yet another may give them to us in virtue of his or her love,
+which shall illumine us for ever, and establish us in some heavenly
+mansion whereof we neither dreamed nor shall ever dream.  Look at
+the Doge Loredano Loredani, the old man's smile upon whose face has
+been reproduced so faithfully in so many lands that it can never
+henceforth be forgotten--would he have had one hundredth part of the
+life he now lives had he not been linked awhile with one of those
+heaven-sent men who know che cosa e amor?  Look at Rembrandt's old
+woman in our National Gallery; had she died before she was eighty-
+three years old she would not have been living now.  Then, when she
+was eighty-three, immortality perched upon her as a bird on a
+withered bough.
+
+I seem to hear some one say that this is a mockery, a piece of
+special pleading, a giving of stones to those that ask for bread.
+Life is not life unless we can feel it, and a life limited to a
+knowledge of such fraction of our work as may happen to survive us
+is no true life in other people; salve it as we may, death is not
+life any more than black is white.
+
+The objection is not so true as it sounds.  I do not deny that we
+had rather not die, nor do I pretend that much even in the case of
+the most favoured few can survive them beyond the grave.  It is only
+because this is so that our own life is possible; others have made
+room for us, and we should make room for others in our turn without
+undue repining.  What I maintain is that a not inconsiderable number
+of people do actually attain to a life beyond the grave which we can
+all feel forcibly enough, whether they can do so or not--that this
+life tends with increasing civilisation to become more and more
+potent, and that it is better worth considering, in spite of its
+being unfelt by ourselves, than any which we have felt or can ever
+feel in our own persons.
+
+Take an extreme case.  A group of people are photographed by
+Edison's new process--say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, with
+any two of the finest men singers the age has known--let them be
+photographed incessantly for half an hour while they perform a scene
+in "Lohengrin"; let all be done stereoscopically.  Let them be
+phonographed at the same time so that their minutest shades of
+intonation are preserved, let the slides be coloured by a competent
+artist, and then let the scene be called suddenly into sight and
+sound, say a hundred years hence.  Are those people dead or alive?
+Dead to themselves they are, but while they live so powerfully and
+so livingly in us, which is the greater paradox--to say that they
+are alive or that they are dead?  To myself it seems that their life
+in others would be more truly life than their death to themselves is
+death.  Granted that they do not present all the phenomena of life--
+who ever does so even when he is held to be alive?  We are held to
+be alive because we present a sufficient number of living phenomena
+to let the others go without saying; those who see us take the part
+for the whole here as in everything else, and surely, in the case
+supposed above, the phenomena of life predominate so powerfully over
+those of death, that the people themselves must be held to be more
+alive than dead.  Our living personality is, as the word implies,
+only our mask, and those who still own such a mask as I have
+supposed have a living personality.  Granted again that the case
+just put is an extreme one; still many a man and many a woman has so
+stamped him or herself on his work that, though we would gladly have
+the aid of such accessories as we doubtless presently shall have to
+the livingness of our great dead, we can see them very sufficiently
+through the master pieces they have left us.
+
+As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it.  The life of the
+embryo was unconscious before birth, and so is the life--I am
+speaking only of the life revealed to us by natural religion--after
+death.  But as the embryonic and infant life of which we were
+unconscious was the most potent factor in our after life of
+consciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce in
+others after death, and it may be even before it on those who have
+never seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and more
+abiding life, and the one which those who would make the best of
+their sojourn here will take most into their consideration.
+
+Unconsciousness is no bar to livingness.  Our conscious actions are
+a drop in the sea as compared with our unconscious ones.  Could we
+know all the life that is in us by way of circulation, nutrition,
+breathing, waste and repair, we should learn what an infinitesimally
+small part consciousness plays in our present existence; yet our
+unconscious life is as truly life as our conscious life, and though
+it is unconscious to itself it emerges into an indirect and
+vicarious consciousness in our other and conscious self, which
+exists but in virtue of our unconscious self.  So we have also a
+vicarious consciousness in others.  The unconscious life of those
+that have gone before us has in great part moulded us into such men
+and women as we are, and our own unconscious lives will in like
+manner have a vicarious consciousness in others, though we be dead
+enough to it in ourselves.
+
+If it is again urged that it matters not to us how much we may be
+alive in others, if we are to know nothing about it, I reply that
+the common instinct of all who are worth considering gives the lie
+to such cynicism.  I see here present some who have achieved, and
+others who no doubt will achieve, success in literature.  Will one
+of them hesitate to admit that it is a lively pleasure to her to
+feel that on the other side of the world some one may be smiling
+happily over her work, and that she is thus living in that person
+though she knows nothing about it?  Here it seems to me that true
+faith comes in.  Faith does not consist, as the Sunday School pupil
+said, "in the power of believing that which we know to be untrue."
+It consists in holding fast that which the healthiest and most
+kindly instincts of the best and most sensible men and women are
+intuitively possessed of, without caring to require much evidence
+further than the fact that such people are so convinced; and for my
+own part I find the best men and women I know unanimous in feeling
+that life in others, even though we know nothing about it, is
+nevertheless a thing to be desired and gratefully accepted if we can
+get it either before death or after.  I observe also that a large
+number of men and women do actually attain to such life, and in some
+cases continue so to live, if not for ever, yet to what is
+practically much the same thing.  Our life then in this world is, to
+natural religion as much as to revealed, a period of probation.  The
+use we make of it is to settle how far we are to enter into another,
+and whether that other is to be a heaven of just affection or a hell
+of righteous condemnation.
+
+Who, then, are the most likely so to run that they may obtain this
+veritable prize of our high calling?  Setting aside such lucky
+numbers drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have
+referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chances and
+changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on the whole
+are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those
+who never so much as saw them in the flesh, and know not even their
+names?  There is a nisus, a straining in the dull dumb economy of
+things, in virtue of which some, whether they will it and know it or
+no, are more likely to live after death than others, and who are
+these?  Those who aimed at it as by some great thing that they would
+do to make them famous?  Those who have lived most in themselves and
+for themselves, or those who have been most ensouled consciously,
+but perhaps better unconsciously, directly but more often
+indirectly, by the most living souls past and present that have
+flitted near them?  Can we think of a man or woman who grips us
+firmly, at the thought of whom we kindle when we are alone in our
+honest daw's plumes, with none to admire or shrug his shoulders, can
+we think of one such, the secret of whose power does not lie in the
+charm of his or her personality--that is to say, in the wideness of
+his or her sympathy with, and therefore life in and communion with
+other people?  In the wreckage that comes ashore from the sea of
+time there is much tinsel stuff that we must preserve and study if
+we would know our own times and people; granted that many a dead
+charlatan lives long and enters largely and necessarily into our own
+lives; we use them and throw them away when we have done with them.
+I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and Alexander
+Popes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mention
+for fear of offending.  They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a
+Museum, serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with
+no vivid or vivifying hold upon us.  They seem to be alive, but are
+not.  I am speaking of those who do actually live in us, and move us
+to higher achievements though they be long dead, whose life thrusts
+out our own and overrides it.  I speak of those who draw us ever
+more towards them from youth to age, and to think of whom is to feel
+at once that we are in the hands of those we love, and whom we would
+most wish to resemble.  What is the secret of the hold that these
+people have upon us?  Is it not that while, conventionally speaking,
+alive, they most merged their lives in, and were in fullest
+communion with those among whom they lived?  They found their lives
+in losing them.  We never love the memory of any one unless we feel
+that he or she was himself or herself a lover.
+
+I have seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-
+called immortality even of the most immortal is not for ever.  I see
+a passage to this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write.
+I will quote it.  The writer says:-
+
+
+"So, it seems to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate of
+departed artists.  If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy life
+they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to distant
+but inevitable death.  They can no longer, as heretofore, speak
+directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking their tears or
+laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry, of which
+imagination holds the secret.  Driven from the marketplace they
+become first the companions of the student, then the victims of the
+specialist.  He who would still hold familiar intercourse with them
+must train himself to penetrate the veil which in ever-thickening
+folds conceals them from the ordinary gaze; he must catch the tone
+of a vanished society, he must move in a circle of alien
+associations, he must think in a language not his own." {5}
+
+
+This is crying for the moon, or rather pretending to cry for it, for
+the writer is obviously insincere.  I see the Saturday Review says
+the passage I have just quoted "reaches almost to poetry," and
+indeed I find many blank verses in it, some of them very aggressive.
+No prose is free from an occasional blank verse, and a good writer
+will not go hunting over his work to rout them out, but nine or ten
+in little more than as many lines is indeed reaching too near to
+poetry for good prose.  This, however, is a trifle, and might pass
+if the tone of the writer was not so obviously that of cheap
+pessimism.  I know not which is cheapest, pessimism or optimism.
+One forces lights, the other darks; both are equally untrue to good
+art, and equally sure of their effect with the groundlings.  The one
+extenuates, the other sets down in malice.  The first is the more
+amiable lie, but both are lies, and are known to be so by those who
+utter them.  Talk about catching the tone of a vanished society to
+understand Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini!  It's nonsense--the folds
+do not thicken in front of these men; we understand them as well as
+those among whom they went about in the flesh, and perhaps better.
+Homer and Shakespeare speak to us probably far more effectually than
+they did to the men of their own time, and most likely we have them
+at their best.  I cannot think that Shakespeare talked better than
+we hear him now in "Hamlet" or "Henry the Fourth"; like enough he
+would have been found a very disappointing person in a drawing-room.
+People stamp themselves on their work; if they have not done so they
+are naught; if they have we have them; and for the most part they
+stamp themselves deeper in their work than on their talk.  No doubt
+Shakespeare and Handel will be one day clean forgotten, as though
+they had never been born.  The world will in the end die; mortality
+therefore itself is not immortal, and when death dies the life of
+these men will die with it--but not sooner.  It is enough that they
+should live within us and move us for many ages as they have and
+will.  Such immortality, therefore, as some men and women are born
+to, achieve, or have thrust upon them, is a practical if not a
+technical immortality, and he who would have more let him have
+nothing.
+
+I see I have drifted into speaking rather of how to make the best of
+death than of life, but who can speak of life without his thoughts
+turning instantly to that which is beyond it?  He or she who has
+made the best of the life after death has made the best of the life
+before it; who cares one straw for any such chances and changes as
+will commonly befall him here if he is upheld by the full and
+certain hope of everlasting life in the affections of those that
+shall come after?  If the life after death is happy in the hearts of
+others, it matters little how unhappy was the life before it.
+
+And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall have
+disappointed you.  But for the great attention which is being paid
+to the work from which I have quoted above, I should not have
+thought it well to insist on points with which you are, I doubt not,
+as fully impressed as I am:  but that book weakens the sanctions of
+natural religion, and minimises the comfort which it affords us,
+while it does more to undermine than to support the foundations of
+what is commonly called belief.  Therefore I was glad to embrace
+this opportunity of protesting.  Otherwise I should not have been so
+serious on a matter that transcends all seriousness.  Lord
+Beaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect.  When asked to give a
+rule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not let him try
+and find out who wrote the letters of Junius."  Pressed for further
+counsel he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--and he
+would say no more.  Don't bore people.  And yet I am by no means
+sure that a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unless
+he who addresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially if
+they have paid any money for hearing him.  My great namesake said,
+"Surely the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," and
+great as the pleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, I
+believe he was right.  So I remember a poem which came out some
+thirty years ago in Punch, about a young lady who went forth in
+quest to "Some burden make or burden bear, but which she did not
+greatly care, oh Miserie."  So, again, all the holy men and women
+who in the Middle Ages professed to have discovered how to make the
+best of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should have
+a large place in their programme.  Still there are limits, and I
+close not without fear that I may have exceeded them.
+
+
+
+THE SANCTUARY OF MONTRIGONE {6}
+
+
+
+The only place in the Valsesia, except Varallo, where I at present
+suspect the presence of Tabachetti {7} is at Montrigone, a little-
+known sanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quarters of a
+mile south of Borgo-Sesia station.  The situation is, of course,
+lovely, but the sanctuary does not offer any features of
+architectural interest.  The sacristan told me it was founded in
+1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintending
+and completing the work undertaken here by himself and Giacomo
+Ferro, fell ill and died.  I do not know whether or no there was an
+earlier sanctuary on the same site, but was told it was built on the
+demolition of a stronghold belonging to the Counts of Biandrate.
+
+The incidents which it illustrates are treated with even more than
+the homeliness usual in works of this description when not dealing
+with such solemn events as the death and passion of Christ.  Except
+when these subjects were being represented, something of the
+latitude, and even humour, allowed in the old mystery plays was
+permitted, doubtless from a desire to render the work more
+attractive to the peasants, who were the most numerous and most
+important pilgrims.  It is not until faith begins to be weak that it
+fears an occasionally lighter treatment of semi-sacred subjects, and
+it is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spirit prevailing
+at this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhat to the
+more pagan character of the place.  Of irreverence, in the sense of
+a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import,
+there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain
+unbending of the bow at Montrigone which is not perceivable at
+Varallo.
+
+The first chapel to the left on entering the church is that of the
+Birth of the Virgin.  St. Anne is sitting up in bed.  She is not at
+all ill--in fact, considering that the Virgin has only been born
+about five minutes, she is wonderful; still the doctors think it may
+be perhaps better that she should keep her room for half an hour
+longer, so the bed has been festooned with red and white paper
+roses, and the counterpane is covered with bouquets in baskets and
+in vases of glass and china.  These cannot have been there during
+the actual birth of the Virgin, so I suppose they had been in
+readiness, and were brought in from an adjoining room as soon as the
+baby had been born.  A lady on her left is bringing in some more
+flowers, which St. Anne is receiving with a smile and most gracious
+gesture of the hands.  The first thing she asked for, when the birth
+was over, was for her three silver hearts.  These were immediately
+brought to her, and she has got them all on, tied round her neck
+with a piece of blue silk ribbon.
+
+Dear mamma has come.  We felt sure she would, and that any little
+misunderstandings between her and Joachim would ere long be
+forgotten and forgiven.  They are both so good and sensible if they
+would only understand one another.  At any rate, here she is, in
+high state at the right hand of the bed.  She is dressed in black,
+for she has lost her husband some few years previously, but I do not
+believe a smarter, sprier old lady for her years could be found in
+Palestine, nor yet that either Giovanni d'Enrico or Giacomo Ferro
+could have conceived or executed such a character.  The sacristan
+wanted to have it that she was not a woman at all, but was a
+portrait of St. Joachim, the Virgin's father.  "Sembra una donna,"
+he pleaded more than once, "ma non e donna."  Surely, however, in
+works of art even more than in other things, there is no "is" but
+seeming, and if a figure seems female it must be taken as such.
+Besides, I asked one of the leading doctors at Varallo whether the
+figure was man or woman.  He said it was evident I was not married,
+for that if I had been I should have seen at once that she was not
+only a woman but a mother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as he
+called it, "una suocera tremenda," and this without knowing that I
+wanted her to be a mother-in-law myself.  Unfortunately she had no
+real drapery, so I could not settle the question as my friend Mr. H.
+F. Jones and I had been able to do at Varallo with the figure of Eve
+that had been turned into a Roman soldier assisting at the capture
+of Christ.  I am not, however, disposed to waste more time upon
+anything so obvious, and will content myself with saying that we
+have here the Virgin's grandmother.  I had never had the pleasure,
+so far as I remembered, of meeting this lady before, and was glad to
+have an opportunity of making her acquaintance.
+
+Tradition says that it was she who chose the Virgin's name, and if
+so, what a debt of gratitude do we not owe her for her judicious
+selection!  It makes one shudder to think what might have happened
+if she had named the child Keren-Happuch, as poor Job's daughter was
+called.  How could we have said, "Ave Keren-Happuch!"  What would
+the musicians have done?  I forget whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was
+a man or a woman, but there were plenty of names quite as
+unmanageable at the Virgin's grandmother's option, and we cannot
+sufficiently thank her for having chosen one that is so euphonious
+in every language which we need take into account.  For this reason
+alone we should not grudge her her portrait, but we should try to
+draw the line here.  I do not think we ought to give the Virgin's
+great-grandmother a statue.  Where is it to end?  It is like Mr.
+Crookes's ultimissimate atoms; we used to draw the line at ultimate
+atoms, and now it seems we are to go a step farther back and have
+ultimissimate atoms.  How long, I wonder, will it be before we feel
+that it will be a material help to us to have ultimissimissimate
+atoms?  Quavers stopped at demi-semi-demi, but there is no reason to
+suppose that either atoms or ancestresses of the Virgin will be so
+complacent.
+
+I have said that on St. Anne's left hand there is a lady who is
+bringing in some flowers.  St. Anne was always passionately fond of
+flowers.  There is a pretty story told about her in one of the
+Fathers, I forget which, to the effect that when a child she was
+asked which she liked best--cakes or flowers?  She could not yet
+speak plainly and lisped out, "Oh fowses, pretty fowses"; she added,
+however, with a sigh and as a kind of wistful corollary, "but cakes
+are very nice."  She is not to have any cakes, just now, but as soon
+as she has done thanking the lady for her beautiful nosegay, she is
+to have a couple of nice new-laid eggs, that are being brought her
+by another lady.  Valsesian women immediately after their
+confinement always have eggs beaten up with wine and sugar, and one
+can tell a Valsesian Birth of the Virgin from a Venetian or a
+Florentine by the presence of the eggs.  I learned this from an
+eminent Valsesian professor of medicine, who told me that, though
+not according to received rules, the eggs never seemed to do any
+harm.  Here they are evidently to be beaten up, for there is neither
+spoon nor egg-cup, and we cannot suppose that they were hard-boiled.
+On the other hand, in the Middle Ages Italians never used egg-cups
+and spoons for boiled eggs.  The mediaeval boiled egg was always
+eaten by dipping bread into the yolk.
+
+Behind the lady who is bringing in the eggs is the under-under-nurse
+who is at the fire warming a towel.  In the foreground we have the
+regulation midwife holding the regulation baby (who, by the way, was
+an astonishingly fine child for only five minutes old).  Then comes
+the under-nurse--a good buxom creature, who, as usual, is feeling
+the water in the bath to see that it is of the right temperature.
+Next to her is the head-nurse, who is arranging the cradle.  Behind
+the head-nurse is the under-under-nurse's drudge, who is just going
+out upon some errands.  Lastly--for by this time we have got all
+round the chapel--we arrive at the Virgin's grandmother's-body-
+guard, a stately, responsible-looking lady, standing in waiting upon
+her mistress.  I put it to the reader--is it conceivable that St.
+Joachim should have been allowed in such a room at such a time, or
+that he should have had the courage to avail himself of the
+permission, even though it had been extended to him?  At any rate,
+is it conceivable that he should have been allowed to sit on St.
+Anne's right hand, laying down the law with a "Marry, come up here,"
+and a "Marry, go-down there," and a couple of such unabashed collars
+as the old lady has put on for the occasion?
+
+Moreover (for I may as well demolish this mischievous confusion
+between St. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), the
+merest tyro in hagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home when
+the Virgin was born.  He had been hustled out of the temple for
+having no children, and had fled desolate and dismayed into the
+wilderness.  It shows how silly people are, for all the time he was
+going, if they had only waited a little, to be the father of the
+most remarkable person of purely human origin who had ever been
+born, and such a parent as this should surely not be hurried.  The
+story is told in the frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only a
+quarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and no one can have known it
+better than D'Enrico.  The frescoes are explained by written
+passages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, an angel
+came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and told
+him the Virgin was to be born.  Then, later on, the same young
+gentleman appeared to him again, and bade him "in God's name be
+comforted, and turn again to his content," for the Virgin had been
+actually born.  On which St. Joachim, who seems to have been of
+opinion that marriage after all WAS rather a failure, said that, as
+things were going on so nicely without him, he would stay in the
+desert just a little longer, and offered up a lamb as a pretext to
+gain time.  Perhaps he guessed about his mother-in-law, or he may
+have asked the angel.  Of course, even in spite of such evidence as
+this I may be mistaken about the Virgin's grandmother's sex, and the
+sacristan may be right; but I can only say that if the lady sitting
+by St. Anne's bedside at Montrigone is the Virgin's father--well, in
+that case I must reconsider a good deal that I have been accustomed
+to believe was beyond question.
+
+Taken singly, I suppose that none of the figures in the chapel,
+except the Virgin's grandmother, should be rated very highly.  The
+under-nurse is the next best figure, and might very well be
+Tabachetti's, for neither Giovanni d'Enrico nor Giacomo Ferro was
+successful with his female characters.  There is not a single really
+comfortable woman in any chapel by either of them on the Sacro Monte
+at Varallo.  Tabachetti, on the other hand, delighted in women; if
+they were young he made them comely and engaging, if they were old
+he gave them dignity and individual character, and the under-nurse
+is much more in accordance with Tabachetti's habitual mental
+attitude than with D'Enrico's or Giacomo Ferro's.  Still there are
+only four figures out of the eleven that are mere otiose supers, and
+taking the work as a whole it leaves a pleasant impression as being
+throughout naive and homely, and sometimes, which is of less
+importance, technically excellent.
+
+Allowance must, of course, be made for tawdry accessories and
+repeated coats of shiny oleaginous paint--very disagreeable where it
+has peeled off and almost more so where it has not.  What work could
+stand against such treatment as the Valsesian terra-cotta figures
+have had to put up with?  Take the Venus of Milo; let her be done in
+terra-cotta, and have run, not much, but still something, in the
+baking; paint her pink, two oils, all over, and then varnish her--it
+will help to preserve the paint; glue a lot of horsehair on to her
+pate, half of which shall have come off, leaving the glue still
+showing; scrape her, not too thoroughly, get the village drawing-
+master to paint her again, and the drawing-master in the next
+provincial town to put a forest background behind her with the
+brightest emerald-green leaves that he can do for the money; let
+this painting and scraping and repainting be repeated several times
+over; festoon her with pink and white flowers made of tissue paper;
+surround her with the cheapest German imitations of the cheapest
+decorations that Birmingham can produce; let the night air and
+winter fogs get at her for three hundred years, and how easy, I
+wonder, will it be to see the goddess who will be still in great
+part there?  True, in the case of the Birth of the Virgin chapel at
+Montrigone, there is no real hair and no fresco background, but time
+has had abundant opportunities without these.  I will conclude my
+notice of this chapel by saying that on the left, above the door
+through which the under-under-nurse's drudge is about to pass, there
+is a good painted terra-cotta bust, said--but I believe on no
+authority--to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico.  Others say that
+the Virgin's grandmother is Giovanni d'Enrico, but this is even more
+absurd than supposing her to be St. Joachim.
+
+The next chapel to the Birth of the Virgin is that of the
+Sposalizio.  There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, but
+still there are some very good ones.  The best have no taint of
+barocco; the man who did them, whoever he may have been, had
+evidently a good deal of life and go, was taking reasonable pains,
+and did not know too much.  Where this is the case no work can fail
+to please.  Some of the figures have real hair and some terra cotta.
+There is no fresco background worth mentioning.  A man sitting on
+the steps of the altar with a book on his lap, and holding up his
+hand to another, who is leaning over him and talking to him, is
+among the best figures; some of the disappointed suitors who are
+breaking their wands are also very good.
+
+The angel in the Annunciation chapel, which comes next in order, is
+a fine, burly, ship's-figurehead, commercial-hotel sort of being
+enough, but the Virgin is very ordinary.  There is no real hair and
+no fresco background, only three dingy old blistered pictures of no
+interest whatever.
+
+In the visit of Mary to Elizabeth there are three pleasing
+subordinate lady attendants, two to the left and one to the right of
+the principal figures; but these figures themselves are not
+satisfactory.  There is no fresco background.  Some of the figures
+have real hair and some terra cotta.
+
+In the Circumcision and Purification chapel--for both these events
+seem contemplated in the one that follows--there are doves, but
+there is neither dog nor knife.  Still Simeon, who has the infant
+Saviour in his arms, is looking at him in a way which can only mean
+that, knife or no knife, the matter is not going to end here.  At
+Varallo they have now got a dreadful knife for the Circumcision
+chapel.  They had none last winter.  What they have now got would do
+very well to kill a bullock with, but could not be used
+professionally with safety for any animal smaller than a rhinoceros.
+I imagine that some one was sent to Novara to buy a knife, and that,
+thinking it was for the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, he got the
+biggest he could see.  Then when he brought it back people said
+"chow" several times, and put it upon the table and went away.
+
+Returning to Montrigone, the Simeon is an excellent figure, and the
+Virgin is fairly good, but the prophetess Anna, who stands just
+behind her, is by far the most interesting in the group, and is
+alone enough to make me feel sure that Tabachetti gave more or less
+help here, as he had done years before at Orta.  She, too, like the
+Virgin's grandmother, is a widow lady, and wears collars of a cut
+that seems to have prevailed ever since the Virgin was born some
+twenty years previously.  There is a largeness and simplicity of
+treatment about the figure to which none but an artist of the
+highest rank can reach, and D'Enrico was not more than a second or
+third-rate man.  The hood is like Handel's Truth sailing upon the
+broad wings of Time, a prophetic strain that nothing but the old
+experience of a great poet can reach.  The lips of the prophetess
+are for the moment closed, but she has been prophesying all the
+morning, and the people round the wall in the background are in
+ecstasies at the lucidity with which she has explained all sorts of
+difficulties that they had never been able to understand till now.
+They are putting their forefingers on their thumbs and their thumbs
+on their forefingers, and saying how clearly they see it all and
+what a wonderful woman Anna is.  A prophet indeed is not generally
+without honour save in his own country, but then a country is
+generally not without honour save with its own prophet, and Anna has
+been glorifying her country rather than reviling it.  Besides, the
+rule may not have applied to prophetesses.
+
+The Death of the Virgin is the last of the six chapels inside the
+church itself.  The Apostles, who of course are present, have all of
+them real hair, but, if I may say so, they want a wash and a brush-
+up so very badly that I cannot feel any confidence in writing about
+them.  I should say that, take them all round, they are a good
+average sample of apostle as apostles generally go.  Two or three of
+them are nervously anxious to find appropriate quotations in books
+that lie open before them, which they are searching with eager
+haste; but I do not see one figure about which I should like to say
+positively that it is either good or bad.  There is a good bust of a
+man, matching the one in the Birth of the Virgin chapel, which is
+said to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico, but it is not known whom
+it represents.
+
+Outside the church, in three contiguous cells that form part of the
+foundations, are:-
+
+
+1.  A dead Christ, the head of which is very impressive while the
+rest of the figure is poor.  I examined the treatment of the hair,
+which is terra-cotta, and compared it with all other like hair in
+the chapels above described; I could find nothing like it, and think
+it most likely that Giacomo Ferro did the figure, and got Tabachetti
+to do the head, or that they brought the head from some unused
+figure by Tabachetti at Varallo, for I know no other artist of the
+time and neighbourhood who could have done it.
+
+2.  A Magdalene in the desert.  The desert is a little coal-cellar
+of an arch, containing a skull and a profusion of pink and white
+paper bouquets, the two largest of which the Magdalene is hugging
+while she is saying her prayers.  She is a very self-sufficient
+lady, who we may be sure will not stay in the desert a day longer
+than she can help, and while there will flirt even with the skull if
+she can find nothing better to flirt with.  I cannot think that her
+repentance is as yet genuine, and as for her praying there is no
+object in her doing so, for she does not want anything.
+
+3.  In the next desert there is a very beautiful figure of St. John
+the Baptist kneeling and looking upwards.  This figure puzzles me
+more than any other at Montrigone; it appears to be of the fifteenth
+rather than the sixteenth century; it hardly reminds me of
+Gaudenzio, and still less of any other Valsesian artist.  It is a
+work of unusual beauty, but I can form no idea as to its authorship.
+
+
+I wrote the foregoing pages in the church at Montrigone itself,
+having brought my camp-stool with me.  It was Sunday; the church was
+open all day, but there was no mass said, and hardly any one came.
+The sacristan was a kind, gentle, little old man, who let me do
+whatever I wanted.  He sat on the doorstep of the main door, mending
+vestments, and to this end was cutting up a fine piece of figured
+silk from one to two hundred years old, which, if I could have got
+it, for half its value, I should much like to have bought.  I sat in
+the cool of the church while he sat in the doorway, which was still
+in shadow, snipping and snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with
+admirable neatness.  He made a charming picture, with the arched
+portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind
+him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and
+hillside.  Every now and then he would come and chirrup about
+Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his
+Joachim was some one else and not Joachim at all.  I said I was very
+sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman.  He asked me what he
+was to do.  He had known it, man and boy, this sixty years, and had
+always shown it as St. Joachim; he had never heard any one but
+myself question his ascription, and could not suddenly change his
+mind about it at the bidding of a stranger.  At the same time he
+felt it was a very serious thing to continue showing it as the
+Virgin's father if it was really her grandmother.  I told him I
+thought this was a case for his spiritual director, and that if he
+felt uncomfortable about it he should consult his parish priest and
+do as he was told.
