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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, November 1879
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: April 23, 2012 [EBook #39517]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
+Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
+been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.
+
+_Italic words_ have been enclosed in underscores. *Gesperrt* (spaced)
+letters have been enclosed in asterisks. Symbols such as hieroglyphics
+or script letters have been represented using braces, e.g. {symbol}.
+
+A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. Some
+inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+             THE
+         CONTEMPORARY
+            REVIEW
+
+  VOLUME XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1879
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  NOVEMBER, 1879.
+                                                                    PAGE
+  On Freedom. By Professor Max Müller                                369
+
+  Mr. Gladstone: Two Studies suggested by his "Gleanings of Past
+    Years." I. By a Liberal.--II. By a Conservative                  398
+
+  The Ancien Régime and the Revolution in France. By Professor
+    von Sybel                                                        432
+
+  What is the Actual Condition of Ireland? By Edward Stanley
+    Robertson                                                        451
+
+  The Deluge: Its Traditions in Ancient Nations. By François
+    Lenormant                                                        465
+
+  Suspended Animation. By Richard A. Proctor                         501
+
+  John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested. IV.--Utilitarianism.
+    By Professor W. Stanley Jevons                                   521
+
+
+
+
+ON FREEDOM.[1]
+
+
+Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth
+his plea for Liberty.[2]
+
+If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the
+elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved
+the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John
+Stuart Mill.
+
+But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In
+presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of
+individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him.
+He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual
+human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of
+growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes
+a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is
+treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of
+individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every
+true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they
+cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the
+lowest level.
+
+I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly
+and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be
+challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or
+the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble
+to _our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is
+not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the
+interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to
+social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to
+the interests of others."
+
+Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle,
+or who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller
+measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when
+it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we
+imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual
+man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more
+freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his
+theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in
+which, in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of
+England, such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and
+hard-working Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred
+inheritance to their sons and daughters?
+
+Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of
+republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one
+single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each
+individual was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if
+you wish to realize the full blessings of the time in which we live,
+compare Mill's plea for Liberty with another written not much more than
+two hundred years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or
+boldness to Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an
+individual in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls
+"freedom of thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being
+able to think what we like--so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely,
+such freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and
+we should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in
+solitary and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom
+of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual
+or associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared
+with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all
+other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed
+down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over.
+
+It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion,
+and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any
+infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority,
+need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even
+sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the
+true ring of honest conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish
+love of truth.
+
+It has seemed strange therefore to many readers of Mill, particularly on
+the Continent, that this cry for Liberty, this demand for freedom for
+every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his
+nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all
+countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation
+if it had reached us from Russia; but why should English philosophers,
+of all others, have to protest against the tyranny of society? It is
+true, nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically, the
+individual, unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far greater
+freedom, or rather licence, than in a country like England, which
+governs itself. Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent.
+It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the
+simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than
+astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of
+those who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the
+doctrines of what is called Nihilism or Individualism,[3]--viz., "that
+society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival
+of the strongest, processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have
+proved successful among wild animals." If there is danger in these
+doctrines the Government is expected to see to it. It may place watchmen
+at the doors of every house and at the corner of every street, but it
+must not count on the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves
+as special constables, or even on the co-operation of public opinion
+which in England would annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one glance
+of scorn and pity.
+
+In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society,
+if it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his
+rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in
+Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows
+how to use that softer, but more crushing pressure, that calm, but
+Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to
+resist.
+
+It is rather against that indirect repression which a well-organized
+society exercises, both through its male and female representatives,
+that Mill's demand for Liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for
+unlimited licence; on the contrary, he would have been the most
+strenuous defender of that balance of power between the weak and the
+strong on which all social life depends. But he resents those smaller
+penalties which society will always inflict on those who disturb its
+dignified peace and comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a
+stinging remark. Had Mill any right to complain of these social
+penalties? Would it not rather amount to an interference with individual
+liberty to wish to deprive any individual or any number of individuals
+of those weapons of self-defence? Those who themselves think and speak
+freely, have hardly a right to complain, if others claim the same
+privilege. Mill himself called the Conservative party the stupid party
+_par excellence_, and he took great pains to explain that it was so, not
+by accident, but by necessity. Need he wonder if those whom he whipped
+and scourged used their own whips and scourges against so merciless a
+critic?
+
+Freethinkers, and I use that name as a title of honour for all who, like
+Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word,
+or deed, compatible with the freedom of others, are apt to make one
+mistake. Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to
+be mistrusted or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often
+very painful operations as a patient submits to the knife of the
+surgeon. That is not in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always
+abused by his enemies. Society will never yield one inch without
+resistance, and few reformers live long enough to receive the thanks of
+those whom they have reformed. Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament
+was a triumph not often shared by social reformers; it was as
+exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat in the Cabinet, or Stanley's
+appointment as Dean of Westminster. Such anomalies will happen in a
+country fortunately so full of anomalies as England; but, as a rule, a
+political reformer must not be angry if he passes through life without
+the title of Right Honourable; nor should a man, if he will always speak
+the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, be disappointed
+if he dies a martyr rather than a Bishop.
+
+But granting even that in Mill's time there existed some traces of
+social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the
+journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be
+openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned
+societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of
+the fashionable world? When young lords begin to discuss the propriety
+of limiting the rights of inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid
+to propose curtailing the long vacation, surely we need not complain of
+the intolerance of English society.
+
+Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian
+friends, who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the
+impression that, however large an amount of political liberty England
+may enjoy, it enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are
+generally willing to be converted so far as London, or other great
+cities, are concerned. But look at your Universities, they say, the
+nurseries of English thought! Can you compare their mediæval spirit,
+their monastic institutions, their scholastic philosophy, with the
+freshness and freedom of the Continental Universities? Strong as these
+prejudices about Oxford and Cambridge have always been, they have become
+still more intense since Professor Helmholtz, in an inaugural address
+which he delivered at his installation as Rector of the University of
+Berlin, lent the authority of his great name to these misconceptions.
+"The tutors," he says,[4] "in the English Universities cannot deviate
+by a hair's-breadth from the dogmatic system of the English Church,
+without exposing themselves to the censure of their Archbishops and
+losing their pupils." In German Universities, on the contrary, we are
+told that the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the
+boldest speculations within the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution,
+may be propounded without let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest
+apotheosis of Papal infallibility.
+
+Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely wrong,
+and the writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a more than
+sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no official
+position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of an
+Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole University.
+Nor does the University, as such, exercise any very strict control over
+the tutors, even when they lecture not to their own College only. Each
+Master of Arts at Oxford claims now the right to lecture (_venia
+docendi_), and I doubt whether they would ever submit to those
+restrictions which, in Germany, the Faculty imposes on every
+_Privat-docent_. _Privat-docents_ in German Universities have been
+rejected by the Faculty for incompetence, and silenced for
+insubordination. I know of no such cases at Oxford during my residence
+of more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they should
+ever occur.
+
+As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are
+Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as
+Hobbes, Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by
+Büchner and Vogt.
+
+I know comparisons are odious, and I am the last man who would wish to
+draw comparisons between English and German Universities unfavourable to
+the latter. But with regard to freedom of thought, of speech, and
+action, Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few weeks at
+Oxford, would find that we enjoy a fuller measure of freedom here than
+the Professors and _Privat-docents_ in any Continental University. The
+publications of some of our professors and tutors ought at least to have
+convinced him that if there is less of brave words and turbulent talk in
+their writings, they display throughout a determination to speak the
+truth, which may be matched, but could not easily be excelled, by the
+leaders of thought in France, Germany, or Italy.
+
+The real difference between English and Continental Universities is that
+the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government
+entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences. I may
+here be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor of the
+University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his
+colleagues, ventured to tell them,[5] "We have still to learn from the
+English how the greatest independence of the individual is compatible
+with willing submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is
+particularly true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Germany, as
+Professor Helmholtz tells us himself, the last decision in almost all
+the more important affairs of the Universities rests with the
+Government, and he does not deny that in times of political and
+ecclesiastical tension, a most inconsiderate use has been made of that
+power. There are, besides, the less important matters, such as raising
+of salaries, leave of absence, scientific missions, even titles and
+decorations, all of which enable a clever Minister of Instruction to
+assert his personal influence among the less independent members of the
+University. In Oxford the University does not know the Ministry, nor the
+Ministry the University. The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or
+Conservative, are freely discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the
+academic constituencies, and the personal dislike of a Minister or
+Ministerial Councillor could as little injure a professor or tutor as
+his favour could add one penny to his salary.
+
+But these are minor matters. What gives their own peculiar character to
+the English Universities is a sense of power and responsibility: power,
+because they are the most respected among the numerous corporations in
+the country; responsibility, because the higher education of the whole
+country has been committed to their charge. Their only master is public
+opinion as represented in Parliament, their only incentive their own
+sense of duty. There is no country in Europe where Universities hold so
+exalted a position, and where those who have the honour to belong to
+them may say with greater truth, _Noblesse oblige_.
+
+I know the dangers of self-government, particularly where higher and
+more ideal interests are concerned, and there are probably few who wish
+for a real reform in schools and Universities who have not occasionally
+yielded to the desire for a Dictator, of a Bismarck or a Falk. But such
+a desire springs only from a momentary weakness and despondency; and no
+one who knows the difference between being governed and governing
+oneself, would ever wish to descend from that higher though dangerous
+position to a lower one, however safe and comfortable it might seem. No
+one who has tasted freedom would ever wish to exchange it for anything
+else. Public opinion is sometimes a hard task-master, and majorities can
+be great tyrants to those who want to be honest to their own
+convictions. But in the struggle of all against all, each individual
+feels that he has his rightful place, and that he may exercise his
+rightful influence. If he is beaten, he is beaten in fair fight; if he
+conquers, he has no one else to thank. No doubt despotic Governments
+have often exercised the most beneficial patronage in encouraging and
+rewarding poets, artists, and men of science. But men of genius who have
+conquered the love and admiration of a whole nation are greater than
+those who have gained the favour of the most brilliant Courts; and we
+know how some of the fairest reputations have been wrecked on the
+patronage which they had to accept at the hands of powerful Ministers or
+ambitious Sovereigns.
+
+But to return to Mill and his plea for Liberty. Though I can hardly
+believe that, were he still among us, he would claim a larger measure of
+freedom for the individual than is now accorded to every one of us in
+the society in which we move, yet the chief cause on which he founded
+his plea for Liberty, the chief evil which he thought could be remedied
+only if society would allow more elbow-room to individual genius, exists
+in the same degree as in his time--aye, even in a higher degree. The
+principle of Individuality has suffered more at present than perhaps at
+any former period of history. The world is becoming more and more
+gregarious, and what the French call our _nature moutonnière_, "our
+mutton-like nature," our tendency to leap where any bell-wether has
+leapt before, becomes more and more prevalent in politics, in religion,
+in art, and even in science. M. de Tocqueville expressed his surprise
+how much more Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did
+those of the last generation. The same remark, adds John Stuart Mill,
+might be made of England in a greater degree. "The modern _régime_ of
+public opinion," he writes, "is in an unorganized form what the Chinese
+educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless
+individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this
+yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed
+Christianity, will tend to become another China."
+
+I fully agree with Mill in recognizing the dangers of uniformity, but I
+doubt whether what he calls the _régime_ of public opinion is alone, or
+even chiefly, answerable for it. No doubt there are some people in whose
+eyes uniformity seems an advantage rather than a disadvantage. If all
+were equally strong, equally educated, equally honest, equally rich,
+equally tall, or equally small, society would seem to them to have
+reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French garden,
+with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers and
+pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp
+the soil with their coiling roots, and overshadow with their dark green
+branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens,
+unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon fall
+into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means but too often
+stagnation, while variety is the surest sign of health and vigour. The
+deepest secret of nature is its love of continued novelty. Its tendency,
+if unrestrained, is towards constantly creating new varieties, which, if
+they fulfil their purpose, become fixed for a time, or, it may be, for
+ever; while others, after they have fulfilled their purpose, vanish to
+make room for new and stronger types.
+
+The same is the secret of human society. It consists and lives in
+individuals, each being meant to be different from all the others, and
+to contribute his own peculiar share to the common wealth. As no tree is
+like any other tree, and no leaf on the same tree like any other leaf,
+no human being is exactly like any other human being, nor is it meant to
+be. It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human
+souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the
+more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the
+development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in
+no distant future. Such is the mystery of individuality that I do not
+wonder if even those philosophers who, like Mill, reduce the meaning of
+the word _sacred_ to the very smallest compass, see in each individual
+soul something sacred, something to be revered, even where we cannot
+understand it, something to be protected against all vulgar violence.
+
+Where I differ from Mill and his school is on the question as to the
+quarter from whence the epidemic of uniformity springs which threatens
+the free development of modern society. Mill points to the society in
+which we move; to those who are in front of us, to our contemporaries. I
+feel convinced that our real enemies are at our back, and that the
+heaviest chains which are fastened on us are those made, not by the
+present, but by past generations--by our ancestors, not by our
+contemporaries.
+
+It is on this point, on the trammels of individual freedom with which we
+may almost be said to be born into the world, and on the means by which
+we may shake off these old chains, or at all events carry them more
+lightly and gracefully, that I wish to speak to you this evening.
+
+You need not be afraid that I am going to enter upon the much discussed
+subject of heredity, whether in its physiological or psychological
+aspects. It is a favourite subject just now, and the most curious facts
+have been brought together of late to illustrate the working of what is
+called heredity. But the more we know of these facts, the less we seem
+able to comprehend the underlying principle. Inheritance is one of those
+numerous words which by their very simplicity and clearness are so apt
+to darken our counsel. If a father has blue eyes and the son has blue
+eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the father
+stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came by
+inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we say
+very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does _inherited_
+mean? In no case does it mean what _inherited_ usually means--something
+external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death,
+secured by law to his son. Whatever else inherited may mean, it does not
+mean that. But unfortunately the word is there, it seems almost pedantic
+to challenge its meaning, and people are always grateful if an easy word
+saves them the trouble of hard thought.
+
+Another apparent advantage of the theory of heredity is that it never
+fails. If the son has blue, and the father black, eyes, all is right
+again, for either the mother, or the grandmother, or some historic or
+prehistoric ancestor, may have had blue eyes, and atavism, we know, will
+assert itself after hundreds and thousands of years.
+
+Do not suppose that I deny the broad facts of what is called by the name
+of heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any
+scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a
+metaphor, quite as bad as the old metaphor of _innate ideas_; for there
+is hardly a single point of similarity between the process by which a
+son may share the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of
+his father, and that by which, after his father's death, the law secures
+to the son the possession of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his
+father held in the Funds.
+
+But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is that
+every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere has the
+consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it enters
+on its journey through life found stronger expression than among the
+Buddhists. What other people call by various names, "fate or
+providence," "tradition or inheritance," "circumstances or environment,"
+they call _Karman_, deed--what has been done, whether by ourselves or by
+others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the
+consequences of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil.
+Originally this _Karman_ seems to have been conceived as personal, as
+the work which we ourselves have done in former existences. But, as
+personally we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages,
+that kind of _Karman_, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the
+question how _Karman_ began, the accumulation of what forms the
+condition of all that exists at present, Buddhism has no answer to give,
+any more than any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists
+say it began with _avidyâ_, and _avidyâ_ means ignorance.[6] They are
+much more deeply interested in the question how _Karman_ may be
+annihilated, how each man may free himself from the influence of
+_Karman_, and Nirvâna, the highest object of all their dreams, is often
+defined by Buddhist philosophers as "freedom from _Karman_."[7]
+
+What the Buddhists call by the general name of _Karman_, comprehends all
+influences which the past exercises on the present, both physically and
+mentally.[8] It is not my object to examine or even to name all these
+influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to look
+upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological map, and
+to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere under our
+feet. Difficult as it is to colour a geological map of England, it would
+be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colours to mark
+the different ingredients of the intellectual surface of this island.
+
+That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or
+Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as
+it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now admitted by everybody.
+Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been separated
+many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient classical
+language of India, yet so unbroken is the bond that holds the West and
+East together that in many cases an intelligent Englishman might still
+guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference is there
+between Sanskrit _sûnu_ and English _son_, between Sanskrit _duhitar_
+and English _daughter_, between Sanskrit _vid_, to know, and English _to
+wit_, between Sanskrit _vaksh_, to grow, and English _to wax_! Think how
+we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Celtic weapon! how we dig
+for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them in our
+museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the antiquity of such
+words as _son_ or _daughter_, _father_ and _mother_? There are no
+monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call
+Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English
+antiquities--as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm's
+Dictionary of the German, in Littré's Dictionary of the French, or in
+Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language--will
+learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many
+volumes on logic and psychology.
+
+And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong through
+our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics; and
+in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hieroglyphics
+have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phœnicia, from Phœnicia to
+Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we write a
+capital F {script F}, when we draw the top line and the smaller line
+through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two horns of the
+cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient Egyptians used for
+representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king whom the
+Greeks called _Cheops_, and they themselves _Chu-fu_, like this:[9]
+
+  {Illustration:
+    +---------+
+    | sieve   |   chu
+    | serpent |   fu
+    | bird    |   u
+    +---------+       }
+
+Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced _chu_; the second,
+the horned serpent, _fu_, and the little bird, again, _u_. In the more
+cursive or Hieratic writing the horned serpent appears as {symbol}; in
+the later Demotic as {symbol} and {symbol}. The Phœnicians, who borrowed
+their letters from the Hieratic Egyptian, wrote {symbol} and {symbol}.
+The Greeks, who took their letters from the Phœnicians, wrote {symbol}.
+When the Greeks, instead of writing like the Phœnicians from right to
+left, began to write from left to right, they turned each letter, and as
+{symbol} became K, our k, so {symbol}, vau, became F, the Greek
+so-called Digamma, the Latin F.
+
+The first letter in _Chu-fu_, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in
+the transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the
+lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as {symbol},
+in Phœnician as {symbol}, in ancient Greek as {symbol}, which occurs on
+an inscription found at Mycenæ and elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus
+asper, while in Latin it is known to us as the letter H.[10] In the same
+manner the undulating line of our capital {script L} still recalls very
+strikingly the bent back of the crouching lion, which in the later
+hieroglyphic inscriptions represents the sound of L.
+
+If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we have
+only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian. Why is our
+hour divided into sixty minutes, our minutes into sixty seconds? Would
+not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a hundred minutes have
+been more natural? We have sixty divisions on the dials of our watches
+simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second
+century B.C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that
+system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but
+for practical purposes they counted by _sossi_ and _sari_, the _sossos_
+representing 60, the _saros_ 60 × 60, or 3600. From Hipparchus that
+system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about 150 A.D., and
+thence it was carried down the stream of civilization, finding its last
+resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.
+
+And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the real
+reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians the art
+of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has been proved
+that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly the sixtieth
+part of a Babylonian _mnâ_, or _mina_. It was nearly equal to our
+sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold and
+silver in a bi-monetary currency had been solved to a certain extent in
+the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and silver
+being fixed at 1 to 13⅓. The silver shekel current in Babylon was
+heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13⅓ to 10, and had
+therefore the value of one-tenth of a gold shekel; and the half silver
+shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one-twentieth of a
+gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be looked
+upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its relation
+of one-twentieth of our gold sovereign.[11]
+
+I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our mental
+life--namely, our _figures_, which we call Arabic, because we received
+them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian, because they
+received them from the Indians--in order to show you how this nineteenth
+century of ours is under the sway of centuries long past and forgotten;
+how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by those who came before
+us, and how the intellectual ground on which we stand is made up of the
+detritus of thoughts which were first thought, not on these isles nor in
+Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the
+Indus.
+
+Now you may well ask _Quorsum hæc omnia?_--What has all this to do with
+freedom and with the free development of individuality? Because a man is
+born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that he is not free to
+grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties of his mind? Are
+those who came before him, and who left him this goodly inheritance, to
+be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition which connects him
+with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather the
+leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk straight?
+
+Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to say that
+every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be left to
+form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals, and coins.
+On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal more, such
+as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the general name of
+_education_, even the most advanced defenders of individualism would
+hold that no child should enter society without submitting, or rather
+without being submitted, to education. Most of us would even go further,
+and make it criminal for parents or even for communities to allow
+children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless parents that
+they are at liberty to do with their children as they like, has at last
+been blown to the winds. I still remember the time when pseudo-Liberals
+were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations, such as the
+Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory education.
+That wicked sophistry, too, has at last been silenced, and among the
+principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the necessity of
+curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children, have been
+Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and individualism.[12] A
+new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the day
+on which "compulsory education" becomes part of their statute-book; and
+I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having proved
+itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying out the principle of
+compulsory education.
+
+But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its
+dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is
+not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity,
+and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.
+
+We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic.
+Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and
+afterwards at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the
+rest, long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for
+themselves, and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe
+if it comes from those in whom the child believes.
+
+Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically,
+and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English
+schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen
+international race between all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the
+English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at
+statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what
+people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that personal
+and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things, and
+that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible things
+as the English.
+
+But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the
+whole school-time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot
+something be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be
+turned into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the
+powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers,
+or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either in
+gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height
+of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations or
+payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds
+with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to
+call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such
+lessons as, for instance, that _th-ough_ is though, _thr-ough_ is
+through, _en-ough_ is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter
+believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into
+elementary schools frighten schoolmasters by the very name of Natural
+Science. But surely every schoolmaster who is worth his salt should be
+able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a
+curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some
+of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of
+the field and the forest, where, better than in frouzy lecture-rooms,
+the edge of the senses can be sharpened, the chest be widened, and that
+freedom of thought fostered which made England what it was even before
+the days of compulsory education.
+
+But in addressing you here to-night it was my intention to speak of the
+higher rather than of elementary education.
+
+All education, as it now exists in most countries of Europe, may be
+divided into three stages--_elementary_, _scholastic_, and _academical_;
+or call it _primary_, _secondary_, and _tertiary_.
+
+Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most civilized
+countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to include under
+compulsory education anything beyond the very elements of knowledge--at
+least for the present; though, with proper management, I know from
+experience that a well-conducted elementary school can afford to provide
+instruction in extra subjects--such as natural science, modern
+languages, and political economy--and yet, with the present system of
+Government grants, be self-supporting.[13]
+
+The next stage above the elementary is _scholastic_ education, as it is
+supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as
+the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at
+once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are
+divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are called
+_Real-schulen_, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of
+mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other,
+called _Gymnasia_ on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of
+instruction.
+
+It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public
+schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention
+can be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In
+Germany, even more perhaps than in England, it is the chief object of a
+good and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible
+at the end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the
+official examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace
+together, than if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys,
+followed by a number of straggling laggards.
+
+And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be
+otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Socratic method is very
+good if we can find the _viri Socratici_ and leisure for discussion. But
+at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery σχολή, or
+leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great
+educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school
+must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as they
+can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty. There is
+an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages
+of ten and eighteen--rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names
+of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, &c. All depends
+here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has
+to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost
+mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too strongly
+recommended during the years spent at school. There may have been too
+much of it when, as the Rev. H. C. Adams informs us in his "Wykehamica"
+(p. 357), boys used to say by heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one
+repeated the whole of Virgil, nay, when another was able to say the
+whole of the English Bible by rote:--"Put him on where you would, he
+would go fluently on, as long as any one would listen."
+
+No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such
+regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature
+deposited in our memory during our childhood and youth, and taken up
+from time to time in the happy hours of our solitude.
+
+One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on the
+Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman classics. The
+majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and they are apt to
+lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute scholarship, and
+to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the arguments for minute
+accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is done by an exclusive
+devotion to critical scholarship before we have acquired a real
+familiarity with the principal works of classical literature. The time
+spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar and syntax,
+writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look only at our
+Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions, and
+exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy to carry;
+and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules which they have
+learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of
+classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted not
+only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient
+thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are
+but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end
+itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average
+ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of
+the ordinary Greek or Latin classics without much difficulty; nay, with
+a certain amount of pleasure. He might have to consult his dictionary
+now and then, or guess the meaning of certain words; he might also feel
+doubtful sometimes whether certain forms came from ἵημι, I send, or
+εἶμι, I go, or εἰμί, I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions. In
+these matters the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical;
+and whenever I meet in the controversies of classical scholars the
+favourite phrase, "Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, this," I
+generally say to myself, "No, he ought not." Anyhow, those who wish to
+see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to
+feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it
+can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen
+are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless
+they have seen it before.
+
+Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be
+finished at school. When a young man goes to University, unless he means
+to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a
+new career. If he has not learnt by that time so much of Greek and Latin
+as is absolutely necessary in after-life for a lawyer, or a student of
+physical science, or even a clergyman, either he or his school is to
+blame. I do not mean to say that it would not be most desirable for
+every one during his University career to attend some lectures on
+classical literature, on ancient history, philosophy, or art. What is to
+be deprecated is, that the University should have to do the work which
+belongs properly to the school.
+
+The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their
+matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge
+ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by
+boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called
+local examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the
+Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University
+would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at
+Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission to
+the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to
+greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from
+the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish
+it from mere schoolboy work.
+
+Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one
+sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction
+must be chiefly dogmatic, at University it is to be Socratic, for I find
+no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the
+burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the words
+which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are, for the
+most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where he knows
+facts, he does not know their evidence; and where he expresses opinions,
+they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without examination.
+
+But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill's prophecies
+might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into
+dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless they are
+diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the guardians of
+the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual spontaneity; and it
+was owing, I believe, to Mill's ignorance of true academic teaching that
+he took so desponding a view of the generation growing up under his
+eyes.
+
+When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma, that is,
+of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge is
+extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the spirit
+of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic dogmas be
+true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because to place either
+truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth
+and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the
+authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we
+could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And,
+thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by
+argument is generally the first step towards violence and persecution.
+
+I do not think of religious dogmas only. They are generally the first to
+rouse inquiry, even during our schoolboy days, and they are by no means
+the most difficult to deal with. Dogma often rages where we least expect
+it. Among scientific men the theory of evolution is at present becoming,
+or has become, a dogma. What is the result? No objections are listened
+to, no difficulties recognized, and a man like Virchow, himself the
+strongest supporter of evolution, who has the moral courage to say that
+the descent of man from any ape whatsoever is, as yet, before the
+tribunal of scientific zoology, "not proven," is howled down in Germany
+in a manner worthy of Ephesians and Galatians. But at present I am
+thinking not so much of any special dogmas, but rather of that dogmatic
+state of mind which is the almost inevitable result of the teaching at
+school. I think of the whole intellect, what has been called the
+_intellectus sibi permissus_, and I maintain that it is the object of
+academic teaching to rouse that intellect out of its slumber by
+questions not less startling than when Galileo asked the world whether
+the sun was really moving and the earth stood still; or when Kant asked
+whether time and space were objects, or necessary forms of our sensuous
+intuition. Till our opinions have thus been tested and stood the test,
+we can hardly call them our own.
+
+How true this is with regard to religion has been boldly expressed by
+Bishop Beveridge.
+
+    "Being conscious to myself," he writes in his "Private Thoughts on
+    Religion," "how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond
+    the rest, as being that religion whereinto I was born and baptized;
+    that which the supreme authority has enjoined and my parents
+    educated me in; that which every one I meet withal highly approves
+    of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued profession, made
+    almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and
+    suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to
+    entertain it any longer without being convinced, by solid and
+    substantial arguments, of the truth and certainty of it."
+
+This is bold and manly language from a Bishop nearly two hundred years
+ago, and I certainly think that the time has come when some of the
+divinity lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge might well be employed in
+placing a knowledge of the sacred books of other religions within the
+reach of undergraduates. Many of the difficulties--most of them of our
+own making--with regard to the origin, the handing down, the later
+corruptions and misinterpretations of sacred texts, would find their
+natural solution, if it was shown how exactly the same difficulties
+arose and had to be dealt with by theologians of other creeds. If
+some--ay, if many--of the doctrines of Christianity were met with in
+other religions also, surely that would not affect their value, or
+diminish their truth; while nothing, I feel certain, would more
+effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true
+place in the historical development of the human mind than to place it
+side by side with the other religions of the world. In the series of
+translations of the "Sacred Books of the East," of which the first three
+volumes have just appeared,[14] I wished myself to include a new
+translation of the Old and New Testaments; and when that series is
+finished it will, I believe, be admitted that nowhere would these two
+books have had a grander setting, or have shone with a brighter light,
+than surrounded by the Veda, the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka,
+and the Qur'än.
+
+But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only, or
+even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academic teaching
+must be Socratic, not dogmatic. The evil of dogmatic teaching lies much
+deeper, and spreads much further.
+
+Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves,
+which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every word
+we use require careful examination and revision? It is not enough to say
+that language assists our thoughts or colours them, or possibly obscures
+them. No, we know now that language and thought are indivisible. It was
+not from poverty of expression that the Greek called reason and language
+by the same word, λόγος. It was because they knew that, though we may
+distinguish between thought and speech, as we distinguish between body
+and soul, it is as impossible to tear the one by violence away from the
+other as it is to separate the concave side of a lens from its convex
+side. This is something to learn and to understand, for, if properly
+understood, it will supply the key to most of our intellectual puzzles,
+and serve as the safest thread through the whole labyrinth of
+philosophy.
+
+"It is evident," as Hobbes remarks,[15] "that truth and falsity have no
+place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though some
+brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may be
+affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason
+fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or
+false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore,
+as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of
+speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the
+same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so
+from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For speech
+has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of
+Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are
+ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them."
+
+Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.
+
+Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even the
+greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the
+terms _genus_, _species_, and _individual_ occupy a very prominent
+place. The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the
+Realists, of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true
+meaning of these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach
+the received meaning of _genus_ and _species_; and if a boy can trace
+these terms back to Aristotle's γένος and εἶδος, and show in what sense
+that philosopher used them, every examiner would be satisfied.
+
+But the time comes when we have to act as our own examiners, and when we
+have to give an account to ourselves of such words as _genus_ and
+_species_. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a _species_
+and a _genus_ walking about in broad daylight; but a little
+consideration will show us that these words express subjective concepts,
+and that, if the whole world were silent, there would never have been a
+thought of a _genus_ or a _species_. There are languages in which we
+look in vain for corresponding words; and if we had been born in such a
+language, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to
+us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent
+them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance,
+according to him, all living beings would constitute a _genus_, men a
+_species_, and Socrates an _individual_.
+
+No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these
+terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember
+that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The
+true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think
+our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch
+their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with
+those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this
+with _genus_ and _species_, we shall find that the words which Aristotle
+defined--viz., γένος and εἶδος--had originally a very different and far
+more useful application than that which he gave to them. Γένος, _genus_,
+meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as were known
+to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward
+appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound, or,
+according to Darwin, the ape and the man. Εἶδος or species, on the
+contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the
+same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if
+we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed, horned,
+winged, or blue animals.
+
+That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural
+justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same
+thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find *_g_âti*,
+generation, used in the sense of _genus_, and opposed to *âk_ri_ti*,
+appearance, used in the sense of _species_.
+
+So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as
+we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological
+classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be
+called a γένος, the _gens_ or clan was a γένος, the nation (gnatio) was
+a γένος, the whole human kith and kin was a γένος; in fact, all that was
+descended from common ancestors was a true γένος. There is no obscurity
+of thought in this.
+
+On the other side, taking εἶδος or species in its original sense, one
+man might be said to be like another in his εἶδος or appearance. An ape,
+too, might quite truly be said to have the same εἶδος or species or
+appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin.
+People might also speak of different εἴδη or forms or classes of things,
+such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armour, without
+committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common
+descent.
+
+Often it would happen that things belonging to the same γένος, such as
+the white man and the negro, differed in their εἶδος or appearance;
+often also that things belonging to the same εἶδος, such as eatables,
+differed in their γένος, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.
+
+All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two terms,
+instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other by the
+philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was called a
+_genus_, might from another be called a species, and _vice versâ_. Human
+beings, for instance, were now called a _species_, all living beings a
+_genus_, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what is
+older than logic--viz., language, thought, or fact. According to
+language, according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings
+constitute a γένος, or generation, so long as they are supposed to have
+common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can only say
+that they form an εἶδος--that is, agree in certain appearances, until it
+has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest in admitting at
+least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal world.[16]
+
+In tracing the history of these two words, γένος and εἶδος, you may see
+passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy, from
+Plato's ideas down to Hegel's _Idee_. The question of _genera_, their
+origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural
+philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and
+classification of _genera_ and _species_, seem at last, thanks to the
+clear sight of Darwin, to have arrived at the old truth which was
+prefigured in language--namely, that Nature knows nothing but _genera_,
+or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and
+that the so-called _species_ are only _genera_, whose genealogical
+descent is _as yet_ more or less obscure.
+
+But the question as to the nature of the εἶδος became a vital question
+in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in
+every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what
+constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that
+form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended
+from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity.
+But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all
+individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they were
+cast remained the same?
+
+Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very question
+what εἶδος or species or form was, and where these things were kept,
+changed those words from predicates into subjects. Εἶδος was conceived
+as something independent and substantial, something within or above the
+individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal.
+Soon there arose as many εἴδη or forms or types as there were general
+concepts. They were considered the only true realities of which the
+phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth away. Here we
+have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the various systems
+of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite opinions that
+ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found
+except in the many (τὸ ἕν παρὰ τὰ πολλά), was strenuously defended by
+Aristotle and his followers.[17]
+
+The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the Middle
+Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as heretics because
+they declared that _animal_, _man_, or _woman_ were mere names, and that
+they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal animal, an ideal
+man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or metaphysical
+types of the ordinary animal, the individual man, the single woman.
+Those philosophers, called _Nominalists_, in opposition to the
+_Realists_, declared that all general terms were _names only_, and that
+nothing could claim reality but the individual.
+
+We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again between
+Locke and Leibniz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to say that the
+knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by the science of
+language alone, which teaches us that there is and can be no such thing
+as "a name only." That phrase ought to be banished from all works on
+philosophy. A name is and always has been the subjective side of our
+knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible without an
+objective side as a key is without a lock. It is useless to ask which of
+the two is the more real, for they are real only by being, not two, but
+one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism. But there is a higher
+Nominalism, which might better be called the Science of Language, and
+which teaches us that, apart from sensuous perception, all human
+knowledge is by names and by names only, and that the object of names is
+always the general.
+
+This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how names
+and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted to very
+careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What I mean by
+academic teaching and academic study is exactly this process of
+snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words, this
+tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought, this
+living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole
+history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to
+differ from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin.
+
+Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is awed
+by them, even though he may have read very little of their writings.
+This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction. Now, at
+University, a young student might hear the following, by no means
+respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from one of the
+greatest English scholars and philosophers:--"There is nothing so absurd
+that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was one of them, have
+not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce anything can be
+more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called
+Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of
+that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part
+of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that
+the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so
+mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources;
+it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed
+on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes. He
+will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind
+the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He
+will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a
+great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle,
+or Plato, or any other great philosopher far more highly and honestly
+than if he had never seen them trodden under foot.
+
+But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely
+iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of
+the schools. Far from it! But I do look upon them as meant to freshen
+the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake our mind to its
+very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down,
+but to make them grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and
+truth! "_Stand upright on thy feet_" ought to be written over the gate
+of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill
+saw approaching from China, and which since his time has made such rapid
+progress Westward, is ever to be stayed.
+
+Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which
+it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany--so far as my own
+experience goes--students are often left too much to themselves, and it
+is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally
+recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance and
+encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all.
+
+There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere
+lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student
+might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are
+useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if
+they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs
+from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact,
+they have less the character of a show-window than of a workshop. Half
+an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than
+a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right
+spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor
+Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the memory of my
+own University life," he writes, "and the impression which a man like
+Johannes Müller, the professor of physiology, made on us, I must set the
+highest value on the personal intercourse with teachers from whom one
+learns how thought works on independent heads. Whoever has come in
+contact but once with one or several first-class men will find his
+intellectual standard changed for life."
+
+In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of
+academic freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of
+constant personal control. It is often thought that English
+undergraduates could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom
+which is granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to
+choose their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own
+teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and untrue.
+Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and the best way
+to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived long enough in
+English and in German Universities to know that the intellectual fibre
+is as strong and sound in the English as in the German youth. But if you
+supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with bladders--nay, if you
+insist on his using them--he will use them, but he will probably never
+learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary, and depend on it, after
+a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps, he will use his arms and
+his legs, and he will swim. If young men do not learn to use their arms,
+their legs, their muscles, their senses, their brain, and their heart
+too, during the bright years of their University life, when are they to
+learn it? True, there are thousands who never learn it, and who float
+happily on through life buoyed up on mere bladders. The worst that can
+happen to them is that some day the bladders may burst, and they may be
+left stranded or drowned. But these are not the men whom England wants
+to fight her battles. It has often been pointed out of late that many of
+those who, during this century, have borne the brunt of the battle in
+the intellectual warfare in England, have not been trained at our
+Universities, while others who have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and
+have distinguished themselves in after-life, have openly declared that
+they attended hardly any lectures in college, or that they derived no
+benefit from them. What can be the ground of that? Not that there is
+less work done at Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a
+different spirit. It is free in Germany; it has now become almost
+compulsory in England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend,
+when I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a
+real pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on
+the history of art, on modern history, on the science of language, or on
+philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the
+subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of
+learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from
+mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the
+freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between
+cramming and examinations.
+
+And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends of
+academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity,
+may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine for
+intellectual levelling--_Examination_.
+
+There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of
+examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they
+are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that
+outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to
+address to the _Times_, in very imperfect English, were in favour of
+examinations. They were signed _La Carrière ouverte_, and were written
+long before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember,
+too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in
+public, was in favour of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when
+the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in
+establishing the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an
+examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system
+in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and
+written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it
+would be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of
+appointment by patronage.
+
+But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal
+the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are conducted,
+and by the results which they produce. As you are interested yourselves
+at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of examinations,
+you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few remarks on the
+safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations.
+
+All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been taught;
+they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which pupils are
+taught.
+
+Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the eyes of
+his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to produce
+shallowness and dishonesty.
+
+Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts
+were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is
+lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is
+gaining marks in examinations.
+
+In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil, all
+pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural
+examiners and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the
+report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the
+principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public
+schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives
+them the right to enter the University, they know that their success
+depends far more on the work which they have done during the years at
+school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination.
+There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work
+done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they
+have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare,
+and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality
+of the school authorities.
+
+To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level of
+lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to
+dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows _not_, he
+can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in
+finding out _how much_ a candidate knows, he can never find out _how_ he
+knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have watched
+their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the examiner,
+for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their teachers.
+
+I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters,
+and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties.
+Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than
+dishonest, and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters
+were rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would
+be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing
+false witness in favour of their pupils.
+
+Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed
+before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a
+good examination should be honour, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The
+mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships
+and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very
+widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is
+generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his
+usefulness in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he
+will entail on his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his
+teacher the loss of pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.
+
+It is always said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the
+sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in
+England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive
+costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it
+seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the
+majority of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and
+exhibitions at school or at University are boys whose parents have been
+able to pay the highest price for their children's previous education.
+If all these prizes were abolished, and the funds thus set free used to
+lessen the price of education at school and in college, I believe that
+the sons of poor parents would be far more benefited than by the present
+system. It might also be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case
+of the sons of poor parents, who were doing well at school from year to
+year; and, in order to guard against favouritism, an examination,
+particularly _vivâ voce_, before all the masters of a school, possibly
+even with some outside examiner, might be useful. But the present system
+bids fair to degenerate into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder
+if, sooner or later, the two-year olds entered for the race have to be
+watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against
+the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for
+clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read,
+that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take
+away the young racers that are likely to win the Derby.[18]
+
+If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the
+same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that every
+University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right to
+demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other for a
+degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia, in
+France, and in England to change and improve the old academic tradition,
+but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural system,
+has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right.
+
+If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to be
+admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of schoolmasters,
+and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim in
+their public lectures. Besides this, it is almost inevitable, if the
+Universities surrender the right of a matriculation-examination, that
+they should lower, not only their own standard, but likewise the
+standard of public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like
+over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite
+sure, at the end of each term or each year that the pupils confided to
+them have done at least some work. This kind of forced labour may do
+some good to the incorrigibly idle, but it does the greatest harm to all
+the rest. If there is an examination at the end of each year, there can
+be no freedom left for any independent work. Both teachers and taught
+will be guided by the same pole-star--examinations; no deviation from
+the beaten track will be considered safe, and all the pleasure derived
+from work done for its own sake, and all the just pride and joy, which
+those only know who have ever ventured out by themselves on the open sea
+of knowledge, must be lost.
+
+We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the brilliant show of
+examination papers.
+
+It is certainly marvellous what an amount of knowledge candidates will
+produce before their examiners; but those who have been both examined
+and examiners know best how fleeting that knowledge is, and how
+different from that other knowledge which has been acquired slowly and
+quietly, for its own sake, for our own sake, without a thought as to
+whether it would ever pay at examinations or not. A candidate, after
+giving most glibly the dates and the titles of the principal works of
+Cobbett, Gibbon, Burke, Adam Smith, and David Hume, was asked whether he
+had ever seen any of their writings, and he had to answer, No. Another,
+who was asked which of the works of Pheidias he had seen, replied that
+he had only read the first two books. That is the kind of dishonest
+knowledge which is fostered by too frequent examinations. There are two
+kinds of knowledge, the one that enters into our very blood, the other
+which we carry about in our pockets. Those who read for examinations
+have generally their pockets cram full; those who work on quietly and
+have their whole heart in their work are often discouraged at the small
+amount of their knowledge, at the little life-blood they have made. But
+what they have learnt has really become their own, has invigorated their
+whole frame, and in the end they have often proved the strongest and
+happiest men in the battle of life.
+
+Omniscience is at present the bane of all our knowledge. From the day he
+leaves school and enters the University a man ought to make up his mind
+that in many things he must remain either altogether ignorant, or be
+satisfied with knowledge at second-hand. Thus only can he clear the deck
+for action. And the sooner he finds out what his own work is to be, the
+more useful and delightful will be his life at University and later.
+There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge, there is hardly
+one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called hobbies ought to be
+utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if we wish our
+Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle, Grote, or
+Darwin. I do not say that in an examination for a University degree a
+minimum of what is now called general culture should not be insisted on;
+but in addition to that, far more freedom ought to be given to the
+examiner to let each candidate produce his own individual work. This is
+done to a far greater extent in Continental than in English
+Universities, and the examinations are therefore mostly confided to the
+members of the _Senatus Academicus_, consisting of the most experienced
+teachers, and the most eminent representatives of the different branches
+of knowledge in the University. Their object is not to find out how many
+marks each candidate may gain by answering a larger or smaller number of
+questions, and then to place them in order before the world like so many
+organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by the work he has
+done during his three or four years at University, has acquired that
+vigour of thought, that maturity of judgment, and that special
+knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic status, to a degree,
+with or without special honours. Such a degree confers no material
+advantages;[19] it does not entitle its holder to any employment in
+Church or State; it does not vouch even for his being a fit person to be
+made an Archbishop or Prime Minister. All this is left to the later
+struggle for life; and in that struggle it seems as if those who, after
+having surveyed the vast field of human knowledge, have settled on a few
+acres of their own and cultivated them as they were never cultivated
+before, who have worked hard and have tasted the true joy and happiness
+of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always depended on
+themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations delighted to
+follow as their royal leaders in their onward march towards greater
+enlightenment, greater happiness, and greater freedom.
+
+To sum up. No one can read Mill's Essay "On Liberty" at the present
+moment without feeling that even during the short period of the last
+twenty years the cause which he advocated so strongly and passionately,
+the cause of individual freedom, has made rapid progress, aye, has
+carried the day. In no country _may_ a man be so entirely himself, so
+true to himself and yet loyal to society, as in England.
+
+But, although the enemy whose encroachments Mill feared most and
+resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own
+bounds,--though such names as Dissent and Nonconformity, which were
+formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the
+poison which they once contained,--Mill's principal fears have
+nevertheless not been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw
+approaching with its attendant evils of feebleness, indifference, and
+sequacity, has been spreading more widely than ever in his days.
+
+It has even been maintained that the very freedom which every individual
+now enjoys has been detrimental to the growth of individuality; that you
+must have an Inquisition if you want to see martyrs; that you must have
+despotism and tyranny to call forth heroes. The very measures which Mill
+and his friends advocated so warmly, compulsory education and
+competitive examinations, are pointed out as having chiefly contributed
+to produce that large array of pass-men, that dead level of
+uninteresting excellence, which is the _beau idéal_ of a Chinese
+Mandarin, while it frightened and disheartened such men as Humboldt,
+Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.
+
+There may be some truth in all this, but it is certainly not the whole
+truth. Education, as it has to be carried on, whether in elementary or
+in public schools, is no doubt a heavy weight which might well press
+down the most independent spirit; it is, in fact, neither more nor less
+than placing, in a systematized form, on the shoulders of every
+generation the ever-increasing mass of knowledge, experience, custom,
+and tradition that has been accumulated by former generations. We need
+not wonder, therefore, if in some schools all spring, all vigour, all
+joyousness of work is crushed out under that load of names and dates, of
+anomalous verbs and syntactic rules, of mathematical formulas and
+geometrical axioms, which boys are expected to bring up for competitive
+examinations.
+
+But a remedy has been provided, and we are ourselves to blame if we do
+not avail ourselves of it to the fullest extent. Europe erected its
+Universities, and called them the homes of the Liberal Arts, and
+determined that between the slavery of the school and the routine of
+practical life every man should have at least three years of freedom.
+What Socrates and his great pupil Plato had done for the youth of
+Greece,[20] these new academies were to do for the youth of Italy,
+France, England, Spain, and Germany; and, though with varying success,
+they have done it. The mediæval and modern Universities have been from
+century to century the homes of free thought. Here the most eminent men
+have spent their lives, not merely in retailing traditional knowledge,
+as at school, but in extending the frontiers of science in all
+directions. Here, in close intercourse with their teachers, or under
+their immediate guidance, generation after generation of boys, fresh
+from school, have grown up into men during the three years of their
+academic life. Here, for the first time, each man has been encouraged to
+dare to be himself, to follow his own tastes, to depend on his own
+judgment, to try the wings of his mind, and, lo, like young eagles
+thrown out of their nest, they could fly. Here the old knowledge
+accumulated at school was tested, and new knowledge acquired straight
+from the fountain-head. Here knowledge ceased to be a mere burden, and
+became a power invigorating the whole mind, like snow which during
+winter lies cold and heavy on the meadows, but when it is touched by the
+sun of spring melts away, and fructifies the ground for a rich harvest.
+
+That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they
+continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that
+real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and
+superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more
+will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity" which
+Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.
+
+Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities.
+There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings
+than your Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure the
+real benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of a
+University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is
+really wanted are men who have done good work in their life, and who are
+willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think for
+themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic stage
+in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others, be
+they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he works
+from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the
+conquest of truth. Those only who have passed through that stage know
+the real blessings of work. To the world at large they may seem mere
+drudges--but the world does not know the triumphant joy with which the
+true mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain walls that once seemed
+unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High Alps, and away from
+the fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city, revels alone, in
+freedom of thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the freedom of the
+highest faith.
+
+    F. MAX MÜLLER.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute.
+
+[2] Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written
+down in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January,
+1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume, and
+it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his Autobiography
+speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows
+himself one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty."
+"None of my writings," he says, "have been either so carefully composed
+or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final revision was to have been
+the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife had
+arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by
+his wife's death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive
+longer than anything else that I have written (with the possible
+exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with mine
+has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which
+the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring
+out into stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large
+variety of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to
+expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."
+
+[3] Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all
+settled concepts, from all inherited restraints and impediments which
+hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect with the historical drag
+tied to its foot."
+
+[4] Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universitäten, Rede
+beim Antritt des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in
+Berlin, am 15 October 1877, gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.
+
+[5] Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen
+observer of English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the
+October number of the _Nineteenth Century_, remarks: "Nowhere is there
+greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere do people
+renounce it more readily of their own accord."
+
+[6] Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.
+
+[7] _Ibid._, p. 39.
+
+[8] "As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the
+consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of
+pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life,
+inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or
+been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there
+where they left it."--Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, p. 104.
+
+[9] Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.
+
+[10] Mémoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phénicien, par E. de
+Rougé, Paris, 1874.
+
+[11] See Brandis, "Das Münzwesen."
+
+[12] "Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should
+require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every
+human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid
+to recognize and assert this truth?"--_On Liberty_, p. 188.
+
+[13] _Times_, January 25, 1879.
+
+[14] "Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.;
+Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879.
+
+[15] "Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.
+
+[16] Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language," _Fraser's
+Magazine_, June, 1873, p. 26.
+
+[17] Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.
+
+[18] L. Noiré, "Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."
+
+[19] Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.
+
+[20] Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen,"
+1878, p. 9.
+
+
+
+
+MR. GLADSTONE.
+
+TWO STUDIES SUGGESTED BY HIS "GLEANINGS OF PAST YEARS."
+
+    _Gleanings of Past Years: 1843-1878._ By the Right Hon. W. E.
+    GLADSTONE, M.P. Seven vols. London: John Murray.
+
+
+I.
+
+Lord Beaconsfield and his party are still holding on. All the
+over-praised Disraelian craft has dwindled somehow to this merely
+muscular operation. An attempt is, indeed, made to disguise the attitude
+by keeping strict silence, and arranging the facial expression of the
+Cabinet, if not of the Party, in a way not agreeing with the strain; but
+the country is fast finding out that the real posture of the
+Conservatives at this moment is that of clutching at office, and nothing
+more. However, no amount of not talking about the elections will put
+them off finally. In his most efficient days Lord Beaconsfield was
+hardly clever enough to operate upon the almanack, and a certain
+terrible date is approaching upon him with increasing swiftness. It will
+be rather humiliating at last for a Premier to be brought up by the day
+of the month, and to be reminded by the great officials of Parliament
+what year of Our Lord it is. But these latter personages are partly paid
+for watching the efflux of time, and no doubt they will do their duty.
+It may be unpleasant for them to have to tell Lord Beaconsfield that
+dates make it impossible for him to go on any longer, but they must get
+what consolation they can from the remembrance that it is the first time
+they ever had to say this to a Minister. Several Parliaments in our
+history have been nicknamed rather uglily, but it is likely that the
+Beaconsfield House of Commons will be known under a description more
+humiliating than any, because so inescapeably accurate. It will
+literally be the run-to-the-last-dregs Parliament, and when, on there
+not being another moment left, the dissolution has necessarily to be
+ordered, the not-any-longer-to-be-put-off elections will take place.
+
+When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand
+whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form
+towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is
+written at the head of this paper--Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen will
+at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far
+north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand
+that wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes
+the centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be
+too near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that
+with Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few
+yards further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not
+unlikely that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the
+speech at Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without
+warning. The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to
+calculate than the final one of the Parliamentary calendar--that,
+namely, of Mr. Gladstone's appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed
+that they are already anxiously counting the days of the dwindling
+interval. Whenever he gives instructions for his hustings to be put up,
+the Conservatives will have to send for their own carpenters, and order
+planks.
+
+The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before he
+again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may
+not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It
+is, in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious
+hard work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the
+passing hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a
+special matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he
+has left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him.
+The result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation
+of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands
+wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds. Lately,
+it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind the country of
+his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as an old man. But
+without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute the register, we
+may say that he has scarcely got anybody to believe it. He has gone on
+felling trees, writing letters and articles, and publishing volumes,
+with utterances of more and better speeches between than anybody else
+can make, in a way which has led not a few to congratulate themselves
+that he was not any younger. In particular, his opponents, so soon as
+they found out that his announcement of retirement into ease meant that
+he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work a little harder in
+another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he had pledged
+himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather to complain
+that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something to be
+said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr. Gladstone's side at
+the time obviously was that the Conservatives were themselves not to do
+anything in particular. It was to be a time of stagnation, and they have
+not kept to that understanding; no sooner had he turned his back than
+they began to swagger up and down the world as Imperialists. They have
+risked the highest interests of the empire and have made England figure
+on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed and blustering for war.
+Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by foregoing all patriotism. It was
+too much to ask from an old-fashioned English statesman, who had always
+himself stood on the side of freedom and peace, and had grown accustomed
+to seeing his country ranged there too. However, we will speak again a
+little later on this point of his announced retirement.
+
+It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman
+now before the public with an official record which can in any way be
+set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of time
+and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House of
+Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not many, who
+have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no one whose
+Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office forty-five
+years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first
+appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then he
+stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone. The
+latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more
+than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade
+and Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary
+for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once. There
+is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in him who
+has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to show.
+Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
+Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a group
+of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not very distant
+date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served under and those
+whom he commanded; including in the association with him some whom he
+attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might scarcely fully apply; for
+Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office, and Mr. Bright in one.
+These latter were achievements of personal influence which may fairly
+rank a trifle higher than merely taking precedence of a Duke in a
+Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has happened in his time in the
+way of legislation and social reform, and his connection with it, it may
+be said, speaking generally, that he has witnessed the political and
+economical remoulding of this kingdom; and, taking all things together,
+has helped it forward in more ways than anybody else who still survives.
+If while Mr. Bright lives his name must always have the honour of first
+mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws is spoken of, it was Mr.
+Gladstone who wrought out all the details of Peel's fiscal reforms. He
+too it was who, much later, gave effect to Cobden's negotiation of the
+French Commercial Treaty; and also, again, made the best bargain that
+could be made when that first international arrangement lapsed. Every
+amelioration bearing on taxation and trade in our time has been
+naturally fated in some way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So,
+too, it was his conversion, or rather his progress, on the question of
+the Franchise--proved by his bringing in of the Russell measure--which
+made the immediate granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory
+trick of the last Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote
+was but a sinister gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from
+England to the sister country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be
+then seen that it was Mr. Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the
+Irish Church and by his Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If
+the Roman Catholics get a University now, they will only get what he
+offered them years ago. The prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some
+day to give to Mr. Gladstone's memory a splendid revenge for the
+ingratitude she showed to the man who brought legislating for Ireland
+into vogue. If we shift our regard to diplomacy, the future is still
+clearly with him in several of the chiefest international arrangements
+this generation has witnessed. When the Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and
+forgotten by everybody but historians and bookworms, the Treaty of
+Washington will be a living, ruling precedent between the mighty
+English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic; and on the day
+that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples of those
+regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves, the
+then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off our
+hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's name
+with the cession of the Ionian Islands.
+
+In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune with
+posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles. It is
+the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own, they
+put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular
+impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving
+auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But if,
+apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance for
+the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his foreign
+policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must not be
+defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all this was
+once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a Peelite. Of
+that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never could be a
+party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle region of
+ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has never ceased
+to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in this country is a
+political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental force. Mr. Gladstone's
+greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was the slowly but
+ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound, robust Liberal; but
+he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness of popular
+progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper of it in ways which
+showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may scrutinize his career
+more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look down lower than
+these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating; and, if we
+do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms, less showy, but
+very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism in the grain of
+every one of them. It was under his auspices that the Civil Service was
+thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of the Lords, with
+Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving us cheap
+newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a whole web of
+legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr. Forster gave to
+the country its first national educational scheme; but for him Mr.
+Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering the principle of our
+military organization from long-period enlistments to the short-term
+service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing to thrust upon him
+the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the army, because they think
+the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks to their resistance of the
+reform, was the only means of effecting it, lends itself to a taunt. Add
+to this list, the fact that although he, at first, for easily seen
+reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the earlier days when he
+was Conservative, did not favour University Reform, yet he finally lent
+himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to understand the
+successive outcries raised against him in the higher social quarters. He
+gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient reasons for their
+dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone was as certain
+in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on his shoulder,
+before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past its time.
+
+But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up his
+political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of his
+having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was always
+for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who once
+ensconced in a shire--say, in Buckinghamshire--remain there as long as
+they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of view. Mr.
+Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself turned out of
+constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was always for the
+same reason--he became too big for them. Among his highest distinctions
+are these,--he is the resigner of Newark, the rejected of Oxford, the
+loser of South Lancashire. The thing has occurred too often to admit of
+a casual explanation. It was not for Liberalism, as it is now
+understood, that he, when still in his youth, offended the mighty Duke
+of Newcastle and had to give up Newark, but it was for reasoned-out
+consistency which gave hope of Liberalism. He would not stultify his
+intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase of the Maynooth Grant
+in contradiction of his own book on Church and State. But all the world
+knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat developed that he quitted
+Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire was that he had for
+years been too busy in pushing forward reforms on all hands. It was a
+noble vanquishment for him, whatever it was for his party, for
+Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career how we will, the result
+still comes out to his honour. He, for conscience' sake, offended the
+great patron on whom his whole prospects then depended, remaining out of
+Parliament for a time; later, he went over with Peel, knowing that it
+meant an ineffective hanging between two parties for an indefinite time,
+sharing the hopes and chances of neither; when Lord Derby came into
+power, he refused office on its being offered. In a word, he has
+evidenced his sincerity and proved his patriotism in every way for which
+it is allowed to other men to claim honour. When a man has risked
+personal prospects, refused place, held office in all its kinds, left
+one lagging constituency after another behind him, and finally, by sheer
+insisting on rapid progress, temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of
+his countrymen throughout the whole nation, as the last general election
+showed that he had, what more is there left for him to do for his
+country? Only one thing remained: the sacrificing his retirement after
+the formal announcement of the close of his career, and, afresh taking
+up his old post in the front of the battle as if he were still young and
+had place and public life to secure, striving his hardest a last time
+for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final
+possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone
+undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by
+him.
+
+The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed
+to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more
+completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze,
+as he of necessity will do.
+
+But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr.
+Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of
+industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself
+needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier,
+for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr.
+Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much
+more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among
+us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he
+has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with
+his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr.
+Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of
+thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said
+what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability
+and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the
+others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple,
+old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no
+mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only
+a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except
+two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly
+seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style
+has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch
+earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone,
+however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the
+public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all
+the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our
+general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If
+we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has
+had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two
+generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed
+out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the
+canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most
+men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in
+Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not
+been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time,
+nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as
+within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr.
+Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer of Art;
+next mark off a reviewer and general _littérateur_ whom professed
+authors will respectfully make room for in their ranks; and not only is
+there still left, solid and firm, the great Parliamentary Minister, but
+of the scattered fragments a couple of Bishops might easily be made,
+with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several preachers for the
+denominations. The latter would be derived from a morsel or two of
+material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not fully aware of as being in
+his composition. It is not very easy to give a complete impression
+offhand of such a multiform personage as this. We must take him a little
+simpler. The general effect of it all has been, as we said above, that
+the mental activity of the community in all matters relating to politics
+and practical affairs has had to take its rate and much of its scale
+largely from him, and he has been thinking with the speed, not of the
+old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of ethical and
+religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to everything.
+In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone has made upon the
+community has been that of an intellect weaponed with a perfectly fluent
+tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of pens, occupying the very
+highest national posts, ceaselessly going on reasoning, insisting upon
+doing it, whether the reasoning might occasionally go wrong or not, just
+as if thinking, speaking, and writing were man's right employment. His
+chief opponents would, perhaps, hesitate in flatly saying that they were
+not; but, at any rate, they have continually been wanting him to stop.
+Nearly all the complaint that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves
+itself into a charge that he has thought and spoken and written too
+much. The accusation is one which it would task a great many men to lay
+themselves open to; it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of
+us. Above all, he has kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly
+the other side might have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so
+well; if only this promptest, quickest ratiocination on the part of a
+practical politician in our times had not, as it progressed, brought him
+ever nearer to the conclusions of Liberalism. He has, we are, however,
+rather ashamed to admit, had to suffer from his own party for this
+unusualness of mental activity. Our practical politics for generations
+past had been carried on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a
+hand-to-mouth principle of mere party expediency, that even some
+Liberals were surprised when he brought a little subtlety of intellect
+into public life. It was enough to make a smaller man despair of his
+countrymen's sanity when he found that for years many of them could not
+distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer of Rome.
+
+To speak plainly, there was never such a humiliating spectacle of public
+stolidity as that which for so long a time was witnessed in the popular
+mystification as to Mr. Gladstone's religious position. It went for
+nothing that his first critical Parliamentary step was to give up his
+seat rather than vote more money to Maynooth; nobody seemed to bear in
+mind that as far back as 1852 he both predicted and publicly hoped for
+the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, and that ten years
+later Sir George Bowyer openly attacked him on that very point in
+Parliament; it did not avail that he it was who paved the way for the
+unification of Italy by dragging into the light before all Europe the
+prison secrets of Neapolitan tyranny. Because he had the good sense to
+oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the loyalty to remain on
+terms of friendship with the companions of his youth after they became
+Puseyites, and avowed that he held the same views as to Church doctrine
+which some of the greatest Church of England divines taught, he was
+called on to explain, every month or so, that he was not a Jesuit. Not
+until he published his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, and by so doing
+threw all the Roman Catholics in England and elsewhere into a white heat
+of rage, was the silliness quite exploded. It is true that the dull
+public might plead that a real profession of religiousness on the part
+of a leading politician was such a novelty that it might be excused
+being a little puzzled, and believing the worst in its perplexity. Worst
+or best, Mr. Gladstone has gone on speaking and writing about his
+religion just as if a man's ethics and faith ought to have some
+connection with his politics, and, as time has passed, people appear to
+think it less strange. This non-reticence on the score of religion has
+made more serious the impression Mr. Gladstone has produced upon the
+public mind; but in reality it is no specialty in his mode of public
+thinking, but only a necessary part of it. He tracks his commonest
+politics to their fundamental principles, and makes of them a system. He
+has always in his reasoning to go back to history, and this has delayed
+his advance in comparison with men who dispense with that; but there
+never yet was a public man who explained so fully as Mr. Gladstone the
+reasons of his changes. All the progress of his mind is to be traced in
+speeches, articles, pamphlets, volumes. He has given too much
+explanation, not too little, for his mind has an insatiability for
+reasons. Most people are content when they get hold of a good one; but
+he wants three or four--in fact, all that can be got by searching for;
+and if it be true, as it certainly is, that he likes the last to have a
+little subtlety about it, long-sustained thinking cannot take people too
+deep in politics, whatever it may do now and then in religion. For
+instance, on the question of Reform Mr. Gladstone has certainly
+exhausted the process, having at last got at the final ideal argument.