+
+On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having made
+acquaintance with a new and, in many respects, interesting work, I
+could not get the sacristan and our difference of opinion out of my
+head.  What, I asked myself, are the differences that unhappily
+divide Christendom, and what are those that divide Christendom from
+modern schools of thought, but a seeing of Joachims as the Virgin's
+grandmothers on a larger scale?  True, we cannot call figures
+Joachim when we know perfectly well that they are nothing of the
+kind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when I called
+Joachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind than I
+have perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who have
+been taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as something
+different.  I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow in
+the preceding article.  If the reader differs from me, let me ask
+him to remember how hard it is for one who has got a figure well
+into his head as the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim.
+
+
+
+A MEDIEVAL GIRL SCHOOL {8}
+
+
+
+This last summer I revisited Oropa, near Biella, to see what
+connection I could find between the Oropa chapels and those at
+Varallo.  I will take this opportunity of describing the chapels at
+Oropa, and more especially the remarkable fossil, or petrified girl
+school, commonly known as the Dimora, or Sojourn of the Virgin Mary
+in the Temple.
+
+If I do not take these works so seriously as the reader may expect,
+let me beg him, before he blames me, to go to Oropa and see the
+originals for himself.  Have the good people of Oropa themselves
+taken them very seriously?  Are we in an atmosphere where we need be
+at much pains to speak with bated breath?  We, as is well known,
+love to take even our pleasures sadly; the Italians take even their
+sadness allegramente, and combine devotion with amusement in a
+manner that we shall do well to study if not imitate.  For this best
+agrees with what we gather to have been the custom of Christ
+himself, who, indeed, never speaks of austerity but to condemn it.
+If Christianity is to be a living faith, it must penetrate a man's
+whole life, so that he can no more rid himself of it than he can of
+his flesh and bones or of his breathing.  The Christianity that can
+be taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book is
+Christianity in name only.  The true Christian can no more part from
+Christ in mirth than in sorrow.  And, after all, what is the essence
+of Christianity?  What is the kernel of the nut?  Surely common
+sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the
+charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times.  The essence of
+Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life,
+but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking
+the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in
+oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these
+behalfs finds more than he has lost.  What can Agnosticism do
+against such Christianity as this?  I should be shocked if anything
+I had ever written or shall ever write should seem to make light of
+these things.  I should be shocked also if I did not know how to be
+amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to be
+amusing.
+
+The reader may need to be reminded that Oropa is among the somewhat
+infrequent sanctuaries at which the Madonna and infant Christ are
+not white, but black.  I shall return to this peculiarity of Oropa
+later on, but will leave it for the present.  For the general
+characteristics of the place I must refer the reader to my book,
+"Alps and Sanctuaries." {9}  I propose to confine myself here to the
+ten or a dozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures,
+painted up to nature, that form one of the main features of the
+place.  At a first glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem
+uninteresting; I venture to think, however, that some, if not most
+of them, though falling a good deal short of the best work at
+Varallo and Crea, are still in their own way of considerable
+importance.  The first chapel with which we need concern ourselves
+is numbered 4, and shows the Conception of the Virgin Mary.  It
+represents St. Anne as kneeling before a terrific dragon or, as the
+Italians call it, "insect," about the size of a Crystal Palace
+pleiosaur.  This "insect" is supposed to have just had its head
+badly crushed by St. Anne, who seems to be begging its pardon.  The
+text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum" is written outside the chapel.  The
+figures have no artistic interest.  As regards dragons being called
+insects, the reader may perhaps remember that the island of S.
+Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta, was infested with insetti, which S.
+Giulio destroyed, and which appear, in a fresco underneath the
+church on the island, to have been monstrous and ferocious dragons;
+but I cannot remember whether their bodies are divided into three
+sections, and whether or no they have exactly six legs--without
+which, I am told, they cannot be true insects.
+
+The fifth chapel represents the birth of the Virgin.  Having
+obtained permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large
+and deep on the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that
+this date covers the whole.  There is a Queen Anne feeling
+throughout the composition, and if we were told that the sculptor
+and Francis Bird, sculptor of the statue in front of St. Paul's
+Cathedral, had studied under the same master, we could very well
+believe it.  The apartment in which the Virgin was born is spacious,
+and in striking contrast to the one in which she herself gave birth
+to the Redeemer.  St. Anne occupies the centre of the composition,
+in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the George
+Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person.  Both
+are gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous
+obligation she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be
+imploring her not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they
+are giving her neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink.  I
+know no other birth of the Virgin in which St. Anne wants so little
+keeping up.
+
+I have explained in my book "Ex Voto," {10} but should perhaps
+repeat here, that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of
+the Virgin, as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne
+always has eggs immediately after the infant is born, and usually a
+good deal more, whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or
+drink.  The eggs are in accordance with a custom that still prevails
+among the peasant classes in the Valsesia, where women on giving
+birth to a child generally are given a sabaglione--an egg beaten up
+with a little wine, or rum, and sugar.  East of Milan the Virgin's
+mother does not have eggs, and I suppose, from the absence of the
+eggs at Oropa, that the custom above referred to does not prevail in
+the Biellese district.  The Virgin also is invariably washed.  St.
+John the Baptist, when he is born at all, which is not very often,
+is also washed; but I have not observed that St. Elizabeth has
+anything like the attention paid her that is given to St. Anne.
+What, however, is wanting here at Oropa in meat and drink is made up
+in Cupids; they swarm like flies on the walls, clouds, cornices, and
+capitals of columns.
+
+Against the right-hand wall are two lady-helps, each warming a towel
+at a glowing fire, to be ready against the baby should come out of
+its bath; while in the right-hand foreground we have the levatrice,
+who having discharged her task, and being now so disposed, has
+removed the bottle from the chimney-piece, and put it near some
+bread, fruit and a chicken, over which she is about to discuss the
+confinement with two other gossips.  The levatrice is a very
+characteristic figure, but the best in the chapel is the one of the
+head nurse, near the middle of the composition; she has now the
+infant in full charge, and is showing it to St. Joachim, with an
+expression as though she were telling him that her husband was a
+merry man.  I am afraid Shakespeare was dead before the sculptor was
+born, otherwise I should have felt certain that he had drawn
+Juliet's nurse from this figure.  As for the little Virgin herself,
+I believe her to be a fine boy of about ten months old.  Viewing the
+work as a whole, if I only felt more sure what artistic merit really
+is, I should say that, though the chapel cannot be rated very highly
+from some standpoints, there are others from which it may be praised
+warmly enough.  It is innocent of anatomy-worship, free from
+affectation or swagger, and not devoid of a good deal of homely
+naivete.  It can no more be compared with Tabachetti or Donatello
+than Hogarth can with Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini; but as it does
+not transcend the limitations of its age, so neither is it wanting
+in whatever merits that age possessed; and there is no age without
+merits of some kind.  There is no inscription saying who made the
+figures, but tradition gives them to Pietro Aureggio Termine, of
+Biella, commonly called Aureggio.  This is confirmed by their strong
+resemblance to those in the Dimora Chapel, in which there is an
+inscription that names Aureggio as the sculptor.
+
+The sixth chapel deals with the Presentation of the Virgin in the
+Temple.  The Virgin is very small, but it must be remembered that
+she is only seven years old, and she is not nearly so small as she
+is at Crea, where, though a life-sized figure is intended, the head
+is hardly bigger than an apple.  She is rushing up the steps with
+open arms towards the High Priest, who is standing at the top.  For
+her it is nothing alarming; it is the High Priest who appears
+frightened; but it will all come right in time.  The Virgin seems to
+be saying, "Why, don't you know me?  I'm the Virgin Mary."  But the
+High Priest does not feel so sure about that, and will make further
+inquiries.  The scene, which comprises some twenty figures, is
+animated enough, and though it hardly kindles enthusiasm, still does
+not fail to please.  It looks as though of somewhat older date than
+the Birth of the Virgin chapel, and I should say shows more signs of
+direct Valsesian influence.  In Marocco's book about Oropa it is
+ascribed to Aureggio, but I find it difficult to accept this.
+
+The seventh, and in many respects most interesting chapel at Oropa,
+shows what is in reality a medieval Italian girl school, as nearly
+like the thing itself as the artist could make it; we are expected,
+however, to see in this the high-class kind of Girton College for
+young gentlewomen that was attached to the Temple at Jerusalem,
+under the direction of the Chief Priest's wife, or some one of his
+near female relatives.  Here all well-to-do Jewish young women
+completed their education, and here accordingly we find the Virgin,
+whose parents desired she should shine in every accomplishment, and
+enjoy all the advantages their ample means commanded.
+
+I have met with no traces of the Virgin during the years between her
+Presentation in the Temple and her becoming head girl at Temple
+College.  These years, we may be assured, can hardly have been other
+than eventful; but incidents, or bits of life, are like living
+forms--it is only here and here, as by rare chance, that one of them
+gets arrested and fossilised; the greater number disappear like the
+greater number of antediluvian molluscs, and no one can say why one
+of these flies, as it were, of life should get preserved in amber
+more than another.  Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; what a
+grain of sand as against a hundredweight is cunning's share here as
+against luck's.  What moment could be more humdrum and unworthy of
+special record than the one chosen by the artist for the chapel we
+are considering?  Why should this one get arrested in its flight and
+made immortal when so many worthier ones have perished?  Yet
+preserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy's wand had
+struck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and others who do
+duty instead of the Hebrew originals.  It has locked them up as
+sleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon.  Surely the hours
+are like the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and the
+other left, and none can give the reason more than he can say why
+Gallio should have won immortality by caring for none of "these
+things."
+
+It seems to me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practice
+now in the matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers have
+done in Regent Street.  Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his
+goods behind strong shutters, so that no one might see them after
+closing hours.  Now he leaves everything open to the eye and turns
+the gas on.  So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleeping
+beauties in impenetrable thickets, now leave them in the most public
+places they can find, as knowing that they will there most certainly
+escape notice.  Look at De Hooghe; look at "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
+or even Shakespeare himself--how long they slept unawakened, though
+they were in broad daylight and on the public thoroughfares all the
+time.  Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces he left at Varallo.
+His figures there are exposed to the gaze of every passer-by; yet
+who heeds them?  Who, save a very few, even know of their existence?
+Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans," by
+Holbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the Universal
+Review.  No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory of
+this age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to conceal
+their proteges under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster is
+much abroad, and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as the
+dulness of culture.
+
+It may be, again, that ever so many years hence, when Mr. Darwin's
+earth-worms shall have buried Oropa hundreds of feet deep, some one
+sinking a well or making a railway-cutting will unearth these
+chapels, and will believe them to have been houses, and to contain
+the exuviae of the living forms that tenanted them.  In the
+meantime, however, let us return to a consideration of the chapel as
+it may now be seen by any one who cares to pass that way.
+
+The work consists of about forty figures in all, not counting
+Cupids, and is divided into four main divisions.  First, there is
+the large public sitting-room or drawing-room of the College, where
+the elder young ladies are engaged in various elegant employments.
+Three, at a table to the left, are making a mitre for the Bishop, as
+may be seen from the model on the table.  Some are merely spinning
+or about to spin.  One young lady, sitting rather apart from the
+others, is doing an elaborate piece of needlework at a tambour-frame
+near the window; others are making lace or slippers, probably for
+the new curate; another is struggling with a letter, or perhaps a
+theme, which seems to be giving her a good deal of trouble, but
+which, when done, will, I am sure, be beautiful.  One dear little
+girl is simply reading "Paul and Virginia" underneath the window,
+and is so concealed that I hardly think she can be seen from the
+outside at all, though from inside she is delightful; it was with
+great regret that I could not get her into any photograph.  One most
+amiable young woman has got a child's head on her lap, the child
+having played itself to sleep.  All are industriously and agreeably
+employed in some way or other; all are plump; all are nice looking;
+there is not one Becky Sharp in the whole school; on the contrary,
+as in "Pious Orgies," all is pious--or sub-pious--and all, if not
+great, is at least eminently respectable.  One feels that St.
+Joachim and St. Anne could not have chosen a school more
+judiciously, and that if one had daughter oneself this is exactly
+where one would wish to place her.  If there is a fault of any kind
+in the arrangements, it is that they do not keep cats enough.  The
+place is overrun with mice, though what these can find to eat I know
+not.  It occurs to me also that the young ladies might be kept a
+little more free of spiders' webs; but in all these chapels, bats,
+mice and spiders are troublesome.
+
+Off the main drawing-room on the side facing the window there is a
+dais, which is approached by a large raised semicircular step,
+higher than the rest of the floor, but lower than the dais itself.
+The dais is, of course, reserved for the venerable Lady Principal
+and the under-mistresses, one of whom, by the way, is a little more
+mondaine than might have been expected, and is admiring herself in a
+looking-glass--unless, indeed, she is only looking to see if there
+is a spot of ink on her face.  The Lady Principal is seated near a
+table, on which lie some books in expensive bindings, which I
+imagine to have been presented to her by the parents of pupils who
+were leaving school.  One has given her a photographic album;
+another a large scrap-book, for illustrations of all kinds; a third
+volume has red edges, and is presumably of a devotional character.
+If I dared venture another criticism, I should say it would be
+better not to keep the ink-pot on the top of these books.  The Lady
+Principal is being read to by the monitress for the week, whose duty
+it was to recite selected passages from the most approved Hebrew
+writers; she appears to be a good deal outraged, possibly at the
+faulty intonation of the reader, which she has long tried vainly to
+correct; or perhaps she has been hearing of the atrocious way in
+which her forefathers had treated the prophets, and is explaining to
+the young ladies how impossible it would be, in their own more
+enlightened age, for a prophet to fail of recognition.
+
+On the half-dais, as I suppose the large semicircular step between
+the main room and the dais should be called, we find, first, the
+monitress for the week, who stands up while she recites; and
+secondly, the Virgin herself, who is the only pupil allowed a seat
+so near to the august presence of the Lady Principal.  She is
+ostensibly doing a piece of embroidery which is stretched on a
+cushion on her lap, but I should say that she was chiefly interested
+in the nearest of four pretty little Cupids, who are all trying to
+attract her attention, though they pay no court to any other young
+lady.  I have sometimes wondered whether the obviously scandalised
+gesture of the Lady Principal might not be directed at these Cupids,
+rather than at anything the monitress may have been reading, for she
+would surely find them disquieting.  Or she may be saying, "Why,
+bless me!  I do declare the Virgin has got another hamper, and St.
+Anne's cakes are always so terribly rich!"  Certainly the hamper is
+there, close to the Virgin, and the Lady Principal's action may be
+well directed at it, but it may have been sent to some other young
+lady, and be put on the sub-dais for public exhibition.  It looks as
+if it might have come from Fortnum and Mason's, and I half expected
+to find a label, addressing it to "The Virgin Mary, Temple College,
+Jerusalem," but if ever there was one the mice have long since eaten
+it.  The Virgin herself does not seem to care much about it, but if
+she has a fault it is that she is generally a little apathetic.
+
+Whose the hamper was, however, is a point we shall never now
+certainly determine, for the best fossil is worse than the worst
+living form.  Why, alas! was not Mr. Edison alive when this chapel
+was made?  We might then have had a daily phonographic recital of
+the conversation, and an announcement might be put outside the
+chapels, telling us at what hours the figures would speak.
+
+On either of side the main room there are two annexes opening out
+from it; these are reserved chiefly for the younger children, some
+of whom, I think, are little boys.  In the left-hand annex, behind
+the ladies who are making a mitre, there is a child who has got a
+cake, and another has some fruit--possibly given them by the Virgin-
+-and a third child is begging for some of it.  The light failed so
+completely here that I was not able to photograph any of these
+figures.  It was a dull September afternoon, and the clouds had
+settled thick round the chapel, which is never very light, and is
+nearly 4000 feet above the sea.  I waited till such twilight as made
+it hopeless that more detail could be got--and a queer ghostly place
+enough it was to wait in--but after giving the plate an exposure of
+fifty minutes, I saw I could get no more, and desisted.
+
+These long photographic exposures have the advantage that one is
+compelled to study a work in detail through mere lack of other
+employment, and that one can take one's notes in peace without being
+tempted to hurry over them; but even so I continually find I have
+omitted to note, and have clean forgotten, much that I want later
+on.
+
+In the other annex there are also one or two younger children, but
+it seems to have been set apart for conversation and relaxation more
+than any other part of the establishment.
+
+I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription inside
+the chapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro Aureggio
+Termine di Biella.  It will be seen that the young ladies are
+exceedingly like one another, and that the artist aimed at nothing
+more than a faithful rendering of the life of his own times.  Let us
+be thankful that he aimed at nothing less.  Perhaps his wife kept a
+girls' school; or he may have had a large family of fat, good-
+natured daughters, whose little ways he had studied attentively; at
+all events the work is full of spontaneous incident, and cannot fail
+to become more and more interesting as the age it renders falls
+farther back into the past.  It is to be regretted that many
+artists, better known men, have not been satisfied with the humbler
+ambitions of this most amiable and interesting sculptor.  If he has
+left us no laboured life-studies, he has at least done something for
+us which we can find nowhere else, which we should be very sorry not
+to have, and the fidelity of which to Italian life at the beginning
+of the last century will not be disputed.
+
+The eighth chapel is that of the Sposalizio, is certainly not by
+Aureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who did
+the Presentation in the Temple.  On going inside I found the figures
+had come from more than one source; some of them are constructed so
+absolutely on Valsesian principles, as regards technique, that it
+may be assumed they came from Varallo.  Each of these last figures
+is in three pieces, that are baked separately and cemented together
+afterwards, hence they are more easily transported; no more clay is
+used than is absolutely necessary; and the off-side of the figure is
+neglected; they will be found chiefly, if not entirely, at the top
+of the steps.  The other figures are more solidly built, and do not
+remind me in their business features of anything in the Valsesia.
+There was a sculptor, Francesco Sala, of Locarno (doubtless the
+village a short distance below Varallo, and not the Locarno on the
+Lago Maggiore), who made designs for some of the Oropa chapels, and
+some of whose letters are still preserved, but whether the Valsesian
+figures in this present work are by him or not I cannot say.
+
+The statues are twenty-five in number; I could find no date or
+signature; the work reminds me of Montrigone; several of the figures
+are not at all bad, and several have horsehair for hair, as at
+Varallo.  The effect of the whole composition is better than we have
+a right to expect from any sculpture dating from the beginning of
+the last century.
+
+The ninth chapel, the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest;
+nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth.  The
+eleventh, the Nativity, though rather better, is still not
+remarkable.
+
+The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not know
+whether the expression of strong personal dislike to the Virgin
+which the High Priest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether it
+is the result of incompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gone
+wrong in the baking.  It is amusing to find Marocco, who has not
+been strict about archaeological accuracy hitherto, complain here
+that there is an anachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiastics
+are dressed as they would be at present, and one of them actually
+carries a wax candle.  This is not as it should be; in works like
+those at Oropa, where implicit reliance is justly placed on the
+earnest endeavours that have been so successfully made to thoroughly
+and carefully and patiently ensure the accuracy of the minutest
+details, it is a pity that even a single error should have escaped
+detection; this, however, has most unfortunately happened here, and
+Marocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard.  He explains that
+the mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both his general
+arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth or
+fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical
+accuracy was not yet so fully understood.
+
+It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men of
+science whether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain people
+whether lay or regular on the other, are trying to play a different
+game, and fail to understand one another because they do not see
+that their objects are not the same.  The cleric and the man of
+science (who is only the cleric in his latest development) are
+trying to develop a throat with two distinct passages--one that
+shall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, and another that shall
+gracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we men of the street
+desire but one throat, and are content that this shall swallow
+nothing bigger than a pony.  Every one knows that there is no such
+effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels as
+incessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, and
+this should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of
+our clerics and our scientists.  I, not being a man of science,
+still continue to do what I said I did in "Alps and Sanctuaries,"
+and make it a rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow
+a few of the smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the
+best astringent for the throat I know of.
+
+The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee.
+This is the best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only one
+which can claim to be taken quite seriously.  Not that all the
+figures are very good; those to the left of the composition are
+commonplace enough; nor are the Christ and the giver of the feast at
+all remarkable; but the ten or dozen figures of guests and
+attendants at the right-hand end of the work are as good as anything
+of their kind can be, and remind me so strongly of Tabachetti that I
+cannot doubt they were done by some one who was indirectly
+influenced by that great sculptor's work.  It is not likely that
+Tabachetti was alive long after 1640, by which time he would have
+been about eighty years old; and the foundations of this chapel were
+not laid till about 1690; the statues are probably a few years
+later; they can hardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied
+under Tabachetti; but until I found out the dates, and went inside
+the chapel to see the way in which the figures had been constructed,
+I was inclined to think they might be by Tabachetti himself, of
+whom, indeed, they are not unworthy.  On examining the figures I
+found them more heavily constructed than Tabachetti's are, with
+smaller holes for taking out superfluous clay, and more finished on
+the off-sides.  Marocco says the sculptor is not known.  I looked in
+vain for any date or signature.  Possibly the right-hand figures
+(for the left-hand ones can hardly be by the same hand) may be by
+some sculptor from Crea, which is at no very great distance from
+Oropa, who was penetrated by Tabachetti's influence; but whether as
+regards action and concert with one another, or as regards
+excellence in detail, I do not see how anything can be more
+realistic, and yet more harmoniously composed.  The placing of the
+musicians in a minstrels' gallery helps the effect; these musicians
+are six in number, and the other figures are twenty-three.  Under
+the table, between Christ and the giver of the feast, there is a
+cat.
+
+The fourteenth chapel, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, is without
+interest.
+
+The fifteenth, the Coronation of the Virgin, contains forty-six
+angels, twenty-six cherubs, fifty-six saints, the Holy Trinity, the
+Madonna herself, and twenty-four innocents, making 156 statues in
+all.  Of these I am afraid there is not one of more than ordinary
+merit; the most interesting is a half-length nude life-study of
+Disma--the good thief.  After what had been promised him it was
+impossible to exclude him, but it was felt that a half-length nude
+figure would be as much as he could reasonably expect.
+
+Behind the sanctuary there is a semi-ruinous and wholly valueless
+work, which shows the finding of the black image, which is now in
+the church, but is only shown on great festivals.
+
+This leads us to a consideration that I have delayed till now.  The
+black image is the central feature of Oropa; it is the raison d'etre
+of the whole place, and all else is a mere incrustation, so to
+speak, around it.  According to this image, then, which was carved
+by St. Luke himself, and than which nothing can be better
+authenticated, both the Madonna and the infant Christ were as black
+as anything can be conceived.  It is not likely that they were as
+black as they have been painted; no one yet ever was so black as
+that; yet, even allowing for some exaggeration on St. Luke's part,
+they must have been exceedingly black if the portrait is to be
+accepted; and uncompromisingly black they accordingly are on most of
+the wayside chapels for many a mile around Oropa.  Yet in the
+chapels we have been hitherto considering--works in which, as we
+know, the most punctilious regard has been shown to accuracy--both
+the Virgin and Christ are uncompromisingly white.  As in the shops
+under the Colonnade where devotional knick-knacks are sold, you can
+buy a black china image or a white one, whichever you like; so with
+the pictures--the black and white are placed side by side--pagando
+il danaro si puo scegliere.  It rests not with history or with the
+Church to say whether the Madonna and Child were black or white, but
+you may settle it for yourself, whichever way you please, or rather
+you are required, with the acquiescence of the Church, to hold that
+they were both black and white at one and the same time.
+
+It cannot be maintained that the Church leaves the matter undecided,
+and by tolerating both types proclaims the question an open one, for
+she acquiesces in the portrait by St. Luke as genuine.  How, then,
+justify the whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels?  If the
+portrait is not known as genuine, why set such a stumbling-block in
+our paths as to show us a black Madonna and a white one, both as
+historically accurate, within a few yards of one another?
+
+I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing that the Church must have
+an explanation to give, if she would only give it, and as myself
+unable to find any, even the most farfetched, that can bring what we
+see at Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony with modern
+conscience, either intellectual or ethical.
+
+I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly
+for September 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto," that
+black Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some
+of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by
+explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might
+be proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but
+comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.'  Others maintained that she
+became black during her sojourn in Egypt. . . .  Priests, of to-day,
+say that extreme age and exposure to the smoke of countless altar-
+candles have caused that change in complexion which the more naive
+fathers of the Church attributed to the power of an Egyptian sun";
+but the writer ruthlessly disposes of this supposition by pointing
+out that in nearly all the instances of black Madonnas it is the
+flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips, the
+white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their original
+colour.  The authoress of the article (Mrs. Hilliard) goes on to
+tell us that Pausanias mentions two statues of the black Venus, and
+says that the oldest statue of Ceres among the Phigalenses was
+black.  She adds that Minerva Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, at
+Athens, was black; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also the
+Thespians; that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded by
+black doves, the emissaries of Venus, and that the Isis Multimammia
+in the Capitol at Rome is black.
+
+Sometimes I have asked myself whether the Church does not intend to
+suggest that the whole story falls outside the domain of history,
+and is to be held as the one great epos, or myth, common to all
+mankind; adaptable by each nation according to its own several
+needs; translatable, so to speak, into the facts of each individual
+nation, as the written word is translatable into its language, but
+appertaining to the realm of the imagination rather than to that of
+the understanding, and precious for spiritual rather than literal
+truths.  More briefly, I have wondered whether she may not intend
+that such details as whether the Virgin was white or black are of
+very little importance in comparison with the basing of ethics on a
+story that shall appeal to black races as well as to white ones.
+
+If so, it is time we were made to understand this more clearly.  If
+the Church, whether of Rome or England, would lean to some such view
+as this--tainted though it be with mysticism--if we could see either
+great branch of the Church make a frank, authoritative attempt to
+bring its teaching into greater harmony with the educated
+understanding and conscience of the time, instead of trying to
+fetter that understanding with bonds that gall it daily more and
+more profoundly; then I, for one, in view of the difficulty and
+graciousness of the task, and in view of the great importance of
+historical continuity, would gladly sink much of my own private
+opinion as to the value of the Christian ideal, and would gratefully
+help either Church or both, according to the best of my very feeble
+ability.  On these terms, indeed, I could swallow not a few camels
+myself cheerfully enough.
+
+Can we, however, see any signs as though either Rome or England will
+stir hand or foot to meet us?  Can any step be pointed to as though
+either Church wished to make things easier for men holding the
+opinions held by the late Mr. Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer and
+Professor Huxley?  How can those who accept evolution with any
+thoroughness accept such doctrines as the Incarnation or the
+Redemption with any but a quasi-allegorical and poetical
+interpretation?  Can we conceivably accept these doctrines in the
+literal sense in which the Church advances them?  And can the
+leaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of the current
+that has set against those literal interpretations which she seems
+to hug more and more closely the more religious life is awakened at
+all?  The clergyman is wanted as supplementing the doctor and the
+lawyer in all civilised communities; these three keep watch on one
+another, and prevent one another from becoming too powerful.  I, who
+distrust the doctrinaire in science even more than the doctrinaire
+in religion, should view with dismay the abolition of the Church of
+England, as knowing that a blatant bastard science would instantly
+step into her shoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is to
+be avoided in England, it can only be through more evident leaning
+on the part of our clergy to such an interpretation of the Sacred
+History as the presence of a black and white Madonna almost side by
+side at Oropa appears to suggest.
+
+I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched on
+dangerous ground, but it is not possible to go to such places as
+Oropa without asking oneself what they mean and involve.  As for the
+average Italian pilgrims, they do not appear to give the matter so
+much as a thought.  They love Oropa, and flock to it in thousands
+during the summer; the President of the Administration assured me
+that they lodged, after a fashion, as many as ten thousand pilgrims
+on the 15th of last August.  It is astonishing how living the
+statues are to these people, and how the wicked are upbraided and
+the good applauded.  At Varallo, since I took the photographs I
+published in my book "Ex Voto," an angry pilgrim has smashed the
+nose of the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for no other
+reason than inability to restrain his indignation against one who
+was helping to inflict pain on Christ.  It is the real hair and the
+painting up to nature that does this.  Here at Oropa I found a paper
+on the floor of the Sposalizio Chapel, which ran as follows:-
+
+"By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter of
+this sanctuary, there have come here to work -- --, mason -- --,
+carpenter, and -- -- plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-first
+day of January 1886, full of cold (pieni di freddo).
+
+"They write these two lines to record their visit.  They pray the
+Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from
+everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da
+ogni equivoco li possa accadere).  Oh, farewell!  We reverently
+salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin,
+and the reader."
+
+Through the Universal Review, I suppose, all its readers are to
+consider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in the
+effusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil.  I
+was sorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it in
+the Chief Priest's hands instead.
+
+
+
+ART IN THE VALLEY OF SAAS {11}
+
+
+
+Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that there
+were some chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those at
+Varallo, described in my book "Ex Voto," {12} I went to Saas during
+this last summer, and venture now to lay my conclusions before the
+reader.
+
+The chapels are fifteen in number, and lead up to a larger and
+singularly graceful one, rather more than half-way between Saas and
+Saas-Fee.  This is commonly but wrongly called the chapel of St.
+Joseph, for it is dedicated to the Virgin, and its situation is of
+such extreme beauty--the great Fee glaciers showing through the open
+portico--that it is in itself worth a pilgrimage.  It is surrounded
+by noble larches and overhung by rock; in front of the portico there
+is a small open space covered with grass, and a huge larch, the stem
+of which is girt by a rude stone seat.  The portico itself contains
+seats for worshippers, and a pulpit from which the preacher's voice
+can reach the many who must stand outside.  The walls of the inner
+chapel are hung with votive pictures, some of them very quaint and
+pleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities that are usually
+dubbed by the name of artistic merit.  Innumerable wooden and waxen
+representations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of the
+cures that have been effected during two centuries of devotion, and
+can hardly fail to awaken a kindly sympathy with the long dead and
+forgotten folks who placed them where they are.
+
+The main interest, however, despite the extreme loveliness of the
+St. Mary's Chapel, centres rather in the small and outwardly
+unimportant oratories (if they should be so called) that lead up to
+it.  These begin immediately with the ascent from the level ground
+on which the village of Saas-im-Grund is placed, and contain scenes
+in the history of the Redemption, represented by rude but spirited
+wooden figures, each about two feet high, painted, gilt, and
+rendered as life-like in all respects as circumstances would permit.
+The figures have suffered a good deal from neglect, and are still
+not a little misplaced.  With the assistance, however, of the Rev.
+E. J. Selwyn, English Chaplain at Saas-im-Grund, I have been able to
+replace many of them in their original positions, as indicated by
+the parts of the figures that are left rough-hewn and unpainted.
+They vary a good deal in interest, and can be easily sneered at by
+those who make a trade of sneering.  Those, on the other hand, who
+remain unsophisticated by overmuch art-culture will find them full
+of character in spite of not a little rudeness of execution, and
+will be surprised at coming across such works in a place so remote
+from any art-centre as Saas must have been at the time these chapels
+were made.  It will be my business therefore to throw what light I
+can upon the questions how they came to be made at all, and who was
+the artist who designed them.
+
+The only documentary evidence consists in a chronicle of the valley
+of Saas written in the early years of this century by the Rev. Peter
+Jos. Ruppen, and published at Sion in 1851.  This work makes
+frequent reference to a manuscript by the Rev. Peter Joseph Clemens
+Lommatter, cure of Saas-Fee from 1738 to 1751, which has
+unfortunately been lost, so that we have no means of knowing how
+closely it was adhered to.  The Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, the present
+excellent cure of Saas-im-Grund, assures me that there is no
+reference to the Saas-Fee oratories in the "Actes de l'Eglise" at
+Saas, which I understand go a long way back; but I have not seen
+these myself.  Practically, then, we have no more documentary
+evidence than is to be found in the published chronicle above
+referred to.
+
+We there find it stated that the large chapel, commonly, but as
+above explained, wrongly called St. Joseph's, was built in 1687, and
+enlarged by subscription in 1747.  These dates appear on the
+building itself, and are no doubt accurate.  The writer adds that
+there was no actual edifice on this site before the one now existing
+was built, but there was a miraculous picture of the Virgin placed
+in a mural niche, before which the pious herdsmen and devout
+inhabitants of the valley worshipped under the vault of heaven. {13}
+A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture was always more or less
+rare and important; the present site, therefore, seems to have been
+long one of peculiar sanctity.  Possibly the name Fee may point to
+still earlier Pagan mysteries on the same site.
+
+As regards the fifteen small chapels, the writer says they
+illustrate the fifteen mysteries of the Psalter, and were built in
+1709, each householder of the Saas-Fee contributing one chapel.  He
+adds that Heinrich Andenmatten, afterwards a brother of the Society
+of Jesus, was an especial benefactor or promoter of the undertaking.
+One of the chapels, the Ascension (No. 12 of the series), has the
+date 1709 painted on it; but there is no date on any other chapel,
+and there seems no reason why this should be taken as governing the
+whole series.
+
+Over and above this, there exists in Saas a tradition, as I was told
+immediately on my arrival, by an English visitor, that the chapels
+were built in consequence of a flood, but I have vainly endeavoured
+to trace this story to an indigenous source.
+
+The internal evidence of the wooden figures themselves--nothing
+analogous to which, it should be remembered, can be found in the
+chapel of 1687--points to a much earlier date.  I have met with no
+school of sculpture belonging to the early part of the eighteenth
+century to which they can be plausibly assigned; and the supposition
+that they are the work of some unknown local genius who was not led
+up to and left no successors may be dismissed, for the work is too
+scholarly to have come from any one but a trained sculptor.  I refer
+of course to those figures which the artist must be supposed to have
+executed with his own hand, as, for example, the central figure of
+the Crucifixion group and those of the Magdalene and St. John.  The
+greater number of the figures were probably, as was suggested to me
+by Mr. Ranshaw, of Lowth, executed by a local woodcarver from models
+in clay and wax furnished by the artist himself.  Those who examine
+the play of line in the hair, mantle, and sleeve of the Magdalene in
+the Crucifixion group, and contrast it with the greater part of the
+remaining draperies, will find little hesitation in concluding that
+this was the case, and will ere long readily distinguish the two
+hands from which the figures have mainly come.  I say "mainly,"
+because there is at least one other sculptor who may well have
+belonged to the year 1709, but who fortunately has left us little.
+Examples of his work may perhaps be seen in the nearest villain with
+a big hat in the Flagellation chapel, and in two cherubs in the
+Assumption of the Virgin.
+
+We may say, then, with some certainty, that the designer was a
+cultivated and practised artist.  We may also not less certainly
+conclude that he was of Flemish origin, for the horses in the
+Journey to Calvary and Crucifixion chapels, where alone there are
+any horses at all, are of Flemish breed, with no trace of the Arab
+blood adopted by Gaudenzio at Varallo.  The character, moreover, of
+the villains is Northern--of the Quentin Matsys, Martin Schongauer
+type, rather than Italian; the same sub-Rubensesque feeling which is
+apparent in more than one chapel at Varallo is not less evident
+here--especially in the Journey to Calvary and Crucifixion chapels.
+There can hardly, therefore, be a doubt that the artist was a
+Fleming who had worked for several years in Italy.
+
+It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well in
+his mind.  For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (I
+refer particularly to the treatment of soldiers' tunics) which are
+peculiar to Tabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subject
+which Tabachetti had treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation,
+Crowning with Thorns, and Journey to Calvary chapels, the work at
+Saas is evidently nothing but a somewhat modified abridgement of
+that at Varallo.  When, however, as in the Annunciation, the
+Nativity, the Crucifixion, and other chapels, the work at Varallo is
+by another than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it.  The Saas
+artist has Tabachetti's Varallo work at his finger-ends, but betrays
+no acquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio. Ant. Paracca,
+or Giovanni D'Enrico.
+
+Even, moreover, when Tabachetti's work at Varallo is being most
+obviously drawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saas
+version differs materially from that at Varallo, and is in some
+respects an improvement on it.  The idea of showing other horsemen
+and followers coming up from behind, whose heads can be seen over
+the crown of the interposing hill, is singularly effective as
+suggesting a number of others that are unseen, nor can I conceive
+that any one but the original designer would follow Tabachetti's
+Varallo design with as much closeness as it has been followed here,
+and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification.  The
+stumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according to
+Tabachetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add,
+but which no Saas woodcarver who was merely adapting from a
+reminiscence of Tabachetti's Varallo chapel would be likely to
+introduce.  These considerations have convinced me that the designer
+of the chapels at Saas is none other than Tabachetti himself, who,
+as has been now conclusively shown, was a native of Dinant, in
+Belgium.
+
+The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not built
+till 1709--a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visible
+on one chapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did not
+write until a century or so later than 1709, and though, indeed, his
+statement may have been taken from the lost earlier manuscript of
+1738, we know nothing about this either one way or the other.  The
+writer may have gone by the still existing 1709 on the Ascension
+chapel, whereas this date may in fact have referred to a
+restoration, and not to an original construction.  There is nothing,
+as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on which the date
+appears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others.  I
+have explained that the work is isolated and exotic.  It is by one
+in whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally
+predominant; by one who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo
+work, and who can improve upon it, but over whom the other Varallo
+sculptors have no power.  The style of the work is of the sixteenth
+and not of the eighteenth century--with a few obvious exceptions
+that suit the year 1709 exceedingly well.  Against such
+considerations as these, a statement made at the beginning of this
+century referring to a century earlier, and a promiscuous date upon
+one chapel, can carry but little weight.  I shall assume, therefore,
+henceforward, that we have here groups designed in a plastic
+material by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best local
+wood-sculptor available, with the exception of a few figures cut by
+the artist himself.
+
+We ask, then, at what period in his life did Tabachetti design these
+chapels, and what led to his coming to such an out-of-the-way place
+as Saas at all?  We should remember that, according both to Fassola
+and Torrotti (writing in 1671 and 1686 respectively), Tabachetti
+{14} became insane about the year 1586 or early in 1587, after
+having just begun the Salutation chapel.  I have explained in "Ex
+Voto" that I do not believe this story.  I have no doubt that
+Tabachetti was declared to be mad, but I believe this to have been
+due to an intrigue, set on foot in order to get a foreign artist out
+of the way, and to secure the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, at
+that precise time undertaken, for Gio. Ant. Paracca, who was an
+Italian.
+
+Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return of
+the workers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte.  He
+may have been goaded into some imprudence which was seized upon as a
+pretext for shutting him up; at any rate, the fact that when in 1587
+he inherited his father's property at Dinant, his trustee (he being
+expressly stated to be "expatrie") was "datif," "dativus," appointed
+not by himself but by the court, lends colour to the statement that
+he was not his own master at the time; for in later kindred deeds,
+now at Namur, he appoints his own trustee.  I suppose, then, that
+Tabachetti was shut up in a madhouse at Varallo for a considerable
+time, during which I can find no trace of him, but that eventually
+he escaped or was released.
+
+Whether he was a fugitive, or whether he was let out from prison, he
+would in either case, in all reasonable probability, turn his face
+homeward.  If he was escaping, he would make immediately for the
+Savoy frontier, within which Saas then lay.  He would cross the
+Baranca above Fobello, coming down on to Ponte Grande in the Val
+Anzasca.  He would go up the Val Anzasca to Macugnaga, and over the
+Monte Moro, which would bring him immediately to Saas.  Saas,
+therefore, is the nearest and most natural place for him to make
+for, if he were flying from Varallo, and here I suppose him to have
+halted.
+
+It so happened that on the 9th of September, 1589, there was one of
+the three great outbreaks of the Mattmark See that have from time to
+time devastated the valley of Saas. {15}  It is probable that the
+chapels were decided upon in consequence of some grace shown by the
+miraculous picture of the Virgin, which had mitigated a disaster
+occurring so soon after the anniversary of her own Nativity.
+Tabachetti, arriving at this juncture, may have offered to undertake
+them if the Saas people would give him an asylum.  Here, at any
+rate, I suppose him to have stayed till some time in 1590, probably
+the second half of it, his design of eventually returning home, if
+he ever entertained it, being then interrupted by a summons to Crea
+near Casale, where I believe him to have worked with a few brief
+interruptions thenceforward for little if at all short of half a
+century, or until about the year 1640.  I admit, however, that the
+evidence for assigning him so long a life rests solely on the
+supposed identity of the figure known as "Il Vecchietto," in the
+Varallo Descent from the Cross chapel, with the portrait of
+Tabachetti himself in the Ecce Homo chapel, also at Varallo.
+
+I find additional reason for thinking the chapels owe their origin
+to the inundation of September 9, 1589, in the fact that the 8th of
+September is made a day of pilgrimage to the Saas-Fee chapels
+throughout the whole valley of Saas.  It is true the 8th of
+September is the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, so
+that under any circumstances this would be a great day, but the fact
+that not only the people of Saas, but the whole valley down to Visp,
+flock to this chapel on the 8th of September, points to the belief
+that some special act of grace on the part of the Virgin was
+vouchsafed on this day in connection with this chapel.  A belief
+that it was owing to the intervention of St. Mary of Fee that the
+inundation was not attended with loss of life would be very likely
+to lead to the foundation of a series of chapels leading up to the
+place where her miraculous picture was placed, and to the more
+special celebration of her Nativity in connection with this spot
+throughout the valley of Saas.  I have discussed the subject with
+the Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, and he told me he thought the fact that
+the great fete of the year in connection with the Saas-Fee chapels
+was on the 8th of September pointed rather strongly to the
+supposition that there was a connection between these and the
+recorded flood of September 9, 1589.
+
+Turning to the individual chapels they are as follows:-
+
+1.  The Annunciation.  The treatment here presents no more analogy
+to that of the same subject at Varallo than is inevitable in the
+nature of the subject.  The Annunciation figures at Varallo have
+proved to be mere draped dummies with wooden heads; Tabachetti, even
+though he did the heads, which he very likely did, would take no
+interest in the Varallo work with the same subject.  The
+Annunciation, from its very simplicity as well as from the
+transcendental nature of the subject, is singularly hard to treat,
+and the work here, whatever it may once have been, is now no longer
+remarkable.
+
+2.  The Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth.  This group, again, bears
+no analogy to the Salutation chapel at Varallo, in which
+Tabachetti's share was so small that it cannot be considered as in
+any way his.  It is not to be expected, therefore, that the Saas
+chapel should follow the Varallo one.  The figures, four in number,
+are pleasing and well arranged.  St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St.
+Zacharias are all talking at once.  The Virgin is alone silent.
+
+3.  The Nativity is much damaged and hard to see.  The treatment
+bears no analogy to that adopted by Gaudenzio Ferrari at Varallo.
+There is one pleasing young shepherd standing against the wall, but
+some figures have no doubt (as in others of the chapels)
+disappeared, and those that remain have been so shifted from their
+original positions that very little idea can be formed of what the
+group was like when Tabachetti left it.
+
+4.  The Purification.  I can hardly say why this chapel should
+remind me, as it does, of the Circumcision chapel at Varallo, for
+there are more figures here than space at Varallo will allow.  It
+cannot be pretended that any single figure is of extraordinary
+merit, but amongst them they tell their story with excellent effect.
+Two, those of St. Joseph and St. Anna (?), that doubtless were once
+more important factors in the drama, are now so much in corners near
+the window that they can hardly be seen.
+
+5.  The Dispute in the Temple.  This subject is not treated at
+Varallo.  Here at Saas there are only six doctors now; whether or no
+there were originally more cannot be determined.
+
+6.  The Agony in the Garden.  Tabachetti had no chapel with this
+subject at Varallo, and there is no resemblance between the Saas
+chapel and that by D'Enrico.  The figures are no doubt approximately
+in their original positions, but I have no confidence that I have
+rearranged them correctly.  They were in such confusion when I first
+saw them that the Rev. E. J. Selwyn and myself determined to
+rearrange them.  They have doubtless been shifted more than once
+since Tabachetti left them.  The sleeping figures are all good.  St.
+James is perhaps a little prosaic.  One Roman soldier who is coming
+into the garden with a lantern, and motioning silence with his hand,
+does duty for the others that are to follow him.  I should think
+more than one of these figures is actually carved in wood by
+Tabachetti, allowance being made for the fact that he was working in
+a material with which he was not familiar, and which no sculptor of
+the highest rank has ever found congenial.
+
+7.  The Flagellation.  Tabachetti has a chapel with this subject at
+Varallo, and the Saas group is obviously a descent with modification
+from his work there.  The figure of Christ is so like the one at
+Varallo that I think it must have been carved by Tabachetti himself.
+The man with the hooked nose, who at Varallo is stooping to bind his
+rods, is here upright:  it was probably the intention to emphasise
+him in the succeeding scenes as well as this, in the same way as he
+has been emphasised at Varallo, but his nose got pared down in the
+cutting of later scenes, and could not easily be added to.  The man
+binding Christ to the column at Varallo is repeated (longo
+intervallo) here, and the whole work is one inspired by that at
+Varallo, though no single figure except that of the Christ is
+adhered to with any very great closeness.  I think the nearer
+malefactor, with a goitre, and wearing a large black hat, is either
+an addition of the year 1709, or was done by the journeyman of the
+local sculptor who carved the greater number of the figures.  The
+man stooping down to bind his rods can hardly be by the same hand as
+either of the two black-hatted malefactors, but it is impossible to
+speak with certainty.  The general effect of the chapel is
+excellent, if we consider the material in which it is executed, and
+the rudeness of the audience to whom it addresses itself.
+
+8.  The Crowning with Thorns.  Here again the inspiration is derived
+from Tabachetti's Crowning with Thorns at Varallo.  The Christs in
+the two chapels are strikingly alike, and the general effect is that
+of a residuary impression left in the mind of one who had known the
+Varallo Flagellation exceedingly well.
+
+9.  Sta. Veronica.  This and the next succeeding chapels are the
+most important of the series.  Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary at
+Varallo is again the source from which the present work was taken,
+but, as I have already said, it has been modified in reproduction.
+Mount Calvary is still shown, as at Varallo, towards the left-hand
+corner of the work, but at Saas it is more towards the middle than
+at Varallo, so that horsemen and soldiers may be seen coming up
+behind it--a stroke that deserves the name of genius none the less
+for the manifest imperfection with which it has been carried into
+execution.  There are only three horses fully shown, and one partly
+shown.  They are all of the heavy Flemish type adopted by Tabachetti
+at Varallo.  The man kicking the fallen Christ and the goitred man
+(with the same teeth missing), who are so conspicuous in the Varallo
+Journey to Calvary, reappear here, only the kicking man has much
+less nose than at Varallo, probably because (as explained) the nose
+got whittled away and could not be whittled back again.  I observe
+that the kind of lapelled tunic which Tabachetti, and only
+Tabachetti, adopts at Varallo, is adopted for the centurion in this
+chapel, and indeed throughout the Saas chapels this particular form
+of tunic is the most usual for a Roman soldier.  The work is still a
+very striking one, notwithstanding its translation into wood and the
+decay into which it has been allowed to fall; nor can it fail to
+impress the visitor who is familiar with this class of art as coming
+from a man of extraordinary dramatic power and command over the
+almost impossible art of composing many figures together effectively
+in all-round sculpture.  Whether all the figures are even now as
+Tabachetti left them I cannot determine, but Mr. Selwyn has restored
+Simon the Cyrenian to the position in which he obviously ought to
+stand, and between us we have got the chapel into something more
+like order.
+
+10.  The Crucifixion.  This subject was treated at Varallo not by
+Tabachetti but by Gaudenzio Ferrari.  It confirms therefore my
+opinion as to the designer of the Saas chapels to find in them no
+trace of the Varallo Crucifixion, while the kind of tunic which at
+Varallo is only found in chapels wherein Tabachetti worked again
+appears here.  The work is in a deplorable state of decay.  Mr.
+Selwyn has greatly improved the arrangement of the figures, but even
+now they are not, I imagine, quite as Tabachetti left them.  The
+figure of Christ is greatly better in technical execution than that
+of either of the two thieves; the folds of the drapery alone will
+show this even to an unpractised eye.  I do not think there can be a
+doubt but that Tabachetti cut this figure himself, as also those of
+the Magdalene and St. John, who stand at the foot of the cross.  The
+thieves are coarsely executed, with no very obvious distinction
+between the penitent and the impenitent one, except that there is a
+fiend painted on the ceiling over the impenitent thief.  The one
+horse introduced into the composition is again of the heavy Flemish
+type adopted by Tabachetti at Varallo.  There is great difference in
+the care with which the folds on the several draperies have been
+cut, some being stiff and poor enough, while others are done very
+sufficiently.  In spite of smallness of scale, ignoble material,
+disarrangement and decay, the work is still striking.
+
+11.  The Resurrection.  There being no chapel at Varallo with any of
+the remaining subjects treated at Saas, the sculptor has struck out
+a line for himself.  The Christ in the Resurrection Chapel is a
+carefully modelled figure, and if better painted might not be
+ineffective.  Three soldiers, one sleeping, alone remain.  There
+were probably other figures that have been lost.  The sleeping
+soldier is very pleasing.
+
+12.  The Ascension is not remarkably interesting; the Christ appears
+to be, but perhaps is not, a much more modern figure than the rest.
+
+18.  The Descent of the Holy Ghost.  Some of the figures along the
+end wall are very good, and were, I should imagine, cut by
+Tabachetti himself.  Those against the two side walls are not so
+well cut.
+
+14.  The Assumption of the Virgin Mary.  The two large cherubs here
+are obviously by a later hand, and the small ones are not good.  The
+figure of the Virgin herself is unexceptionable.  There were
+doubtless once other figures of the Apostles which have disappeared;
+of these a single St. Peter (?), so hidden away in a corner near the
+window that it can only be seen with difficulty, is the sole
+survivor.
+
+15.  The Coronation of the Virgin is of later date, and has probably
+superseded an earlier work.  It can hardly be by the designer of the
+other chapels of the series.  Perhaps Tabachetti had to leave for
+Crea before all the chapels at Saas were finished.
+
+Lastly, we have the larger chapel dedicated to St. Mary, which
+crowns the series.  Here there is nothing of more than common
+artistic interest, unless we except the stone altar mentioned in
+Ruppen's chronicle.  This is of course classical in style, and is, I
+should think, very good.
+
+Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find
+highly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing.
+A wooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats
+of paint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those
+few that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have
+attention concentrated on themselves alone.  As mere wood-carving
+the Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, with
+the triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at
+Gliss, close to Brieg.  But, in the first place, the work at Gliss
+is worthy of Holbein himself:  I know no wood-carving that can so
+rivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour and
+not oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the second
+place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists held
+neither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatly
+better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanese
+curiousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, it
+cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan and
+dramatic effectiveness.  The difference between the two classes of
+work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens
+or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto;
+the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the
+other.  Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of the
+designer is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable
+skill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of Ober-
+Ammergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a
+little drowned in that of his mouthpiece.  If, however, the reader
+will bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and will
+also remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapels
+were designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubt
+shattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he will
+probably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many of
+the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had the
+pleasure of examining them.
+
+I will now run briefly through the other principal works in the
+neighbourhood to which I think the reader would be glad to have his
+attention directed.
+
+At Saas-Fee itself the main altar-piece is without interest, as also
+one with a figure of St. Sebastian.  The Virgin and Child above the
+remaining altar are, so far as I remember them, very good, and
+greatly superior to the smaller figures of the same altar-piece.
+
+At Almagel, an hour's walk or so above Saas-Grund--a village, the
+name of which, like those of the Alphubel, the Monte Moro, and more
+than one other neighbouring site, is supposed to be of Saracenic
+origin--the main altar-piece represents a female saint with folded
+arms being beheaded by a vigorous man to the left.  These two
+figures are very good.  There are two somewhat inferior elders to
+the right, and the composition is crowned by the Assumption of the
+Virgin.  I like the work, but have no idea who did it.  Two bishops
+flanking the composition are not so good.  There are two other
+altars in the church:  the right-hand one has some pleasing figures,
+not so the left-hand.
+
+In St. Joseph's Chapel, on the mule-road between Saas-Grund and
+Saas-Fee, the St. Joseph and the two children are rather nice.  In
+the churches and chapels which I looked into between Saas and
+Stalden, I saw many florid extravagant altar-pieces, but nothing
+that impressed me favourably.
+
+In the parish church at Saas-Grund there are two altar-pieces which
+deserve attention.  In the one over the main altar the arrangement
+of the Last Supper in a deep recess half-way up the composition is
+very pleasing and effective; in that above the right-hand altar of
+the two that stand in the body of the church there are a number of
+round lunettes, about eight inches in diameter, each containing a
+small but spirited group of wooden figures.  I have lost my notes on
+these altar-pieces and can only remember that the main one has been
+restored, and now belongs to two different dates, the earlier date
+being, I should imagine, about 1670.  A similar treatment of the
+Last Supper may be found near Brieg in the church of Naters, and no
+doubt the two altar-pieces are by the same man.  There are, by the
+way, two very ambitious altars on either side the main arch leading
+to the chance in the church at Naters, of which the one on the south
+side contains obvious reminiscences of Gaudenzio Ferrari's Sta.
+Maria frescoes at Varallo; but none of the four altar-pieces in the
+two transepts tempted me to give them much attention.  As regards
+the smaller altar-piece at Saas-Grund, analogous work may be found
+at Cravagliana, half-way between Varallo and Fobello, but this last
+has suffered through the inveterate habit which Italians have of
+showing their hatred towards the enemies of Christ by mutilating the
+figures that represent them.  Whether the Saas work is by a
+Valsesian artist who came over to Switzerland, or whether the
+Cravagliana work is by a Swiss who had come to Italy, I cannot say
+without further consideration and closer examination than I have
+been able to give.  The altar-pieces of Mairengo, Chiggiogna, and, I
+am told, Lavertezzo, all in the Canton Ticino, are by a Swiss or
+German artist who has migrated southward; but the reverse migration
+was equally common.
+
+Being in the neighbourhood, and wishing to assure myself whether the
+sculptor of the Saas-Fee chapels had or had not come lower down the
+valley, I examined every church and village which I could hear of as
+containing anything that might throw light on this point.  I was
+thus led to Vispertimenen, a village some three hours above either
+Visp or Stalden.  It stands very high, and is an almost untouched
+example of a medieval village.  The altar-piece of the main church
+is even more floridly ambitious in its abundance of carving and
+gilding than the many other ambitious altar-pieces with which the
+Canton Valais abounds.  The Apostles are receiving the Holy Ghost on
+the first storey of the composition, and they certainly are
+receiving it with an overjoyed alacrity and hilarious ecstasy of
+allegria spirituale which it would not be easy to surpass.  Above
+the village, reaching almost to the limits beyond which there is no
+cultivation, there stands a series of chapels like those I have been
+describing at Saas-Fee, only much larger and more ambitious.  They
+are twelve in number, including the church that crowns the series.
+The figures they contain are of wood (so I was assured, but I did
+not go inside the chapels):  they are life-size, and in some chapels
+there are as many as a dozen figures.  I should think they belonged
+to the later half of the last century, and here, one would say,
+sculpture touches the ground; at least, it is not easy to see how
+cheap exaggeration can sink an art more deeply.  The only things
+that at all pleased me were a smiling donkey and an ecstatic cow in
+the Nativity chapel.  Those who are not allured by the prospect of
+seeing perhaps the very worst that can be done in its own line, need
+not be at the pains of climbing up to Vispertimenen.  Those, on the
+other hand, who may find this sufficient inducement will not be
+disappointed, and they will enjoy magnificent views of the Weisshorn
+and the mountains near the Dom.
+
+I have already referred to the triptych at Gliss.  This is figured
+in Wolf's work on Chamonix and the Canton Valais, but a larger and
+clearer reproduction of such an extraordinary work is greatly to be
+desired.  The small wooden statues above the triptych, as also those
+above its modern companion in the south transept, are not less
+admirable than the triptych itself.  I know of no other like work in
+wood, and have no clue whatever as to who the author can have been
+beyond the fact that the work is purely German and eminently
+Holbeinesque in character.
+
+I was told of some chapels at Rarogne, five or six miles lower down
+the valley than Visp.  I examined them, and found they had been
+stripped of their figures.  The few that remained satisfied me that
+we have had no loss.  Above Brieg there are two other like series of
+chapels.  I examined the higher and more promising of the two, but
+found not one single figure left.  I was told by my driver that the
+other series, close to the Pont Napoleon on the Simplon road, had
+been also stripped of its figures, and, there being a heavy storm at
+the time, have taken his word for it that this was so.
+
+
+
+THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE  {16}
+
+
+
+Three well-known writers, Professor Max Muller, Professor Mivart,
+and Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace have lately maintained that though the
+theory of descent with modification accounts for the development of
+all vegetable life, and of all animals lower than man, yet that man
+cannot--not at least in respect of the whole of his nature--be held
+to have descended from any animal lower than himself, inasmuch as
+none lower than man possesses even the germs of language.  Reason,
+it is contended--more especially by Professor Max Muller in his
+"Science of Thought," to which I propose confining our attention
+this evening--is so inseparably connected with language, that the
+two are in point of fact identical; hence it is argued that, as the
+lower animals have no germs of language, they can have no germs of
+reason, and the inference is drawn that man cannot be conceived as
+having derived his own reasoning powers and command of language
+through descent from beings in which no germ of either can be found.
+The relations therefore between thought and language, interesting in
+themselves, acquire additional importance from the fact of their
+having become the battle-ground between those who say that the
+theory of descent breaks down with man, and those who maintain that
+we are descended from some ape-like ancestor long since extinct.
+
+The contention of those who refuse to admit man unreservedly into
+the scheme of evolution is comparatively recent.  The great
+propounders of evolution, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck--not to
+mention a score of others who wrote at the close of the last and
+early part of this present century--had no qualms about admitting
+man into their system.  They have been followed in this respect by
+the late Mr. Charles Darwin, and by the greatly more influential
+part of our modern biologists, who hold that whatever loss of
+dignity we may incur through being proved to be of humble origin, is
+compensated by the credit we may claim for having advanced ourselves
+to such a high pitch of civilisation; this bids us expect still
+further progress, and glorifies our descendants more than it abases
+our ancestors.  But to whichever view we may incline on sentimental
+grounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declared
+language to form no impassable barrier between man and the lower
+animals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brute
+dare cross, and deduces hence the conclusion that man cannot have
+descended from an unknown but certainly speechless ape.