+It turns out, as he stated it to Mr. Lowe, to be this,--that, apart
+from, or rather in addition to, all the hard reasons of justice and
+safety that Mr. Bright can urge for extending the franchise, the vote
+ought to be given because it has an educative power, and will make our
+humbler fellow-countrymen better citizens. It is open to any one, who is
+stupid enough, to call that argument subtle, but no one can deny that it
+is truly Liberal. There is not a man among us to-day who keeps the main
+Liberal issues so broad and clear as Mr. Gladstone does, and this simply
+because he will get to a principle. He adds a tremendous multiplicity of
+ideas in the way of side issues, but, as we above put it, they are all
+reasons in addition. There is a very simple test of it,--he has never
+recanted a single article of his Liberal progress, never gone back a
+single step. This hardly can be said of either Mr. Lowe or a few others
+who might be named. It could not even be said of so thorough a Liberal
+as Earl Russell. Mr. Gladstone's alleged over-refining has ended in
+placing and keeping him in the practical lead of his party, at a time of
+life when many born in the faith grow faint-hearted. Even the one bit of
+mysticism which his political feeling has developed--namely, the belief
+that the popular judgment is truest of all in very large matters--is
+only the full flowering of the popular trust which every Liberal
+professes to have. The bulk of the nation will forgive him that excess
+of political belief, if it be an excess, for it is the last compliment a
+statesman can pay them, and they have but to merit it, and it then turns
+to Mr. Gladstone's praise as well as theirs. But, at any rate, it will
+not do for Liberals to set out to argue the point with Mr. Gladstone, or
+they will quickly find themselves tripped up by a principle; for it is
+no sentimentality in him which underlies the view, but completed logic
+and wide recollection of historical instances.
+
+Indeed, although it was necessary in trying to reproduce the general
+impression Mr. Gladstone has made upon his contemporaries to speak of
+this alleged over-refining, what is meant by it has been after all a
+kind of superfluity of mental operation. His intricacy of thinking has
+never hindered his activity; least of all living men has Mr. Gladstone
+been a dreamer. He stands in history as a reviser of fiscal policies; an
+introducer of new administrative modes; a widener of the boundaries of
+political rights; a ceaseless overthrower of public abuses. From first
+to last he has been, as the hatred of his opponents has too well
+witnessed, a man of practice. You may add to this that he reasons too
+minutely, if you like; but it was not by a transcendental casuistry of
+politics that he wearied the country: it was by his enormous energy in
+ceaselessly proposing wide sweeping measures. The casuistry was all in
+addition. The over-refining of Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, been of a
+wholly different kind from what is common among men; it has consisted in
+finding justifications afterwards for very prompt vigorous doing.
+Examine, if any one thinks it worth while at this time of day, the
+Ewelme Rectory case, or the issue of the Royal Warrant on Purchase, or
+the Collier appointment, and it will appear that it was for bold
+decision in taking a practical step that he was arraigned as much as for
+subsequently finding too many reasons for it. For ourselves, as we have
+not set out to apologize for Mr. Gladstone (men of his dimensions must
+be taken as they are), but simply to put down hints recalling more fully
+than is usual the great features of his career, there is no need for our
+not saying that we wish he had in some cases dispensed with these
+arguments in excess of the conclusion. In some instances it is as wise
+after all, though not so clever, to be satisfied with urging one good
+reason, and not to confuse ordinary people by adding five or six more
+not so good, the risk being that there will be a bad one among them. But
+the fact remains that Mr. Gladstone has not busied himself in tying
+mental knots for the purpose of entanglement; he has indulged in no such
+waste of time. The mental puzzle has always referred to some practical
+doing. Owing to this, his opponents have had to admit his mental
+sincerity, while accusing him of over-subtlety. It nearly all turned, in
+fact, into the psychological question of whether Mr. Gladstone's mind
+had not at one part of its machinery a twist, and in the meantime while
+this point was being discussed he went on carrying his measures. If
+there were Liberals who did not quite follow him in his defence of the
+issue of the Royal Warrant, when he drew distinctions between
+prerogative and statutory power, they had not the least doubt that in
+abolishing purchase he had effected a capital Liberal reform, and they
+might hope that his reasoning as well as his practice was right. Is Mr.
+Gladstone to be the only one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be
+allowed? The hullabaloo which was raised when somebody could say that he
+had broken through a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though
+from this one politician perfection was expected, which was not an ill
+compliment at bottom; and any admirers who may admit that perfection was
+not always got, do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this
+world goes, and may still think him the most upright of our public men.
+His mental machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like
+it for rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it;
+his mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply
+arguments to the last shred of the material which any case in hand
+affords. But, to return to the main point,--it never leaves go of the
+real business. Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his
+voluminous writing, has, with the one exception of his classical
+studies, been no mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of
+special objects. These productions have been meant to frame public
+opinion, and to give him openings for legislation, if that became
+possible. He has used the press because it had become the hugest
+instrument of the time he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of
+multiplying books that Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to
+practically influencing men.
+
+This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends--this iron
+determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend upon his
+power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and popular
+persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as the final
+imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was always meant for a
+Liberal. A man of this kind might be born a Conservative; it might take
+him time to break fully with old ties; but for him to stay finally in
+the ranks where thought was allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were
+looked on with toleration, and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others,
+was an impossibility. Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a
+born financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for
+publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His whole
+life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has had in
+it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social condition
+of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too much upon them
+to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper circle, which so
+foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing itself the
+nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has been subjected
+to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his father was a
+baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. Nobles have
+been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as his
+official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed the whole
+of his long career without a sparkle of the glitter of adventitious
+display: that proudest title of all, which it is not in the power of the
+Crown to bestow but only to take away--"the Great Commoner"--has
+descended upon him, and is still his. Then he has fenced himself off
+with no stiffness of manner; the only dignity he has assumed has been
+the natural seriousness of ardent sincerity, warning off triflers only.
+To everybody else he has been accessible; any person could impose on him
+the trouble of a written reply. His post-cards were known to be public
+property. But putting aside that joke, which is now worn bare, scarcely
+has any one so fully and ungrudgingly accepted the responsibilities of
+his position. He has been the public's faithful, ready servant in every
+particular. Nor has it been mere complaisance, or a drudging of
+mechanical industry; he has exhibited a real faculty of interesting
+himself in all that anybody has been doing actively and well. To say
+that he is the only statesman who, while clinging to the Church of
+England, has commanded the sympathies of the Dissenters, might provoke
+an enemy, embittered by the fact, to reply that he had tactical reasons
+for trying to do that; but it could have been nothing else than real
+width of mind and a robust versatility which enabled this High Churchman
+largely to divide impartial admiration between the Evangelical party and
+the Romanists, pointing out fully and exactly what is to be praised in
+each. Any one who wishes it can find the estimates set out in detail in
+the third and seventh volumes of "The Gleanings." This wide range of
+intellectual appreciation is really as much a characteristic of Mr.
+Gladstone as has been his unyielding tenacity and doctrinal hold within
+the limits of his personal confession of belief. He, a firm acceptor of
+the tenets of sacramental efficacy, apostolical succession, and the
+authority of the Church in her own sphere, could take up the
+semi-rationalistic book "Ecce Homo," and turn it round-and-round
+admiringly as a most curious and valuable mental production. Nothing in
+which thought was really shown has escaped his notice, or failed to
+arouse his interest. He has bent his look on Secularism, as a scientific
+inquirer might scrutinize a new species, and he has stooped to quote Mr.
+Bradlaugh. In one place you will find him, very likely on the page after
+giving a passage from Isaiah or the Psalms, citing the old poet Dunbar,
+or speaking of Rowe or Swift, or alluding to Rousseau; while long before
+it became a fashion he had words of sympathizing praise for Shelley,
+selecting, of all other places, _The Quarterly Review_ to print them in.
+But, perhaps, the clearest proof of all, alike of his power to bear
+testimony in spite of personal disliking, and his standing hard and fast
+upon a principle when he has reached it, is that he, whom Macaulay
+nearly half a century ago described as "a young man of unblemished
+character," and whom his Lordship, if he were now alive, would speak of
+as "the old man with personal fame unspotted," could step aside in one
+of his articles to recognize the public debt due to Jack Wilkes as a
+helper forward of our freedom. Wherever a national service has been
+done, Mr. Gladstone's eulogy always has been ready.
+
+Down to this point we have not spared so much as a hint to his
+magnificent oratory, his unsurpassed debating skill, his not infrequent
+successes in literary style. These were not the things that anybody
+needed reminding of, and that necessity was the prescribed limit of our
+self-imposed task. Who has forgotten when the expounding of the Budget
+was the greatest intellectual treat of the Session, when sugar and
+railway duties and tea became natural themes for eloquence, and the
+unfolding of the surplus was breathlessly waited for like the
+_dénouement_ of a novelist's plot? Those scenes are long past, it is
+true, but the echoes of them can still be heard, for each year since has
+brought a disappointing reminder to awaken them. But the matchless
+vigour and splendour of his debating fence has never slackened, never
+weakened; the only privilege of the older generation in respect of it,
+is that they can boast to have witnessed more of it, not to have seen
+better displays. As to his writings, there least of all is any reminder
+wanted, for he presents the public with an improving specimen each
+month. If any one laid themselves out to find fault with Mr. Gladstone's
+literature, the very worst thing they could discover to say of it, would
+be that it still was oratory, only written down.
+
+This is the man who, after a few weeks of leisure, reappears next month
+in Midlothian; first in the field, as if that appearance was his by
+right of custom. How well he compares with the rest of our older party
+leaders! Mr. Bright, grown a little pursy, though also stricken by
+domestic misfortune, rests rather inertly on his laurels, which
+certainly are plentiful enough to invite repose; Mr. Forster has never
+succeeded in quite finding his way out of the clauses of his own
+Education Act, where he sees himself confronted with the Church of
+England at the end of so many vistas, that he is lost in admiration of
+its architecture; Mr. Goschen, by some strange weakness (which, let us
+hope, is only temporary) has got a scare from meeting the County
+Franchise wearing Joseph Arch's coat and hat; while Mr. Lowe is riding
+hobbies, bicycle-wise, in and out before the very select constituency of
+the London University, with readers of _The Fortnightly Review_ for
+outside spectators, just by way of showing off his little feats of
+mental gymnastic. In the meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the veteran of them
+all, is putting on his harness for a fresh contest, a riper, better
+Liberal to-day than on any previous day of fight. It is for the younger
+men to rally round him.
+
+But, before taking our leave of Mr. Gladstone, we have finally to
+enlarge our view of him. Early in these remarks it seemed well to give a
+very hasty summary of his whole career; but there remains to be
+attempted an exact sketch of his actual position in respect of opinions
+and practical relations at the moment when he ceased to be Minister. Let
+us, first of all, at this moment when a Brummagem Imperialism is only
+yet half-faded, recall what was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the historic
+position and natural function of England among the nations; for it has
+been craftily made to appear that he was willing, and indeed anxious,
+for this country to efface itself. In 1870, when he was still at the
+height of power, he published in _The Edinburgh Review_ his article on
+"Germany, France, and England," and the following was the view he then
+put forward of the international obligations and duties of his country,
+in spite of the sea dividing us from other lands:--
+
+"Yet we are not isolated.... With vast multitudes of persons in each of
+the Continental countries we have constant relations, both of personal
+and commercial intercourse, which grow from year to year; and as,
+happily, we have no conflict of interests, real or supposed, nor scope
+for evil passions afforded by our peaceful rivalry, there is nothing to
+hinder the self-acting growth of concord.... So far from this implying
+either a condition or a policy of isolation, it marks out England as the
+appropriate object of the general confidence.... All that is wanted is
+that she should discharge the functions, which are likely more and more
+to accrue to her, modestly, kindly, impartially.... But in order that
+she may act fully up to a part of such high distinction, the kingdom of
+Queen Victoria must be in all things worthy of it. The world-wide cares
+and responsibilities with which the British people have charged
+themselves are really beyond the ordinary measure of human strength; and
+until a recent period it seemed the opinion of our rulers that we could
+not do better than extend them yet further, wherever an opening could
+easily, or even decently, be found. With this avidity for material
+extension was joined a preternatural and morbid sensibility. Russia at
+the Amoor, America at the Fee-jee or the Sandwich Islands, France in New
+Caledonia or Cochin China--all these, and the like, were held to be good
+reasons for a feverish excitement lest other nations should do for
+themselves but the fiftieth part of what we have done for ourselves....
+The secret of strength lies in keeping some proportion between the
+burden and the back."
+
+Is it necessary to ask whether this is a policy combining dignified
+patriotism and prudently-restrained common sense? Compare it for a
+moment with the gewgaw skimble-skamble diplomatic sensationalism with
+which we have been presented since. But let us go a little more into
+detail as to Mr. Gladstone's standing with reference to international
+relations. This present Government has perhaps forgotten that there is
+such a nation in the world as the United States of America; but Mr.
+Gladstone kept it well in mind, and we suppose every one will admit that
+he, of all statesmen, stands well with that people of our own blood, who
+very shortly will be the most powerful community upon the earth, and the
+one with whom we shall, for all time, have most to do. However, we will
+keep within the bounds of Europe. It is the fashion now to give
+precedence to Germany. Well, Mr. Gladstone was among the first to
+predict the success of Prussia, and she is not likely to forget who it
+was who preserved neutrality at a moment most critical to her. Is it
+France that he is not on good relations with? Why this Minister, who
+invited her wine trade, and strove unceasingly to increase commerce to
+and fro across the Channel, and who is for giving further and further
+political rights to his countrymen, is the only English statesman whom
+the bulk of Frenchmen can understand. To them our Tories must be as
+antiquated as their own Royalists. Italy is a growing Power in the
+European comity, and who is there among our statesmen who can in her
+fair cities arouse half the enthusiasm he can? He is, literally, the
+only English politician they familiarly know. With Austria, it is true,
+he during the recent war lost patience for a moment, but her conduct
+since has told that her rulers must at the time have known that he had
+good reasons for it; and no one has more fully appreciated the
+difficulties of Austria's position than he has done, or was more early
+in giving her, years ago, the very counsel which she has since proved
+was the wisest for her. There remains one other great Power to be
+named--Russia; the State with whom we shall have directly of necessity
+to stand face to face in the far East, and with whom terms will in the
+end have somehow to be made. It is urged against Mr. Gladstone that he
+has not rendered himself obnoxious enough to this remaining Power--that
+is, that he did not incapacitate himself for negotiating with her, and,
+having postponed defiance of her, might make some peaceful arrangement.
+Can any friend of peace think this a very grievous accusation? Mr.
+Gladstone has gained this position of goodwill all round at what
+cost?--that of having fallen into disfavour with the Turks. That is his
+one terrible disqualification for affairs; or, if you wish to be
+precisely exhaustive, and at the same time to elicit the absurdity
+fully, you may add to it that he has irritated the Bourbons. It is quite
+true, and we, indeed, wish to put it clearly forward, that he was for
+abating a little of our national swagger, and was prepared to see, and
+to welcome, advancement in other nations. But every well-grounded
+Liberal knows that it is only on those two conditions that England can
+permanently pursue her own paths of industrial development, and the
+world make progress. Mr. Gladstone's single sin in reference to our
+external relations was his readiness to favour those two results.
+
+But how does he show when a last view is taken of him from within our
+politics? Here, again, first look to the circumference. In dealing with
+the colonies, he was for all being put in possession of a free autonomy,
+and then urging them to self-reliance--in those ways welding them into
+the integrity of the empire; and as to India, he insisted that we should
+strive more and more to realize what he termed the generous conception
+of a moral trusteeship, to be administered for the benefit of those over
+whom we rule. Here, once more, we get the true ring of a sound
+Liberalism, for those are the only principles, we venture to affirm, on
+which such an empire as this of ours can ever be made permanent.
+Treating the colonies as babies and biting the thumb at Russia, even
+from the most scientific frontier India can furnish, though you shout
+"Empress" from it as loudly as you will, has nothing truly English about
+it. Empire is not kept in such a mawkish, artificial manner.
+
+But now narrow the gaze within our own home limits. The chief domestic
+questions for the British public are these,--extension of the County
+Franchise, the Redistribution of Seats, the Disestablishment of the
+Church, and Retrenchment of Expenditure. The Land Question will yet have
+to grow, and may not ripen in his time. But on three of the above
+pending matters Mr. Gladstone stands at the very front. He is for making
+our field cultivators citizens no less than our artizans; he is for
+re-allotting members in a manner which will give us a Parliament truly
+representative; and it is hardly necessary to speak of economical
+benefits in connection with the Minister who used the nation to
+reduction of taxation and surpluses arriving together, and whose last
+promise under that head was the total abolition of the Income Tax. On
+the other of these great domestic matters, that which stands third in
+the above list, the Disestablishment of the Church, it has seemed to
+advanced Liberals that Mr. Gladstone has lagged. But the lively fear of
+his opponents on this very matter is full of hope. Since he last
+dissented from Mr. Miall's motion, he has written a very significant
+phrase in an article in this Review. In treating of "The Courses of
+Religious Thought," when reviewing the churches of the United States and
+of the British Colonies he spoke of their vigorous growth, "far from the
+possibly chilling shadow of National Establishments of Religion." In
+that phrase, for a man so practical as is Mr. Gladstone,
+Disestablishment seems to cast its shadow before, and not a few persons
+on the other side of the question shivered from the chilliness it made.
+But these topics of the first class do not depend upon any one
+statesman; the biggest of men have these capital problems thrust upon
+them; all that you can do is to take note how a leader stands in
+reference to them. And the above is Mr. Gladstone's standing. But there
+was another class of legislative reforms which he was the man to have
+gone in search of. In one of his most recent articles he has given us a
+hint of a dream of this kind which was in his mind. He stated it
+thus:--"Our currency, our local government, our liquor laws, portions
+even of our taxation, remain in a state either positively disgraceful,
+or at the least inviting and demanding improvement." That programme of
+the further benefits which we should have owed to Mr. Gladstone was put
+aside by the giddiness of twenty-five or thirty constituencies at the
+last elections, but it will fittingly serve to give the finishing touch
+to our presentation of him in this paper. Liberals have, in fact, to
+thank him for offering more of reform and of benefit than the country
+would let him give it. Splendid as his achievements have been, he really
+had others in reserve.
+
+Is it too late? is the question that naturally arises. Certainly there
+is no hope of having the five years of administration by him which we
+have lost since 1874. That is irretrievable; and if Mr. Gladstone felt
+then his growing years, and had a wish to finish other tasks apart from
+politics, he is no younger now; while the aims of his purposed leisure
+must have been greatly interfered with by his partial recall to affairs
+owing to the dangers to which freedom in Bulgaria and our own national
+credit were exposed. It is wholly a matter for Mr. Gladstone to decide.
+If the next elections go in favour of the Liberals, all the world knows
+that office is there for him to take or to leave. Earl Granville, the
+Duke of Argyll, Lord Hartington would, we need not say, be among the
+first even to urge it as far as it was right to do so, and the whole
+party would welcome him back to power with a shout of joy. Who knows?
+Mr. Gladstone's patriotism is great, and our financial muddle will,
+also, be very great about that time. Between the two he might be
+tempted; he may yet do us the final service of putting the national
+finances right again. It is, we repeat, wholly for him to say. Earlier
+in this paper a further word was promised on the subject of his
+retirement; but, upon second thoughts, it scarcely seems necessary. Mr.
+Gladstone was too experienced in Parliamentary doings not to know that
+the Conservatives would take care to keep enough of their majority until
+time itself forced them back to the unwished-for hustings. He did his
+party not an atom of practical injury by retiring; rather, it was a good
+opportunity for giving a younger leader practice. It would be quite
+idle, on the other hand, to argue with his opponents for complaining
+that he did not retire enough. He has made speeches, they say; he has
+written articles in every organ there is; he has even republished
+previous writings. As we before said, they have themselves to blame for
+it in great measure: if they wanted Mr. Gladstone to stay in retirement,
+they should have carefully kept quiet. Instead of that they made a noise
+before his door, disturbing him in his studies. What more natural than
+that he should come out? He did so, and found that, disguised like
+harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which they call Imperialism, they
+were playing high jinks with Britain's reputation and the chances of
+freedom for the oppressed in the East. It was too much for him; but if
+they complain of the number of the weapons he attacked them with, we
+know that it would have been impossible for him to please them there.
+They never have been satisfied on that score. What they really find
+fault with are the blows they got.
+
+And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining that
+he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland; the real fact
+being that they wish he had gone much farther still. They never are
+sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them. We leave them
+anxiously listening for his approach again unto these shores, knowing
+very well that to their thinking they will hear his voice all too soon.
+
+    A LIBERAL.
+
+
+II.
+
+Description is said to be only possible by comparing, and when one is
+asked to sketch Mr. Gladstone, how is it to be set about? His admirers
+will have it that he has been a very great Minister, so that if we adopt
+the comparative method, we ought to look high for standards. Shall we
+match him alongside Bismarck or Cavour? The latter, to give him
+precedence, stands renowned for building up his country in evil days,
+when every omen was against her. But Mr. Gladstone, succeeding to power
+when England was in the full tide of prosperity and at the height of
+fame, gave up her prospects, and would have acquiesced in her decadence.
+There is no likeness whatever between him and Cavour. Then take
+Bismarck. The great German Chancellor shares with the Italian Minister
+the glory of having widened the bounds and raised the position of his
+land, and he stands now head and shoulders above all in the midst of the
+diplomatic world a very Colossus. But Mr. Gladstone is and has always
+been outside that world altogether. Prince Bismarck has his hand on all
+the springs of action, and will let pass no chance of exalting his
+country. Mr. Gladstone, we repeat, never made the slightest impression
+in the regions of diplomacy; Courts did not know him, foreign statesmen
+left him out of their reckoning of the men that had to be dealt with.
+The great international achievements for which he has alone been talked
+of have been the surrender of British territory and the paying down of
+English money lavishly to another State for preposterous claims. But it
+will be said that it is not fair to Mr. Gladstone to compare him to
+Prince Bismarck and Count Cavour, for they were men who found their
+country in unusual circumstances. Look, then, to names in our own
+history. Pitt must not be spoken of for the reasons just allowed in the
+other cases; but there are Canning and Palmerston. How does Mr.
+Gladstone look alongside them? He has himself more than once alluded to
+Canning, as if not unwilling to be thought to have received his mantle.
+It was, however, always only in connection with Greece that he spoke of
+Canning; but that Minister looked much farther than the Mediterranean.
+One would have thought that so fine a rhetorician as Mr. Gladstone would
+not have forgotten the famous phrase in which Canning claimed to have
+called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
+Lord Palmerston was without any such fine phrases, but in foreign
+affairs he acted boldly, though he had to fall back on a musty Latin
+quotation to describe it. Every Englishman, however, understood Latin
+when their Minister said, _Civis Romanus sum_. Yet neither of these
+Ministers at any part of their career lived in times more stirring than
+Mr. Gladstone has done, nor when the interests of England were more
+endangered. He has still later had magnificent opportunities, but he did
+worse than lose them.
+
+From all this, it would seem that, whether we look abroad or at home,
+there is no possibility of describing Mr. Gladstone by hints of
+comparison with these historical personages. What is said in that way
+appears, in fact, to turn into contrast; which is, also, itself a mode
+of delineation, though not usually of the kind the chief object of it
+wishes. We can find no Minister to couple along with him as having
+deliberately despaired of his country. However, Mr. Gladstone is
+certainly great in some way, for although other nations while we were
+under his sway were gradually losing sight of England herself as well as
+of him, he was making plenty of noise all the time at home. If it should
+turn out, as we go on, that he was not a great Minister but a great
+orator, that would seem to account for both the things. If Bismarck and
+Cavour have made affairs, Mr. Gladstone has made speeches, beating them
+as much in that as they did him in the other respect. But it is not
+exactly the same thing to the countries the men represent.
+
+It is, therefore, under a humbler, more domestic aspect than that of
+this high supreme style of Minister which we have first tried that we
+must begin Mr. Gladstone's portraiture. The task may be divided into two
+portions. There is the opinion which we Conservatives hold of the
+general influence and effect he has had upon our national interests, in
+which we may be credited with at least trying to estimate his acts and
+measures on their merits; and, besides that, there is a judgment of him
+from a narrower party view, arising out of his historic relation to
+ourselves. We will take the latter first.
+
+To hear Liberals talk, one might suppose that Conservatives had always
+cherished a special hatred against Mr. Gladstone simply for ceasing to
+be a Tory and becoming a Radical. That the Conservatives rather late in
+his career came to show much irritation against Mr. Gladstone is
+perfectly correct; but it was, as I hope to show as I go on, for very
+different reasons than simply because he had made one Conservative less
+and one Liberal more. A great political party has no such immortal
+animosities as that supposes: party feeling is not based on merely
+sentimental grounds. Both sides are used to losing men. It is the common
+fate of Parliamentary warfare. Now and then, some rather idle person who
+has time to waste in going back a long way in his recollections bethinks
+himself that Lord Beaconsfield was not always a Conservative; but we
+never yet heard of any one among the party challenging sympathy for him
+on the score that he had been hunted by the Liberals through half a
+century or so for having deserted them. Yet it will be admitted that
+Lord Beaconsfield has injured the Liberals more than ever Mr. Gladstone
+has done the Conservatives. What is the reason, then, of this difference
+of alleged treatment in the two cases? The answer may be given in half a
+sentence,--Lord Beaconsfield, alike when he was Mr. Disraeli and since,
+has always fought fair. That is enough in politics to make your
+opponents acquiesce in your being such; but Mr. Gladstone as his career
+developed surprised and puzzled everybody, his own friends included; and
+those who blame the Conservatives for, in the end, losing temper and
+showing exasperation, should bear in mind that he finally produced the
+very same effect upon the country at large.
+
+It is worth while following this point a little further, for it would
+not be of much use attempting to sketch Mr. Gladstone if we are supposed
+to dislike him from some mere party instinct. Will anybody be good
+enough to tell us when this inscrutable emotion of hatred of Mr.
+Gladstone arose? Liberals are not supposed to be strong in history, but
+they have very short memories indeed if they have forgotten both their
+own career and his. Why, in 1852--that is, in the twentieth year of Mr.
+Gladstone's Parliamentary life--the Conservatives were offering him
+office, which was not refused by him with over-much promptness. For
+nearly fourteen years after that he was retained as the representative
+of the University of Oxford. It is, in fact, not yet very much more
+than a dozen years since this victim of political persecution, and
+present champion of the Radicals, was quietly ensconced in a seat for
+what is sometimes spoken of as the head-quarters of Toryism. He has
+roved a good deal among the constituencies since, but he was then
+willing to have gone on remaining at Oxford, if his constituents had
+also been willing to have been made laughing-stocks by letting him
+remain. Surely a man who represented Tory electors until he was getting
+fast on for sixty could scarcely up to that point have been much hunted
+and worried for Liberal principles. To speak plainly, there never was so
+late a conversion made of so much histrionic use as this of Mr.
+Gladstone's. But though it has suited both his and his present party's
+ends, it rather puzzles plain people who have kept their recollections a
+little trim to think that if he lives on into senatorial decrepitude, he
+will never have sat for Radical constituencies anything like so long a
+time as he did for Conservative ones. For between thirty and forty years
+this Liberal ex-Premier was a Tory member.
+
+In fact, a glance at the right honourable gentleman's wonderfully
+prosperous career will show that in the list of our public men he has of
+all others made the fewest, the briefest, the least sacrifices either
+for principle or party. There are very simple ways of testing it; Mr.
+Gladstone has not been out of office long enough for a man who was
+innocent of business prudence in his career. He has, in fact, reaped the
+official spoils of two parties, if not of three. The dates and
+appointments are on record for anybody to trace out. On the very face of
+it, a man who has served under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Russell,
+and then come out as a full-blown Liberal Prime Minister himself, must
+of necessity be said to offer rather a miscellaneous career. His warmest
+admirer must admit that he has been either the most fortunate or else
+the most prudent of men; and, as we do not wish to be stingy in our
+recognition of his skill, we prefer to compliment him by attributing his
+great prosperity throughout so many years and under so many different
+chiefs to his prudence.
+
+If this very hasty review of Mr. Gladstone's chronicle does not agree
+with the impression of him which is the prevailing one on the Liberal
+side, it is the one which the bare facts of his career would produce on
+every side if they could be seen without the misleading effect of his
+very fine words and exceedingly solemn attitudes. Very fortunately for
+him it is only the Conservatives who have a full and accurate
+recollection of Mr. Gladstone. They have necessarily observed him
+continuously from their own unshifting party position, and so have been
+able to perceive in a way that hardly was practicable to the Liberals,
+who were always shifting and struggling among themselves, how invariably
+and consistently his announcements of change of view have hit with the
+opportunities for improvement of his Parliamentary position. On every
+occasion, to the very moment, so soon as a Liberal question had fully
+ripened, Mr. Gladstone presented himself to pluck it. It was so with
+Reform, it was so with Church Rates, it was so with University Reform,
+it was so with the Ballot, it was so with the spoliation of the Irish
+Church and the unsettling of the Irish landowners, and it is so with the
+County Franchise, and it will be so once more, if the Liberals ever get
+into power again, with the English Church and the English Land Laws. Mr.
+Bright, Mr. Miall, and all the Radicals have drudged for many a year for
+Mr. Gladstone, who, when all the outdoor work has been done, has always
+allowed himself to be persuaded to bring in the Measure just in the nick
+of time, and, by expounding it in a very fine speech, has robbed its
+actual originators of two-thirds of the credit of making it possible.
+
+Luckily for the Conservatives, though he never had the courage to attack
+a question of the very first class himself in the way of initiative, he
+had an insatiable ambition for meddling with smaller ones, and by making
+vents in these ways for his restlessness and his ambition, he finally
+ruined all that his skilful prudence in the larger affairs had gained
+him, disgusting the country till it determined to get him off its hands
+at any price. Still, that is not just now the point in question.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's so slowly passing through all the stages from
+Conservatism to Radicalism has had this effect,--that while all other
+public men of his standing have grown more or less antiquated in steady
+loyal service to their party, and by presenting a fixed if monotonous
+aspect to the public, this one Parliamentary personage kept a perennial
+freshness, simply by skilfully dividing his prolonged career into
+distinct periods and going on changing. Some political section has been
+always welcoming Mr. Gladstone newly into its ranks and to its spoils,
+for, as we have said, the two things unfailingly went together; and the
+shouts with which he was received were always strengthened by fainter
+murmurs of applause from other sections more advanced along the line,
+who hoped to receive him themselves later on. They did so. Really to
+each one of them he was a recruit from the last party. To the
+Palmerstonians he ought at the most to have been only a Peelite; to the
+Liberals at worst only a Palmerstonian. But by a surprising adroitness,
+it was always made to appear that in all his migrations from party to
+party, he joined each successive group as a new retreater from the
+Tories. It certainly was true in one sense; he was always going further
+away from them. But for all party purposes and reckoning, he had as much
+left them when he joined Palmerston as when he shook hands with Mr.
+Bright and took his place in front of the Radicals.
+
+These are only a first handful of specimens of a certain unfairness in
+Mr. Gladstone's position and career from first to last, from which he
+has largely profited, and which very naturally irked his opponents, who
+have had to suffer its inconveniences. He has posed as a sort of
+political orphan left lonely in the Parliamentary world at the death of
+Peel, who has been persecuted by wicked Tories from one Chancellorship
+of the Exchequer to another, until they finally drove him into the
+Premiership, but all this time he was successfully seceding from them,
+though they continued in pursuit. It must have been Mr. Gladstone's
+portentous earnestness of demeanour which has covered up from the
+general public a joke so huge and prolonged as this, preventing
+everybody from seeing that such a tale did not agree with his
+unprecedented prosperity. But if in these ways he has kept himself
+interesting to the country, and fresh and surprising for every group he
+has in rotation joined, both he and his changes have long been stale to
+the Conservatives. They are able to look along his whole track, and
+seeing him from behind, know him as a Peelite, a follower of Aberdeen, a
+Palmerstonian, a Russellite, and a Radical. They are debarred from
+applying his own name to the last stage, and calling him a Gladstonian.
+Strangely enough, and indeed very significantly, that term has never
+taken root in our politics. There really have never been any
+Gladstonians: no one ever was or ever will be called by that title. Mr.
+Gladstone will end his days and depart without founding any school; he
+will stand recorded only as the acceptor of office from those who did
+so, and the passer of other people's measures. But in political life a
+man who attains the first rank of conspicuousness without founding a
+line may fairly be suspected. It will be found that he has been too busy
+in a narrower way,--looking after not questions but himself. To that
+very small party, numerically reckoned, consisting of only one member,
+Mr. Gladstone has been consistently and untiringly faithful. He has
+challenged for it sympathy in all the ways to which his very fine
+oratory has lent itself, and he has not neglected the humbler art of
+perpetual advertisement, keeping it by means of the press and the
+platform ever before the public eye. But when he finally leaves us it is
+certain to vanish entirely.
+
+Very likely some ardent Radical, whose mind is so full of having got Mr.
+Gladstone at last that he forgets, or perhaps never knew, how many
+grades and shades of politicians have in succession enjoyed him before,
+will say that in all this we are only railing at Mr. Gladstone's
+success. His success! In order to describe Mr. Gladstone, we had first
+to write retrospectively, take in his earlier phases, and to look
+generally at his whole history. In that retrospect, down to a late point
+in it, he was exceedingly prosperous; but we never meant to say that he
+had been very successful since the beginning of 1874. There is not the
+slightest need for any Conservative to feel bitter against Mr. Gladstone
+now on any grounds of personal envy. He has done them the greatest
+service of any public man for three generations; and at any time he
+might have individually prospered as much as he liked for them, if it
+had been possible for him to do it without injuring his country. It is
+to this more serious examination of his career that we now go.
+
+Not that we propose to entangle ourselves in the minute details of it,
+for that is in no way necessary. We have already in part explained why
+we may, in such a sketch as this, drop out many years of his political
+life. For a great length of time Mr. Gladstone was only a Budget-maker.
+It is true he made them for Governments that were not Conservative, but
+he still was considered nearly a Conservative outside his financial
+handicraft. And here, again, part of the explanation we earlier gave
+applies. There is not the slightest reason why any Conservative should
+pause long to consider Mr. Gladstone as the passer of the Ballot, or
+even as the disestablisher of the Irish Church and the interferer with
+the rights of landed property in Ireland. The only thing special to be
+said about him in connection with these things as distinguishing him
+from the ruck of Liberals would be, that he was a very late ex-Tory, and
+at the time a professed High Churchman. He somehow got the Liberals to
+let him write his name across every one of those measures so soon as it
+was seen that they would pass, and he has made the legislation in that
+way seem to be his; but the Conservatives know with whom they had really
+to deal in the inception and the pushing forward of those movements, and
+it was not Mr. Gladstone. The real men were Mr. Bright, Mr. Dillwyn, Mr.
+Miall, and those who for many a year worked with them while Mr.
+Gladstone was never heard of, never thought of, in connection with the
+matters they had always matured before he had anything to do with them.
+
+Nor was it on account of these affairs that Mr. Gladstone's fall
+occurred when it came, which is another reason why it would be waste of
+time to discuss them in connection with him. Who is proposing to alter
+these things now that they have been fought out between the great
+parties of the State and decided? As a supplement to his Irish Land
+Bill, we now have the Irish peasants refusing to pay any rent at all:
+but in these days when a thing is done in our Parliament it is done. The
+Conservatives, in spite of the majority at their back, have never put
+forward a finger to touch those settlements, nor do they mean to do so;
+and yet not only our own country, but all Europe, and indeed realms
+farther away still, have been keenly aware that the Beaconsfield
+Ministry has been very busy for years undoing something that Mr.
+Gladstone had done.
+
+What was this gigantic task, which was not the repealing of legislation,
+or the passing of statutes of any kind, but which required courage and
+effort more arduous than those things? There must have been some cause
+for the bursts of applause which have again and again echoed on our
+shores from all parts of the civilized globe at something that was going
+on. It was, we hasten to answer, the rehabilitation of England in the
+eyes of the world,--the restoration of her ancient power as a factor in
+the enforcement and administration of public right among the nations.
+Somehow, coincidently with Mr. Gladstone's prosperity as a Minister,
+England, his country, had sunk, and in exactly answering ratio, and was
+sinking lower and lower still daily. He was very famous, or at least
+very notorious, at home, but the renown of Britain abroad was clouding;
+and our people never will bear that, as history had shown before. This
+man, who at heart was but a financier, and who ought in the fitness of
+things never to have risen higher in office than a Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, whose function it should have been to find funds for some one
+else as a Prime Minister capable of a policy in the higher international
+politics befitting an Empire, was conducting our foreign affairs in the
+spirit of a commercial traveller; willing to effect a little saving by
+giving up a group of islands in one part or a bit of territory in
+another, and to effect an economy at another time by backing out of a
+treaty. Though, at the same time, if anybody insisted, and there loomed,
+however distantly, a possibility of war, he would pay the money down in
+a hurry by millions, as he did in the Alabama case. We should have had
+all the world insisting very soon, making peace more costly than war
+itself, besides the shame of unjustifiable surrender.
+
+But we were spared all this; though the undoing of the humiliation, as
+far as it had gone, has fully occupied Mr. Gladstone's successors ever
+since.
+
+This is the great accusation which the Conservatives have to bring
+against Mr. Gladstone--that of having degraded the position of his
+country; and an arraignment more fatal than this cannot be made in the
+case of a chief Minister. It is not alone the Conservatives who make it.
+Did not Earl Russell, Liberal though he was, find enough English blood
+in his aged veins when writing his last book, to say that Mr. Gladstone
+had dragged the name of England through the mire? But it would not be
+quite accurate to put this forward as the full explanation of Mr.
+Gladstone's sudden tumble from office; for it was not until after that
+occurred that the bulk of people quite knew the whole extent of the
+injury he had worked in this respect. The Conservative leaders guessed
+it, but they knew more about foreign affairs than the rank and file of
+the nation. Everybody, of course, high and low, was aware that he had
+unasked given up the Ionian Islands because of some literary reasons
+which he had come upon in writing books about Homer, that he had
+surrendered territory in the San Juan Boundary Question, and that he had
+quietly gone to Geneva and paid America, not indeed all she asked,--for
+even with Britain's wealth the whole of the first modest request would
+only have been found with difficulty,--but he had counted down a sum
+that made Brother Jonathan's shrewd eyes twinkle with joy. The country,
+from these events following one another, had come to have a very uneasy
+feeling that somehow under his auspices everything was going against us
+abroad. Still it was only later that it was made fully apparent how
+completely England was effaced; not until the three Emperors had begun
+to settle the rearrangement of Eastern Europe, without so much as saying
+to Great Britain, "By your leave." There is difficulty when looking back
+now to prevent oneself from suffering some illusion in this respect; but
+it is a fact, and we may be glad of it, that Englishmen did not until it
+was roughly forced upon them suppose beforehand that their position had
+dwindled to quite so low an ebb.
+
+At the elections of 1874, there was no distinct foreign policy before
+the public, for though there were many on the Conservative side who
+sympathized with France in her adversity, and saw clearly that Germany's
+mutilation of her territory meant trouble in time to come, not a voice
+was raised in deprecation of our neutrality. But, for the matter of
+that, it may be just as correctly said that there was no matured
+domestic question before the country, for it will not be supposed that
+there was a single Tory any more than a Liberal who wished the Income
+Tax to be retained on his shoulders. It was hardly for proposing to do
+away with that impost that everybody voted so unanimously against Mr.
+Gladstone; they only did so at the polling-booths in spite of his
+proposing it, which somehow seems rather mysterious. If his opponents
+were not proposing to recall any of the recent legislation, and if there
+was no special question of foreign affairs pending, and if nobody had
+any desire not to be lightened of taxation, how was it, pray, that Mr.
+Gladstone was so ignominiously hurled from power? In reality, there is
+not the slightest difficulty about it--Mr. Gladstone was decisively
+rejected by his countrymen, not on any question of policy, either home
+or foreign, but because of the _personal impression_ he had slowly but
+surely imprinted on their minds. The real issue before the country was
+whether it would have any more of Mr. Gladstone, and it said No.
+
+It is a common artifice on the part of his apologisers to insinuate that
+he had wearied the nation by offering it too many things for its good.
+But neither individuals nor communities are much in the habit of
+refusing gifts; it is the one thing, and nearly the only thing, in this
+world for which there is an excellent reason whenever so strange a
+proceeding happens. There is another way of representing the matter, one
+much less complimentary but far more true--the country was sick of Mr.
+Gladstone. Even the sight of Mr. Lowe standing at his side with four
+millions of surplus in his hands was not enough to tempt them. The
+promise to abolish the Income Tax was the most tremendous bribe ever
+offered to the constituencies, but, to their credit, it did not corrupt
+them. They would not accept Mr. Gladstone any longer at any price
+whatever. The believers in democracy, and Mr. Gladstone in particular,
+according to some of his very latest reasonings, ought to have accepted
+this universal disgust as being a popular inspiration. However, they
+have done nothing of the kind, but avow that it was a public delusion,
+which they at first hinted would be temporary; but if the public is
+liable to delusions, and to fits of them which continue for seven or
+eight years at a stretch, for that is now the duration of this one, what
+becomes of these very radical gentlemen's democracy? For it is not
+really open to them to plead, though they will go on doing it, that the
+people's eyes were dazzled by a glitter of diplomatic success, and their
+blood infuriated by a skilfully aroused anti-Russian feeling. It is not
+open to them for a simple reason, but a very conclusive one: the
+elections came before anything of this could have happened; and the
+elections themselves arrived with the suddenness they did owing to
+something which had preceded them--namely, a steady run of Ministerial
+defeats in the by-contests, wherever a vacancy occurred in a
+constituency. Mr. Gladstone avowed all this in the address with which he
+startled the Greenwich electors and the whole country, though he and his
+friends have never mentioned the fact since. It was for the purpose of
+putting all things right that the elections which put them all more
+wrong still were so unexpectedly ordered. It was not because of being
+intoxicated by the diplomatic triumph of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
+Salisbury at Berlin--which did not occur till years after--that the
+constituencies rejected Mr. Gladstone. We have no wish to be
+unnecessarily impolite, but the true reason for it was that which we
+have named already--they had come not to like Mr. Gladstone. If we trace
+that fact backwards in a natural way, we shall find that one cause of it
+was that they felt the honour and the interest of England were not safe
+in his hands; but this was only one among other causes. It swelled
+afterwards into the biggest reason of all, and now practically includes
+all the others; but, at the moment, it was not actually known that the
+safety of England was about to be imperilled.
+
+The voters were affected by other reasons. What were those other
+reasons? The public must have known them pretty clearly at the time,
+since it acted so promptly and decidedly upon them, and it, therefore,
+ought not to need very much recalling of them now, for the time, after
+all, is not so very long ago. But it may be as well to go into them a
+little, since it was through the incidents furnishing them that the
+general public was led to form the very same estimate of Mr. Gladstone
+which the Conservatives had held for about a score of years before. At
+last the popular judgment coincided with that of his Parliamentary
+opponents, and he fell from power. But any one who will give a moment's
+consideration to the cases of the Collier appointment, the Ewelme
+Rectory affair, and the issue of the Royal Warrant on purchase in the
+army, will see that we are right in affirming that Mr. Gladstone's
+ignominious expulsion from office was owing to moral rather than
+political causes. It stands recorded that this Minister, who had put
+religious professions in the front of his politics in a way novel to
+public life, had to defend his conduct over and over again in the House
+of Commons by quoting the mere letter of the law. Parliament became not
+unlike the Old Bailey when a legal wrangle is going on over the
+technicalities of an indictment; and the unwonted spectacle of Lord
+Chief Justices accusing a theological Premier of having somehow evaded a
+statute was not made any less unedifying by Mr. Gladstone showing great
+skill in being his own attorney. Everybody must admit that he certainly
+did that.
+
+It is possible to recall each of the cases in very few words. An Act of
+Parliament had been passed with a view to strengthening the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, as this Court was one of Appeal, it
+stood to reason that those appointed to it to revise other Judges'
+decisions should have had judicial experience themselves. It was
+expressly provided in the Act that those to be raised to this Court
+should be already Judges. To the surprise of the whole country, Sir
+Robert Collier, well known as Mr. Gladstone's Attorney-General, and,
+therefore, conspicuously only a waiter for a judgeship, not a judge
+already, was announced as the filler of one of these vacancies, before
+half the readers of the newspapers knew that he had ceased to be
+Attorney-General. It turned out, however, that he was in reality a judge
+at the moment, and that he had been one for some few moments previously,
+having, in fact, sat on the bench of the Common Pleas for just two days.
+There is not space to follow Mr. Gladstone's wonderful reasoning, but it
+chiefly turned on a point so fine as this, that what the Act meant to
+stipulate was not experience, but _status_. In other words, that a man
+should be made a judge of one kind for five minutes, in order to be
+turned into one of another kind, just for the say of the thing. Amazed
+members of the Legislature which had passed the enactment protested that
+they were not so foolishly subtle as this, and that they had never,
+before Mr. Gladstone mentioned it, thought of any such distinction as
+that between _status_ and experience.
+
+But this was not the only instance in which he has told people what they
+had intended better than they knew, and all differently. In the Ewelme
+Rectory business he would have it that when a statute said Oxford it
+meant Cambridge, or at least that its specifying Oxford did not signify,
+or that it included Cambridge, or, in fact, might be construed to
+prescribe anything else which it did not say and which was contrary to
+what everybody had thought of it before. However, here, again, as the
+lawyers would otherwise have been troublesome, the technicality was
+found to have been formally complied with. The words of the enactment
+did really require that the man who was to be made rector of Ewelme
+parish should be a member of Oxford Convocation, and Mr. Harvey, Mr.
+Gladstone's friend, who had been educated at Cambridge, and who, until
+that living became vacant, had never dreamed of connection with Oxford,
+was made a member of the Convocation, in order to receive the living. Of
+course, Mr. Gladstone argued that Mr. Harvey's being a Master of Arts
+was enough, though the statute said nothing of that, and everybody else
+had thought it expressly stated a certain University where the Master of
+Arts was to come from.
+
+But let us go on to the third case, that of the issue of the Royal
+Warrant abolishing purchase. Not a few of the Liberals who exulted at
+the success of the party measure had a misgiving at the way in which it
+was secured. It was felt to be a victory which could not be repeated,
+and one of a style which, if they who snatched it had been
+Conservatives, would have thrown the country into a convulsion. The most
+violent act in the name of the Crown which the oldest man living in
+England has witnessed, was counselled by Mr. Gladstone. Because the
+Lords, in the exercise of the power which the Constitution gives them,
+were not willing instantly to pass his Bill for giving an entirely new
+social aspect to the army, he caused the Queen to do nothing short of
+superseding them entirely, and practically reduced the Constitution at a
+stroke to the Commons and the Crown. It is just now part of the tactics
+of the Liberals to protest against some imagined wish to bring in
+"personal rule." If any such preposterous design existed, it would be
+Mr. Gladstone's own act which would be fallen back upon for the
+precedent. The feeling which has best enabled the most thoughtful among
+Englishmen to understand the kind of shock which foreigners experience
+on the occurrence of one of the political earthquakes which they call on
+the Continent by the name _coup d'état_, was that which ran through the
+country when Mr. Gladstone announced that there was nothing for the
+Lords to discuss, that he had advised the Queen to issue a Royal
+Warrant. We had lost all recollection of the particular sensation, but
+he brought back just a twinge of it. Mr. Gladstone, however, can do
+Radical acts and then explain them historically. Once more we found
+ourselves all inextricably entangled in his casuistry. He now argued
+that the Royal Warrant had not been issued by exercise of prerogative,
+but in strict pursuance of statutory power, there being some Act of the
+Georges to that effect, which ordinary people had forgotten. It is not
+necessary to follow the thing further. In the end, Mr. Gladstone became
+too clever for the country. Even the dullest began to perceive that Mr.
+Gladstone could conscientiously do whatever he liked. The more subtly he
+argued, the more plain John Bull got puzzled.
+
+It may, at first sight, seem tasking the public memory too much to ask
+people if they remember the tension there was in the political
+atmosphere towards the end of Mr. Gladstone's career. But a very great
+many will not have forgotten it. The political weather is so far like
+the other sort that it is only borne in mind for its badness; that,
+however, was a terrible season. At the last, Mr. Gladstone seemed to
+have got into the air, and he did not improve the climate. He may urge,
+certainly, that Mr. Lowe had made himself very obnoxious, that Mr.
+Ayrton had been found to be intolerable, and that the great trade of the
+publicans, with all its supporters, was in arms against Mr. Bruce. That
+is all true; the country disliked each one of these his chief
+colleagues. But neither Mr. Lowe's hard cynicism, nor Mr. Ayrton's
+dogmatic inæstheticism, nor Mr. Bruce's stolid mechanical interference,
+stirred the large keen dissatisfaction which Mr. Gladstone's own
+incomprehensibility in the end did. He gave men's consciences a shock,
+and none of the others affected to feel so deeply as that: it was only
+he who had stood forward as a political moralist, and then set everybody
+by the ears discussing his conduct. It was the same outside Parliament
+and within it. Everybody was arguing Mr. Gladstone; nobody could make
+him out, nobody felt safe, or could imagine what was coming next. If the
+atmosphere had but been charged a little more with him, England would
+not have been worth living in. Luckily the elections came, and the air
+was cleared.
+
+But if in the more exaggerated instances we have above spoken of, the
+general public became aware of a certain obliquity, an unreliability, a
+dissatisfied restlessness, an imperiousness in Mr. Gladstone, the
+Conservatives had been more or less continuously aware of those
+qualities for many years. They, as we said earlier, have had to observe
+the right hon. gentleman closer, more continuously, and it would be easy
+for any one of them who is of middle age to give from his own memory a
+string of instances, just the same in kind as those above, though not so
+broadly striking, beginning much earlier in his career, and coming down
+much later. Very recently, Lord Salisbury at Manchester recalled Mr.
+Gladstone's dealings with his Oxford constituents in reference to the
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. But his lordship courteously
+spared his opponent the details. Has the world forgotten the famous
+letter to Dr. Hannah, bearing the date of June, 1865, written, as Mr.
+Gladstone himself with unlooked-for _naïveté_ admits in his "Chapter of
+Autobiography," for the appeasing of doubts? He in it asserted, first of
+all, that the question was "remote and apparently out of all bearing on
+the practical politics of the day;" second, he avowed that he was
+probably going "to be silent" on the topic; third, he said that "he
+scarcely expected ever to be called on to share in such a measure;" and,
+as his finishing words, spoke of it as "a question lying at a distance
+he could not measure." These were far too many causes for not doing a
+thing, and the Conservatives accordingly began to look out. In 1869, Mr.
+Gladstone disestablished the Irish Church. The "remoteness" and the
+"distance which was not measurable" somehow came to be packed within
+these two dates,--1865-9. What had so hurried matters? Well, one can
+only recall what had happened in the interim, and among the events there
+had been these two occurrences--he had been expelled from Oxford and
+rejected by South Lancashire. The like suddenness attended his
+conversion on the subject of the Ballot. After half a lifetime of
+opposition, he one fine morning announced that it must pass, hardly a
+hint of warning having been given beforehand.
+
+But his whole career has shown this suddenness of advance, at distinct
+periods, which, as we have said, always coincided with the brightening
+of the prospects of the respective agitations. It is true, as is earlier
+pointed out, that he took something like a quarter of a century to
+travel the ground between the Conservative starting-point and the
+Radical position, but the length of time was not owing to his creeping
+between the bounds; he has traversed it at successive leaps, standing
+still between, and, at the places where he remained stationary, there
+was always the warm shelter of office. This style of progress has
+characterized him down to the present moment. As late as 1874 he told a
+deputation that he did not consider the question of the County Franchise
+ripe. There has been a good deal of very indifferent weather since then;
+but whether or not the field crops have matured, it seems now that the
+agricultural labourer has been growing fast. Mr. Joseph Arch has been
+the sun that has shone upon him, and Mr. Gladstone, as usual, is quite
+ready to reap the harvest. Examples might be multiplied manifold. Take
+the boasted case of the Liberal surplus, of which we have never ceased
+to hear--just as if Mr. Lowe and Mr. Gladstone had between them coined
+the money. Its history, stated in three words, was this: Mr. Lowe had
+mulcted the public in an unnecessary twopence of Income Tax, and,
+instead of shamefully confessing the incompetency it showed in a
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented himself before the
+constituencies, on the eve of the elections, with his hands full of
+gold, and with the air of presenting it to them.
+
+Mr. Gladstone, great financier as he is, was not above profiting by his
+subordinate's miscalculation. Instead of administering a rebuke, as a
+good journeyman might have been expected to do to a bad apprentice, he
+patted Mr. Lowe on the back. Indeed, in the Greenwich address, when he
+so magniloquently spoke of the money being given back in the shape of
+abolishing the Income Tax, he seemed to take some credit to himself.
+
+It will be beginning, perforce, to dawn upon the reader that this was a
+Minister very difficult to be dealt with by an Opposition. If we had
+space in this paper, a part of the task of sketching Mr. Gladstone would
+be to point out how injuriously he has confused the demarcation of
+parties; how unscrupulous he has been in seeking allies which on no
+principle of fair classification belonged to him. It may be nothing that
+he can half apologize for Irish Obstructionists--the Liberals have
+always exploited Irish members. But this very high Churchman, who clings
+to a tenet so ridiculous in the eyes of Dissenters as apostolical
+succession, can figure in Dr. Joseph Parker's chapel, and betray a close
+and not uncomplimentary knowledge of the trust-deed of the Rev. Newman
+Hall's congregation. This austere gentleman, who, when inquiring into
+the "Theses of Erastus" (see his article), finds out that moral offences
+are at the root and source of all heresy, has a kindly word for such
+free-thinkers as happen to be also political leaders of the working
+men--Mr. Bradlaugh, for example. This objector to divorce, on such
+stupendously elevated grounds as that we are all members of a mystical
+body, and who cannot bring himself to allow more than a civil marriage
+to a deceased wife's sister, mingles in the ruck of Radicals. But if he
+has what they must think ecclesiastical crotchets, he always manages
+them with most skilful prudence. If he has to satisfy his most private
+feelings by bringing in no fewer than six resolutions in more or less
+opposition to the Public Worship Bill, he can withdraw them again. But
+was this the gentleman to champion Radicals and Dissenters? An
+Opposition which had to keep its own consistent lines, and which was
+closely restricted as to its allies, was at a perpetual disadvantage
+with one whose own opinions, subtle and complicated as they might be,
+cut him off from nobody who could be of aid.
+
+Fortunately the country itself, at a certain rather tardy point, rallied
+its patriotism in that spontaneous way which always practically
+reinforces the Conservative party. The "Alabama" claims gave those who
+did not meddle much in politics their first shock, while for more
+thoughtful persons it brought back a reminiscence of the surrender of
+the Ionian Islands; and when, later, the public saw him stand tamely by
+while Russia tore up the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, every
+student of our history knew that Mr. Gladstone's fate was sealed. The
+nation, stirred by arousings of the deeper instincts of the English
+character, at last reckoned with him on general grounds--dislike of his
+personal demeanour, and dread of what he was bringing on the country. It
+refused to be won either by the finest oratory or the prospect of
+reduced taxation.
+
+The Conservatives came into power on the highest tide of popular feeling
+which living Englishmen have witnessed. But the change was too late to
+prevent mischief; Russia, encouraged by England's effacement during Mr.
+Gladstone's sway, had matured her further plans, and had already put her
+secret intrigues into motion. The Treaty of San Stefano showed plainly
+what her plan was, and just as clearly does everybody not blinded by
+party feeling now know that to Russia's amazement, and amidst the
+surprised and grateful admiration of the whole civilized globe, the
+present Ministry have thwarted that plan and made England again safe and
+famous. It would be a waste of time to retrace the details: a summary of
+them is to be found in Lord Salisbury's Manchester speech. What alone
+further concerns us here is the manner in which Mr. Gladstone has borne
+himself in Opposition. We have already seen how he did so as a Minister.
+It was understood, indeed, that he had retired, with something which was
+meant to pass for dignity, though to the eyes of the nation there was
+never anything which was not sulk which had so much the look of it.
+However, on the plea that something had happened in the world, he was
+quickly back again in front, elbowing Lord Hartington aside. Speeches,
+in Parliament and out, articles in every magazine, republication in
+pamphlet and volume, letters to everybody, which, practically, meant to
+all the newspapers: there never was such an active resuscitation of one
+who had so publicly become politically defunct. It is, however, not for
+coming to life again that we find fault with Mr. Gladstone, for, in
+truth, we always expected it.
+
+Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he
+has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be
+made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope, and
+other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his
+back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy,
+and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very
+necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's own
+tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some other
+negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government was charged
+with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional usage imposed no
+limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits had not been
+transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord Northbrook had
+acted with spirit years before, that war would never have been
+necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked, he and the
+Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had been at great pains
+to get himself and his Government into a difficulty. Why Mr. Gladstone
+has had so little to say about the Cape war is a mystery, which may be
+explained some day; all that can now be said of it is that it shows a
+striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though his industry was
+gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware that his renewal of
+them, though we suppose it must go on, having been arranged so long and
+announced so pompously, is a trifle late, with the Cape war ended, our
+troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi Bazar, and checkmated,
+scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany. However, no doubt we
+shall have some very fine speeches, proving that nothing of this ought
+to have happened, or that it won't last long, or that the Beaconsfield
+Administration did not bring it about, or any thing else, just as
+reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many different ways by a
+practised orator.
+
+What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's
+success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of
+his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation
+in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so
+irresistibly points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no
+matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a party,
+cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive
+occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making his
+very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous in
+hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the
+rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have
+been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that we
+are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied them
+that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen or of
+Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of the
+wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take the
+first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the fact
+was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how the
+sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone as
+a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which they could all
+join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of unanimity and
+cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it he has been
+very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and seemingly slow
+in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the outset even
+precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful orator, even
+quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage, so largely
+prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed, and to do so for a
+long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end, and that
+completely.
+
+His temperament made that nearly certain. He was always too busy making
+speeches, or writing for the press, or answering letters, to be any
+power in social life. A strange kind of semi-recluse, but combining with
+bookworm habits a passion for speechifying and for using the penny post,
+was not likely to conciliate London, and he never did. By-and-by he was
+railing at the Clubs, because they did not agree with him; and then he
+had next to appeal from the metropolitan journals to the superior
+politicians and brighter wits who preside over the provincial
+newspapers. All this prognosticated failure. Even his special gifts and
+the kind of successes which fell to him turned into the means of helping
+it. His turn for figures not unnaturally made immediate economy his
+great object, forgetful of the larger connection in such a land as ours
+between an imperial position in the world and the preservation of our
+commerce, and overlooking also the costliness of reasserting our
+position when a crisis came; while his ready eloquence, having no longer
+open to it the old patriotic themes, had to expend itself in the
+adornment of British abnegation, and the excited applause given to his
+rhetoric was mistaken by him for assent to his views, till he was amazed
+to find himself suddenly quite out of accord with the nation, and
+falling, he knew not why, headlong from power.
+
+Even to this hour he seems never to have had the least misgiving that
+the man who could speak with such complacency of the trading supremacy
+of the world passing to America (see his article on "Kin Beyond the
+Sea"), and who could urge as a reason for our not caring to interfere in
+Egypt that it would be the egg of a North African empire (see his
+article on "Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East"), was not the
+man to be England's Minister. But the country had found it out even
+before he wrote those articles; his threatening his countrymen with the
+calamity of finding another empire on their hands, in the only part of
+the world yet remaining to be explored and civilized, has only proved
+that they were right, and will not terrify Englishmen.
+
+But a fluent orator has always left to him a kind of gambler's hope of
+retrieving everything by talking. Mr. Gladstone is going to alter
+everything by making a dozen or two of speeches in Scotland. Are these
+Midlothian harangues to be longer than that made at Greenwich, or more
+numerous than those uttered in Lancashire? They may be as fine as they
+will for anything it signifies to Conservatives, if the result is only
+again the same as on the other occasions, and it is hardly likely that
+he will persuade Englishmen now amidst their returning renown to despair
+of the future of England.
+
+    A CONSERVATIVE.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
+
+    _Histoire de l'Ancien Régime_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+    _Histoire de la Revolution française_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+
+
+When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien Régime and
+the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy, he
+ended with these words:--"I have now reached the threshold of the great
+Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it, but perhaps I may
+soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no longer consider its
+causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to pass judgment on
+the society that has proceeded from it."
+
+Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his purpose,
+a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be regretted,
+and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken to fill up
+the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected task--the
+description, namely, of modern France as the outcome of the immense
+transformation which the Revolution brought upon the Old French State.
+The fundamental principles which appear so clearly and sharply in
+Tocqueville's development are prominent in Taine's; the activity of the
+earlier author prepared the ground for the later to build on. But we
+must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently independent, and his
+descriptions more striking, broad, and richly coloured than those of his
+precursor, while the material contents of his work are often different.
+But what, in spite of this, constitutes the resemblance between the two
+men is, their having for basis a common conception both of the State and
+what it presupposes, and of the historian and his task. It is the very
+opposite of the manner of thinking entertained in the eighteenth century
+which, without any heed to the peculiar character of the necessities of
+a given people, was bent on constructing, according to simple rules of
+reason and natural law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very
+striking manner, declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he
+observes, "I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a
+large number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide
+as to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist
+or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist, and I
+was nothing of the kind--nay, I was nothing at all, and envied those who
+had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a constitution as
+they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new, or most simple
+plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial castle, a
+burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a cottage, and
+each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only proper dwelling, the
+only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me this seemed an utter
+mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed be able to say what house
+they admire, but some experience is needed to teach them what house they
+need, whether it be commodious and lasting, stands the weather well, and
+harmonizes with the customs, occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We
+here in France have never been content with our political erections; in
+the course of eighty years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them
+thirteen times. Other nations have acted differently, and found their
+advantage in so doing. They have preserved an old, substantial building,
+enlarged, built around, and beautified it according to their needs, but
+never attempted to build an ideal house at one stroke, according to the
+rules of pure reason. It would therefore appear that the sudden
+invention of an entirely new, and at the same time suitable and durable
+constitution is an undertaking that transcends human capacity. The
+political and social form which a people permanently assumes is no
+matter of choice, but fixed by its character and its past. It must be
+suited to its idiosyncrasy, even in the minutest points, or it will
+crack and fall. Therefore we must know ourselves before we can discover
+what the proper constitution for us is. We must invert the accustomed
+method, and first form to ourselves a picture of the nation before we
+sketch a constitution. At the same time this is a far harder and wider
+task than the one hitherto in favour. What inquiries into past and
+present, what labour in all domains of thought and action, are needed to
+understand with precision and completeness the nature and growth of a
+great people through centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting
+out first empty discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as
+regards myself, I shall not think of a political opinion until I have
+learnt to know France."