+
+It may perhaps be expected that I should begin a lecture on the
+relations between thought and language with some definition of both
+these things; but thought, as Sir William Grove said of motion, is a
+phenomenon "so obvious to simple apprehension, that to define it
+would make it more obscure." {17}  Definitions are useful where
+things are new to us, but they are superfluous about those that are
+already familiar, and mischievous, so far as they are possible at
+all, in respect of all those things that enter so profoundly and
+intimately into our being that in them we must either live or bear
+no life.  To vivisect the more vital processes of thought is to
+suspend, if not to destroy them; for thought can think about
+everything more healthily and easily than about itself.  It is like
+its instrument the brain, which knows nothing of any injuries
+inflicted upon itself.  As regards what is new to us, a definition
+will sometimes dilute a difficulty, and help us to swallow that
+which might choke us undiluted; but to define when we have once well
+swallowed is to unsettle, rather than settle, our digestion.
+Definitions, again, are like steps cut in a steep slope of ice, or
+shells thrown on to a greasy pavement; they give us foothold, and
+enable us to advance, but when we are at our journey's end we want
+them no longer.  Again, they are useful as mental fluxes, and as
+helping us to fuse new ideas with our older ones.  They present us
+with some tags and ends of ideas that we have already mastered, on
+to which we can hitch our new ones; but to multiply them in respect
+of such a matter as thought, is like scratching the bite of a gnat;
+the more we scratch the more we want to scratch; the more we define
+the more we shall have to go on defining the words we have used in
+our definitions, and shall end by setting up a serious mental raw in
+the place of a small uneasiness that was after all quite endurable.
+We know too well what thought is, to be able to know that we know
+it, and I am persuaded there is no one in this room but understands
+what is meant by thought and thinking well enough for all the
+purposes of this discussion.  Whoever does not know this without
+words will not learn it for all the words and definitions that are
+laid before him.  The more, indeed, he hears, the more confused he
+will become.  I shall, therefore, merely premise that I use the word
+"thought" in the same sense as that in which it is generally used by
+people who say that they think this or that.  At any rate, it will
+be enough if I take Professor Max Muller's own definition, and say
+that its essence consists in a bringing together of mental images
+and ideas with deductions therefrom, and with a corresponding power
+of detaching them from one another.  Hobbes, the Professor tells us,
+maintained this long ago, when he said that all our thinking
+consists of addition and subtraction--that is to say, in bringing
+ideas together, and in detaching them from one another.
+
+Turning from thought to language, we observe that the word is
+derived from the French langue, or tongue.  Strictly, therefore, it
+means tonguage.  This, however, takes account of but a very small
+part of the ideas that underlie the word.  It does, indeed, seize a
+familiar and important detail of everyday speech, though it may be
+doubted whether the tongue has more to do with speaking than lips,
+teeth and throat have, but it makes no attempt at grasping and
+expressing the essential characteristic of speech.  Anything done
+with the tongue, even though it involve no speaking at all, is
+tonguage; eating oranges is as much tonguage as speech is.  The
+word, therefore, though it tells us in part how speech is effected,
+reveals nothing of that ulterior meaning which is nevertheless
+inseparable from any right use of the words either "speech" or
+"language."  It presents us with what is indeed a very frequent
+adjunct of conversation, but the use of written characters, or the
+finger-speech of deaf mutes, is enough to show that the word
+"language" omits all reference to the most essential characteristics
+of the idea, which in practice it nevertheless very sufficiently
+presents to us.  I hope presently to make it clear to you how and
+why it should do so.  The word is incomplete in the first place,
+because it omits all reference to the ideas which words, speech or
+language are intended to convey, and there can be no true word
+without its actually or potentially conveying an idea.  Secondly, it
+makes no allusion to the person or persons to whom the ideas are to
+be conveyed.  Language is not language unless it not only expresses
+fairly definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys these
+ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute,
+that can understand them.  We may speak to a dog or horse, but not
+to a stone.  If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality only
+talking to ourselves.  The person or animal spoken to is half the
+battle--a half, moreover, which is essential to there being any
+battle at all.  It takes two people to say a thing--a sayee as well
+as a sayer.  The one is as essential to any true saying as the
+other.  A. may have spoken, but if B. has not heard, there has been
+nothing said, and he must speak again.  True, the belief on A.'s
+part that he had a bona fide sayee in B., saves his speech qua him,
+but it has been barren and left no fertile issue.  It has failed to
+fulfil the conditions of true speech, which involve not only that A.
+should speak, but also that B. should hear.  True, again, we often
+speak of loose, incoherent, indefinite language; but by doing so we
+imply, and rightly, that we are calling that language which is not
+true language at all.  People, again, sometimes talk to themselves
+without intending that any other person should hear them, but this
+is not well done, and does harm to those who practise it.  It is
+abnormal, whereas our concern is with normal and essential
+characteristics; we may, therefore, neglect both delirious
+babblings, and the cases in which a person is regarding him or
+herself, as it were, from outside, and treating himself as though he
+were some one else.
+
+Inquiring, then, what are the essentials, the presence of which
+constitutes language, while their absence negatives it altogether,
+we find that Professor Max Muller restricts them to the use of
+grammatical articulate words that we can write or speak, and denies
+that anything can be called language unless it can be written or
+spoken in articulate words and sentences.  He also denies that we
+can think at all unless we do so in words; that is to say, in
+sentences with verbs and nouns.  Indeed he goes so far as to say
+upon his title-page that there can be no reason--which I imagine
+comes to much the same thing as thought--without language, and no
+language without reason.
+
+Against the assertion that there can be no true language without
+reason I have nothing to say.  But when the Professor says that
+there can be no reason, or thought, without language, his opponents
+contend, as it seems to me, with greater force, that thought, though
+infinitely aided, extended and rendered definite through the
+invention of words, nevertheless existed so fully as to deserve no
+other name thousands, if not millions of years before words had
+entered into it at all.  Words, they say, are a comparatively recent
+invention, for the fuller expression of something that was already
+in existence.
+
+Children, they urge, are often evidently thinking and reasoning,
+though they can neither think nor speak in words.  If you ask me to
+define reason, I answer as before that this can no more be done than
+thought, truth or motion can be defined.  Who has answered the
+question, "What is truth?"  Man cannot see God and live.  We cannot
+go so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations;
+if we try to do we topple over, and lose that very reason about
+which we vainly try to reason.  If we let the foundations be, we
+know well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them in
+all security.  We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin and
+confine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further.  Who can
+define heat or cold, or night or day?  Yet, so long as we hold fast
+by current consent, our chances of error for want of better
+definition are so small that no sensible person will consider them.
+In like manner, if we hold by current consent or common sense, which
+is the same thing, about reason, we shall not find the want of an
+academic definition hinder us from a reasonable conclusion.  What
+nurse or mother will doubt that her infant child can reason within
+the limits of its own experience, long before it can formulate its
+reason in articulately worded thought?  If the development of any
+given animal is, as our opponents themselves admit, an epitome of
+the history of its whole anterior development, surely the fact that
+speech is an accomplishment acquired after birth so artificially
+that children who have gone wild in the woods lose it if they have
+ever learned it, points to the conclusion that man's ancestors only
+learned to express themselves in articulate language at a
+comparatively recent period.  Granted that they learn to think and
+reason continually the more and more fully for having done so, will
+common sense permit us to suppose that they could neither think nor
+reason at all till they could convey their ideas in words?
+
+I will return later to the reason of the lower animals, but will now
+deal with the question what it is that constitutes language in the
+most comprehensive sense that can be properly attached to it.  I
+have said already that language to be language at all must not only
+convey fairly definite coherent ideas, but must also convey them to
+another living being.  Whenever two living beings have conveyed and
+received ideas, there has been language, whether looks or gestures
+or words spoken or written have been the vehicle by means of which
+the ideas have travelled.  Some ideas crawl, some run, some fly; and
+in this case words are the wings they fly with, but they are only
+the wings of thought or of ideas, they are not the thought or ideas
+themselves, nor yet, as Professor Max Muller would have it,
+inseparably connected with them.  Last summer I was at an inn in
+Sicily, where there was a deaf and dumb waiter; he had been born so,
+and could neither write nor read.  What had he to do with words or
+words with him?  Are we to say, then, that this most active, amiable
+and intelligent fellow could neither think nor reason?  One day I
+had had my dinner and had left the hotel.  A friend came in, and the
+waiter saw him look for me in the place I generally occupied.  He
+instantly came up to my friend, and moved his two forefingers in a
+way that suggested two people going about together, this meant "your
+friend"; he then moved his forefingers horizontally across his eyes,
+this meant, "who wears divided spectacles"; he made two fierce marks
+over the sockets of his eyes, this meant, "with the heavy eyebrows";
+he pulled his chin, and then touched his white shirt, to say that my
+beard was white.  Having thus identified me as a friend of the
+person he was speaking to, and as having a white beard, heavy
+eyebrows, and wearing divided spectacles, he made a munching
+movement with his jaws to say that I had had my dinner; and finally,
+by making two fingers imitate walking on the table, he explained
+that I had gone away.  My friend, however, wanted to know how long I
+had been gone, so he pulled out his watch and looked inquiringly.
+The man at once slapped himself on the back, and held up the five
+fingers of one hand, to say it was five minutes ago.  All this was
+done as rapidly as though it had been said in words; and my friend,
+who knew the man well, understood without a moment's hesitation.
+Are we to say that this man had no thought, nor reason, nor
+language, merely because he had not a single word of any kind in his
+head, which I am assured he had not; for, as I have said, he could
+not speak with his fingers?  Is it possible to deny that a dialogue-
+-an intelligent conversation--had passed between the two men?  And
+if conversation, then surely it is technical and pedantic to deny
+that all the essential elements of language were present.  The signs
+and tokens used by this poor fellow were as rude an instrument of
+expression, in comparison with ordinary language, as going on one's
+hands and knees is in comparison with walking, or as walking
+compared with going by train; but it is as great an abuse of words
+to limit the word "language" to mere words written or spoken, as it
+would be to limit the idea of a locomotive to a railway engine.
+This may indeed pass in ordinary conversation, where so much must be
+suppressed if talk is to be got through at all, but it is
+intolerable when we are inquiring about the relations between
+thought and words.  To do so is to let words become as it were the
+masters of thought, on the ground that the fact of their being only
+its servants and appendages is so obvious that it is generally
+allowed to go without saying.
+
+If all that Professor Max Muller means to say is, that no animal but
+man commands an articulate language, with verbs and nouns, or is
+ever likely to command one (and I question whether in reality he
+means much more than this), no one will differ from him.  No dog or
+elephant has one word for bread, another for meat, and another for
+water.  Yet, when we watch a cat or dog dreaming, as they often
+evidently do, can we doubt that the dream is accompanied by a mental
+image of the thing that is dreamed of, much like what we experience
+in dreams ourselves, and much doubtless like the mental images which
+must have passed through the mind of my deaf and dumb waiter?  If
+they have mental images in sleep, can we doubt that waking, also,
+they picture things before their mind's eyes, and see them much as
+we do--too vaguely indeed to admit of our thinking that we actually
+see the objects themselves, but definitely enough for us to be able
+to recognise the idea or object of which we are thinking, and to
+connect it with any other idea, object, or sign that we may think
+appropriate?
+
+Here we have touched on the second essential element of language.
+We laid it down, that its essence lay in the communication of an
+idea from one intelligent being to another; but no ideas can be
+communicated at all except by the aid of conventions to which both
+parties have agreed to attach an identical meaning.  The agreement
+may be very informal, and may pass so unconsciously from one
+generation to another that its existence can only be recognised by
+the aid of much introspection, but it will be always there.  A
+sayer, a sayee, and a convention, no matter what, agreed upon
+between them as inseparably attached to the idea which it is
+intended to convey--these comprise all the essentials of language.
+Where these are present there is language; where any of them are
+wanting there is no language.  It is not necessary for the sayee to
+be able to speak and become a sayer.  If he comprehends the sayer--
+that is to say, if he attaches the same meaning to a certain symbol
+as the sayer does--if he is a party to the bargain whereby it is
+agreed upon by both that any given symbol shall be attached
+invariably to a certain idea, so that in virtue of the principle of
+associated ideas the symbol shall never be present without
+immediately carrying the idea along with it, then all the essentials
+of language are complied with, and there has been true speech though
+never a word was spoken.
+
+The lower animals, therefore, many of them, possess a part of our
+own language, though they cannot speak it, and hence do not possess
+it so fully as we do.  They cannot say "bread," "meat," or "water,"
+but there are many that readily learn what ideas they ought to
+attach to these symbols when they are presented to them.  It is idle
+to say that a cat does not know what the cat's-meat man means when
+he says "meat."  The cat knows just as well, neither better nor
+worse than the cat's-meat man does, and a great deal better than I
+myself understand much that is said by some very clever people at
+Oxford or Cambridge.  There is more true employment of language,
+more bona fide currency of speech, between a sayer and a sayee who
+understand each other, though neither of them can speak a word, than
+between a sayer who can speak with the tongues of men and of angels
+without being clear about his own meaning, and a sayee who can
+himself utter the same words, but who is only in imperfect agreement
+with the sayer as to the ideas which the words or symbols that he
+utters are intended to convey.  The nature of the symbols counts for
+nothing; the gist of the matter is in the perfect harmony between
+sayer and sayee as to the significance that is to be associated with
+them.
+
+Professor Max Muller admits that we share with the lower animals
+what he calls an emotional language, and continues that we may call
+their interjections and imitations language if we like, as we speak
+of the language of the eyes or the eloquence of mute nature, but he
+warns us against mistaking metaphor for fact.  It is indeed mere
+metaphor to talk of the eloquence of mute nature, or the language of
+winds and waves.  There is no intercommunion of mind with mind by
+means of a covenanted symbol; but it is only an apparent, not a
+real, metaphor to say that two pairs of eyes have spoken when they
+have signalled to one another something which they both understand.
+A schoolboy at home for the holidays wants another plate of pudding,
+and does not like to apply officially for more.  He catches the
+servant's eye and looks at the pudding; the servant understands,
+takes his plate without a word, and gets him some.  Is it metaphor
+to say that the boy asked the servant to do this, or is it not
+rather pedantry to insist on the letter of a bond and deny its
+spirit, by denying that language passed, on the ground that the
+symbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered and
+received by eyes and not by mouth and ears?  When the lady drank to
+the gentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there
+no conversation because there was neither noun nor verb?  Eyes are
+verbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between those
+who understand one another.  Whether the ideas underlying them are
+expressed and conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail that
+matters nothing.
+
+But everything we say is metaphorical if we choose to be captious.
+Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor.
+Written words are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only by
+metaphor, or substitution and transposition of ideas, that we can
+call them language.  They are indeed potential language, and the
+symbols employed presuppose nouns, verbs, and the other parts of
+speech; but for the most part it is in what we read between the
+lines that the profounder meaning of any letter is conveyed.  There
+are words unwritten and untranslatable into any nouns that are
+nevertheless felt as above, about and underneath the gross material
+symbols that lie scrawled upon the paper; and the deeper the feeling
+with which anything is written the more pregnant will it be of
+meaning which can be conveyed securely enough, but which loses
+rather than gains if it is squeezed into a sentence, and limited by
+the parts of speech.  The language is not in the words but in the
+heart-to-heartness of the thing, which is helped by words, but is
+nearer and farther than they.  A correspondent wrote to me once,
+many years ago, "If I could think to you without words you would
+understand me better."  But surely in this he was thinking to me,
+and without words, and I did understand him better . . .  So it is
+not by the words that I am too presumptuously venturing to speak to-
+night that your opinions will be formed or modified.  They will be
+formed or modified, if either, by something that you will feel, but
+which I have not spoken, to the full as much as by anything that I
+have actually uttered.  You may say that this borders on mysticism.
+Perhaps it does, but their really is some mysticism in nature.
+
+To return, however, to terra firma.  I believe I am right in saying
+that the essence of language lies in the intentional conveyance of
+ideas from one living being to another through the instrumentality
+of arbitrary tokens or symbols agreed upon, and understood by both
+as being associated with the particular ideas in question.  The
+nature of the symbol chosen is a matter of indifference; it may be
+anything that appeals to human senses, and is not too hot or too
+heavy; the essence of the matter lies in a mutual covenant that
+whatever it is it shall stand invariably for the same thing, or
+nearly so.
+
+We shall see this more easily if we observe the differences between
+written and spoken language.  The written word "stone," and the
+spoken word, are each of them symbols arrived at in the first
+instance arbitrarily.  They are neither of them more like the other
+than they are to the idea of a stone which rises before our minds,
+when we either see or hear the word, or than this idea again is like
+the actual stone itself, but nevertheless the spoken symbol and the
+written one each alike convey with certainty the combination of
+ideas to which we have agreed to attach them.
+
+The written symbol is formed with the hand, appeals to the eye,
+leaves a material trace as long as paper and ink last, can travel as
+far as paper and ink can travel, and can be imprinted on eye after
+eye practically ad infinitum both as regards time and space.
+
+The spoken symbol is formed by means of various organs in or about
+the mouth, appeals to the ear, not the eye, perishes instantly
+without material trace, and if it lives at all does so only in the
+minds of those who heard it.  The range of its action is no wider
+than that within which a voice can be heard; and every time a fresh
+impression is wanted the type must be set up anew.
+
+The written symbol extends infinitely, as regards time and space,
+the range within which one mind can communicate with another; it
+gives the writer's mind a life limited by the duration of ink,
+paper, and readers, as against that of his flesh and blood body.  On
+the other hand, it takes longer to learn the rules so as to be able
+to apply them with ease and security, and even then they cannot be
+applied so quickly and easily as those attaching to spoken symbols.
+Moreover, the spoken symbol admits of a hundred quick and subtle
+adjuncts by way of action, tone and expression, so that no one will
+use written symbols unless either for the special advantages of
+permanence and travelling power, or because he is incapacitated from
+using spoken ones.  This, however, is hardly to the point; the point
+is that these two conventional combinations of symbols, that are as
+unlike one another as the Hallelujah Chorus is to St. Paul's
+Cathedral, are the one as much language as the other; and we
+therefore inquire what this very patent fact reveals to us about the
+more essential characteristics of language itself.  What is the
+common bond that unites these two classes of symbols that seem at
+first sight to have nothing in common, and makes the one raise the
+idea of language in our minds as readily as the other?  The bond
+lies in the fact that both are a set of conventional tokens or
+symbols, agreed upon between the parties to whom they appeal as
+being attached invariably to the same ideas, and because they are
+being made as a means of communion between one mind and another,--
+for a memorandum made for a person's own later use is nothing but a
+communication from an earlier mind to a later and modified one; it
+is therefore in reality a communication from one mind to another as
+much as though it had been addressed to another person.
+
+We see, therefore, that the nature of the outward and visible sign
+to which the inward and spiritual idea of language is attached does
+not matter.  It may be the firing of a gun; it may be an old
+semaphore telegraph; it may be the movements of a needle; a look, a
+gesture, the breaking of a twig by an Indian to tell some one that
+he has passed that way:  a twig broken designedly with this end in
+view is a letter addressed to whomsoever it may concern, as much as
+though it had been written out in full on bark or paper.  It does
+not matter one straw what it is, provided it is agreed upon in
+concert, and stuck to.  Just as the lowest forms of life
+nevertheless present us with all the essential characteristics of
+livingness, and are as much alive in their own humble way as the
+most highly developed organisms, so the rudest intentional and
+effectual communication between two minds through the
+instrumentality of a concerted symbol is as much language as the
+most finished oratory of Mr. Gladstone.  I demur therefore to the
+assertion that the lower animals have no language, inasmuch as they
+cannot themselves articulate a grammatical sentence.  I do not
+indeed pretend that when the cat calls upon the tiles it uses what
+it consciously and introspectively recognises as language; it says
+what it has to say without introspection, and in the ordinary course
+of business, as one of the common forms of courtship.  It no more
+knows that it has been using language than M. Jourdain knew he had
+been speaking prose, but M. Jourdain's knowing or not knowing was
+neither here nor there.
+
+Anything which can be made to hitch on invariably to a definite idea
+that can carry some distance--say an inch at the least, and which
+can be repeated at pleasure, can be pressed into the service of
+language.  Mrs. Bentley, wife of the famous Dr. Bentley of Trinity
+College, Cambridge, used to send her snuff-box to the college
+buttery when she wanted beer, instead of a written order.  If the
+snuff-box came the beer was sent, but if there was no snuff-box
+there was no beer.  Wherein did the snuff-box differ more from a
+written order, than a written order differs from a spoken one?  The
+snuff-box was for the time being language.  It sounds strange to say
+that one might take a pinch of snuff out of a sentence, but if the
+servant had helped him or herself to a pinch while carrying it to
+the buttery this is what would have been done; for if a snuff-box
+can say "Send me a quart of beer," so efficiently that the beer is
+sent, it is impossible to say that it is not a bona fide sentence.
+As for the recipient of the message, the butler did not probably
+translate the snuff-box into articulate nouns and verbs; as soon as
+he saw it he just went down into the cellar and drew the beer, and
+if he thought at all, it was probably about something else.  Yet he
+must have been thinking without words, or he would have drawn too
+much beer or too little, or have spilt it in the bringing it up, and
+we may be sure that he did none of these things.
+
+You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent the
+snuff-box to the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity,
+it would not have been language, for there would have been no
+covenant between sayer and sayee as to what the symbol should
+represent, there would have been no previously established
+association of ideas in the mind of the butler of St. John's between
+beer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial, arbitrary, and by
+no means one of those in respect of which an impromptu bargain might
+be proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented to without
+previous formality by the person to whom it was presented.  More
+briefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able to
+understand and read it aright.  It would have been a dead letter to
+him--a snuff-box and not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinity
+it was a letter and not a snuff-box.
+
+You will also note that it was only at the moment when he was
+looking at it and accepting it as a message that it flashed forth
+from snuff-box-hood into the light and life of living utterance.  As
+soon as it had kindled the butler into sending a single quart of
+beer, its force was spent until Mrs. Bentley threw her soul into it
+again and charged it anew by wanting more beer, and sending it down
+accordingly.
+
+Again, take the ring which the Earl of Essex sent to Queen
+Elizabeth, but which the queen did not receive.  This was intended
+as a sentence, but failed to become effectual language because the
+sensible material symbol never reached those sentient organs which
+it was intended to affect.  A book, again, however full of excellent
+words it may be, is not language when it is merely standing on a
+bookshelf.  It speaks to no one, unless when being actually read, or
+quoted from by an act of memory.  It is potential language as a
+lucifer-match is potential fire, but it is no more language till it
+is in contact with a recipient mind, than a match is fire till it is
+struck, and is being consumed.
+
+A piece of music, again, without any words at all, or a song with
+words that have nothing in the world to do with the ideas which it
+is nevertheless made to convey, is often very effectual language.
+Much lying, and all irony depends on tampering with covenanted
+symbols, and making those that are usually associated with one set
+of ideas convey by a sleight of mind others of a different nature.
+That is why irony is intolerably fatiguing unless very sparingly
+used.  Take the song which Blondel sang under the window of King
+Richard's prison.  There was not one syllable in it to say that
+Blondel was there, and was going to help the king to get out of
+prison.  It was about some silly love affair, but it was a letter
+all the same, and the king made language of what would otherwise
+have been no language, by guessing the meaning, that is to say by
+perceiving that he was expected to enter then and there into a new
+covenant as to the meaning of the symbols that were presented to
+him, understanding what this covenant was to be, and acquiescing in
+it.
+
+On the other hand, no ingenuity can torture language into being a
+fit word to use in connection with either sounds or any other
+symbols that have not been intended to convey a meaning, or again in
+connection with either sounds or symbols in respect of which there
+has been no covenant between sayer and sayee.  When we hear people
+speaking a foreign language--we will say Welsh--we feel that though
+they are no doubt using what is very good language as between
+themselves, there is no language whatever as far as we are
+concerned.  We call it lingo, not language.  The Chinese letters on
+a tea-chest might as well not be there, for all that they say to us,
+though the Chinese find them very much to the purpose.  They are a
+covenant to which we have been no parties--to which our intelligence
+has affixed no signature.
+
+We have already seen that it is in virtue of such an understood
+covenant that symbols so unlike one another as the written word
+"stone" and the spoken word alike at once raise the idea of a stone
+in our minds.  See how the same holds good as regards the different
+languages that pass current in different nations.  The letters p, i,
+e, r, r, e convey the idea of a stone to a Frenchman as readily as
+s, t, o, n, e do to ourselves.  And why? because that is the
+covenant that has been struck between those who speak and those who
+are spoken to.  Our "stone" conveys no idea to a Frenchman, nor his
+"pierre" to us, unless we have done what is commonly called
+acquiring one another's language.  To acquire a foreign language is
+only to learn and adhere to the covenants in respect of symbols
+which the nation in question has adopted and adheres to.
+
+Till we have done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak,
+of the game that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, play
+together; but the convention being once known and assented to, it
+does not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the word
+"lapis," or by "lithos," "pietra," "pierre," "stein," "stane" or
+"stone"; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, and
+one set, unless they are of unwieldy length will do as well as
+another, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick to
+them; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not the
+symbols.  The whole power of spoken language is vested in the
+invariableness with which certain symbols are associated with
+certain ideas.  If we are strict in always connecting the same
+symbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clear
+to ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to any one who is
+also fairly strict.  If, on the other hand, we use the same
+combination of symbols for one thing one day and for another the
+next, we abuse our symbols instead of using them, and those who
+indulge in slovenly habits in this respect ere long lose the power
+alike of thinking and of expressing themselves correctly.  The
+symbols, however, in the first instance, may be anything in the wide
+world that we have a fancy for.  They have no more to do with the
+ideas they serve to convey than money has with the things that it
+serves to buy.
+
+The principle of association, as every one knows, involves that
+whenever two things have been associated sufficiently together, the
+suggestion of one of them to the mind shall immediately raise a
+suggestion of the other.  It is in virtue of this principle that
+language, as we so call it, exists at all, for the essence of
+language consists, as I have said perhaps already too often, in the
+fixity with which certain ideas are invariably connected with
+certain symbols.  But this being so, it is hard to see how we can
+deny that the lower animals possess the germs of a highly rude and
+unspecialised, but still true language, unless we also deny that
+they have any ideas at all; and this I gather is what Professor Max
+Muller in a quiet way rather wishes to do.  Thus he says, "It is
+easy enough to show that animals communicate, but this is a fact
+which has never been doubted.  Dogs who growl and bark leave no
+doubt in the minds of other dogs or cats, or even of man, of what
+they mean, but growling and barking are not language, nor do they
+even contain the elements of language." {18}
+
+I observe the Professor says that animals communicate without saying
+what it is that they communicate.  I believe this to have been
+because if he said that the lower animals communicate their ideas,
+this would be to admit that they have ideas; if so, and if, as they
+present every appearance of doing, they can remember, reflect upon,
+modify these ideas according to modified surroundings, and
+interchange them with one another, how is it possible to deny them
+the germs of thought, language, and reason--not to say a good deal
+more than the germs?  It seems to me that not knowing what else to
+say that animals communicated if it was not ideas, and not knowing
+what mess he might not get into if he admitted that they had ideas
+at all, he thought it safer to omit his accusative case altogether.
+
+That growling and barking cannot be called a very highly specialised
+language goes without saying; they are, however, so much diversified
+in character, according to circumstances, that they place a
+considerable number of symbols at an animal's command, and he
+invariably attaches the same symbol to the same idea.  A cat never
+purrs when she is angry, nor spits when she is pleased.  When she
+rubs her head against any one affectionately it is her symbol for
+saying that she is very fond of him, and she expects, and usually
+finds that it will be understood.  If she sees her mistress raise
+her hand as though to pretend to strike her, she knows that it is
+the symbol her mistress invariably attaches to the idea of sending
+her away, and as such she accepts it.  Granted that the symbols in
+use among the lower animals are fewer and less highly differentiated
+than in the case of any known human language, and therefore that
+animal language is incomparably less subtle and less capable of
+expressing delicate shades of meaning than our own, these
+differences are nevertheless only those that exist between highly
+developed and inchoate language; they do not involve those that
+distinguish language from no language.  They are the differences
+between the undifferentiated protoplasm of the amoeba and our own
+complex organisation; they are not the differences between life and
+no life.  In animal language as much as in human there is a mind
+intentionally making use of a symbol accepted by another mind as
+invariably attached to a certain idea, in order to produce that idea
+in the mind which it is desired to affect--more briefly, there is a
+sayer, a sayee, and a covenanted symbol designedly applied.  Our own
+speech is vertebrated and articulated by means of nouns, verbs, and
+the rules of grammar.  A dog's speech is invertebrate, but I do not
+see how it is possible to deny that it possesses all the essential
+elements of language.
+
+I have said nothing about Professor R. L. Garner's researches into
+the language of apes, because they have not yet been so far verified
+and accepted as to make it safe to rely upon them; but when he lays
+it down that all voluntary sounds are the products of thought, and
+that, if they convey a meaning to another, they perform the
+functions of human speech, he says what I believe will commend
+itself to any unsophisticated mind.  I could have wished, however,
+that he had not limited himself to sounds, and should have preferred
+his saying what I doubt not he would readily accept--I mean, that
+all symbols or tokens of whatever kind, if voluntarily adopted as
+such, are the products of thought, and perform the functions of
+human speech; but I cannot too often remind you that nothing can be
+considered as fulfilling the conditions of language, except a
+voluntary application of a recognised token in order to convey a
+more or less definite meaning, with the intention doubtless of thus
+purchasing as it were some other desired meaning and consequent
+sensation.  It is astonishing how closely in this respect money and
+words resemble one another.  Money indeed may be considered as the
+most universal and expressive of all languages.  For gold and silver
+coins are no more money when not in the actual process of being
+voluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language.
+Pounds, shillings and pence are recognised covenanted tokens, the
+outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual purchasing
+power, but till in actual use they are only potential money, as the
+symbols of language, whatever they may be, are only potential
+language till they are passing between two minds.  It is the power
+and will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and as
+long as these are in abeyance the money is in abeyance also; the
+coins may be safe in one's pocket, but they are as dead as a log
+till they begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they begin
+to burn within us.
+
+The real question, however, as to the substantial underlying
+identity between the language of the lower animals and our own,
+turns upon that other question whether or no, in spite of an
+immeasurable difference of degree, the thought and reason of man and
+of the lower animals is essentially the same.  No one will expect a
+dog to master and express the varied ideas that are incessantly
+arising in connection with human affairs.  He is a pauper as against
+a millionaire.  To ask him to do so would be like giving a street-
+boy sixpence and telling him to go and buy himself a founder's share
+in the New River Company.  He would not even know what was meant,
+and even if he did it would take several millions of sixpences to
+buy one.  It is astonishing what a clever workman will do with very
+modest tools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make a very
+small sum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas an
+intelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limited
+vocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence can
+ever reach the level of a man's.  What we do maintain is that,
+within its own limited range, it is of the same essential character
+as our own, and that though a dog's ideas in respect of human
+affairs are both vague and narrow, yet in respect of canine affairs
+they are precise enough and extensive enough to deserve no other
+name than thought or reason.  We hold moreover that they communicate
+their ideas in essentially the same manner as we do--that is to say,
+by the instrumentality of a code of symbols attached to certain
+states of mind and material objects, in the first instance
+arbitrarily, but so persistently, that the presentation of the
+symbol immediately carries with it the idea which it is intended to
+convey.  Animals can thus receive and impart ideas on all that most
+concerns them.  As my great namesake said some two hundred years
+ago, they know "what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic wit
+can fly."  And they not only know what's what themselves, but can
+impart to one another any new what's-whatness that they may have
+acquired, for they are notoriously able to instruct and correct one
+another.
+
+Against this Professor Max Muller contends that we can know nothing
+of what goes on in the mind of any lower animal, inasmuch as we are
+not lower animals ourselves.  "We can imagine anything we like about
+what passes in the mind of an animal," he writes, "we can know
+absolutely nothing." {19}  It is something to have it in evidence
+that he conceives animals as having a mind at all, but it is not
+easy to see how they can be supposed to have a mind, without being
+able to acquire ideas, and having acquired, to read, mark, learn,
+and inwardly digest them.  Surely the mistake of requiring too much
+evidence is hardly less great than that of being contented with too
+little.  We, too, are animals, and can no more refuse to infer
+reason from certain visible actions in their case than we can in our
+own.  If Professor Max Muller's plea were allowed, we should have to
+deny our right to infer confidently what passes in the mind of any
+one not ourselves, inasmuch as we are not that person.  We never,
+indeed, can obtain irrefragable certainty about this or any other
+matter, but we can be sure enough in many cases to warrant our
+staking all that is most precious to us on the soundness of our
+opinion.  Moreover, if the Professor denies our right to infer that
+animals reason, on the ground that we are not animals enough
+ourselves to be able to form an opinion, with what right does he
+infer so confidently himself that they do not reason?  And how, if
+they present every one of those appearances which we are accustomed
+to connect with the communication of an idea from one mind to
+another, can we deny that they have a language of their own, though
+it is one which in most cases we can neither speak nor understand?
+How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a man with a gun
+and warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they all show
+that they understand by immediately taking flight, should not be
+credited both with reason and the germs of language?
+
+After all, a professor, whether of philology, psychology, biology,
+or any other ology, is hardly the kind of person to whom we should
+appeal on such an elementary question as that of animal intelligence
+and language.  We might as well ask a botanist to tell us whether
+grass grows, or a meteorologist to tell us if it has left off
+raining.  If it is necessary to appeal to any one, I should prefer
+the opinion of an intelligent gamekeeper to that of any professor,
+however learned.  The keepers, again, at the Zoological Gardens,
+have exceptional opportunities for studying the minds of animals--
+modified, indeed, by captivity, but still minds of animals.  Grooms,
+again, and dog-fanciers, are to the full as able to form an
+intelligent opinion on the reason and language of animals as any
+University Professor, and so are cats'-meat men.  I have repeatedly
+asked gamekeepers and keepers at the Zoological Gardens whether
+animals could reason and converse with one another, and have always
+found myself regarded somewhat contemptuously for having even asked
+the question.  I once said to a friend, in the hearing of a keeper
+at the Zoological Gardens, that the penguin was very stupid.  The
+man was furious, and jumped upon me at once.  "He's not stupid at
+all," said he; "he's very intelligent."
+
+Who has not seen a cat, when it wishes to go out, raise its fore
+paws on to the handle of the door, or as near as it can get, and
+look round, evidently asking some one to turn it for her?  Is it
+reasonable to deny that a reasoning process is going on in the cat's
+mind, whereby she connects her wish with the steps necessary for its
+fulfilment, and also with certain invariable symbols which she knows
+her master or mistress will interpret?  Once, in company with a
+friend, I watched a cat playing with a house-fly in the window of a
+ground-floor room.  We were in the street, while the cat was inside.
+When we came up to the window she gave us one searching look, and,
+having satisfied herself that we had nothing for her, went on with
+her game.  She knew all about the glass in the window, and was sure
+we could do nothing to molest her, so she treated us with absolute
+contempt, never even looking at us again.
+
+The game was this.  She was to catch the fly and roll it round and
+round under her paw along the window-sill, but so gently as not to
+injure it nor prevent it from being able to fly again when she had
+done rolling it.  It was very early spring, and flies were scarce,
+in fact there was not another in the whole window.  She knew that if
+she crippled this one, it would not be able to amuse her further,
+and that she would not readily get another instead, and she liked
+the feel of it under her paw.  It was soft and living, and the
+quivering of its wings tickled the ball of her foot in a manner that
+she found particularly grateful; so she rolled it gently along the
+whole length of the window-sill.  It then became the fly's turn.  He
+was to get up and fly about in the window, so as to recover himself
+a little; then she was to catch him again, and roll him softly all
+along the window-sill, as she had done before.
+
+It was plain that the cat knew the rules of her game perfectly well,
+and enjoyed it keenly.  It was equally plain that the fly could not
+make head or tail of what it was all about.  If it had been able to
+do so it would have gone to play in the upper part of the window,
+where the cat could not reach it.  Perhaps it was always hoping to
+get through the glass, and escape that way; anyhow, it kept pretty
+much to the same pane, no matter how often it was rolled.  At last,
+however, the fly, for some reason or another, did not reappear on
+the pane, and the cat began looking everywhere to find it.  Her
+annoyance when she failed to do so was extreme.  It was not only
+that she had lost her fly, but that she could not conceive how she
+should have ever come to do so.  Presently she noted a small knot in
+the woodwork of the sill, and it flashed upon her that she had
+accidentally killed the fly, and that this was its dead body.  She
+tried to move it gently with her paw, but it was no use, and for the
+time she satisfied herself that the knot and the fly had nothing to
+do with one another.  Every now and then, however, she returned to
+it as though it were the only thing she could think of, and she
+would try it again.  She seemed to say she was certain there had
+been no knot there before--she must have seen it if there had been;
+and yet, the fly could hardly have got jammed so firmly into the
+wood.  She was puzzled and irritated beyond measure, and kept
+looking in the same place again and again, just as we do when we
+have mislaid something.  She was rapidly losing temper and dignity
+when suddenly we saw the fly reappear from under the cat's stomach
+and make for the window-pane, at the very moment when the cat
+herself was exclaiming for the fiftieth time that she wondered where
+that stupid fly ever could have got to.  No man who has been hunting
+twenty minutes for his spectacles could be more delighted when he
+suddenly finds them on his own forehead.  "So that's where you
+were," we seemed to hear her say, as she proceeded to catch it, and
+again began rolling it very softly without hurting it, under her
+paw.  My friend and I both noticed that the cat, in spite of her
+perplexity, never so much as hinted that we were the culprits.  The
+question whether anything outside the window could do her good or
+harm had long since been settled by her in the negative, and she was
+not going to reopen it; she simply cut us dead, and though her
+annoyance was so great that she was manifestly ready to lay the
+blame on anybody or anything with or without reason, and though she
+must have perfectly well known that we were watching the whole
+affair with amusement, she never either asked us if we had happened
+to see such a thing as a fly go down our way lately, or accused us
+of having taken it from her--both of which ideas she would, I am
+confident, have been very well able to convey to us if she had been
+so minded.
+
+Now what are thought and reason if the processes that were going
+through this cat's mind were not both one and the other?  It would
+be childish to suppose that the cat thought in words of its own, or
+in anything like words.  Its thinking was probably conducted through
+the instrumentality of a series of mental images.  We so habitually
+think in words ourselves that we find it difficult to realise
+thought without words at all; our difficulty, however, in imagining
+the particular manner in which the cat thinks has nothing to do with
+the matter.  We must answer the question whether she thinks or no,
+not according to our own ease or difficulty in understanding the
+particular manner of her thinking, but according as her action does
+or does not appear to be of the same character as other action that
+we commonly call thoughtful.  To say that the cat is not
+intelligent, merely on the ground that we cannot ourselves fathom
+her intelligence--this, as I have elsewhere said, is to make
+intelligence mean the power of being understood, rather than the
+power of understanding.  This nevertheless is what, for all our
+boasted intelligence, we generally do.  The more we can understand
+an animal's ways, the more intelligent we call it, and the less we
+can understand these, the more stupid do we declare it to be.  As
+for plants--whose punctuality and attention to all the details and
+routine of their somewhat restricted lines of business is as obvious
+as it is beyond all praise--we understand the working of their minds
+so little that by common consent we declare them to have no
+intelligence at all.
+
+Before concluding I should wish to deal a little more fully with
+Professor Max Muller's contention that there can be no reason
+without language, and no language without reason.  Surely when two
+practised pugilists are fighting, parrying each other's blows, and
+watching keenly for an unguarded point, they are thinking and
+reasoning very subtly the whole time, without doing so in words.
+The machination of their thoughts, as well as its expression, is
+actual--I mean, effectuated and expressed by action and deed, not
+words.  They are unaware of any logical sequence of thought that
+they could follow in words as passing through their minds at all.
+They may perhaps think consciously in words now and again, but such
+thought will be intermittent, and the main part of the fighting will
+be done without any internal concomitance of articulated phrases.
+Yet we cannot doubt that their action, however much we may
+disapprove of it, is guided by intelligence and reason; nor should
+we doubt that a reasoning process of the same character goes on in
+the minds of two dogs or fighting-cocks when they are striving to
+master their opponents.
+
+Do we think in words, again, when we wind up our watches, put on our
+clothes, or eat our breakfasts?  If we do, it is generally about
+something else.  We do these things almost as much without the help
+of words as we wink or yawn, or perform any of those other actions
+that we call reflex, as it would almost seem because they are done
+without reflection.  They are not, however, the less reasonable
+because wordless.
+
+Even when we think we are thinking in words, we do so only in half
+measure.  A running accompaniment of words no doubt frequently
+attends our thoughts; but, unless we are writing or speaking, this
+accompaniment is of the vaguest and most fitful kind, as we often
+find out when we try to write down or say what we are thinking
+about, though we have a fairly definite notion of it, or fancy that
+we have one, all the time.  The thought is not steadily and
+coherently governed by and moulded in words, nor does it steadily
+govern them.  Words and thought interact upon and help one another,
+as any other mechanical appliances interact on and help the
+invention that first hit upon them; but reason or thought, for the
+most part, flies along over the heads of words, working its own
+mysterious way in paths that are beyond our ken, though whether some
+of our departmental personalities are as unconscious of what is
+passing, as that central government is which we alone dub with the
+name of "we" or "us," is a point on which I will not now touch.
+
+I cannot think, then, that Professor Max Muller's contention that
+thought and language are identical--and he has repeatedly affirmed
+this--will ever be generally accepted.  Thought is no more identical
+with language than feeling is identical with the nervous system.
+True, we can no more feel without a nervous system than we can
+discern certain minute organisms without a microscope.  Destroy the
+nervous system, and we destroy feeling.  Destroy the microscope, and
+we can no longer see the animalcules; but our sight of the
+animalcules is not the microscope, though it is effectuated by means
+of the microscope, and our feeling is not the nervous system, though
+the nervous system is the instrument that enables us to feel.
+
+The nervous system is a device which living beings have gradually
+perfected--I believe I may say quite truly--through the will and
+power which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of
+which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend.  By the help
+of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living
+beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate
+their feelings in thought with more and more precision.  The higher
+evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the
+consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted
+upon thought.  These things are as power and desire, or supply and
+demand, each one of which is continually outstripping, and being in
+turn outstripped by the other; but, in spite of their close
+connection and interaction, power is not desire, nor demand supply.
+Language is a device evolved sometimes by leaps and bounds, and
+sometimes exceedingly slowly, whereby we help ourselves alike to
+greater ease, precision, and complexity of thought, and also to more
+convenient interchange of thought among ourselves.  Thought found
+rude expression, which gradually among other forms assumed that of
+words.  These reacted upon thought, and thought again on them, but
+thought is no more identical with words than words are with the
+separate letters of which they are composed.
+
+To sum up, then, and to conclude.  I would ask you to see the
+connection between words and ideas, as in the first instance
+arbitrary.  No doubt in some cases an imitation of the cry of some
+bird or wild beast would suggest the name that should be attached to
+it; occasionally the sound of an operation such as grinding may have
+influenced the choice of the letters g, r, as the root of many words
+that denote a grinding, grating, grasping, crushing, action; but I
+understand that the number of words due to direct imitation is
+comparatively few in number, and that they have been mainly coined
+as the result of connections so far-fetched and fanciful as to
+amount practically to no connection at all.  Once chosen, however,
+they were adhered to for a considerable time among the dwellers in
+any given place, so as to become acknowledged as the vulgar tongue,
+and raise readily in the mind of the inhabitants of that place the
+ideas with which they had been artificially associated.
+
+As regards our being able to think and reason without words, the
+Duke of Argyll has put the matter as soundly as I have yet seen it
+stated.  "It seems to me," he wrote, "quite certain that we can and
+do constantly think of things without thinking of any sound or word
+as designating them.  Language seems to me to be necessary for the
+progress of thought, but not at all for the mere act of thinking.
+It is a product of thought, an expression of it, a vehicle for the
+communication of it, and an embodiment which is essential to its
+growth and continuity; but it seems to me altogether erroneous to
+regard it as an inseparable part of cogitation."
+
+The following passages, again, are quoted from Sir William Hamilton
+in Professor Max Muller's own book, with so much approval as to lead
+one to suppose that the differences between himself and his
+opponents are in reality less than he believes them to be:-
+
+"Language," says Sir W. Hamilton, "is the attribution of signs to
+our cognitions of things.  But as a cognition must have already been
+there before it could receive a sign, consequently that knowledge
+which is denoted by the formation and application of a word must
+have preceded the symbol that denotes it.  A sign, however, is
+necessary to give stability to our intellectual progress--to
+establish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our
+advance to another beyond.  A country may be overrun by an armed
+host, but it is only conquered by the establishment of fortresses.
+Words are the fortresses of thought.  They enable us to realise our
+dominion over what we have already overrun in thought; to make every
+intellectual conquest the base of operations for others still
+beyond."
+
+"This," says Professor Max Muller, "is a most happy illustration,"
+and he proceeds to quote the following, also from Sir William
+Hamilton, which he declares to be even happier still.
+
+"You have all heard," says Sir William Hamilton, "of the process of
+tunnelling through a sandbank.  In this operation it is impossible
+to succeed unless every foot, nay, almost every inch of our progress
+be secured by an arch of masonry before we attempt the excavation of
+another.  Now language is to the mind precisely what the arch is to
+the tunnel.  The power of thinking and the power of excavation are
+not dependent on the words in the one case or on the mason-work in
+the other; but without these subsidiaries neither could be carried
+on beyond its rudimentary commencement.  Though, therefore, we allow
+that every movement forward in language must be determined by an
+antecedent movement forward in thought, still, unless thought be
+accompanied at each point of its evolutions by a corresponding
+evolution of language, its further development is arrested."
+
+Man has evolved an articulate language, whereas the lower animals
+seem to be without one.  Man, therefore, has far outstripped them in
+reasoning faculty as well as in power of expression.  This, however,
+does not bar the communications which the lower animals make to one
+another from possessing all the essential characteristics of
+language, and as a matter of fact, wherever we can follow them we
+find such communications effectuated by the aid of arbitrary symbols
+covenanted upon by the living beings that wish to communicate, and
+persistently associated with certain corresponding feelings, states
+of mind, or material objects.  Human language is nothing more than
+this in principle, however much further the principle has been
+carried in our own case than in that of the lower animals.
+
+This being admitted, we should infer that the thought or reason on
+which the language of men and animals is alike founded differs as
+between men and brutes in degree but not in kind.  More than this
+cannot be claimed on behalf of the lower animals, even by their most
+enthusiastic admirer.
+
+
+
+THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM {20}--PART I
+
+
+
+It will be readily admitted that of all living writers Mr. Alfred
+Russel Wallace is the one the peculiar turn of whose mind best fits
+him to write on the subject of natural selection, or the
+accumulation of fortunate but accidental variations through descent
+and the struggle for existence.  His mind in all its more essential
+characteristics closely resembles that of the late Mr. Charles
+Darwin himself, and it is no doubt due to this fact that he and Mr.
+Darwin elaborated their famous theory at the same time, and
+independently of one another.  I shall have occasion in the course
+of the following article to show how misled and misleading both
+these distinguished men have been, in spite of their unquestionable
+familiarity with the whole range of animal and vegetable phenomena.
+I believe it will be more respectful to both of them to do this in
+the most out-spoken way.  I believe their work to have been as
+mischievous as it has been valuable, and as valuable as it has been
+mischievous; and higher, whether praise or blame, I know not how to
+give.  Nevertheless I would in the outset, and with the utmost
+sincerity, admit concerning Messrs. Wallace and Darwin that neither
+can be held as the more profound and conscientious thinker; neither
+can be put forward as the more ready to acknowledge obligation to
+the great writers on evolution who had preceded him, or to place his
+own developments in closer and more conspicuous historical
+connection with earlier thought upon the subject; neither is the
+more ready to welcome criticism and to state his opponent's case in
+the most pointed and telling way in which it can be put; neither is
+the more quick to encourage new truth; neither is the more genial,
+generous adversary, or has the profounder horror of anything even
+approaching literary or scientific want of candour; both display the
+same inimitable power of putting their opinions forward in the way
+that shall best ensure their acceptance; both are equally unrivalled
+in the tact that tells them when silence will be golden, and when on
+the other hand a whole volume of facts may be advantageously brought
+forward.  Less than the foregoing tribute both to Messrs. Darwin and
+Wallace I will not, and more I cannot pay.
+
+Let us now turn to the most authoritative exponent of latter-day
+evolution--I mean to Mr. Wallace, whose work, entitled "Darwinism,"
+though it should have been entitled "Wallaceism," is still so far
+Darwinistic that it develops the teaching of Mr. Darwin in the
+direction given to it by Mr. Darwin himself--so far, indeed, as this
+can be ascertained at all--and not in that of Lamarck.  Mr. Wallace
+tells us, on the first page of his preface, that he has no intention
+of dealing even in outline with the vast subject of evolution in
+general, and has only tried to give such an account of the theory of
+natural selection as may facilitate a clear conception of Darwin's
+work.  How far he has succeeded is a point on which opinion will
+probably be divided.  Those who find Mr. Darwin's works clear will
+also find no difficulty in understanding Mr. Wallace; those, on the
+other hand, who find Mr. Darwin puzzling are little likely to be
+less puzzled by Mr. Wallace.  He continues:-
+
+"The objections now made to Darwin's theory apply solely to the
+particular means by which the change of species has been brought
+about, not to the fact of that change."
+
+But "Darwin's theory"--as Mr. Wallace has elsewhere proved that he
+understands--has no reference "to the fact of that change"--that is
+to say, to the fact that species have been modified in course of
+descent from other species.  This is no more Mr. Darwin's theory
+than it is the reader's or my own.  Darwin's theory is concerned
+only with "the particular means by which the change of species has
+been brought about"; his contention being that this is mainly due to
+the natural survival of those individuals that have happened by some
+accident to be born most favourably adapted to their surroundings,
+or, in other words, through accumulation in the common course of
+nature of the more lucky variations that chance occasionally
+purveys.  Mr. Wallace's words, then, in reality amount to this, that
+the objections now made to Darwin's theory apply solely to Darwin's
+theory, which is all very well as far as it goes, but might have
+been more easily apprehended if he had simply said, "There are
+several objections now made to Mr. Darwin's theory."
+
+It must be remembered that the passage quoted above occurs on the
+first page of a preface dated March 1889, when the writer had
+completed his task, and was most fully conversant with his subject.
+Nevertheless, it seems indisputable either that he is still
+confusing evolution with Mr. Darwin's theory, or that he does not
+know when his sentences have point and when they have none.
+
+I should perhaps explain to some readers that Mr. Darwin did not
+modify the main theory put forward, first by Buffon, to whom it
+indisputably belongs, and adopted from him by Erasmus Darwin,
+Lamarck, and many other writers in the latter half of the last
+century and the earlier years of the present.  The early
+evolutionists maintained that all existing forms of animal and
+vegetable life, including man, were derived in course of descent
+with modification from forms resembling the lowest now known.
+
+Mr. Darwin went as far as this, and farther no one can go.  The
+point at issue between him and his predecessors involves neither the
+main fact of evolution, nor yet the geometrical ratio of increase,
+and the struggle for existence consequent thereon.  Messrs. Darwin
+and Wallace have each thrown invaluable light upon these last two
+points, but Buffon, as early as 1756, had made them the keystone of
+his system.  "The movement of nature," he then wrote, "turns on two
+immovable pivots:  one, the illimitable fecundity which she has
+given to all species:  the other, the innumerable difficulties which
+reduce the results of that fecundity."  Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck
+followed in the same sense.  They thus admit the survival of the
+fittest as fully as Mr. Darwin himself, though they do not make use
+of this particular expression.  The dispute turns not upon natural
+selection, which is common to all writers on evolution, but upon the
+nature and causes of the variations that are supposed to be selected
+from and thus accumulated.  Are these mainly attributable to the
+inherited effects of use and disuse, supplemented by occasional
+sports and happy accidents?  Or are they mainly due to sports and
+happy accidents, supplemented by occasional inherited effects of use
+and disuse?
+
+The Lamarckian system has all along been maintained by Mr. Herbert
+Spencer, who, in his "Principles of Biology," published in 1865,
+showed how impossible it was that accidental variations should
+accumulate at all.  I am not sure how far Mr. Spencer would consent
+to being called a Lamarckian pure and simple, nor yet how far it is
+strictly accurate to call him one; nevertheless, I can see no
+important difference in the main positions taken by him and by
+Lamarck.
+
+The question at issue between the Lamarckians, supported by Mr.
+Spencer and a growing band of those who have risen in rebellion
+against the Charles-Darwinian system on the one hand, and Messrs.
+Darwin and Wallace with the greater number of our more prominent
+biologists on the other, involves the very existence of evolution as
+a workable theory.  For it is plain that what Nature can be supposed
+able to do by way of choice must depend on the supply of the
+variations from which she is supposed to choose.  She cannot take
+what is not offered to her; and so again she cannot be supposed able
+to accumulate unless what is gained in one direction in one
+generation, or series of generations, is little likely to be lost in
+those that presently succeed.  Now variations ascribed mainly to use
+and disuse can be supposed capable of being accumulated, for use and
+disuse are fairly constant for long periods among the individuals of
+the same species, and often over large areas; moreover, conditions
+of existence involving changes of habit, and thus of organisation,
+come for the most part gradually; so that time is given during which
+the organism can endeavour to adapt itself in the requisite
+respects, instead of being shocked out of existence by too sudden
+change.  Variations, on the other hand, that are ascribed to mere
+chance cannot be supposed as likely to be accumulated, for chance is
+notoriously inconstant, and would not purvey the variations in
+sufficiently unbroken succession, or in a sufficient number of
+individuals, modified similarly in all the necessary correlations at
+the same time and place to admit of their being accumulated.  It is
+vital therefore to the theory of evolution, as was early pointed out
+by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin and by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
+that variations should be supposed to have a definite and persistent
+principle underlying them, which shall tend to engender similar and
+simultaneous modification, however small, in the vast majority of
+individuals composing any species.  The existence of such a
+principle and its permanence is the only thing that can be supposed
+capable of acting as rudder and compass to the accumulation of
+variations, and of making it hold steadily on one course for each
+species, till eventually many havens, far remote from one another,
+are safely reached.
+
+It is obvious that the having fatally impaired the theory of his
+predecessors could not warrant Mr. Darwin in claiming, as he most
+fatuously did, the theory of evolution.  That he is still generally
+believed to have been the originator of this theory is due to the
+fact that he claimed it, and that a powerful literary backing at
+once came forward to support him.  It seems at first sight
+improbable that those who too zealously urged his claims were
+unaware that so much had been written on the subject, but when we
+find even Mr. Wallace himself as profoundly ignorant on this subject
+as he still either is, or affects to be, there is no limit
+assignable to the ignorance or affected ignorance of the kind of
+biologists who would write reviews in leading journals thirty years
+ago.  Mr. Wallace writes:-
+
+"A few great naturalists, struck by the very slight difference
+between many of these species, and the numerous links that exist
+between the most different forms of animals and plants, and also
+observing that a great many species do vary considerably in their
+forms, colours and habits, conceived the idea that they might be all
+produced one from the other.  The most eminent of these writers was
+a great French naturalist, Lamarck, who published an elaborate work,
+the Philosophie Zoologique, in which he endeavoured to prove that
+all animals whatever are descended from other species of animals.
+He attributed the change of species chiefly to the effect of changes
+in the conditions of life--such as climate, food, &c.; and
+especially to the desires and efforts of the animals themselves to
+improve their condition, leading to a modification of form or size
+in certain parts, owing to the well-known physiological law that all
+organs are strengthened by constant use, while they are weakened or
+even completely lost by disuse . . .
+
+"The only other important work dealing with the question was the
+celebrated 'Vestiges of Creation,' published anonymously, but now
+acknowledged to have been written by the late Robert Chambers."
+
+None are so blind as those who will not see, and it would be waste
+of time to argue with the invincible ignorance of one who thinks
+Lamarck and Buffon conceived that all species were produced from one
+another, more especially as I have already dealt at some length with
+the early evolutionists in my work, "Evolution, Old and New," first
+published ten years ago, and not, so far as I am aware, detected in
+serious error or omission.  If, however, Mr. Wallace still thinks it
+safe to presume so far on the ignorance of his readers as to say
+that the only two important works on evolution before Mr. Darwin's
+were Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique and the "Vestiges of
+Creation," how fathomable is the ignorance of the average reviewer
+likely to have been thirty years ago, when the "Origin of Species"
+was first published?  Mr. Darwin claimed evolution as his own
+theory.  Of course, he would not claim it if he had no right to it.
+Then by all means give him the credit of it.  This was the most
+natural view to take, and it was generally taken.  It was not,
+moreover, surprising that people failed to appreciate all the
+niceties of Mr. Darwin's "distinctive feature" which, whether
+distinctive or no, was assuredly not distinct, and was never frankly
+contrasted with the older view, as it would have been by one who
+wished it to be understood and judge upon its merits.  It was in
+consequence of this omission that people failed to note how fast and
+loose Mr. Darwin played with his distinctive feature, and how
+readily he dropped it on occasion.