+
+From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of
+course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that
+corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the course
+of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their historical
+representation of it--Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and
+Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at the
+beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at
+would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut
+and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was
+pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were
+owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the
+worthlessness of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke
+real interest in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main
+point--our party is right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of
+mind more than to any other hindrances we may attribute the small
+advance made, up to the middle of our century, in the knowledge of
+facts, in the history of the Revolution; this is what explains the else
+inexplicable phenomenon that, spite of the large interest felt in the
+period, no history of Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as
+yet been written. For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine,
+spite of the strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of
+their material, have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly
+see.
+
+Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the writing
+of such a history. With firm and decided political principles of their
+own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge only.
+Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge of the
+political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old
+saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but
+to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed from
+which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and
+working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce
+upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves
+in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by a
+contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question: "How can
+Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous work the
+utter corruption of the Ancien Régime, place the Revolution in his
+second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were so
+completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in utterly
+destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics who,
+after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be a
+thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment,
+proclaimed him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed,
+certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain
+inconsistencies do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an
+historical standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first
+volume paints the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather
+should we have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had
+sprung a healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no
+other soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien Régime; it
+was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been
+fostered, and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had
+received its stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all
+relations were dislocated, political feeling perverted, all portions of
+the people filled with bitter hatred against the State and each other,
+how should pupils in such a school amidst the final shock of
+catastrophes show themselves men of ripe experience, practical wisdom,
+and determined energy? He who has once taken in this simple truth will
+be much inclined to a mild judgment of individual men and parties; at
+all events, he will not be able abruptly to take sides either for or
+against the Ancien Régime or the Revolution. For one thing will have
+grown clear to him, that the Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but
+the undeniable offspring, of the old condition of things.
+
+That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first
+order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded
+on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited,
+as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French,
+but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are
+hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly
+explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is
+frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to
+follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and
+then to controvert it on certain points.
+
+It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries
+led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of
+our century, but a production of the Ancien Régime. Since the days of
+Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had
+taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and
+plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary
+principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of
+independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed
+thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in
+the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government,
+preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and
+consequently imposed taxes and corvées upon their dependents, while
+often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were
+now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal
+bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as
+hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The
+King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for
+their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the
+cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went
+on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and
+essential element of the great Revolution.
+
+It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject.
+Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads
+and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord
+lived in the midst of his dependents--his own interest was identical
+with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional
+ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State
+attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic
+government divided the landowners from the people, and by the
+unjustified continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in
+opposition. For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and
+farmer had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of
+chase, his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not
+inconsiderable number of the higher middle classes gained the special
+privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were only
+increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy service by
+exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one hand, and of
+the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully and precisely
+than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation has brought out a
+still more appalling condition than had been imagined. After the State,
+the Church, and the landlord had received their rates, the share of the
+farmer in the proceeds of his land never amounted to more than a half,
+and often his taxes rose to eighty per cent. of his income. On the other
+hand, the privileged classes paid at least a fifth less than the just
+proportion, and knew how to obtain on a yearly average at least a
+hundred millions in the shape of presents, pensions, &c. With
+increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought of any care to be
+taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and magnates streamed
+towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of them was from their
+unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus France fell asunder
+into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal knowledge or
+common interest, divided by contempt and hatred--worlds that lived on
+side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance, and luxury,
+and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty, wretchedness,
+ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and devouring
+bitterness of heart--a condition such as no other nation of Christian
+Europe had ever before come to.
+
+Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of
+authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a
+part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led
+into error.
+
+I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which
+treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal
+officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of
+this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville,
+but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it
+made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the
+political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred
+the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher
+classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the
+historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great
+bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and
+economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in
+France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible
+thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which
+gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later,
+under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against
+the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress,
+and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the
+opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal
+parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than
+liberties--that is to say, they expected the improvement of their
+condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a
+Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of
+Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but
+after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second
+time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people
+throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this
+institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely
+done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much
+as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how
+without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars
+and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have
+arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when
+Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious
+idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all
+political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the
+King--the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in
+working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and
+excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an
+evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance
+that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the
+worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of
+his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of
+Louis XVI. was from first to last spent in efforts, by the setting aside
+of feudal privileges, alike to strengthen the Crown and promote the good
+of the people, and in no case can it be more incorrect to look upon the
+Crown as a devouring parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This
+brings me back to my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side
+of his picture of society under the Ancien Régime written the history of
+its last monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this
+misconception.
+
+But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of the
+higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished personages
+had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials appeared to
+the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted the army as a
+mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there, there was no
+question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling and care
+of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and abbots drew
+immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to fair dames,
+but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the affair of
+needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their ambition and
+interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To shine there was the
+object of their distinguished lives. And as the French people have ever
+been largely endowed with grace and _esprit_, these efforts resulted in
+a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social
+intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of _bon ton_, such as
+the world never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a
+great nation had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite
+society its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and
+sacrifice mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of
+character to the promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end
+of existence was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and
+action were rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life
+should be spent in society was the most pressing requirement of
+politeness, the reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes
+unendurable. The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed
+itself became the law of this great world, and the consequences were
+felt on all sides. Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion
+came to be held unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an
+offence against manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any
+strong passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of
+conventionality. Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself
+gracefully, and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting
+variety into the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as
+welcome as sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or
+labour, for the aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind
+of knowledge was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it
+followed that all mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of
+its content but the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the
+service of enjoyment, such was the motto of this society. Genial
+originality, unconscious creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly
+antipathetic there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves
+subservient to the ruling mood.
+
+A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics of good
+society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary theories of
+its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development of this
+process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's work,
+for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth
+century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such
+extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out the
+continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus
+gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history.
+Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural
+science since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe,
+by which a way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of
+men, in opposition to the speculative and theological conceptions of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive method,
+the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to all
+intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment as the
+only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having been at
+once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural science, the
+next step was to apply the tone of thought they had engendered to the
+phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also to demand thorough
+investigation by the one true authority--criticism. Whatever the
+consequence of this investigation might in particular cases be, the very
+fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing, _as
+such_, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected to that
+of critical reason--this betokened a new epoch in the world's history,
+and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress in
+politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual culture.
+It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such positive
+results, its application should be thorough and universal. No naturalist
+delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he has
+considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages,
+compared it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just
+through the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that
+analysis leads him to the comprehension of universal truth. And
+according to this same rule, in order to arrive at a just and
+practicable idea of reform for any State, a great mass of special
+observations by technically practised and prepared eyes would have been
+required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the
+peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of
+culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective
+functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for
+only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the
+organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner
+of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of
+single actualities according to these laws.
+
+How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very
+opposite occurred--that politicians, stimulated by young natural
+science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive
+method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a
+few abstract principles?
+
+Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the
+influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal
+tendency.
+
+The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle
+existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual
+excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every
+littérateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual
+structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to
+devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than
+this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to
+secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most
+natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the
+satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent.
+We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent
+tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all
+thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep
+earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very
+opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly
+sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied
+knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to
+reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions.
+Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and
+superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge
+which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the
+working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and
+frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to
+any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into
+one conventional form--an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to
+the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended
+in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of
+imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and
+absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact
+could not be entirely concealed, it was understood that among cultivated
+persons it could never be given any importance. Even on the stage it was
+no longer considered becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or
+Iroquois, should speak in their own natural manner; they were all alike
+rendered polite, sententious, and fluent as their distinguished
+audience. Each local and individual tone was rubbed away, every person
+of the drama was but a mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence
+of the author. As with the drama, so with other literature. Taine
+correctly observes that if we read an English romance of the period, we
+have before our eyes a section of the English people; but a French one,
+though widely varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French
+salon, and that only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how
+could any one come to the study of the State by means of difficult and
+distant researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he
+remained solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but
+exercised very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to
+turn over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for
+some ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the
+falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to
+the complicated task of judging any individual State and its
+constitution according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its
+historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man dreamt
+of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require
+anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with
+disapproval. It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a
+pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any
+subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most
+intelligent, yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting
+conversation. In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal
+effort was pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be
+commonplace, and in every case to bring forward new and amazing truths.
+Accordingly speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but
+so much the more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the
+progress was regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken
+never to skip over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker
+became rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every
+subject to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society
+was delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most
+advanced views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to
+deviate from real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.
+
+That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning
+of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle
+of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the
+foundations of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to
+distinguished society. Disgust at their own impotence and the
+omnipotence of royal officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy,
+vexation at some personal neglect at Court,--altogether there was cause
+enough for malicious satisfaction when philosophers, by biting
+criticisms, made clear the standpoint of burdensome potentates. And when
+an ever-growing and strengthening Materialism taught the doctrine of
+physical enjoyment and judicious selfishness as the guiding principle of
+human conduct, it only spoke out what had half-unconsciously been the
+sum of all the motives and activities of high society. But above all,
+theories were but theories, merely conversation, excitement, pastime.
+The nobles declaimed against obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant
+to keep his own rightful possessions, and among these were privileges
+and feudal rights. They felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the
+ignorant masses, because they professed humanitarianism and liberalism,
+and spoke against superstition and subordination. That these
+much-admired theories might by-and-by become common to the whole
+community, and then bring about horrible explosions--of this they had
+not the remotest suspicion. Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a
+thing to the ladies of Versailles, would have been looked upon as we
+should look upon a prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next
+century cats and dogs, instead of men, were to be lords of creation.
+
+This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose
+co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It
+was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its
+rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present
+actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulæ and
+commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set
+about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history
+of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure,
+the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and
+conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the
+concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a
+mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since
+all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must
+render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a
+natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to
+employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left
+free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically
+pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great
+majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than
+thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact
+that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared
+to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that
+conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of
+the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied
+that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly
+guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional
+order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was
+altogether outside their range of thought.
+
+But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions.
+The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to powder.
+Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of the hoary
+unrighteousness of the Old Régime could make a stand; the pity was that,
+according to its own principles, the former found it impossible to
+attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.
+
+But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing
+ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political
+constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material
+for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and
+anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that
+miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane God
+unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the positive
+statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that the
+so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized matter.
+True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau declared his
+faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the one all the
+more resolutely contended against the divine institution of the Church,
+and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines of Sin and
+Justification. However different each may have been from the other, they
+waged in common a war for life and death against the Church, the war of
+utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong in saying that the
+Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a feudal and aristocratic
+institution; that after it had lost its wealth and privileges,
+democratic society recognized how strong a democratic momentum the
+Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up with increased
+warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt Taine's record is
+the more correct one. The Revolution knew well that it desired not the
+wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and not the partisans of the
+Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers were largely swelled by
+the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about the elevation of the
+Church in our own century.
+
+If we now contemplate somewhat more narrowly the Constitutional theory
+of the illumination, we shall discern two characteristic and prominent
+features, which, on the one hand, show its descent from the innermost
+core of the Ancien Régime, and, on the other, very energetically
+determined the whole course of the Revolution. The ideal state deduced
+from the universal characteristics of mankind was as cosmopolitan as
+levelling. Just as on the stage of the period, Frenchman and savage,
+ancient Greek and modern Parisian, spoke the same language,--that of the
+salons of Versailles,--so political theories recognized neither
+Frenchman nor Englishman, Catholic nor Protestant, educated nor
+uneducated, only Man in general. They never considered what institutions
+would be adequate, in France, to the needs and capacities of the
+educated ranks and uneducated masses, or how far the habits and opinions
+of their nation would render the adoption of a foreign institution
+practicable or injurious; rather they formulated the rights of men, of
+abstract instead of actually existing men, and were convinced that a
+constitution based thereupon was for all men, and consequently for all
+peoples, the only good, and therefore the only lawful one. And just as
+clear as the equality of nations under the new political law, appeared
+the equality of all men in the new State, by which was meant not merely
+a claim to equal protection by law, or equal facility in obtaining one's
+rights, but a demand for the realization of an inborn and material
+equality of rights. This, as is well known, was the point on which
+Rousseau took his stand, and gave the last and decisive direction to the
+impending democratic revolution. Taine justly observes how frequently,
+in spite of their common principles, Rousseau's character and way of
+life led him to take different views from those of Voltaire and the
+Encyclopædists. The deepest and most unqualified indignation of these
+last was inspired by what they called superstition, stupidity, and
+priestcraft, the transformation of the old State being with them more an
+affair of the intellect than the feelings, a conclusion drawn from their
+universal theory and an ideal requirement of philanthropy. It was
+generosity that led them to appear as the advocates of the poor and
+their woes, while they themselves were high in the approval and favour
+of the best society. Rousseau, on the other hand, had himself led the
+life of the proletaire; in the nervous excitability and measureless
+vanity which made him almost prouder of his weaknesses and vices than of
+the greatness and strength of his talents he--poor, often hungry, not
+seldom degraded and reviled--had filled himself with burning wrath
+against the favoured of earthly fortune, the noble and the rich, the
+revellers in idleness and luxury. This growing hatred he transferred to
+the State and the laws which had produced so unrighteous a contrast
+between man and man. Men, he maintained, were in their original
+condition good, because equal. It was the State, culture, society, that
+first introduced inequality, and vice and crime thereby. The existing
+order was not merely incompetent, as the Encyclopædists asserted, but
+hurtful, poisonous, deadly. And, in contrast to it, he sketches a
+picture of the true human State.
+
+Equal and good men assemble in their natural condition to think on the
+basis of their future State. Each endows the new community with all
+liberty and property, in order to receive back an equal share of the
+management and the possessions of the whole. But this whole is
+omnipotent. No laws bind its will, for its will is the source of all
+law. No king, no official, no superior rules over it; each individual is
+only empowered to act, so far and so long as he upholds the plenipotence
+of the sovereign mass. It is not the upper classes who command the
+people, but the people which require obedience from its officers and
+throws them away when they no longer please it. For individual liberty
+there is here no place; but owing to the equality of all, the free will
+of the masses joyously and harmoniously prevails.
+
+For a season these doctrines only served to afford a welcome mental
+stimulant to the minds, if not of the nobility, of the cultivated and
+property-possessing classes. The higher, and soon the lower, bourgeoisie
+inflated themselves with these views. At this period they shared certain
+of the privileges of the nobles, filled numerous and prominent offices
+in the State, gave to the nation its largest number of famous thinkers
+and poets, promoted industry and commerce, and daily increased in
+wealth, while the nobles, by their extravagance, ruined themselves
+financially. The former were, therefore, full of the consciousness of
+their own dignity, and found the continued precedence claimed by the
+nobles to be unendurable. They believed with inward satisfaction in this
+doctrine of the equality of all men and the sovereignty of the whole.
+For, instead of the privileged, it seemed to them self-evident that
+owing to their culture they, the hitherto unprivileged, ought to stand
+out prominently among the people as leaders of that governing whole.
+Thus the state of freedom and equality would be the state of pure reason
+as well, and, therefore, the leading position could not fail to fall to
+them, the masters of reasonable discussion. Meanwhile the mass of the
+poor, wholly cut off from the sources of culture and the mental
+movements of their country, for long years knew nothing of this absolute
+governing power which, according to the new discoveries, inalienably
+belonged to it, and was so surprisingly soon to fall into its lap. The
+only change in their condition, and thus the only preparation for their
+future sovereignty, was an increase of outward distress and of inward
+confusion and embitterment; and then came the time when the small circle
+to which education and enjoyment were limited, and the State power they
+wielded, fell into internal demoralization, strife of factions, and
+financial embarrassments, till the very Crown itself was obliged to
+summon popular forces to war against the privileged. All the springs of
+State machinery refused to work, coffers were empty, authorities and
+classes at bitter internecine strife, the army unreliable and
+undisciplined. It was under circumstances like these that the mass of
+the people in towns and villages heard from their candidates, advocates,
+and demagogues, what in truth their rights were. In their ignorance and
+want, their rudeness and embitterment, they suddenly learnt that for
+them--as sovereign--limits, obligations, authority no longer existed,
+that the old corruption and slavish condition was to be thoroughly got
+rid of, and that then everything would belong to them. They listened
+with greedy ears, and rushed forward to trample under foot whatever
+sought to contest these rights of theirs.
+
+The highest and noblest aims lured the century on, and animated the
+hearts of countless worthy men: liberty, well-being, and culture for
+all, no difference between man and man but that of talent and virtue,
+fraternity among all citizens in the State and all nations on the earth;
+these were the ideals that 1780 proclaimed to the world and the future,
+and therefore the French still love to speak of the deathless principles
+and fair days of this first epoch of the Revolution. All this, Thiers
+tells us, would have been admirably realized had not evil-hearted
+emigrants and foreign Powers by their malignant attacks, driven the most
+humane of all Revolutions into desperation, a fight for existence, and
+bloodshed. All would have gone well, says Louis Blanc, had not the
+wicked Thermidorians, on the occasion of Robespierre's fall, brought in
+a policy of vice and self-seeking instead of one of virtue and brotherly
+love. Probably, on the other side the Vosges, eighty men out of every
+hundred adopt one or other of these views, and so it is easily
+intelligible that the merciless facts by which Taine shatters these fair
+pictures should be received with repugnance and surprise by his
+countrymen. The contrast between such a reality and such an ideal is
+indeed enormous; fair days, or so much even as one fair day in the
+course of the Revolution, can no longer be spoken of; in the very hour
+when absolute monarchy collapsed, a wild, rude, and cruel anarchy
+covered the land, filling France with violence and crime of every kind
+for a decade, and lastly causing an unparalleled despotism to appear to
+the French people salvation and deliverance. The conclusion is
+unavoidable, either the ideal was good for nothing, and the Coblentz
+emigrants had right on their side against the nation, or the French
+people had set about their high task in a quite impracticable way, and
+their historical fame has this time to be limited to the motto, _In
+magnis voluisse sat est_. Neither of these alternatives will have a
+pleasing sound in the ears of a Liberal Frenchman.
+
+But, pleasing or not, the facts are indisputable, and up to the present
+time each new investigation of authentic documents has only served to
+give them a wider range and a more assured basis. We have seen the end
+of the Ancien Régime. The nobles of the former State were unnerved by
+idleness, debilitated by enjoyment, degraded by immorality; never had
+the aristocracy of a great nation fallen and been brushed away from the
+soil of their country, making so feeble a resistance. The leaders of the
+movement followed a political teaching based on a most one-sided and
+therefore radically false conception of human nature, and had no idea of
+the real nature of their fellow-citizens, or of the principles and needs
+of genuine political life. Finally the masses were unmoved by any
+political thought whatever, but were darkly conscious of their own
+wretched state up to the present time, and their hatred of those who
+had, or were supposed to have, occasioned it, were credulous and
+impressionable, and penetrated with the rightfulness of their wildest
+passions and desires. With such materials as these it is possible indeed
+to blow up an old and half-useless house, but not to construct on its
+ruins a well-planned and lasting new one.
+
+Thus Taine shows by details from documents contemporaneous with the
+events, how, even before the opening of the National Assembly, the
+condition of things was out of joint at a hundred points. Tumults and
+plunder, disobedience to authorities, and maltreatment of obnoxious
+persons, were the order of the day; public officials were spiritless,
+and dared not command the already murmuring troops to restore order. The
+first weeks of the Assembly brought hot discussions as to the union of
+the three orders, attempts at reactionary State measures, and the taking
+of the Bastille. Excitement grew from day to day; the suspense
+throughout the country was tremendous. With the Parisian catastrophes
+the whole Ancien Régime rocked and gave way from side to side; and not
+merely privileges and feudal rights, but all State authorities vanished
+at one blow, or at the first threat from an armed mob resigned their
+functions. The French nation had positively no government, no laws, no
+police, no taxation. In place of these they had journals, clubs,
+societies, popular songs, and Lynch law; security for person and
+property no longer existed; every one did according to his heart's
+desire till a stronger than he preferred the opposite and knocked him
+down. This state of anarchy actually went on thus till the culmination
+of the Reign of Terror; every now and then it quieted down here or
+there, to burst out the following day at some other point with redoubled
+fury. In the midst of the omnipresent turmoil and confusion, the King, a
+powerless prisoner, sat in the Tuileries. The only quarter which
+afforded a possibility of the restoration of the State was the National
+Assembly, which was sufficiently respected and popular both with the
+people and the National Guard, to have enforced obedience had it set
+about it the right way. But there were two reasons which forbade the
+adoption of that way. One was that the Assembly was deprived of free
+action by the ruling theory of the Rights of Man, Liberty and Equality.
+This included the rights of resistance against oppression, and
+accordingly every citizen might at any moment consider himself oppressed
+and authorized in resisting. It had been borne in upon these sovereign
+citizens that the will of the sovereign people stood higher than that of
+its representatives, and that the people was at any time capable of
+re-entering upon the direct exercise of its sovereignty. It is plain
+that under the influence of theories such as these any control over
+street-riots and local deeds of violence was a difficult, if not
+hopeless task. And, on the same ground, it was impracticable to attempt
+any control or regulation of press or clubs, which looked upon their
+boundless activity as the highest expression and most precious jewel of
+revolutionary liberty. As, according to theory, State officials were to
+be, not the lords, but the servants of the sovereign people, it became
+expedient that they should not be named by the Central Government, but
+chosen, and that only for a short time, by the citizens. In the same
+spirit the affairs of Government were entrusted not to individual
+officials, but to deliberating colleagues; while, as to the passing of
+laws, the principle of equality rendered impossible the formation of an
+Upper House, or any finally decisive action on the part of the King.
+Thus the Government remained powerless, legislation was hasty and
+uncertain, the lower classes unmanageable, and on very many occasions it
+was plain that club orators and journalists who knew how to flatter the
+demands of the masses bent both Government and National Assembly beneath
+their sway. More than once there arose indignation in the Assembly at so
+unworthy and dangerous a condition; but at each attempt to grapple with
+and remove it, the fear of a monarchical or aristocratic reaction fell
+upon it and paralyzed its action.
+
+In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and
+proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the
+authority of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the
+army, and energetic organization of Government, extensive powers
+conferred on the police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice.
+But how then? If power were thus conferred upon the Government to
+restrain proletaires and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the
+National Assembly against the head of the reinforced Government, against
+the King, who had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in
+defenceless subjection? This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit
+invariably triumphing at the National Assembly. The present fear of the
+violence of the crowd attendant at the sittings combined with the
+apprehension of a future monarchical reaction. When, some years later,
+at the organization of the Republican Government, the weakness of
+authority was again felt, more than one orator freely declared the
+existing arrangements to be undoubtedly bad throughout, and to be
+amended as soon as possible; owned that this had, indeed, been perfectly
+known at the time of their creation in 1790, but that they were
+intentionally framed thus, in the interests of liberty, to prevent the
+King from exercising any power. Enough--the Constitutional Assembly did
+nothing to surround personal safety and political order with any
+inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did much to open the door wide
+to the passionate and arbitrary action of the masses. We may say that
+they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the horrors of the Terror, and
+had the sad beginnings of that development before their eyes, without
+even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most especially in the
+economical department: the colossal transformation of the laws of
+property in France, which brought half the soil into new hands, and
+irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic paths, was
+out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.
+
+For more than twenty years I have, in my "History of the Revolution
+Period," established these circumstances from authentic documents, and
+thus given repeated offence to the French public. I may therefore be
+permitted to feel all the greater satisfaction at such a distinguished
+investigator as Taine, after drawing forth numberless documents from
+Parisian archives, coming to absolutely the same conclusion. All I have
+heard in the way of objection to his statements is utterly unimportant.
+As it is not possible to drive the facts he has proved from original
+documents out of existence, the observation is made that though his
+information may be true, it is one-sided; that while he never wearies of
+describing revolts and misdeeds, he does not sufficiently point out in
+how many places the Civil Guard bravely and loyally upheld civil order.
+Taine would be the last to dispute this fact; had it not been so there
+would have been no longer any France left in the nineteenth century. But
+he would venture to inquire whether praise be deserved by an Assembly
+which, as ruler of a great State, surrendered without resistance now the
+third of it, now the half, during three years, to a bloody anarchy;
+whether we can speak of "fair days" or "humane Revolution," when in this
+short period six horrible Jacqueries laid the land waste, when countless
+political murders remained unpunished, and military _émeutes_ and
+ecclesiastical brawls thrust the weapons of civil war into the hands of
+the masses. We are told of a pure and ideal inspiration then filling
+millions of liberty-loving and patriotic spirits; and well may we call
+that a fair time in which noble aims and infinite hopes set all pulses
+beating higher, and stimulate a whole people to youthful efforts, and
+fill it with fresh and energetic life. Yes, there were moments of golden
+dreams and illusions like these. Only they should have lasted longer. It
+is not through their feelings, speeches, wishes, but their deeds, that
+nations assume their historical position and receive their historical
+sentence. Taine writes the last, indeed, with an incisive pen, and often
+with glaring colours, but essentially he gives nothing but what follows
+by indissoluble sequence from the facts of the Revolution.
+
+On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his work,
+or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a whole.
+Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances; I must be
+satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first months of the
+Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was identical in town and
+country, and the lawless violence of artisans and peasants pursued the
+same ends by the same means, one of the most prominent features of the
+later phase, the Terror, was the gradual introduction of a war of
+interest between the people of the capital and the villages. The more
+the power of the Mountain and the Parisian Commune increased, the more
+absolutely the booty of the Revolution fell to the share of the town
+proletaires, at the cost not only of the great landed proprietors, but
+the small farmers as well. Our first impression at the aspect of this
+rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we
+may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so
+extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the
+possibility of a class war. But for any disquisition on this subject, or
+allusion to the causes that, in the first years of the Revolution,
+prepared its way, we look through Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the
+representation of the Ancien Régime, his attention is pre-eminently
+turned to social relations connected with the land. Had he with an
+equally comprehensive and minute care studied the different strata, the
+interests and wants of the town population, the problem alluded to would
+have solved itself.
+
+It is with admirable insight and incontrovertible reasoning that Taine
+shows the logical untenableness and practical mischief of the theory of
+equality, both in the writings of Rousseau and the action of the
+Constituent Assembly. He proves the contradiction between this equality
+and the very nature of man, and how, consequently, pure democracy
+rendered the development of political liberty unattainable. In perfect
+agreement with Tocqueville, he points to the absolute necessity, under
+the circumstances of the time, of aristocratic institutions, for the
+creation and preservation of a free State, and explains how deeply
+seated these are in the needs and claims of human nature. This portion
+of his work is indeed masterly; and the more widely extended the
+equalitarian superstition among the Liberal parties of our day, the more
+one could desire Taine's views to exercise a strong and wide-spread
+influence. But, on the other hand, it appears to me that by this very
+conception of political institutions, our author has been led to show
+himself something more than just in the sentence he passes on the
+representatives of this period, the nobles and prelates of 1789. This is
+one of the few incongruities already alluded to between the first and
+second volume. After reading of the luxury, artificiality, and idleness
+of aristocratic society in the former, and coming with the author to the
+conviction that terrible consequences must attend such a condition, one
+is surprised to find in the latter that these privileged ones were the
+best, the most discerning and patriotic portion of the nation, whose
+annihilation or exile brought about the same injurious results that the
+expulsion of the Huguenots had done. This contradiction is not cleared
+up by the fact that in the years immediately preceding the Revolution,
+and chiefly through the influence of Rousseau, a sentimental humanity
+had prevailed in high circles, that here, too, it was the fashion to
+speak of a return to an idyllic life of nature, of universal brotherly
+love, and of the relief of every form of distress. For these
+transformations remained, in point of fact, only fanciful phrases of the
+salons. When Louis XVI., Turgot, and Calonne, really desired to set
+about such philanthropic reforms in good earnest, it was, as we have
+already seen, these sentimental nobles themselves who hindered their
+effort, and by nullifying reform brought about the Revolution. When the
+catastrophe came, many of them had sufficient insight into the new
+position of affairs to make haste and repudiate those privileges which
+throughout the land had been already trampled under foot by an unchained
+people. The horrible persecution to which they were subjected, in utter
+disregard of all existing rights and all human feeling, with
+bloodthirsty cruelty and shameless greed, must ever insure for the
+victims the compassion and sympathy of every right-minded observer; and
+in order fully to justify revolutionary laws against emigrants, one
+would be driven to advance sophisms only, not arguments. But all this
+does not affect the question, whether, as Taine assumes, these
+persecuted ones did hold a distinguished place in the nation for
+political virtue, intellectual culture, and capacity for action.
+Neighbouring nations, so far as I know, without exception took at the
+time an entirely different view. Doubtless, there were among the
+emigrants many who won respect and regard in the regions whither their
+flight had led them. But the great majority, by their thoughtless
+arrogance, mutual bickerings, and shameless frivolity, left behind them
+a bad reputation; whereas a hundred years before the exiled Huguenots,
+by their unity, earnestness, and industry, won, wherever they went, the
+respect and gratitude of their new countrymen.
+
+    HEINRICH VON SYBEL.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF IRELAND?
+
+
+Returning to settle in Ireland after an absence that began more than
+twenty years ago, I found two things strongly claiming my attention.
+One, was the very great advance in material well-being which my country
+appeared to have made. The other, was the fact that both Englishmen and
+Irishmen appeared resolutely to ignore this progress. Nearly all who
+write and speak about Ireland, either dwell upon her grievances or
+assume poverty as her normal condition. I know not of any who have
+attempted to record her returning prosperity. Yet there are few facts in
+modern history better worthy of notice than the advance in material
+wealth which has taken place in Ireland during the thirty years between
+1846 and 1876.
+
+The year 1879 marks the close of just one-third of a century from the
+great famine. The first thirty years of this period, 1846-76, were years
+of continual advance in well-being. From 1877 and down to the present
+year a reaction has been going on, which is largely connected with a
+general depression of trade all over the world. For reasons which will
+appear hereafter, I do not hold that this reaction is likely to be
+permanent.
+
+It is true that at the beginning of that period the country was in the
+very lowest depths of poverty and depression. The starting-point
+therefore was a very backward one: and the wonder is that so much
+advance should have been made, considering not only the backwardness of
+the starting-point but the difficulties of the road.
+
+I shall not attempt to depict the state of things which prevailed at the
+close of the great potato famine. The condition of the country is well
+known; the facts are in the recollection of many persons now living; and
+the evidence is within the reach of all inquirers. I may safely assume
+that Ireland then was among the very poorest of all the countries in
+Europe. What is her position now?
+
+In discussing the social condition of any country, the population
+question naturally comes to the front. Is the population pressing unduly
+on the means of subsistence? then there is something wrong, and until
+this is set right progress is impossible. On the other hand, if the
+population is so sparse as to leave the resources of the country
+undeveloped, there is also something wrong, though in this case the evil
+is far less. The population, such as it is, may be prosperous and
+advancing, though it is not producing all it might.
+
+The former was notoriously the state of things in Ireland before
+1847.[21] In 1845 (the year immediately preceding the famine) the
+population was at the highest point it attained during the present
+century, and probably the highest it ever reached. It was estimated at
+8,295,061. In 1847, the year when the famine was at its height, the
+numbers are given as 8,025,274. In 1875, just thirty years after the
+maximum, the numbers had fallen to 5,309,494. In 1877 they were
+estimated at 5,338,906, showing an increase over 1875 of 29,412.
+
+It is a familiar fact that the population of 1845 and 1847 was
+excessive. Whether the present population may not be defective in regard
+of productive power is a question not without importance, but not
+immediately relevant. What we are now dealing with is the material
+welfare of the existing population; and it is clear that five millions
+can live where eight cannot. But are the five millions better off in
+some proportion to the price the country has paid for the decrease in
+population? And is there a real advance in the condition of the people,
+not a mere rise out of beggary and starvation?
+
+In attempting an answer to a question of this nature, one looks
+naturally to the rate of wages first. But this test is an imperfect one:
+partly because local variations are still considerable; partly because
+money payments in many places and among large classes are more or less
+supplemented by subsistence drawn directly from the land. Besides, a
+mere increase in money wages may mean little or nothing, unless the
+increased wages possess increased purchasing power, and there be at the
+same time an upward tendency in the standard of living. Putting aside
+the wages question accordingly (to be discussed hereafter), let us try
+to find other indications of the extent and nature of the changes in the
+people's condition since the famine. A test of some value, though not
+absolutely conclusive by itself, will be afforded by changes in the area
+of farms. It is notorious that one of the causes which most contributed
+to bring about the famine and its miseries was the small size of
+holdings. Now the census returns show that from 1851, very shortly after
+the famine, there has been a steady decrease in the number of farms
+under fifteen acres, and a steady increase in the number of farms
+between fifteen and thirty acres, as well as in farms exceeding thirty
+acres in area. Up to 1861 the number of holdings not exceeding fifteen
+acres had declined fifty-five per cent., while those above fifteen acres
+had increased 133 per cent. The number of farms between fifteen and
+thirty acres was in 1861 double what it had been in 1841, and the farms
+above thirty acres amounted in 1861 to 157,833, against 48,625, which
+had been their number twenty years before. Between 1861 and 1871 farms
+under fifteen acres decreased by 12,548, and farms above thirty acres
+increased by 1470. According to the latest returns (1875) the farms not
+exceeding one acre in area were 51,459; those of one to five acres were
+69,098; those of five to fifteen acres, 166,959; fifteen to thirty
+acres, 137,669; the total above thirty acres being 160,298 holdings.
+
+This distribution of the land seems to indicate a considerable
+improvement compared with the state of things prevailing before the
+famine. Unfortunately the increase in the size of holdings has not been
+attended by a corresponding decrease in the number held on an insecure
+tenure. Tenancy at will continues to be the rule, and permanency the
+exception, in our land tenure. I have made an attempt to estimate
+roughly the classes of landholders. The "Domesday" list of proprietors
+of land gives the number of owners of one acre and under ten as 6892,
+holding 28,968 acres, or an average of a little over four acres each:
+between ten acres and fifty there are 7746 owners, holding 195,525
+acres, or an average a little over twenty-six acres: between fifty acres
+and a hundred there are 3479 owners, holding 250,147 acres, or an
+average of just under seventy-two acres. These make up a body of small
+proprietors, owning from one to a hundred acres, numbering 18,117.
+_Eason's Almanac_ for 1879, which has been published while I write,
+estimates the number of "proprietors in fee" of agricultural holdings at
+20,217. The same authority gives the number of leaseholders in
+perpetuity as 10,298; for terms of years exceeding thirty-one as 13,712;
+for thirty-one years and under, 47,623 (many of which may be short
+leases); and of leases for lives, or lives and years alternative, as
+63,759. The number of tenancies at will is 526,628, or 77.2 per cent, of
+the whole number of holdings. These statistics were collected in 1870,
+and they have doubtless been in some degree modified by the working of
+the Church Act and the Land Act. I have omitted from my extracts from
+the Domesday list the proprietors of under one acre. These are given in
+_Thom's Directory_ as 36,144, holding 9065 acres; but their holdings do
+not affect the present question, as they are mostly non-agricultural.
+The estimate in _Eason's Almanac_ purports to relate wholly to
+agricultural holdings. Domesday includes all classes.
+
+Another index of the condition of a people may be found in the way they
+are housed. Mean and comfortless dwellings imply not only a low standard
+of comfort, but often a low morality. Let us see how this matter has
+stood in Ireland. The Census Commissioners of 1841 divided the dwellings
+of the people into four classes. The fourth, or lowest, comprised all
+mud cabins having only one room. Of this class there were in all
+Ireland, according to the 1841 census, 491,278. In the last census,
+1871, the number had fallen to 155,675. The third-class dwellings were
+also built of mud, but contained three or four rooms, with windows; the
+latter convenience being by no means universally present in the
+one-roomed cabin of the fourth class. Of the third class the census of
+1841 enumerated 533,297; by 1871 this number had fallen to 357,126. The
+second class are described as good farmhouses, and in towns, houses
+having from five to nine rooms. Of this class in 1841 there were
+264,184; and in 1871 the number had increased to 387,660. The first
+class of houses increased during the same period from 40,080 to 60,919.
+Let us see now in what way the population has been distributed in the
+different classes of houses. In 1841 the number of families occupying
+first-class houses was 31,333. In 1871 the number had risen to 49,693.
+During the same period the number of families in second-class houses
+rose from 241,664 to 357,752. On the other hand, the families in
+third-class houses decreased from 574,386 to 432,774; and those in the
+fourth-class, or one-roomed cabins, from 625,356 to 227,379. By a
+curious coincidence, the _proportion_ of families to houses was the same
+in 1841 and in 1871--one hundred and eleven families to one hundred
+houses. In this way the very great shifting in the _classes_ is all the
+more clearly proved to indicate a real rise in the condition of the
+people.
+
+In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to discuss
+the wages question and the condition of the labouring population. Of the
+actual number of this class I can find no accurate return. But we have
+already seen that the number of families inhabiting the lowest class of
+houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the lowest class of
+labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871 gave the average
+number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100 families, we may
+estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied by 507, or
+1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may be safely
+assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now the money
+wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1_s._ 6_d._ a day in the
+most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in harvest
+time the labourers earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a day. A great many labourers have
+small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count
+directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is that
+the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his family
+can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig,
+&c.--thereby eking out the actual money payment.
+
+The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward
+and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast, potatoes
+and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper. The
+people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of
+feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics
+abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the sea
+that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are
+always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many of the
+labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am told that
+in certain districts there is one day in the year when every family
+among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of fresh
+meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish this
+meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.
+
+The condition of the people being such as I have described, one would
+naturally expect not to find pauperism very prevalent. As a matter of
+fact it is not. The average daily number of paupers in the workhouses
+throughout 1876 was 43,235, and of recipients of out-door relief 31,600:
+bringing up the total to 74,835. The average of persons in receipt of
+relief was 140.6 in 10,000 of population. This daily average represents
+the current subsisting mass of pauperism, and is in a considerable
+measure made up of the old, infirm, and sick. Of able-bodied paupers,
+the males were only 1697 in the daily average of workhouse inmates, and
+the females were 4130. There were 10,134 healthy children under fifteen
+in the workhouses, and the other inmates were either sick in hospital or
+permanently unable to work. These figures seem to be the very reverse of
+alarming. Permanent pauperism is not a very virulent social disorder
+when only two able-bodied persons to every five hundred of the
+population are in receipt of in-door relief, and when the whole
+permanent pauper population barely exceeds fourteen in a thousand. But
+though permanent pauperism may be well in hand, casual pauperism may be
+at a high pitch. Let us see how this matter has stood. I shall first
+take the statistics of 1876, and then try to modify my conclusions by
+such later figures as may be available. In 1876 the population of
+England and Wales stood at 24,244,000, and the total of paupers in
+receipt of relief, in-door and out-door, on the 1st of January of that
+year, was 752,887; Scotland, with a population of 3,527,000, had a total
+pauper population on the 1st of January, 1876, of 66,733. In Ireland, on
+the same date, the total population being 5,321,600, the paupers
+amounted to 77,913. In other words, at a rough estimate, on the 1st of
+January, 1876, about one person in every thirty-three in England and
+Wales was in receipt of relief as a pauper; in Scotland, about one in
+every fifty-three; while in Ireland the proportion was only one in
+sixty-eight. A similar proportion appears in the incidence of the
+poor-rate. In 1876 England and Wales paid at the rate of 6_s._ 0¾_d._
+per head of population; Scotland 5_s_. 0½_d._; Ireland only 3_s._
+4_d._
+
+Of course these figures must undergo modification in view of the altered
+circumstances of the present time. The statistics of 1876 are not an
+accurate guide to the facts of 1879. During the last three years there
+has been considerable depression of trade; and it may very well be that
+the returns of this year will indicate an ebb in the tide of prosperity.
+But, unless I am very much mistaken, after making all allowances, it
+will probably be found that Ireland is the part of the United Kingdom
+least affected by the present prolonged commercial crisis.[22]
+
+The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the
+considerable class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of
+wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but
+perhaps not less intelligent class--that of English travellers in
+Ireland--will promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are
+cooked; they will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been
+beset with beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from
+pauperism? Surely the true state of the case is that the people keep out
+of the workhouses merely in order to live on public charity in another
+form?" It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very
+common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national
+scandal. There is, however, something to be said in mitigation of
+judgment, though perhaps not in defence. It is a matter in which figures
+are of little use; for no one could, by any possibility, estimate how
+many persons live wholly by begging. That there are in every community
+some persons who do may be taken as certain. That their number is larger
+in proportion to the bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in
+a Protestant community, is antecedently probable. The theory of the
+Roman Catholic religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to
+be no sin to live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms.
+_Never turn away thy face from any poor man_, is a text acted on by
+devout Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not
+difficult to foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the
+Irish Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of
+indiscriminate almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small
+degree by the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful
+efforts in the direction of the organization of charity. Another
+influence, which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy
+that scandalizes the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The
+habits of centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than
+twenty years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the
+Irish poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is
+limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of Catholic
+chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the roads leading
+to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often beset by little
+knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these are no more
+professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself with pheasant
+shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of excitement
+with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner or more
+vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.
+
+Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would
+exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is
+common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a
+larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply
+of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the
+mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the
+small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to
+show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the
+revenues of the Irish mendicant!
+
+An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete
+without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here
+we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England
+and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of
+drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an
+approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland,
+the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209,
+or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the
+drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous
+proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in
+all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so
+that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England,
+still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same,
+this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is
+rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of
+apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people
+might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on
+greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other
+hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox,
+argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk
+proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make
+an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament,
+and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man,
+when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the
+habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be
+given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force
+is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in
+England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter
+seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a
+quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier
+constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home.
+That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the
+startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we
+come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with
+drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces,
+it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.
+
+The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally
+those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink
+may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an
+indirect fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things
+which he may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of
+poverty, and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring
+then to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876
+only four persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number
+sentenced in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy;
+for the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of
+only about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in
+England were eight times as numerous as in Ireland.[25] But this is not
+all. Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these
+drink is only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly
+every murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of
+intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve
+sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none
+in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as
+representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the
+thirty-two persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were
+executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come to
+sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were
+only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of returns
+of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it is not
+easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the statistics of
+conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the person are
+much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland than in
+England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable
+expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in
+London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel
+anywhere in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the
+apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a
+proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the other
+hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth), we have
+1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties inflicted in
+Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.
+
+Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence, we
+find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against none
+in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against 26 in
+Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against only 69 in
+Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect drink to be
+a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there is no
+assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by violence,
+except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for crime.
+Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for minor
+offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against 10,674 in
+England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for terms of
+years, against 1063 in England.
+
+All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal
+of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is
+true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes,
+especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing
+minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization
+make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that,
+though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy
+keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have time
+for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something to
+do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but this is
+certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges of
+Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white gloves
+instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may be, I
+merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the most
+part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference
+they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken animals
+after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception to the
+rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on the Irish
+character--agrarian outrage--is not to be accounted for by drink. The
+true explanation is familiar to all who really know the country. The
+Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his support, and
+believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself to have a
+moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a belief
+which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be stated
+with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it
+without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his
+hostility to the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment,
+looks on himself as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a
+wronged man (which he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged
+have always been raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply
+a brigand in a frieze coat.
+
+I have no desire to compose an Essay on the Land Question; but it is
+absolutely impracticable to discuss Irish social economy without finding
+the Land Question in one's way. It is the question which most closely
+concerns the industrial classes; for the land is the mainstay of Irish
+industry. It is the pivot upon which all Irish politics turn; for
+although priestly influence counts for a great deal, that influence
+itself depends in great measure on the land hunger of the peasantry. I
+feel that I should be leaving Hamlet out of the play if I did not say a
+few words on the matter. As I have already hinted, the Irish peasant has
+three reasons for his desire to be "rooted in the soil." One is a
+traditional reason. He thinks that his forefathers were unjustly ousted
+by foreign conquerors. His belief rests on an utterly distorted view of
+history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors
+of a few of the existing peasantry might in a sort of sense have been
+called landowners. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be
+equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had
+been the serfs or the slaves of barbarous chieftains. The old Gaelic
+tribal ownership, if left to itself, might or might not have ripened
+into a peasant proprietary; but the only real grievance which the
+existing Gaelic peasantry can allege, is that the English conquest
+forcibly interrupted the natural process of evolution. Moreover, a large
+number of the existing peasants are no true Gael at all, but the
+descendants of Danes, Normans, and the various waves of Saxon settlers
+from Elizabeth to William of Orange. In parts of Ireland there are even
+to be found the descendants of French Huguenots, of Scotch fugitives
+involved in the Stuart insurrections, and of refugees of 1793. That such
+a _colluvies gentium_ should claim to be the heirs of Septs which
+occupied the land
+
+    "Ere the emerald gem of the Western world
+        Had been set in the crown of a stranger,"
+
+is simply a proof of profound ignorance of history. Such, however, is
+the vague traditional belief; and it is complicated with a moral
+sentiment, that he who tills the land has a right to live by the land.
+The sentiment is open to no objection, provided it be understood that
+the land is an instrument of production in which the whole community is
+interested. The cultivator has the same right to live by the land as the
+artisan to live by his handicraft, and no more--that is, both peasant
+and artisan have a right to expect that the social system shall be so
+adjusted that neither shall be unjustly deprived of the fruit of his
+labour. But neither peasant nor artisan can claim that any instrument of
+production shall be used for the sole sake of the producer. Hence, even
+if peasant proprietorship were undeniably the best thing for the
+peasant, it does not follow that he has a moral right to it, unless it
+be good for the whole community as well. This consideration is too
+often neglected by the thorough-going advocates of peasant
+proprietorship. They assume that the interests of the peasants are the
+only interests to be considered. In Ireland, indeed, they are not far
+wrong; for the peasantry _are_ very nearly the whole community. This,
+however, only raises the previous question, whether peasant
+proprietorship would be a success in Ireland--of which hereafter. The
+last and most practical of the agrarian arguments is that a tenant
+evicted is a man ruined. Even this is only partially true, and at most
+is only an argument against capricious eviction. It is conclusive as
+against the system of tenancy at will, or any of those short tenures
+which are, in fact, a standing notice to quit. It holds good in favour
+of peasant proprietorship to this extent--that the ruin of a peasant
+proprietor can only occur through his own fault or misfortune, and not
+through the caprice of a landlord. In short, the discontent of the Irish
+peasantry proves that the Anglo-Irish system of tenure is about the
+worst of all possible systems; but it proves little or nothing in favour
+of peasant ownership.
+
+My own opinion (_valeat quantum_) is that the soil and climate of
+Ireland render the country utterly unfit to maintain a considerable body
+of peasant proprietors; but that, nevertheless, it would be wise and
+politic to establish peasant properties as widely as may be practicable.
+The climate is notoriously damp, and variable in the extreme. Grain
+crops are inferior and precarious--root crops are not much better--even
+meadows are untrustworthy, because of the difficulty of haymaking--but
+Irish pasture is perhaps the best in the world. Natural conditions mark
+out Ireland as a pastoral and cattle-breeding country; and such a
+country is the destined home of _latifundia_. It is not merely that
+cattle require large spaces of pasture; but the trade in cattle requires
+capital, and requires the power of staying through seasons of adversity.
+An attempt to breed or deal in cattle by a class of peasant proprietors,
+acting singly, could only end in ruin; a ruin even more complete than
+bad seasons would bring upon unsuccessful cultivators of grain. Another
+product for which Ireland is eminently fitted is timber.[26] This also
+obviously requires spaces of land, and intervals of idle capital,
+utterly incompatible with any system of small holdings. Nature would
+seem to have marked out Ireland as a country to be thinly populated;
+historical accident once made her one of the most populous of countries,
+and we all know what came of it. The people were dependent on a single
+kind of food; it failed, and misery ensued such as modern Europe had
+never beheld. The scenes of 1847 we may devoutly hope will never be
+witnessed again; but such a season as 1878-79 would be a trial that few
+peasant proprietors could stand. Why then do I say that a peasant
+proprietary ought to be created? Because I believe that in the
+experiment is to be found the sole method of convincing the Irish
+peasants that their true interest lies in quite another direction. The
+peasant now believes that all he wants in order to be prosperous is to
+be "rooted in the soil." It is of no use to appeal to abstract
+reasoning. He knows that he has to pay rent, and that he is liable to
+eviction for non-payment. Carefully as recent legislation has guarded
+him against capricious eviction, he knows that if his landlord chooses
+to pay for turning him out, out he must go. The few of his neighbours
+who do acquire freeholds, he perceives to be comparatively prosperous.
+He does not take into account that the prosperity of the freeholder is
+maintained by precisely the same exceptional energy and thrift which in
+the first instance enabled him to secure the freehold. Besides, it is
+undeniable that _cæteris paribus_ a man who holds rent-free is likely to
+be better off than one who pays rent; and so long as rent is the rule
+and freehold the exception, the few freeholders will seem at least to
+possess an advantage over the many rentpayers. In short, the peasant
+farmer will never cease to believe ownership a panacea for all his ills,
+until he shall have tried it, and failed. Of course it does not
+absolutely follow that the experiment of creating a peasant proprietary
+must needs fail. It may succeed; and then the Irish land problem is
+solved. For the reasons given above, however, I think it would fail. If
+all the holdings of fifteen acres and under (there are 285,000[27] of
+them, or nearly half the whole number of farms in Ireland) were turned
+into peasant properties tomorrow, I believe they would in thirty, or at
+most in fifty, years be recast into large cattle farms, owned probably
+for the most part by joint-stock companies. The process of consolidation
+would be partly the buying out of ruined peasants after some such
+seasons as we are now undergoing; partly a voluntary union of the
+residue, who would find association desirable in order to secure a
+sufficiency of land and capital. But those who might be compelled to
+part with their lands could no longer ascribe their ruin to the tenure
+by which they held. It would be made clear to them and to all concerned
+that it is the laws of Nature and not the laws of England which hinder
+Ireland from maintaining a dense agricultural population.
+
+It may be urged against what I have here said, that it is hardly worth
+while engaging in a social revolution merely in order that the last
+state of things may turn out on the whole very similar to the first. I
+cannot deny the force of this remark; though I may suggest, in my turn,
+that perhaps it is worth while to make some sacrifice for the sake of
+attaining stable equilibrium in the social system. I am persuaded that
+the one great difficulty in Irish affairs is to convince the peasant
+that the law is a power not hostile but friendly to him. This is no easy
+task. It is not so very long since the law actually was the hard master
+it is still supposed to be. Nor is the peasant's own attitude of mind a
+very easy one to deal with. He clamours loudly to be "rooted in the
+soil," or, in other words, to be made absolute owner of his farm; but he
+clamours not less loudly against the absenteeship of his landlord. He
+utterly fails to perceive the inconsistency of his position. He cannot
+eat his cake and have his cake. He cannot be at one and the same time
+tenant to a resident lord of the manor, and owner in fee-simple of his
+own holding. Absolute peasant ownership is _primâ facie_ incompatible
+with the very existence of a landed aristocracy; and it may be some
+perception of this that induces certain of the land agitators to propose
+fixity of tenure at a quit-rent rather than absolute peasant
+proprietorship. But it is clear that this is a mere evasion of the
+difficulty. A landlord, who is merely a rent-charger, has no more motive
+to reside on his estate than if he sold it and lived on the interest of
+the purchase-money. There is no doubt a sense in which the two things
+are not absolutely incompatible. Peasant properties might be intermixed
+with large estates owned by resident landlords. And this would certainly
+constitute a state of things by no means undesirable; in fact, it is
+what might possibly emerge from the experiment I have mentioned above. I
+think it more than probable that a great deal of the land, after such an
+experiment, would fall into the hands of joint-stock companies; but a
+considerable portion might also be bought up by individuals, who might
+choose to become resident landlords. It must, however, be remembered
+that there are many things besides agrarian agitation which tempt Irish
+landlords to become absentees. Residence in Ireland is attended with
+many drawbacks and discomforts, even when a landlord is on the best of
+terms with his tenantry. Absenteeism is no new complaint; Adam Smith
+discussed proposals for an absentee-tax. Its prevalence is not
+uncommonly ascribed to the Union, but it might as well be ascribed to
+the Deluge. The most potent causes of absenteeism in the latter half of
+the nineteenth century are the City of Dublin Steam Navigation Company,
+and the London and North-Western Railway. These, and kindred
+institutions, are also the channels which conduct a vast deal of wealth
+into Ireland; and if absenteeism constitutes a perennial drain on her
+resources, the facilities of locomotion cause the drain to return
+ten-fold.[28] If these facilities did not exist, it does not follow that
+the landlords who remained at home would necessarily be of much use to
+the community. The squires and _squireens_ in Lever's and Maxwell's
+novels are very amusing to read about; but they are a race that nobody
+at the present day would seriously wish to revive. However this may be,
+there is little inducement for the existing landlords to remain resident
+in a country where they are continually threatened, and occasionally
+shot. I cannot help thinking that in the tendency to absenteeism,
+courageous statesmanship might find the means of solving the Land
+problem. There should be little difficulty, one would imagine, in
+persuading a number of existing Irish landlords to part with their
+estates for a reasonable compensation.[29] The Church Surplus is at hand
+to provide the purchase-money. After deducting the sums to be paid to
+the Intermediate Education Board, and to the National School Teachers'
+Pension Fund, there will remain nearly four millions in the hands of the
+Temporalities Commission. This money judiciously advanced to tenant
+farmers would enable a considerable number of them to acquire the
+freehold of their farms, and thus the foundations of a peasant
+proprietary might be laid without any confiscation or disturbance of
+vested rights. The Royal Commission on Agriculture would perhaps be a
+good medium for acquiring information on this subject. They might
+include in the scope of their inquiry the best method of carrying out
+some such scheme as has been here indicated.
+
+Having set out with no intention beyond that of offering a general view
+of a few leading facts and figures relating to Irish affairs, I find
+myself insensibly gliding into a political discussion. So far as I have
+any excuse for this, it must be found in the irrepressible character of
+the Land problem; which, as I before remarked, can by no possibility be
+evaded by any one who writes on Irish social economy. Yet this problem
+itself is in one aspect simply a phase of the struggle going on all over
+the world between, labour and capital. Side by side with this there is
+yet another struggle going on, which is also a phase of a world-wide
+conflict. It is the old story of Priesthood against Free Thought; but in
+Ireland, like nearly all things Irish, it bears a peculiar aspect of its
+own. Many a man here would be amazed to be told that he is fighting on
+the side of the priests; yet the Irish Orange Tory, and to some extent
+even the Irish Evangelical clergyman, is really and truly (though of
+course unconsciously) helping the policy of the Roman Church. But it
+would extend my essay beyond all reasonable limits to discuss this
+matter; and besides, I set out to write on statistics, and not on
+politics.[30]
+
+    EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] The statistics in this Essay are chiefly taken from _Thom's Almanac
+and Official Directory for 1878_. The tables given in that Almanac are
+for the most part brought down no later than 1876. It so happens,
+however, that 1876 is a very convenient date for the purpose of this
+paper. It marks the conclusion of a period of just thirty years from the
+worst crisis of the Potato Famine; and it marks also the conclusion of a
+cycle of commercial inflation, some of whose results were strongly felt
+in Ireland.
+
+I have, of course, consulted other authorities besides _Thom's
+Directory_, but I shall specify these as occasion arises. When no
+special reference is given, my authority is Thom.
+
+[22] While I write _Eason's Almanac for 1879_ has been published. This
+authority gives the total average of paupers daily in receipt of relief
+through 1877 as 78,223, or 146.5 in 10,000 of the population. An
+increase of less than six in ten thousand is not very alarming, and the
+fact seems in some measure to justify the opinion I have ventured to
+express in the text, that Ireland will be found to suffer less from the
+present crisis than other parts of the United Kingdom. It must, however,
+be taken into consideration that the present year (1879) threatens a
+very poor harvest: and this circumstance is absolutely certain to
+enhance whatever distress already exists.
+
+[23] See note on previous page.
+
+[24] The 24¼ millions in England and Wales are kept in order by a
+police force of 29,689. In Scotland 3½ millions of population have
+only 3356 policemen. In Ireland, with a population well under 5½
+millions, there are 12,081 policemen. And yet, as will appear presently,
+there is far less crime in Ireland relatively than in either of the
+other kingdoms.
+
+[25] It is only just to admit that the death sentences are not a fair
+test. Too many murders remain undetected, owing to the existence of
+agrarian conspiracy. The number of murders known to have been committed
+is unluckily not to be found in the returns to which I have access. But
+the very fact of their remaining undetected is a proof that they are not
+directly connected with intoxication, for it shows that they are for the
+most part agrarian.
+
+[26] It has been calculated, apparently on trustworthy data, that an
+acre of land planted with larch or fir, at an expense of about £20,
+would be worth £2000 at the end of forty years, besides the intermediate
+yield from clearings of young timber, game cover, and so forth. This is
+a very high return for a small outlay; but it is completely beyond the
+means of any peasant proprietor.
+
+[27] _Eason's Almanac_, 1879. The actual number is 285,464. The total of
+agricultural holdings is 581,963.
+
+[28] I have unfortunately been unable to obtain any statistics of the
+cross-channel trade. I find it stated in _Thom's Directory_ that the
+trade of Belfast alone was valued in the year 1866 at £24,332,000--viz.,
+£12,417,000 imports and £11,915,000 exports. The year 1866 was a bad
+year: so it may be assumed that these figures represent a low average. I
+find no means of estimating the import and export trade of Cork and
+Dublin.
+
+I may mention here that one cause of interruption in the composition of
+this paper was an unsuccessful search for complete trade statistics.
+
+[29] A few of the Home Rule M.P.'s who are now stumping the country on
+the Land grievance are themselves landlords. It has been suggested that
+they should introduce fixity of tenure on their estates, in one or other
+of its various forms. Mr. Errington (who is _not_ one of the stump
+orators of the party) has, I am told, notified his intention to give
+long leases to his tenantry. In a case like this the _argumentum ad
+hominem_, though a perfectly fair one, is a perfectly useless one.
+
+[30] I have referred above (note, p. 463) to my failure to obtain trade
+statistics. This circumstance has caused me to fail also in fully
+carrying out the original plan of this paper. I had intended not only to
+give a general view of the recent condition of the Irish people, but to
+enter somewhat fully into its causes, and discuss the probabilities of
+the future. The great revival in prosperity, which I have imperfectly
+sketched, was closely connected with the cross-channel trade. At
+present, affairs look sufficiently gloomy both here and in England; and
+the forecast of the future depends mainly upon the prospect of revival
+in English trade.
+
+
+
+
+THE DELUGE:
+
+ITS TRADITIONS IN ANCIENT NATIONS.
+
+
+Of all traditions relating to the history of primitive humanity, by far
+the most universal is that of the Deluge. Our present purpose is to pass
+under review the principal versions of it extant among the leading races
+of men. The concordance of these with the Biblical narrative will bring
+out their primary unity, and we shall thus be able to recognize the fact
+of this tradition being one of those which date before the dispersion of
+peoples, go back to the very dawn of the civilized world, and can only
+refer to a real and definite event.
+
+But we have previously to get rid of certain legendary recollections
+erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, their essential
+features forbidding sound criticism to assimilate them therewith. We
+allude to such as refer to local phenomena, and are of historic and
+comparatively recent date. Doubtless the tradition of the great
+primitive cataclysm may have been confused with these, and thus have led
+to an exaggeration of their importance; but the characteristic points of
+the narrative admitted into the Book of Genesis are wanting, and even
+under the legendary form it has assumed these events retain a decidedly
+special and restricted character. To group recollections of this nature
+with those that really relate to the Deluge would be to invalidate,
+rather than confirm, the consequences we are entitled to draw from the
+latter.
+
+Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books of
+China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even
+resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the
+date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous
+to the eighth century B.C., we may yet determine as long subsequent to
+the fully historic periods of Egypt and Babylon.[31] Chinese authors
+describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course
+of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of
+every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot, has
+proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the
+Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above
+catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its banks
+had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were but the
+beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters, carried on
+further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven on the rocky
+face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for contemporaneous
+with these works, and is consequently the most ancient specimen of
+Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears to present an
+intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts
+suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious fact
+connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through ancient
+copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research has
+failed to re-discover the original.
+
+Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the
+legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the
+ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America,
+although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with the
+fundamental historic element.
+
+Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica,
+having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river Funzha
+leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its waters;
+men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few escape by flight
+to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that Botchica broke
+asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, in
+order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next reassembled the
+dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship, and went up
+to heaven, after having lived 500 years in Cundinamarca.
+
+
+I.
+
+_Chaldean and Biblical Narratives._--Of the traditions relating to the
+great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans.
+Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the
+tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes
+nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes
+evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time when
+Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into Palestine.
+
+We have two versions of the Chaldean story--unequally developed indeed,
+but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and
+also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of
+Babylon and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of
+the Greeks.[32] After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the
+Chaldean priest continues thus:--
+
+    "Obartès Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra)
+    reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the
+    Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred
+    documents as follows:--Cronos (Êa) appeared to him in his sleep, and
+    announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the
+    Assyrian month Sivan--a little before the summer solstice), all men
+    should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the
+    beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to
+    writing,[33] and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then
+    to build a vessel, and to enter into it with his family and dearest
+    friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to
+    cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare
+    everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what
+    direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'towards the
+    gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.
+
+    "Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and
+    five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and
+    embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.
+
+    "The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some
+    of the birds. These finding no food nor place to alight on returned
+    to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but
+    they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally,
+    loosed the third time the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros
+    understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof
+    of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain.
+    He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot,
+    worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the
+    gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.
+
+    "Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel not seeing Xisuthros
+    return, descended too and began to seek him, calling him by his
+    name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard
+    commanding them piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was
+    receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell
+    thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his
+    daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour. The
+    voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and
+    conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at
+    Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country
+    in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having
+    heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to
+    Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in
+    Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in
+    Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped
+    from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of
+    witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon,
+    disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities,
+    built temples, and restored Babylon."
+
+By the side of this version, which, interesting though it be, is, after
+all, second hand, we are now able to place an original
+Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the
+first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh and now in
+the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an
+episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chaunt of the great epic of
+the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name
+has not as yet been made out with certainty,[34] being attacked by
+disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult
+the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to
+which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He
+asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his
+obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is
+induced to relate the cataclysm.