+
+It may be said that the question of what was thought by the
+predecessors of Mr. Darwin is, after all, personal, and of no
+interest to the general public, comparable to that of the main
+issue--whether we are to accept evolution or not.  Granted that
+Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck bore the burden and heat of the
+day before Mr. Charles Darwin was born, they did not bring people
+round to their opinion, whereas Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace did, and
+the public cannot be expected to look beyond this broad and
+indisputable fact.
+
+The answer to this is, that the theory which Messrs. Darwin and
+Wallace have persuaded the public to accept is demonstrably false,
+and that the opponents of evolution are certain in the end to
+triumph over it.  Paley, in his "Natural Theology," long since
+brought forward far too much evidence of design in animal
+organisation to allow of our setting down its marvels to the
+accumulations of fortunate accident, undirected by will, effort and
+intelligence.  Those who examine the main facts of animal and
+vegetable organisation without bias will, no doubt, ere long
+conclude that all animals and vegetables are derived ultimately from
+unicellular organisms, but they will not less readily perceive that
+the evolution of species without the concomitance and direction of
+mind and effort is as inconceivable as is the independent creation
+of every individual species.  The two facts, evolution and design,
+are equally patent to plain people.  There is no escaping from
+either.  According to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, we may have
+evolution, but are on no account to have it as mainly due to
+intelligent effort, guided by ever higher and higher range of
+sensations, perceptions, and ideas.  We are to set it down to the
+shuffling of cards, or the throwing of dice without the play, and
+this will never stand.
+
+According to the older men, cards did indeed count for much, but
+play counted for more.  They denied the teleology of the time--that
+is to say, the teleology that saw all adaptation to surroundings as
+part of a plan devised long ages since by a quasi-anthropomorphic
+being who schemed everything out much as a man would do, but on an
+infinitely vaster scale.  This conception they found repugnant alike
+to intelligence and conscience, but, though they do not seem to have
+perceived it, they left the door open for a design more true and
+more demonstrable than that which they excluded.  By making their
+variations mainly due to effort and intelligence, they made organic
+development run on all-fours with human progress, and with
+inventions which we have watched growing up from small beginnings.
+They made the development of man from the amoeba part and parcel of
+the story that may be read, though on an infinitely smaller scale,
+in the development of our most powerful marine engines from the
+common kettle, or of our finest microscopes from the dew-drop.
+
+The development of the steam-engine and the microscope is due to
+intelligence and design, which did indeed utilise chance
+suggestions, but which improved on these, and directed each step of
+their accumulation, though never foreseeing more than a step or two
+ahead, and often not so much as this.  The fact, as I have elsewhere
+urged, that the man who made the first kettle did not foresee the
+engines of the Great Eastern, or that he who first noted the
+magnifying power of the dew-drop had no conception of our present
+microscopes--the very limited amount, in fact, of design and
+intelligence that was called into play at any one point--this does
+not make us deny that the steam-engine and microscope owe their
+development to design.  If each step of the road was designed, the
+whole journey was designed, though the particular end was not
+designed when the journey was begun.  And so is it, according to the
+older view of evolution, with the development of those living
+organs, or machines, that are born with us, as part of the
+perambulating carpenter's chest we call our bodies.  The older view
+gives us our design, and gives us our evolution too.  If it refuses
+to see a quasi-anthropomorphic God modelling each species from
+without as a potter models clay, it gives us God as vivifying and
+indwelling in all His creatures--He in them, and they in Him.  If it
+refuses to see God outside the universe, it equally refuses to see
+any part of the universe as outside God.  If it makes the universe
+the body of God, it also makes God the soul of the universe.  The
+question at issue, then, between the Darwinism of Erasmus Darwin and
+the neo-Darwinism of his grandson, is not a personal one, nor
+anything like a personal one.  It not only involves the existence of
+evolution, but it affects the view we take of life and things in an
+endless variety of most interesting and important ways.  It is
+imperative, therefore, on those who take any interest in these
+matters, to place side by side in the clearest contrast the views of
+those who refer the evolution of species mainly to accumulation of
+variations that have no other inception than chance, and of that
+older school which makes design perceive and develop still further
+the goods that chance provides.
+
+But over and above this, which would be in itself sufficient, the
+historical mode of studying any question is the only one which will
+enable us to comprehend it effectually.  The personal element cannot
+be eliminated from the consideration of works written by living
+persons for living persons.  We want to know who is who--whom we can
+depend upon to have no other end than the making things clear to
+himself and his readers, and whom we should mistrust as having an
+ulterior aim on which he is more intent than on the furthering of
+our better understanding.  We want to know who is doing his best to
+help us, and who is only trying to make us help him, or to bolster
+up the system in which his interests are vested.  There is nothing
+that will throw more light upon these points than the way in which a
+man behaves towards those who have worked in the same field with
+himself, and, again, than his style.  A man's style, as Buffon long
+since said, is the man himself.  By style, I do not, of course, mean
+grammar or rhetoric, but that style of which Buffon again said that
+it is like happiness, and vient de la douceur de l'ame.  When we
+find a man concealing worse than nullity of meaning under sentences
+that sound plausibly enough, we should distrust him much as we
+should a fellow-traveller whom we caught trying to steal our watch.
+We often cannot judge of the truth or falsehood of facts for
+ourselves, but we most of us know enough of human nature to be able
+to tell a good witness from a bad one.
+
+However this may be, and whatever we may think of judging systems by
+the directness or indirectness of those who advance them,
+biologists, having committed themselves too rashly, would have been
+more than human if they had not shown some pique towards those who
+dared to say, first, that the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace
+was unworkable; and secondly, that even though it were workable it
+would not justify either of them in claiming evolution.  When
+biologists show pique at all they generally show a good deal of
+pique, but pique or no pique, they shunned Mr. Spencer's objection
+above referred to with a persistency more unanimous and obstinate
+than I ever remember to have seen displayed even by professional
+truth-seekers.  I find no rejoinder to it from Mr. Darwin himself,
+between 1865 when it was first put forward, and 1882 when Mr. Darwin
+died.  It has been similarly "ostrichised" by all the leading
+apologists of Darwinism, so far at least as I have been able to
+observe, and I have followed the matter closely for many years.  Mr.
+Spencer has repeated and amplified it in his recent work, "The
+Factors of Organic Evolution," but it still remains without so much
+as an attempt at serious answer, for the perfunctory and illusory
+remarks of Mr. Wallace at the end of his "Darwinism" cannot be
+counted as such.  The best proof of its irresistible weight is that
+Mr. Darwin, though maintaining silence in respect to it, retreated
+from his original position in the direction that would most obviate
+Mr. Spencer's objection.
+
+Yet this objection has been repeatedly urged by the more prominent
+anti-Charles-Darwinian authorities, and there is no sign that the
+British public is becoming less rigorous in requiring people either
+to reply to objections repeatedly urged by men of even moderate
+weight, or to let judgment go by default.  As regards Mr. Darwin's
+claim to the theory of evolution generally, Darwinians are beginning
+now to perceive that this cannot be admitted, and either say with
+some hardihood that Mr. Darwin never claimed it, or after a few
+saving clauses to the effect that this theory refers only to the
+particular means by which evolution has been brought about, imply
+forthwith thereafter none the less that evolution is Mr. Darwin's
+theory.  Mr. Wallace has done this repeatedly in his recent
+"Darwinism."  Indeed, I should be by no means sure that on the first
+page of his preface, in the passage about "Darwin's theory," which I
+have already somewhat severely criticised, he was not intending
+evolution by "Darwin's theory," if in his preceding paragraph he had
+not so clearly shown that he knew evolution to be a theory of
+greatly older date than Mr. Darwin's.
+
+The history of science--well exemplified by that of the development
+theory--is the history of eminent men who have fought against light
+and have been worsted.  The tenacity with which Darwinians stick to
+their accumulation of fortuitous variations is on a par with the
+like tenacity shown by the illustrious Cuvier, who did his best to
+crush evolution altogether.  It always has been thus, and always
+will be; nor is it desirable in the interests of Truth herself that
+it should be otherwise.  Truth is like money--lightly come, lightly
+go; and if she cannot hold her own against even gross
+misrepresentation, she is herself not worth holding.
+Misrepresentation in the long run makes Truth as much as it mars
+her; hence our law courts do not think it desirable that pleaders
+should speak their bona fide opinions, much less that they should
+profess to do so.  Rather let each side hoodwink judge and jury as
+best it can, and let truth flash out from collision of defence and
+accusation.  When either side will not collide, it is an axiom of
+controversy that it desires to prevent the truth from being
+elicited.
+
+Let us now note the courses forced upon biologists by the
+difficulties of Mr. Darwin's distinctive feature.  Mr. Darwin and
+Mr. Wallace, as is well known, brought the feature forward
+simultaneously and independently of one another, but Mr. Wallace
+always believed in it more firmly than Mr. Darwin did.  Mr. Darwin
+as a young man did not believe in it.  He wrote before 1889,
+"Nature, by making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has
+fitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country,"
+{21} a sentence than which nothing can coincide more fully with the
+older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors of
+variations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequent
+distinctive feature.  Moreover, as I showed in my last work on
+evolution, {22} in the peroration to his "Origin of Species," he
+discarded his accidental variations altogether, and fell back on the
+older theory, so that the body of the "Origin of Species" supports
+one theory, and the peroration another that differs from it toto
+caelo.  Finally, in his later editions, he retreated indefinitely
+from his original position, edging always more and more continually
+towards the theory of his grandfather and Lamarck.  These facts
+convince me that he was at no time a thorough-going Darwinian, but
+was throughout an unconscious Lamarckian, though ever anxious to
+conceal the fact alike from himself and from his readers.
+
+Not so with Mr. Wallace, who was both more outspoken in the first
+instance, and who has persevered along the path of Wallaceism just
+as Mr. Darwin with greater sagacity was ever on the retreat from
+Darwinism.  Mr. Wallace's profounder faith led him in the outset to
+place his theory in fuller daylight than Mr. Darwin was inclined to
+do.  Mr. Darwin just waved Lamarck aside, and said as little about
+him as he could, while in his earlier editions Erasmus Darwin and
+Buffon were not so much as named.  Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at
+once raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcised.  He
+said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary."  The giraffe
+did not "acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of
+the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this
+purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its
+antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh
+range of pasture over the same ground as their shorter-necked
+companions, and on the first scarcity of food were thus enabled to
+outlive them." {23}
+
+"Which occurred" is evidently "which happened to occur" by some
+chance or accident unconnected with use and disuse.  The word
+"accident" is never used, but Mr. Wallace must be credited with this
+instance of a desire to give his readers a chance of perceiving that
+according to his distinctive feature evolution is an affair of luck,
+rather than of cunning.  Whether his readers actually did understand
+this as clearly as Mr. Wallace doubtless desired that they should,
+and whether greater development at this point would not have helped
+them to fuller apprehension, we need not now inquire.  What was
+gained in distinctness might have been lost in distinctiveness, and
+after all he did technically put us upon our guard.
+
+Nevertheless he too at a pinch takes refuge in Lamarckism.  In
+relation to the manner in which the eyes of soles, turbots, and
+other flat-fish travel round the head so as to become in the end
+unsymmetrically placed, he says:-
+
+"The eyes of these fish are curiously distorted in order that both
+eyes may be upon the upper side, where alone they would be of any
+use. . . . Now if we suppose this process, which in the young is
+completed in a few days or weeks, to have been spread over thousands
+of generations during the development of these fish, those usually
+surviving WHOSE EYES RETAINED MORE AND MORE OF THE POSITION INTO
+WHICH THE YOUNG FISH TRIED TO TWIST THEM [italics mine], the change
+becomes intelligible." {24}  When it was said by Professor Ray
+Lankester--who knows as well as most people what Lamarck taught--
+that this was "flat Lamarckism," Mr. Wallace rejoined that it was
+the survival of the modified individuals that did it all, not the
+efforts of the young fish to twist their eyes, and the transmission
+to descendants of the effects of those efforts.  But this, as I said
+in my book, "Evolution, Old and New," {25} is like saying that
+horses are swift runners, not by reason of the causes, whatever they
+were, that occasioned the direct line of their progenitors to vary
+towards ever greater and greater swiftness, but because their more
+slow-going uncles and aunts go away.  Plain people will prefer to
+say that the main cause of any accumulation of favourable
+modifications consists rather in that which brings about the initial
+variations, and in the fact that these can be inherited at all, than
+in the fact that the unmodified individuals were not successful.
+People do not become rich because the poor in large numbers go away,
+but because they have been lucky, or provident, or more commonly
+both.  If they would keep their wealth when they have made it they
+must exclude luck thenceforth to the utmost of their power, and
+their children must follow their example, or they will soon lose
+their money.  The fact that the weaker go to the wall does not bring
+about the greater strength of the stronger; it is the consequence of
+this last and not the cause--unless, indeed, it be contended that a
+knowledge that the weak go to the wall stimulates the strong to
+exertions which they would not otherwise so make, and that these
+exertions produce inheritable modifications.  Even in this case,
+however, it would be the exertions, or use and disuse, that would be
+the main agents in the modification.  But it is not often that Mr.
+Wallace thus backslides.  His present position is that acquired (as
+distinguished from congenital) modifications are not inherited at
+all.  He does not indeed put his faith prominently forward and pin
+himself to it as plainly as could be wished, but under the heading,
+"The Non-Heredity of Acquired Characters," he writes as follows on
+p. 440 of his recent work in reference to Professor Weismann's
+Theory of Heredity:-
+
+"Certain observations on the embryology of the lower animals are
+held to afford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they are
+too technical to be made clear to ordinary readers.  A logical
+result of the theory is the impossibility of the transmission of
+acquired characters, since the molecular structure of the germ-plasm
+is already determined within the embryo; and Weismann holds that
+there are no facts which really prove that acquired characters can
+be inherited, although their inheritance has, by most writers, been
+considered so probable as hardly to stand in need of direct proof.
+
+"We have already seen in the earlier part of this chapter that many
+instances of change, imputed to the inheritance of acquired
+variations, are really cases of selection."
+
+And the rest of the remarks tend to convey the impression that Mr.
+Wallace adopts Professor Weismann's view, but, curiously enough,
+though I have gone through Mr. Wallace's book with a special view to
+this particular point, I have not been able to find him definitely
+committing himself either to the assertion that acquired
+modifications never are inherited, or that they sometimes are so.
+It is abundantly laid down that Mr. Darwin laid too much stress on
+use and disuse, and a residuary impression is left that Mr. Wallace
+is endorsing Professor Weismann's view, but I have found it
+impossible to collect anything that enables me to define his
+position confidently in this respect.
+
+This is natural enough, for Mr. Wallace has entitled his book
+"Darwinism," and a work denying that use and disuse produced any
+effect could not conceivably be called Darwinism.  Mr. Herbert
+Spencer has recently collected many passages from "The Origin of
+Species" and from "Animals and Plants under Domestication," {26}
+which show how largely, after all, use and disuse entered into Mr.
+Darwin's system, and we know that in his later years he attached
+still more importance to them.  It was out of the question,
+therefore, that Mr. Wallace should categorically deny that their
+effects were inheritable.  On the other hand, the temptation to
+adopt Professor Weismann's view must have been overwhelming to one
+who had been already inclined to minimise the effects of use and
+disuse.  On the whole, one does not see what Mr. Wallace could do,
+other than what he has done--unless, of course, he changed his
+title, or had been no longer Mr. Wallace.
+
+Besides, thanks to the works of Mr. Spencer, Professor Mivart,
+Professor Semper, and very many others, there has for some time been
+a growing perception that the Darwinism of Charles Darwin was
+doomed.  Use and disuse must either do even more than is officially
+recognised in Mr. Darwin's later concessions, or they must do a
+great deal less.  If they can do as much as Mr. Darwin himself said
+they did, why should they not do more?  Why stop where Mr. Darwin
+did?  And again, where in the name of all that is reasonable did he
+really stop?  He drew no line, and on what principle can we say that
+so much is possible as effect of use and disuse, but so much more
+impossible?  If, as Mr. Darwin contended, disuse can so far reduce
+an organ as to render it rudimentary, and in many cases get rid of
+it altogether, why cannot use create as much as disuse can destroy,
+provided it has anything, no matter how low in structure, to begin
+with?  Let us know where we stand.  If it is admitted that use and
+disuse can do a good deal, what does a good deal mean?  And what is
+the proportion between the shares attributable to use and disuse and
+to natural selection respectively?  If we cannot be told with
+absolute precision, let us at any rate have something more definite
+than the statement that natural selection is "the most important
+means of modification."
+
+Mr. Darwin gave us no help in this respect; and worse than this, he
+contradicted himself so flatly as to show that he had very little
+definite idea upon the subject at all.  Thus in respect to the
+winglessness of the Madeira beetles he wrote:-
+
+"In some cases we might easily put down to disuse modifications of
+structure, which are wholly or mainly due to natural selection.  Mr.
+Wollaston has discovered the remarkable fact that 200 beetles, out
+of the 550 species (but more are now known) inhabiting Madeira, are
+so far deficient in wings that they cannot fly; and that of the 29
+endemic genera no less than 23 have all their species in this
+condition!  Several facts,--namely, that beetles in many parts of
+the world are frequently blown out to sea and perish; that the
+beetles in Madeira, as observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much concealed
+until the wind lulls and the sun shines; that the proportion of
+wingless beetles is larger on the exposed Desertas than in Madeira
+itself; and especially the extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted
+on by Mr. Wollaston, that certain large groups of beetles, elsewhere
+excessively numerous, which absolutely require the use of their
+wings are here almost entirely absent;--these several considerations
+make me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira
+beetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, COMBINED
+PROBABLY WITH DISUSE [italics mine].  For during many successive
+generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its
+wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from
+indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving, from not
+being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which
+most readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea,
+and thus destroyed." {27}
+
+We should like to know, first, somewhere about how much disuse was
+able to do after all, and moreover why, if it can do anything at
+all, it should not be able to do all.  Mr. Darwin says:  "Any change
+in structure and function which can be effected by small stages is
+within the power of natural selection."  "And why not," we ask,
+"within the power of use and disuse?"  Moreover, on a later page we
+find Mr. Darwin saying:-
+
+"IT APPEARS PROBABLE THAT DISUSE HAS BEEN THE MAIN AGENT IN
+RENDERING ORGANS RUDIMENTARY [italics mine].  It would at first lead
+by slow steps to the more and more complete reduction of a part,
+until at last it has become rudimentary--as in the case of the eyes
+of animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds
+inhabiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beasts
+of prey to take flight, and have ultimately lost the power of
+flying.  Again, an organ, useful under certain conditions, might
+become injurious under others, AS WITH THE WINGS OF BEETLES LIVING
+ON SMALL AND EXPOSED ISLANDS; and in this case natural selection
+will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was rendered
+harmless and rudimentary [italics mine]." {28}
+
+So that just as an undefined amount of use and disuse was introduced
+on the earlier page to supplement the effects of natural selection
+in respect of the wings of beetles on small and exposed islands, we
+have here an undefined amount of natural selection introduced to
+supplement the effects of use and disuse in respect of the identical
+phenomena.  In the one passage we find that natural selection has
+been the main agent in reducing the wings, though use and disuse
+have had an appreciable share in the result; in the other, it is use
+and disuse that have been the main agents, though an appreciable
+share in the result must be ascribed to natural selection.
+
+Besides, who has seen the uncles and aunts going away with the
+uniformity that is necessary for Mr. Darwin's contention?  We know
+that birds and insects do often get blown out to sea and perish, but
+in order to establish Mr. Darwin's position we want the evidence of
+those who watched the reduction of the wings during the many
+generations in the course of which it was being effected, and who
+can testify that all, or the overwhelming majority, of the beetles
+born with fairly well-developed wings got blown out to sea, while
+those alone survived whose wings were congenitally degenerate.  Who
+saw them go, or can point to analogous cases so conclusive as to
+compel assent from any equitable thinker?
+
+Darwinians of the stamp of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Professor Ray
+Lankester, or Mr. Romanes, insist on their pound of flesh in the
+matter of irrefragable demonstration.  They complain of us for not
+bringing forward some one who has been able to detect the movement
+of the hour-hand of a watch during a second of time, and when we
+fail to do so, declare triumphantly that we have no evidence that
+there is any connection between the beating of a second and the
+movement of the hour-hand.  When we say that rain comes from the
+condensation of moisture in the atmosphere, they demand of us a
+rain-drop from moisture not yet condensed.  If they stickle for
+proof and cavil on the ninth part of a hair, as they do when we
+bring forward what we deem excellent instances of the transmission
+of an acquired characteristic, why may not we, too, demand at any
+rate some evidence that the unmodified beetles actually did always,
+or nearly always, get blown out to sea, during the reduction above
+referred to, and that it is to this fact, and not to the masterly
+inactivity of their fathers and mothers, that the Madeira beetles
+owe their winglessness?  If we began stickling for proof in this
+way, our opponents would not be long in letting us know that
+absolute proof is unattainable on any subject, that reasonable
+presumption is our highest certainty, and that crying out for too
+much evidence is as bad as accepting too little.  Truth is like a
+photographic sensitised plate, which is equally ruined by over and
+by under exposure, and the just exposure for which can never be
+absolutely determined.
+
+Surely if disuse can be credited with the vast powers involved in
+Mr. Darwin's statement that it has probably "been the main agent in
+rendering organs rudimentary," no limits are assignable to the
+accumulated effects of habit, provided the effects of habit, or use
+and disuse, are supposed, as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to be
+inheritable at all.  Darwinians have at length woke up to the
+dilemma in which they are placed by the manner in which Mr. Darwin
+tried to sit on the two stools of use and disuse, and natural
+selection of accidental variations, at the same time.  The knell of
+Charles-Darwinism is rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in the
+general perception on the part of biologists that we must either
+assign to use and disuse such a predominant share in modification as
+to make it the feature most proper to be insisted on, or deny that
+the modifications, whether of mind or body, acquired during a single
+lifetime, are ever transmitted at all.  If they can be inherited at
+all, they can be accumulated.  If they can be accumulated at all,
+they can be so, for anything that appears to the contrary, to the
+extent of the specific and generic differences with which we are
+surrounded.  The only thing to do is to pluck them out root and
+branch:  they are as a cancer which, if the smallest fibre be left
+unexcised, will grow again, and kill any system on to which it is
+allowed to fasten.  Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if
+he casts longing eyes towards Weismannism.
+
+And what was Mr. Darwin's system?  Who can make head or tail of the
+inextricable muddle in which he left it?  The "Origin of Species" in
+its latest shape is the reduction of hedging to an absurdity.  How
+did Mr. Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of the last
+edition of the "Origin of Species"?  He wrote:-
+
+"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
+thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during a
+long course of descent.  This has been effected chiefly through the
+natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable
+variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of
+the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner--that is,
+in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present--by the
+direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem
+to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously.  It appears that I
+formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of
+variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure
+independently of natural selection."
+
+The "numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations" above
+referred to are intended to be fortuitous, accidental, spontaneous.
+It is the essence of Mr. Darwin's theory that this should be so.
+Mr. Darwin's solemn statement, therefore, of his theory, after he
+had done his best or his worst with it, is, when stripped of
+surplusage, as follows:-
+
+"The modification of species has been mainly effected by
+accumulation of spontaneous variations; it has been aided in an
+important manner by accumulation of variations due to use and
+disuse, and in an unimportant manner by spontaneous variations; I do
+not even now think that spontaneous variations have been very
+important, but I used once to think them less important than I do
+now."
+
+It is a discouraging symptom of the age that such a system should
+have been so long belauded, and it is a sign of returning
+intelligence that even he who has been more especially the alter ego
+of Mr. Darwin should have felt constrained to close the chapter of
+Charles-Darwinism as a living theory, and relegate it to the
+important but not very creditable place in history which it must
+henceforth occupy.  It is astonishing, however, that Mr. Wallace
+should have quoted the extract from the "Origin of Species" just
+given, as he has done on p. 412 of his "Darwinism," without
+betraying any sign that he has caught its driftlessness--for drift,
+other than a desire to hedge, it assuredly has not got.  The battle
+now turns on the question whether modifications of either structure
+or instinct due to use or disuse are ever inherited, or whether they
+are not.  Can the effects of habit be transmitted to progeny at all?
+We know that more usually they are not transmitted to any
+perceptible extent, but we believe also that occasionally, and
+indeed not infrequently, they are inherited and even intensified.
+What are our grounds for this opinion?  It will be my object to put
+these forward in the following number of the Universal Review.
+
+
+
+THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM--PART II {29}
+
+
+
+At the close of my article in last month's number of the Universal
+Review, I said I would in this month's issue show why the opponents
+of Charles-Darwinism believe the effects of habits acquired during
+the lifetime of a parent to produce an effect on their subsequent
+offspring, in spite of the fact that we can rarely find the effect
+in any one generation, or even in several, sufficiently marked to
+arrest our attention.
+
+I will now show that offspring can be, and not very infrequently is,
+affected by occurrences that have produced a deep impression on the
+parent organism--the effect produced on the offspring being such as
+leaves no doubt that it is to be connected with the impression
+produced on the parent.  Having thus established the general
+proposition, I will proceed to the more particular one--that habits,
+involving use and disuse of special organs, with the modifications
+of structure thereby engendered, produce also an effect upon
+offspring, which, though seldom perceptible as regards structure in
+a single, or even in several generations, is nevertheless capable of
+being accumulated in successive generations till it amounts to
+specific and generic difference.  I have found the first point as
+much as I can treat within the limits of this present article, and
+will avail myself of the hospitality of the Universal Review next
+month to deal with the second.
+
+The proposition which I have to defend is one which no one till
+recently would have questioned, and even now, those who look most
+askance at it do not venture to dispute it unreservedly; they every
+now and then admit it as conceivable, and even in some cases
+probable; nevertheless they seek to minimise it, and to make out
+that there is little or no connection between the great mass of the
+cells of which the body is composed, and those cells that are alone
+capable of reproducing the entire organism.  The tendency is to
+assign to these last a life of their own, apart from, and
+unconnected with that of the other cells of the body, and to cheapen
+all evidence that tends to prove any response on their part to the
+past history of the individual, and hence ultimately of the race.
+
+Professor Weismann is the foremost exponent of those who take this
+line.  He has naturally been welcomed by English Charles-Darwinians;
+for if his view can be sustained, then it can be contended that use
+and disuse produce no transmissible effect, and the ground is cut
+from under Lamarck's feet; if, on the other hand, his view is
+unfounded, the Lamarckian reaction, already strong, will gain still
+further strength.  The issue, therefore, is important, and is being
+fiercely contested by those who have invested their all of
+reputation for discernment in Charles-Darwinian securities.
+
+Professor Weismann's theory is, that at every new birth a part of
+the substance which proceeds from parents and which goes to form the
+new embryo is not used up in forming the new animal, but remains
+apart to generate the germ-cells--or perhaps I should say "germ-
+plasm"--which the new animal itself will in due course issue.
+
+Contrasting the generally received view with his own, Professor
+Weismann says that according to the first of these "the organism
+produces germ-cells afresh again and again, and that it produces
+them entirely from its own substance."  While by the second "the
+germ-cells are no longer looked upon as the product of the parent's
+body, at least as far as their essential part--the specific germ-
+plasm--is concerned; they are rather considered as something which
+is to be placed in contrast with the tout ensemble of the cells
+which make up the parent's body, and the germ-cells of succeeding
+generations stand in a similar relation to one another as a series
+of generations of unicellular organisms arising by a continued
+process of cell-division." {30}
+
+On another page he writes:-
+
+"I believe that heredity depends upon the fact that a small portion
+of the effective substance of the germ, the germ-plasm, remains
+unchanged during the development of the ovum into an organism, and
+that this part of the germ-plasm serves as a foundation from which
+the germ-cells of the new organism are produced.  There is,
+therefore, continuity of the germ-plasm from one generation to
+another.  One might represent the germ-plasm by the metaphor of a
+long creeping root-stock from which plants arise at intervals, these
+latter representing the individuals of successive generations." {31}
+
+Mr. Wallace, who does not appear to have read Professor Weismann's
+essays themselves, but whose remarks are, no doubt, ultimately
+derived from the sequel to the passage just quoted from page 266 of
+Professor Weismann's book, contends that the impossibility of the
+transmission of acquired characters follows as a logical result from
+Professor Weismann's theory, inasmuch as the molecular structure of
+the germ-plasm that will go to form any succeeding generation is
+already predetermined within the still unformed embryo of its
+predecessor; "and Weismann," continues Mr. Wallace, "holds that
+there are no facts which really prove that acquired characters can
+be inherited, although their inheritance has, by most writers, been
+considered so probable as hardly to stand in need of direct proof."
+{32}
+
+Professor Weismann, in passages too numerous to quote, shows that he
+recognises this necessity, and acknowledges that the non-
+transmission of acquired characters "forms the foundation of the
+views" set forth in his book, p. 291.
+
+Professor Ray Lankester does not commit himself absolutely to this
+view, but lends it support by saying (Nature, December 12, 1889):
+"It is hardly necessary to say that it has never yet been shown
+experimentally that ANYTHING acquired by one generation is
+transmitted to the next (putting aside diseases)."
+
+Mr. Romanes, writing in Nature, March 18, 1890, and opposing certain
+details of Professor Weismann's theory, so far supports it as to say
+that "there is the gravest possible doubt lying against the
+supposition that any really inherited decrease is due to the
+inherited effects of disuse."  The "gravest possible doubt" should
+mean that Mr. Romanes regards it as a moral certainty that disuse
+has no transmitted effect in reducing an organ, and it should follow
+that he holds use to have no transmitted effect in its development.
+The sequel, however, makes me uncertain how far Mr. Romanes intends
+this, and I would refer the reader to the article which Mr. Romanes
+has just published on Weismann in the Contemporary Review for this
+current month.
+
+The burden of Mr. Thiselton Dyer's controversy with the Duke of
+Argyll (see Nature, January 16, 1890, et seq.) was that there was no
+evidence in support of the transmission of any acquired
+modification.  The orthodoxy of science, therefore, must be held as
+giving at any rate a provisional support to Professor Weismann, but
+all of them, including even Professor Weismann himself, shrink from
+committing themselves to the opinion that the germ-cells of any
+organisms remain in all cases unaffected by the events that occur to
+the other cells of the same organism, and until they do this they
+have knocked the bottom out of their case.
+
+From among the passages in which Professor Weismann himself shows a
+desire to hedge I may take the following from page 170 of his book:-
+
+"I am also far from asserting that the germ-plasm which, as I hold,
+is transmitted as the basis of heredity from one generation to
+another, is absolutely unchangeable or totally uninfluenced by
+forces residing in the organism within which it is transformed into
+germ-cells.  I am also compelled to admit it as conceivable that
+organisms may exert a modifying influence upon their germ-cells, and
+even that such a process is to a certain extent inevitable.  The
+nutrition and growth of the individual must exercise some influence
+upon its germ-cells . . . "
+
+Professor Weismann does indeed go on to say that this influence must
+be extremely slight, but we do not care how slight the changes
+produced may be provided they exist and can be transmitted.  On an
+earlier page (p. 101) he said in regard to variations generally that
+we should not expect to find them conspicuous; their frequency would
+be enough, if they could be accumulated.  The same applies here, if
+stirring events that occur to the somatic cells can produce any
+effect at all on offspring.  A very small effect, provided it can be
+repeated and accumulated in successive generations, is all that even
+the most exacting Lamarckian will ask for.
+
+Having now made the reader acquainted with the position taken by the
+leading Charles-Darwinian authorities, I will return to Professor
+Weismann himself, who declares that the transmission of acquired
+characters "at first sight certainly seems necessary," and that "it
+appears rash to attempt to dispense with its aid."  He continues:-
+
+"Many phenomena only appear to be intelligible if we assume the
+hereditary transmission of such acquired characters as the changes
+which we ascribe to the use or disuse of particular organs, or to
+the direct influence of climate.  Furthermore, how can we explain
+instinct as hereditary habit, unless it has gradually arisen by the
+accumulation, through heredity, of habits which were practised in
+succeeding generations?" {33}
+
+I may say in passing that Professor Weismann appears to suppose that
+the view of instinct just given is part of the Charles-Darwinian
+system, for on page 889 of his book he says "that many observers had
+followed Darwin in explaining them [instincts] as inherited habits."
+This was not Mr. Darwin's own view of the matter.  He wrote:-
+
+"If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and I think
+it can be shown that this does sometimes happen--then the
+resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct
+becomes so close as not to be distinguished. . . But it would be the
+most serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts
+have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted
+by inheritance to succeeding generations.  It can be clearly shown
+that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted,
+namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly
+have been thus acquired."--["Origin of Species," ed., 1859, p. 209.]
+
+Again we read:  "Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as
+actions which have become inherited solely from long-continued and
+compulsory habit, but this, I think, is not true."--Ibid., p. 214.
+
+Again:  "I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative
+case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited
+habit, as advanced by Lamarck."--["Origin of Species," ed. 1872, p.
+283.]
+
+I am not aware that Lamarck advanced the doctrine that instinct is
+inherited habit, but he may have done so in some work that I have
+not seen.
+
+It is true, as I have more than once pointed out, that in the later
+editions of the "Origin of Species" it is no longer "the MOST
+serious" error to refer instincts generally to inherited habit, but
+it still remains "a serious error," and this slight relaxation of
+severity does not warrant Professor Weismann in ascribing to Mr.
+Darwin an opinion which he emphatically condemned.  His tone,
+however, is so offhand, that those who have little acquaintance with
+the literature of evolution would hardly guess that he is not much
+better informed on this subject than themselves.
+
+Returning to the inheritance of acquired characters, Professor
+Weismann says that this has never been proved either by means of
+direct observation or by experiment.  "It must be admitted," he
+writes, "that there are in existence numerous descriptions of cases
+which tend to prove that such mutilations as the loss of fingers,
+the scars of wounds, &c., are inherited by the offspring, but in
+these descriptions the previous history is invariably obscure, and
+hence the evidence loses all scientific value."
+
+The experiments of M.  Brown-Sequard throw so much light upon the
+question at issue that I will quote at some length from the summary
+given by Mr. Darwin in his "Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication." {34}  Mr. Darwin writes:-
+
+"With respect to the inheritance of structures mutilated by injuries
+or altered by disease, it was until lately difficult to come to any
+definite conclusion."  [Then follow several cases in which
+mutilations practised for many generations are not found to be
+transmitted.]  "Notwithstanding," continues Mr. Darwin, "the above
+several negative cases, we now possess conclusive evidence that the
+effects of operations are sometimes inherited.  Dr. Brown-Sequard
+gives the following summary of his observations on guinea-pigs, and
+this summary is so important that I will quote the whole:-
+
+"'1st.  Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents having
+been rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord.
+
+"'2nd.  Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents
+having been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve.
+
+"'3rd.  A change in the shape of the ear in animals born of parents
+in which such a change was the effect of a division of the cervical
+sympathetic nerve.
+
+"'4th.  Partial closure of the eyelids in animals born of parents in
+which that state of the eyelids had been caused either by the
+section of the cervical sympathetic nerve or the removal of the
+superior cervical ganglion.
+
+"'5th.  Exophthalmia in animals born of parents in which an injury
+to the restiform body had produced that protrusion of the eyeball.
+This interesting fact I have witnessed a good many times, and I have
+seen the transmission of the morbid state of the eye continue
+through four generations.  In these animals modified by heredity,
+the two eyes generally protruded, although in the parents usually
+only one showed exophthalmia, the lesion having been made in most
+cases only on one of the corpora restiformia.
+
+"'6th.  Haematoma and dry gangrene of the ears in animals born of
+parents in which these ear-alterations had been caused by an injury
+to the restiform body near the nib of the calamus.
+
+"'7th.  Absence of two toes out of the three of the hind leg, and
+sometimes of the three, in animals whose parents had eaten up their
+hind-leg toes which had become anaesthetic from a section of the
+sciatic nerve alone, or of that nerve and also of the crural.
+Sometimes, instead of complete absence of the toes, only a part of
+one or two or three was missing in the young, although in the parent
+not only the toes but the whole foot was absent (partly eaten off,
+partly destroyed by inflammation, ulceration, or gangrene).
+
+"'8th.  Appearance of various morbid states of the skin and hair of
+the neck and face in animals born of parents having had similar
+alterations in the same parts, as effects of an injury to the
+sciatic nerve.'
+
+"It should be especially observed that Brown-Sequard has bred during
+thirty years many thousand guinea-pigs from animals which had not
+been operated upon, and not one of these manifested the epileptic
+tendency.  Nor has he ever seen a guinea-pig born without toes,
+which was not the offspring of parents which had gnawed off their
+own toes owing to the sciatic nerve having been divided.  Of this
+latter fact thirteen instances were carefully recorded, and a
+greater number were seen; yet Brown-Sequard speaks of such cases as
+one of the rarer forms of inheritance.  It is a still more
+interesting fact, 'that the sciatic nerve in the congenitally
+toeless animal has inherited the power of passing through all the
+different morbid states which have occurred in one of its parents
+from the time of the division till after its reunion with the
+peripheric end.  It is not, therefore, simply the power of
+performing an action which is inherited, but the power of performing
+a whole series of actions, in a certain order.'
+
+"In most of the cases of inheritance recorded by Brown-Sequard only
+one of the two parents had been operated upon and was affected.  He
+concludes by expressing his belief that 'what is transmitted is the
+morbid state of the nervous system,' due to the operation performed
+on the parents."
+
+Mr. Darwin proceeds to give other instances of inherited effects of
+mutilations:-
+
+"With the horse there seems hardly a doubt that exostoses on the
+legs, caused by too much travelling on hard roads, are inherited.
+Blumenbach records the case of a man who had his little finger on
+the right hand almost cut off, and which in consequence grew
+crooked, and his sons had the same finger on the same hand similarly
+crooked.  A soldier, fifteen years before his marriage, lost his
+left eye from purulent ophthalmia, and his two sons were
+microphthalmic on the same side."
+
+The late Professor Rolleston, whose competence as an observer no one
+is likely to dispute, gave Mr. Darwin two cases as having fallen
+under his own notice, one of a man whose knee had been severely
+wounded, and whose child was born with the same spot marked or
+scarred, and the other of one who was severely cut upon the cheek,
+and whose child was born scarred in the same place.  Mr. Darwin's
+conclusion was that "the effects of injuries, especially when
+followed by disease, or perhaps exclusively when thus followed, are
+occasionally inherited."
+
+Let us now see what Professor Weismann has to say against this.  He
+writes:-
+
+"The only cases worthy of discussion are the well-known experiments
+upon guinea-pigs conducted by the French physiologist, Brown-
+Sequard.  But the explanation of his results is, in my opinion, open
+to discussion.  In these cases we have to do with the apparent
+transmission of artificially produced malformations . . . All these
+effects were said to be transmitted to descendants as far as the
+fifth or sixth generation.
+
+"But we must inquire whether these cases are really due to heredity,
+and not to simple infection.  In the case of epilepsy, at any rate,
+it is easy to imagine that the passage of some specific organism
+through the reproductive cells may take place, as in the case of
+syphilis.  We are, however, entirely ignorant of the nature of the
+former disease.  This suggested explanation may not perhaps apply to
+the other cases; but we must remember that animals which have been
+subjected to such severe operations upon the nervous system have
+sustained a great shock, and if they are capable of breeding, it is
+only probable that they will produce weak descendants, and such as
+are easily affected by disease.  Such a result does not, however,
+explain why the offspring should suffer from the same disease as
+that which was artificially induced in the parents.  But this does
+not appear to have been by any means invariably the case.  Brown-
+Sequard himself says:  'The changes in the eye of the offspring were
+of a very variable nature, and were only occasionally exactly
+similar to those observed in the parents.'
+
+"There is no doubt, however, that these experiments demand careful
+consideration, but before they can claim scientific recognition,
+they must be subjected to rigid criticism as to the precautions
+taken, the nature and number of the control experiments, &c.
+
+"Up to the present time such necessary conditions have not been
+sufficiently observed.  The recent experiments themselves are only
+described in short preliminary notices, which, as regards their
+accuracy, the possibility of mistake, the precautions taken, and the
+exact succession of individuals affected, afford no data on which a
+scientific opinion can be founded" (pp. 81, 82).
+
+The line Professor Weismann takes, therefore, is to discredit the
+facts; yet on a later page we find that the experiments have since
+been repeated by Obersteiner, "who has described them in a very
+exact and unprejudiced manner," and that "the fact"--(I imagine that
+Professor Weismann intends "the facts")--"cannot be doubted."
+
+On a still later page, however, we read:-
+
+"If, for instance, it could be shown that artificial mutilation
+spontaneously reappears in the offspring with sufficient frequency
+to exclude all possibilities of chance, then such proof [i.e., that
+acquired characters can be transmitted] would be forthcoming.  The
+transmission of mutilations has been frequently asserted, and has
+been even recently again brought forward, but all the supposed
+instances have broken down when carefully examined" (p. 390).
+
+Here, then, we are told that proof of the occasional transmission of
+mutilations would be sufficient to establish the fact, but on p. 267
+we find that no single fact is known which really proves that
+acquired characters can be transmitted, "FOR THE ASCERTAINED FACTS
+WHICH SEEM TO POINT TO THE TRANSMISSION OF ARTIFICIALLY PRODUCED
+DISEASES CANNOT BE CONSIDERED AS PROOF" [Italics mine.]  Perhaps;
+but it was mutilation in many cases that Professor Weismann
+practically admitted to have been transmitted when he declared that
+Obersteiner had verified Brown-Sequard's experiments.
+
+That Professor Weismann recognises the vital importance to his own
+theory of the question whether or no mutilations can be transmitted
+under any circumstances, is evident from a passage on p. 425 of his
+work, on which he says:  "It can hardly be doubted that mutilations
+are acquired characters; they do not arise from any tendency
+contained in the germ, but are merely the reaction of the body under
+certain external influences.  They are, as I have recently expressed
+it, purely somatogenic characters--viz., characters which emanate
+from the body (soma) only, as opposed to the germ-cells; they are,
+therefore, characters that do not arise from the germ itself.
+
+"If mutilations must necessarily be transmitted" [which no one that
+I know of has maintained], "or even if they might occasionally be
+transmitted" [which cannot, I imagine, be reasonably questioned], "a
+powerful support would be given to the Lamarckian principle, and the
+transmission of functional hypertrophy or atrophy would thus become
+highly probable."
+
+I have not found any further attempt in Professor Weismann's book to
+deal with the evidence adduced by Mr. Darwin to show that
+mutilations, if followed by diseases, are sometimes inherited; and I
+must leave it to the reader to determine how far Professor Weismann
+has shown reason for rejecting Mr. Darwin's conclusion.  I do not,
+however, dwell upon these facts now as evidence of a transmitted
+change of bodily form, or of instinct due to use and disuse or
+habit; what they prove is that the germ-cells within the parent's
+body do not stand apart from the other cells of the body so
+completely as Professor Weismann would have us believe, but that, as
+Professor Hering, of Prague, has aptly said, they echo with more or
+less frequency and force to the profounder impressions made upon
+other cells.
+
+I may say that Professor Weismann does not more cavalierly wave
+aside the mass of evidence collected by Mr. Darwin and a host of
+other writers, to the effect that mutilations are sometimes
+inherited, than does Mr. Wallace, who says that, "as regards
+mutilations, it is generally admitted that they are not inherited,
+and there is ample evidence on this point."  It is indeed generally
+admitted that mutilations, when not followed by disease, are very
+rarely, if ever, inherited; and Mr. Wallace's appeal to the "ample
+evidence" which he alleges to exist on this head, is much as though
+he should say that there is ample evidence to show that the days are
+longer in summer than in winter.  "Nevertheless," he continues, "a
+few cases of apparent inheritance of mutilations have been recorded,
+and these, if trustworthy, are difficulties in the way of the
+theory." . . . "The often-quoted case of a disease induced by
+mutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs)
+has been discussed by Professor Weismann and shown to be not
+conclusive.  The mutilation itself--a section of certain nerves--was
+never inherited, but the resulting epilepsy, or a general state of
+weakness, deformity, or sores, was sometimes inherited.  It is,
+however, possible that the mere injury introduced and encouraged the
+growth of certain microbes, which, spreading through the organism,
+sometimes reached the germ-cells, and thus transmitted a diseased
+condition to the offspring." {35}
+
+I suppose a microbe which made guinea-pigs eat their toes off was
+communicated to the germ-cells of an unfortunate guinea-pig which
+had been already microbed by it, and made the offspring bite its
+toes off too.  The microbe has a good deal to answer for.
+
+On the case of the deterioration of horses in the Falkland Islands
+after a few generations, Professor Weismann says:-
+
+"In such a case we have only to assume that the climate which is
+unfavourable, and the nutriment which is insufficient for horses,
+affect not only the animal as a whole but also its germ-cells.  This
+would result in the diminution in size of the germ-cells, the
+effects upon the offspring being still further intensified by the
+insufficient nourishment supplied during growth.  But such results
+would not depend upon the transmission by the germ-cells of certain
+peculiarities due to the unfavourable climate, which only appear in
+the full-grown horse."
+
+But Professor Weismann does not like such cases, and admits that he
+cannot explain the facts in connection with the climatic varieties
+of certain butterflies, except "by supposing the passive acquisition
+of characters produced by the direct influence of climate."
+
+Nevertheless in his next paragraph but one he calls such cases
+"doubtful," and proposes that for the moment they should be left
+aside.  He accordingly leaves them, but I have not yet found what
+other moment he considered auspicious for returning to them.  He
+tells us that "new experiments will be necessary, and that he has
+himself already begun to undertake them."  Perhaps he will give us
+the results of these experiments in some future book--for that they
+will prove satisfactory to him can hardly, I think, be doubted.  He
+writes:-
+
+"Leaving on one side, for the moment, these doubtful and
+insufficiently investigated cases, we may still maintain that the
+assumption that changes induced by external conditions in the
+organism as a whole are communicated to the germ-cells after the
+manner indicated in Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis, is wholly
+unnecessary for the explanation of these phenomena.  Still we cannot
+exclude the possibility of such a transmission occasionally
+occurring, for even if the greater part of the effects must be
+attributable to natural selection, there might be a smaller part in
+certain cases which depends on this exceptional factor."
+
+I repeatedly tried to understand Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis,
+and so often failed that I long since gave the matter up in despair.
+I did so with the less unwillingness because I saw that no one else
+appeared to understand the theory, and that even Mr. Darwin's
+warmest adherents regarded it with disfavour.  If Mr. Darwin means
+that every cell of the body throws off minute particles that find
+their way to the germ-cells, and hence into the new embryo, this is
+indeed difficult of comprehension and belief.  If he means that the
+rhythms or vibrations that go on ceaselessly in every cell of the
+body communicate themselves with greater or less accuracy or
+perturbation, as the case may be, to the cells that go to form
+offspring, and that since the characteristics of matter are
+determined by vibrations, in communicating vibrations they in effect
+communicate matter, according to the view put forward in the last
+chapter of my book "Luck or Cunning," {36} then we can better
+understand it.  I have nothing, however, to do with Mr. Darwin's
+theory of pangenesis beyond avoiding the pretence that I understand
+either the theory itself or what Professor Weismann says about it;
+all I am concerned with is Professor Weismann's admission, made
+immediately afterwards, that the somatic cells may, and perhaps
+sometimes do, impart characteristics to the germ-cells.
+
+"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion," he
+continues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we
+must wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark
+that, if we admit even occasional communication of changes in the
+somatic cells to the germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of the
+wedge, as Mr. Darwin did when he said that use and disuse did a good
+deal towards modification.  Buffon, in his first volume on the lower
+animals, {37} dwells on the impossibility of stopping the breach
+once made by admission of variation at all.  "If the point," he
+writes, "were once gained, that among animals and vegetables there
+had been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, which
+had been produced in the course of direct descent from another
+species; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass was
+but a degeneration from the horse--then there is no farther limit to
+be set to the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong in
+supposing that with sufficient time she could have evolved all other
+organised forms from one primordial type."  So with use and disuse
+and transmission of acquired characteristics generally--once show
+that a single structure or instinct is due to habit in preceding
+generations, and we can impose no limit on the results achievable by
+accumulation in this respect, nor shall we be wrong in conceiving it
+as possible that all specialisation, whether of structure or
+instinct, may be due ultimately to habit.
+
+How far this can be shown to be probable is, of course, another
+matter, but I am not immediately concerned with this; all I am
+concerned with now is to show that the germ-cells not unfrequently
+become permanently affected by events that have made a profound
+impression upon the somatic cells, in so far that they transmit an
+obvious reminiscence of the impression to the embryos which they go
+subsequently towards forming.  This is all that is necessary for my
+case, and I do not find that Professor Weismann, after all, disputes
+it.
+
+But here, again, comes the difficulty of saying what Professor
+Weismann does, and what he does not, dispute.  One moment he gives
+all that is wanted for the Lamarckian contention, the next he denies
+common-sense the bare necessaries of life.  For a more exhaustive
+and detailed criticism of Professor Weismann's position, I would
+refer the reader to an admirably clear article by Mr. Sidney H.
+Vines, which appeared in Nature, October 24, 1889.  I can only say
+that while reading Professor Weismann's book, I feel as I do when I
+read those of Mr. Darwin, and of a good many other writers on
+biology whom I need not name.  I become like a fly in a window-pane.
+I see the sunshine and freedom beyond, and buzz up and down their
+pages, ever hopeful to get through them to the fresh air without,
+but ever kept back by a mysterious something, which I feel but
+cannot either grasp or see.  It was not thus when I read Buffon,
+Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read such
+articles as Mr. Vines's just referred to.  Love of self-display, and
+the want of singleness of mind that it inevitably engenders--these,
+I suppose, are the sins that glaze the casements of most men's
+minds; and from these, no matter how hard he tries to free himself,
+nor how much he despises them, who is altogether exempt?
+
+Finally, then, when we consider the immense mass of evidence
+referred to briefly, but sufficiently, by Mr. Charles Darwin, and
+referred to without other, for the most part, than off-hand
+dismissal by Professor Weismann in the last of the essays that have
+been recently translated, I do not see how any one who brings an
+unbiased mind to the question can hesitate as to the side on which
+the weight of testimony inclines.  Professor Weismann declares that
+"the transmission of mutilations may be dismissed into the domain of
+fable." {38}  If so, then, whom can we trust?  What is the use of
+science at all if the conclusions of a man as competent as I readily
+admit Mr. Darwin to have been, on the evidence laid before him from
+countless sources, is to be set aside lightly and without giving the
+clearest and most cogent explanation of the why and wherefore?  When
+we see a person "ostrichising" the evidence which he has to meet, as
+clearly as I believe Professor Weismann to be doing, we shall in
+nine cases out of ten be right in supposing that he knows the
+evidence to be too strong for him.
+
+
+
+THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM--PART III
+
+
+
+Now let me return to the recent division of biological opinion into
+two main streams--Lamarckism and Weismannism Both Lamarckians and
+Weismannists, not to mention mankind in general, admit that the
+better adapted to its surroundings a living form may be, the more
+likely it is to outbreed its compeers.  The world at large, again,
+needs not to be told that the normal course is not unfrequently
+deflected through the fortunes of war; nevertheless, according to
+Lamarckians and Erasmus-Darwinians, habitual effort, guided by ever-
+growing intelligence--that is to say, by continued increase of power
+in the matter of knowing our likes and dislikes--has been so much
+the main factor throughout the course of organic development, that
+the rest, though not lost sight of, may be allowed to go without
+saying.  According, on the other hand, to extreme Charles-Darwinians
+and Weismannists, habit, effort and intelligence acquired during the
+experience of any one life goes for nothing.  Not even a little
+fraction of it endures to the benefit of offspring.  It dies with
+him in whom it is acquired, and the heirs of a man's body take no
+interest therein.  To state this doctrine is to arouse instinctive
+loathing; it is my fortunate task to maintain that such a nightmare
+of waste and death is as baseless as it is repulsive.
+
+The split in biological opinion occasioned by the deadlock to which
+Charles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent,
+widens rapidly.  Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as
+a byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Nature
+without seeing how hot the contention is between his followers and
+those of Weismann.  This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to
+growing perception that Mr. Darwin should either have gone farther
+towards Lamarckism or not so far.  In admitting use and disuse as
+freely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow of
+a system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunate
+accidents.  In assigning the lion's share of development to the
+accumulation of fortunate accidents, he tempted fortuitists to try
+to cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denying that the
+effects of use and disuse can be inherited at all.  When the public
+had once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and wherein
+Mr. Charles Darwin had differed from him, it became impossible for
+Charles-Darwinians to remain where they were, nor is it easy to see
+what course was open to them except to cast about for a theory by
+which they could get rid of use and disuse altogether.  Weismannism,
+therefore, is the inevitable outcome of the straits to which
+Charles-Darwinians were reduced through the way in which their
+leader had halted between two opinions.
+
+This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards,
+have kept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr.
+Darwin so much in the background.  Unwillingness to make this
+understood is nowhere manifested more clearly than in Dr. Francis
+Darwin's life of his father.  In this work Lamarck is sneered at
+once or twice, and told to go away, but there is no attempt to state
+the two cases side by side; from which, as from not a little else, I
+conclude that Dr. Francis Darwin has descended from his father with
+singularly little modification.
+
+Proceeding to the evidence for the transmissions of acquired habits,
+I will quote two recently adduced examples from among the many that
+have been credibly attested.  The first was contributed to Nature
+(March 14, 1889) by Professor Marcus M. Hartog, who wrote:-
+
+"A. B. is moderately myopic and very astigmatic in the left eye;
+extremely myopic in the right.  As the left eye gave such bad images
+for near objects, he was compelled in childhood to mask it, and
+acquired the habit of leaning his head on his left arm for writing,
+so as to blind that eye, or of resting the left temple and eye on
+the hand, with the elbow on the table.  At the age of fifteen the
+eyes were equalised by the use of suitable spectacles, and he soon
+lost the habit completely and permanently.  He is now the father of
+two children, a boy and a girl, whose vision (tested repeatedly and
+fully) is emmetropic in both eyes, so that they have not inherited
+the congenital optical defect of their father.  All the same, they
+have both of them inherited his early acquired habit, and need
+constant watchfulness to prevent their hiding the left eye when
+writing, by resting the head on the left forearm or hand.  Imitation
+is here quite out of the question.
+
+"Considering that every habit involves changes in the proportional
+development of the muscular and osseous systems, and hence probably
+of the nervous system also, the importance of inherited habits,
+natural or acquired, cannot be overlooked in the general theory of
+inheritance.  I am fully aware that I shall be accused of flat
+Lamarckism, but a nickname is not an argument."
+
+To this Professor Ray Lankester rejoined (Nature, March 21, 1889):-
+
+"It is not unusual for children to rest the head on the left forearm
+or hand when writing, and I doubt whether much value can be attached
+to the case described by Professor Hartog.  The kind of observation
+which his letter suggests is, however, likely to lead to results
+either for or against the transmission of acquired characters.  An
+old friend of mine lost his right arm when a schoolboy, and has ever
+since written with his left.  He has a large family and
+grandchildren, but I have not heard of any of them showing a
+disposition to left-handedness."
+
+From Nature (March 21, 1889) I take the second instance communicated
+by Mr. J. Jenner-Weir, who wrote as follows:-
+
+"Mr. Marcus M. Hartog's letter of March 6th, inserted in last week's
+number (p. 462), is a very valuable contribution to the growing
+evidence that acquired characters may be inherited.  I have long
+held the view that such is often the case, and I have myself
+observed several instances of the, at least I may say, apparent
+fact.
+
+"Many years ago there was a very fine male of the Capra megaceros in
+the gardens of the Zoological Society.  To restrain this animal from
+jumping over the fence of the enclosure in which he was confined, a
+long, and heavy chain was attached to the collar round his neck.  He
+was constantly in the habit of taking this chain up by his horns and
+moving it from one side to another over his back; in doing this he
+threw his head very much back, his horns being placed in a line with
+the back.  The habit had become quite chronic with him, and was very
+tiresome to look at.  I was very much astonished to observe that his
+offspring inherited the habit, and although it was not necessary to
+attach a chain to their necks, I have often seen a young male
+throwing his horns over his back and shifting from side to side an
+imaginary chain.  The action was exactly the same as that of his
+ancestor.  The case of the kid of this goat appears to me to be
+parallel to that of child and parent given by Mr. Hartog.  I think
+at the time I made this observation I informed Mr. Darwin of the
+fact by letter, and he did not accuse me of 'flat Lamarckism.'"
+
+To this letter there was no rejoinder.  It may be said, of course,
+that the action of the offspring in each of these cases was due to
+accidental coincidence only.  Anything can be said, but the question
+turns not on what an advocate can say, but on what a reasonably
+intelligent and disinterested jury will believe; granted they might
+be mistaken in accepting the foregoing stories, but the world of
+science, like that of commerce, is based on the faith or confidence,
+which both creates and sustains them.  Indeed the universe itself is
+but the creature of faith, for assuredly we know of no other
+foundation.  There is nothing so generally and reasonably accepted--
+not even our own continued identity--but questions may be raised
+about it that will shortly prove unanswerable.  We cannot so test
+every sixpence given us in change as to be sure that we never take a
+bad one, and had better sometimes be cheated than reduce caution to
+an absurdity.  Moreover, we have seen from the evidence given in my
+preceding article that the germ-cells issuing from a parent's body
+can, and do, respond to profound impressions made on the somatic-
+cells.  This being so, what impressions are more profound, what
+needs engage more assiduous attention than those connected with
+self-protection, the procuring of food, and the continuation of the
+species?  If the mere anxiety connected with an ill-healing wound
+inflicted on but one generation is sometimes found to have so
+impressed the germ-cells that they hand down its scars to offspring,
+how much more shall not anxieties that have directed action of all
+kinds from birth till death, not in one generation only but in a
+longer series of generations than the mind can realise to itself,
+modify, and indeed control, the organisation of every species?