+
+By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the
+palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the
+narrative with hardly any breaks.[35] These three copies were, by order
+of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C.,
+from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of
+Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is
+difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian
+scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen
+centuries, at least, before our era, and even probably beyond; it was
+therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with
+Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove
+that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the
+_hieratic_, a character which must have already become difficult to
+decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to
+the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have
+simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand.
+Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the
+original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a
+copy of some still more ancient manuscript, in which the original text
+had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have
+introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these
+preliminary observations I proceed to give integrally the narrative
+ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:--
+
+    "I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my
+    preservation--and tell to thee the decision of the gods.
+
+    "The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on
+    the Euphrates--it was ancient and in it [men did not honour] the
+    gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods--[The gods
+    took counsel on the appeal of] Anu--[a deluge was proposed by]
+    Bel--[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
+
+    "And the god [Êa] the immutable lord,--repeated this command in a
+    dream.--I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he
+    said to me:--'Man of Shiruppak, son of Ubaratutu--thou, build a
+    vessel and finish it [quickly].--[By a deluge] I will destroy
+    substance and life.--Cause thou to go up into the vessel the
+    substance of all that has life.--The vessel thou shall build--600
+    cubits shall be the measure of its length--and 60 cubits the amount
+    of its breadth and of its height.--[Launch it] thus on the ocean and
+    cover it with a roof.'--I understood, and I said to Êa, my
+    lord:--'[The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus--[when] I
+    shall do it,--young and old [shall laugh at me.]'--[Êa opened his
+    mouth and] spoke.--He said to me, his servant:--'[If they laugh at
+    thee] thou shalt say to them: [shall be punished] he who has
+    insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.-- ... like
+    to caverns ... ---- ... I will exercise my judgment on that which is
+    on high and that which is below ... ---- ... Close the vessel ...
+    ---- ... At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,--enter
+    into it and draw the door of the ship towards thee.--Within it, thy
+    grains, thy furniture, thy provisions,--thy riches, thy
+    men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people--the
+    cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the plain that I will
+    assemble--and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy
+    door.'--Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;--he said to Êa, his
+    lord:--'No one has made [such a] ship.--On the prow I will
+    fix....--I shall see ... and the vessel ...--the vessel thou
+    commandest me to build [thus]--which in....[36]
+
+    "On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.--In its
+    covering fourteen in all were its rafters--fourteen in all did it
+    count above.--I placed its roof and I covered it.--I embarked in it
+    on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;--I divided
+    the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks
+    through which the water entered in;--I visited the chinks and added
+    what was wanting.--I poured on the exterior three times 3,600
+    measures of asphalte,--and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte
+    within.--Three times 3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the
+    chests of provisions.--I kept 3,600 chests for the nourishment of my
+    family,--and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3,600
+    chests.--For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;--I instituted
+    [rations] for each day.--In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of
+    barrels and of wine--[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of
+    a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the
+    earth.--[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.-- ... of
+    the sun ... the vessel was completed.-- ... strong and--I had
+    carried above and below the furniture of the ship.--[This lading
+    filled the two-thirds.]
+
+    "All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver
+    I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered--all
+    that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered
+    together.--I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants male and
+    female,--the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains,
+    and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend."
+
+    "Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined and----he announced it
+    in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly
+    from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.'----The fixed
+    moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms: 'In the
+    evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven.'----When the
+    evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,----I entered into the
+    vessel and shut my door.----In shutting the vessel, to
+    Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot----I confided this dwelling, with all
+    that it contained.
+
+    "Mu-sheri-ina-namari[37]--rose from the foundations of heaven in a
+    black cloud;--Ramman[38] thundered in the midst of the cloud--and
+    Nabon and Sharru marched before;--they marched, devastating the
+    mountain and the plain;--Nergal[39] the powerful, dragged
+    chastisements after him;--Adar[40] advanced, overthrowing before
+    him;--the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction--in their
+    terrors they agitated the earth.--The inundation of Ramman swelled
+    up to the sky--and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed
+    into a desert.
+
+    "They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;--[they
+    destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.--The
+    terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].--The brother no
+    longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In
+    heaven--the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and--sought a
+    refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[41]--The gods were
+    stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like
+    dogs.--Ishtar wailed like a child,--the great goddess pronounced her
+    discourse:--'Here is humanity returned into mud, and--this is the
+    misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.--So I
+    announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,--for the evil
+    I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.--I am
+    the mother who gave birth to men, and--like to the race of fishes,
+    there they are filling the sea;--and the gods by reason of
+    that--which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with
+    me.'--The gods on their seats were seated in tears--and they held
+    their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
+
+    "Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and
+    the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the
+    seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible
+    water-spout--which had assailed after the fashion of an
+    earthquake--grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and
+    the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
+    observing--and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto
+    seaweeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light
+    smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I
+    wept;--and my tears came over my face.
+
+    "I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points
+    of the horizon; not any continent.--The vessel was borne above the
+    land of Nizir--the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did
+    not permit it to pass over.--A day and a second day the mountain of
+    Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;--the
+    third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and
+    did not permit it to pass over;--the fifth and sixth day the
+    mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass
+    over.--At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a
+    dove. The dove went, turned, and--found no place to light on, and it
+    came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went,
+    turned, and--found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent
+    out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the
+    waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.
+
+    "I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds,
+    and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on
+    the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured
+    vases,[42]--and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood.
+    The gods were seized with the desire of it--the gods were seized
+    with a benevolent desire of it;--and the gods assembled like flies
+    above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the
+    great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their
+    glory (the gods).[43] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will
+    never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave
+    them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!--but never may Bel
+    come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he
+    has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men
+    for the pit.'
+
+    "From far, in drawing near, Bel--saw the vessel, and Bel
+    stopped;--he was filled with anger against the gods and the
+    celestial archangels:--
+
+    "'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the
+    abyss!'--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior
+    Bel:--'What other than Êa should have formed this resolution?--for
+    Êa possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all.'--Êa opened his mouth
+    and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--'O thou, herald of the gods,
+    warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the
+    water-spout of the deluge.--Let the sinner carry the weight of his
+    sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.--Please thyself
+    with this good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it
+    never [shall be violated.]--Instead of thy making a new deluge, let
+    lions appear and reduce the number of men; instead of thy making a
+    new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;--instead
+    of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine and let the earth be
+    [devastated];--instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara[44]
+    appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision
+    of the great gods;--it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and
+    comprehended what the gods had decided.'
+
+    "Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the
+    vessel.--He took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise and
+    made her place herself at my side.--He turned around us and stopped
+    short; he approached our group.--'Until now Khasisatra has made part
+    of perishable humanity;--but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are
+    going to be carried away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will
+    reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'--They carried me away and
+    established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."
+
+This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that, or
+rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides
+striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated,
+that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different
+narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the
+other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final
+editor. Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he
+omitted no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice
+narrated in different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are
+mixed up, it is easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each
+should form a continuous and unbroken narrative. Some critics have
+recently pretended that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and
+Deluge, both cuneiform documents disproved the distinction between the
+two sources of Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its
+composition; that the same repetitions, in effect, were to be found
+there. This was a premature conclusion, drawn from translations very
+imperfect as yet, and requiring thorough revision; and, indeed,
+confining ourselves to the story of the Deluge, such revision, carried
+on according to strict philological principles, does away with the
+arguments that had been based on the version of George Smith. None of
+the repetitions of the final text of Genesis are observable in the
+Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary, decisively confirms the
+distinction made between the two narratives, the Elohist and Jehovist,
+interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. It is with each of
+these separately--when disentangled and compared--that the Chaldean
+narrative coincides in its order--it is not with the result of their
+combination. And nothing could be easier than to demonstrate this by a
+synoptic table, in which the three narratives were collated.
+
+Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference,
+what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its
+own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions of the
+same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on the one
+hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel streams
+proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on both sides
+divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation of the two
+traditions to have taken place at a very remote era, and the one of
+which the Bible affords us the expression to be not merely an edition of
+that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated from a severely
+monotheistic point of view.
+
+The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant
+of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, _têbâh_, signifies
+"coffer," and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the
+ark; there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no
+pilot. In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have
+been composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a
+reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the
+Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is
+launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with
+bitumen, it is entrusted to a pilot.
+
+The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king, who
+goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants and
+companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who are
+saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's three
+sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction (in
+the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between clean and
+unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered by sevens,
+although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially sacramental
+character.
+
+As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only between
+the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal, but between
+the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform documents measure
+the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus by stadia. Genesis states its
+length and breadth to have been in the proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of
+5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand,
+the fragments of Berosus do not treat of the relative dimensions of
+height and breadth, and the tablet gives them as equal, while the Bible
+speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty of breadth. But these
+differences as to figures have but a secondary importance; nothing so
+liable to alterations and variations in different editions of the same
+narrative. We may observe, however, that in Genesis it is only the
+Elohist--always much addicted to figures--who gives the dimensions of
+the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the Jehovist alone who tells of
+the sending forth of the birds, which occupies a considerable place in
+the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations here between the Biblical
+story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter adding the swallow to
+the dove and the raven, and not attributing to the dove the part of a
+messenger of good tidings, I do not think they go for much. The
+agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of far more importance.
+
+But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the
+absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the
+Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different
+systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions,
+dissimilar in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from
+Chaldea.
+
+By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the ordinal
+numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a lunar year,
+beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October), at the autumnal
+equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the Author of the Targum
+of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi and Kimchi, among the Jewish
+commentators of the Middle Ages; and proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis
+among the moderns. The rain begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark
+the 17th day of the second month--_i.e._, Marcheshvan. The great force
+of the waters lasts 150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month--_i.e._,
+Nisan (March-April)--the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the
+tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the
+mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following
+year--that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox--the waters have
+completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the second
+month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus eleven days--that
+is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365 days. Now, under
+the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria, the rains of late
+autumn begin towards the end of November, and at once the level of the
+Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow of the two rivers
+occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at the end of May, from
+which time the waters go down. At the end of June they have left the
+plains, and from August to November are at their lowest level. Now the
+dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist, and re-stated as we have been
+doing according to Michaelis and Knobel, accord perfectly with these
+phases of the rising and falling of the two Mesopotamian rivers. They
+accord even better in the primitive system which served for
+starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has been so ingeniously
+restored by M. Schræder,[45] a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days
+in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its greatest height and
+150 for its decrease. According to this system, the leaving of the ark
+must have taken place on the first day of the 601st year of Noah's
+life--that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox.
+Thus the deliverance of the father of the new humanity, as well as the
+Covenant made by God with him and his race, were fixed on the very day
+to which an ancient opinion which has maintained itself among the Jews
+assigned the creation of the world. As to the beginning of the Deluge,
+it occurred, according to the same system, on the 1st day of the third
+month--that is to say, at the commencement of the lunation whose end
+coincided with the Sun's entry into Capricorn, when the conjunction of
+planets brought about periodic deluges according to an astrological
+conception of Chaldean origin, which does not indeed appear a very
+ancient one; but must have been based on data adopted by some of the
+sacerdotal schools of Babylonia as to the epoch of the cataclysm.
+
+It is also with the winter rains, and not with the swelling of the
+Euphrates and Tigris in spring, that the calendrical construction,
+according to which the antediluvian kings or patriarchs have been placed
+in relation with solar mansions (a construction followed in Uruk's Epic
+poem), causes the commencement of the Deluge to coincide. It connects,
+in point of fact, the tradition of the cataclysm with the month of
+Shabut (January-February), and with the sign of Aquarius. Accordingly, I
+find great difficulty in admitting the exactness of the date, 15th of
+Daisios, given in the extract of Alexander Polybister, as that assigned
+by Berosus to the Deluge, for this would make the event occur in the
+middle of the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, in a
+season of complete drought, when the rivers have reached their lowest
+level. I hold this to be an evident error, due not to the author of the
+Chaldean History himself, but to his transcriber. Berosus must have
+written μηνὸς ὀγδόυ· πέμπτῃ καὶ δεκάτῃ the 15th of the eighth month,
+translating into Greek the Assyrian name of the Arakh-Shanina. And by a
+readily explicable error Cornelius Alexander must have turned it into
+Daisios, which was the eighth month of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar,
+forgetting the difference between the initial point of its year and that
+of the Chaldeo-Assyrian. In reality, then, the date given by Berosus
+only differed by two days from that adopted by the Elohist compiler of
+Genesis. Besides, as Knobel rightly insists, in placing the commencement
+of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th of a month, we place it always at the
+full moon, for it is also with this phase of the light that lights the
+night that popular belief in Egypt and Mesopotamia links the periodic
+rise of Nile or Tigris.
+
+The system of the Jehovist is quite a different one. According to him,
+Jahveh announces the Deluge to Noah only seven days beforehand. The
+waters are at their height for forty days, and decrease during forty
+more. After these eighty days Noah sends out the three birds at
+intervals of seven days, and thus it is on the 21st day after he has
+opened the window of the ark for the first time that he, too, goes out
+of the ark and offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here the phases of the
+cataclysm are evidently calculated on those of the annual spring outflow
+of the Euphrates and Tigris, so that we need not hesitate to assign the
+origin of the very form of the tradition received by the Jehovist
+writer, to the cradle of the race of the Terahites in Chaldea. The
+overflow of the two rivers of Mesopotamia lasts, in fact, for an average
+of seventy-five days from the middle of March to the end of May; and
+twenty-six days later--that is, at the end of the 101 in all (80 + 21 =
+75 + 26 = 101), when the Jehovist makes Noah leave the ark--the lands
+which have been inundated become once more practicable.
+
+What, moreover, in the Jehovist narrative bears a very marked impress of
+Chaldean origin is the part played in it by septennial periods; seven
+days intervening between the announcement and the beginning of the
+Deluge, seven between each sending forth of the birds. That religious
+and mystic importance attached to the heptade which gave rise to the
+conception of the seven days of creation, and to the invention of the
+week, is an essentially Chaldean idea. It is among the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians that we discover its origin and find its most
+numerous applications. The story of Khasisatra, in the poem of Uruk,
+invariably proceeds hebdomadally. The violence of the Deluge lasts seven
+days, and so does the stay of the vessel on Mount Nizir when the waters
+begin to go down. It is true, indeed, that the building of the vessel
+occupies eight instead of seven days; but we must add the time necessary
+for the embarkation of provisions, animals, passengers, and this will
+enable us to calculate the whole duration of Khasisatra's preparations
+between the vision sent him by Êa and the moment when he closes the
+vessel at the approach of the rain, as consisting of fourteen days or
+two hebdomades. This being granted, if the poem does not state precisely
+the intervals at which the three birds were sent forth, we are justified
+in applying here the figures used by the Jehovist in Genesis, and
+counting seven days between the first and second sending forth, seven
+between the second and third, and seven, lastly, between the departure
+of the bird which does not return, and the leaving the vessel. The whole
+interval, then, between the warning of Êa and the sacrifice of
+Khasisatra, amounts to seven hebdomades--plainly a number intentionally
+assigned. And the whole duration of the Deluge is doubled by the sacred
+writer, who was the author of the Jehovist document, 7 × 2 × 7, instead
+of 7 × 7; that is, fourteen weeks with just three days over, owing to
+the writer having employed the round numbers 40 + 40 = 80 days, instead
+of the precise number seventy-seven days or eleven hebdomades (7 + 4 ×
+7), to indicate the interval between the beginning of the diluvian rain
+and the sending forth of the first bird. And now, if we keep count of
+the time between the announcing of the cataclysm by Jahveh and its
+commencement, the figures of the Jehovist are in all 7 × 2 × 7 + 7 days,
+and those of the system of the Chaldean poem 7 × 7. But they are on both
+sides combinations of seven.
+
+Where the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative and that of the Bible absolutely
+diverge, is in their statement of what, after the Deluge, befell the
+righteous man saved from it. According to the figures of the Elohist,
+Noah lives on among his descendants for 350 years, and dies at the age
+of 950. Khasisatra receives the privilege of immortality; is carried
+away "to live like the gods," and transported into "a distant place,"
+where the hero of Uruk goes to visit him in order to learn the secrets
+of life and death. But in the Bible we have something of the same kind
+told us of Noah's great-grandfather Enoch, who "walked with God, and was
+not, because God took him." We see, then, that the Babylonian tradition
+united in the person of Khasisatra facts which the Bible distributes
+between Enoch and Noah, the two whom Holy Scripture equally
+characterizes as having "walked with God."
+
+The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess," erroneously
+attributed to Lucian, acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the
+Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in
+the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce.
+
+    "The generality of people, he says, tell us that the founder of the
+    temple was Deucalion Sisythes, that Deucalion in whose time the
+    great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by
+    the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus:--The actual
+    race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the
+    members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended
+    from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of time. As to the
+    former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride,
+    committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the
+    rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants, accordingly they
+    were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous
+    volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary
+    abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds, and the sea
+    overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water, and
+    all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety,
+    was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was
+    saved:--He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great
+    coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all
+    other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received
+    them all, and while they were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with
+    reciprocal amity which prevented their devouring one another. In
+    this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long
+    as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the
+    Greeks of Deucalion.
+
+    "But to this which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a
+    marvellous narrative:--That in their country a great chasm opened,
+    into which all the waters of the deluge poured. Then Deucalion
+    raised an altar and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to
+    this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated
+    under the temple. Whether it was once large and has now shrunk, I do
+    not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of
+    the event the following is the rite accomplished:--Twice a year sea
+    water is brought to the temple. This is not only done by the
+    priests, but numerous pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and
+    Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bringing water. It is
+    poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft which, narrow as it
+    is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to be in
+    virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the
+    memory of the catastrophe and of the benefits that he received from
+    the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."
+
+It appears to me difficult not to recognize an echo of fables popular
+in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it
+played in the Deluge,--in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran
+respecting the oven _tannur_ which began to bubble and disgorge water
+all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this _tannur_
+has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman
+commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mahomet
+made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that the waters
+of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.
+
+
+II.
+
+_Indian Traditions._--India, in its turn, affords us an account of the
+Deluge, which by its poverty strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible
+and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the
+_Çatapatha Brâhmana_ of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the
+first time by M. Max Müller.
+
+    "One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had
+    washed himself a fish remained in his hands. And it addressed these
+    words to him:--'Protect me and I will save thee.' 'From what wilt
+    thou save me?' 'A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from
+    that I will save thee.' 'How shall I protect thee?' The fish
+    replied: 'While we are small we run great dangers, for fish swallow
+    fish. Keep me at first in a vase; when I become too large for it dig
+    a basin to put me into. When I shall have grown still more, throw me
+    into the ocean; then I shall be preserved from destruction.' Soon it
+    grew a large fish. It said to Manu, 'The very year I shall have
+    reached my full growth the Deluge will happen. Then build a vessel
+    and worship me. When the waters rise, enter the vessel and I will
+    save thee.'
+
+    "After keeping him thus, Manu carried the fish to the sea. In the
+    year indicated Manu built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when
+    the Deluge came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming
+    up to him, and Manu fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of
+    the fish, by which means the latter made it pass over the mountain
+    of the North. The fish said, 'I have saved thee; fasten the vessel
+    to a tree that the water may not sweep it away while thou art on the
+    mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt
+    descend.' Manu descended with the waters, and this is what is called
+    the _descent of Manu_ on the mountain of the North. The deluge had
+    carried away all creatures, and Manu remained alone."
+
+Next in order of date and complication, which always goes on loading the
+narrative more and more with fantastic and parasitical details, comes
+the version in the enormous epic of _Mahâbhârata_. That of the poem
+called _Bhâgavata-Purâna_ is still more recent and fabulous. Finally,
+the same tradition forms the subject of an entire poem of very low date,
+the _Matsya-Purâna_, of which an analysis has been given by the great
+Indian scholar, Wilson.
+
+In the preface to the third volume of his edition of _Bhâgavata-Purâna_,
+Eugene Burnouf has carefully compared the three narratives known at the
+time he wrote (that of the _Çatapatha Brâhmana_ has been since
+discovered), with a view to clearing up the origin of the Indian
+tradition of the Deluge. He points out in a discussion that deserves to
+remain a model of erudition and subtle criticism, that it is absolutely
+wanting in the Vedic hymns, where we only find distant allusions to it
+that seem to belong to a different kind of legend altogether, and also
+that this tradition was primitively foreign to the essentially Indian
+system of _Manvantaras_, or periodic destructions of the world. He
+thence concludes that it must have been imported into India subsequently
+to the adoption of this system, which is, however, very ancient, being
+common to Brahmanism and Buddhism, and therefore inclines to look upon
+it as a Semitic importation that took place in historic times, not,
+indeed, of Genesis, but more probably of the Babylonian tradition.
+
+The discovery of an original edition of the latter confirms the theory
+of the French savant. The leading feature which distinguishes the Indian
+narrative is the part assigned to a god who puts on the form of a fish,
+in order to warn Manu, to guide his vessel and save him from the flood.
+The nature of the metamorphosis is the only fundamental and primitive
+point, for different versions vary as to the personality of the god who
+assumes this form--the _Brâhmana_ leaves it uncertain, the _Mahâbhârata_
+fixes on Brahma, and the compilers of the _Purânas_ on Vishnu. This is
+the more remarkable that this metamorphosis into a fish _Matsyavatara_
+remains isolated in Indian mythology, is foreign to its habitual
+symbolism, and gives rise to no ulterior developments: no trace being
+found in India of that fish-worship which was so important and
+widespread among other ancient people. Burnouf rightly saw in this a
+sign of importation from without, and especially of its Babylonian
+origin, for classic testimony, recently confirmed by native monuments,
+shows us that in the religion of Babylon the conception of
+ichthyomorphic gods held a more prominent place than elsewhere. The part
+played by the divine fish with regard to Manu in the Indian legend, is
+attributed both by the Epic of Uruk and by Berosus to the god Êa, who is
+also designated Schalman, "the Saviour." Now this god, whose type of
+representation we now know certainly from Assyrian and Babylonian
+monuments, is essentially the ichthyomorphic god, and his image almost
+invariably combines the forms of fish and man. In astronomical tables
+frequent mention is made of the catasterism of the "fish of Êa," which
+is indubitably our sign Pisces, since it presides over the month Adar.
+It is to a connection of ideas based on the diluvian record, that we
+must attribute the placing of Pisces--primarily of the "fish of
+Êa"--next to Aquarius, whose relation to the history of the Deluge we
+have already pointed out. Here we have an evident allusion to the part
+of Saviour attributed by the people who invented the Zodiac, to the god
+Êa in the flood, and to the idea of an ichthyomorphic nature especially
+belonging to this aspect of his personality. Êa is, moreover, the
+Oannès, lawgiver of the fragments of Berosus, half-man, half-fish, whose
+form, answering to the description given by the Chaldean history, has
+been discovered in the sculptures of Assyrian palaces and on cylinders,
+the Euahanès of Hygin, and the Oès of Helladios.[46]
+
+Whenever we find among two different peoples one same legend, with as
+_special_ a circumstance which does not spring _naturally_ and
+_necessarily_ from the fundamental facts of the narrative, and when,
+moreover, this circumstance is closely connected with the whole
+religious conceptions of one of these peoples, and remains isolated and
+alien from the customary symbolism of the other, criticism lays it down
+as an absolute rule that we must conclude the legend to have been
+transmitted from the one to the other in an already fixed form, to be a
+foreign importation, superimposed, not fused with the national, and as
+it were genial, traditions of the people, who have received, without
+having created it.
+
+We must also remark that in the _Purânas_ it is no longer Manu Vaivasata
+that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different personage,
+the King of the Dâsas--_i.e._, fishers, Satyravata, "the man who loves
+justice and truth," strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean Khasisatra.
+Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised,
+though it be of recent date and full of fantastic and often puerile
+details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of _Brâhmana_
+or than the _Mahâbhârata_, and above all it gives some circumstances
+omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the
+original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a
+circumstance preserved no doubt by the oral tradition--popular and not
+Brahmanic--with which the _Purânas_ are so deeply imbued. This has been
+already observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following passage
+of the _Bhâgavata-Purâna_: "In _seven days_," said Vishnu to Satyravata,
+"the three worlds shall be submerged." There is nothing like this in the
+_Brâhmana_ nor the _Mahâbhârata_, but in Genesis the Lord says to Noah,
+"_Yet seven days_ and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;" and a
+little further we read, "_After seven days_ the waters of the flood were
+upon the earth." And we have just pointed out the parts played by
+hebdomades as successive periods in that system of the duration of the
+flood, adopted by the author of the Jehovist documents inserted in
+Genesis, as well as by the compiler of the Chaldean Epic of Uruk. Nor
+must we pay less attention to what the _Bhâgavata-Purâna_ says of the
+directions given by the fish-god to Satyravata for the placing of the
+sacred Scriptures in a safe place in order to preserve them from
+Hayagrîva, a marine horse dwelling in the abyss, and of the conflict of
+the god with this Hayagrîva, who had stolen the Vedas and thus produced
+the cataclysm by disturbing the order of the world. This circumstance
+too is wanting in the more ancient compositions, even in the
+_Mahâbhârata_, but it is a most important one, and cannot be looked on
+as a spontaneous product of Indian soil, for we recognize in it under
+an Indian garb the very tradition of the interment of the sacred
+writings at Sippara by Khasisatra, such as we have it in the fragments
+of Berosus.
+
+It is the Chaldean form, then, of the tradition that the Indians have
+adopted owing to communications which the commercial relations between
+the countries render historically natural, and they afterwards amplified
+it with the exuberance peculiar to their imagination. But they must have
+adopted it all the more readily because it agreed with a tradition,
+which under a somewhat different form had been brought by their
+ancestors from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race. That the
+recollection of the flood did indeed form part of the original
+groundwork of the legends as to the origin of the world held by this
+great race, is beyond all doubt. For if Indians have accepted the
+Chaldean form of the story, so nearly allied to that of Genesis, all
+other nations of Aryan descent show themselves possessed of entirely
+original versions of the cataclysm which cannot be held to have been
+borrowed either from Babylonian or Hebrew sources.
+
+
+III.
+
+_Traditions of other Aryan Peoples._--Among the Iranians, in the sacred
+books containing the fundamental Zoroastrian doctrines, and dating very
+far back, we meet with a tradition which must assuredly be looked upon
+as a variety of that of the Deluge, though possessing a special
+character, and diverging in some essential particulars from those we
+have been examining. It relates how Yima, who in the original and
+primitive conception was the father of the human race, was warned by
+Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth being about to be devastated by
+a flood. The god ordered Yima to construct a refuge, a square garden,
+_vara_, protected by an enclosure, and to cause the germs of men,
+beasts, and plants to enter it, in order to escape annihilation.
+Accordingly, when the inundation occurred, the garden of Yima with all
+that it contained was alone spared, and the message of safety was
+brought thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy of Ahuramazda.[47]
+
+A comparison has also been made, but erroneously as I think, between the
+Biblical and Chaldean Deluge and a story only found complete in the
+_Bundahesh-pahlavi_;[48] though, as a few of the older books contain
+allusions to some of its circumstances;[49] it must date further back
+than this edition of it, which is recent. Ahuramazda determines to
+destroy the Khafçtras--_i.e._, the maleficent spirits created by
+Angrômainyus, the spirit of evil: Tistrya, the genius of the star
+Sirius, descends at his command to earth, and, assuming the form of a
+man, causes it to rain for ten days. The waters cover the earth, and all
+maleficent beings are drowned. A violent wind dries the earth, but some
+germs of the evil spirit's creation remain, and may reappear, therefore
+Tistrya descends again under the form of a white horse, and produces a
+second Deluge by another rainfall of ten days. To prevent him
+accomplishing his task, the demon Apusha assumes the appearance of a
+black horse, and engages in combat; but he is struck with lightning by
+Ahuramazda, as well as the demon Çpendjaghra, who had come to his aid.
+Finally, to bring about the complete destruction of evil, Tistrya
+descends the third time under the form of a bull, and produces a third
+Deluge by a third rainfall of ten days, after which the waters divide to
+form the four great and the twenty-four small seas. Now all this relates
+to a cosmogonic fact, anterior to the creation of man. The Khafçtras,
+from which Tistrya undertakes to purge the earth, are the hurtful and
+venomous beasts created by Angrômainyus which fervent Mazedans make it a
+duty to destroy in our actual world--such as scorpions, lizards, toads,
+serpents, rats, &c. There is no allusion here to humanity, or the
+punishment of its sins. If we were bent on finding in our Bible any
+parallel to this first rain falling on the surface of the earth--which
+both destroys the hurtful creatures by which it was infested and renders
+it productive of a fertile vegetation--we should turn, not to the
+account of the Deluge, but to what is said in Gen. ii. 5, 6.
+
+The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which
+primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the name
+of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of Bœotia or Attica; a quite
+mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name seemingly
+derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in Sanscrit _Ângha_.
+It is said that in his time the whole land was covered by a flood, whose
+waters reached the sky, and from which he, together with some
+companions, escaped in a vessel.
+
+The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus having
+worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose crimes he was
+wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his father, constructed a
+coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The Deluge came,
+the chest or coffer floated at the mercy of the waves for nine days and
+nine nights, and was finally stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and
+Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and according to the command of Zeus
+re-people the world by throwing behind them "the bones of the
+earth"--namely, stones, which change into men. This Deluge of Deucalion
+is in Grecian tradition what most resembles a universal Deluge. Many
+authors affirm that it extended to the whole earth, and that the whole
+human race perished. At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease
+the manes of its victims, a ceremony called _Hydrophoria_ was observed,
+having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis in Syria,
+that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Phœnician importation,
+and the result of an assimilation established in remote antiquity
+between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as described by
+the author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess."[50] Close to the
+temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the soil was shown, in length
+but one cubit, through which it was said the waters of the Deluge had
+been swallowed up. Thus, every year, on the third day of the festival of
+the Anthestéria, a day of mourning consecrated to the dead,--that is, on
+the thirteenth of the month of Anthestérion, towards the beginning of
+March--it was customary, as at Bambyce, to pour water into the fissure,
+together with flour mixed with honey, poured also into the trench dug to
+the west of the tomb, in the funereal sacrifices of the Athenians.
+
+Others, on the contrary, limit Deucalion's flood to Greece, even declare
+that it only destroyed the larger portion of the community, a great many
+men saving themselves on the highest mountains. Thus the Delphian legend
+told how the inhabitants of that town, following the wolves in their
+flight, had taken refuge in a cave on the summit of Parnassus, where
+they built the town of Lycorea, whose foundation is, on the other hand,
+attributed by the Chronicle of Paros to Deucalion, after the
+reproduction by him of a new human race. Later mythographers necessarily
+adopted this idea of several points of simultaneous escape from a desire
+to reconcile the local legends of several places in Greece, which named
+some other than Deucalion as the hero saved from the flood. For
+instance, at Megara it was the eponym of the city Megaros, son of Zeus
+and of one of the nymphs Sithnides, who, warned by the cry of cranes of
+the imminence of the danger, took refuge on Mount Geranien. Again, there
+was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to have escaped the flood by
+rising into the air on wings given him by the nymphs, and it was
+Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had preserved at Dodona. For
+the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero of the Deluge was Merops,
+son of Hyas, who there assembled under his rule the remnant of humanity
+preserved with him. The traditions of Rhodes only supposed the
+Telchines, those of Crete Jasion, to have escaped the cataclysm. In
+Samothracia the same character was attributed to Saon, said to be the
+son of Zeus or of Hermes; he seems only to have been a heroic form of
+the Hermès Saos or Sôcos, the object of special worship in the island, a
+divinity in whom M. Philippe Berges recognizes with good reason a
+Phœnician importation, the Sakan of Canaan identified elsewhere with
+Hermes Dardanos, supposed to have arrived in Samothracia immediately
+after these events, being driven by the Deluge from Arcadia.
+
+In all these flood stories of Greece we cannot doubt that the tradition
+of a cataclysm fatal to the whole of humanity--a tradition common to all
+Aryan peoples--was mixed up, as Knobel rightly observes, more or less
+precisely with local catastrophes produced by extraordinary overflows of
+lakes or rivers, or the rupture of their natural embankments, the
+sinking of some portions of the sea-coast, or tidal waves consequent
+upon earthquakes or sudden upheavals of the ocean bed. Such events were
+frequent in Greece, in the district between Egypt and Palestine, near
+Pelusium and Mount Casius, as well as in the Cimbric Chersonese. The
+Greeks used to relate how often their country had in primitive ages been
+the theatre of such catastrophes. Istros numbered four of these, one of
+which had opened the Straits of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, when the
+waters of the Euxine, rushing into the Ægean, submerged the islands and
+neighbouring coasts. This is evidently the Deluge of Samothracia; where
+the inhabitants who succeeded in saving themselves did so only by
+gaining the highest peak of the mountain that rises there; then, in
+gratitude for their preservation, consecrated the whole island by
+surrounding its shores with a belt of altars dedicated to the gods. In
+like manner the tradition of the Deluge of Ogyges seems connected with
+the recollection of an extraordinary rise of the Lake Capaïs, inundating
+the whole of the great Bœotian Valley, a recollection amplified
+later--as is ever the case with legends--by applying to the local
+disaster all the details popularly told of the primitive Deluge which
+had taken place before the separation of the ancestors of the two races,
+Semitic and Aryan. It is also probable that some event that had occurred
+in Thessaly, or rather in the region of Parnassus, determined the
+localization of the legend of Deucalion. Nevertheless, it always
+retained, as we have seen, a more general character than the others,
+whether the Deluge be extended to the whole earth or limited to the
+whole of Greece.
+
+Be that as it may, the different narratives were reconciled by admitting
+three successive Deluges, those of Ogyges, Deucalion, and Dardanos. The
+general opinion pronounced the former the most ancient, placing it 600
+or 250 years before that of Deucalion. But this chronology is far from
+being universally accepted; and the inhabitants of Samothracia maintain
+their Deluge to have been the earliest. Christian chronographers of the
+third and fourth century, as, for instance, Julius Africanus and
+Eusebius, adopted the Hellenic dates of the Deluges of Ogyges and
+Deucalion, and inscribed them in their records as different events from
+the Mosaic Deluge, which, for their part, they fixed at 1000 years
+before that of Ogyges.
+
+In Phrygia the diluvian tradition was as natural as in Greece. The town
+of Apamea derived thence its surname _Kibotos_, or ark, and claimed to
+be the place where the Ark had stopped. Iconium had the like
+pretensions. In the same way the people of Milyas, in Armenia, showed
+the fragments of the Ark on the top of the mountain called Baris; and
+these were also exhibited in early Christian times to pilgrims on
+Ararat, as Berosus tells us that in his day the remnants of the vessel
+of Khasisatra were visited on the Gordyan range.
+
+In the second and third centuries of our era, by means of the syncretic
+infiltration of Jewish and Christian traditions even into minds still
+attached to Paganism, the sacerdotal authorities of Apamea and Phrygia
+had coins struck bearing an open ark, in which the patriarch and his
+wife were seen receiving back the dove with the olive branch, and side
+by side were the two same personages, having left the Ark to retake
+possession of the earth. On the Ark is inscribed the name ΝΩΕ, the very
+form the name assumes in the Septuagint. Thus, at this time the Pagan
+priesthood of the Phrygian city had, we see, adopted the Biblical
+narrative, even down to its names, and had grafted it on the old native
+tradition. They related that a short while before the Deluge there
+reigned a holy man called Annacos, who had predicted it, and occupied
+the throne more than 300 years, an evident reproduction of the Enoch of
+the Bible, who walked with God for 365 years.
+
+As to the branch of the Celts--in the bardic poems of Wales, we have a
+tradition of the Deluge, which, although recent under the concise form
+of the Triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is
+localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible
+catastrophes of the island of Prydain, or Britain, the other two
+consisting of devastation by fire and by drought.
+
+    "The first of these events," it is said, "was the irruption of
+    Llyn-llion, or 'the lake of waves,' and the inundation (_bawdd_) of
+    the whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the
+    exception of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel
+    without rigging, and it was by them that the island of Prydain was
+    re-peopled."[51]
+
+Pictet here observes--
+
+    "Although the triads in their actual form hardly date further than
+    the thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly
+    connected with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a
+    borrowing from Genesis.
+
+    "But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad[52] speaking of the
+    vessel Nefydd-naf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of
+    Llyn-llion, bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much
+    resembles the ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have
+    suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but
+    evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the
+    same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (_ychain
+    bannog_) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyn-llion the _avanc_
+    (beaver or crocodile?) in order that the lake should not overflow.
+    The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering
+    the chaos of bardic monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile
+    we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an indigenous tradition of
+    the Deluge."
+
+We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian
+Ealda.[53] But here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The
+three sons of Borr, Othin, Wili, and We, grandsons of Buri, the first
+man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar or Ice giants, and his
+body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his
+wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it,
+except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and
+reproduces the race. "Thus," Pictet again observes, "the myth only
+belongs to the general tradition through these last features, by which,
+however, we trace it up to a common source."
+
+Of all European peoples the Lithuanians were the last to embrace
+Christianity, and their language remains nearest to the original Aryan.
+They have a legend of the Deluge, the groundwork of which appears very
+ancient, although it has assumed the simple character of a popular tale,
+and some of its details may have been borrowed from Genesis at the time
+of the first Christian missions. According to it[54] the god Pramzimras,
+seeing the whole earth to be full of iniquity, sends two giants, Wandu
+and Wêjas (fire and wind), to lay it waste. These overthrew everything
+in their fury, and only a few men saved themselves on a mountain.
+Pramzimras, who was engaged in eating celestial walnuts, dropped a shell
+near the mountain, and in it the men took refuge, the giants respecting
+it. Having escaped from the calamity, they afterwards disperse, and only
+one very aged couple remain in the country, greatly bewailing their
+childless condition. Pramzimras, to console them, sends his rainbow and
+bids them jump "on the bones of the earth," which curiously recalls the
+oracle to Deucalion. The two old people jump nine times, and nine pairs
+are the result, who became the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes.
+
+
+IV.
+
+_Egyptian Traditions._--While the tradition of the Deluge holds so
+considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the
+Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many
+cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion
+to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the
+Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from
+it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaëton; they even
+added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to
+that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes
+resembling it. According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected,
+however, of being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had
+himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelæ in hieroglyphical and
+sacred language the principles of all knowledge. After it the second
+Thoth translated into the vulgar tongue the contents of these stelæ.
+This would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho
+not speaking of it in what remains to us of his "Dynasties," his only
+complete authentic work. The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic
+religion on this head render it very likely that the above is merely a
+foreign tradition, recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and
+Chaldean origin. "Thus," says M. Maury, "the Seriadic land, where the
+passage in question places these hieroglyphic columns, might very well
+be no other than Chaldea. This tradition, though not in the Bible,
+existed as a popular legend among the Jews at the beginning of our era,
+which confirms our supposition; as the Hebrews might have learnt it
+during the Babylonian captivity. Josephus tells us that the patriarch
+Seth, in order that wisdom and astronomical knowledge should not perish,
+erected, in prevision of the double destruction by fire and water
+predicted by Adam, two columns, the one in brick, the other in stone, on
+which this knowledge was engraved, and which subsisted in the Seriadic
+country." This history is evidently only a variety of the Chaldean
+legend of the terra-cotta tables bearing the divine revelations, and the
+principles of all sciences which Êa ordered Khasisatra to bury before
+the Deluge, "in the city of the Sun at Sippara," as we have had it above
+in the extracts from Berosus.
+
+Nevertheless, the Egyptians did admit a destruction by the gods of
+primal men on account of their rebellion and their sins. This event was
+related in a chapter of the sacred books of Thoth, those famous Hermetic
+books of the Egyptian priesthood which are graven on the sides of one of
+the inmost chambers of the funereal hypogeum of Seti the First at
+Thebes. The text has been published and translated by M. Edouard
+Naville.[55]
+
+The scene is laid at the close of the reign of the god Râ, the earliest
+terrestrial reign, according to the system of the priests of Thebes, the
+second, according to that of the priests of Memphis, which is the one
+followed by Manetho, who placed at the very origin of things the reign
+of Phtah, previous to that of Râ. Irritated by the impiety and crimes of
+the men he has made, the god assembles the other gods to hold counsel
+with them in profound secrecy, "so that men should not see it, nor their
+heart be afraid."
+
+    "Said by Râ to Nun:[56] 'Thou, the eldest of the gods, of whom I am
+    born, and ye ancient gods, here are the men who are born from
+    myself; they speak words against me, tell me what you would do in
+    the matter; lo, I have waited, and have not slain them before
+    hearing your words.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Nun: 'My son Râ, a greater god than he who
+    has made him and created him, I stand in great fear of thee; do thou
+    deliberate alone.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'Lo, they take to flight through the
+    country, and their hearts are afraid....'
+
+    "Said by the Gods: 'Let thy face permit, and let those men be
+    smitten who plot evil things, thine enemies, and let none [of them
+    remain.]'"
+
+A goddess, whose name has unfortunately disappeared, but who seems to
+have been Tefnut, identified with Hathor and Sekhet, is then sent to
+accomplish the sentence of destruction.
+
+    "This goddess left, and slew the men upon the earth.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of this God: 'Come in peace, Hathor; thou hast
+    done [what was ordained thee.]'
+
+    "Said by this Goddess: 'Thou art living; for I have been stronger
+    than men, and my heart is satisfied.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'I am living, for I will rule over them
+    [and I will complete] their ruin.'
+
+    "And lo, Sekhet, during several nights, trod their blood under-foot
+    as far as the town of Hâ-klinen-su (Héracléopolis.)"
+
+But the massacre ended, the anger of Râ was appeased; he began to repent
+of what he had done. A great expiatory sacrifice succeeded in finally
+calming him. Fruits were gathered throughout Egypt, bruised, and their
+juice mingled with human blood, 7000 pitchers being filled with it and
+presented to the god.
+
+    "And lo, the Majesty of Râ, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, comes
+    with the gods in three days of sailing to see these vases of drink,
+    after he had ordered the goddess to slay men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'This is well; I will protect men
+    because of it.' Said by Râ: 'I raise my hand concerning this, to say
+    that I will no more destroy men.'
+
+    "The Majesty of Râ, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, commanded in
+    the middle of the night to overthrow the liquid in the vases, and
+    the fields were completely filled with water by the will of this
+    god. The goddess arrived in the morning, and found the fields full
+    of water. Her face grew joyous, and she drank abundantly and went
+    away satisfied. She no more perceived any men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ to the goddess: 'Come in peace, gracious
+    goddess.'
+
+    "And he caused the young priestesses of Amu to be born.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ to this goddess: 'Libations shall be made
+    to her at each of the festivals of the new year, under the
+    superintendence of my priestesses.'
+
+    "Hence it comes that libations are made under the superintendence of
+    the priestesses of Hathor by all men since the ancient days."
+
+Nevertheless, some men have escaped the destruction commanded by Râ, and
+renewed the population of the earth. As for the solar god who reigns
+over the world, he feels himself old, sick and weary; he has had enough
+of living among men, whom he regrets not to have completely annihilated,
+but has sworn henceforth to spare.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'There is a smarting pain that torments
+    me; what is it then that hurts me?' Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'I am
+    living, but my heart is weary of being with them [men], and I have
+    in no way destroyed them. That destruction is not one that I have
+    made myself.'
+
+    "Said by the gods who accompany him: 'Away with lassitude, thou hast
+    obtained all thou didst desire.'"
+
+The god Râ decides, however, to accept the help of the men of the new
+human race who offer themselves to him to combat his enemies, and a
+great battle takes place, out of which they come victorious. But in
+spite of this success the god, disgusted with earthly life, resolves to
+quit it for ever, and has himself carried into heaven by the goddess
+Nut, who takes the form of a cow. Then he creates a region of delight,
+the fields of Aalu, the Elysium of Egyptian mythology, which he peoples
+with stars. Entering into rest, he assigns to different gods the
+government of different parts of the world. Shu, who is to succeed him
+as king, is to administer celestial matters with Nut; Seb and Nun
+receive the charge of the things of earth and water. Finally, Râ, a
+sovereign who has voluntarily abdicated, goes to dwell with Thoth, his
+favourite son, on whom he has bestowed the superintendence of the
+under-world.
+
+Such is this strange narrative, "in which," as M. Naville has well said,
+"in the midst of fantastic and often puerile inventions, we do
+nevertheless find the two terms of existence as understood by the
+ancient Egyptians. Râ begins with earth, and passing through heaven
+stops in the region of profundity, Ament, in which he apparently wishes
+to sojourn. This then is a symbolic and religious representation of
+life, which for every Egyptian--and especially for a royal
+conqueror--had to begin and end like the sun. This explains the chapter
+being inscribed in a tomb."
+
+Hence it was the last portion of the narrative--which we can analyse but
+very briefly--the abdication of Râ and his retreat, first, in heaven,
+next in the Ament, a symbol of death which is to be followed by
+resurrection as the setting of the sun by its rising--it is this which
+constituted its interest in the conception of the doctrine of a future
+life, illustrated in the decoration of the interior of the tomb of Seti
+I. For our present purpose, on the contrary, it is the beginning of the
+story which constitutes its importance, it is that destruction of primal
+humanity by the gods of which no mention has been hitherto found
+elsewhere. Although the means of destruction employed by Râ are quite
+dissimilar, although he does not proceed by submersion but by a massacre
+in which the lion-headed goddess Tefnut or Sekhet, the dreadful form of
+Hathor, is the agent, the other sides of the story bear a sufficiently
+striking analogy to that of the Mosaic or Chaldean Deluge to show that
+it is the special and very individual form assumed in Egypt by that
+tradition. In both we have human corruption exciting divine wrath, and
+punished by a divinely ordained annihilation of the race, from which
+there escapes but a very small number destined to give birth to a new
+humanity. Finally, after the event an expiatory sacrifice appeases the
+celestial anger, and a solemn covenant is made between men and the
+deity, who swears never so to destroy them again. To me, the agreement
+of these principal features outweighs the divergence in detail. And we
+have also to observe how singularly akin is the part ascribed by the
+Egyptian priest to Râ with that assigned in the epic poem of Uruk to the
+god Bel, in the deluge of Khasisatra. The Egyptians believed, as did
+other nations, in the destruction of mankind; but as inundation meant
+for them prosperity and life, they changed the primitive tradition; the
+human race, instead of perishing by water, was otherwise exterminated;
+and the inundation--that crowning benefit to the valley of the
+Nile--became in their eyes the sign that the wrath of Râ was appeased.
+
+
+V.
+
+_American Stories of the Flood._
+
+    "It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find
+    in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that
+    of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the
+    Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that
+    certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and
+    Aleutian islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought
+    in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those
+    Mongol or Siberian populations,[57] which were fused with the
+    natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American nations, the
+    Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social condition
+    at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a
+    special character, and seems to have been developed on the soil
+    where it flourished. Many very simple inventions, such as the use of
+    weights, were unknown to these people, and this shows that their
+    knowledge was not derived from India or Japan. The attempts that
+    have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia
+    have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides,
+    had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could
+    not have introduced a myth not found in its own Scriptures.[58] The
+    cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the
+    nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore
+    unexplained."
+
+I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of immense
+erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers, and will not
+therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion. Others also, no
+less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness between
+American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible and the
+Chaldeans.
+
+The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they appear to
+have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before
+any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of
+the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli
+or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in
+a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft, made of cypress
+wood (_Cupressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox
+have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs,
+and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly
+in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in Chaldean
+sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife,
+his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was
+essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god
+Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture
+from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth
+was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the
+humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi,
+seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain
+of Colhuacan.
+
+The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as to
+the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus," from
+the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic
+pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual
+one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the
+conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los
+Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after the
+arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous
+traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.
+
+The first age is marked with the cipher 13×400+6, or 5206, which
+Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of the
+period, and Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement,
+from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution of the
+manuscript. This age is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Earth." It is that
+of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac, whose
+end was destruction by famine.
+
+The number of the second age is 12×400+4, or 4804, and it is called
+_Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on Earth of
+Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed into birds,
+and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one human pair
+find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.
+
+As to the third age, _Ehécatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," its number is
+10×400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane raised
+by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men are
+metamorphosed into monkeys.
+
+Then comes the fourth age, _Atonatiuh_, "Sun of Water," whose number is
+10×400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge.
+All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his
+wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree.
+The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of
+Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards earth. Coxcox and
+Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a
+tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is
+represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.
+
+All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did not
+hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote quite
+recently:
+
+    "The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of
+    America, and Christian writers have not failed to see in it a
+    reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay, in connection with the
+    pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower of Babel. We
+    shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox,
+    among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of
+    flowers, Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of
+    Noah and his wife by joining on to them the story of the ark and the
+    dove. It is enough to observe that all these legends have only been
+    collected and published at a relatively recent period.[59] The first
+    chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity,
+    such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous
+    authors, such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec
+    Camargo, never breathe a word of stories they could not have failed
+    to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find
+    in Mr. Bancroft's[60] work a criticism of these legends, due to Don
+    José Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum, which proves
+    incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and
+    tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which
+    according to him only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs
+    around the central lakes of the plateau of Anahuac."
+
+I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who
+are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which,
+indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And
+this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as
+anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its
+defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or
+Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of
+vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicué or Mallalcuéyé, is a
+well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of
+Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a
+very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of
+unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves.
+There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two
+divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two
+survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the
+theory of Don José Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been
+interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious
+and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard
+de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only
+removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced
+by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for
+instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the
+existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken,
+for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a
+striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex
+Vaticanus."
+
+The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled
+by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex
+Chimalpopoca_ by Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and
+partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des
+Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history
+of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from
+the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the
+age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the
+age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by
+the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods,
+everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose
+sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual
+appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point
+to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close,
+mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape
+under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water,
+which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the
+Deluge.
+
+Here is the narrative according to Abbé Brasseur's version, held correct
+by Americanists:--
+
+    "This is the sun called _Nahui-atl_, '4 water.'[62] Now the water
+    was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the
+    third and fourth times. When the sun _Nahui-atl_ came there had
+    passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six
+    years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and found themselves
+    changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day
+    all was lost and the day _Nahui-xochitl_ '4 flower,' destroyed all
+    our flesh.
+
+    "And that year was that of _cé-calli_, '1 house,'[63] and the day
+    _Nahui-atl_ all was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water,
+    and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.
+
+    "Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and
+    his spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to
+    hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the
+    month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'
+
+    "Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said:
+    'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'
+
+    "But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water
+    remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they
+    began to see fish.
+
+    "Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they
+    roasted fish.
+
+    "The gods Citlallinicué and Citlalatonac instantly looking down
+    said: 'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do
+    they thus smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca
+    descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?'
+    And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and heads, and
+    they were transformed into dogs (_chichime_)."
+
+This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the
+North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly
+indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a
+Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.
+
+The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to the
+generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by
+extracts given from it by Abbé Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les
+Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though
+already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so
+strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here,
+too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the
+same order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then
+added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made
+himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants,
+who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl, the
+god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck
+Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself
+sun in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar,
+devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The
+statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca" as to
+the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled by
+this last narrative.
+
+Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are closed
+in the way we have seen.
+
+The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the patronage
+of the goddess Chalchihuitlicué. The Deluge terminates it, and after
+this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.
+
+We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando d'Alva
+Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose
+pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving
+the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first
+chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic
+ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four
+in all, including the actual period. The first is the _Atonatiuh_, or
+"Sun of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a
+universal deluge. Then comes the _Thlachitonatiuh_, or "Sun of Earth,"
+when the giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of
+the survivors of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing
+the mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth,
+closes this age. It is in the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind,"
+that Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of
+Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames, but
+ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious
+reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished by
+the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys.
+Then begins the present age, _Tlatonatiuh_, or "Sun of Fire," thus
+called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that
+Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and
+if he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place
+in his series of ages.
+
+Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be really
+indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries. We may doubt
+as to some particulars in some of the versions, though this arises
+chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much resemble the
+story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it is
+unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn from
+the Bible--and universally admitted to have existed--that, namely, of
+the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the
+four ages or Yugas of India, and of the _manvantaras_ where the
+destruction of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there
+is an analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch,
+and M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans
+devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from
+India. The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of
+the diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem--ever recurring
+with regard to American civilization--of how far these are spontaneous
+and how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In
+the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem
+negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive
+conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence
+American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were, nor
+attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we frame a
+real American archæology on the same scientific basis and by the same
+methods as other archæologies. And in this respect Messrs. T. G. Müller
+and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of their precursors
+in this field of inquiry.
+
+For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with Flood
+stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences. Hence
+I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The Flood
+stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to be one
+of the oldest held by humanity--a tradition so primitive as to be
+anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments
+of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America brought
+from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at the same
+time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively carried it
+into theirs."[64] The fact is that among American peoples this tradition
+may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not borrowed from
+the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot be equally
+confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign
+importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.
+
+Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the
+destruction of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in
+the curious book of _Popol-vuh_ that collection of the mythological
+traditions of Guatemala, written after the conquest in the native
+tongue, by a secret adept of the old religion; discovered, copied, and
+translated into Spanish in the beginning of the last century by the
+Dominican Francisco Ximenez, curé of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish
+version has been published by M. Schelzer, the original text with a
+French translation by Abbé Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing
+that animals were neither capable of speaking nor of adoring them,
+determined to make men in their own image. They fashioned them at first
+in clay. But those men had no consistency, could not turn their heads;
+spoke, indeed, but understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their
+imperfect work by a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they
+made a man of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far
+superior to the former; they moved and lived, but only like other
+animals; they spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the
+gods. Then Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a
+rain of burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful
+earthquake. All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished,
+with a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of
+white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men:
+Balam-Quitze, "the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the
+night;" Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar
+of the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and
+rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their
+final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a
+light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became
+like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for
+them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the
+Quichés were born--Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children.
+This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed from
+the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian
+missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as
+usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a
+great flood.
+
+We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias
+Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the
+Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those
+Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great
+numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The
+monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted
+several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years
+after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our
+subject:--
+
+    "_Question by Bobadilla._ Who has created heaven and earth, the
+    stars and moon, man and all else?
+
+    "_Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan)._ Tamagastad and Cippatoval,
+    the one is a man, the other a woman.
+
+    "_Q._ Who created that man and woman?
+
+    "_A._ No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.
+
+    "_Q._ Did they create Christians?
+
+    "_A._ I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and
+    Cippatoval.
+
+    "_Q._ Are there any gods greater than they?
+
+    "_A._ No; we believe them to be the greatest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "_Q._ Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?
+
+    "_A._ They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour
+    like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what
+    Indians eat.
+
+    "_Q._ Who gave them to eat?
+
+    "_A._ Everything belongs to them.
+
+    "_Q._ Where are they now?
+
+    "_A._ In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.
+
+    "_Q._ How did they ascend thither?
+
+    "_A._ I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were
+    born, for they have no father nor mother.
+
+    "_Q._ How do they live at present?
+
+    "_A._ They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds
+    from the place where dwell the _teotes_ (gods).
+
+    "_Q._ Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the
+    _teotes_ created the world it has been destroyed?
+
+    "_A._ Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by
+    water and all became sea.
+
+    "_Q._ How did that man and woman escape?
+
+    "_A._ They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and
+    afterwards they came down to earth and re-made all things as they
+    now are, and we are their issue.
+
+    "_Q._ You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some
+    individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?
+
+    "_A._ No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors
+    told me."
+
+The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue, is
+evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of fire, whose
+cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at Tunga and Sogamosa
+to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us back to the religious
+and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced civilization in the high
+table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to recognize in the
+Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so universally spread
+tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with the memory of a
+local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas had suffered at the
+time of their first settlement. Neither must we forget that Botchica and
+his wicked spouse, who brought about the inundation of Cundinamarca, are
+no other than personifications of the sun and moon, as were the pair
+Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru
+is gentle and beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps
+her brother and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of
+Cundinamarca, on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of
+night and of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."
+
+Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition
+among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it only
+arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha or
+Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of the
+element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no bones,
+and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and filling
+up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the Aymaras, who,
+according to them, had created the earth; and who, issuing from Lake
+Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled the earliest men
+at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the Incas led to his
+undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing his religious
+importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the Sun, come
+upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger brother of
+Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha that the Deluge
+is placed by the writers of very recent date, who mention this event, of
+which the native tradition was unknown to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,
+to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva, and, in short, to all
+authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters. MacCulloch does indeed
+quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors never speak of a Deluge
+involving all humanity; they only say that Viracocha gave laws to the
+earliest men at the close of a primordial period anterior to their
+creation, when the whole surface of the earth had been under water.
+
+Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have been
+found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very nature these
+leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to writing by the
+natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may, in perfectly good
+faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious desire to
+assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have been only
+collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long time in
+contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them more than
+one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements into their
+traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance to those we
+have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, previous to the
+arrival of the Spanish conquerors.
+
+The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea of
+European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a childish
+version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead of a fish
+who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the catastrophe;
+but this brings us back to a myth special to America--that of the
+transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the Flood-story of
+the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+    "The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for
+    several days to run up and down the banks of the river, looking
+    fixedly at the water and howling as in distress. His master was
+    annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered him to go home, upon which
+    he began speaking and revealed the impending calamity, ending his
+    prediction by saying that the only way in which his master and his
+    family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for
+    he would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that
+    there was not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand
+    which would lead to a general inundation in which everything would
+    perish. The man obeyed his dog, was saved with his family, and they
+    repeopled the earth."
+
+It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the
+Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood by
+reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts
+behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women. If the
+report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a very
+singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the Greek
+story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
+
+Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in
+the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and
+North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America among
+the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition as
+current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:--
+
+    "In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the
+    rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming
+    upon the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself with his
+    family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The
+    animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured
+    against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with
+    all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a
+    punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."
+
+According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of
+the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was
+destroyed by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth,
+had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our
+acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways--full of grotesque and
+perplexing touches--in which the man saved from the deluge is called
+Menaboshu.[65] To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the
+diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and
+the founder of existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among
+the Mandans, of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters,
+and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men pierced
+the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned
+all men, with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and
+when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch
+of willow in its beak. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of
+Tezpi and Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the
+native originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition
+among the Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the
+physical peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the
+Missouri led Catlin to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white
+origin.
+
+In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made to a
+very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. The
+whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the
+supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken
+refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The
+Commissioners of the United States who explored New Mexico before its
+annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the
+different native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us
+kindred narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record.
+But for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely
+trusted.
+
+
+VI.
+
+_Polynesian Traditions._--In Oceania even, and not among the Pelagian
+negroes or Papoos,[66] but the Polynesian, racenatives of the
+archipelago of Australasia, the diluvian tradition has been traced,
+mingled with recollections of sudden rises of the sea, which are one of
+the most frequent scourges of those islands. The most noted is that of
+Tahiti, which has been specially referred to the primeval tradition.
+Here it is as given by M. Gaussin,[67] who has published a translation
+of it, as well as the Tahitian text, written by a native named Maré:--
+
+    "Two men had gone out to sea to fish with the line, Roo and Teahoroa
+    by name. They threw their hooks into the sea, which caught in the
+    hair of the god Ruahatu. They exclaimed, 'A fish!' They drew up the
+    line and saw that it was a man they had caught. At sight of the god
+    they bounded to the other end of their bark, and were half dead with
+    fear. Ruahatu asked them, 'What is this?' The two fishermen replied,
+    'We came to fish, and we did not know that our hooks would catch
+    thee.' The god then said, 'Unfasten my hair;' and they did so. Then
+    Ruahatu asked, 'What are your names?' They replied, 'Roo and
+    Teahoroa.' Ruahatu next said, 'Return to the shore, and tell men
+    that the earth will be covered with water, and all the world will
+    perish. To-morrow morning repair to the islet called Toa-marama; it
+    will be a place of safety for you and your children.'
+
+    "Ruahatu caused the sea to cover the lands. All were covered, and
+    all men perished except Roo, Teahoroa, and their families."
+
+This story, like all in this part of the world currently referred to the
+memory of the Deluge, has assumed the childish character peculiar to
+Polynesian legends, and moreover, as M. Maury justly observes, it may be
+naturally explained by the recollection of one of those tidal waves so
+common in Polynesia. The most essential feature of all traditions
+properly called diluvian is wanting here. The island, observes M. Maury,
+has no resemblance to the Ark.[68] It is true that one of the versions
+of the Tahitian legend states that the two fishermen repaired to
+Toa-marama, not only with their families, but with a pig, a dog, and a
+couple of fowls, which recalls the entry of the animals into the Ark. On
+the other hand, some details of a similar story among the Fijis,
+especially one in which, for many years after the event, canoes were
+kept ready in case of its repetition, far better fit a local phenomenon,
+a tidal wave, than a universal deluge.
+
+However, if all these legends were exclusively related to local
+catastrophes, it would be strange that they should appear and be almost
+similar in a certain number of localities at a great distance from each
+other, and only where the Polynesian race has taken root, or left
+indubitable traces of its passage;--this race, indigenous in the Malay
+Archipelago, not having migrated thence till about the fourth century of
+the Christian era--_i.e._, at a time when, in consequence of the
+communication between India and a portion of Malaysia,[69] the
+Flood-tradition under its Indian form might well have entered in.
+Without, therefore, deciding the question one way or other, we do not
+think that that opinion can absolutely be condemned which finds in these
+Polynesian legends an echo of the tradition of the Deluge, much
+weakened, much changed, and more inextricably confused than anywhere
+else with local disasters of recent date.
+
+The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story
+of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the
+human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now a
+recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily
+invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of
+universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible
+event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors
+of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This
+cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and
+before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races
+were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to
+admit that at as many different points of the globe as we should have to
+assume in order to explain the wide spread of these traditions--local
+phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having
+assumed an identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not
+necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.
+
+Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not
+primitive but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect
+of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
+is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of
+Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is
+undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but
+among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient
+times; and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the
+Bible speaks as being descended from Noah, those of which it gives the
+ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation,
+which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact
+value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the
+other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and
+ethnological significance. In another paper I propose to inquire
+whether, in the conception of the inspired writers, the Deluge really
+was universal, in the sense customarily supposed.
+
+But as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from
+being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having,
+to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
+races--Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or
+Kushite--that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the
+ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity--before the
+ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia
+they together inhabited.
+
+    FRANÇOIS LENORMANT.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] The date of the termination of the works undertaken by Yu, in order
+to repair the damage done by this flood, lies between 2278 and 2062 B.C.
+according to the chronological system adopted.
+
+[32] This work of Berosus was already out of existence in the fourth
+century of our era, when Eusebius of Cesarea, to whom we owe such
+fragments as we possess, wrote. Only two abridgments remained, due to
+later polygraphers, Abydenus and Alexander Polybistor. Eusebius gives
+the version of each editor, the one I quote is that of Alexander.
+
+[33] Abydenus says, "all that composed the scriptures."
+
+[34] He is provisionally called Izdhubar or Ghirdhubar, transcribing for
+want of a more certain method, according to their phonetic value, the
+characters composing the ideographic spelling of his name.
+
+[35] The text is published in "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,"
+vol. iv. pp. 50 and 51. The two principal translations hitherto given
+are those of George Smith and M. Oppert. The one we now offer contains a
+large share of personal work. We avail ourselves of the labours of our
+illustrious precursors, but believe that we have also added some
+important steps towards a precise understanding of the text.
+
+[36] Here several verses are wanting.
+
+[37] "The water of the twilight at break of day," one of the
+personifications of rain.
+
+[38] The god of thunder.
+
+[39] The god of war and death.
+
+[40] The Chaldeo-Assyrian Hercules.
+
+[41] The superior heaven of the fixed stars.
+
+[42] Vases of the measure called in Hebrew _Seäh_. This relates to a
+detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.
+
+[43] These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.
+
+[44] The god of epidemics.
+
+[45] _Studien zur Kritik und Erklarung der Biblischen Urgeschichte_, p.
+150.
+
+[46] Oannès and Euahanès belong to an Accadian form: Êa-Khan, "Êa the
+fish;" Oès to the simple Êa, as the Aos of Damascus.
+
+[47] _Vendidâd_, ii. 46.
+
+[48] Chapter vii.
+
+[49] See especially _Yesht_ viii., 13 _Vendidâd_, xix. 135.
+
+[50] It is in virtue of this assimilation that Plutarch (De Solert anim.
+13) speaks of the dove sent out by Deucalion to see if the Deluge had
+ceased, a circumstance mentioned by no other Greek mythographer.
+
+[51] "Myvyrian Archæology of Wales," vol. ii. p. 50, triad 13.
+
+[52] _Ibid._ p. 71, triad 97.
+
+[53] Vafthrudnismal, st. 29.
+
+[54] Hanwsch, _Slawischer Mythus_, p. 234.
+
+[55] "Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology," vol. iv. pp.
+1-19.
+
+[56] Personification of the primordial abyss.
+
+[57] Nevertheless, the Deluge holds an important place among the
+cosmogonic traditions--decidedly original in character--which Reguly has
+found among the Voguls. We also hear of a diluvian story among the
+Eulets or Kalmuks, where it seems to have come in with Buddhism.
+
+[58] We must, however, observe that Buddhist missionaries appear to have
+introduced the diluvian tradition of Judea into China. Gutzlaff, "On
+Buddhism in China," in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1st
+series, vol. xii. p. 78), affirms that he saw its principal episode
+represented in a very fine painting of a temple to the goddess
+Kivan-yin.
+
+[59] Recently published, not recently collected. The date of Pedro de
+los Rios shows this.
+
+[60] "The Native Races of the Pacific States," vol. iii. p. 68.
+
+[61] By a singular alteration of the text it is said that the jaguars
+"were devoured," instead of "they devoured."
+
+[62] From the day of the year when the final cataclysm was supposed to
+have occurred.
+
+[63] This designation of the year accords with the system of Mexican
+cycles, containing four groups of years, each named after some object or
+animal.
+
+[64] "Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose," p. 283.
+
+[65] This name looks like a corruption of that of the Indian Manu
+Vaivasvata.
+
+[66] Except in the Fiji Islands, where the Polynesians have been for
+some time settled among the Melanians, and have only been destroyed by
+these after having infused into the population an element sufficiently
+marked to render the Fijis a mixed rather than a purely black race.
+
+[67] Gaussin: "Du Dialecte de Tahiti et de la Langue polynésienne," p.
+235. See also Ellis's "Polynesian Researches."
+
+[68] We may, however, observe that in the Iranian myth of Yima, which we
+have reported above, a square enclosure (_vara_) miraculously preserved
+from the deluge, holds the place of the Biblical Ark and of the vessel
+of Chaldean tradition.
+
+[69] The date of the first establishment of Indian Brahmanists in Java
+remains uncertain, but from the end of the second century B.C. the Greek
+Iambulos (Diod. Sicul. ii. 57) very exactly described as the way of
+writing in this island the syllabic system Kavi, borrowed from India.
+
+
+
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
+
+
+Some time since an article appeared in the _Times_, quoted from the
+_Brisbane Courier_ (an Australian paper of good credit), stating that
+one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be congealed
+for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life, so that
+they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead meat, yet
+on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity. Many
+regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though a few
+days later an article appeared, the opening words of which implied that
+only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken the article _au
+grand sérieux_. Of course it was a hoax; but it is worthy of notice that
+the editor of the _Brisbane Courier_ had really been misled, as he
+admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him credit.[70]
+
+This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as a
+joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown), did
+good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain
+statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which
+otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose here
+to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some
+of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth
+while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as
+some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative. I
+shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of
+resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in
+America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New York
+paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity some forty
+years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that the two
+stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to seems
+to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, _bien entendu_)
+which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly
+associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right,
+indeed, in saying, _Le style c'est de l'homme même_, we can readily
+understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to
+themselves.
+
+It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of
+scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of the
+place where the experiments were made. The history of the wonderful
+Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:--"Many of the
+readers of the _Brisbane Courier_ who know Sydney Harbour will remember
+the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour, which, in a
+succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a chain of lakes
+for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made more than
+ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost sheer into
+the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by white
+beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick
+buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of
+publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now
+established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future
+prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was
+precisely in this tone that the author of the "Lunar Hoax"[71] opened
+his account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build
+an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon
+the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all
+future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks--though probably
+he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by whom this had
+been said,--"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man,
+as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he may now fold
+the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental
+supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the description
+which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's representation of
+the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled banner round
+him, and died like the son of a hoss").
+
+It next becomes necessary to describe the persons engaged in pursuing
+the experiments by which the art of freezing animals alive is to be
+attained. "The gentlemen engaged in this enterprise are Signor Rotura,
+whose researches into the botany and natural history of South America
+have rendered his name eminent; and Mr. James Grant, a pupil of the late
+Mr. Nicolle, so long associated with Mr. Thomas Mort in his freezing
+process. Next to the late Mr. Nicolle, Mr. James Grant can claim
+pre-eminence of knowledge in the science of generating cold, and his
+freezing chamber at Woolhara has long been known as the seat of valuable
+experiments originated in his, Mr. Nicolle's, lifetime." Is it merely an
+accident, by the way, or is it due to the circumstance that exceptional
+powers of invention in general matters are often found in company with
+singular poverty of invention as to details, that two of the names here
+mentioned closely resemble names connected with the Lunar Hoax? It was
+Nicollet who in reality devised the Lunar Hoax, though Richard Alton
+Locke, the reputed author, probably gave to the story its final form;
+and, again, the story purported to come from Dr. Grant, of Glasgow. In
+the earlier narrative, again, as in the later, due care was taken to
+impress readers with the belief that those who had made the discovery,
+or taken part in the work, were worthy of all confidence. Sir W.
+Herschel was the inventor of the optical device by which the inhabitants
+of the moon were to be rendered visible, a plan which "evinced the most
+profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity
+in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and
+cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood,
+determined upon testing it at whatever cost." Among his companions he
+had "Dr. Andrew Grant, Lieutenant Drummond of the Royal Engineers, and a
+large party of the best English mechanics."
+
+The accounts of preliminary researches, doubts, and difficulties are in
+both cases very similar in tone. "It appears that five months ago," says
+the narrator of the Australian hoax, "Signor Rotura called upon Mr.
+Grant to invoke his assistance in a scheme for the transmission of live
+stock to Europe. Signor Rotura averred that he had discovered a South
+American vegetable poison, allied to the well-known _woolara_ (_sic_)
+that had the power of perfectly suspending animation, and that the
+trance thus produced continued until the application of another
+vegetable essence caused the blood to resume its circulation and the
+heart its functions. So perfect, moreover, was this suspension of life
+that Signor Rotura had found in a warm climate decomposition set in at
+the extremities after a week of this living death, and he imagined that
+if the body in this inert state were reduced to a temperature
+sufficiently low to arrest decomposition, the trance might be kept up
+for months, possibly for years. He frankly owned that he had never tried
+this preserving of the tissues by cold, and could not confidently speak
+as to its effect upon the after-restoration of the animal operated on.
+Before he left Mr. Grant he had turned that gentleman's doubts into
+wondering curiosity by experimenting on his dog." The account of this
+experiment I defer for a moment till I have shown how closely in several
+respects this portion of the Australian hoax resembles the corresponding
+part of the American story. It will be observed that the great discovery
+is presented as simply a very surprising development of a process which
+is strictly within the limits, not only of what is possible, but of what
+is known. So also in the case of the Lunar Hoax, the amazing magnifying
+power by which living creatures in the moon were said to have been
+rendered visible, was presented as simply a very remarkable development
+of the familiar properties of the telescope. In both cases, the
+circumstances which in reality limit the possible extension of the
+properties in question were kept conveniently concealed from view. In
+both cases, doubts and difficulties were urged with an apparent
+frankness intended to disarm suspicion. In both cases, also, the
+inventor of the new method by which difficulties were to be overcome is
+represented as in conference with a man of nearly equal skill, who urges
+the doubts naturally suggested by the wonderful nature of the promised
+achievements. In the Lunar Hoax, Sir John Herschel and Sir David
+Brewster are thus represented in conference. Herschel asks whether the
+difficulty arising from deficient illumination may not be overcome by
+effecting a transfusion of artificial light through the focal image.
+Brewster, startled at the novel thought, as he well might be,
+hesitatingly refers "to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of
+incidence," which is effective though glorious in its absurdity. (Yet it
+has been gravely asserted that this nonsense deceived Arago.) "Sir John,
+grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in
+which the refrangibility was arrested by the second speculum and the
+angle of incidence restored by the third" (a bewilderingly ridiculous
+statement). "'And,' continued he, 'why cannot the illuminated
+microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct, and if
+necessary even to magnify, the focal object?' Sir David sprang from his
+chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and leaping half-way to the ceiling"
+(from which we may infer that he was somewhat more than _tête montée_),
+"exclaimed, 'Thou art the man!'"
+
+The method devised in each case being once accepted as sound, the rest
+of course readily follows. In the case of the Lunar Hoax a number of
+discoveries are made which need not here be described[72] (though I
+shall take occasion presently to quote some passages relating to them
+which closely resemble in style certain passages in the Australian
+narrative). In the later hoax, the illustrative experiments are
+forthwith introduced. Signor Rotura, having so far persuaded Mr. Grant
+of the validity of the plan as to induce him to allow a favourite dog to
+be experimented upon, "injected two drops of his liquid, mixed with a
+little glycerine, into a small puncture made in the dog's ear. In three
+or four minutes the animal was perfectly rigid, the four legs stretched
+backward, eyes wide open, pupils very much dilated, and exhibiting
+symptoms very similar to those caused by strychnine, except that there
+had been no previous struggle or pain. Begging his owner to have no
+apprehension for the life of his favourite animal, Signor Rotura lifted
+the dog carefully and placed him on a shelf in a cupboard, where he
+begged he might be left till the following day, when he promised to call
+at ten o'clock and revive the apparently dead brute. Mr. Grant
+continually during that day and night visited the cupboard, and so
+perfectly was life suspended in his favourite--no motion of the pulse or
+heart giving any indication of the possibility of revival--that he
+confesses he felt all the sharpest reproaches of remorse at having
+sacrificed a faithful friend to a doubtful and dangerous experiment. The
+temperature of the body, too, in the first four hours gradually lowered
+to 25 degrees Fahrenheit below ordinary blood temperature, which
+increased his fears as to the result; and by morning the body was as
+cold as in natural death. At ten o'clock next morning, according to
+promise, Signor Rotura presented himself, and laughing at Mr. Grant's
+fears, requested a tub of warm water to be brought. He tested this with
+the thermometer at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" (which, being the temperature
+of freezing water, can hardly be called warm), "and in this laid the
+dog, head under." In reply to Mr. Grant's objections Signor Rotura
+assured him that, as animation must remain entirely suspended until the
+administration of the antidote, no water could be drawn into the lungs,
+and that the immersion of the body was simply to bring it again to a
+blood-heat. After about ten minutes of this bath the body was taken out,
+and another liquid injected in a puncture made in the neck. "Mr. Grant
+tells me," proceeds the veracious narrator, "that the revival of Turk
+was the most startling thing he ever witnessed; and having since seen
+the experiment made upon a sheep, I can fully confirm his statement. The
+dog first showed the return of life in the eye" (winking, doubtless, at
+the joke), "and after five and a half minutes he drew a long breath, and
+the rigidity left his limbs. In a few minutes more he commenced gently
+wagging his tail, and then slowly got up, stretched himself, and trotted
+off as though nothing had happened." From this moment Mr. Grant had full
+faith in Signor Rotura's discovery, and promised him all the assistance
+in his power. They next determined to try freezing the body. But the
+first two experiments were not encouraging. Mr. Grant fortunately did
+not allow his favourite dog to be experimented upon further, so a
+strange dog was put into the freezing room at Mr. Grant's works for four
+days, after having in the first place had his animation suspended by
+Signor Rotura. Although this animal survived so far as to draw a long
+breath, the vital energies appeared too exhausted for a complete rally,
+and the animal died. So also did the next two animals experimented on,
+a cat and a dog. "In the meantime, however, Dr. Barker had been taken
+into their counsels, and at his suggestion respiration was encouraged,
+as in the case of persons drowned, by artificial compression and
+expansion of the lungs. Dr. Barker was of opinion that, as the heart in
+every case began to beat, it was a want of vital force to set the lungs
+in proper motion that caused death. The result showed his surmises to be
+entirely correct. A number of animals whose lives had been sealed up in
+this artificial death have been kept in the freezing chamber from one to
+five weeks, and it is found that though the shock to the system from
+this freezing is very great, it is not increased by duration of time."
+
+I need not follow the hoaxer's account of the buildings erected for the
+further prosecution of these researches. One point, however, may be
+mentioned illustrating the resemblance to which I have already referred
+as existing between this Australian narrative and the Lunar Hoax. In
+describing the works erected at Middle Harbour, the Australian account
+carefully notes that the necessary funds were provided by Mr.
+Christopher Newton, of Pitt Street. In like manner, in the Lunar Hoax we
+are told that the plate-glass required for the optical arrangement
+devised by Sir J. Herschel was "obtained, by consent be it observed,
+from the shop-window of M. Desanges, the jeweller to his ex-majesty
+Charles X., in High Street."
+
+Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which are the
+more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly stated by
+Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in this narrative,
+apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded as beyond the
+range of scientific possibilities:--"Arrived at the works in Middle
+Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr. Grant's
+apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the freezing
+chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here were fourteen
+sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides in a heap,
+_alive_, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present position for
+nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three months.
+Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his shoulder, and
+carried it outside into the other building, where a number of shallow
+cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water taps to each
+tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of these tanks was
+quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor, I meantime
+examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the nineteen-days-dead
+lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come back to us, and many
+of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to me less improbable
+than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the lamb, to all
+appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only difference
+perceptible to me between his condition and actual death being the
+absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained its
+brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is
+heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends
+a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped
+into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three
+minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the
+introduction of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken
+out and placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing
+the wool on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver
+syringe under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green
+liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the
+_Astracharlis_, found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its
+back, Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with
+his knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural
+depression and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was
+struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the
+door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front.
+Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the
+marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a
+discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by
+scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage
+resembling in tone the lively account of the lamb's behaviour when
+released. Herds of agile creatures like antelopes were seen in the moon,
+"abounding in the acclivitous glades of the woods." "This beautiful
+creature afforded us," says the narrator, "the most exquisite amusement.
+The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as
+faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of the
+_camera obscura_. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon
+its beard, it would suddenly bound away, as if conscious of our earthly
+impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent
+nibbling the herbage, say or do to them what we would." And again, a
+little further on, "We fairly laughed at the recognition of so familiar
+an acquaintance as a sheep in so distant a land--a good large sheep,
+which would not have disgraced the farms of Leicestershire or the
+shambles of Leadenhall Market; presently they appeared in great numbers,
+and on reducing the lenses we found them in flocks over a great part of
+the valley. I need not say how desirous we were of finding shepherds to
+these flocks, and even a man with blue apron and rolled-up sleeves would
+have been a welcome sight to us, if not to the sheep; but they fed in
+peace, lords of their own pastures, without either protector or
+destroyer in human shape."
+
+Not less amusing, though more gravely written, is the account of the
+benefits likely to follow from the use of the wonderful process for
+freezing animals alive. Cargoes of live sheep can be readily sent from
+Australia to Europe. Any that cannot be restored to life will still be
+good meat; while the rest can be turned to pasture or driven alive to
+market. With bullocks the case would not be quite so simple, because of
+their greater size and weight, which would render them more difficult
+to handle with safety. The carcass being rendered brittle by freezing,
+they are so much the more liable to injury. "It sounded odd to hear Mr.
+Grant and Signor Rotura laying stress upon the danger of breakage in a
+long voyage." This one can readily imagine.
+
+Some of the remoter consequences of the discovery are touched on by the
+narrator, though but lightly, as if he saw the necessity of keeping his
+wonders within reasonable limits. Signor Rotura, "though he had never
+attempted his experiment on a human being," which was considerate on his
+part, "had no doubt at all as to its perfect safety." He had requested
+Sir Henry Parkes to allow him to operate on the next felon under capital
+sentence. This, by the way, was a compromising statement on our hoaxer's
+part. It requires very little acquaintance with our laws to know that no
+one could allow a felon condemned to death to be experimented on in this
+or in any other manner. Such a man is condemned to die, and to die
+without any preliminary tortures, bodily or mental, other than those
+inseparable from the legally adopted method of bringing death about. He
+can neither be allowed to remain alive after an experiment, and
+necessarily free (because he has not been condemned to other punishment
+than the death penalty), nor can he be first experimented upon and then
+hanged. So that that single sentence in the narrative should have shown
+every one that it was a hoax, even if the inherent absurdity of many
+other parts of the story had not shown this very clearly. As to whether
+a temporary suspension of the vital faculties would affect the longevity
+of the patient, Signor Rotura expressed himself somewhat doubtful; he
+believed, however, that the duration of life might in this way be
+prolonged for years. "I was anxious," says the hoaxer, "to know if a
+period of, say, five years of this inertness were submitted to, whether
+it would be so much cut out of one's life, or if it would be simply five
+years of unconscious existence tacked on to one's sentient life. Signor
+Rotura could give no positive answer, but he believes, as no change
+takes place or can take place while this frozen trance continues, no
+consumption, destruction, or reparation of tissue being possible, it
+would be so many unvalued and profitless years added to a lifetime." Of
+some of the strange ideas suggested by this conception I shall take
+occasion to speak further on; I must for the present turn, however, from
+the consideration of this ingenious hoax to discuss the scientific
+possibilities which underlie the narrative, or at least some parts of
+the narrative.
+
+In the first place, it must be noticed that in the phenomena of
+hibernation we have what at a first view seems closely to resemble the
+results of Signor Rotura's apocryphal experiments. As was remarked in
+the _Times_, the idea underlying the Australian story is that the
+hibernation of animals can be artificially imitated and extended, so
+that as certain animals lie in a state of torpor and insensibility
+throughout the winter months, all animals also may perhaps be caused to
+lie in such a state for an indefinite length of time, if only a suitable
+degree of cold is maintained, and some special contrivance adopted to
+prevent insensibility from passing into death. The phenomena of
+hibernation are indeed so surprising, when rightly understood, that
+inexperienced persons might well believe in almost any wonders resulting
+from the artificial production (which, be it remembered, is altogether
+possible) of the hibernating condition, and the artificial extension of
+this condition to other animals than those which at present hibernate,
+and to long periods of time. It has been justly said, that if
+hibernation had only been noticed among cold-blooded animals, its
+possibility in the case of mammals would have seemed inconceivable. The
+first news that the bat and hedgehog pass into the state of complete
+hibernation, would probably have bean received as either a daring hoax
+or a very gross blunder.
+
+Let us consider what hibernation really is. When, as winter approaches
+and their insect food disappears, the bat and the hedgehog resign
+themselves to torpor, the processes which we are in the habit of
+associating with vitality gradually diminish in activity. The breathing
+becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more slowly, more
+and more feebly. At last the breathing ceases altogether. The
+circulation does not wholly cease, however. So far as is known, the life
+of warm-blooded animals cannot continue after the circulation has
+entirely ceased for more than a certain not very considerable length of
+time.[73] The chemical changes on which animal heat depends, and without
+which there can be no active vitality, cease with the cessation of
+respiration. But dormant vitality is still maintained in hibernation,
+because the heart's fibre, excited to contract by the carbonized blood,
+continues to propel the blood through the torpid body. This slow
+circulation of venous blood continues during the whole period of
+hibernation. It is the only vital process which can be recognised; and
+it is not easy to understand how the life of any warm-blooded animal can
+be maintained in this way. The explanation usually offered is that the
+material conveyed by the absorbents suffices to counterbalance the
+process of waste occasioned by the slow circulation. But this does not
+in reality touch the chief difficulty presented by the phenomena of
+hibernation. So far as mere waste is concerned (as I have elsewhere
+pointed out) the imagined Australian process is as effectual as
+hibernation; in that process, of course the circulation would be as
+completely checked as the respiration; thus there would be no waste, and
+the absorbents (which would also be absolutely dormant) would not have
+to do even that slight amount of work which they accomplish during
+hibernation. Science can only say that the known cases of hibernation
+among warm-blooded animals show that the vital forces may be reduced
+much lower without destroying life, than but for them we should have
+deemed conceivable.
+
+But next let us consider what science has to say as to the artificial
+suspension of vitality. In Dr. Richardson's paper on this subject there
+is much which seems almost as surprising as anything in the Australian
+story. Indeed, he seems scarcely to have felt assured that that story
+really was a hoax. "The statements," he says, "which, under the head of
+'A Wonderful Discovery,' are copied from the _Brisbane Courier_, seem
+greatly to have astonished the reading public. To what extent the
+statements are true or untrue it is impossible to say. The whole may be
+a cleverly-written fiction, and certain of the words and names used
+seem, according to some readers, to suggest that view; but be this so or
+not, I wish to indicate that some part at all events of what is stated
+might be true, and is certainly within the range of possibility." "The
+discovery," he proceeds, "which is described in the communication under
+notice, is not in principle new; on the subject of suspension of
+animation I have myself been making experimental inquiries for
+twenty-five years at least, and have communicated to the scientific
+world many essays, lectures, and demonstrations, relating to it. I have
+twice read papers bearing on this inquiry to the Royal Society, once to
+the British Association for the Advancement of Science, two or three
+times in my lectures on Experimental and Practical Medicine, and
+published one in _Nature_. In respect to the particular point of the
+preservation of animal bodies for food, I dwelt on this topic in the
+lectures delivered before the Society of Arts, in April and May of last
+year (1878), explaining very definitely that the course of research in
+the direction of preservation must ultimately lead to a process by which
+we should keep the structures of animals in a form of suspended
+molecular life." In other words, Dr. Richardson had indicated the
+possibility of doing precisely that which would have constituted the
+chief value of the Australian discovery, if this had been real.
+
+Let us next consider what is known respecting the possibility of
+suspending a conscious and active life. This is first stated in general
+terms by Dr. Richardson, as follows:--"If an animal perfectly free from
+disease be subjected to the action of some chemical agents or physical
+agencies which have the property of reducing to the extremest limit the
+motor forces of the body, the muscular irritability, and the nervous
+stimulus to muscular action, and if the suspension of the muscular
+irritability and of the nervous excitation be made at once and equally,
+the body even of a warm-blooded animal may be brought down to a
+condition so closely resembling death, that the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life." This general statement must be
+carefully studied if the reader desires thoroughly to understand at once
+the power and the limits of the power of science in this direction. The
+motor forces, the muscular irritability, and the nervous stimulus to
+muscular action, can be reduced to a certain extent without destroying
+life, but not absolutely without destroying life. The reduction of the
+muscular irritability must be made at once and equally; if the muscular
+irritability is reduced to its lowest limit while the nervous
+excitation remains unaltered, or is less reduced, death ensues; and
+_vice versâ_, if the nervous excitation is reduced to its lowest limits
+while the muscular irritability remains unaltered, or is little reduced,
+death equally follows. Then it is to be noticed that though when the
+state of seeming death is brought about, the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life, it does not follow that science
+may not find perfectly sure means of detecting cases where life still
+exists but is at its very lowest. Of course all the ordinary tests, in
+which so many place complete reliance--a mirror placed close to the
+mouth, a finger on the pulse, hand, or ear applied to the breast[74]
+over the heart, and so forth--would be utterly inadequate, in such a
+case, to reveal any signs of life. That doctors have been deceived by
+cases of suspended vitality not artificially produced, but presenting
+similar phenomena, is well known. A case in point may not be out of
+place here, as illustrating well certain features of suspended
+animation, and showing the possibility that in _some_ cases
+consciousness may remain, even when the most careful examination detects
+no traces of life. The case is described by Dr. Alexander Crichton, in
+his "Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement." "A young
+lady, who had seemed gradually to sink until she died, had been placed
+in her coffin, careful scrutiny revealing no signs of vitality. On the
+day appointed for her funeral, several hymns were sung before her door.
+She was conscious of all that happened around her, and heard her friends
+lamenting her death. She felt them put on the dead-clothes, and lay her
+in the coffin, which produced an indescribable mental anxiety. She tried
+to cry, but her mind was without power, and could not act on the body.
+It was equally impossible to her to stretch out her arms or to open her
+eyes or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The
+internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the
+funeral hymns began to be sung and when the lid of the coffin was about
+to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the
+first one which gave activity to her mind, and caused it to operate on
+her corporeal frame. Just as the people were about to nail on the lid,
+a kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of the
+body. It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive
+motion was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes
+after, during which fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once
+opened her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek." In this case it
+was considered that the state of trance had been brought about by the
+excessive contractile action of the nervous centres. St. Augustine, by
+the way, remarks in his "De Civitate Dei" on the case of a certain
+priest called Restitutus (appropriately enough), who could when he
+wished withdraw himself from life in such sort that he did not feel when
+twitched or stung, but might even be burned without suffering pain
+except afterwards from the wound so produced. Not only did he not
+struggle or even move, but like a dead person he did not breathe, yet
+afterwards he said that he could hear the voices of those around him (if
+they spoke loudly) as if from a great distance (_de longinquo_).
+
+To return, however, to Dr. Richardson's discussion of the artificial
+suspension of active life.
+
+He recognises three degrees of muscular irritability, to which he has
+given the names of active efficient, passive efficient, and
+negative,--though doubtless he would recognize the probability that the
+line separating the first from the second may not always be easily
+traced, and that, though there is a most definite distinction between
+the second and the third, the actual position of the boundary line has
+not as yet been determined. In other words, so far as the first and
+second states are concerned, there are not two degrees only, but many.
+As regards the third or negative state, which is only another way of
+describing death, there is, of course, only one degree, though the
+evidence as to the existence of this state may be more or less complete
+and obvious. Dr. Richardson defines the active efficient state of
+muscular irritability as that "represented in the ordinary living muscle
+in which the heart is working at full tension, and all parts of the body
+are thoroughly supplied with blood, with perfection of consciousness in
+waking hours, and, in a word, full life." The second, or passive
+efficient state, "is represented in suspended animation, in which the
+heart is working regularly but at low tension, supplying the muscles and
+other parts with sufficient blood to maintain the molecular life, but no
+more." The third of these states--the negative--"is represented when
+there is no motion whatever of blood through the body, as in an animal
+entirely frozen."
+
+With the first and third of these states I have in reality nothing to
+do, unless indeed it could be shown that the third or negative state can
+be produced without causing death. Perhaps in assuming, as I did above,
+that this state is identical with the state of the dead, I was, in fact,
+assuming what science has yet to demonstrate. I may at any rate,
+however, say without fear of valid contradiction, that science has as
+yet never succeeded in showing that this negative state may be attained
+even for a moment without death ensuing; and the probability (almost
+amounting to certainty) is that death and this change of state have in
+every instance been simultaneous. Dr. Richardson speaks of the second
+stage as that in which animation is _usually_ suspended; but he does not
+show that the third stage can even possibly be attained without death.
+
+The second stage, or stage of passive efficiency, closely resembles the
+third, "but differs from it in that, under favouring circumstances, the
+whole of the phenomena of the active efficient stage may be perfectly
+resumed, the heart suddenly enlarging in volume from its filling with
+blood, and reanimating the whole organism by the force of its renewed
+stroke in full tension. So far as we have yet proceeded," continues Dr.
+Richardson, "the whole phenomena of restoration from death are
+accomplished during this stage;" meaning, it would seem, that in all
+instances of restoration the restoration has been from the second, never
+from the third stage. "To those who are not accustomed to see them they
+are no doubt very wonderful, looking like veritable restorations from
+death. They surprise even medical men the first time they are witnessed
+by them." He gives an interesting illustration. At a meeting of the
+British Medical Association at Leeds, "a member of the Association was
+showing to a large audience the action of nitrous oxide gas, using a
+rabbit as the subject of his demonstration. The animal was removed from
+the narcotizing chamber a little too late, for it had ceased to breathe,
+and it was placed on the table to all appearance dead." "At this stage,"
+he proceeds, "I went to the table, and by use of a small pair of
+double-acting bellows restored respiration. In about four minutes there
+was revival of active irritability in the abdominal muscles, and two
+minutes later the animal leaped again into life, as if it had merely
+been asleep. There was nothing remarkable in the fact; but it excited,
+even in so cultivated an audience as was then present, the liveliest
+surprise."
+
+But when we learn the condition necessary that a body which has once
+been reduced to the state of passive efficiency should be restored to
+active life, we recognise that even when science has learned how to
+reduce vitality to a minimum without destroying it, few will care to
+risk the process, either in their own persons or in the case of those
+dear to them. Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular
+irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and
+equally reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and
+the nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls
+the aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word
+which we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or
+crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears to
+the word watery. If all three fluids remain in the aqueous condition,
+"the period during which life may be restored is left undefined. It may
+be a very long period, including weeks, and possibly months, granting
+that decomposition of the tissues is not established; and even after a
+limited process of decomposition, there may be renewal of life in
+cold-blooded animals. But if pectous change begins in any one of the
+structures I have named, it extends like a crystallization quickly
+through all the structures, and thereupon recovery is impossible, for
+the change in one of the parts is sufficient to prevent the restoration
+of all. Thus the heart may be beating, but the blood being pectous it
+beats in vain; or the heart may beat and the blood may flow, but the
+voluntary muscles being pectous the circulating action is vain; or the
+heart may beat, the blood may flow, and the muscles may remain in the
+aqueous condition, but the nerves being pectous the circulating action
+is in vain; or sometimes the heart may come to rest, and the other parts
+may remain susceptible, but the motion of the heart and blood not being
+present to quicken them into activity, their life is in vain." Add to
+this, that the restoration of the motor forces, of the muscular
+irritability, and of the nervous excitation, must be as simultaneous and
+as equal as their reduction had been, and we begin to recognise decided
+objections to the too frequent suspension of animation, even when the
+most perfect artificial means have been devised for bringing about that
+interesting result.
+
+Although, however, we may not feel encouraged to believe that many will
+care to have experiments tried on themselves in this direction, we may
+still examine with interest the results of experimental research and
+experience. These agree in showing that there are means by which active
+life may be suspended, while at the same time the aqueous condition of
+the fluids mentioned above (the blood, the muscular fluid, and the
+nervous fluid, the two latter of which are for convenience called the
+colloidal animal fluids, and are derived from the blood) is retained.
+
+The first and in some respects the most efficient of these means is
+cold. The blood and the colloidal fluids remain in the aqueous condition
+when the body is exposed to cold at freezing-point. "At this same point
+all vital acts, excepting perhaps the motion of the heart" (it is Dr.
+Richardson, be it remembered, who thus uses the significant word
+"perhaps"), "may be temporarily arrested in an animal, and then some
+animals may continue apparently dead for long intervals of time, and may
+yet return to life under conditions favourable to recovery." Dr.
+Richardson gives a singular illustration of this, describing an
+experiment which must have appeared even more surprising to those who
+witnessed it than that in which the rabbit was restored to life. "In one
+of my lectures on death from cold," he says, "which I delivered in the
+winter session of 1867, some fish which during a hard frost had been
+frozen in a tank at Newcastle-on-Tyne, were sent up to me by rail. They
+were produced in the completely frozen state at the lecture, and by
+careful thawing many of them were restored to perfect life. At my
+Croomian lecture on muscular irritability after systemic death, a
+similar fact was illustrated from frogs." It would appear, indeed, that
+so far as cold-blooded animals are concerned, there is no recognisable
+limit to the time during which they may remain thus frozen yet
+afterwards recover. But, even in their case, much skill is required to
+make the recovery sure. "If in thawing them the utmost care is not taken
+to thaw gradually, and at a temperature always below the natural
+temperature of the living animal, the fluids will pass from the frozen
+state through the aqueous into the pectous so rapidly that death from
+pectous change will be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or
+life stage at all." Naturally it is much more difficult to restore life
+in the case of warm-blooded animals. Indeed, Dr. Richardson remarks,
+that in the case of the more complex and differently shielded organs of
+warm-blooded animals, it is next to impossible to thaw equally and
+simultaneously all the colloidal fluids. "In very young animals it can
+be done. Young kittens, a day or two old, that have been drowned in
+ice-cold water, will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a
+certainty, if brought into dry air at a temperature of 98 degrees
+Fahrenheit. The gentlest motion of the body will be sufficient to
+re-start the respiration, and therewith the life."
+
+Remarking on such cases as these, Dr. Richardson notes that the nearest
+natural approach to the stage of passive efficiency is seen in
+hibernating animals. He states, however, that in hibernation the
+complete state of passive efficiency is not produced. He does not accept
+the opinion of those who consider that in true hibernation breathing
+ceases as above described. A slow respiration continues, he believes, as
+well as that low stage of active efficiency of circulation which we have
+already indicated. "The hibernating animal sleeps only; and while
+sleeping it consumes or wastes; and if the cold be prolonged it may die
+from waking." More decisive, because surer, is the evidence derived from
+the possibility of waking the hibernating animals by the common methods
+used for waking a sleeper. This certainly seems to show that animation
+is not positively suspended.
+
+He asks next the question whether an animal like a fish, frozen equally
+through all its structures, is to be regarded as actually dead in the
+strict sense of the word or not, seeing that if it be uniformly and
+equally thawed it may recover from this perfectly frozen state. "In like
+manner," he says, "it may be doubted whether a healthy warm-blooded
+animal suddenly and equally frozen through all its parts is dead,
+although it is not recoverable." If, as seems certainly to be the case,
+the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it some
+inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue,
+some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not
+have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot die
+again. Albeit, the outlook is not encouraging, at any rate so far as the
+use of cold alone for maintaining suspended animation in full-grown
+warm-blooded animals is concerned. Cold will, however, for a long time
+maintain ready for motion active organs locally subject to it Even after
+death this effect of cold "may be locally demonstrated," Dr. Richardson
+tells us, "and has sometimes been so demonstrated to the wonder of the
+world." "For instance, on January 17, in the year 1803, Aldini, the
+nephew of Galvani, created the greatest astonishment in London by a
+series of experiments which he conducted on a malefactor, twenty-six
+years old, named John Forster, who was executed at Newgate, and whose
+body, an hour after execution, was delivered over to Mr. Keate, Master
+of the College of Surgeons, for research. The body had been exposed for
+an hour to an atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point,[75] and from
+that cause, though Aldini does not seem to have recognised the fact, the
+voluntary muscles retained their irritability to such a degree that when
+Aldini began to pass voltaic currents through the body, some of the
+bystanders seem to have concluded that the unfortunate malefactor had
+come again to life. It is significant also that Aldini in his report
+says that his object was not to produce reanimation, but to obtain a
+practical knowledge how far galvanism might be employed as an auxiliary
+to revive persons who were accidentally suffocated, _as though he
+himself were in some doubt_,"--that is, not in doubt only about the
+power of galvanism, but in doubt whether Forster had been restored to
+life for a while, or not! Dr. Richardson has himself repeated, on lower
+animals, these experiments of Aldini's, except that the animals on which
+he has experimented have passed into death under chloroform, not through
+suffocation. His object, in fact, was to determine the best treatment
+for human beings who sink under chloroform and other anæsthetics. He
+finds that in warm weather he fails to get the same results. Noticing
+this, he says, "I experimented at and below the freezing-point, and then
+found that both by the electrical discharge, and by injection of water
+heated to 130 degrees" (again this terrible inexactness of expression)
+"into the muscles through the arteries, active muscular movements could
+be produced in warm-blooded animals many hours after death. Thus, for
+lecture experiment, I have removed one muscle from the body of an animal
+that had slept to death from chloroform, and putting the muscle in a
+glass tube surrounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days
+in a condition for its making a final muscular contraction, and, by
+gently thawing it, have made it, in the act of final contraction, do
+some mechanical work, such as moving a long needle on the face of a
+dial, or discharging a pistol. In muscles so removed from the body and
+preserved ready for motion there is, however, only one final act. For
+as the blood and nervous supply are both cut off from it, there is
+nothing left in it but the reserved something that was fixed by the
+cold. But I do not see any reason why this should not be maintained in
+reservation for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold
+atmosphere."
+
+Cold being, however, obviously insufficient of itself for the suspension
+of active life in warm-blooded animals, at least if such life is
+eventually to be restored, let us next consider some of the agencies
+which either alone or aided by cold may suspend without destroying life.
+
+The first known of all such agencies was mandragora. Dioscorides
+describes a wine, called _morion_, which was made from the leaves and
+the root of mandragora, and possessed properties resembling those of
+chloral hydrate. That it must have been an effective narcotic is shown
+by the circumstance that painful operations were performed on patients
+subjected to its influence, without their suffering the least pain, or
+even feeling. The sleep thus produced lasted several hours. Dr.
+Richardson considers that the use of this agent was probably continued
+until the twelfth or thirteenth century. "From the use of it doubtless
+came," he says, "the Shaksperian legend of Juliet." He strangely omits
+to notice that Shakspeare elsewhere speaks of this narcotic by name,
+where Iago says of Othello:
+
+            "Not poppy, nor mandragora,
+    Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
+    Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep
+    Which thou own'dst yesterday."
+
+Probably the use of mandragora as a narcotic may have continued much
+later than the thirteenth century. In earlier times it was certainly
+used as opium is now used, not for medicinal purposes, but to produce
+for a while an agreeable sensation of dreamy drowsiness. "There were
+those," says Dr. Richardson, in his interesting article on Narcotics in
+the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July last, "who drank of it for taste or
+pleasure, and who were spoken of as 'mandragorites,' as we might speak
+of 'alcoholists' or 'chloralists.' They passed into the land of sleep
+and dream, and waking up in scare and alarm were the screaming mandrakes
+of an ancient civilization." He has himself made the "morion" of the
+ancients, dispensing the prescription of Dioscorides and Pliny. "The
+same chemist, Mr. Hanbury," he says, "who first put chloral into my
+hands for experiment, also procured for me the root of the true
+mandragora. From that root I made the morion, tested it on myself, tried
+its effects, and re-proved, after a lapse perhaps of four or five
+centuries, that it had all the properties originally ascribed to it."
+
+The "deadly nightshade" has similar properties. (In fact, morion was
+originally made from the _Atropa belladonna_, not from its ally the
+_Atropa mandragora_.) In 1851, Dr. Richardson attended two children who
+were poisoned for a time from eating the berries and chewing the leaves
+of the nightshade, which they had gathered near Richmond. They were
+brought home insensible, he says, "and they lay in a condition of
+suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being required to
+detect either the respiration or the movements of the heart; they
+nevertheless recovered."
+
+With the nitrite of amyl, Dr. Richardson has suspended the life of a
+frog for nine days, yet the creature was then restored to full and
+vigorous life. He has shown also that the same power of suspension,
+though in less degree, "could be produced in warm-blooded animals, and
+that the heart of a warm-blooded animal would contract for a period of
+eighteen hours after apparent death." The action of nitrite of amyl
+seems to resemble that of cold. In the pleasing language of the doctors,
+"it prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents
+_rigor mortis_, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous
+centres and cords." So long as this change is prevented, active life can
+be restored. But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred,
+all was over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction
+was the result." From the analogy of some of the symptoms resulting from
+the use of nitrite of amyl with the symptoms of catalepsy, Dr.
+Richardson has "ventured to suggest that under some abnormal conditions
+the human body itself, in its own chemistry, may produce an agent which
+causes the suspended life observed during the cataleptic condition." The
+suggestion has an interest apart from the question of the possibility of
+safely suspending animation for considerable periods of time: it might
+be possible to detect the nature of the agent thus produced by the
+chemistry of the human body (if the theory is correct), and thus to
+learn how its power might be counteracted.
+
+Chloral hydrate seems singularly efficient in producing the semblance of
+death,--so completely, indeed, as to deceive even the elect. Dr.
+Richardson states that at the meeting of the British Association at
+Exeter, some pigeons which had been put to sleep by the needle injection
+of a large dose of chloral, "fell into such complete resemblance of
+death that they passed for dead among an audience containing many
+physiologists and other men of science. For my own part," he proceeds,
+"I could detect no sign of life in them, and they were laid in one of
+the out-offices of the museum of the infirmary as dead. In this
+condition they were left late at night, but in the following morning
+they were found alive, and as well as if nothing hurtful had happened to
+them." Similar effects seem to be produced by the deadly poisons
+cyanogen gas and hydrocyanic acid, though in the following case,
+narrated by Dr. Richardson, the animal experimented upon (not with the
+idea of eventually restoring it to life) belonged to a race so specially
+tenacious of life that some may consider only one of its proverbial nine
+lives to have been affected. In the laboratory of a large drug
+establishment a cat, "by request of its owner, was killed, as was
+assumed, instantaneously and painlessly by a large dose of Scheele's
+acid. The animal appeared to die without a pang, and, presenting every
+appearance of death, was laid in a sink to be removed on the next
+morning. At night the animal was lying still in form of death in the
+tank beneath a tap. In the morning it was found alive and well, but with
+the fur wet from the dropping of water from the tap." This fact was
+communicated to Dr. Richardson by an eminent chemist under whose direct
+observation it occurred, in corroboration of an observation of his own
+similar in character.
+
+Our old friend alcohol (if friend it can be called) possesses the power
+of suspending active vitality without destroying life, or at any rate
+without depriving the muscles of their excitability. Dr. Richardson
+records the case of a drunken man who, while on the ice at the Welsh
+Harp lake, fell into the water through an opening in the ice, and was
+for more than fifteen minutes completely immersed. He was extricated to
+all appearance dead, but under artificial respiration was restored to
+consciousness, though he did not survive for many hours. On the whole,
+alcoholic suspension of life does not appear to be the best method
+available. To test it, the patient must first get "very, very drunk,"
+and even then, like the soldiers in the old song, must go on drinking,
+lest the experiment should terminate simply in the fiasco of a drunken
+sleep.
+
+The last agent for suspending life referred to by Dr. Richardson is pure
+oxygen. But he has not yet obtained such information on the power of
+oxygen in this respect as he hopes to do.
+
+Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics
+and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that much
+is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension of
+animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various chemical
+agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold, together with
+the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended living
+action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative influence the
+process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the news from
+Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been done had
+been effected by the combination of one of the chemical agents above
+named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question which would
+remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle has been developed,
+but whether in matter of detail a new product has been discovered which,
+better than any of the agents we already possess, destroys and suspends
+animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds, "there are, I doubt not,
+hundreds of substances which, like mandragora and nitrite of amyl, would
+suspend the vital process, and it may be a new experimenter has met with
+such an agent. It is not incredible, indeed, that the Indian Fakirs
+possess a vegetable extract or essence which possesses the same power,
+and by means of which they perform their as yet unexplained feat of
+prolonged living burial." But he is careful to note the weak points of
+the Australian story--viz., first, the statement that the method used is
+a secret, "for men of true science know no such word;" secondly, that
+the experimenter has himself to go to America to procure more supplies
+of his agents; and, thirdly, that he requires two agents, one of which
+is an antidote to the other. As respects this third point, he asks very
+pertinently how an antidote can be absorbed and enter into the
+circulation in a body practically dead.
+
+It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax, and a
+mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long distances to
+Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised such important
+results, only to find that there was not a particle of truth in the
+story.
+
+    RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[70] Many fail to see a joke when it is gravely propounded in print, who
+would at once recognise it as such, were it uttered verbally, with
+however serious a countenance. Possibly this is due to the necessary
+absence in the printed account of the indications by which we recognise
+that a speaker is jesting--as a certain expression of countenance, or a
+certain intonation of voice, by which the grave utterer of a spoken jest
+conveys his real meaning. In a paper which recently appeared in the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, Mr. Foster (Thomas of that ilk) propounded very
+gravely the theory that our Nursery Rhymes have in reality had their
+origin in Nature Myths. He explained, for instance, that the rhymes
+relating to Little Jack Horner were originally descriptive of sunrise in
+winter: Little Jack is the sun in winter, the Christmas pie is the
+cloud-covered sky; the thumb represents the sun's first ray piercing
+through the clouds; and Jack's rejoicing means the brightness of full
+sunlight. So also the rhymes beginning Hey Diddle Diddle are shown to be
+of deep and solemn import, all in manifest burlesque of some recent
+extravagant interpretations of certain ancient stories by Goldziher,
+Steinthal, and others. Yet this fun was seriously criticized by more
+than half the critics, by some approvingly, by some otherwise.
+
+[71] For a full account of this clever hoax the reader is referred to my
+"Myths and Marvels of Astronomy."
+
+[72] The most curious are given in the ninth essay of my work referred
+to in the preceding note.
+
+[73] Few probably are aware how long some animals may remain without
+breathing and yet survive. Kittens and puppies have been brought to life
+after being immersed in water for nearly three-quarters of an hour.
+
+[74] Objection has been taken to the italicized words in the following
+passage from "No Thoroughfare" (one of the parts certainly written by
+Dickens and not by Wilkie Collins): "The cry came up: 'His heart still
+beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have cast off the rope, for
+the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him; but I
+am not afraid.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking lower, but his
+heart still beats against mine.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking
+still, and we are deadly cold. _His heart no longer beats against mine._
+Let no one come down to add to our weight. Lower the rope only.' ... The
+cry came up with a deathly silence, 'Raise! softly!' ... She broke from
+them all and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands
+upon _the heart that stood still_." It has been supposed that Dickens
+wilfully departed here from truth, in order to leave the impression on
+the reader that Vendale was assuredly dead. That he wished to convey
+this impression is obvious. He often showed similar care to remove, if
+possible, all hope from the anxious reader's mind (markedly so in his
+latest and unfinished work, where nevertheless any one well acquainted
+with Dickens's manner knows not only that Drood is alive, but that
+disguised as Datchery he was to have watched Jasper to the end). But in
+reality, it has happened more than once that persons have been restored
+to life who have been found in snow-drifts not merely reduced to
+complete insensibility, but without any recognisable heart-beat. Dickens
+had probably heard of such cases when in Switzerland.
+
+[75] Dr. Richardson will certainly excite the contempt of the northern
+professor who rebuked me recently for speaking of heat when I should
+have said temperature. "An atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point"
+is an expression as inadmissible, if we must be punctilious in such
+matters, as the expressions "blood-heat," "a heat of ten degrees," and
+so forth. Possibly, however, it is not desirable to be punctilious when
+there is no possibility of being misunderstood, especially as it may be
+noticed (the Edinburgh professor has often afforded striking
+illustrations of the fact by errors of his own) that too great an effort
+to be punctilious often results in very remarkable incorrectness of
+expression.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED.
+
+IV.--UTILITARIANISM.
+
+
+In some respects Mill's Essays, published under the title
+"Utilitarianism," are among his best writings. They have, in the first
+place, the excellence of brevity. Ninety-six pages, printed in handsome
+type, make but a light task for the student who wishes to enter into the
+intricacies of moral doctrine. Moreover, the last Essay consists of a
+digression concerning the nature and origin of the idea of Justice, and
+it occupies nearly one-third of the whole book. Thus Mill managed to
+compress his discussion of so important a subject as the foundations of
+Moral Right and Wrong into some sixty pleasant pages.
+
+And pleasant pages they certainly are, for they are written in Mill's
+very best style. Now Mill, even when he is most prolix, when he is
+pursuing the intricacies of the most involved points of logic and
+philosophy, can seldom or never be charged with dulness and heaviness.
+His language is too easy, polished, and apparently lucid. In these
+Essays on Utilitarianism, he reaches his own highest standard of style.
+There is hardly any other book in the range of philosophy, so far as my
+reading has gone, which can be read with less effort. There is something
+enticing in the easy flow of sentences and ideas, and without apparent
+difficulty the reader finds himself agreeably borne into the midst of
+the most profound questions of ethical philosophy, questions which have
+been the battle-ground of the human intellect for two thousand five
+hundred years.
+
+Partly to this excellence of style, partly to Mill's immense reputation,
+acquired by other works and in other ways, must we attribute the
+importance which has been generally attached to these ninety-six pages.
+Probably no other modern work of the same small typographical extent has
+been equally discussed, criticized, and admired, unless, indeed, it be
+the Essay on Liberty of the same author. The result is, that Mill has
+been generally regarded as the latest and best expounder of the great
+Utilitarian Doctrine--that doctrine which is, by one and no doubt the
+preponderating school, regarded as the foundation of all moral and
+legislative progress. Many there are who think that, what Hume and Paley
+and Jeremy Bentham began, Mill has carried nearly to perfection in these
+agreeable Essays.
+
+Nothing can be more plain, too, than that Mill himself believed he was
+dutifully expounding the doctrines of his father, of his father's
+friend, the great Bentham, and of the other unquestionable Utilitarians
+among whom he grew up. Mill seems to pride himself upon having been the
+first, not indeed to invent, but to bring into general acceptance the
+name of the school to which he supposed himself to belong. He says:[76]
+"The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the
+first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did not
+invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
+'Annals of the Parish.' After using it as a designation for several
+years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
+resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
+for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
+of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
+term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
+convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution."
+
+In the Autobiography (p. 79), Mill makes a statement to the same effect,
+saying--
+
+    "I did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galt's novels,
+    the 'Annals of the Parish,' in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom
+    the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his
+    parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become utilitarians. With a
+    boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized on the word, and for
+    some years called myself and others by it as a sectarian
+    appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some others
+    holding the opinions it was intended to designate. As those opinions
+    attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and
+    opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when
+    those who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other
+    sectarian characteristics."
+
+It is pointed out, however, by Mr. Sidgwick in his article on
+Benthamism,[77] that Bentham himself suggested the name "Utilitarian,"
+in a letter to Dumont, as far back as June, 1802.
+
+Mill explicitly states that it was his purpose in these Essays on
+Utilitarianism to expound a previously received doctrine of utility.
+Towards the close of his first chapter, containing General Remarks, he
+says (p. 6): "On the present occasion, I shall, without further
+discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something
+towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or
+Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of." He
+proceeds to explain that a preliminary condition of the rational
+acceptance or rejection of a doctrine is that its formula should be
+correctly understood. The very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of the
+Utilitarian formula was the chief obstacle which impeded its reception;
+the main work to be done, therefore, by a Utilitarian writer was to
+clear the doctrine from the grosser misconceptions. Thus the question
+would be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties
+removed. His Essays purport throughout to be a defence and exposition of
+the Utilitarian doctrine.
+
+But one characteristic of Mill's writings is that there is often a wide
+gulf between what he intends and what he achieves. There is even a want
+of security that what he is at any moment urging may not be the logical
+contrary of what he thinks he is urging. This happens to be palpably the
+case with the celebrated Essays before us. Mill explains and defends his
+favourite doctrine with so much affection and so much candour that he
+finally explains himself into the opposite doctrine. Yet with that
+simplicity which is a pleasing feature of his personal character, Mill
+continues to regard himself as a Utilitarian long after he has left the
+grounds of Paley and Bentham. Lines of logical distinction and questions
+of logical consistency are of little account to one who cannot
+distinguish between fact and feeling, between sense and sentiment. It is
+possible that no small part of the favour with which these Essays have
+always been received by the general public is due to the happy way in
+which Mill has combined the bitter and the sweet. The uncompromising
+rigidity of the Benthamist formulas is softened and toned down. An
+apparently scientific treatment is combined with so many noble
+sentiments and high aspirations, that almost any one except a logician
+may be disarmed.
+
+But nothing can endure if it be not logical. These Essays may be very
+agreeable reading; they may make readers congratulate themselves on so
+easily becoming moral philosophers; but they cannot really advance moral
+science if they represent one thing as being another thing. I make it my
+business therefore in this article to show that Mill was intellectually
+unfitted to decide what was utilitarian and what was not. In removing
+the obstacles to the reception of his favourite doctrine he removed its
+landmarks too, and confused everything. It is true that I come rather
+late in the day to show this. Some scores, if not hundreds, of critics
+have shown the same fact more or less clearly. Eminent men of the most
+different schools and tones of thought--such as the Rev. Dr. Martineau,
+Mr. Sidgwick, Dr. Ward, Professor Birks, the late Professor Grote--have
+criticized and refuted Mill time after time.
+
+Since commencing my analysis of Mill's Philosophy, I have been surprised
+to find, too, that some who were supposed to support Mill's school
+through thick and thin, have long since discovered the inconsistencies
+which I would now expose, at such wearisome length as if they were new
+discoveries. Such is the ground which my friend, Professor Croom
+Robertson, takes in his quarterly review, _Mind_, which must be
+considered our best authority on philosophical questions. As to this
+matter of Utilitarianism, a very eminent author, formerly a friend of
+Mill himself, assures me that the subject is quite threshed out, and
+implies that there is no need for me to trouble the public any more
+about it. In fact, it would seem to be allowed within philosophical
+circles that Mill's works are often wrongheaded and unphilosophical. Yet
+these works are supposed to have done so much good that obloquy attaches
+to any one who would seek to diminish the respect paid to them by the
+public at large. Philosophers, and teachers of the last generation at
+least, have done their best to give Mill's groundless philosophy a hold
+upon all the schools and all the press, and yet we of this generation
+are to wait calmly until this influence dissolves of its own accord. We
+are to do nothing to lessen the natural respect paid to the memory of
+the dead, especially of the dead who have unquestionably laboured with
+single-minded purpose for what they considered the good of their
+fellow-creatures. But in nothing is it more true than in philosophy,
+that "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred
+with their bones." Words and false arguments cannot be recalled. Throw a
+stone into the surface of the still sea, and you are powerless to
+prevent the circle of disturbance from spreading more and more widely.
+True it is, that one disturbance may be overcome and apparently
+obliterated by other deeper disturbances; but Mill's works and opinions
+were disseminated by the immense former influence of the united band of
+Benthamist philosophers. He is criticized and discussed and repeated, in
+almost every philosophical work of the last thirty or forty years. He is
+taken throughout the world as the representative of British philosophy,
+and it is not sufficient for a few eminent thinkers in Oxford, or
+Cambridge, or London, or Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, to acknowledge in a
+tacit sort of way that this doctrine and that doctrine is wrong.
+Eventually, no doubt, the opinion of the Lecture Halls and Combination
+Rooms will guide the public opinion; but it may take a generation for
+tacit opinions to permeate society. We must have them distinctly and
+boldly expressed. It is especially to be remembered that the public
+press throughout the English-speaking countries is mostly conducted by
+men educated in the time when Mill's works were entirely predominant.
+These men are now for the most part cut off, by geographical or
+professional obstacles, from the direct influence of Oxford or
+Cambridge. The circle of disturbance has spread beyond the immediate
+reach of those centres of thought. To be brief, I do not believe that
+Mill's immense philosophical influence, founded as it is on confusion of
+thought, will readily collapse. I fear that it may remain as a permanent
+obstacle in the way of sound thinking. _Citius emergit veritas ex
+errore, quam ex confusione._ Had Mill simply erred as did Hobbes about
+elementary geometry, and Berkeley about infinitesimals, it would be
+necessary merely to point out the errors and consign them to merciful
+oblivion. But it is not so easy to consign to oblivion ponderous works
+so full of confusion of thought that every inexperienced and unwarned
+reader is sure to lose his way in them, and to take for profound
+philosophy that which is really a kind of kaleidoscopic presentation of
+philosophic ideas and phrases, in a succession of various but usually
+inconsistent combinations. To the public at large, Mill's works still
+undoubtedly remain as the standard of accurate thinking, and the most
+esteemed repertory of philosophy. I cannot therefore consider my
+criticism superfluous, and at the risk of repeating much that has been
+said by the eminent critics already mentioned, or by others, I must show
+that Mill has thrown ethical philosophy into confusion as far as could
+well be done in ninety-six pages.
+
+The nature of the Utilitarian doctrine is explained by Mill with
+sufficient accuracy in pp. 9 and 10, where he says--
+
+    "The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or
+    the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in
+    proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
+    produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure,
+    and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of
+    pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the
+    theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it
+    includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this
+    is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do
+    not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is
+    grounded--namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only
+    things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are
+    as numerous in the utilitarian as any other scheme) are desirable
+    either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the
+    promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
+
+Mill proceeds to say that such a theory of life excites inveterate
+dislike in many minds, and among them some of the most estimable in
+feeling and purpose. To hold forth no better end than pleasure is felt
+to be utterly mean and grovelling--a doctrine worthy only of swine. Mill
+accordingly proceeds to inquire whether there is anything really
+grovelling in the doctrine--whether, on the contrary, we may not include
+under pleasure, feelings and motives which are in the highest degree
+noble and elevating. The whole inquiry turns upon this question--Do
+pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity? Can a small amount
+of pleasure of very elevated character outweigh a large amount of
+pleasure of low quality? We should never think of estimating pictures by
+their size and number. The productions of West and Fuseli, which were
+the wonder and admiration of our grandparents, can now be bought by the
+square yard, to cover the bare walls of eating-houses and music-halls.
+_Sic transit gloria mundi._ But a choice sketch by Turner sometimes
+sells for many pounds per square inch. It is clear, then, that in the
+opinion of connoisseurs, which must, for our present purpose, be
+considered final, high art is almost wholly a matter of quality. Two
+great pictures by West may be nearly twice as valuable as one; and two
+equally choice sketches by Turner are twice as good as one; but it would
+seem hardly possible in the present day for the disciple of "high art"
+to bring West and Turner into the same category of thought. I suppose
+that even Turner will presently begin to wane before "the higher
+criticism."
+
+A corresponding difficulty lies at the very basis of the Utilitarian
+theory of ethics. The tippler may esteem two pints of beer doubly as
+much as one; the hero may feel double satisfaction in saving two lives
+instead of one; but who shall weigh the pleasure of a pint of beer
+against the pleasure of saving a fellow-creature's life.
+
+Paley, indeed, cut the Gordian knot of this difficulty in a summary
+manner; he denied altogether that there is any difference between
+pleasures, except in continuance and intensity. It must have required
+some moral courage to write the paragraph to be next quoted; yet Paley,
+however much he may be said to have temporized and equivocated about
+oaths and subscription to Articles, cannot be accused of want of
+explicitness in this passage. There is a directness and clear-hitting of
+the point in Paley's writings which always charms me.
+
+    "In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the
+    amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree
+    of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the
+    greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life, is what
+    we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what human
+    happiness consists in. In which inquiry I will omit much usual
+    declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the
+    superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal
+    part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and
+    delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and
+    sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in
+    nothing, but in continuance and intensity: from a just computation
+    of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness,
+    tranquillity, and contentment, of men of different tastes, tempers,
+    stations, and pursuits, every question concerning human happiness
+    must receive its decision."[78]
+
+Bentham, it need hardly be said, adopted the same idea as the basis of
+his ethical and legislative theories. In his uncompromising style he
+tells us[79] that
+
+    "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
+    masters, _pain_ and _pleasure_. It is for them alone to point out
+    what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On
+    the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain
+    of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us
+    in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can
+    make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and
+    confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but
+    in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The
+    _principle of utility_ recognises this subjection, and assumes it
+    for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear
+    the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems
+    which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in
+    caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
+
+Elsewhere Bentham proceeds to show how we may estimate the _values_ of
+pleasures and pains, meaning obviously by _values_ the quantities or
+forces. As these feelings are both the ends and the instruments of the
+moralist and legislator, it especially behoves us to learn how to
+estimate these values aright, and Bentham tells us most distinctly.[80]
+
+    To a person, he says, considered _by himself_, the value of a
+    pleasure or pain considered _by itself_, will be greater or less,
+    according to the four following circumstances. 1. Its _intensity_.
+    2. Its _duration_. 3. Its _certainty_ or _uncertainty_. 4. Its
+    _propinquity_ or _remoteness_. But when the value of any pleasure or
+    pain is to be considered for the purpose of estimating the general
+    tendency of the act, we have to take into account also, 5. The
+    _fecundity_, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of
+    the same kind, that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure; pains, if it
+    be a pain. 6. Its _purity_, or the chance it has of _not_ being
+    followed by sensations of the _opposite_ kind: that is, pains, if it
+    be a pleasure; pleasures, if it be a pain. Finally, when we consider
+    the interests of a number of persons, we must also estimate a
+    pleasure or pain with reference to, 7. Its extent; that is the
+    number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it.
+
+Thus did Bentham clearly and explicitly lay the foundations of the moral
+and political sciences, and to impress these fundamental propositions on
+the memory he framed the following curious mnemonic lines, which may be
+quoted for the sake of their quaintness:--
+
+    "_Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure_----
+    Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
+    Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:
+    If it be public, wide let them _extend_.
+    Such _pains_ avoid, whichever be thy view:
+    If pains _must_ come, let them _extend_ to few."
+
+In all that Bentham says about pleasure and pain, there is not a word
+about the intrinsic superiority of one pleasure to another. He advocates
+our seeking _pure_ pleasures; but with him a pure pleasure was clearly
+defined as one not likely to be followed by feelings of the opposite
+kind; the pleasure of opium-eating, for instance, would be called
+impure, simply because it is likely to lead to bad health and consequent
+pain; if not so followed by evil consequences, the pleasure would be as
+pure as any other pleasure. With Bentham morality became, as it were, a
+question of the ledger and the balance-sheet; all feelings were reduced
+to the same denomination of value, and whenever we indulge in a little
+enjoyment, or endure a pain, the consequences in regard to subsequent
+enjoyment or suffering are to be inexorably scored for or against us, as
+the case may be. Our conduct must be judged wise or foolish according
+as, in the long-run, we find a favourable "hedonic" balance-sheet.