+
+I see Professor S. H. Vines, in the article on Weismann's theory
+referred to in my preceding article, says Mr. Darwin "held that it
+was not the sudden variations due to altered external conditions
+which become permanent, but those slowly produced by what he termed
+'the accumulative action of changed conditions of life.'"  Nothing
+can be more soundly Lamarckian, and nothing should more conclusively
+show that, whatever else Mr. Darwin was, he was not a Charles-
+Darwinian; but what evidence other than inferential can from the
+nature of the case be adduced in support of this, as I believe,
+perfectly correct judgment?  None know better than they who clamour
+for direct evidence that their master was right in taking the
+position assigned to him by Professor Vines, that they cannot
+reasonably look for it.  With us, as with themselves, modification
+proceeds very gradually, and it violates our principles as much as
+their own to expect visible permanent progress, in any single
+generation, or indeed in any number of generations of wild species
+which we have yet had time to observe.  Occasionally we can find
+such cases, as in that of Branchipus stagnalis, quoted by Mr.
+Wallace, or in that of the New Zealand Kea whose skin, I was assured
+by the late Sir Julius von Haast, has already been modified as a
+consequence of its change of food.  Here we can show that in even a
+few generations structure is modified under changed conditions of
+existence, but as we believe these cases to occur comparatively
+rarely, so it is still more rarely that they occur when and where we
+can watch them.  Nature is eminently conservative, and fixity of
+type, even under considerable change of conditions, is surely more
+important for the well-being of any species than an over-ready power
+of adaptation to, it may be, passing changes.  There could be no
+steady progress if each generation were not mainly bound by the
+traditions of those that have gone before it.  It is evolution and
+not incessant revolution that both parties are upholding; and this
+being so, rapid visible modification must be the exception, not the
+rule.  I have quoted direct evidence adduced by competent observers,
+which is, I believe, sufficient to establish the fact that offspring
+can be and is sometimes modified by the acquired habits of a
+progenitor.  I will now proceed to the still more, as it appears to
+me, cogent proof afforded by general considerations.
+
+What, let me ask, are the principal phenomena of heredity?  There
+must be physical continuity between parent, or parents, and
+offspring, so that the offspring is, as Erasmus Darwin well said, a
+kind of elongation of the life of the parent.
+
+Erasmus Darwin put the matter so well that I may as well give his
+words in full; he wrote:-
+
+"Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new
+animal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, since
+a part of the embryon animal is, or was, a part of the parent, and
+therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at
+the time of its production; and therefore it may retain some of the
+habits of the parent system.
+
+"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem to
+consist of a living filament with certain capabilities of
+irritation, sensation, volition, and association, and also with some
+acquired habits or propensities peculiar to the parent; the former
+of these are in common with other animals; the latter seem to
+distinguish or produce the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped,
+with the similarity of feature or form to the parent." {39}
+
+Those who accept evolution insist on unbroken physical continuity
+between the earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both are
+and are not personally identical with the unicellular organism from
+which we have descended in the course of many millions of years,
+exactly in the same way as an octogenarian both is and is not
+personally identical with the microscopic impregnate ovum from which
+he grew up.  Everything both is and is not.  There is no such thing
+as strict identity between any two things in any two consecutive
+seconds.  In strictness they are identical and yet not identical, so
+that in strictness they violate a fundamental rule of strictness--
+namely, that a thing shall never be itself and not itself at one and
+the same time; we must choose between logic and dealing in a
+practical spirit with time and space; it is not surprising,
+therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardly
+paid to her, is told to stand aside when people come to practice.
+In practice identity is generally held to exist where continuity is
+only broken slowly and piecemeal, nevertheless, that occasional
+periods of even rapid change are not held to bar identity, appears
+from the fact that no one denies this to hold between the
+microscopically small impregnate ovum and the born child that
+springs from it, nor yet, therefore, between the impregnate ovum and
+the octogenarian into which the child grows; for both ovum and
+octogenarian are held personally identical with the newborn baby,
+and things that are identical with the same are identical with one
+another.
+
+The first, then, and most important element of heredity is that
+there should be unbroken continuity, and hence sameness of
+personality, between parents and offspring, in neither more nor less
+than the same sense as that in which any other two personalities are
+said to be the same.  The repetition, therefore, of its
+developmental stages by any offspring must be regarded as something
+which the embryo repeating them has already done once, in the person
+of one or other parent; and if once, then, as many times as there
+have been generations between any given embryo now repeating it, and
+the point in life from which we started--say, for example, the
+amoeba.  In the case of asexually and sexually produced organisms
+alike, the offspring must be held to continue the personality of the
+parent or parents, and hence on the occasion of every fresh
+development, to be repeating something which in the person of its
+parent or parents it has done once, and if once, then any number of
+times, already.
+
+It is obvious, therefore, that the germ-plasm (or whatever the fancy
+word for it may be) of any one generation is as physically identical
+with the germ-plasm of its predecessor as any two things can be.
+The difference between Professor Weismann and, we will say,
+Heringians consists in the fact that the first maintains the new
+germ-plasm when on the point of repeating its developmental
+processes to take practically no cognisance of anything that has
+happened to it since the last occasion on which it developed itself;
+while the latter maintain that offspring takes much the same kind of
+account of what has happened to it in the persons of its parents
+since the last occasion on which it developed itself, as people in
+ordinary life take of things that happen to them.  In daily life
+people let fairly normal circumstances come and go without much heed
+as matters of course.  If they have been lucky they make a note of
+it and try to repeat their success.  If they have been unfortunate
+but have recovered rapidly they soon forget it; if they have
+suffered long and deeply they grizzle over it and are scared and
+scarred by it for a long time.  The question is one of cognisance or
+non-cognisance on the part of the new germs, of the more profound
+impressions made on them while they were one with their parents,
+between the occasion of their last preceding development, and the
+new course on which they are about to enter.  Those who accept the
+theory put forward independently by Professor Hering of Prague
+(whose work on this subject is translated in my book, "Unconscious
+Memory") {40} and by myself in "Life and Habit," {41} believe in
+cognizance, as do Lamarckians generally.  Weismannites, and with
+them the orthodoxy of English science, find non-cognisance more
+acceptable.
+
+If the Heringian view is accepted, that heredity is only a mode of
+memory, and an extension of memory from one generation to another,
+then the repetition of its development by any embryo thus becomes
+only the repetition of a lesson learned by rote; and, as I have
+elsewhere said, our view of life is simplified by finding that it is
+no longer an equation of, say, a hundred unknown quantities, but of
+ninety-nine only, inasmuch as two of the unknown quantities prove to
+be substantially identical.  In this case the inheritance of
+acquired characteristics cannot be disputed, for it is postulated in
+the theory that each embryo takes note of, remembers and is guided
+by the profounder impressions made upon it while in the persons of
+its parents, between its present and last preceding development.  To
+maintain this is to maintain use and disuse to be the main factors
+throughout organic development; to deny it is to deny that use and
+disuse can have any conceivable effect.  For the detailed reasons
+which led me to my own conclusions I must refer the reader to my
+books, "Life and Habit" {42} and "Unconscious Memory," {42} the
+conclusions of which have been often adopted, but never, that I have
+seen, disputed.  A brief resume of the leading points in the
+argument is all that space will here allow me to give.
+
+We have seen that it is a first requirement of heredity that there
+shall be physical continuity between parents and offspring.  This
+holds good with memory.  There must be continued identity between
+the person remembering and the person to whom the thing that is
+remembered happened.  We cannot remember things that happened to
+some one else, and in our absence.  We can only remember having
+heard of them.  We have seen, however, that there is as much bona-
+fide sameness of personality between parents and offspring up to the
+time at which the offspring quits the parent's body, as there is
+between the different states of the parent himself at any two
+consecutive moments; the offspring therefore, being one and the same
+person with its progenitors until it quits them, can be held to
+remember what happened to them within, of course, the limitations to
+which all memory is subject, as much as the progenitors can remember
+what happened earlier to themselves.  Whether it does so remember
+can only be settled by observing whether it acts as living beings
+commonly do when they are acting under guidance of memory.  I will
+endeavour to show that, though heredity and habit based on memory go
+about in different dresses, yet if we catch them separately--for
+they are never seen together--and strip them there is not a mole nor
+strawberry-mark, nor trick nor leer of the one, but we find it in
+the other also.
+
+What are the moles and strawberry-marks of habitual action, or
+actions remembered and thus repeated?  First, the more often we
+repeat them the more easily and unconsciously we do them.  Look at
+reading, writing, walking, talking, playing the piano, &c.; the
+longer we have practised any one of these acquired habits, the more
+easily, automatically and unconsciously, we perform it.  Look, on
+the other hand, broadly, at the three points to which I called
+attention in "Life and Habit":-
+
+I.  That we are most conscious of and have most control over such
+habits as speech, the upright position, the arts and sciences--which
+are acquisitions peculiar to the human race, always acquired after
+birth, and not common to ourselves and any ancestor who had not
+become entirely human.
+
+II.  That we are less conscious of and have less control over eating
+and drinking [provided the food be normal], swallowing, breathing,
+seeing, and hearing--which were acquisitions of our prehuman
+ancestry, and for which we had provided ourselves with all the
+necessary apparatus before we saw light, but which are still,
+geologically speaking, recent.
+
+III.  That we are most unconscious of and have least control over
+our digestion and circulation--powers possessed even by our
+invertebrate ancestry, and, geologically speaking, of extreme
+antiquity.
+
+I have put the foregoing very broadly, but enough is given to show
+the reader the gist of the argument.  Let it be noted that
+disturbance and departure, to any serious extent, from normal
+practice tends to induce resumption of consciousness even in the
+case of such old habits as breathing, seeing, and hearing, digestion
+and the circulation of the blood.  So it is with habitual actions in
+general.  Let a player be never so proficient on any instrument, he
+will be put out if the normal conditions under which he plays are
+too widely departed from, and will then do consciously, if indeed he
+can do it at all, what he had hitherto been doing unconsciously.  It
+is an axiom as regards actions acquired after birth, that we never
+do them automatically save as the result of long practice; the
+stages in the case of any acquired facility, the inception of which
+we have been able to watch, have invariably been from a nothingness
+of ignorant impotence to a little somethingness of highly self-
+conscious, arduous performance, and thence to the
+unselfconsciousness of easy mastery.  I saw one year a poor blind
+lad of about eighteen sitting on a wall by the wayside at Varese,
+playing the concertina with his whole body, and snorting like a
+child.  The next year the boy no longer snorted, and he played with
+his fingers only; the year after that he seemed hardly to know
+whether he was playing or not, it came so easily to him.  I know no
+exception to this rule.  Where is the intricate and at one time
+difficult art in which perfect automatic ease has been reached
+except as the result of long practice?  If, then, wherever we can
+trace the development of automatism we find it to have taken this
+course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken the
+same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken?
+Ought we not, whenever we see a difficult action performed,
+automatically to suspect antecedent practice?  Granted that without
+the considerations in regard to identity presented above it would
+not have been easy to see where a baby of a day old could have had
+the practice which enables it to do as much as it does
+unconsciously, but even without these considerations it would have
+been more easy to suppose that the necessary opportunities had not
+been wanting, than that the easy performance could have been gained
+without practice and memory.
+
+When I wrote "Life and Habit" (originally published in 1877) I said
+in slightly different words:-
+
+"Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the
+whole principle of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledge
+of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its
+blood--millions of years before any one had discovered oxygen--sees
+and hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the
+facts concerning optics and acoustics compared with which the
+conscious discoveries of Newton are insignificant--shall we say that
+a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and so
+regularly without being even able to give them attention, and yet
+without mistake, and shall we also say at the same time that it has
+not learnt to do them, and never did them before?
+
+"Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience of
+mankind."
+
+I have met with nothing during the thirteen years since the
+foregoing was published that has given me any qualms about its
+soundness.  From the point of view of the law courts and everyday
+life it is, of course, nonsense; but in the kingdom of thought, as
+in that of heaven, there are many mansions, and what would be
+extravagance in the cottage or farmhouse, as it were, of daily
+practice, is but common decency in the palace of high philosophy,
+wherein dwells evolution.  If we leave evolution alone, we may stick
+to common practice and the law courts; touch evolution and we are in
+another world; not higher, not lower, but different as harmony from
+counterpoint.  As, however, in the most absolute counterpoint there
+is still harmony, and in the most absolute harmony still
+counterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touch with
+common sense, and common sense with high philosophy.
+
+The common-sense view of the matter to people who are not over-
+curious and to whom time is money, will be that a baby is not a baby
+until it is born, and that when born it should be born in wedlock.
+Nevertheless, as a sop to high philosophy, every baby is allowed to
+be the offspring of its father and mother.
+
+The high-philosophy view of the matter is that every human being is
+still but a fresh edition of the primordial cell with the latest
+additions and corrections; there has been no leap nor break in
+continuity anywhere; the man of to-day is the primordial cell of
+millions of years ago as truly as he is the himself of yesterday; he
+can only be denied to be the one on grounds that will prove him not
+to be the other.  Every one is both himself and all his direct
+ancestors and descendants as well; therefore, if we would be
+logical, he is one also with all his cousins, no matter how distant,
+for he and they are alike identical with the primordial cell, and we
+have already noted it as an axiom that things which are identical
+with the same are identical with one another.  This is practically
+making him one with all living things, whether animal or vegetable,
+that ever have existed or ever will--something of all which may have
+been in the mind of Sophocles when he wrote:-
+
+
+"Nor seest thou yet the gathering hosts of ill
+That shall en-one thee both with thine own self
+And with thine offspring."
+
+
+And all this has come of admitting that a man may be the same person
+for two days running!  As for sopping common sense it will be enough
+to say that these remarks are to be taken in a strictly scientific
+sense, and have no appreciable importance as regards life and
+conduct.  True they deal with the foundations on which all life and
+conduct are based, but like other foundations they are hidden out of
+sight, and the sounder they are, the less we trouble ourselves about
+them.
+
+What other main common features between heredity and memory may we
+note besides the fact that neither can exist without that kind of
+physical continuity which we call personal identity?  First, the
+development of the embryo proceeds in an established order; so must
+all habitual actions based on memory.  Disturb the normal order and
+the performance is arrested.  The better we know "God save the
+Queen," the less easily can we play or sing it backwards.  The
+return of memory again depends on the return of ideas associated
+with the particular thing that is remembered--we remember nothing
+but for the presence of these, and when enough of these are
+presented to us we remember everything.  So, if the development of
+an embryo is due to memory, we should suppose the memory of the
+impregnate ovum to revert not to yesterday, when it was in the
+persons of its parents, but to the last occasion on which it was an
+impregnate ovum.  The return of the old environment and the presence
+of old associations would at once involve recollection of the course
+that should be next taken, and the same should happen throughout the
+whole course of development.  The actual course of development
+presents precisely the phenomena agreeable with this.  For fuller
+treatment of this point I must refer the reader to the chapter on
+the abeyance of memory in my book "Life and Habit," already referred
+to.
+
+Secondly, we remember best our last few performances of any given
+kind, so our present performance will probably resemble some one or
+other of these; we remember our earlier performances by way of
+residuum only, but every now and then we revert to an earlier habit.
+This feature of memory is manifested in heredity by the way in which
+offspring commonly resembles most its nearer ancestors, but
+sometimes reverts to earlier ones.  Brothers and sisters, each as it
+were giving their own version of the same story, but in different
+words, should generally resemble each other more closely than more
+distant relations.  And this is what actually we find.
+
+Thirdly, the introduction of slightly new elements into a method
+already established varies it beneficially; the new is soon fused
+with the old, and the monotony ceases to be oppressive.  But if the
+new be too foreign, we cannot fuse the old and the new--nature
+seeming to hate equally too wide a deviation from ordinary practice
+and none at all.  This fact reappears in heredity as the beneficial
+effects of occasional crossing on the one hand, and on the other, in
+the generally observed sterility of hybrids.  If heredity be an
+affair of memory, how can an embryo, say of a mule, be expected to
+build up a mule on the strength of but two mule-memories?  Hybridism
+causes a fault in the chain of memory, and it is to this cause that
+the usual sterility of hybrids must be referred.
+
+Fourthly, it requires many repeated impressions to fix a method
+firmly, but when it has been engrained into us we cease to have much
+recollection of the manner in which it came to be so, or indeed of
+any individual repetition, but sometimes a single impression, if
+prolonged as well as profound, produces a lasting impression and is
+liable to return with sudden force, and then to go on returning to
+us at intervals.  As a general rule, however, abnormal impressions
+cannot long hold their own against the overwhelming preponderance of
+normal authority.  This appears in heredity as the normal non-
+inheritance of mutilations on the one hand, and on the other as
+their occasional inheritance in the case of injuries followed by
+disease.
+
+Fifthly, if heredity and memory are essentially the same, we should
+expect that no animal would develop new structures of importance
+after the age at which its species begins ordinarily to continue its
+race; for we cannot suppose offspring to remember anything that
+happens to the parent subsequently to the parent's ceasing to
+contain the offspring within itself.  From the average age,
+therefore, of reproduction, offspring should cease to have any
+farther steady, continuous memory to fall back upon; what memory
+there is should be full of faults, and as such unreliable.  An
+organism ought to develop as long as it is backed by memory--that is
+to say, until the average age at which reproduction begins; it
+should then continue to go for a time on the impetus already
+received, and should eventually decay through failure of any memory
+to support it, and tell it what to do.  This corresponds absolutely
+with what we observe in organisms generally, and explains, on the
+one hand, why the age of puberty marks the beginning of completed
+development--a riddle hitherto not only unexplained but, so far as I
+have seen, unasked; it explains, on the other hand, the phenomena of
+old age--hitherto without even attempt at explanation.
+
+Sixthly, those organisms that are the longest in reaching maturity
+should on the average be the longest-lived, for they will have
+received the most momentous impulse from the weight of memory behind
+them.  This harmonises with the latest opinion as to the facts.  In
+his article on Weismann in the Contemporary Review for May 1890, Mr.
+Romanes writes:  "Professor Weismann has shown that there is
+throughout the metazoa a general correlation between the natural
+lifetime of individuals composing any given species, and the age at
+which they reach maturity or first become capable of procreation."
+This, I believe, has been the conclusion generally arrived at by
+biologists for some years past.
+
+Lateness, then, in the average age of reproduction appears to be the
+principle underlying longevity.  There does not appear at first
+sight to be much connection between such distinct and apparently
+disconnected phenomena as 1, the orderly normal progress of
+development; 2, atavism and the resumption of feral characteristics;
+3, the more ordinary resemblance inter se of nearer relatives; 4,
+the benefit of an occasional cross, and the usual sterility of
+hybrids; 5, the unconsciousness with which alike bodily development
+and ordinary physiological functions proceed, so long as they are
+normal; 6, the ordinary non-inheritance, but occasional inheritance
+of mutilations; 7, the fact that puberty indicates the approach of
+maturity; 8, the phenomena of middle life and old age; 9, the
+principle underlying longevity.  These phenomena have no conceivable
+bearing on one another until heredity and memory are regarded as
+part of the same story.  Identify these two things, and I know no
+phenomenon of heredity that does not immediately become infinitely
+more intelligible.  Is it conceivable that a theory which harmonises
+so many facts hitherto regarded as without either connection or
+explanation should not deserve at any rate consideration from those
+who profess to take an interest in biology?
+
+It is not as though the theory were unknown, or had been condemned
+by our leading men of science.  Professor Ray Lankester introduced
+it to English readers in an appreciative notice of Professor
+Hering's address, which appeared in Nature, July 18, 1876.  He wrote
+to the Athenaeum, March 24, 1884, and claimed credit for having done
+so, but I do not believe he has ever said more in public about it
+than what I have here referred to.  Mr. Romanes did indeed try to
+crush it in Nature, January 27, 1881, but in 1883, in his "Mental
+Evolution in Animals," he adopted its main conclusion without
+acknowledgment.  The Athenaeum, to my unbounded surprise, called him
+to task for this (March 1, 1884), and since that time he has given
+the Heringian theory a sufficiently wide berth.  Mr. Wallace showed
+himself favourably enough disposed towards the view that heredity
+and memory are part of the same story when he reviewed my book "Life
+and Habit" in Nature, March 27, 1879, but he has never since
+betrayed any sign of being aware that such a theory existed.  Mr.
+Herbert Spencer wrote to the Athenaeum (April 5, 1884), and claimed
+the theory for himself, but, in spite of his doing this, he has
+never, that I have seen, referred to the matter again.  I have dealt
+sufficiently with his claim in my book, "Luck or Cunning." {43}
+Lastly, Professor Hering himself has never that I know of touched
+his own theory since the single short address read in 1870, and
+translated by me in 1881.  Every one, even its originator, except
+myself, seems afraid to open his mouth about it.  Of course the
+inference suggests itself that other people have more sense than I
+have.  I readily admit it; but why have so many of our leaders shown
+such a strong hankering after the theory, if there is nothing in it?
+
+The deadlock that I have pointed out as existing in Darwinism will,
+I doubt not, lead ere long to a consideration of Professor Hering's
+theory.  English biologists are little likely to find Weismann
+satisfactory for long, and if he breaks down there is nothing left
+for them but Lamarck, supplemented by the important and elucidatory
+corollary on his theory proposed by Professor Hering.  When the time
+arrives for this to obtain a hearing it will be confirmed,
+doubtless, by arguments clearer and more forcible than any I have
+been able to adduce; I shall then be delighted to resign the
+championship which till then I shall continue, as for some years
+past, to have much pleasure in sustaining.  Heretofore my
+satisfaction has mainly lain in the fact that more of our prominent
+men of science have seemed anxious to claim the theory than to
+refute it; in the confidence thus engendered I leave it to any
+fuller consideration which the outline I have above given may
+incline the reader to bestow upon it.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  Published in the Universal Review, July 1888.
+
+{2}  Published in the Universal Review, December 1890.
+
+{3}  Published in the Universal Review, May 1889.  As I have several
+times been asked if the letters here reprinted were not fabricated
+by Butler himself, I take this opportunity of stating that they are
+authentic in every particular, and that the originals are now in my
+possession.--R. A. S.
+
+{4}  An address delivered at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895.
+
+{5}  "The Foundations of Belief," by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour.
+Longmans, 1895, p. 48.
+
+{6}  Published in the Universal Review, November 1888.
+
+{7}  Since this essay was written it has been ascertained by
+Cavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, that Tabachetti
+died in 1615.  If, therefore, the Sanctuary of Montrigone was not
+founded until 1631, it is plain that Tabachetti cannot have worked
+there.  All the latest discoveries about Tabachetti's career will be
+found in Cavaliere Negri's pamphlet "Il Santuario di Crea"
+(Alessandria, 1902).  See also note on p. 154.--R. A. S.
+
+{8}  Published in the Universal Review, December 1889.
+
+{9}  Longmans & Co., 1890.
+
+{10}  Longmans & Co., 1890.
+
+{11}  Published in the Universal Review, November 1890.
+
+{12}  Longmans & Co., 1890.
+
+{13}  M. Ruppen's words run:  "1687 wurde die Kapelle zur hohen
+Stiege gebaut, 1747 durch Zusatz vergrossert und 1755 mit Orgeln
+ausgestattet.  Anton Ruppen, ein geschickter Steinhauer mid
+Maurermeister leitete den Kapellebau, und machte darin das kleinere
+Altarlein.  Bei der hohen Stiege war fruher kein Gebetshauslein; nur
+ein wunderthatiges Bildlein der Mutter Gottes stand da in einer
+Mauer vor dem fromme Hirten und viel andachtiges Volk unter freiem
+Himmel beteten.
+
+"1709 wurden die kleinen Kapellelein die 15 Geheimnisse des Psalters
+vorstelland auf dem Wege zur hohen Stiege gebaut.  Jeder Haushalter
+des Viertels Fee ubernahm den Bau eines dieser Geheimnisskapellen,
+und ein besonderer Gutthater dieser frommen Unternehmung war
+Heinrich Andenmatten, nachher Bruder der Geselischaft Jesu."
+
+{14}  The story of Tabachetti's incarceration is very doubtful.
+Cavaliere F. Negri, to whose book on Tabachetti and his work at Crea
+I have already referred the reader, does not mention it.  Tabachetti
+left his native Dinant in 1585, and from that date until his death
+in 1615 he appears to have worked chiefly at Varallo and Crea.
+There is a document in existence stating that in 1588 he executed a
+statue for the hermitage of S. Rocco, at Crea, which, if it is to be
+relied on, disposes both of the incarceration and of the visit to
+Saas.  It is possible, however, that the date is 1598, in which case
+Butler's theory of the visit to Saas may hold good.  In 1590
+Tabachetti was certainly at Varallo, and again in 1594, 1599, and
+1602.  He died in 1615, possibly during a visit to Varallo, though
+his home at that time was Costigliole, near Asti.--R. A. S.
+
+{15}  This is thus chronicled by M. Ruppen:  "1589 den 9 September
+war eine Wassergrosse, die viel Schaden verursachte.  Die
+Thalstrasse, die von den Steinmatten an bis zur Kirche am Ufer der
+Visp lag, wurde ganz zerstort.  Man ward gezwungen eine neue Strasse
+in einiger Entfernung vom Wasser durch einen alten Fussweg
+auszuhauen welche vier und einerhalben Viertel der Klafter, oder 6
+Schuh und 9 Zoll breit soilte."  (p. 43).
+
+{16}  A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College in Great
+Ormond Street, March 15, 1890; rewritten and delivered again at the
+Somerville Club, February 13, 1894.
+
+{17}  "Correlation of Forces":  Longmans, 1874, p. 15.
+
+{18}  "Three Lectures on the Science of Language," Longmans, 1889,
+p. 4.
+
+{19}  "Science of Thought," Longmans, 1887, p. 9.
+
+{20}  Published in the Universal Review, April, May, and June 1890.
+
+{21}  "Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle," iii. p. 237.
+
+{22}  "Luck, or Cunning, as the main means of Organic Modification?"
+(Longmans), pp. 179, 180.
+
+{23}  Journals of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology,
+vol. iii.), 1859, p. 61.
+
+{24}  "Darwinism" (Macmillan, 1889), p. 129.
+
+{25}  Longmans, 1890, p. 376.
+
+{26}  See Nature, March 6, 1890.
+
+{27}  "Origin of Species," sixth edition, 1888, vol. i. p. 168.
+
+{28}  "Origin of Species," sixth edition, 1888, vol. ii. p. 261.
+
+{29}  Mr. J. T. Cunningham, of the Marine Biological Laboratory,
+Plymouth, has called my attention to the fact that I have ascribed
+to Professor Ray Lankester a criticism on Mr. Wallace's remarks upon
+the eyes of certain fiat-fish, which Professor Ray Lankester was, in
+reality, only adopting--with full acknowledgment--from Mr.
+Cunningham.  Mr. Cunningham has left it to me whether to correct my
+omission publicly or not, but he would so plainly prefer my doing so
+that I consider myself bound to insert this note.  Curiously enough
+I find that in my book "Evolution Old and New," I gave what Lamarck
+actually said upon the eyes of flat-fish, and having been led to
+return to the subject, I may as well quote his words.  He wrote:-
+
+"Need--always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal is
+placed, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification--can not
+only modify an organ--that is to say, augment or reduce it--but can
+change its position when the case requires its removal.
+
+"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them,
+and have their eyes accordingly placed on either side of their head.
+Some fishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarine
+banks and inclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves as
+much as possible in order to get as near as they can to the shore.
+In this situation they receive more light from above than from
+below, and find it necessary to pay attention to whatever happens to
+be above them; this need has involved the displacement of their
+eyes, which now take the remarkable position which we observe in the
+case of soles, turbots, plaice, &c.  The transfer of position is not
+even yet complete in the case of these fishes, and the eyes are not,
+therefore, symmetrically placed; but they are so with the skate,
+whose head and whole body are equally disposed on either side a
+longitudinal section.  Hence the eyes of this fish are placed
+symmetrically upon the uppermost side."--Philosophie Zoologique,
+tom. i., pp. 250, 251.  Edition C. Martins.  Paris, 1873.
+
+{30}  "Essays on Heredity," &c., Oxford, 1889, p. 171.
+
+{31}  "Essays on Heredity," &c., Oxford, 1889, p. 266.
+
+{32}  "Darwinism," 1889, p. 440.
+
+{33}  Page 83.
+
+{34}  Vol. i. p. 466, &c.  Ed. 1885.
+
+{35}  "Darwinism," p. 440.
+
+{36}  Longmans, 1890.
+
+{37}  Tom. iv. p. 383.  Ed. 1753.
+
+{38}  Essays, &c., p. 447.
+
+{39}  "Zoonomia," 1794, vol. i. p. 480.
+
+{40}  Longmans, 1890.
+
+{41}  Longmans, 1890.
+
+{42}  Longmans, 1890.
+
+{43}  Longmans, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Essays on Life, Art and Science, by Butler
+