+
+What Mill in his earlier life thought about these foundations of the
+utilitarian doctrine, and the elaborate structure reared therefrom by
+Bentham, he has told us in his Autobiography, pp. 64 to 70. Subsequently
+Mill revolted, as we all know, against the narrowness of the Benthamist
+creed. While wishing to retain[81] the precision of expression, the
+definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague
+generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of Bentham
+and of his own father, James Mill, John Stuart decided to give a wider
+basis and a more free and "genial" character to the utilitarian
+speculations.
+
+Let us consider how Mill proceeded to give this "genial" character to
+the utilitarian philosophy. It must be admitted, he says,[82] that
+utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental
+over bodily pleasures _chiefly_ in the greater permanency, safety,
+uncostliness, &c., of the former--that is, in their circumstantial
+advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. As regards Bentham, at
+least, Mill might have omitted the word _chiefly_. But according to
+Mill, there is no need why they should have taken such a ground.
+
+    "They might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher
+    ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the
+    principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of
+    pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would
+    be absurd, that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
+    considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should
+    be supposed to depend on quantity alone."
+
+Then Mill proceeds to point out, with all the persuasiveness of his best
+style, that there are higher feelings which we would not sacrifice for
+any quantity of a lower feeling. Few human creatures, he holds, would
+consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the
+fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being
+would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus,
+no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, and so
+forth. Mill, in fact, treats us to a good deal of what Paley so
+cynically called the "usual declamation," on the dignity and capacity of
+our nature, and the worthiness of some satisfactions compared with the
+grossness and sensuality of others. It must be allowed that Mill has the
+best of it, at least with the majority of readers. Paley is simply
+brutal as to the way in which he depresses everything to the same level
+of apparent sensuality. Mill overflows with genial and noble
+aspirations; he hardly deigns to count the lower pleasures as worth
+putting in the scale; it is better, he thinks, to be a human being
+dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied
+than a fool satisfied. If the pig or the fool is of a different opinion,
+it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other
+party to the comparison knows both sides. In the pages which follow
+there is much nobleness and elevation of thought. But where is the
+logic? We are nothing if we are not logical. But does Mill, in the
+fervour of his revolt against the cold, narrow restraints of the
+Benthamist formulas, consider the consistency and stability of his
+position? Let us examine in some detail the position to which he has
+brought himself.
+
+It is plain, in the first place, that pleasure is with Mill the ultimate
+purpose of existence; for the philosophy is that of utilitarianism, and
+Mill distinctly assures us (Autobiography, p. 178) that he "never
+ceased to be a utilitarian." We must, of course, distinguish between the
+pleasure of the individual and the pleasure of other individuals of the
+race, between Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism, as Mr. Sidgwick
+calls these very different doctrines. But the happiness of the race is,
+of course, made up of the happiness of its units, so that unless most of
+the individuals pursue a course ensuring happiness, the race cannot be
+happy in the aggregate. Now, to acquire happiness the individual must,
+of course, select that line of conduct which is likely to--that is, will
+in the majority of cases--bring happiness. He must aim at something
+which is capable of being reached. Mill tells us (p. 18) that if by
+happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is
+evident enough that this is impossible to attain.
+
+    "A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases,
+    and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional
+    brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of
+    this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of
+    life were as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness
+    which they meant was not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in
+    an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various
+    pleasures, with a decided predominance of the actual over the
+    passive, and _having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect
+    more from life than it is capable of bestowing_.[83] A life thus
+    composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has
+    always appeared worthy of the name of happiness."
+
+Then Mill goes on to point out what he considers has been sufficient to
+satisfy great numbers of mankind (p. 19):
+
+    "The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either
+    of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose:
+    tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that
+    they can be content with very little pleasure: with much excitement,
+    many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.
+    There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the
+    mass of mankind to unite both."
+
+From these passages we must gather that at any rate the mass of mankind
+will attain happiness if they are satisfied with these main
+constituents, and we are especially told that the foundation of the
+whole utilitarian philosophy (Mill does not specify the substantive to
+which the adjective _whole_ applies in the above quotation, but it must
+from the context be either "utilitarian philosophy," "search for
+happiness," or some closely equivalent idea) is _not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing_.
+
+The question, then, may fairly arise whether upon a fair calculation of
+probabilities they are not wise, upon Mill's own showing, who aim at
+moderate achievements in life, so that in accomplishing these they may
+insure a satisfied life. This seems the more reasonable, if, as Mill
+elsewhere tells us, the nobler feelings are very apt to be killed off by
+the chilly realities of life.
+
+    "Many," he says (p. 14), "who begin with youthful enthusiasm for
+    everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and
+    selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very
+    common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasure
+    in preference to the higher, I believe that before they devote
+    themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become
+    incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
+    natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
+    influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of
+    young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
+    their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which
+    it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher
+    capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose
+    their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity
+    for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior
+    pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because
+    they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only
+    ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
+    questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to
+    both classes of pleasure, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the
+    lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual
+    attempt to combine both."
+
+It would seem, then, that for the mass of mankind there is small
+prospect indeed of achieving happiness through high aspirations. They
+will not have time nor opportunity for indulging them. If they look for
+happiness solely to such aspirations they must be disappointed, and
+cannot have a satisfied life; if they attempt to combine the higher and
+lower lives they are likely to "break down in the ineffectual attempt."
+Now, I submit that, under these circumstances, it is folly, according to
+Mill's scheme of morality, to aim high; it is equivalent to going into a
+life-lottery, in which there are no doubt high prizes to be gained, but
+few and far between. It is simply gambling with hedonic stakes;
+preferring a small chance of high enjoyment to comparative certainty of
+moderate pleasures. Mill clearly admits this when he says (p. 14), "It
+is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
+the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed
+being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the
+world is constituted, is imperfect."
+
+Although, then, "the foundation of the whole" is not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing, we are actually to prefer becoming
+highly endowed, although we cannot expect life to satisfy the
+corresponding aspirations. That is to say, although seeking for
+happiness, we are to prefer the course in which we are approximately
+certain of not obtaining it.
+
+But Mill goes on to give some explanations. He says that the highly
+endowed being can learn to bear the imperfections of his happiness, "if
+they are at all bearable" (p. 14). This is small comfort if they happen
+to be _not at all bearable_, an alternative which is not further pursued
+by Mill. And will not this intolerable fate be most likely to befall
+those whose aspirations have been pitched most highly? But Mill goes on:
+
+    "They (that is, the imperfections of life or happiness?) will not
+    make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the
+    imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which
+    those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being
+    dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
+    dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is
+    of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side
+    of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both
+    sides."
+
+Concerning this position of affairs the most apposite remark I can make
+is contained in the somewhat trite and vulgar saying, "Where ignorance
+is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." If Socrates is pretty sure to be
+dissatisfied, and yet, owing to his wisdom, cannot help wishing to be
+Socrates, he seems to have no chance of that individual happiness which
+depends on being satisfied, and not expecting from life more than it is
+capable of bestowing. The great majority of people who do not know what
+it is like to be Socrates, are surely to be congratulated that they can,
+without scruple or remorse, seek a prize of happiness which there is a
+fair prospect of securing. But Mill tells us that those who choose the
+lower life do so "because they only know their own side of the question.
+The other party to the comparison knows both sides." Then Mill
+introduces a paragraph, already partially quoted, in which he allows
+that men often do, _from infirmity of character_, make their selection
+for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable. Many
+who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, sink in later
+years into indolence and selfishness. The capacity for the nobler
+feelings is easily killed, and men lose their high aspirations because
+they have not time and opportunity for indulging them. I submit that,
+_from Mill's point of view_, these are all valid reasons why they should
+_not_ choose the higher life. We are considering here, not those who
+have always been devoid of the nobler feelings, but those who have in
+earlier life been full of enthusiasm and high aspirations. If such men,
+with few exceptions, decide eventually in favour of the lower life, they
+are parties who _do_ know both sides of the comparison, and deliberately
+choose not to be Socrates, with the prospect of the very imperfect
+happiness (probably involving short rations) which is incident to the
+life of Socrates.
+
+Mill, indeed, calmly assumes that the vote goes in his own and Socrates'
+favour. He says (p. 15):
+
+    "From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there
+    can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of
+    two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most
+    grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from
+    its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by
+    knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among
+    them, must be admitted as final. And there need be the less
+    hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of
+    pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to, even
+    on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining
+    which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
+    pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
+    familiar with both?"
+
+Now, were we dealing with a writer of average logical accuracy there
+would be considerable presumption that when he adduces evidence and
+claims a result in his own favour in this confident way, there would be
+some ground for the claim. But my scrutiny of Mill's "System of Logic"
+has taught me caution in admitting such presumptions in respect of his
+writings, and here is a case in point. He claims that the suffrage of
+the majority is in favour of Socrates' life, although he has admitted
+that the vast majority of men somehow or other elect not to be Socrates.
+He assumes, indeed, that this is because their aspirations have been
+first killed off by unfavourable circumstances; his only residuum of
+fact is contained in this somewhat hesitating conclusion already
+quoted:--
+
+    "It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
+    susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
+    preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in
+    an ineffectual attempt to combine both."
+
+Although, then, millions and millions are continually deciding against
+Socrates' life, for one reason or another (and many in all ages who make
+the ineffectual attempt at a combination break down), Mill gratuitously
+assumes that they are none of them competent witnesses, because they
+must have lost their higher feelings before they could have descended to
+the lower level; then the comparatively few who do choose the higher
+life and succeed in attaining it are adduced as giving a large majority,
+or even a unanimous vote in favour of their own choice. I submit that
+this is a fallacy probably to be best classed as a _petitio principii_;
+Mill entirely begs the question when he assumes that every witness
+against him is an incapacitated witness, because he must have lost his
+capacity for the nobler feelings before he could have decided in favour
+of the lower.
+
+The verdict which Mill takes in favour of his high-quality pleasures is
+entirely that of a packed jury. It is on a par with the verdict which
+would be given by vegetarians in favour of a vegetable diet. No doubt,
+those who call themselves vegetarians would almost unanimously say that
+it is the best and highest diet; but then, all those who have tried such
+diet and found it impracticable have disappeared from the jury, together
+with all those whose common sense, or scientific knowledge, or weak
+state of health, or other circumstances, have prevented them from
+attempting the experiment. By the same method of decision, we might all
+be required to get up at five o'clock in the morning and do four hours
+of head-work before breakfast, because the few hard-headed and
+hard-bodied individuals who do this sort of thing are unanimously of
+opinion that it is a healthly and profitable way of beginning the day.
+
+Of course, it will be understood that I am not denying the moral
+superiority of some pleasures and courses of life over others. I am only
+showing that Mill's attempt to reconcile his ideas on the subject with
+the Utilitarian theory hopelessly fails. The few pleasant pages in which
+he makes this attempt (Utilitarianism, pp. 8-28), form, in fact, a most
+notable piece of sophistical reasoning. Much of the interest of these
+undoubtedly interesting passages arises from the kaleidoscopic way in
+which the standing difficulties of ethical science are woven together,
+as if they were logically coherent in Mill's mode of presentation. The
+ideas involved are as old as Plato and Aristotle. The high aspirations
+correspond to τὸ καλὸν of Plato. The superior man who can judge both
+sides of the question is the βέλτιστος ἀνήρ of Aristotle. The
+Utilitarian doctrine is that of Epicurus. Now, Mill managed to persuade
+himself that he could in twenty pages reconcile the controversies of
+ages.
+
+Nor is it to be supposed that Bentham, in making his analysis of the
+conditions of pleasure, overlooked the difference of high and low; he
+did not overlook it at all--he analyzed it. A pleasure to be high must
+have the marks of intensity, length, certainty, fruitfulness, and
+purity, or of some of these at least; and when we take Altruism into
+account, the feelings must be of wide extent--that is, fruitful of
+pleasure and devoid of evil to great numbers of people. It is a higher
+pleasure to build a Free Library than to establish a new Race Course;
+not because there is a _Free-Library-building emotion_, which is
+essentially better than a _Race-Course-establishing emotion_, each being
+a simple unanalyzable feeling; but because we may, after the model of
+inquiry given by Bentham, resolve into its elements the effect of one
+action and the other upon the happiness of the community. Thus, we
+should find that Mill proposed to give "geniality" to the Utilitarian
+philosophy by throwing into confusion what it was the very merit of
+Bentham to have distinguished and arranged scientifically. We must hold
+to the dry old Jeremy, if we are to have any chance of progress in
+Ethics. Mill, at some "crisis in his mental history," decided in favour
+of a genial instead of a logical and scientific Ethics, and the result
+is the mixture of sentiment and sophistry contained in the attractive
+pages under review.
+
+In order to treat adequately of Mill's ethical doctrines it would no
+doubt be necessary to go on to other parts of the Essays, and to inquire
+how he treats other moral elements, such as the Social or Altruistic
+Feelings. The existence of such feelings is admitted on p. 46, and,
+indeed, insisted on as a basis of powerful natural sentiment,
+constituting the strength of the Utilitarian morality. But it would be
+an endless work to examine all phases of Mill's doctrines, and to show
+whether or not they are logically consistent _inter se_. They are really
+not worth the trouble. Just let us notice, however, how he treats the
+question whether moral feelings are innate or not. On this point Mill
+gives (p. 45) the following characteristic deliverance:--"If, as is my
+own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to
+reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though these are
+acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our
+nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all
+of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the
+most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired
+capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our
+nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain
+small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
+brought by cultivation to a high degree of development." If life were
+long enough, I should like, with the assistance of the "Methods of
+Ethics," to analyze the ideas involved in this passage. I can merely
+suggest the following questions:--If acquired capacities are equally
+natural with those not acquired, what is the use of introducing a
+distinction without a difference? If moral feelings can spring up
+spontaneously, even in the smallest degree, and then be developed by
+"natural outgrowths," how do any of our feelings differ from natural
+ones? What does Mill mean, at the top of the next page, by speaking of
+"moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation?" Are these
+also not the less natural because they are of artificial creation? If
+not, we should like to know how to draw the line between _acquired_ and
+_artificial_ capacities. How, again, are we to interpret the use of the
+word _natural_, on p. 50, where, speaking of the deeply-rooted
+conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social
+being, he says--
+
+    "This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to
+    their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to
+    those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural
+    feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition
+    of education," &c.
+
+Here a natural feeling is contrasted to the product of education,
+although we were before told that acquired capacities, like speaking,
+building, cultivating, were none the less natural. But I must candidly
+confess that when Mill introduces the words _nature_ and _natural_, I am
+completely baffled. I give it up. I can no longer find any logical marks
+to assist me in tracking out his course of thought. The word _nature_
+may be Mill's key to a profound philosophy; but I rather think it is the
+key to many of his fallacies.
+
+I often amuse myself by trying to imagine what Bentham would have said
+of Benthamism expounded by Mill. Especially would it be interesting to
+hear Bentham on Mill's use of the word "natural." No passage in which
+Bentham analyzes the meaning of "nature," or "natural," occurs to me,
+but the following is his treatment of the word "unnatural," as employed
+in Ethics:--
+
+    "Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent: and there it
+    means something; although nothing to the present purpose. But here
+    it means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps
+    the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean,
+    which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is,
+    the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the disposition
+    he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it."[84]
+
+Would that the grand old man, as he still sits benignly pondering in his
+own proper bones and clothes, in the upper regions of a well-known
+institution, could be got to deliver himself in like style about
+feelings which are _not the less natural because they are acquired_.
+
+Before passing on, however, I must point out, in the extract from p. 45,
+the characteristic habit which Mill has of _minimizing_ things which he
+is obliged to admit. Instead of denying straightforwardly that we have
+moral feelings, he says they are not present in all of us in any
+"perceptible degree." The moral faculty is capable of springing up
+spontaneously "in a certain small degree." This will remind every reader
+of the way in which, in his "Essays on Religion," instead of flatly
+adopting Atheism or Theism, which are clear logical negatives each of
+the other, he concludes that though God is almost proved not to exist,
+He may possibly exist, and we must "imagine" this chance to be as large
+as we can, though it belongs only "to one of the lower degrees of
+probability." Exactly the same manner of meeting a weighty question will
+be discovered again in his demonstration of the non-existence of
+necessary truths. I shall hope to examine carefully his treatment of
+this important part of philosophy on a future occasion. We shall then
+find, I believe, that his argument proves non-existence of such things
+as necessary truths, because those truths which cannot be explained on
+the association principle are very few indeed. I beg pardon for
+introducing an incongruous illustration, but Mill's manner of minimizing
+an all-important admission often irresistibly reminds me of the young
+woman who, being taxed with having borne a child, replied that it was
+only a very small one.
+
+Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it
+is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a
+full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same
+precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis
+is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral
+Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to the
+reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though that is a
+great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and
+nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to the
+establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made a new
+era in philosophy.[85] Mill has been singularly unfortunate from this
+point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic writer
+conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He brought
+to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he ignored that
+which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.
+
+I am aware that, in her Introductory Notice to the Essays on Religion
+(p. viii.), Miss Helen Taylor apologizes for Mill having omitted any
+references to the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine "in passages
+where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or where
+subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner to
+which the Author of these Essays would certainly have referred had their
+works been published before these were written."[86] Here it is implied
+that Mill anticipated the authors of the Evolution philosophy in some of
+their thoughts, and it is a most amiable and pardonable bias which leads
+Miss Taylor to find in the works of one so dear to her that which is not
+there. The fact is that the whole tone of Mill's moral and political
+writings is totally opposed to the teaching of Darwin and Spencer,
+Taylor and Maine. Mill's idea of human nature was that we came into the
+world like lumps of soft clay, to be shaped by the accidents of life, or
+the care of those who educate us. Austin insisted on the evidence which
+history and daily experience afford of "the extraordinary pliability of
+human nature," and Mill borrowed the phrase from him.[87] No phrase
+could better express the misapprehensions of human nature which, it is
+to be hoped, will cease for ever with the last generation of writers.
+Human nature is one of the last things which can be called "pliable."
+Granite rocks can be more easily moulded than the poor savages that hide
+among them. We are all of us full of deep springs of unconquerable
+character, which education may in some degree soften or develop, but can
+neither create nor destroy. The mind can be shaped about as much as the
+body; it may be starved into feebleness, or fed and exercised into
+vigour and fulness; but we start always with inherent hereditary powers
+of growth. The non-recognition of this fact is the great defect in the
+moral system of Bentham. The great Jeremy was accustomed to make short
+work with the things which he did not understand, and it is thus he
+disposes of "the pretended system" of a moral sense:[88]
+
+    "One man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is
+    right and what is wrong, and that it is called a _moral sense_; and
+    then he goes to his work at his ease, and says such a thing is right
+    and such a thing is wrong--Why? because my moral sense tells me it
+    is."
+
+Bentham then bluntly ignored the validity of innate feelings, but this
+omission, though a great defect, did not much diminish the value of his
+analysis of the good and bad effects of actions. Mill discarded the
+admirable Benthamist analysis, but failed to introduce the true
+Evolutionist principles; thus he falls between the two. It is to Herbert
+Spencer we must look for a more truthful philosophy of morals than was
+possible before his time.
+
+The publication of the first part of his Principles of Morality, under
+the title "The Data of Ethics," gives us, in a definite form, and in his
+form, what we could previously only infer from the general course of his
+philosophy and from his brief letter on Utilitarianism addressed to
+Mill. Although but fragments, these writings enable us to see that a
+definite step has been made in a matter debated since the dawn of
+intellect. The moral sense doctrine, so rudely treated by Bentham, is no
+longer incapable of reconciliation with the greatest happiness
+principle, only it now becomes a moving and developable moral sense. An
+absolute and unalterable moral standard was opposed to the palpable fact
+that customs and feelings differ widely, and Paley, on this ground, was
+induced to reject it. Now we perceive that we all have a moral sense;
+but the moral sense of one individual, and still more of one race, may
+differ from that of another individual or race. Each is more or less
+fitted to its circumstances, and the best is ascertained by _eventual
+success_.
+
+At the tail end of an article it is, of course, impossible to discuss
+the grounds or results of the Spencerian philosophy. To me it presents
+itself, in its main features, as unquestionably true; indeed, it is
+already difficult to look back and imagine how philosophers could have
+denied of the human mind and actions what is so obviously true of the
+animal races generally. As a reaction from the old views about innate
+ideas, the philosophers of the eighteenth century wished to believe that
+the human mind was a kind of _tabula rasa_, or _carte blanche_, upon
+which education could impress any character. But if so, why not harness
+the lion, and teach the sheep to drive away the wolf? If the moral, not
+to speak of the physical characteristics of the lower animals, are so
+distinct, why should there not be moral and mental differences among
+ourselves, descending, as we obviously do, from different stocks with
+different physical characteristics? Notice what Mr. Darwin says on this
+point:--
+
+    "Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism'
+    (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a 'powerful natural
+    sentiment,' and as 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian
+    morality;' but on the previous page he says, 'if, as is my own
+    belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+    not for that reason less natural.' It is with hesitation that I
+    venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be
+    disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the
+    lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain and
+    others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual
+    during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at
+    least extremely improbable."[89]
+
+Many persons may be inclined to like the philosophy of Spencer no better
+than that of Mill. But, if the one be true and the other false, liking
+and disliking have no place in the matter. There may be many things
+which we cannot possibly like; but if they are, they are. It is possible
+that the Principles of Evolution, as expounded by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
+may seem as wanting in "geniality" as the formulas of Bentham. There is
+nothing genial, it must be confessed, about the mollusca and other
+cold-blooded organisms with which Mr. Spencer perpetually illustrates
+his principles. Heaven forbid that any one should try to give geniality
+to Mr. Spencer's views of ethics by any operation comparable to that
+which Mill performed upon Benthamism.
+
+Nevertheless, I fully believe that all which is sinister and ungenial in
+the Philosophy of Evolution is either the expression of unquestionable
+facts, or else it is the outcome of misinterpretation. It is impossible
+to see how Mr. Spencer, any more than other people, can explain away the
+existence of pain and evil. Nobody has done this; perhaps nobody ever
+shall do it; certainly systems of Theology will not do it. A true
+philosopher will not expect to solve everything. But if we admit the
+patent fact that pain exists, let us observe also the tendency which
+Spencer and Darwin establish towards its _minimization_. Evolution is a
+striving ever towards the better and the happier. There may be almost
+infinite powers against us, but at least there is a deep-laid scheme
+working towards goodness and happiness. So profound and wide-spread is
+this confederacy of the powers of good, that no failure and no series of
+failures can disconcert it. Let mankind be thrown back a hundred times,
+and a hundred times the better tendencies of evolution will re-assert
+themselves. Paley pointed out how many beautiful contrivances there are
+in the human form, tending to our benefit. Spencer has pointed out that
+the Universe is one deep-laid framework for the production of such
+beneficent contrivances. Paley called upon us to admire such exquisite
+inventions as a hand or an eye. Spencer calls upon us to admire a
+machine which is the most comprehensive of all machines, because it is
+ever engaged in inventing beneficial inventions _ad infinitum_. Such at
+least is my way of regarding his Philosophy.
+
+Darwin, indeed, cautions us against supposing that natural selection
+always leads towards the production of higher and happier types of life.
+Retrogression may result as well as progression. But I apprehend that
+retrogression can only occur where the environment of a living species
+is altered to its detriment. Mankind degenerates when forced, like the
+Esquimaux, to inhabit the Arctic regions. Still in retrograding, in a
+sense, the being becomes more suited to its circumstances--more capable
+therefore of happiness. The inventing machine of Evolution would be
+working badly if it worked otherwise. But, however this may be, we must
+accept the philosophy if it be true, and, for my part, I do so without
+reluctance.
+
+According to Mill, we are little self-dependent gods, fighting with a
+malignant and murderous power called Nature, sure, one would think, to
+be worsted in the struggle. According to Spencer, as I venture to
+interpret his theory, we are the latest manifestation of an
+all-prevailing tendency towards the good--the happy. Creation is not yet
+concluded, and there is no one of us who may not become conscious in his
+heart that he is no Automaton, no mere lump of Protoplasm, but the
+Creature of a Creator.
+
+    W. STANLEY JEVONS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[76] "Utilitarianism," fifth edition, p. 9, foot-note. Except where
+otherwise specified, the references throughout this article will be to
+the pages of the fifth edition of "Utilitarianism."
+
+[77] _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1877, vol. xxi. p. 648.
+
+[78] "The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," Book I. chap.
+vi. 2nd paragraph.
+
+[79] "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," p.
+1.
+
+[80] "Principles," &c. chap. iv. sect. 2-5. The statement is not a
+verbatim extract but an abridgment of the sections named.
+
+[81] "Autobiography," p. 214.
+
+[82] "Utilitarianism," p. 11.
+
+[83] Italicised by the present writer.
+
+[84] "Principles of Morals and Legislation," ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 31.
+
+[85] A very important article by Dr. E. L. Youmans upon Mr. Spencer's
+philosophy has just appeared in the _North American Review_ for October,
+1879. Dr. Youmans traces the history of the Evolution doctrines, and
+proves the originality and independence of Mr. Spencer as regards the
+closely related views of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and Professor Huxley.
+The eminent men in question are no doubt in perfect agreement; but Dr.
+Youmans seems to think that readers in general do not properly
+understand the singular originality and boldness of Mr. Spencer's vast
+and partially accomplished enterprise in philosophy.
+
+[86] Mr. Morley does not seem to countenance any such claims. On the
+contrary, he remarks in his "Critical Miscellanies," p. 324, that Mill's
+Essays lose in interest by not dealing with the Darwinian hypothesis.
+
+[87] "Autobiography," p. 187.
+
+[88] "Principles of Morals," &c., p. 29.
+
+[89] "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," 1871, vol.
+i. p. 71. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Darwin felt the inconsistency
+and confusion of ideas in the passages quoted, although he does not so
+express himself. Otherwise, why does he quote from two pages?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, November 1879
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: April 23, 2012 [EBook #39517]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
+Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
+been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.
+
+_Italic words_ have been enclosed in underscores. *Gesperrt* (spaced)
+letters have been enclosed in asterisks. Greek letters have been
+transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =schol�=. Symbols such
+as hieroglyphics or script letters have been represented using braces,
+e.g. {symbol}. As the oe ligature cannot be included in this format, it
+has been replaced with the separate letters, e.g. "Phoenician".
+
+A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. Some
+inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+             THE
+         CONTEMPORARY
+            REVIEW
+
+  VOLUME XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1879
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  NOVEMBER, 1879.
+                                                                    PAGE
+  On Freedom. By Professor Max M�ller                                369
+
+  Mr. Gladstone: Two Studies suggested by his "Gleanings of Past
+    Years." I. By a Liberal.--II. By a Conservative                  398
+
+  The Ancien R�gime and the Revolution in France. By Professor
+    von Sybel                                                        432
+
+  What is the Actual Condition of Ireland? By Edward Stanley
+    Robertson                                                        451
+
+  The Deluge: Its Traditions in Ancient Nations. By Fran�ois
+    Lenormant                                                        465
+
+  Suspended Animation. By Richard A. Proctor                         501
+
+  John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested. IV.--Utilitarianism.
+    By Professor W. Stanley Jevons                                   521
+
+
+
+
+ON FREEDOM.[1]
+
+
+Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth
+his plea for Liberty.[2]
+
+If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the
+elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved
+the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John
+Stuart Mill.
+
+But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In
+presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of
+individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him.
+He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual
+human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of
+growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes
+a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is
+treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of
+individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every
+true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they
+cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the
+lowest level.
+
+I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly
+and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be
+challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or
+the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble
+to _our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is
+not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the
+interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to
+social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to
+the interests of others."
+
+Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle,
+or who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller
+measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when
+it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we
+imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual
+man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more
+freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his
+theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in
+which, in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of
+England, such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and
+hard-working Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred
+inheritance to their sons and daughters?
+
+Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of
+republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one
+single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each
+individual was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if
+you wish to realize the full blessings of the time in which we live,
+compare Mill's plea for Liberty with another written not much more than
+two hundred years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or
+boldness to Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an
+individual in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls
+"freedom of thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being
+able to think what we like--so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely,
+such freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and
+we should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in
+solitary and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom
+of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual
+or associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared
+with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all
+other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed
+down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over.
+
+It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion,
+and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any
+infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority,
+need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even
+sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the
+true ring of honest conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish
+love of truth.
+
+It has seemed strange therefore to many readers of Mill, particularly on
+the Continent, that this cry for Liberty, this demand for freedom for
+every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his
+nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all
+countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation
+if it had reached us from Russia; but why should English philosophers,
+of all others, have to protest against the tyranny of society? It is
+true, nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically, the
+individual, unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far greater
+freedom, or rather licence, than in a country like England, which
+governs itself. Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent.
+It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the
+simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than
+astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of
+those who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the
+doctrines of what is called Nihilism or Individualism,[3]--viz., "that
+society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival
+of the strongest, processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have
+proved successful among wild animals." If there is danger in these
+doctrines the Government is expected to see to it. It may place watchmen
+at the doors of every house and at the corner of every street, but it
+must not count on the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves
+as special constables, or even on the co-operation of public opinion
+which in England would annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one glance
+of scorn and pity.
+
+In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society,
+if it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his
+rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in
+Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows
+how to use that softer, but more crushing pressure, that calm, but
+Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to
+resist.
+
+It is rather against that indirect repression which a well-organized
+society exercises, both through its male and female representatives,
+that Mill's demand for Liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for
+unlimited licence; on the contrary, he would have been the most
+strenuous defender of that balance of power between the weak and the
+strong on which all social life depends. But he resents those smaller
+penalties which society will always inflict on those who disturb its
+dignified peace and comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a
+stinging remark. Had Mill any right to complain of these social
+penalties? Would it not rather amount to an interference with individual
+liberty to wish to deprive any individual or any number of individuals
+of those weapons of self-defence? Those who themselves think and speak
+freely, have hardly a right to complain, if others claim the same
+privilege. Mill himself called the Conservative party the stupid party
+_par excellence_, and he took great pains to explain that it was so, not
+by accident, but by necessity. Need he wonder if those whom he whipped
+and scourged used their own whips and scourges against so merciless a
+critic?
+
+Freethinkers, and I use that name as a title of honour for all who, like
+Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word,
+or deed, compatible with the freedom of others, are apt to make one
+mistake. Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to
+be mistrusted or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often
+very painful operations as a patient submits to the knife of the
+surgeon. That is not in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always
+abused by his enemies. Society will never yield one inch without
+resistance, and few reformers live long enough to receive the thanks of
+those whom they have reformed. Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament
+was a triumph not often shared by social reformers; it was as
+exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat in the Cabinet, or Stanley's
+appointment as Dean of Westminster. Such anomalies will happen in a
+country fortunately so full of anomalies as England; but, as a rule, a
+political reformer must not be angry if he passes through life without
+the title of Right Honourable; nor should a man, if he will always speak
+the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, be disappointed
+if he dies a martyr rather than a Bishop.
+
+But granting even that in Mill's time there existed some traces of
+social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the
+journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be
+openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned
+societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of
+the fashionable world? When young lords begin to discuss the propriety
+of limiting the rights of inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid
+to propose curtailing the long vacation, surely we need not complain of
+the intolerance of English society.
+
+Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian
+friends, who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the
+impression that, however large an amount of political liberty England
+may enjoy, it enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are
+generally willing to be converted so far as London, or other great
+cities, are concerned. But look at your Universities, they say, the
+nurseries of English thought! Can you compare their medi�val spirit,
+their monastic institutions, their scholastic philosophy, with the
+freshness and freedom of the Continental Universities? Strong as these
+prejudices about Oxford and Cambridge have always been, they have become
+still more intense since Professor Helmholtz, in an inaugural address
+which he delivered at his installation as Rector of the University of
+Berlin, lent the authority of his great name to these misconceptions.
+"The tutors," he says,[4] "in the English Universities cannot deviate
+by a hair's-breadth from the dogmatic system of the English Church,
+without exposing themselves to the censure of their Archbishops and
+losing their pupils." In German Universities, on the contrary, we are
+told that the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the
+boldest speculations within the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution,
+may be propounded without let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest
+apotheosis of Papal infallibility.
+
+Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely wrong,
+and the writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a more than
+sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no official
+position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of an
+Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole University.
+Nor does the University, as such, exercise any very strict control over
+the tutors, even when they lecture not to their own College only. Each
+Master of Arts at Oxford claims now the right to lecture (_venia
+docendi_), and I doubt whether they would ever submit to those
+restrictions which, in Germany, the Faculty imposes on every
+_Privat-docent_. _Privat-docents_ in German Universities have been
+rejected by the Faculty for incompetence, and silenced for
+insubordination. I know of no such cases at Oxford during my residence
+of more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they should
+ever occur.
+
+As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are
+Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as
+Hobbes, Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by
+B�chner and Vogt.
+
+I know comparisons are odious, and I am the last man who would wish to
+draw comparisons between English and German Universities unfavourable to
+the latter. But with regard to freedom of thought, of speech, and
+action, Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few weeks at
+Oxford, would find that we enjoy a fuller measure of freedom here than
+the Professors and _Privat-docents_ in any Continental University. The
+publications of some of our professors and tutors ought at least to have
+convinced him that if there is less of brave words and turbulent talk in
+their writings, they display throughout a determination to speak the
+truth, which may be matched, but could not easily be excelled, by the
+leaders of thought in France, Germany, or Italy.
+
+The real difference between English and Continental Universities is that
+the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government
+entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences. I may
+here be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor of the
+University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his
+colleagues, ventured to tell them,[5] "We have still to learn from the
+English how the greatest independence of the individual is compatible
+with willing submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is
+particularly true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Germany, as
+Professor Helmholtz tells us himself, the last decision in almost all
+the more important affairs of the Universities rests with the
+Government, and he does not deny that in times of political and
+ecclesiastical tension, a most inconsiderate use has been made of that
+power. There are, besides, the less important matters, such as raising
+of salaries, leave of absence, scientific missions, even titles and
+decorations, all of which enable a clever Minister of Instruction to
+assert his personal influence among the less independent members of the
+University. In Oxford the University does not know the Ministry, nor the
+Ministry the University. The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or
+Conservative, are freely discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the
+academic constituencies, and the personal dislike of a Minister or
+Ministerial Councillor could as little injure a professor or tutor as
+his favour could add one penny to his salary.
+
+But these are minor matters. What gives their own peculiar character to
+the English Universities is a sense of power and responsibility: power,
+because they are the most respected among the numerous corporations in
+the country; responsibility, because the higher education of the whole
+country has been committed to their charge. Their only master is public
+opinion as represented in Parliament, their only incentive their own
+sense of duty. There is no country in Europe where Universities hold so
+exalted a position, and where those who have the honour to belong to
+them may say with greater truth, _Noblesse oblige_.
+
+I know the dangers of self-government, particularly where higher and
+more ideal interests are concerned, and there are probably few who wish
+for a real reform in schools and Universities who have not occasionally
+yielded to the desire for a Dictator, of a Bismarck or a Falk. But such
+a desire springs only from a momentary weakness and despondency; and no
+one who knows the difference between being governed and governing
+oneself, would ever wish to descend from that higher though dangerous
+position to a lower one, however safe and comfortable it might seem. No
+one who has tasted freedom would ever wish to exchange it for anything
+else. Public opinion is sometimes a hard task-master, and majorities can
+be great tyrants to those who want to be honest to their own
+convictions. But in the struggle of all against all, each individual
+feels that he has his rightful place, and that he may exercise his
+rightful influence. If he is beaten, he is beaten in fair fight; if he
+conquers, he has no one else to thank. No doubt despotic Governments
+have often exercised the most beneficial patronage in encouraging and
+rewarding poets, artists, and men of science. But men of genius who have
+conquered the love and admiration of a whole nation are greater than
+those who have gained the favour of the most brilliant Courts; and we
+know how some of the fairest reputations have been wrecked on the
+patronage which they had to accept at the hands of powerful Ministers or
+ambitious Sovereigns.
+
+But to return to Mill and his plea for Liberty. Though I can hardly
+believe that, were he still among us, he would claim a larger measure of
+freedom for the individual than is now accorded to every one of us in
+the society in which we move, yet the chief cause on which he founded
+his plea for Liberty, the chief evil which he thought could be remedied
+only if society would allow more elbow-room to individual genius, exists
+in the same degree as in his time--aye, even in a higher degree. The
+principle of Individuality has suffered more at present than perhaps at
+any former period of history. The world is becoming more and more
+gregarious, and what the French call our _nature moutonni�re_, "our
+mutton-like nature," our tendency to leap where any bell-wether has
+leapt before, becomes more and more prevalent in politics, in religion,
+in art, and even in science. M. de Tocqueville expressed his surprise
+how much more Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did
+those of the last generation. The same remark, adds John Stuart Mill,
+might be made of England in a greater degree. "The modern _r�gime_ of
+public opinion," he writes, "is in an unorganized form what the Chinese
+educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless
+individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this
+yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed
+Christianity, will tend to become another China."
+
+I fully agree with Mill in recognizing the dangers of uniformity, but I
+doubt whether what he calls the _r�gime_ of public opinion is alone, or
+even chiefly, answerable for it. No doubt there are some people in whose
+eyes uniformity seems an advantage rather than a disadvantage. If all
+were equally strong, equally educated, equally honest, equally rich,
+equally tall, or equally small, society would seem to them to have
+reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French garden,
+with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers and
+pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp
+the soil with their coiling roots, and overshadow with their dark green
+branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens,
+unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon fall
+into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means but too often
+stagnation, while variety is the surest sign of health and vigour. The
+deepest secret of nature is its love of continued novelty. Its tendency,
+if unrestrained, is towards constantly creating new varieties, which, if
+they fulfil their purpose, become fixed for a time, or, it may be, for
+ever; while others, after they have fulfilled their purpose, vanish to
+make room for new and stronger types.
+
+The same is the secret of human society. It consists and lives in
+individuals, each being meant to be different from all the others, and
+to contribute his own peculiar share to the common wealth. As no tree is
+like any other tree, and no leaf on the same tree like any other leaf,
+no human being is exactly like any other human being, nor is it meant to
+be. It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human
+souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the
+more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the
+development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in
+no distant future. Such is the mystery of individuality that I do not
+wonder if even those philosophers who, like Mill, reduce the meaning of
+the word _sacred_ to the very smallest compass, see in each individual
+soul something sacred, something to be revered, even where we cannot
+understand it, something to be protected against all vulgar violence.
+
+Where I differ from Mill and his school is on the question as to the
+quarter from whence the epidemic of uniformity springs which threatens
+the free development of modern society. Mill points to the society in
+which we move; to those who are in front of us, to our contemporaries. I
+feel convinced that our real enemies are at our back, and that the
+heaviest chains which are fastened on us are those made, not by the
+present, but by past generations--by our ancestors, not by our
+contemporaries.
+
+It is on this point, on the trammels of individual freedom with which we
+may almost be said to be born into the world, and on the means by which
+we may shake off these old chains, or at all events carry them more
+lightly and gracefully, that I wish to speak to you this evening.
+
+You need not be afraid that I am going to enter upon the much discussed
+subject of heredity, whether in its physiological or psychological
+aspects. It is a favourite subject just now, and the most curious facts
+have been brought together of late to illustrate the working of what is
+called heredity. But the more we know of these facts, the less we seem
+able to comprehend the underlying principle. Inheritance is one of those
+numerous words which by their very simplicity and clearness are so apt
+to darken our counsel. If a father has blue eyes and the son has blue
+eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the father
+stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came by
+inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we say
+very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does _inherited_
+mean? In no case does it mean what _inherited_ usually means--something
+external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death,
+secured by law to his son. Whatever else inherited may mean, it does not
+mean that. But unfortunately the word is there, it seems almost pedantic
+to challenge its meaning, and people are always grateful if an easy word
+saves them the trouble of hard thought.
+
+Another apparent advantage of the theory of heredity is that it never
+fails. If the son has blue, and the father black, eyes, all is right
+again, for either the mother, or the grandmother, or some historic or
+prehistoric ancestor, may have had blue eyes, and atavism, we know, will
+assert itself after hundreds and thousands of years.
+
+Do not suppose that I deny the broad facts of what is called by the name
+of heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any
+scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a
+metaphor, quite as bad as the old metaphor of _innate ideas_; for there
+is hardly a single point of similarity between the process by which a
+son may share the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of
+his father, and that by which, after his father's death, the law secures
+to the son the possession of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his
+father held in the Funds.
+
+But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is that
+every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere has the
+consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it enters
+on its journey through life found stronger expression than among the
+Buddhists. What other people call by various names, "fate or
+providence," "tradition or inheritance," "circumstances or environment,"
+they call _Karman_, deed--what has been done, whether by ourselves or by
+others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the
+consequences of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil.
+Originally this _Karman_ seems to have been conceived as personal, as
+the work which we ourselves have done in former existences. But, as
+personally we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages,
+that kind of _Karman_, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the
+question how _Karman_ began, the accumulation of what forms the
+condition of all that exists at present, Buddhism has no answer to give,
+any more than any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists
+say it began with _avidy�_, and _avidy�_ means ignorance.[6] They are
+much more deeply interested in the question how _Karman_ may be
+annihilated, how each man may free himself from the influence of
+_Karman_, and Nirv�na, the highest object of all their dreams, is often
+defined by Buddhist philosophers as "freedom from _Karman_."[7]
+
+What the Buddhists call by the general name of _Karman_, comprehends all
+influences which the past exercises on the present, both physically and
+mentally.[8] It is not my object to examine or even to name all these
+influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to look
+upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological map, and
+to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere under our
+feet. Difficult as it is to colour a geological map of England, it would
+be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colours to mark
+the different ingredients of the intellectual surface of this island.
+
+That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or
+Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as
+it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now admitted by everybody.
+Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been separated
+many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient classical
+language of India, yet so unbroken is the bond that holds the West and
+East together that in many cases an intelligent Englishman might still
+guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference is there
+between Sanskrit _s�nu_ and English _son_, between Sanskrit _duhitar_
+and English _daughter_, between Sanskrit _vid_, to know, and English _to
+wit_, between Sanskrit _vaksh_, to grow, and English _to wax_! Think how
+we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Celtic weapon! how we dig
+for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them in our
+museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the antiquity of such
+words as _son_ or _daughter_, _father_ and _mother_? There are no
+monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call
+Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English
+antiquities--as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm's
+Dictionary of the German, in Littr�'s Dictionary of the French, or in
+Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language--will
+learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many
+volumes on logic and psychology.
+
+And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong through
+our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics; and
+in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hieroglyphics
+have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia
+to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we
+write a capital F {script F}, when we draw the top line and the
+smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two
+horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient Egyptians
+used for representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king
+whom the Greeks called _Cheops_, and they themselves _Chu-fu_, like
+this:[9]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+    +---------+
+    | sieve   |   chu
+    | serpent |   fu
+    | bird    |   u
+    +---------+
+]
+
+Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced _chu_; the second,
+the horned serpent, _fu_, and the little bird, again, _u_. In the more
+cursive or Hieratic writing the horned serpent appears as
+{symbol}; in the later Demotic as {symbol} and
+{symbol}. The Phoenicians, who borrowed their letters from the
+Hieratic Egyptian, wrote {symbol} and {symbol}. The
+Greeks, who took their letters from the Phoenicians, wrote
+{symbol}. When the Greeks, instead of writing like the
+Phoenicians from right to left, began to write from left to right,
+they turned each letter, and as {symbol} became K, our k, so
+{symbol}, vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, the Latin
+F.
+
+The first letter in _Chu-fu_, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in
+the transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the
+lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as
+{symbol}, in Phoenician as {symbol}, in ancient Greek
+as {symbol}, which occurs on an inscription found at Mycen� and
+elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus asper, while in Latin it is known
+to us as the letter H.[10] In the same manner the undulating line of our
+capital {script L} still recalls very strikingly the bent back of
+the crouching lion, which in the later hieroglyphic inscriptions
+represents the sound of L.
+
+If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we have
+only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian. Why is our
+hour divided into sixty minutes, our minutes into sixty seconds? Would
+not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a hundred minutes have
+been more natural? We have sixty divisions on the dials of our watches
+simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second
+century B.C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that
+system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but
+for practical purposes they counted by _sossi_ and _sari_, the _sossos_
+representing 60, the _saros_ 60 � 60, or 3600. From Hipparchus that
+system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about 150 A.D., and
+thence it was carried down the stream of civilization, finding its last
+resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.
+
+And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the real
+reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians the art
+of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has been proved
+that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly the sixtieth
+part of a Babylonian _mn�_, or _mina_. It was nearly equal to our
+sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold and
+silver in a bi-monetary currency had been solved to a certain extent in
+the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and silver
+being fixed at 1 to 13-1/3. The silver shekel current in Babylon was
+heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13-1/3 to 10, and had
+therefore the value of one-tenth of a gold shekel; and the half silver
+shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one-twentieth of a
+gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be looked
+upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its relation
+of one-twentieth of our gold sovereign.[11]
+
+I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our mental
+life--namely, our _figures_, which we call Arabic, because we received
+them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian, because they
+received them from the Indians--in order to show you how this nineteenth
+century of ours is under the sway of centuries long past and forgotten;
+how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by those who came before
+us, and how the intellectual ground on which we stand is made up of the
+detritus of thoughts which were first thought, not on these isles nor in
+Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the
+Indus.
+
+Now you may well ask _Quorsum h�c omnia?_--What has all this to do with
+freedom and with the free development of individuality? Because a man is
+born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that he is not free to
+grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties of his mind? Are
+those who came before him, and who left him this goodly inheritance, to
+be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition which connects him
+with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather the
+leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk straight?
+
+Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to say that
+every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be left to
+form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals, and coins.
+On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal more, such
+as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the general name of
+_education_, even the most advanced defenders of individualism would
+hold that no child should enter society without submitting, or rather
+without being submitted, to education. Most of us would even go further,
+and make it criminal for parents or even for communities to allow
+children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless parents that
+they are at liberty to do with their children as they like, has at last
+been blown to the winds. I still remember the time when pseudo-Liberals
+were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations, such as the
+Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory education.
+That wicked sophistry, too, has at last been silenced, and among the
+principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the necessity of
+curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children, have been
+Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and individualism.[12] A
+new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the day
+on which "compulsory education" becomes part of their statute-book; and
+I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having proved
+itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying out the principle of
+compulsory education.
+
+But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its
+dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is
+not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity,
+and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.
+
+We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic.
+Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and
+afterwards at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the
+rest, long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for
+themselves, and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe
+if it comes from those in whom the child believes.
+
+Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically,
+and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English
+schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen
+international race between all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the
+English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at
+statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what
+people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that personal
+and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things, and
+that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible things
+as the English.
+
+But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the
+whole school-time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot
+something be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be
+turned into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the
+powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers,
+or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either in
+gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height
+of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations or
+payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds
+with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to
+call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such
+lessons as, for instance, that _th-ough_ is though, _thr-ough_ is
+through, _en-ough_ is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter
+believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into
+elementary schools frighten schoolmasters by the very name of Natural
+Science. But surely every schoolmaster who is worth his salt should be
+able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a
+curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some
+of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of
+the field and the forest, where, better than in frouzy lecture-rooms,
+the edge of the senses can be sharpened, the chest be widened, and that
+freedom of thought fostered which made England what it was even before
+the days of compulsory education.
+
+But in addressing you here to-night it was my intention to speak of the
+higher rather than of elementary education.
+
+All education, as it now exists in most countries of Europe, may be
+divided into three stages--_elementary_, _scholastic_, and _academical_;
+or call it _primary_, _secondary_, and _tertiary_.
+
+Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most civilized
+countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to include under
+compulsory education anything beyond the very elements of knowledge--at
+least for the present; though, with proper management, I know from
+experience that a well-conducted elementary school can afford to provide
+instruction in extra subjects--such as natural science, modern
+languages, and political economy--and yet, with the present system of
+Government grants, be self-supporting.[13]
+
+The next stage above the elementary is _scholastic_ education, as it is
+supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as
+the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at
+once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are
+divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are called
+_Real-schulen_, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of
+mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other,
+called _Gymnasia_ on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of
+instruction.
+
+It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public
+schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention
+can be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In
+Germany, even more perhaps than in England, it is the chief object of a
+good and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible
+at the end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the
+official examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace
+together, than if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys,
+followed by a number of straggling laggards.
+
+And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be
+otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Socratic method is very
+good if we can find the _viri Socratici_ and leisure for discussion. But
+at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery =schol�=,
+or leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great
+educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school
+must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as they
+can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty. There is
+an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages
+of ten and eighteen--rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names
+of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, &c. All depends
+here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has
+to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost
+mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too strongly
+recommended during the years spent at school. There may have been too
+much of it when, as the Rev. H. C. Adams informs us in his "Wykehamica"
+(p. 357), boys used to say by heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one
+repeated the whole of Virgil, nay, when another was able to say the
+whole of the English Bible by rote:--"Put him on where you would, he
+would go fluently on, as long as any one would listen."
+
+No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such
+regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature
+deposited in our memory during our childhood and youth, and taken up
+from time to time in the happy hours of our solitude.
+
+One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on the
+Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman classics. The
+majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and they are apt to
+lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute scholarship, and
+to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the arguments for minute
+accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is done by an exclusive
+devotion to critical scholarship before we have acquired a real
+familiarity with the principal works of classical literature. The time
+spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar and syntax,
+writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look only at our
+Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions, and
+exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy to carry;
+and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules which they have
+learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of
+classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted not
+only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient
+thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are
+but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end
+itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average
+ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of
+the ordinary Greek or Latin classics without much difficulty; nay, with
+a certain amount of pleasure. He might have to consult his dictionary
+now and then, or guess the meaning of certain words; he might also feel
+doubtful sometimes whether certain forms came from =hi�mi=, I send, or
+=eimi=, I go, or =eimi=, I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions.
+In these matters the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical;
+and whenever I meet in the controversies of classical scholars the
+favourite phrase, "Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, this," I
+generally say to myself, "No, he ought not." Anyhow, those who wish to
+see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to
+feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it
+can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen
+are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless
+they have seen it before.
+
+Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be
+finished at school. When a young man goes to University, unless he means
+to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a
+new career. If he has not learnt by that time so much of Greek and Latin
+as is absolutely necessary in after-life for a lawyer, or a student of
+physical science, or even a clergyman, either he or his school is to
+blame. I do not mean to say that it would not be most desirable for
+every one during his University career to attend some lectures on
+classical literature, on ancient history, philosophy, or art. What is to
+be deprecated is, that the University should have to do the work which
+belongs properly to the school.
+
+The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their
+matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge
+ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by
+boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called
+local examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the
+Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University
+would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at
+Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission to
+the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to
+greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from
+the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish
+it from mere schoolboy work.
+
+Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one
+sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction
+must be chiefly dogmatic, at University it is to be Socratic, for I find
+no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the
+burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the words
+which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are, for the
+most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where he knows
+facts, he does not know their evidence; and where he expresses opinions,
+they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without examination.
+
+But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill's prophecies
+might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into
+dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless they are
+diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the guardians of
+the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual spontaneity; and it
+was owing, I believe, to Mill's ignorance of true academic teaching that
+he took so desponding a view of the generation growing up under his
+eyes.
+
+When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma, that is,
+of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge is
+extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the spirit
+of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic dogmas be
+true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because to place either
+truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth
+and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the
+authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we
+could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And,
+thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by
+argument is generally the first step towards violence and persecution.
+
+I do not think of religious dogmas only. They are generally the first to
+rouse inquiry, even during our schoolboy days, and they are by no means
+the most difficult to deal with. Dogma often rages where we least expect
+it. Among scientific men the theory of evolution is at present becoming,
+or has become, a dogma. What is the result? No objections are listened
+to, no difficulties recognized, and a man like Virchow, himself the
+strongest supporter of evolution, who has the moral courage to say that
+the descent of man from any ape whatsoever is, as yet, before the
+tribunal of scientific zoology, "not proven," is howled down in Germany
+in a manner worthy of Ephesians and Galatians. But at present I am
+thinking not so much of any special dogmas, but rather of that dogmatic
+state of mind which is the almost inevitable result of the teaching at
+school. I think of the whole intellect, what has been called the
+_intellectus sibi permissus_, and I maintain that it is the object of
+academic teaching to rouse that intellect out of its slumber by
+questions not less startling than when Galileo asked the world whether
+the sun was really moving and the earth stood still; or when Kant asked
+whether time and space were objects, or necessary forms of our sensuous
+intuition. Till our opinions have thus been tested and stood the test,
+we can hardly call them our own.
+
+How true this is with regard to religion has been boldly expressed by
+Bishop Beveridge.
+
+    "Being conscious to myself," he writes in his "Private Thoughts on
+    Religion," "how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond
+    the rest, as being that religion whereinto I was born and baptized;
+    that which the supreme authority has enjoined and my parents
+    educated me in; that which every one I meet withal highly approves
+    of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued profession, made
+    almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and
+    suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to
+    entertain it any longer without being convinced, by solid and
+    substantial arguments, of the truth and certainty of it."
+
+This is bold and manly language from a Bishop nearly two hundred years
+ago, and I certainly think that the time has come when some of the
+divinity lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge might well be employed in
+placing a knowledge of the sacred books of other religions within the
+reach of undergraduates. Many of the difficulties--most of them of our
+own making--with regard to the origin, the handing down, the later
+corruptions and misinterpretations of sacred texts, would find their
+natural solution, if it was shown how exactly the same difficulties
+arose and had to be dealt with by theologians of other creeds. If
+some--ay, if many--of the doctrines of Christianity were met with in
+other religions also, surely that would not affect their value, or
+diminish their truth; while nothing, I feel certain, would more
+effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true
+place in the historical development of the human mind than to place it
+side by side with the other religions of the world. In the series of
+translations of the "Sacred Books of the East," of which the first three
+volumes have just appeared,[14] I wished myself to include a new
+translation of the Old and New Testaments; and when that series is
+finished it will, I believe, be admitted that nowhere would these two
+books have had a grander setting, or have shone with a brighter light,
+than surrounded by the Veda, the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka,
+and the Qur'�n.
+
+But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only, or
+even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academic teaching
+must be Socratic, not dogmatic. The evil of dogmatic teaching lies much
+deeper, and spreads much further.
+
+Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves,
+which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every word
+we use require careful examination and revision? It is not enough to say
+that language assists our thoughts or colours them, or possibly obscures
+them. No, we know now that language and thought are indivisible. It was
+not from poverty of expression that the Greek called reason and language
+by the same word, =logos=. It was because they knew that, though we may
+distinguish between thought and speech, as we distinguish between body
+and soul, it is as impossible to tear the one by violence away from the
+other as it is to separate the concave side of a lens from its convex
+side. This is something to learn and to understand, for, if properly
+understood, it will supply the key to most of our intellectual puzzles,
+and serve as the safest thread through the whole labyrinth of
+philosophy.
+
+"It is evident," as Hobbes remarks,[15] "that truth and falsity have no
+place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though some
+brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may be
+affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason
+fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or
+false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore,
+as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of
+speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the
+same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so
+from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For speech
+has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of
+Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are
+ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them."
+
+Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.
+
+Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even the
+greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the
+terms _genus_, _species_, and _individual_ occupy a very prominent
+place. The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the
+Realists, of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true
+meaning of these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach
+the received meaning of _genus_ and _species_; and if a boy can trace
+these terms back to Aristotle's =genos= and =eidos=, and show in what
+sense that philosopher used them, every examiner would be satisfied.
+
+But the time comes when we have to act as our own examiners, and when we
+have to give an account to ourselves of such words as _genus_ and
+_species_. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a _species_
+and a _genus_ walking about in broad daylight; but a little
+consideration will show us that these words express subjective concepts,
+and that, if the whole world were silent, there would never have been a
+thought of a _genus_ or a _species_. There are languages in which we
+look in vain for corresponding words; and if we had been born in such a
+language, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to
+us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent
+them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance,
+according to him, all living beings would constitute a _genus_, men a
+_species_, and Socrates an _individual_.
+
+No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these
+terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember
+that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The
+true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think
+our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch
+their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with
+those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this
+with _genus_ and _species_, we shall find that the words which Aristotle
+defined--viz., =genos= and =eidos=--had originally a very different and
+far more useful application than that which he gave to them. =Genos=,
+_genus_, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as
+were known to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward
+appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound, or,
+according to Darwin, the ape and the man. =Eidos= or species, on the
+contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the
+same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if
+we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed, horned,
+winged, or blue animals.
+
+That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural
+justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same
+thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find *_g_�ti*,
+generation, used in the sense of _genus_, and opposed to *�k_ri_ti*,
+appearance, used in the sense of _species_.
+
+So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as
+we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological
+classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be
+called a =genos=, the _gens_ or clan was a =genos=, the nation (gnatio)
+was a =genos=, the whole human kith and kin was a =genos=; in fact, all
+that was descended from common ancestors was a true =genos=. There is no
+obscurity of thought in this.
+
+On the other side, taking =eidos= or species in its original sense, one
+man might be said to be like another in his =eidos= or appearance. An
+ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same =eidos= or species
+or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin.
+People might also speak of different =eid�= or forms or classes of
+things, such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armour, without
+committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common
+descent.
+
+Often it would happen that things belonging to the same =genos=, such as
+the white man and the negro, differed in their =eidos= or appearance;
+often also that things belonging to the same =eidos=, such as eatables,
+differed in their =genos=, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.
+
+All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two terms,
+instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other by the
+philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was called a
+_genus_, might from another be called a species, and _vice vers�_. Human
+beings, for instance, were now called a _species_, all living beings a
+_genus_, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what is
+older than logic--viz., language, thought, or fact. According to
+language, according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings
+constitute a =genos=, or generation, so long as they are supposed to
+have common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can only
+say that they form an =eidos=--that is, agree in certain appearances,
+until it has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest in
+admitting at least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal
+world.[16]
+
+In tracing the history of these two words, =genos= and =eidos=, you may
+see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy,
+from Plato's ideas down to Hegel's _Idee_. The question of _genera_,
+their origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural
+philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and
+classification of _genera_ and _species_, seem at last, thanks to the
+clear sight of Darwin, to have arrived at the old truth which was
+prefigured in language--namely, that Nature knows nothing but _genera_,
+or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and
+that the so-called _species_ are only _genera_, whose genealogical
+descent is _as yet_ more or less obscure.
+
+But the question as to the nature of the =eidos= became a vital question
+in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in
+every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what
+constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that
+form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended
+from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity.
+But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all
+individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they were
+cast remained the same?
+
+Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very question
+what =eidos= or species or form was, and where these things were kept,
+changed those words from predicates into subjects. =Eidos= was conceived
+as something independent and substantial, something within or above the
+individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal.
+Soon there arose as many =eid�= or forms or types as there were general
+concepts. They were considered the only true realities of which the
+phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth away. Here we
+have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the various systems
+of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite opinions that
+ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found
+except in the many (=to hen para ta polla=), was strenuously defended by
+Aristotle and his followers.[17]
+
+The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the Middle
+Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as heretics because
+they declared that _animal_, _man_, or _woman_ were mere names, and that
+they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal animal, an ideal
+man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or metaphysical
+types of the ordinary animal, the individual man, the single woman.
+Those philosophers, called _Nominalists_, in opposition to the
+_Realists_, declared that all general terms were _names only_, and that
+nothing could claim reality but the individual.
+
+We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again between
+Locke and Leibniz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to say that the
+knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by the science of
+language alone, which teaches us that there is and can be no such thing
+as "a name only." That phrase ought to be banished from all works on
+philosophy. A name is and always has been the subjective side of our
+knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible without an
+objective side as a key is without a lock. It is useless to ask which of
+the two is the more real, for they are real only by being, not two, but
+one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism. But there is a higher
+Nominalism, which might better be called the Science of Language, and
+which teaches us that, apart from sensuous perception, all human
+knowledge is by names and by names only, and that the object of names is
+always the general.
+
+This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how names
+and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted to very
+careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What I mean by
+academic teaching and academic study is exactly this process of
+snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words, this
+tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought, this
+living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole
+history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to
+differ from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin.
+
+Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is awed
+by them, even though he may have read very little of their writings.
+This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction. Now, at
+University, a young student might hear the following, by no means
+respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from one of the
+greatest English scholars and philosophers:--"There is nothing so absurd
+that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was one of them, have
+not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce anything can be
+more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called
+Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of
+that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part
+of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that
+the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so
+mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources;
+it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed
+on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes. He
+will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind
+the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He
+will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a
+great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle,
+or Plato, or any other great philosopher far more highly and honestly
+than if he had never seen them trodden under foot.
+
+But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely
+iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of
+the schools. Far from it! But I do look upon them as meant to freshen
+the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake our mind to its
+very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down,
+but to make them grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and
+truth! "_Stand upright on thy feet_" ought to be written over the gate
+of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill
+saw approaching from China, and which since his time has made such rapid
+progress Westward, is ever to be stayed.
+
+Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which
+it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany--so far as my own
+experience goes--students are often left too much to themselves, and it
+is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally
+recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance and
+encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all.
+
+There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere
+lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student
+might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are
+useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if
+they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs
+from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact,
+they have less the character of a show-window than of a workshop. Half
+an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than
+a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right
+spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor
+Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the memory of my
+own University life," he writes, "and the impression which a man like
+Johannes M�ller, the professor of physiology, made on us, I must set the
+highest value on the personal intercourse with teachers from whom one
+learns how thought works on independent heads. Whoever has come in
+contact but once with one or several first-class men will find his
+intellectual standard changed for life."
+
+In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of
+academic freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of
+constant personal control. It is often thought that English
+undergraduates could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom
+which is granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to
+choose their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own
+teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and untrue.
+Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and the best way
+to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived long enough in
+English and in German Universities to know that the intellectual fibre
+is as strong and sound in the English as in the German youth. But if you
+supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with bladders--nay, if you
+insist on his using them--he will use them, but he will probably never
+learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary, and depend on it, after
+a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps, he will use his arms and
+his legs, and he will swim. If young men do not learn to use their arms,
+their legs, their muscles, their senses, their brain, and their heart
+too, during the bright years of their University life, when are they to
+learn it? True, there are thousands who never learn it, and who float
+happily on through life buoyed up on mere bladders. The worst that can
+happen to them is that some day the bladders may burst, and they may be
+left stranded or drowned. But these are not the men whom England wants
+to fight her battles. It has often been pointed out of late that many of
+those who, during this century, have borne the brunt of the battle in
+the intellectual warfare in England, have not been trained at our
+Universities, while others who have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and
+have distinguished themselves in after-life, have openly declared that
+they attended hardly any lectures in college, or that they derived no
+benefit from them. What can be the ground of that? Not that there is
+less work done at Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a
+different spirit. It is free in Germany; it has now become almost
+compulsory in England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend,
+when I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a
+real pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on
+the history of art, on modern history, on the science of language, or on
+philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the
+subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of
+learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from
+mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the
+freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between
+cramming and examinations.
+
+And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends of
+academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity,
+may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine for
+intellectual levelling--_Examination_.
+
+There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of
+examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they
+are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that
+outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to
+address to the _Times_, in very imperfect English, were in favour of
+examinations. They were signed _La Carri�re ouverte_, and were written
+long before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember,
+too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in
+public, was in favour of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when
+the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in
+establishing the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an
+examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system
+in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and
+written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it
+would be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of
+appointment by patronage.
+
+But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal
+the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are conducted,
+and by the results which they produce. As you are interested yourselves
+at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of examinations,
+you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few remarks on the
+safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations.
+
+All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been taught;
+they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which pupils are
+taught.
+
+Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the eyes of
+his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to produce
+shallowness and dishonesty.
+
+Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts
+were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is
+lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is
+gaining marks in examinations.
+
+In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil, all
+pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural
+examiners and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the
+report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the
+principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public
+schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives
+them the right to enter the University, they know that their success
+depends far more on the work which they have done during the years at
+school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination.
+There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work
+done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they
+have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare,
+and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality
+of the school authorities.
+
+To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level of
+lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to
+dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows _not_, he
+can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in
+finding out _how much_ a candidate knows, he can never find out _how_ he
+knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have watched
+their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the examiner,
+for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their teachers.
+
+I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters,
+and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties.
+Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than
+dishonest, and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters
+were rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would
+be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing
+false witness in favour of their pupils.
+
+Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed
+before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a
+good examination should be honour, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The
+mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships
+and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very
+widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is
+generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his
+usefulness in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he
+will entail on his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his
+teacher the loss of pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.
+
+It is always said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the
+sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in
+England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive
+costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it
+seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the
+majority of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and
+exhibitions at school or at University are boys whose parents have been
+able to pay the highest price for their children's previous education.
+If all these prizes were abolished, and the funds thus set free used to
+lessen the price of education at school and in college, I believe that
+the sons of poor parents would be far more benefited than by the present
+system. It might also be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case
+of the sons of poor parents, who were doing well at school from year to
+year; and, in order to guard against favouritism, an examination,
+particularly _viv� voce_, before all the masters of a school, possibly
+even with some outside examiner, might be useful. But the present system
+bids fair to degenerate into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder
+if, sooner or later, the two-year olds entered for the race have to be
+watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against
+the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for
+clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read,
+that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take
+away the young racers that are likely to win the Derby.[18]
+
+If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the
+same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that every
+University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right to
+demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other for a
+degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia, in
+France, and in England to change and improve the old academic tradition,
+but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural system,
+has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right.
+
+If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to be
+admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of schoolmasters,
+and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim in
+their public lectures. Besides this, it is almost inevitable, if the
+Universities surrender the right of a matriculation-examination, that
+they should lower, not only their own standard, but likewise the
+standard of public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like
+over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite
+sure, at the end of each term or each year that the pupils confided to
+them have done at least some work. This kind of forced labour may do
+some good to the incorrigibly idle, but it does the greatest harm to all
+the rest. If there is an examination at the end of each year, there can
+be no freedom left for any independent work. Both teachers and taught
+will be guided by the same pole-star--examinations; no deviation from
+the beaten track will be considered safe, and all the pleasure derived
+from work done for its own sake, and all the just pride and joy, which
+those only know who have ever ventured out by themselves on the open sea
+of knowledge, must be lost.
+
+We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the brilliant show of
+examination papers.
+
+It is certainly marvellous what an amount of knowledge candidates will
+produce before their examiners; but those who have been both examined
+and examiners know best how fleeting that knowledge is, and how
+different from that other knowledge which has been acquired slowly and
+quietly, for its own sake, for our own sake, without a thought as to
+whether it would ever pay at examinations or not. A candidate, after
+giving most glibly the dates and the titles of the principal works of
+Cobbett, Gibbon, Burke, Adam Smith, and David Hume, was asked whether he
+had ever seen any of their writings, and he had to answer, No. Another,
+who was asked which of the works of Pheidias he had seen, replied that
+he had only read the first two books. That is the kind of dishonest
+knowledge which is fostered by too frequent examinations. There are two
+kinds of knowledge, the one that enters into our very blood, the other
+which we carry about in our pockets. Those who read for examinations
+have generally their pockets cram full; those who work on quietly and
+have their whole heart in their work are often discouraged at the small
+amount of their knowledge, at the little life-blood they have made. But
+what they have learnt has really become their own, has invigorated their
+whole frame, and in the end they have often proved the strongest and
+happiest men in the battle of life.
+
+Omniscience is at present the bane of all our knowledge. From the day he
+leaves school and enters the University a man ought to make up his mind
+that in many things he must remain either altogether ignorant, or be
+satisfied with knowledge at second-hand. Thus only can he clear the deck
+for action. And the sooner he finds out what his own work is to be, the
+more useful and delightful will be his life at University and later.
+There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge, there is hardly
+one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called hobbies ought to be
+utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if we wish our
+Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle, Grote, or
+Darwin. I do not say that in an examination for a University degree a
+minimum of what is now called general culture should not be insisted on;
+but in addition to that, far more freedom ought to be given to the
+examiner to let each candidate produce his own individual work. This is
+done to a far greater extent in Continental than in English
+Universities, and the examinations are therefore mostly confided to the
+members of the _Senatus Academicus_, consisting of the most experienced
+teachers, and the most eminent representatives of the different branches
+of knowledge in the University. Their object is not to find out how many
+marks each candidate may gain by answering a larger or smaller number of
+questions, and then to place them in order before the world like so many
+organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by the work he has
+done during his three or four years at University, has acquired that
+vigour of thought, that maturity of judgment, and that special
+knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic status, to a degree,
+with or without special honours. Such a degree confers no material
+advantages;[19] it does not entitle its holder to any employment in
+Church or State; it does not vouch even for his being a fit person to be
+made an Archbishop or Prime Minister. All this is left to the later
+struggle for life; and in that struggle it seems as if those who, after
+having surveyed the vast field of human knowledge, have settled on a few
+acres of their own and cultivated them as they were never cultivated
+before, who have worked hard and have tasted the true joy and happiness
+of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always depended on
+themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations delighted to
+follow as their royal leaders in their onward march towards greater
+enlightenment, greater happiness, and greater freedom.
+
+To sum up. No one can read Mill's Essay "On Liberty" at the present
+moment without feeling that even during the short period of the last
+twenty years the cause which he advocated so strongly and passionately,
+the cause of individual freedom, has made rapid progress, aye, has
+carried the day. In no country _may_ a man be so entirely himself, so
+true to himself and yet loyal to society, as in England.
+
+But, although the enemy whose encroachments Mill feared most and
+resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own
+bounds,--though such names as Dissent and Nonconformity, which were
+formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the
+poison which they once contained,--Mill's principal fears have
+nevertheless not been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw
+approaching with its attendant evils of feebleness, indifference, and
+sequacity, has been spreading more widely than ever in his days.
+
+It has even been maintained that the very freedom which every individual
+now enjoys has been detrimental to the growth of individuality; that you
+must have an Inquisition if you want to see martyrs; that you must have
+despotism and tyranny to call forth heroes. The very measures which Mill
+and his friends advocated so warmly, compulsory education and
+competitive examinations, are pointed out as having chiefly contributed
+to produce that large array of pass-men, that dead level of
+uninteresting excellence, which is the _beau id�al_ of a Chinese
+Mandarin, while it frightened and disheartened such men as Humboldt,
+Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.
+
+There may be some truth in all this, but it is certainly not the whole
+truth. Education, as it has to be carried on, whether in elementary or
+in public schools, is no doubt a heavy weight which might well press
+down the most independent spirit; it is, in fact, neither more nor less
+than placing, in a systematized form, on the shoulders of every
+generation the ever-increasing mass of knowledge, experience, custom,
+and tradition that has been accumulated by former generations. We need
+not wonder, therefore, if in some schools all spring, all vigour, all
+joyousness of work is crushed out under that load of names and dates, of
+anomalous verbs and syntactic rules, of mathematical formulas and
+geometrical axioms, which boys are expected to bring up for competitive
+examinations.
+
+But a remedy has been provided, and we are ourselves to blame if we do
+not avail ourselves of it to the fullest extent. Europe erected its
+Universities, and called them the homes of the Liberal Arts, and
+determined that between the slavery of the school and the routine of
+practical life every man should have at least three years of freedom.
+What Socrates and his great pupil Plato had done for the youth of
+Greece,[20] these new academies were to do for the youth of Italy,
+France, England, Spain, and Germany; and, though with varying success,
+they have done it. The medi�val and modern Universities have been from
+century to century the homes of free thought. Here the most eminent men
+have spent their lives, not merely in retailing traditional knowledge,
+as at school, but in extending the frontiers of science in all
+directions. Here, in close intercourse with their teachers, or under
+their immediate guidance, generation after generation of boys, fresh
+from school, have grown up into men during the three years of their
+academic life. Here, for the first time, each man has been encouraged to
+dare to be himself, to follow his own tastes, to depend on his own
+judgment, to try the wings of his mind, and, lo, like young eagles
+thrown out of their nest, they could fly. Here the old knowledge
+accumulated at school was tested, and new knowledge acquired straight
+from the fountain-head. Here knowledge ceased to be a mere burden, and
+became a power invigorating the whole mind, like snow which during
+winter lies cold and heavy on the meadows, but when it is touched by the
+sun of spring melts away, and fructifies the ground for a rich harvest.
+
+That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they
+continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that
+real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and
+superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more
+will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity" which
+Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.
+
+Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities.
+There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings
+than your Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure the
+real benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of a
+University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is
+really wanted are men who have done good work in their life, and who are
+willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think for
+themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic stage
+in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others, be
+they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he works
+from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the
+conquest of truth. Those only who have passed through that stage know
+the real blessings of work. To the world at large they may seem mere
+drudges--but the world does not know the triumphant joy with which the
+true mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain walls that once seemed
+unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High Alps, and away from
+the fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city, revels alone, in
+freedom of thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the freedom of the
+highest faith.
+
+    F. MAX M�LLER.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute.
+
+[2] Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written
+down in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January,
+1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume, and
+it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his Autobiography
+speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows
+himself one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty."
+"None of my writings," he says, "have been either so carefully composed
+or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final revision was to have been
+the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife had
+arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by
+his wife's death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive
+longer than anything else that I have written (with the possible
+exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with mine
+has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which
+the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring
+out into stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large
+variety of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to
+expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."
+
+[3] Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all
+settled concepts, from all inherited restraints and impediments which
+hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect with the historical drag
+tied to its foot."
+
+[4] Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universit�ten, Rede
+beim Antritt des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit�t in
+Berlin, am 15 October 1877, gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.
+
+[5] Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen
+observer of English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the
+October number of the _Nineteenth Century_, remarks: "Nowhere is there
+greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere do people
+renounce it more readily of their own accord."
+
+[6] Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.
+
+[7] _Ibid._, p. 39.
+
+[8] "As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the
+consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of
+pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life,
+inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or
+been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there
+where they left it."--Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, p. 104.
+
+[9] Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.
+
+[10] M�moire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Ph�nicien, par E. de
+Roug�, Paris, 1874.
+
+[11] See Brandis, "Das M�nzwesen."
+
+[12] "Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should
+require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every
+human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid
+to recognize and assert this truth?"--_On Liberty_, p. 188.
+
+[13] _Times_, January 25, 1879.
+
+[14] "Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.;
+Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879.
+
+[15] "Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.
+
+[16] Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language," _Fraser's
+Magazine_, June, 1873, p. 26.
+
+[17] Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.
+
+[18] L. Noir�, "P�dagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."
+
+[19] Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.
+
+[20] Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen,"
+1878, p. 9.
+
+
+
+
+MR. GLADSTONE.
+
+TWO STUDIES SUGGESTED BY HIS "GLEANINGS OF PAST YEARS."
+
+    _Gleanings of Past Years: 1843-1878._ By the Right Hon. W. E.
+    GLADSTONE, M.P. Seven vols. London: John Murray.
+
+
+I.
+
+Lord Beaconsfield and his party are still holding on. All the
+over-praised Disraelian craft has dwindled somehow to this merely
+muscular operation. An attempt is, indeed, made to disguise the attitude
+by keeping strict silence, and arranging the facial expression of the
+Cabinet, if not of the Party, in a way not agreeing with the strain; but
+the country is fast finding out that the real posture of the
+Conservatives at this moment is that of clutching at office, and nothing
+more. However, no amount of not talking about the elections will put
+them off finally. In his most efficient days Lord Beaconsfield was
+hardly clever enough to operate upon the almanack, and a certain
+terrible date is approaching upon him with increasing swiftness. It will
+be rather humiliating at last for a Premier to be brought up by the day
+of the month, and to be reminded by the great officials of Parliament
+what year of Our Lord it is. But these latter personages are partly paid
+for watching the efflux of time, and no doubt they will do their duty.
+It may be unpleasant for them to have to tell Lord Beaconsfield that
+dates make it impossible for him to go on any longer, but they must get
+what consolation they can from the remembrance that it is the first time
+they ever had to say this to a Minister. Several Parliaments in our
+history have been nicknamed rather uglily, but it is likely that the
+Beaconsfield House of Commons will be known under a description more
+humiliating than any, because so inescapeably accurate. It will
+literally be the run-to-the-last-dregs Parliament, and when, on there
+not being another moment left, the dissolution has necessarily to be
+ordered, the not-any-longer-to-be-put-off elections will take place.
+
+When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand
+whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form
+towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is
+written at the head of this paper--Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen will
+at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far
+north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand
+that wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes
+the centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be
+too near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that
+with Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few
+yards further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not
+unlikely that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the
+speech at Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without
+warning. The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to
+calculate than the final one of the Parliamentary calendar--that,
+namely, of Mr. Gladstone's appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed
+that they are already anxiously counting the days of the dwindling
+interval. Whenever he gives instructions for his hustings to be put up,
+the Conservatives will have to send for their own carpenters, and order
+planks.
+
+The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before he
+again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may
+not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It
+is, in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious
+hard work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the
+passing hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a
+special matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he
+has left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him.
+The result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation
+of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands
+wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds. Lately,
+it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind the country of
+his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as an old man. But
+without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute the register, we
+may say that he has scarcely got anybody to believe it. He has gone on
+felling trees, writing letters and articles, and publishing volumes,
+with utterances of more and better speeches between than anybody else
+can make, in a way which has led not a few to congratulate themselves
+that he was not any younger. In particular, his opponents, so soon as
+they found out that his announcement of retirement into ease meant that
+he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work a little harder in
+another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he had pledged
+himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather to complain
+that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something to be
+said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr. Gladstone's side at
+the time obviously was that the Conservatives were themselves not to do
+anything in particular. It was to be a time of stagnation, and they have
+not kept to that understanding; no sooner had he turned his back than
+they began to swagger up and down the world as Imperialists. They have
+risked the highest interests of the empire and have made England figure
+on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed and blustering for war.
+Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by foregoing all patriotism. It was
+too much to ask from an old-fashioned English statesman, who had always
+himself stood on the side of freedom and peace, and had grown accustomed
+to seeing his country ranged there too. However, we will speak again a
+little later on this point of his announced retirement.
+
+It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman
+now before the public with an official record which can in any way be
+set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of time
+and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House of
+Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not many, who
+have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no one whose
+Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office forty-five
+years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first
+appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then he
+stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone. The
+latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more
+than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade
+and Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary
+for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once. There
+is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in him who
+has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to show.
+Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
+Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a group
+of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not very distant
+date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served under and those
+whom he commanded; including in the association with him some whom he
+attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might scarcely fully apply; for
+Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office, and Mr. Bright in one.
+These latter were achievements of personal influence which may fairly
+rank a trifle higher than merely taking precedence of a Duke in a
+Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has happened in his time in the
+way of legislation and social reform, and his connection with it, it may
+be said, speaking generally, that he has witnessed the political and
+economical remoulding of this kingdom; and, taking all things together,
+has helped it forward in more ways than anybody else who still survives.
+If while Mr. Bright lives his name must always have the honour of first
+mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws is spoken of, it was Mr.
+Gladstone who wrought out all the details of Peel's fiscal reforms. He
+too it was who, much later, gave effect to Cobden's negotiation of the
+French Commercial Treaty; and also, again, made the best bargain that
+could be made when that first international arrangement lapsed. Every
+amelioration bearing on taxation and trade in our time has been
+naturally fated in some way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So,
+too, it was his conversion, or rather his progress, on the question of
+the Franchise--proved by his bringing in of the Russell measure--which
+made the immediate granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory
+trick of the last Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote
+was but a sinister gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from
+England to the sister country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be
+then seen that it was Mr. Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the
+Irish Church and by his Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If
+the Roman Catholics get a University now, they will only get what he
+offered them years ago. The prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some
+day to give to Mr. Gladstone's memory a splendid revenge for the
+ingratitude she showed to the man who brought legislating for Ireland
+into vogue. If we shift our regard to diplomacy, the future is still
+clearly with him in several of the chiefest international arrangements
+this generation has witnessed. When the Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and
+forgotten by everybody but historians and bookworms, the Treaty of
+Washington will be a living, ruling precedent between the mighty
+English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic; and on the day
+that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples of those
+regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves, the
+then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off our
+hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's name
+with the cession of the Ionian Islands.
+
+In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune with
+posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles. It is
+the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own, they
+put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular
+impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving
+auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But if,
+apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance for
+the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his foreign
+policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must not be
+defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all this was
+once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a Peelite. Of
+that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never could be a
+party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle region of
+ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has never ceased
+to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in this country is a
+political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental force. Mr. Gladstone's
+greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was the slowly but
+ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound, robust Liberal; but
+he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness of popular
+progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper of it in ways which
+showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may scrutinize his career
+more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look down lower than
+these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating; and, if we
+do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms, less showy, but
+very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism in the grain of
+every one of them. It was under his auspices that the Civil Service was
+thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of the Lords, with
+Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving us cheap
+newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a whole web of
+legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr. Forster gave to
+the country its first national educational scheme; but for him Mr.
+Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering the principle of our
+military organization from long-period enlistments to the short-term
+service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing to thrust upon him
+the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the army, because they think
+the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks to their resistance of the
+reform, was the only means of effecting it, lends itself to a taunt. Add
+to this list, the fact that although he, at first, for easily seen
+reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the earlier days when he
+was Conservative, did not favour University Reform, yet he finally lent
+himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to understand the
+successive outcries raised against him in the higher social quarters. He
+gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient reasons for their
+dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone was as certain
+in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on his shoulder,
+before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past its time.
+
+But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up his
+political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of his
+having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was always
+for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who once
+ensconced in a shire--say, in Buckinghamshire--remain there as long as
+they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of view. Mr.
+Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself turned out of
+constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was always for the
+same reason--he became too big for them. Among his highest distinctions
+are these,--he is the resigner of Newark, the rejected of Oxford, the
+loser of South Lancashire. The thing has occurred too often to admit of
+a casual explanation. It was not for Liberalism, as it is now
+understood, that he, when still in his youth, offended the mighty Duke
+of Newcastle and had to give up Newark, but it was for reasoned-out
+consistency which gave hope of Liberalism. He would not stultify his
+intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase of the Maynooth Grant
+in contradiction of his own book on Church and State. But all the world
+knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat developed that he quitted
+Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire was that he had for
+years been too busy in pushing forward reforms on all hands. It was a
+noble vanquishment for him, whatever it was for his party, for
+Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career how we will, the result
+still comes out to his honour. He, for conscience' sake, offended the
+great patron on whom his whole prospects then depended, remaining out of
+Parliament for a time; later, he went over with Peel, knowing that it
+meant an ineffective hanging between two parties for an indefinite time,
+sharing the hopes and chances of neither; when Lord Derby came into
+power, he refused office on its being offered. In a word, he has
+evidenced his sincerity and proved his patriotism in every way for which
+it is allowed to other men to claim honour. When a man has risked
+personal prospects, refused place, held office in all its kinds, left
+one lagging constituency after another behind him, and finally, by sheer
+insisting on rapid progress, temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of
+his countrymen throughout the whole nation, as the last general election
+showed that he had, what more is there left for him to do for his
+country? Only one thing remained: the sacrificing his retirement after
+the formal announcement of the close of his career, and, afresh taking
+up his old post in the front of the battle as if he were still young and
+had place and public life to secure, striving his hardest a last time
+for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final
+possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone
+undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by
+him.
+
+The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed
+to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more
+completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze,
+as he of necessity will do.
+
+But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr.
+Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of
+industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself
+needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier,
+for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr.
+Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much
+more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among
+us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he
+has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with
+his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr.
+Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of
+thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said
+what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability
+and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the
+others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple,
+old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no
+mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only
+a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except
+two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly
+seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style
+has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch
+earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone,
+however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the
+public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all
+the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our
+general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If
+we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has
+had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two
+generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed
+out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the
+canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most
+men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in
+Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not
+been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time,
+nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as
+within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr.
+Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer of Art;
+next mark off a reviewer and general _litt�rateur_ whom professed
+authors will respectfully make room for in their ranks; and not only is
+there still left, solid and firm, the great Parliamentary Minister, but
+of the scattered fragments a couple of Bishops might easily be made,
+with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several preachers for the
+denominations. The latter would be derived from a morsel or two of
+material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not fully aware of as being in
+his composition. It is not very easy to give a complete impression
+offhand of such a multiform personage as this. We must take him a little
+simpler. The general effect of it all has been, as we said above, that
+the mental activity of the community in all matters relating to politics
+and practical affairs has had to take its rate and much of its scale
+largely from him, and he has been thinking with the speed, not of the
+old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of ethical and
+religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to everything.
+In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone has made upon the
+community has been that of an intellect weaponed with a perfectly fluent
+tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of pens, occupying the very
+highest national posts, ceaselessly going on reasoning, insisting upon
+doing it, whether the reasoning might occasionally go wrong or not, just
+as if thinking, speaking, and writing were man's right employment. His
+chief opponents would, perhaps, hesitate in flatly saying that they were
+not; but, at any rate, they have continually been wanting him to stop.
+Nearly all the complaint that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves
+itself into a charge that he has thought and spoken and written too
+much. The accusation is one which it would task a great many men to lay
+themselves open to; it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of
+us. Above all, he has kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly
+the other side might have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so
+well; if only this promptest, quickest ratiocination on the part of a
+practical politician in our times had not, as it progressed, brought him
+ever nearer to the conclusions of Liberalism. He has, we are, however,
+rather ashamed to admit, had to suffer from his own party for this
+unusualness of mental activity. Our practical politics for generations
+past had been carried on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a
+hand-to-mouth principle of mere party expediency, that even some
+Liberals were surprised when he brought a little subtlety of intellect
+into public life. It was enough to make a smaller man despair of his
+countrymen's sanity when he found that for years many of them could not
+distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer of Rome.
+
+To speak plainly, there was never such a humiliating spectacle of public
+stolidity as that which for so long a time was witnessed in the popular
+mystification as to Mr. Gladstone's religious position. It went for
+nothing that his first critical Parliamentary step was to give up his
+seat rather than vote more money to Maynooth; nobody seemed to bear in
+mind that as far back as 1852 he both predicted and publicly hoped for
+the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, and that ten years
+later Sir George Bowyer openly attacked him on that very point in
+Parliament; it did not avail that he it was who paved the way for the
+unification of Italy by dragging into the light before all Europe the
+prison secrets of Neapolitan tyranny. Because he had the good sense to
+oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the loyalty to remain on
+terms of friendship with the companions of his youth after they became
+Puseyites, and avowed that he held the same views as to Church doctrine
+which some of the greatest Church of England divines taught, he was
+called on to explain, every month or so, that he was not a Jesuit. Not
+until he published his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, and by so doing
+threw all the Roman Catholics in England and elsewhere into a white heat
+of rage, was the silliness quite exploded. It is true that the dull
+public might plead that a real profession of religiousness on the part
+of a leading politician was such a novelty that it might be excused
+being a little puzzled, and believing the worst in its perplexity. Worst
+or best, Mr. Gladstone has gone on speaking and writing about his
+religion just as if a man's ethics and faith ought to have some
+connection with his politics, and, as time has passed, people appear to
+think it less strange. This non-reticence on the score of religion has
+made more serious the impression Mr. Gladstone has produced upon the
+public mind; but in reality it is no specialty in his mode of public
+thinking, but only a necessary part of it. He tracks his commonest
+politics to their fundamental principles, and makes of them a system. He
+has always in his reasoning to go back to history, and this has delayed
+his advance in comparison with men who dispense with that; but there
+never yet was a public man who explained so fully as Mr. Gladstone the
+reasons of his changes. All the progress of his mind is to be traced in
+speeches, articles, pamphlets, volumes. He has given too much
+explanation, not too little, for his mind has an insatiability for
+reasons. Most people are content when they get hold of a good one; but
+he wants three or four--in fact, all that can be got by searching for;
+and if it be true, as it certainly is, that he likes the last to have a
+little subtlety about it, long-sustained thinking cannot take people too
+deep in politics, whatever it may do now and then in religion. For
+instance, on the question of Reform Mr. Gladstone has certainly
+exhausted the process, having at last got at the final ideal argument.
+It turns out, as he stated it to Mr. Lowe, to be this,--that, apart
+from, or rather in addition to, all the hard reasons of justice and
+safety that Mr. Bright can urge for extending the franchise, the vote
+ought to be given because it has an educative power, and will make our
+humbler fellow-countrymen better citizens. It is open to any one, who is
+stupid enough, to call that argument subtle, but no one can deny that it
+is truly Liberal. There is not a man among us to-day who keeps the main
+Liberal issues so broad and clear as Mr. Gladstone does, and this simply
+because he will get to a principle. He adds a tremendous multiplicity of
+ideas in the way of side issues, but, as we above put it, they are all
+reasons in addition. There is a very simple test of it,--he has never
+recanted a single article of his Liberal progress, never gone back a
+single step. This hardly can be said of either Mr. Lowe or a few others
+who might be named. It could not even be said of so thorough a Liberal
+as Earl Russell. Mr. Gladstone's alleged over-refining has ended in
+placing and keeping him in the practical lead of his party, at a time of
+life when many born in the faith grow faint-hearted. Even the one bit of
+mysticism which his political feeling has developed--namely, the belief
+that the popular judgment is truest of all in very large matters--is
+only the full flowering of the popular trust which every Liberal
+professes to have. The bulk of the nation will forgive him that excess
+of political belief, if it be an excess, for it is the last compliment a
+statesman can pay them, and they have but to merit it, and it then turns
+to Mr. Gladstone's praise as well as theirs. But, at any rate, it will
+not do for Liberals to set out to argue the point with Mr. Gladstone, or
+they will quickly find themselves tripped up by a principle; for it is
+no sentimentality in him which underlies the view, but completed logic
+and wide recollection of historical instances.
+
+Indeed, although it was necessary in trying to reproduce the general
+impression Mr. Gladstone has made upon his contemporaries to speak of
+this alleged over-refining, what is meant by it has been after all a
+kind of superfluity of mental operation. His intricacy of thinking has
+never hindered his activity; least of all living men has Mr. Gladstone
+been a dreamer. He stands in history as a reviser of fiscal policies; an
+introducer of new administrative modes; a widener of the boundaries of
+political rights; a ceaseless overthrower of public abuses. From first
+to last he has been, as the hatred of his opponents has too well
+witnessed, a man of practice. You may add to this that he reasons too
+minutely, if you like; but it was not by a transcendental casuistry of
+politics that he wearied the country: it was by his enormous energy in
+ceaselessly proposing wide sweeping measures. The casuistry was all in
+addition. The over-refining of Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, been of a
+wholly different kind from what is common among men; it has consisted in
+finding justifications afterwards for very prompt vigorous doing.
+Examine, if any one thinks it worth while at this time of day, the
+Ewelme Rectory case, or the issue of the Royal Warrant on Purchase, or
+the Collier appointment, and it will appear that it was for bold
+decision in taking a practical step that he was arraigned as much as for
+subsequently finding too many reasons for it. For ourselves, as we have
+not set out to apologize for Mr. Gladstone (men of his dimensions must
+be taken as they are), but simply to put down hints recalling more fully
+than is usual the great features of his career, there is no need for our
+not saying that we wish he had in some cases dispensed with these
+arguments in excess of the conclusion. In some instances it is as wise
+after all, though not so clever, to be satisfied with urging one good
+reason, and not to confuse ordinary people by adding five or six more
+not so good, the risk being that there will be a bad one among them. But
+the fact remains that Mr. Gladstone has not busied himself in tying
+mental knots for the purpose of entanglement; he has indulged in no such
+waste of time. The mental puzzle has always referred to some practical
+doing. Owing to this, his opponents have had to admit his mental
+sincerity, while accusing him of over-subtlety. It nearly all turned, in
+fact, into the psychological question of whether Mr. Gladstone's mind
+had not at one part of its machinery a twist, and in the meantime while
+this point was being discussed he went on carrying his measures. If
+there were Liberals who did not quite follow him in his defence of the
+issue of the Royal Warrant, when he drew distinctions between
+prerogative and statutory power, they had not the least doubt that in
+abolishing purchase he had effected a capital Liberal reform, and they
+might hope that his reasoning as well as his practice was right. Is Mr.
+Gladstone to be the only one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be
+allowed? The hullabaloo which was raised when somebody could say that he
+had broken through a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though
+from this one politician perfection was expected, which was not an ill
+compliment at bottom; and any admirers who may admit that perfection was
+not always got, do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this
+world goes, and may still think him the most upright of our public men.
+His mental machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like
+it for rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it;
+his mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply
+arguments to the last shred of the material which any case in hand
+affords. But, to return to the main point,--it never leaves go of the
+real business. Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his
+voluminous writing, has, with the one exception of his classical
+studies, been no mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of
+special objects. These productions have been meant to frame public
+opinion, and to give him openings for legislation, if that became
+possible. He has used the press because it had become the hugest
+instrument of the time he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of
+multiplying books that Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to
+practically influencing men.
+
+This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends--this iron
+determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend upon his
+power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and popular
+persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as the final
+imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was always meant for a
+Liberal. A man of this kind might be born a Conservative; it might take
+him time to break fully with old ties; but for him to stay finally in
+the ranks where thought was allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were
+looked on with toleration, and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others,
+was an impossibility. Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a
+born financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for
+publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His whole
+life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has had in
+it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social condition
+of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too much upon them
+to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper circle, which so
+foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing itself the
+nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has been subjected
+to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his father was a
+baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. Nobles have
+been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as his
+official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed the whole
+of his long career without a sparkle of the glitter of adventitious
+display: that proudest title of all, which it is not in the power of the
+Crown to bestow but only to take away--"the Great Commoner"--has
+descended upon him, and is still his. Then he has fenced himself off
+with no stiffness of manner; the only dignity he has assumed has been
+the natural seriousness of ardent sincerity, warning off triflers only.
+To everybody else he has been accessible; any person could impose on him
+the trouble of a written reply. His post-cards were known to be public
+property. But putting aside that joke, which is now worn bare, scarcely
+has any one so fully and ungrudgingly accepted the responsibilities of
+his position. He has been the public's faithful, ready servant in every
+particular. Nor has it been mere complaisance, or a drudging of
+mechanical industry; he has exhibited a real faculty of interesting
+himself in all that anybody has been doing actively and well. To say
+that he is the only statesman who, while clinging to the Church of
+England, has commanded the sympathies of the Dissenters, might provoke
+an enemy, embittered by the fact, to reply that he had tactical reasons
+for trying to do that; but it could have been nothing else than real
+width of mind and a robust versatility which enabled this High Churchman
+largely to divide impartial admiration between the Evangelical party and
+the Romanists, pointing out fully and exactly what is to be praised in
+each. Any one who wishes it can find the estimates set out in detail in
+the third and seventh volumes of "The Gleanings." This wide range of
+intellectual appreciation is really as much a characteristic of Mr.
+Gladstone as has been his unyielding tenacity and doctrinal hold within
+the limits of his personal confession of belief. He, a firm acceptor of
+the tenets of sacramental efficacy, apostolical succession, and the
+authority of the Church in her own sphere, could take up the
+semi-rationalistic book "Ecce Homo," and turn it round-and-round
+admiringly as a most curious and valuable mental production. Nothing in
+which thought was really shown has escaped his notice, or failed to
+arouse his interest. He has bent his look on Secularism, as a scientific
+inquirer might scrutinize a new species, and he has stooped to quote Mr.
+Bradlaugh. In one place you will find him, very likely on the page after
+giving a passage from Isaiah or the Psalms, citing the old poet Dunbar,
+or speaking of Rowe or Swift, or alluding to Rousseau; while long before
+it became a fashion he had words of sympathizing praise for Shelley,
+selecting, of all other places, _The Quarterly Review_ to print them in.
+But, perhaps, the clearest proof of all, alike of his power to bear
+testimony in spite of personal disliking, and his standing hard and fast
+upon a principle when he has reached it, is that he, whom Macaulay
+nearly half a century ago described as "a young man of unblemished
+character," and whom his Lordship, if he were now alive, would speak of
+as "the old man with personal fame unspotted," could step aside in one
+of his articles to recognize the public debt due to Jack Wilkes as a
+helper forward of our freedom. Wherever a national service has been
+done, Mr. Gladstone's eulogy always has been ready.
+
+Down to this point we have not spared so much as a hint to his
+magnificent oratory, his unsurpassed debating skill, his not infrequent
+successes in literary style. These were not the things that anybody
+needed reminding of, and that necessity was the prescribed limit of our
+self-imposed task. Who has forgotten when the expounding of the Budget
+was the greatest intellectual treat of the Session, when sugar and
+railway duties and tea became natural themes for eloquence, and the
+unfolding of the surplus was breathlessly waited for like the
+_d�nouement_ of a novelist's plot? Those scenes are long past, it is
+true, but the echoes of them can still be heard, for each year since has
+brought a disappointing reminder to awaken them. But the matchless
+vigour and splendour of his debating fence has never slackened, never
+weakened; the only privilege of the older generation in respect of it,
+is that they can boast to have witnessed more of it, not to have seen
+better displays. As to his writings, there least of all is any reminder
+wanted, for he presents the public with an improving specimen each
+month. If any one laid themselves out to find fault with Mr. Gladstone's
+literature, the very worst thing they could discover to say of it, would
+be that it still was oratory, only written down.
+
+This is the man who, after a few weeks of leisure, reappears next month
+in Midlothian; first in the field, as if that appearance was his by
+right of custom. How well he compares with the rest of our older party
+leaders! Mr. Bright, grown a little pursy, though also stricken by
+domestic misfortune, rests rather inertly on his laurels, which
+certainly are plentiful enough to invite repose; Mr. Forster has never
+succeeded in quite finding his way out of the clauses of his own
+Education Act, where he sees himself confronted with the Church of
+England at the end of so many vistas, that he is lost in admiration of
+its architecture; Mr. Goschen, by some strange weakness (which, let us
+hope, is only temporary) has got a scare from meeting the County
+Franchise wearing Joseph Arch's coat and hat; while Mr. Lowe is riding
+hobbies, bicycle-wise, in and out before the very select constituency of
+the London University, with readers of _The Fortnightly Review_ for
+outside spectators, just by way of showing off his little feats of
+mental gymnastic. In the meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the veteran of them
+all, is putting on his harness for a fresh contest, a riper, better
+Liberal to-day than on any previous day of fight. It is for the younger
+men to rally round him.
+
+But, before taking our leave of Mr. Gladstone, we have finally to
+enlarge our view of him. Early in these remarks it seemed well to give a
+very hasty summary of his whole career; but there remains to be
+attempted an exact sketch of his actual position in respect of opinions
+and practical relations at the moment when he ceased to be Minister. Let
+us, first of all, at this moment when a Brummagem Imperialism is only
+yet half-faded, recall what was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the historic
+position and natural function of England among the nations; for it has
+been craftily made to appear that he was willing, and indeed anxious,
+for this country to efface itself. In 1870, when he was still at the
+height of power, he published in _The Edinburgh Review_ his article on
+"Germany, France, and England," and the following was the view he then
+put forward of the international obligations and duties of his country,
+in spite of the sea dividing us from other lands:--
+
+"Yet we are not isolated.... With vast multitudes of persons in each of
+the Continental countries we have constant relations, both of personal
+and commercial intercourse, which grow from year to year; and as,
+happily, we have no conflict of interests, real or supposed, nor scope
+for evil passions afforded by our peaceful rivalry, there is nothing to
+hinder the self-acting growth of concord.... So far from this implying
+either a condition or a policy of isolation, it marks out England as the
+appropriate object of the general confidence.... All that is wanted is
+that she should discharge the functions, which are likely more and more
+to accrue to her, modestly, kindly, impartially.... But in order that
+she may act fully up to a part of such high distinction, the kingdom of
+Queen Victoria must be in all things worthy of it. The world-wide cares
+and responsibilities with which the British people have charged
+themselves are really beyond the ordinary measure of human strength; and
+until a recent period it seemed the opinion of our rulers that we could
+not do better than extend them yet further, wherever an opening could
+easily, or even decently, be found. With this avidity for material
+extension was joined a preternatural and morbid sensibility. Russia at
+the Amoor, America at the Fee-jee or the Sandwich Islands, France in New
+Caledonia or Cochin China--all these, and the like, were held to be good
+reasons for a feverish excitement lest other nations should do for
+themselves but the fiftieth part of what we have done for ourselves....
+The secret of strength lies in keeping some proportion between the
+burden and the back."
+
+Is it necessary to ask whether this is a policy combining dignified
+patriotism and prudently-restrained common sense? Compare it for a
+moment with the gewgaw skimble-skamble diplomatic sensationalism with
+which we have been presented since. But let us go a little more into
+detail as to Mr. Gladstone's standing with reference to international
+relations. This present Government has perhaps forgotten that there is
+such a nation in the world as the United States of America; but Mr.
+Gladstone kept it well in mind, and we suppose every one will admit that
+he, of all statesmen, stands well with that people of our own blood, who
+very shortly will be the most powerful community upon the earth, and the
+one with whom we shall, for all time, have most to do. However, we will
+keep within the bounds of Europe. It is the fashion now to give
+precedence to Germany. Well, Mr. Gladstone was among the first to
+predict the success of Prussia, and she is not likely to forget who it
+was who preserved neutrality at a moment most critical to her. Is it
+France that he is not on good relations with? Why this Minister, who
+invited her wine trade, and strove unceasingly to increase commerce to
+and fro across the Channel, and who is for giving further and further
+political rights to his countrymen, is the only English statesman whom
+the bulk of Frenchmen can understand. To them our Tories must be as
+antiquated as their own Royalists. Italy is a growing Power in the
+European comity, and who is there among our statesmen who can in her
+fair cities arouse half the enthusiasm he can? He is, literally, the
+only English politician they familiarly know. With Austria, it is true,
+he during the recent war lost patience for a moment, but her conduct
+since has told that her rulers must at the time have known that he had
+good reasons for it; and no one has more fully appreciated the
+difficulties of Austria's position than he has done, or was more early
+in giving her, years ago, the very counsel which she has since proved
+was the wisest for her. There remains one other great Power to be
+named--Russia; the State with whom we shall have directly of necessity
+to stand face to face in the far East, and with whom terms will in the
+end have somehow to be made. It is urged against Mr. Gladstone that he
+has not rendered himself obnoxious enough to this remaining Power--that
+is, that he did not incapacitate himself for negotiating with her, and,
+having postponed defiance of her, might make some peaceful arrangement.
+Can any friend of peace think this a very grievous accusation? Mr.
+Gladstone has gained this position of goodwill all round at what
+cost?--that of having fallen into disfavour with the Turks. That is his
+one terrible disqualification for affairs; or, if you wish to be
+precisely exhaustive, and at the same time to elicit the absurdity
+fully, you may add to it that he has irritated the Bourbons. It is quite
+true, and we, indeed, wish to put it clearly forward, that he was for
+abating a little of our national swagger, and was prepared to see, and
+to welcome, advancement in other nations. But every well-grounded
+Liberal knows that it is only on those two conditions that England can
+permanently pursue her own paths of industrial development, and the
+world make progress. Mr. Gladstone's single sin in reference to our
+external relations was his readiness to favour those two results.
+
+But how does he show when a last view is taken of him from within our
+politics? Here, again, first look to the circumference. In dealing with
+the colonies, he was for all being put in possession of a free autonomy,
+and then urging them to self-reliance--in those ways welding them into
+the integrity of the empire; and as to India, he insisted that we should
+strive more and more to realize what he termed the generous conception
+of a moral trusteeship, to be administered for the benefit of those over
+whom we rule. Here, once more, we get the true ring of a sound
+Liberalism, for those are the only principles, we venture to affirm, on
+which such an empire as this of ours can ever be made permanent.
+Treating the colonies as babies and biting the thumb at Russia, even
+from the most scientific frontier India can furnish, though you shout
+"Empress" from it as loudly as you will, has nothing truly English about
+it. Empire is not kept in such a mawkish, artificial manner.
+
+But now narrow the gaze within our own home limits. The chief domestic
+questions for the British public are these,--extension of the County
+Franchise, the Redistribution of Seats, the Disestablishment of the
+Church, and Retrenchment of Expenditure. The Land Question will yet have
+to grow, and may not ripen in his time. But on three of the above
+pending matters Mr. Gladstone stands at the very front. He is for making
+our field cultivators citizens no less than our artizans; he is for
+re-allotting members in a manner which will give us a Parliament truly
+representative; and it is hardly necessary to speak of economical
+benefits in connection with the Minister who used the nation to
+reduction of taxation and surpluses arriving together, and whose last
+promise under that head was the total abolition of the Income Tax. On
+the other of these great domestic matters, that which stands third in
+the above list, the Disestablishment of the Church, it has seemed to
+advanced Liberals that Mr. Gladstone has lagged. But the lively fear of
+his opponents on this very matter is full of hope. Since he last
+dissented from Mr. Miall's motion, he has written a very significant
+phrase in an article in this Review. In treating of "The Courses of
+Religious Thought," when reviewing the churches of the United States and
+of the British Colonies he spoke of their vigorous growth, "far from the
+possibly chilling shadow of National Establishments of Religion." In
+that phrase, for a man so practical as is Mr. Gladstone,
+Disestablishment seems to cast its shadow before, and not a few persons
+on the other side of the question shivered from the chilliness it made.
+But these topics of the first class do not depend upon any one
+statesman; the biggest of men have these capital problems thrust upon
+them; all that you can do is to take note how a leader stands in
+reference to them. And the above is Mr. Gladstone's standing. But there
+was another class of legislative reforms which he was the man to have
+gone in search of. In one of his most recent articles he has given us a
+hint of a dream of this kind which was in his mind. He stated it
+thus:--"Our currency, our local government, our liquor laws, portions
+even of our taxation, remain in a state either positively disgraceful,
+or at the least inviting and demanding improvement." That programme of
+the further benefits which we should have owed to Mr. Gladstone was put
+aside by the giddiness of twenty-five or thirty constituencies at the
+last elections, but it will fittingly serve to give the finishing touch
+to our presentation of him in this paper. Liberals have, in fact, to
+thank him for offering more of reform and of benefit than the country
+would let him give it. Splendid as his achievements have been, he really
+had others in reserve.
+
+Is it too late? is the question that naturally arises. Certainly there
+is no hope of having the five years of administration by him which we
+have lost since 1874. That is irretrievable; and if Mr. Gladstone felt
+then his growing years, and had a wish to finish other tasks apart from
+politics, he is no younger now; while the aims of his purposed leisure
+must have been greatly interfered with by his partial recall to affairs
+owing to the dangers to which freedom in Bulgaria and our own national
+credit were exposed. It is wholly a matter for Mr. Gladstone to decide.
+If the next elections go in favour of the Liberals, all the world knows
+that office is there for him to take or to leave. Earl Granville, the
+Duke of Argyll, Lord Hartington would, we need not say, be among the
+first even to urge it as far as it was right to do so, and the whole
+party would welcome him back to power with a shout of joy. Who knows?
+Mr. Gladstone's patriotism is great, and our financial muddle will,
+also, be very great about that time. Between the two he might be
+tempted; he may yet do us the final service of putting the national
+finances right again. It is, we repeat, wholly for him to say. Earlier
+in this paper a further word was promised on the subject of his
+retirement; but, upon second thoughts, it scarcely seems necessary. Mr.
+Gladstone was too experienced in Parliamentary doings not to know that
+the Conservatives would take care to keep enough of their majority until
+time itself forced them back to the unwished-for hustings. He did his
+party not an atom of practical injury by retiring; rather, it was a good
+opportunity for giving a younger leader practice. It would be quite
+idle, on the other hand, to argue with his opponents for complaining
+that he did not retire enough. He has made speeches, they say; he has
+written articles in every organ there is; he has even republished
+previous writings. As we before said, they have themselves to blame for
+it in great measure: if they wanted Mr. Gladstone to stay in retirement,
+they should have carefully kept quiet. Instead of that they made a noise
+before his door, disturbing him in his studies. What more natural than
+that he should come out? He did so, and found that, disguised like
+harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which they call Imperialism, they
+were playing high jinks with Britain's reputation and the chances of
+freedom for the oppressed in the East. It was too much for him; but if
+they complain of the number of the weapons he attacked them with, we
+know that it would have been impossible for him to please them there.
+They never have been satisfied on that score. What they really find
+fault with are the blows they got.
+
+And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining that
+he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland; the real fact
+being that they wish he had gone much farther still. They never are
+sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them. We leave them
+anxiously listening for his approach again unto these shores, knowing
+very well that to their thinking they will hear his voice all too soon.
+
+    A LIBERAL.
+
+
+II.
+
+Description is said to be only possible by comparing, and when one is
+asked to sketch Mr. Gladstone, how is it to be set about? His admirers
+will have it that he has been a very great Minister, so that if we adopt
+the comparative method, we ought to look high for standards. Shall we
+match him alongside Bismarck or Cavour? The latter, to give him
+precedence, stands renowned for building up his country in evil days,
+when every omen was against her. But Mr. Gladstone, succeeding to power
+when England was in the full tide of prosperity and at the height of
+fame, gave up her prospects, and would have acquiesced in her decadence.
+There is no likeness whatever between him and Cavour. Then take
+Bismarck. The great German Chancellor shares with the Italian Minister
+the glory of having widened the bounds and raised the position of his
+land, and he stands now head and shoulders above all in the midst of the
+diplomatic world a very Colossus. But Mr. Gladstone is and has always
+been outside that world altogether. Prince Bismarck has his hand on all
+the springs of action, and will let pass no chance of exalting his
+country. Mr. Gladstone, we repeat, never made the slightest impression
+in the regions of diplomacy; Courts did not know him, foreign statesmen
+left him out of their reckoning of the men that had to be dealt with.
+The great international achievements for which he has alone been talked
+of have been the surrender of British territory and the paying down of
+English money lavishly to another State for preposterous claims. But it
+will be said that it is not fair to Mr. Gladstone to compare him to
+Prince Bismarck and Count Cavour, for they were men who found their
+country in unusual circumstances. Look, then, to names in our own
+history. Pitt must not be spoken of for the reasons just allowed in the
+other cases; but there are Canning and Palmerston. How does Mr.
+Gladstone look alongside them? He has himself more than once alluded to
+Canning, as if not unwilling to be thought to have received his mantle.
+It was, however, always only in connection with Greece that he spoke of
+Canning; but that Minister looked much farther than the Mediterranean.
+One would have thought that so fine a rhetorician as Mr. Gladstone would
+not have forgotten the famous phrase in which Canning claimed to have
+called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
+Lord Palmerston was without any such fine phrases, but in foreign
+affairs he acted boldly, though he had to fall back on a musty Latin
+quotation to describe it. Every Englishman, however, understood Latin
+when their Minister said, _Civis Romanus sum_. Yet neither of these
+Ministers at any part of their career lived in times more stirring than
+Mr. Gladstone has done, nor when the interests of England were more
+endangered. He has still later had magnificent opportunities, but he did
+worse than lose them.
+
+From all this, it would seem that, whether we look abroad or at home,
+there is no possibility of describing Mr. Gladstone by hints of
+comparison with these historical personages. What is said in that way
+appears, in fact, to turn into contrast; which is, also, itself a mode
+of delineation, though not usually of the kind the chief object of it
+wishes. We can find no Minister to couple along with him as having
+deliberately despaired of his country. However, Mr. Gladstone is
+certainly great in some way, for although other nations while we were
+under his sway were gradually losing sight of England herself as well as
+of him, he was making plenty of noise all the time at home. If it should
+turn out, as we go on, that he was not a great Minister but a great
+orator, that would seem to account for both the things. If Bismarck and
+Cavour have made affairs, Mr. Gladstone has made speeches, beating them
+as much in that as they did him in the other respect. But it is not
+exactly the same thing to the countries the men represent.
+
+It is, therefore, under a humbler, more domestic aspect than that of
+this high supreme style of Minister which we have first tried that we
+must begin Mr. Gladstone's portraiture. The task may be divided into two
+portions. There is the opinion which we Conservatives hold of the
+general influence and effect he has had upon our national interests, in
+which we may be credited with at least trying to estimate his acts and
+measures on their merits; and, besides that, there is a judgment of him
+from a narrower party view, arising out of his historic relation to
+ourselves. We will take the latter first.
+
+To hear Liberals talk, one might suppose that Conservatives had always
+cherished a special hatred against Mr. Gladstone simply for ceasing to
+be a Tory and becoming a Radical. That the Conservatives rather late in
+his career came to show much irritation against Mr. Gladstone is
+perfectly correct; but it was, as I hope to show as I go on, for very
+different reasons than simply because he had made one Conservative less
+and one Liberal more. A great political party has no such immortal
+animosities as that supposes: party feeling is not based on merely
+sentimental grounds. Both sides are used to losing men. It is the common
+fate of Parliamentary warfare. Now and then, some rather idle person who
+has time to waste in going back a long way in his recollections bethinks
+himself that Lord Beaconsfield was not always a Conservative; but we
+never yet heard of any one among the party challenging sympathy for him
+on the score that he had been hunted by the Liberals through half a
+century or so for having deserted them. Yet it will be admitted that
+Lord Beaconsfield has injured the Liberals more than ever Mr. Gladstone
+has done the Conservatives. What is the reason, then, of this difference
+of alleged treatment in the two cases? The answer may be given in half a
+sentence,--Lord Beaconsfield, alike when he was Mr. Disraeli and since,
+has always fought fair. That is enough in politics to make your
+opponents acquiesce in your being such; but Mr. Gladstone as his career
+developed surprised and puzzled everybody, his own friends included; and
+those who blame the Conservatives for, in the end, losing temper and
+showing exasperation, should bear in mind that he finally produced the
+very same effect upon the country at large.
+
+It is worth while following this point a little further, for it would
+not be of much use attempting to sketch Mr. Gladstone if we are supposed
+to dislike him from some mere party instinct. Will anybody be good
+enough to tell us when this inscrutable emotion of hatred of Mr.
+Gladstone arose? Liberals are not supposed to be strong in history, but
+they have very short memories indeed if they have forgotten both their
+own career and his. Why, in 1852--that is, in the twentieth year of Mr.
+Gladstone's Parliamentary life--the Conservatives were offering him
+office, which was not refused by him with over-much promptness. For
+nearly fourteen years after that he was retained as the representative
+of the University of Oxford. It is, in fact, not yet very much more
+than a dozen years since this victim of political persecution, and
+present champion of the Radicals, was quietly ensconced in a seat for
+what is sometimes spoken of as the head-quarters of Toryism. He has
+roved a good deal among the constituencies since, but he was then
+willing to have gone on remaining at Oxford, if his constituents had
+also been willing to have been made laughing-stocks by letting him
+remain. Surely a man who represented Tory electors until he was getting
+fast on for sixty could scarcely up to that point have been much hunted
+and worried for Liberal principles. To speak plainly, there never was so
+late a conversion made of so much histrionic use as this of Mr.
+Gladstone's. But though it has suited both his and his present party's
+ends, it rather puzzles plain people who have kept their recollections a
+little trim to think that if he lives on into senatorial decrepitude, he
+will never have sat for Radical constituencies anything like so long a
+time as he did for Conservative ones. For between thirty and forty years
+this Liberal ex-Premier was a Tory member.
+
+In fact, a glance at the right honourable gentleman's wonderfully
+prosperous career will show that in the list of our public men he has of
+all others made the fewest, the briefest, the least sacrifices either
+for principle or party. There are very simple ways of testing it; Mr.
+Gladstone has not been out of office long enough for a man who was
+innocent of business prudence in his career. He has, in fact, reaped the
+official spoils of two parties, if not of three. The dates and
+appointments are on record for anybody to trace out. On the very face of
+it, a man who has served under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Russell,
+and then come out as a full-blown Liberal Prime Minister himself, must
+of necessity be said to offer rather a miscellaneous career. His warmest
+admirer must admit that he has been either the most fortunate or else
+the most prudent of men; and, as we do not wish to be stingy in our
+recognition of his skill, we prefer to compliment him by attributing his
+great prosperity throughout so many years and under so many different
+chiefs to his prudence.
+
+If this very hasty review of Mr. Gladstone's chronicle does not agree
+with the impression of him which is the prevailing one on the Liberal
+side, it is the one which the bare facts of his career would produce on
+every side if they could be seen without the misleading effect of his
+very fine words and exceedingly solemn attitudes. Very fortunately for
+him it is only the Conservatives who have a full and accurate
+recollection of Mr. Gladstone. They have necessarily observed him
+continuously from their own unshifting party position, and so have been
+able to perceive in a way that hardly was practicable to the Liberals,
+who were always shifting and struggling among themselves, how invariably
+and consistently his announcements of change of view have hit with the
+opportunities for improvement of his Parliamentary position. On every
+occasion, to the very moment, so soon as a Liberal question had fully
+ripened, Mr. Gladstone presented himself to pluck it. It was so with
+Reform, it was so with Church Rates, it was so with University Reform,
+it was so with the Ballot, it was so with the spoliation of the Irish
+Church and the unsettling of the Irish landowners, and it is so with the
+County Franchise, and it will be so once more, if the Liberals ever get
+into power again, with the English Church and the English Land Laws. Mr.
+Bright, Mr. Miall, and all the Radicals have drudged for many a year for
+Mr. Gladstone, who, when all the outdoor work has been done, has always
+allowed himself to be persuaded to bring in the Measure just in the nick
+of time, and, by expounding it in a very fine speech, has robbed its
+actual originators of two-thirds of the credit of making it possible.
+
+Luckily for the Conservatives, though he never had the courage to attack
+a question of the very first class himself in the way of initiative, he
+had an insatiable ambition for meddling with smaller ones, and by making
+vents in these ways for his restlessness and his ambition, he finally
+ruined all that his skilful prudence in the larger affairs had gained
+him, disgusting the country till it determined to get him off its hands
+at any price. Still, that is not just now the point in question.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's so slowly passing through all the stages from
+Conservatism to Radicalism has had this effect,--that while all other
+public men of his standing have grown more or less antiquated in steady
+loyal service to their party, and by presenting a fixed if monotonous
+aspect to the public, this one Parliamentary personage kept a perennial
+freshness, simply by skilfully dividing his prolonged career into
+distinct periods and going on changing. Some political section has been
+always welcoming Mr. Gladstone newly into its ranks and to its spoils,
+for, as we have said, the two things unfailingly went together; and the
+shouts with which he was received were always strengthened by fainter
+murmurs of applause from other sections more advanced along the line,
+who hoped to receive him themselves later on. They did so. Really to
+each one of them he was a recruit from the last party. To the
+Palmerstonians he ought at the most to have been only a Peelite; to the
+Liberals at worst only a Palmerstonian. But by a surprising adroitness,
+it was always made to appear that in all his migrations from party to
+party, he joined each successive group as a new retreater from the
+Tories. It certainly was true in one sense; he was always going further
+away from them. But for all party purposes and reckoning, he had as much
+left them when he joined Palmerston as when he shook hands with Mr.
+Bright and took his place in front of the Radicals.
+
+These are only a first handful of specimens of a certain unfairness in
+Mr. Gladstone's position and career from first to last, from which he
+has largely profited, and which very naturally irked his opponents, who
+have had to suffer its inconveniences. He has posed as a sort of
+political orphan left lonely in the Parliamentary world at the death of
+Peel, who has been persecuted by wicked Tories from one Chancellorship
+of the Exchequer to another, until they finally drove him into the
+Premiership, but all this time he was successfully seceding from them,
+though they continued in pursuit. It must have been Mr. Gladstone's
+portentous earnestness of demeanour which has covered up from the
+general public a joke so huge and prolonged as this, preventing
+everybody from seeing that such a tale did not agree with his
+unprecedented prosperity. But if in these ways he has kept himself
+interesting to the country, and fresh and surprising for every group he
+has in rotation joined, both he and his changes have long been stale to
+the Conservatives. They are able to look along his whole track, and
+seeing him from behind, know him as a Peelite, a follower of Aberdeen, a
+Palmerstonian, a Russellite, and a Radical. They are debarred from
+applying his own name to the last stage, and calling him a Gladstonian.
+Strangely enough, and indeed very significantly, that term has never
+taken root in our politics. There really have never been any
+Gladstonians: no one ever was or ever will be called by that title. Mr.
+Gladstone will end his days and depart without founding any school; he
+will stand recorded only as the acceptor of office from those who did
+so, and the passer of other people's measures. But in political life a
+man who attains the first rank of conspicuousness without founding a
+line may fairly be suspected. It will be found that he has been too busy
+in a narrower way,--looking after not questions but himself. To that
+very small party, numerically reckoned, consisting of only one member,
+Mr. Gladstone has been consistently and untiringly faithful. He has
+challenged for it sympathy in all the ways to which his very fine
+oratory has lent itself, and he has not neglected the humbler art of
+perpetual advertisement, keeping it by means of the press and the
+platform ever before the public eye. But when he finally leaves us it is
+certain to vanish entirely.
+
+Very likely some ardent Radical, whose mind is so full of having got Mr.
+Gladstone at last that he forgets, or perhaps never knew, how many
+grades and shades of politicians have in succession enjoyed him before,
+will say that in all this we are only railing at Mr. Gladstone's
+success. His success! In order to describe Mr. Gladstone, we had first
+to write retrospectively, take in his earlier phases, and to look
+generally at his whole history. In that retrospect, down to a late point
+in it, he was exceedingly prosperous; but we never meant to say that he
+had been very successful since the beginning of 1874. There is not the
+slightest need for any Conservative to feel bitter against Mr. Gladstone
+now on any grounds of personal envy. He has done them the greatest
+service of any public man for three generations; and at any time he
+might have individually prospered as much as he liked for them, if it
+had been possible for him to do it without injuring his country. It is
+to this more serious examination of his career that we now go.
+
+Not that we propose to entangle ourselves in the minute details of it,
+for that is in no way necessary. We have already in part explained why
+we may, in such a sketch as this, drop out many years of his political
+life. For a great length of time Mr. Gladstone was only a Budget-maker.
+It is true he made them for Governments that were not Conservative, but
+he still was considered nearly a Conservative outside his financial
+handicraft. And here, again, part of the explanation we earlier gave
+applies. There is not the slightest reason why any Conservative should
+pause long to consider Mr. Gladstone as the passer of the Ballot, or
+even as the disestablisher of the Irish Church and the interferer with
+the rights of landed property in Ireland. The only thing special to be
+said about him in connection with these things as distinguishing him
+from the ruck of Liberals would be, that he was a very late ex-Tory, and
+at the time a professed High Churchman. He somehow got the Liberals to
+let him write his name across every one of those measures so soon as it
+was seen that they would pass, and he has made the legislation in that
+way seem to be his; but the Conservatives know with whom they had really
+to deal in the inception and the pushing forward of those movements, and
+it was not Mr. Gladstone. The real men were Mr. Bright, Mr. Dillwyn, Mr.
+Miall, and those who for many a year worked with them while Mr.
+Gladstone was never heard of, never thought of, in connection with the
+matters they had always matured before he had anything to do with them.
+
+Nor was it on account of these affairs that Mr. Gladstone's fall
+occurred when it came, which is another reason why it would be waste of
+time to discuss them in connection with him. Who is proposing to alter
+these things now that they have been fought out between the great
+parties of the State and decided? As a supplement to his Irish Land
+Bill, we now have the Irish peasants refusing to pay any rent at all:
+but in these days when a thing is done in our Parliament it is done. The
+Conservatives, in spite of the majority at their back, have never put
+forward a finger to touch those settlements, nor do they mean to do so;
+and yet not only our own country, but all Europe, and indeed realms
+farther away still, have been keenly aware that the Beaconsfield
+Ministry has been very busy for years undoing something that Mr.
+Gladstone had done.
+
+What was this gigantic task, which was not the repealing of legislation,
+or the passing of statutes of any kind, but which required courage and
+effort more arduous than those things? There must have been some cause
+for the bursts of applause which have again and again echoed on our
+shores from all parts of the civilized globe at something that was going
+on. It was, we hasten to answer, the rehabilitation of England in the
+eyes of the world,--the restoration of her ancient power as a factor in
+the enforcement and administration of public right among the nations.
+Somehow, coincidently with Mr. Gladstone's prosperity as a Minister,
+England, his country, had sunk, and in exactly answering ratio, and was
+sinking lower and lower still daily. He was very famous, or at least
+very notorious, at home, but the renown of Britain abroad was clouding;
+and our people never will bear that, as history had shown before. This
+man, who at heart was but a financier, and who ought in the fitness of
+things never to have risen higher in office than a Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, whose function it should have been to find funds for some one
+else as a Prime Minister capable of a policy in the higher international
+politics befitting an Empire, was conducting our foreign affairs in the
+spirit of a commercial traveller; willing to effect a little saving by
+giving up a group of islands in one part or a bit of territory in
+another, and to effect an economy at another time by backing out of a
+treaty. Though, at the same time, if anybody insisted, and there loomed,
+however distantly, a possibility of war, he would pay the money down in
+a hurry by millions, as he did in the Alabama case. We should have had
+all the world insisting very soon, making peace more costly than war
+itself, besides the shame of unjustifiable surrender.
+
+But we were spared all this; though the undoing of the humiliation, as
+far as it had gone, has fully occupied Mr. Gladstone's successors ever
+since.
+
+This is the great accusation which the Conservatives have to bring
+against Mr. Gladstone--that of having degraded the position of his
+country; and an arraignment more fatal than this cannot be made in the
+case of a chief Minister. It is not alone the Conservatives who make it.
+Did not Earl Russell, Liberal though he was, find enough English blood
+in his aged veins when writing his last book, to say that Mr. Gladstone
+had dragged the name of England through the mire? But it would not be
+quite accurate to put this forward as the full explanation of Mr.
+Gladstone's sudden tumble from office; for it was not until after that
+occurred that the bulk of people quite knew the whole extent of the
+injury he had worked in this respect. The Conservative leaders guessed
+it, but they knew more about foreign affairs than the rank and file of
+the nation. Everybody, of course, high and low, was aware that he had
+unasked given up the Ionian Islands because of some literary reasons
+which he had come upon in writing books about Homer, that he had
+surrendered territory in the San Juan Boundary Question, and that he had
+quietly gone to Geneva and paid America, not indeed all she asked,--for
+even with Britain's wealth the whole of the first modest request would
+only have been found with difficulty,--but he had counted down a sum
+that made Brother Jonathan's shrewd eyes twinkle with joy. The country,
+from these events following one another, had come to have a very uneasy
+feeling that somehow under his auspices everything was going against us
+abroad. Still it was only later that it was made fully apparent how
+completely England was effaced; not until the three Emperors had begun
+to settle the rearrangement of Eastern Europe, without so much as saying
+to Great Britain, "By your leave." There is difficulty when looking back
+now to prevent oneself from suffering some illusion in this respect; but
+it is a fact, and we may be glad of it, that Englishmen did not until it
+was roughly forced upon them suppose beforehand that their position had
+dwindled to quite so low an ebb.
+
+At the elections of 1874, there was no distinct foreign policy before
+the public, for though there were many on the Conservative side who
+sympathized with France in her adversity, and saw clearly that Germany's
+mutilation of her territory meant trouble in time to come, not a voice
+was raised in deprecation of our neutrality. But, for the matter of
+that, it may be just as correctly said that there was no matured
+domestic question before the country, for it will not be supposed that
+there was a single Tory any more than a Liberal who wished the Income
+Tax to be retained on his shoulders. It was hardly for proposing to do
+away with that impost that everybody voted so unanimously against Mr.
+Gladstone; they only did so at the polling-booths in spite of his
+proposing it, which somehow seems rather mysterious. If his opponents
+were not proposing to recall any of the recent legislation, and if there
+was no special question of foreign affairs pending, and if nobody had
+any desire not to be lightened of taxation, how was it, pray, that Mr.
+Gladstone was so ignominiously hurled from power? In reality, there is
+not the slightest difficulty about it--Mr. Gladstone was decisively
+rejected by his countrymen, not on any question of policy, either home
+or foreign, but because of the _personal impression_ he had slowly but
+surely imprinted on their minds. The real issue before the country was
+whether it would have any more of Mr. Gladstone, and it said No.
+
+It is a common artifice on the part of his apologisers to insinuate that
+he had wearied the nation by offering it too many things for its good.
+But neither individuals nor communities are much in the habit of
+refusing gifts; it is the one thing, and nearly the only thing, in this
+world for which there is an excellent reason whenever so strange a
+proceeding happens. There is another way of representing the matter, one
+much less complimentary but far more true--the country was sick of Mr.
+Gladstone. Even the sight of Mr. Lowe standing at his side with four
+millions of surplus in his hands was not enough to tempt them. The
+promise to abolish the Income Tax was the most tremendous bribe ever
+offered to the constituencies, but, to their credit, it did not corrupt
+them. They would not accept Mr. Gladstone any longer at any price
+whatever. The believers in democracy, and Mr. Gladstone in particular,
+according to some of his very latest reasonings, ought to have accepted
+this universal disgust as being a popular inspiration. However, they
+have done nothing of the kind, but avow that it was a public delusion,
+which they at first hinted would be temporary; but if the public is
+liable to delusions, and to fits of them which continue for seven or
+eight years at a stretch, for that is now the duration of this one, what
+becomes of these very radical gentlemen's democracy? For it is not
+really open to them to plead, though they will go on doing it, that the
+people's eyes were dazzled by a glitter of diplomatic success, and their
+blood infuriated by a skilfully aroused anti-Russian feeling. It is not
+open to them for a simple reason, but a very conclusive one: the
+elections came before anything of this could have happened; and the
+elections themselves arrived with the suddenness they did owing to
+something which had preceded them--namely, a steady run of Ministerial
+defeats in the by-contests, wherever a vacancy occurred in a
+constituency. Mr. Gladstone avowed all this in the address with which he
+startled the Greenwich electors and the whole country, though he and his
+friends have never mentioned the fact since. It was for the purpose of
+putting all things right that the elections which put them all more
+wrong still were so unexpectedly ordered. It was not because of being
+intoxicated by the diplomatic triumph of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
+Salisbury at Berlin--which did not occur till years after--that the
+constituencies rejected Mr. Gladstone. We have no wish to be
+unnecessarily impolite, but the true reason for it was that which we
+have named already--they had come not to like Mr. Gladstone. If we trace
+that fact backwards in a natural way, we shall find that one cause of it
+was that they felt the honour and the interest of England were not safe
+in his hands; but this was only one among other causes. It swelled
+afterwards into the biggest reason of all, and now practically includes
+all the others; but, at the moment, it was not actually known that the
+safety of England was about to be imperilled.
+
+The voters were affected by other reasons. What were those other
+reasons? The public must have known them pretty clearly at the time,
+since it acted so promptly and decidedly upon them, and it, therefore,
+ought not to need very much recalling of them now, for the time, after
+all, is not so very long ago. But it may be as well to go into them a
+little, since it was through the incidents furnishing them that the
+general public was led to form the very same estimate of Mr. Gladstone
+which the Conservatives had held for about a score of years before. At
+last the popular judgment coincided with that of his Parliamentary
+opponents, and he fell from power. But any one who will give a moment's
+consideration to the cases of the Collier appointment, the Ewelme
+Rectory affair, and the issue of the Royal Warrant on purchase in the
+army, will see that we are right in affirming that Mr. Gladstone's
+ignominious expulsion from office was owing to moral rather than
+political causes. It stands recorded that this Minister, who had put
+religious professions in the front of his politics in a way novel to
+public life, had to defend his conduct over and over again in the House
+of Commons by quoting the mere letter of the law. Parliament became not
+unlike the Old Bailey when a legal wrangle is going on over the
+technicalities of an indictment; and the unwonted spectacle of Lord
+Chief Justices accusing a theological Premier of having somehow evaded a
+statute was not made any less unedifying by Mr. Gladstone showing great
+skill in being his own attorney. Everybody must admit that he certainly
+did that.
+
+It is possible to recall each of the cases in very few words. An Act of
+Parliament had been passed with a view to strengthening the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, as this Court was one of Appeal, it
+stood to reason that those appointed to it to revise other Judges'
+decisions should have had judicial experience themselves. It was
+expressly provided in the Act that those to be raised to this Court
+should be already Judges. To the surprise of the whole country, Sir
+Robert Collier, well known as Mr. Gladstone's Attorney-General, and,
+therefore, conspicuously only a waiter for a judgeship, not a judge
+already, was announced as the filler of one of these vacancies, before
+half the readers of the newspapers knew that he had ceased to be
+Attorney-General. It turned out, however, that he was in reality a judge
+at the moment, and that he had been one for some few moments previously,
+having, in fact, sat on the bench of the Common Pleas for just two days.
+There is not space to follow Mr. Gladstone's wonderful reasoning, but it
+chiefly turned on a point so fine as this, that what the Act meant to
+stipulate was not experience, but _status_. In other words, that a man
+should be made a judge of one kind for five minutes, in order to be
+turned into one of another kind, just for the say of the thing. Amazed
+members of the Legislature which had passed the enactment protested that
+they were not so foolishly subtle as this, and that they had never,
+before Mr. Gladstone mentioned it, thought of any such distinction as
+that between _status_ and experience.
+
+But this was not the only instance in which he has told people what they
+had intended better than they knew, and all differently. In the Ewelme
+Rectory business he would have it that when a statute said Oxford it
+meant Cambridge, or at least that its specifying Oxford did not signify,
+or that it included Cambridge, or, in fact, might be construed to
+prescribe anything else which it did not say and which was contrary to
+what everybody had thought of it before. However, here, again, as the
+lawyers would otherwise have been troublesome, the technicality was
+found to have been formally complied with. The words of the enactment
+did really require that the man who was to be made rector of Ewelme
+parish should be a member of Oxford Convocation, and Mr. Harvey, Mr.
+Gladstone's friend, who had been educated at Cambridge, and who, until
+that living became vacant, had never dreamed of connection with Oxford,
+was made a member of the Convocation, in order to receive the living. Of
+course, Mr. Gladstone argued that Mr. Harvey's being a Master of Arts
+was enough, though the statute said nothing of that, and everybody else
+had thought it expressly stated a certain University where the Master of
+Arts was to come from.
+
+But let us go on to the third case, that of the issue of the Royal
+Warrant abolishing purchase. Not a few of the Liberals who exulted at
+the success of the party measure had a misgiving at the way in which it
+was secured. It was felt to be a victory which could not be repeated,
+and one of a style which, if they who snatched it had been
+Conservatives, would have thrown the country into a convulsion. The most
+violent act in the name of the Crown which the oldest man living in
+England has witnessed, was counselled by Mr. Gladstone. Because the
+Lords, in the exercise of the power which the Constitution gives them,
+were not willing instantly to pass his Bill for giving an entirely new
+social aspect to the army, he caused the Queen to do nothing short of
+superseding them entirely, and practically reduced the Constitution at a
+stroke to the Commons and the Crown. It is just now part of the tactics
+of the Liberals to protest against some imagined wish to bring in
+"personal rule." If any such preposterous design existed, it would be
+Mr. Gladstone's own act which would be fallen back upon for the
+precedent. The feeling which has best enabled the most thoughtful among
+Englishmen to understand the kind of shock which foreigners experience
+on the occurrence of one of the political earthquakes which they call on
+the Continent by the name _coup d'�tat_, was that which ran through the
+country when Mr. Gladstone announced that there was nothing for the
+Lords to discuss, that he had advised the Queen to issue a Royal
+Warrant. We had lost all recollection of the particular sensation, but
+he brought back just a twinge of it. Mr. Gladstone, however, can do
+Radical acts and then explain them historically. Once more we found
+ourselves all inextricably entangled in his casuistry. He now argued
+that the Royal Warrant had not been issued by exercise of prerogative,
+but in strict pursuance of statutory power, there being some Act of the
+Georges to that effect, which ordinary people had forgotten. It is not
+necessary to follow the thing further. In the end, Mr. Gladstone became
+too clever for the country. Even the dullest began to perceive that Mr.
+Gladstone could conscientiously do whatever he liked. The more subtly he
+argued, the more plain John Bull got puzzled.
+
+It may, at first sight, seem tasking the public memory too much to ask
+people if they remember the tension there was in the political
+atmosphere towards the end of Mr. Gladstone's career. But a very great
+many will not have forgotten it. The political weather is so far like
+the other sort that it is only borne in mind for its badness; that,
+however, was a terrible season. At the last, Mr. Gladstone seemed to
+have got into the air, and he did not improve the climate. He may urge,
+certainly, that Mr. Lowe had made himself very obnoxious, that Mr.
+Ayrton had been found to be intolerable, and that the great trade of the
+publicans, with all its supporters, was in arms against Mr. Bruce. That
+is all true; the country disliked each one of these his chief
+colleagues. But neither Mr. Lowe's hard cynicism, nor Mr. Ayrton's
+dogmatic in�stheticism, nor Mr. Bruce's stolid mechanical interference,
+stirred the large keen dissatisfaction which Mr. Gladstone's own
+incomprehensibility in the end did. He gave men's consciences a shock,
+and none of the others affected to feel so deeply as that: it was only
+he who had stood forward as a political moralist, and then set everybody
+by the ears discussing his conduct. It was the same outside Parliament
+and within it. Everybody was arguing Mr. Gladstone; nobody could make
+him out, nobody felt safe, or could imagine what was coming next. If the
+atmosphere had but been charged a little more with him, England would
+not have been worth living in. Luckily the elections came, and the air
+was cleared.
+
+But if in the more exaggerated instances we have above spoken of, the
+general public became aware of a certain obliquity, an unreliability, a
+dissatisfied restlessness, an imperiousness in Mr. Gladstone, the
+Conservatives had been more or less continuously aware of those
+qualities for many years. They, as we said earlier, have had to observe
+the right hon. gentleman closer, more continuously, and it would be easy
+for any one of them who is of middle age to give from his own memory a
+string of instances, just the same in kind as those above, though not so
+broadly striking, beginning much earlier in his career, and coming down
+much later. Very recently, Lord Salisbury at Manchester recalled Mr.
+Gladstone's dealings with his Oxford constituents in reference to the
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. But his lordship courteously
+spared his opponent the details. Has the world forgotten the famous
+letter to Dr. Hannah, bearing the date of June, 1865, written, as Mr.
+Gladstone himself with unlooked-for _na�vet�_ admits in his "Chapter of
+Autobiography," for the appeasing of doubts? He in it asserted, first of
+all, that the question was "remote and apparently out of all bearing on
+the practical politics of the day;" second, he avowed that he was
+probably going "to be silent" on the topic; third, he said that "he
+scarcely expected ever to be called on to share in such a measure;" and,
+as his finishing words, spoke of it as "a question lying at a distance
+he could not measure." These were far too many causes for not doing a
+thing, and the Conservatives accordingly began to look out. In 1869, Mr.
+Gladstone disestablished the Irish Church. The "remoteness" and the
+"distance which was not measurable" somehow came to be packed within
+these two dates,--1865-9. What had so hurried matters? Well, one can
+only recall what had happened in the interim, and among the events there
+had been these two occurrences--he had been expelled from Oxford and
+rejected by South Lancashire. The like suddenness attended his
+conversion on the subject of the Ballot. After half a lifetime of
+opposition, he one fine morning announced that it must pass, hardly a
+hint of warning having been given beforehand.
+
+But his whole career has shown this suddenness of advance, at distinct
+periods, which, as we have said, always coincided with the brightening
+of the prospects of the respective agitations. It is true, as is earlier
+pointed out, that he took something like a quarter of a century to
+travel the ground between the Conservative starting-point and the
+Radical position, but the length of time was not owing to his creeping
+between the bounds; he has traversed it at successive leaps, standing
+still between, and, at the places where he remained stationary, there
+was always the warm shelter of office. This style of progress has
+characterized him down to the present moment. As late as 1874 he told a
+deputation that he did not consider the question of the County Franchise
+ripe. There has been a good deal of very indifferent weather since then;
+but whether or not the field crops have matured, it seems now that the
+agricultural labourer has been growing fast. Mr. Joseph Arch has been
+the sun that has shone upon him, and Mr. Gladstone, as usual, is quite
+ready to reap the harvest. Examples might be multiplied manifold. Take
+the boasted case of the Liberal surplus, of which we have never ceased
+to hear--just as if Mr. Lowe and Mr. Gladstone had between them coined
+the money. Its history, stated in three words, was this: Mr. Lowe had
+mulcted the public in an unnecessary twopence of Income Tax, and,
+instead of shamefully confessing the incompetency it showed in a
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented himself before the
+constituencies, on the eve of the elections, with his hands full of
+gold, and with the air of presenting it to them.
+
+Mr. Gladstone, great financier as he is, was not above profiting by his
+subordinate's miscalculation. Instead of administering a rebuke, as a
+good journeyman might have been expected to do to a bad apprentice, he
+patted Mr. Lowe on the back. Indeed, in the Greenwich address, when he
+so magniloquently spoke of the money being given back in the shape of
+abolishing the Income Tax, he seemed to take some credit to himself.
+
+It will be beginning, perforce, to dawn upon the reader that this was a
+Minister very difficult to be dealt with by an Opposition. If we had
+space in this paper, a part of the task of sketching Mr. Gladstone would
+be to point out how injuriously he has confused the demarcation of
+parties; how unscrupulous he has been in seeking allies which on no
+principle of fair classification belonged to him. It may be nothing that
+he can half apologize for Irish Obstructionists--the Liberals have
+always exploited Irish members. But this very high Churchman, who clings
+to a tenet so ridiculous in the eyes of Dissenters as apostolical
+succession, can figure in Dr. Joseph Parker's chapel, and betray a close
+and not uncomplimentary knowledge of the trust-deed of the Rev. Newman
+Hall's congregation. This austere gentleman, who, when inquiring into
+the "Theses of Erastus" (see his article), finds out that moral offences
+are at the root and source of all heresy, has a kindly word for such
+free-thinkers as happen to be also political leaders of the working
+men--Mr. Bradlaugh, for example. This objector to divorce, on such
+stupendously elevated grounds as that we are all members of a mystical
+body, and who cannot bring himself to allow more than a civil marriage
+to a deceased wife's sister, mingles in the ruck of Radicals. But if he
+has what they must think ecclesiastical crotchets, he always manages
+them with most skilful prudence. If he has to satisfy his most private
+feelings by bringing in no fewer than six resolutions in more or less
+opposition to the Public Worship Bill, he can withdraw them again. But
+was this the gentleman to champion Radicals and Dissenters? An
+Opposition which had to keep its own consistent lines, and which was
+closely restricted as to its allies, was at a perpetual disadvantage
+with one whose own opinions, subtle and complicated as they might be,
+cut him off from nobody who could be of aid.
+
+Fortunately the country itself, at a certain rather tardy point, rallied
+its patriotism in that spontaneous way which always practically
+reinforces the Conservative party. The "Alabama" claims gave those who
+did not meddle much in politics their first shock, while for more
+thoughtful persons it brought back a reminiscence of the surrender of
+the Ionian Islands; and when, later, the public saw him stand tamely by
+while Russia tore up the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, every
+student of our history knew that Mr. Gladstone's fate was sealed. The
+nation, stirred by arousings of the deeper instincts of the English
+character, at last reckoned with him on general grounds--dislike of his
+personal demeanour, and dread of what he was bringing on the country. It
+refused to be won either by the finest oratory or the prospect of
+reduced taxation.
+
+The Conservatives came into power on the highest tide of popular feeling
+which living Englishmen have witnessed. But the change was too late to
+prevent mischief; Russia, encouraged by England's effacement during Mr.
+Gladstone's sway, had matured her further plans, and had already put her
+secret intrigues into motion. The Treaty of San Stefano showed plainly
+what her plan was, and just as clearly does everybody not blinded by
+party feeling now know that to Russia's amazement, and amidst the
+surprised and grateful admiration of the whole civilized globe, the
+present Ministry have thwarted that plan and made England again safe and
+famous. It would be a waste of time to retrace the details: a summary of
+them is to be found in Lord Salisbury's Manchester speech. What alone
+further concerns us here is the manner in which Mr. Gladstone has borne
+himself in Opposition. We have already seen how he did so as a Minister.
+It was understood, indeed, that he had retired, with something which was
+meant to pass for dignity, though to the eyes of the nation there was
+never anything which was not sulk which had so much the look of it.
+However, on the plea that something had happened in the world, he was
+quickly back again in front, elbowing Lord Hartington aside. Speeches,
+in Parliament and out, articles in every magazine, republication in
+pamphlet and volume, letters to everybody, which, practically, meant to
+all the newspapers: there never was such an active resuscitation of one
+who had so publicly become politically defunct. It is, however, not for
+coming to life again that we find fault with Mr. Gladstone, for, in
+truth, we always expected it.
+
+Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he
+has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be
+made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope, and
+other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his
+back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy,
+and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very
+necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's own
+tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some other
+negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government was charged
+with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional usage imposed no
+limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits had not been
+transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord Northbrook had
+acted with spirit years before, that war would never have been
+necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked, he and the
+Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had been at great pains
+to get himself and his Government into a difficulty. Why Mr. Gladstone
+has had so little to say about the Cape war is a mystery, which may be
+explained some day; all that can now be said of it is that it shows a
+striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though his industry was
+gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware that his renewal of
+them, though we suppose it must go on, having been arranged so long and
+announced so pompously, is a trifle late, with the Cape war ended, our
+troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi Bazar, and checkmated,
+scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany. However, no doubt we
+shall have some very fine speeches, proving that nothing of this ought
+to have happened, or that it won't last long, or that the Beaconsfield
+Administration did not bring it about, or any thing else, just as
+reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many different ways by a
+practised orator.
+
+What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's
+success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of
+his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation
+in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so
+irresistibly points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no
+matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a party,
+cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive
+occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making his
+very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous in
+hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the
+rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have
+been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that we
+are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied them
+that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen or of
+Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of the
+wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take the
+first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the fact
+was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how the
+sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone as
+a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which they could all
+join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of unanimity and
+cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it he has been
+very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and seemingly slow
+in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the outset even
+precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful orator, even
+quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage, so largely
+prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed, and to do so for a
+long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end, and that
+completely.
+
+His temperament made that nearly certain. He was always too busy making
+speeches, or writing for the press, or answering letters, to be any
+power in social life. A strange kind of semi-recluse, but combining with
+bookworm habits a passion for speechifying and for using the penny post,
+was not likely to conciliate London, and he never did. By-and-by he was
+railing at the Clubs, because they did not agree with him; and then he
+had next to appeal from the metropolitan journals to the superior
+politicians and brighter wits who preside over the provincial
+newspapers. All this prognosticated failure. Even his special gifts and
+the kind of successes which fell to him turned into the means of helping
+it. His turn for figures not unnaturally made immediate economy his
+great object, forgetful of the larger connection in such a land as ours
+between an imperial position in the world and the preservation of our
+commerce, and overlooking also the costliness of reasserting our
+position when a crisis came; while his ready eloquence, having no longer
+open to it the old patriotic themes, had to expend itself in the
+adornment of British abnegation, and the excited applause given to his
+rhetoric was mistaken by him for assent to his views, till he was amazed
+to find himself suddenly quite out of accord with the nation, and
+falling, he knew not why, headlong from power.
+
+Even to this hour he seems never to have had the least misgiving that
+the man who could speak with such complacency of the trading supremacy
+of the world passing to America (see his article on "Kin Beyond the
+Sea"), and who could urge as a reason for our not caring to interfere in
+Egypt that it would be the egg of a North African empire (see his
+article on "Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East"), was not the
+man to be England's Minister. But the country had found it out even
+before he wrote those articles; his threatening his countrymen with the
+calamity of finding another empire on their hands, in the only part of
+the world yet remaining to be explored and civilized, has only proved
+that they were right, and will not terrify Englishmen.
+
+But a fluent orator has always left to him a kind of gambler's hope of
+retrieving everything by talking. Mr. Gladstone is going to alter
+everything by making a dozen or two of speeches in Scotland. Are these
+Midlothian harangues to be longer than that made at Greenwich, or more
+numerous than those uttered in Lancashire? They may be as fine as they
+will for anything it signifies to Conservatives, if the result is only
+again the same as on the other occasions, and it is hardly likely that
+he will persuade Englishmen now amidst their returning renown to despair
+of the future of England.
+
+    A CONSERVATIVE.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANCIEN R�GIME AND THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
+
+    _Histoire de l'Ancien R�gime_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+    _Histoire de la Revolution fran�aise_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+
+
+When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien R�gime and
+the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy, he
+ended with these words:--"I have now reached the threshold of the great
+Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it, but perhaps I may
+soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no longer consider its
+causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to pass judgment on
+the society that has proceeded from it."
+
+Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his purpose,
+a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be regretted,
+and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken to fill up
+the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected task--the
+description, namely, of modern France as the outcome of the immense
+transformation which the Revolution brought upon the Old French State.
+The fundamental principles which appear so clearly and sharply in
+Tocqueville's development are prominent in Taine's; the activity of the
+earlier author prepared the ground for the later to build on. But we
+must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently independent, and his
+descriptions more striking, broad, and richly coloured than those of his
+precursor, while the material contents of his work are often different.
+But what, in spite of this, constitutes the resemblance between the two
+men is, their having for basis a common conception both of the State and
+what it presupposes, and of the historian and his task. It is the very
+opposite of the manner of thinking entertained in the eighteenth century
+which, without any heed to the peculiar character of the necessities of
+a given people, was bent on constructing, according to simple rules of
+reason and natural law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very
+striking manner, declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he
+observes, "I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a
+large number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide
+as to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist
+or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist, and I
+was nothing of the kind--nay, I was nothing at all, and envied those who
+had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a constitution as
+they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new, or most simple
+plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial castle, a
+burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a cottage, and
+each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only proper dwelling, the
+only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me this seemed an utter
+mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed be able to say what house
+they admire, but some experience is needed to teach them what house they
+need, whether it be commodious and lasting, stands the weather well, and
+harmonizes with the customs, occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We
+here in France have never been content with our political erections; in
+the course of eighty years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them
+thirteen times. Other nations have acted differently, and found their
+advantage in so doing. They have preserved an old, substantial building,
+enlarged, built around, and beautified it according to their needs, but
+never attempted to build an ideal house at one stroke, according to the
+rules of pure reason. It would therefore appear that the sudden
+invention of an entirely new, and at the same time suitable and durable
+constitution is an undertaking that transcends human capacity. The
+political and social form which a people permanently assumes is no
+matter of choice, but fixed by its character and its past. It must be
+suited to its idiosyncrasy, even in the minutest points, or it will
+crack and fall. Therefore we must know ourselves before we can discover
+what the proper constitution for us is. We must invert the accustomed
+method, and first form to ourselves a picture of the nation before we
+sketch a constitution. At the same time this is a far harder and wider
+task than the one hitherto in favour. What inquiries into past and
+present, what labour in all domains of thought and action, are needed to
+understand with precision and completeness the nature and growth of a
+great people through centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting
+out first empty discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as
+regards myself, I shall not think of a political opinion until I have
+learnt to know France."
+
+From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of
+course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that
+corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the course
+of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their historical
+representation of it--Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and
+Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at the
+beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at
+would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut
+and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was
+pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were
+owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the
+worthlessness of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke
+real interest in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main
+point--our party is right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of
+mind more than to any other hindrances we may attribute the small
+advance made, up to the middle of our century, in the knowledge of
+facts, in the history of the Revolution; this is what explains the else
+inexplicable phenomenon that, spite of the large interest felt in the
+period, no history of Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as
+yet been written. For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine,
+spite of the strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of
+their material, have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly
+see.
+
+Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the writing
+of such a history. With firm and decided political principles of their
+own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge only.
+Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge of the
+political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old
+saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but
+to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed from
+which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and
+working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce
+upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves
+in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by a
+contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question: "How can
+Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous work the
+utter corruption of the Ancien R�gime, place the Revolution in his
+second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were so
+completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in utterly
+destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics who,
+after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be a
+thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment,
+proclaimed him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed,
+certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain
+inconsistencies do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an
+historical standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first
+volume paints the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather
+should we have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had
+sprung a healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no
+other soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien R�gime; it
+was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been
+fostered, and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had
+received its stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all
+relations were dislocated, political feeling perverted, all portions of
+the people filled with bitter hatred against the State and each other,
+how should pupils in such a school amidst the final shock of
+catastrophes show themselves men of ripe experience, practical wisdom,
+and determined energy? He who has once taken in this simple truth will
+be much inclined to a mild judgment of individual men and parties; at
+all events, he will not be able abruptly to take sides either for or
+against the Ancien R�gime or the Revolution. For one thing will have
+grown clear to him, that the Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but
+the undeniable offspring, of the old condition of things.
+
+That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first
+order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded
+on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited,
+as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French,
+but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are
+hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly
+explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is
+frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to
+follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and
+then to controvert it on certain points.
+
+It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries
+led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of
+our century, but a production of the Ancien R�gime. Since the days of
+Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had
+taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and
+plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary
+principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of
+independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed
+thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in
+the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government,
+preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and
+consequently imposed taxes and corv�es upon their dependents, while
+often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were
+now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal
+bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as
+hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The
+King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for
+their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the
+cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went
+on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and
+essential element of the great Revolution.
+
+It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject.
+Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads
+and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord
+lived in the midst of his dependents--his own interest was identical
+with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional
+ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State
+attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic
+government divided the landowners from the people, and by the
+unjustified continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in
+opposition. For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and
+farmer had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of
+chase, his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not
+inconsiderable number of the higher middle classes gained the special
+privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were only
+increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy service by
+exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one hand, and of
+the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully and precisely
+than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation has brought out a
+still more appalling condition than had been imagined. After the State,
+the Church, and the landlord had received their rates, the share of the
+farmer in the proceeds of his land never amounted to more than a half,
+and often his taxes rose to eighty per cent. of his income. On the other
+hand, the privileged classes paid at least a fifth less than the just
+proportion, and knew how to obtain on a yearly average at least a
+hundred millions in the shape of presents, pensions, &c. With
+increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought of any care to be
+taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and magnates streamed
+towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of them was from their
+unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus France fell asunder
+into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal knowledge or
+common interest, divided by contempt and hatred--worlds that lived on
+side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance, and luxury,
+and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty, wretchedness,
+ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and devouring
+bitterness of heart--a condition such as no other nation of Christian
+Europe had ever before come to.
+
+Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of
+authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a
+part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led
+into error.
+
+I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which
+treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal
+officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of
+this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville,
+but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it
+made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the
+political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred
+the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher
+classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the
+historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great
+bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and
+economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in
+France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible
+thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which
+gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later,
+under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against
+the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress,
+and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the
+opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal
+parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than
+liberties--that is to say, they expected the improvement of their
+condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a
+Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of
+Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but
+after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second
+time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people
+throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this
+institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely
+done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much
+as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how
+without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars
+and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have
+arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when
+Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious
+idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all
+political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the
+King--the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in
+working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and
+excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an
+evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance
+that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the
+worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of
+his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of
+Louis XVI. was from first to last spent in efforts, by the setting aside
+of feudal privileges, alike to strengthen the Crown and promote the good
+of the people, and in no case can it be more incorrect to look upon the
+Crown as a devouring parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This
+brings me back to my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side
+of his picture of society under the Ancien R�gime written the history of
+its last monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this
+misconception.
+
+But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of the
+higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished personages
+had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials appeared to
+the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted the army as a
+mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there, there was no
+question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling and care
+of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and abbots drew
+immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to fair dames,
+but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the affair of
+needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their ambition and
+interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To shine there was the
+object of their distinguished lives. And as the French people have ever
+been largely endowed with grace and _esprit_, these efforts resulted in
+a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social
+intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of _bon ton_, such as
+the world never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a
+great nation had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite
+society its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and
+sacrifice mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of
+character to the promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end
+of existence was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and
+action were rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life
+should be spent in society was the most pressing requirement of
+politeness, the reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes
+unendurable. The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed
+itself became the law of this great world, and the consequences were
+felt on all sides. Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion
+came to be held unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an
+offence against manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any
+strong passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of
+conventionality. Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself
+gracefully, and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting
+variety into the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as
+welcome as sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or
+labour, for the aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind
+of knowledge was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it
+followed that all mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of
+its content but the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the
+service of enjoyment, such was the motto of this society. Genial
+originality, unconscious creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly
+antipathetic there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves
+subservient to the ruling mood.
+
+A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics of good
+society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary theories of
+its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development of this
+process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's work,
+for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth
+century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such
+extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out the
+continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus
+gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history.
+Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural
+science since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe,
+by which a way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of
+men, in opposition to the speculative and theological conceptions of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive method,
+the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to all
+intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment as the
+only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having been at
+once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural science, the
+next step was to apply the tone of thought they had engendered to the
+phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also to demand thorough
+investigation by the one true authority--criticism. Whatever the
+consequence of this investigation might in particular cases be, the very
+fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing, _as
+such_, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected to that
+of critical reason--this betokened a new epoch in the world's history,
+and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress in
+politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual culture.
+It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such positive
+results, its application should be thorough and universal. No naturalist
+delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he has
+considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages,
+compared it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just
+through the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that
+analysis leads him to the comprehension of universal truth. And
+according to this same rule, in order to arrive at a just and
+practicable idea of reform for any State, a great mass of special
+observations by technically practised and prepared eyes would have been
+required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the
+peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of
+culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective
+functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for
+only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the
+organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner
+of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of
+single actualities according to these laws.
+
+How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very
+opposite occurred--that politicians, stimulated by young natural
+science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive
+method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a
+few abstract principles?
+
+Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the
+influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal
+tendency.
+
+The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle
+existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual
+excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every
+litt�rateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual
+structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to
+devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than
+this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to
+secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most
+natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the
+satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent.
+We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent
+tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all
+thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep
+earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very
+opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly
+sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied
+knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to
+reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions.
+Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and
+superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge
+which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the
+working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and
+frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to
+any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into
+one conventional form--an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to
+the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended
+in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of
+imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and
+absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact
+could not be entirely concealed, it was understood that among cultivated
+persons it could never be given any importance. Even on the stage it was
+no longer considered becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or
+Iroquois, should speak in their own natural manner; they were all alike
+rendered polite, sententious, and fluent as their distinguished
+audience. Each local and individual tone was rubbed away, every person
+of the drama was but a mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence
+of the author. As with the drama, so with other literature. Taine
+correctly observes that if we read an English romance of the period, we
+have before our eyes a section of the English people; but a French one,
+though widely varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French
+salon, and that only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how
+could any one come to the study of the State by means of difficult and
+distant researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he
+remained solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but
+exercised very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to
+turn over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for
+some ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the
+falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to
+the complicated task of judging any individual State and its
+constitution according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its
+historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man dreamt
+of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require
+anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with
+disapproval. It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a
+pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any
+subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most
+intelligent, yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting
+conversation. In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal
+effort was pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be
+commonplace, and in every case to bring forward new and amazing truths.
+Accordingly speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but
+so much the more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the
+progress was regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken
+never to skip over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker
+became rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every
+subject to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society
+was delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most
+advanced views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to
+deviate from real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.
+
+That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning
+of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle
+of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the
+foundations of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to
+distinguished society. Disgust at their own impotence and the
+omnipotence of royal officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy,
+vexation at some personal neglect at Court,--altogether there was cause
+enough for malicious satisfaction when philosophers, by biting
+criticisms, made clear the standpoint of burdensome potentates. And when
+an ever-growing and strengthening Materialism taught the doctrine of
+physical enjoyment and judicious selfishness as the guiding principle of
+human conduct, it only spoke out what had half-unconsciously been the
+sum of all the motives and activities of high society. But above all,
+theories were but theories, merely conversation, excitement, pastime.
+The nobles declaimed against obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant
+to keep his own rightful possessions, and among these were privileges
+and feudal rights. They felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the
+ignorant masses, because they professed humanitarianism and liberalism,
+and spoke against superstition and subordination. That these
+much-admired theories might by-and-by become common to the whole
+community, and then bring about horrible explosions--of this they had
+not the remotest suspicion. Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a
+thing to the ladies of Versailles, would have been looked upon as we
+should look upon a prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next
+century cats and dogs, instead of men, were to be lords of creation.
+
+This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose
+co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It
+was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its
+rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present
+actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formul� and
+commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set
+about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history
+of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure,
+the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and
+conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the
+concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a
+mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since
+all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must
+render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a
+natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to
+employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left
+free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically
+pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great
+majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than
+thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact
+that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared
+to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that
+conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of
+the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied
+that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly
+guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional
+order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was
+altogether outside their range of thought.
+
+But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions.
+The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to powder.
+Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of the hoary
+unrighteousness of the Old R�gime could make a stand; the pity was that,
+according to its own principles, the former found it impossible to
+attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.
+
+But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing
+ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political
+constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material
+for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and
+anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that
+miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane God
+unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the positive
+statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that the
+so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized matter.
+True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau declared his
+faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the one all the
+more resolutely contended against the divine institution of the Church,
+and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines of Sin and
+Justification. However different each may have been from the other, they
+waged in common a war for life and death against the Church, the war of
+utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong in saying that the
+Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a feudal and aristocratic
+institution; that after it had lost its wealth and privileges,
+democratic society recognized how strong a democratic momentum the
+Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up with increased
+warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt Taine's record is
+the more correct one. The Revolution knew well that it desired not the
+wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and not the partisans of the
+Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers were largely swelled by
+the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about the elevation of the
+Church in our own century.
+
+If we now contemplate somewhat more narrowly the Constitutional theory
+of the illumination, we shall discern two characteristic and prominent
+features, which, on the one hand, show its descent from the innermost
+core of the Ancien R�gime, and, on the other, very energetically
+determined the whole course of the Revolution. The ideal state deduced
+from the universal characteristics of mankind was as cosmopolitan as
+levelling. Just as on the stage of the period, Frenchman and savage,
+ancient Greek and modern Parisian, spoke the same language,--that of the
+salons of Versailles,--so political theories recognized neither
+Frenchman nor Englishman, Catholic nor Protestant, educated nor
+uneducated, only Man in general. They never considered what institutions
+would be adequate, in France, to the needs and capacities of the
+educated ranks and uneducated masses, or how far the habits and opinions
+of their nation would render the adoption of a foreign institution
+practicable or injurious; rather they formulated the rights of men, of
+abstract instead of actually existing men, and were convinced that a
+constitution based thereupon was for all men, and consequently for all
+peoples, the only good, and therefore the only lawful one. And just as
+clear as the equality of nations under the new political law, appeared
+the equality of all men in the new State, by which was meant not merely
+a claim to equal protection by law, or equal facility in obtaining one's
+rights, but a demand for the realization of an inborn and material
+equality of rights. This, as is well known, was the point on which
+Rousseau took his stand, and gave the last and decisive direction to the
+impending democratic revolution. Taine justly observes how frequently,
+in spite of their common principles, Rousseau's character and way of
+life led him to take different views from those of Voltaire and the
+Encyclop�dists. The deepest and most unqualified indignation of these
+last was inspired by what they called superstition, stupidity, and
+priestcraft, the transformation of the old State being with them more an
+affair of the intellect than the feelings, a conclusion drawn from their
+universal theory and an ideal requirement of philanthropy. It was
+generosity that led them to appear as the advocates of the poor and
+their woes, while they themselves were high in the approval and favour
+of the best society. Rousseau, on the other hand, had himself led the
+life of the proletaire; in the nervous excitability and measureless
+vanity which made him almost prouder of his weaknesses and vices than of
+the greatness and strength of his talents he--poor, often hungry, not
+seldom degraded and reviled--had filled himself with burning wrath
+against the favoured of earthly fortune, the noble and the rich, the
+revellers in idleness and luxury. This growing hatred he transferred to
+the State and the laws which had produced so unrighteous a contrast
+between man and man. Men, he maintained, were in their original
+condition good, because equal. It was the State, culture, society, that
+first introduced inequality, and vice and crime thereby. The existing
+order was not merely incompetent, as the Encyclop�dists asserted, but
+hurtful, poisonous, deadly. And, in contrast to it, he sketches a
+picture of the true human State.
+
+Equal and good men assemble in their natural condition to think on the
+basis of their future State. Each endows the new community with all
+liberty and property, in order to receive back an equal share of the
+management and the possessions of the whole. But this whole is
+omnipotent. No laws bind its will, for its will is the source of all
+law. No king, no official, no superior rules over it; each individual is
+only empowered to act, so far and so long as he upholds the plenipotence
+of the sovereign mass. It is not the upper classes who command the
+people, but the people which require obedience from its officers and
+throws them away when they no longer please it. For individual liberty
+there is here no place; but owing to the equality of all, the free will
+of the masses joyously and harmoniously prevails.
+
+For a season these doctrines only served to afford a welcome mental
+stimulant to the minds, if not of the nobility, of the cultivated and
+property-possessing classes. The higher, and soon the lower, bourgeoisie
+inflated themselves with these views. At this period they shared certain
+of the privileges of the nobles, filled numerous and prominent offices
+in the State, gave to the nation its largest number of famous thinkers
+and poets, promoted industry and commerce, and daily increased in
+wealth, while the nobles, by their extravagance, ruined themselves
+financially. The former were, therefore, full of the consciousness of
+their own dignity, and found the continued precedence claimed by the
+nobles to be unendurable. They believed with inward satisfaction in this
+doctrine of the equality of all men and the sovereignty of the whole.
+For, instead of the privileged, it seemed to them self-evident that
+owing to their culture they, the hitherto unprivileged, ought to stand
+out prominently among the people as leaders of that governing whole.
+Thus the state of freedom and equality would be the state of pure reason
+as well, and, therefore, the leading position could not fail to fall to
+them, the masters of reasonable discussion. Meanwhile the mass of the
+poor, wholly cut off from the sources of culture and the mental
+movements of their country, for long years knew nothing of this absolute
+governing power which, according to the new discoveries, inalienably
+belonged to it, and was so surprisingly soon to fall into its lap. The
+only change in their condition, and thus the only preparation for their
+future sovereignty, was an increase of outward distress and of inward
+confusion and embitterment; and then came the time when the small circle
+to which education and enjoyment were limited, and the State power they
+wielded, fell into internal demoralization, strife of factions, and
+financial embarrassments, till the very Crown itself was obliged to
+summon popular forces to war against the privileged. All the springs of
+State machinery refused to work, coffers were empty, authorities and
+classes at bitter internecine strife, the army unreliable and
+undisciplined. It was under circumstances like these that the mass of
+the people in towns and villages heard from their candidates, advocates,
+and demagogues, what in truth their rights were. In their ignorance and
+want, their rudeness and embitterment, they suddenly learnt that for
+them--as sovereign--limits, obligations, authority no longer existed,
+that the old corruption and slavish condition was to be thoroughly got
+rid of, and that then everything would belong to them. They listened
+with greedy ears, and rushed forward to trample under foot whatever
+sought to contest these rights of theirs.
+
+The highest and noblest aims lured the century on, and animated the
+hearts of countless worthy men: liberty, well-being, and culture for
+all, no difference between man and man but that of talent and virtue,
+fraternity among all citizens in the State and all nations on the earth;
+these were the ideals that 1780 proclaimed to the world and the future,
+and therefore the French still love to speak of the deathless principles
+and fair days of this first epoch of the Revolution. All this, Thiers
+tells us, would have been admirably realized had not evil-hearted
+emigrants and foreign Powers by their malignant attacks, driven the most
+humane of all Revolutions into desperation, a fight for existence, and
+bloodshed. All would have gone well, says Louis Blanc, had not the
+wicked Thermidorians, on the occasion of Robespierre's fall, brought in
+a policy of vice and self-seeking instead of one of virtue and brotherly
+love. Probably, on the other side the Vosges, eighty men out of every
+hundred adopt one or other of these views, and so it is easily
+intelligible that the merciless facts by which Taine shatters these fair
+pictures should be received with repugnance and surprise by his
+countrymen. The contrast between such a reality and such an ideal is
+indeed enormous; fair days, or so much even as one fair day in the
+course of the Revolution, can no longer be spoken of; in the very hour
+when absolute monarchy collapsed, a wild, rude, and cruel anarchy
+covered the land, filling France with violence and crime of every kind
+for a decade, and lastly causing an unparalleled despotism to appear to
+the French people salvation and deliverance. The conclusion is
+unavoidable, either the ideal was good for nothing, and the Coblentz
+emigrants had right on their side against the nation, or the French
+people had set about their high task in a quite impracticable way, and
+their historical fame has this time to be limited to the motto, _In
+magnis voluisse sat est_. Neither of these alternatives will have a
+pleasing sound in the ears of a Liberal Frenchman.
+
+But, pleasing or not, the facts are indisputable, and up to the present
+time each new investigation of authentic documents has only served to
+give them a wider range and a more assured basis. We have seen the end
+of the Ancien R�gime. The nobles of the former State were unnerved by
+idleness, debilitated by enjoyment, degraded by immorality; never had
+the aristocracy of a great nation fallen and been brushed away from the
+soil of their country, making so feeble a resistance. The leaders of the
+movement followed a political teaching based on a most one-sided and
+therefore radically false conception of human nature, and had no idea of
+the real nature of their fellow-citizens, or of the principles and needs
+of genuine political life. Finally the masses were unmoved by any
+political thought whatever, but were darkly conscious of their own
+wretched state up to the present time, and their hatred of those who
+had, or were supposed to have, occasioned it, were credulous and
+impressionable, and penetrated with the rightfulness of their wildest
+passions and desires. With such materials as these it is possible indeed
+to blow up an old and half-useless house, but not to construct on its
+ruins a well-planned and lasting new one.
+
+Thus Taine shows by details from documents contemporaneous with the
+events, how, even before the opening of the National Assembly, the
+condition of things was out of joint at a hundred points. Tumults and
+plunder, disobedience to authorities, and maltreatment of obnoxious
+persons, were the order of the day; public officials were spiritless,
+and dared not command the already murmuring troops to restore order. The
+first weeks of the Assembly brought hot discussions as to the union of
+the three orders, attempts at reactionary State measures, and the taking
+of the Bastille. Excitement grew from day to day; the suspense
+throughout the country was tremendous. With the Parisian catastrophes
+the whole Ancien R�gime rocked and gave way from side to side; and not
+merely privileges and feudal rights, but all State authorities vanished
+at one blow, or at the first threat from an armed mob resigned their
+functions. The French nation had positively no government, no laws, no
+police, no taxation. In place of these they had journals, clubs,
+societies, popular songs, and Lynch law; security for person and
+property no longer existed; every one did according to his heart's
+desire till a stronger than he preferred the opposite and knocked him
+down. This state of anarchy actually went on thus till the culmination
+of the Reign of Terror; every now and then it quieted down here or
+there, to burst out the following day at some other point with redoubled
+fury. In the midst of the omnipresent turmoil and confusion, the King, a
+powerless prisoner, sat in the Tuileries. The only quarter which
+afforded a possibility of the restoration of the State was the National
+Assembly, which was sufficiently respected and popular both with the
+people and the National Guard, to have enforced obedience had it set
+about it the right way. But there were two reasons which forbade the
+adoption of that way. One was that the Assembly was deprived of free
+action by the ruling theory of the Rights of Man, Liberty and Equality.
+This included the rights of resistance against oppression, and
+accordingly every citizen might at any moment consider himself oppressed
+and authorized in resisting. It had been borne in upon these sovereign
+citizens that the will of the sovereign people stood higher than that of
+its representatives, and that the people was at any time capable of
+re-entering upon the direct exercise of its sovereignty. It is plain
+that under the influence of theories such as these any control over
+street-riots and local deeds of violence was a difficult, if not
+hopeless task. And, on the same ground, it was impracticable to attempt
+any control or regulation of press or clubs, which looked upon their
+boundless activity as the highest expression and most precious jewel of
+revolutionary liberty. As, according to theory, State officials were to
+be, not the lords, but the servants of the sovereign people, it became
+expedient that they should not be named by the Central Government, but
+chosen, and that only for a short time, by the citizens. In the same
+spirit the affairs of Government were entrusted not to individual
+officials, but to deliberating colleagues; while, as to the passing of
+laws, the principle of equality rendered impossible the formation of an
+Upper House, or any finally decisive action on the part of the King.
+Thus the Government remained powerless, legislation was hasty and
+uncertain, the lower classes unmanageable, and on very many occasions it
+was plain that club orators and journalists who knew how to flatter the
+demands of the masses bent both Government and National Assembly beneath
+their sway. More than once there arose indignation in the Assembly at so
+unworthy and dangerous a condition; but at each attempt to grapple with
+and remove it, the fear of a monarchical or aristocratic reaction fell
+upon it and paralyzed its action.
+
+In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and
+proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the
+authority of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the
+army, and energetic organization of Government, extensive powers
+conferred on the police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice.
+But how then? If power were thus conferred upon the Government to
+restrain proletaires and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the
+National Assembly against the head of the reinforced Government, against
+the King, who had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in
+defenceless subjection? This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit
+invariably triumphing at the National Assembly. The present fear of the
+violence of the crowd attendant at the sittings combined with the
+apprehension of a future monarchical reaction. When, some years later,
+at the organization of the Republican Government, the weakness of
+authority was again felt, more than one orator freely declared the
+existing arrangements to be undoubtedly bad throughout, and to be
+amended as soon as possible; owned that this had, indeed, been perfectly
+known at the time of their creation in 1790, but that they were
+intentionally framed thus, in the interests of liberty, to prevent the
+King from exercising any power. Enough--the Constitutional Assembly did
+nothing to surround personal safety and political order with any
+inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did much to open the door wide
+to the passionate and arbitrary action of the masses. We may say that
+they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the horrors of the Terror, and
+had the sad beginnings of that development before their eyes, without
+even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most especially in the
+economical department: the colossal transformation of the laws of
+property in France, which brought half the soil into new hands, and
+irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic paths, was
+out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.
+
+For more than twenty years I have, in my "History of the Revolution
+Period," established these circumstances from authentic documents, and
+thus given repeated offence to the French public. I may therefore be
+permitted to feel all the greater satisfaction at such a distinguished
+investigator as Taine, after drawing forth numberless documents from
+Parisian archives, coming to absolutely the same conclusion. All I have
+heard in the way of objection to his statements is utterly unimportant.
+As it is not possible to drive the facts he has proved from original
+documents out of existence, the observation is made that though his
+information may be true, it is one-sided; that while he never wearies of
+describing revolts and misdeeds, he does not sufficiently point out in
+how many places the Civil Guard bravely and loyally upheld civil order.
+Taine would be the last to dispute this fact; had it not been so there
+would have been no longer any France left in the nineteenth century. But
+he would venture to inquire whether praise be deserved by an Assembly
+which, as ruler of a great State, surrendered without resistance now the
+third of it, now the half, during three years, to a bloody anarchy;
+whether we can speak of "fair days" or "humane Revolution," when in this
+short period six horrible Jacqueries laid the land waste, when countless
+political murders remained unpunished, and military _�meutes_ and
+ecclesiastical brawls thrust the weapons of civil war into the hands of
+the masses. We are told of a pure and ideal inspiration then filling
+millions of liberty-loving and patriotic spirits; and well may we call
+that a fair time in which noble aims and infinite hopes set all pulses
+beating higher, and stimulate a whole people to youthful efforts, and
+fill it with fresh and energetic life. Yes, there were moments of golden
+dreams and illusions like these. Only they should have lasted longer. It
+is not through their feelings, speeches, wishes, but their deeds, that
+nations assume their historical position and receive their historical
+sentence. Taine writes the last, indeed, with an incisive pen, and often
+with glaring colours, but essentially he gives nothing but what follows
+by indissoluble sequence from the facts of the Revolution.
+
+On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his work,
+or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a whole.
+Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances; I must be
+satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first months of the
+Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was identical in town and
+country, and the lawless violence of artisans and peasants pursued the
+same ends by the same means, one of the most prominent features of the
+later phase, the Terror, was the gradual introduction of a war of
+interest between the people of the capital and the villages. The more
+the power of the Mountain and the Parisian Commune increased, the more
+absolutely the booty of the Revolution fell to the share of the town
+proletaires, at the cost not only of the great landed proprietors, but
+the small farmers as well. Our first impression at the aspect of this
+rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we
+may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so
+extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the
+possibility of a class war. But for any disquisition on this subject, or
+allusion to the causes that, in the first years of the Revolution,
+prepared its way, we look through Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the
+representation of the Ancien R�gime, his attention is pre-eminently
+turned to social relations connected with the land. Had he with an
+equally comprehensive and minute care studied the different strata, the
+interests and wants of the town population, the problem alluded to would
+have solved itself.
+
+It is with admirable insight and incontrovertible reasoning that Taine
+shows the logical untenableness and practical mischief of the theory of
+equality, both in the writings of Rousseau and the action of the
+Constituent Assembly. He proves the contradiction between this equality
+and the very nature of man, and how, consequently, pure democracy
+rendered the development of political liberty unattainable. In perfect
+agreement with Tocqueville, he points to the absolute necessity, under
+the circumstances of the time, of aristocratic institutions, for the
+creation and preservation of a free State, and explains how deeply
+seated these are in the needs and claims of human nature. This portion
+of his work is indeed masterly; and the more widely extended the
+equalitarian superstition among the Liberal parties of our day, the more
+one could desire Taine's views to exercise a strong and wide-spread
+influence. But, on the other hand, it appears to me that by this very
+conception of political institutions, our author has been led to show
+himself something more than just in the sentence he passes on the
+representatives of this period, the nobles and prelates of 1789. This is
+one of the few incongruities already alluded to between the first and
+second volume. After reading of the luxury, artificiality, and idleness
+of aristocratic society in the former, and coming with the author to the
+conviction that terrible consequences must attend such a condition, one
+is surprised to find in the latter that these privileged ones were the
+best, the most discerning and patriotic portion of the nation, whose
+annihilation or exile brought about the same injurious results that the
+expulsion of the Huguenots had done. This contradiction is not cleared
+up by the fact that in the years immediately preceding the Revolution,
+and chiefly through the influence of Rousseau, a sentimental humanity
+had prevailed in high circles, that here, too, it was the fashion to
+speak of a return to an idyllic life of nature, of universal brotherly
+love, and of the relief of every form of distress. For these
+transformations remained, in point of fact, only fanciful phrases of the
+salons. When Louis XVI., Turgot, and Calonne, really desired to set
+about such philanthropic reforms in good earnest, it was, as we have
+already seen, these sentimental nobles themselves who hindered their
+effort, and by nullifying reform brought about the Revolution. When the
+catastrophe came, many of them had sufficient insight into the new
+position of affairs to make haste and repudiate those privileges which
+throughout the land had been already trampled under foot by an unchained
+people. The horrible persecution to which they were subjected, in utter
+disregard of all existing rights and all human feeling, with
+bloodthirsty cruelty and shameless greed, must ever insure for the
+victims the compassion and sympathy of every right-minded observer; and
+in order fully to justify revolutionary laws against emigrants, one
+would be driven to advance sophisms only, not arguments. But all this
+does not affect the question, whether, as Taine assumes, these
+persecuted ones did hold a distinguished place in the nation for
+political virtue, intellectual culture, and capacity for action.
+Neighbouring nations, so far as I know, without exception took at the
+time an entirely different view. Doubtless, there were among the
+emigrants many who won respect and regard in the regions whither their
+flight had led them. But the great majority, by their thoughtless
+arrogance, mutual bickerings, and shameless frivolity, left behind them
+a bad reputation; whereas a hundred years before the exiled Huguenots,
+by their unity, earnestness, and industry, won, wherever they went, the
+respect and gratitude of their new countrymen.
+
+    HEINRICH VON SYBEL.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF IRELAND?
+
+
+Returning to settle in Ireland after an absence that began more than
+twenty years ago, I found two things strongly claiming my attention.
+One, was the very great advance in material well-being which my country
+appeared to have made. The other, was the fact that both Englishmen and
+Irishmen appeared resolutely to ignore this progress. Nearly all who
+write and speak about Ireland, either dwell upon her grievances or
+assume poverty as her normal condition. I know not of any who have
+attempted to record her returning prosperity. Yet there are few facts in
+modern history better worthy of notice than the advance in material
+wealth which has taken place in Ireland during the thirty years between
+1846 and 1876.
+
+The year 1879 marks the close of just one-third of a century from the
+great famine. The first thirty years of this period, 1846-76, were years
+of continual advance in well-being. From 1877 and down to the present
+year a reaction has been going on, which is largely connected with a
+general depression of trade all over the world. For reasons which will
+appear hereafter, I do not hold that this reaction is likely to be
+permanent.
+
+It is true that at the beginning of that period the country was in the
+very lowest depths of poverty and depression. The starting-point
+therefore was a very backward one: and the wonder is that so much
+advance should have been made, considering not only the backwardness of
+the starting-point but the difficulties of the road.
+
+I shall not attempt to depict the state of things which prevailed at the
+close of the great potato famine. The condition of the country is well
+known; the facts are in the recollection of many persons now living; and
+the evidence is within the reach of all inquirers. I may safely assume
+that Ireland then was among the very poorest of all the countries in
+Europe. What is her position now?
+
+In discussing the social condition of any country, the population
+question naturally comes to the front. Is the population pressing unduly
+on the means of subsistence? then there is something wrong, and until
+this is set right progress is impossible. On the other hand, if the
+population is so sparse as to leave the resources of the country
+undeveloped, there is also something wrong, though in this case the evil
+is far less. The population, such as it is, may be prosperous and
+advancing, though it is not producing all it might.
+
+The former was notoriously the state of things in Ireland before
+1847.[21] In 1845 (the year immediately preceding the famine) the
+population was at the highest point it attained during the present
+century, and probably the highest it ever reached. It was estimated at
+8,295,061. In 1847, the year when the famine was at its height, the
+numbers are given as 8,025,274. In 1875, just thirty years after the
+maximum, the numbers had fallen to 5,309,494. In 1877 they were
+estimated at 5,338,906, showing an increase over 1875 of 29,412.
+
+It is a familiar fact that the population of 1845 and 1847 was
+excessive. Whether the present population may not be defective in regard
+of productive power is a question not without importance, but not
+immediately relevant. What we are now dealing with is the material
+welfare of the existing population; and it is clear that five millions
+can live where eight cannot. But are the five millions better off in
+some proportion to the price the country has paid for the decrease in
+population? And is there a real advance in the condition of the people,
+not a mere rise out of beggary and starvation?
+
+In attempting an answer to a question of this nature, one looks
+naturally to the rate of wages first. But this test is an imperfect one:
+partly because local variations are still considerable; partly because
+money payments in many places and among large classes are more or less
+supplemented by subsistence drawn directly from the land. Besides, a
+mere increase in money wages may mean little or nothing, unless the
+increased wages possess increased purchasing power, and there be at the
+same time an upward tendency in the standard of living. Putting aside
+the wages question accordingly (to be discussed hereafter), let us try
+to find other indications of the extent and nature of the changes in the
+people's condition since the famine. A test of some value, though not
+absolutely conclusive by itself, will be afforded by changes in the area
+of farms. It is notorious that one of the causes which most contributed
+to bring about the famine and its miseries was the small size of
+holdings. Now the census returns show that from 1851, very shortly after
+the famine, there has been a steady decrease in the number of farms
+under fifteen acres, and a steady increase in the number of farms
+between fifteen and thirty acres, as well as in farms exceeding thirty
+acres in area. Up to 1861 the number of holdings not exceeding fifteen
+acres had declined fifty-five per cent., while those above fifteen acres
+had increased 133 per cent. The number of farms between fifteen and
+thirty acres was in 1861 double what it had been in 1841, and the farms
+above thirty acres amounted in 1861 to 157,833, against 48,625, which
+had been their number twenty years before. Between 1861 and 1871 farms
+under fifteen acres decreased by 12,548, and farms above thirty acres
+increased by 1470. According to the latest returns (1875) the farms not
+exceeding one acre in area were 51,459; those of one to five acres were
+69,098; those of five to fifteen acres, 166,959; fifteen to thirty
+acres, 137,669; the total above thirty acres being 160,298 holdings.
+
+This distribution of the land seems to indicate a considerable
+improvement compared with the state of things prevailing before the
+famine. Unfortunately the increase in the size of holdings has not been
+attended by a corresponding decrease in the number held on an insecure
+tenure. Tenancy at will continues to be the rule, and permanency the
+exception, in our land tenure. I have made an attempt to estimate
+roughly the classes of landholders. The "Domesday" list of proprietors
+of land gives the number of owners of one acre and under ten as 6892,
+holding 28,968 acres, or an average of a little over four acres each:
+between ten acres and fifty there are 7746 owners, holding 195,525
+acres, or an average a little over twenty-six acres: between fifty acres
+and a hundred there are 3479 owners, holding 250,147 acres, or an
+average of just under seventy-two acres. These make up a body of small
+proprietors, owning from one to a hundred acres, numbering 18,117.
+_Eason's Almanac_ for 1879, which has been published while I write,
+estimates the number of "proprietors in fee" of agricultural holdings at
+20,217. The same authority gives the number of leaseholders in
+perpetuity as 10,298; for terms of years exceeding thirty-one as 13,712;
+for thirty-one years and under, 47,623 (many of which may be short
+leases); and of leases for lives, or lives and years alternative, as
+63,759. The number of tenancies at will is 526,628, or 77.2 per cent, of
+the whole number of holdings. These statistics were collected in 1870,
+and they have doubtless been in some degree modified by the working of
+the Church Act and the Land Act. I have omitted from my extracts from
+the Domesday list the proprietors of under one acre. These are given in
+_Thom's Directory_ as 36,144, holding 9065 acres; but their holdings do
+not affect the present question, as they are mostly non-agricultural.
+The estimate in _Eason's Almanac_ purports to relate wholly to
+agricultural holdings. Domesday includes all classes.
+
+Another index of the condition of a people may be found in the way they
+are housed. Mean and comfortless dwellings imply not only a low standard
+of comfort, but often a low morality. Let us see how this matter has
+stood in Ireland. The Census Commissioners of 1841 divided the dwellings
+of the people into four classes. The fourth, or lowest, comprised all
+mud cabins having only one room. Of this class there were in all
+Ireland, according to the 1841 census, 491,278. In the last census,
+1871, the number had fallen to 155,675. The third-class dwellings were
+also built of mud, but contained three or four rooms, with windows; the
+latter convenience being by no means universally present in the
+one-roomed cabin of the fourth class. Of the third class the census of
+1841 enumerated 533,297; by 1871 this number had fallen to 357,126. The
+second class are described as good farmhouses, and in towns, houses
+having from five to nine rooms. Of this class in 1841 there were
+264,184; and in 1871 the number had increased to 387,660. The first
+class of houses increased during the same period from 40,080 to 60,919.
+Let us see now in what way the population has been distributed in the
+different classes of houses. In 1841 the number of families occupying
+first-class houses was 31,333. In 1871 the number had risen to 49,693.
+During the same period the number of families in second-class houses
+rose from 241,664 to 357,752. On the other hand, the families in
+third-class houses decreased from 574,386 to 432,774; and those in the
+fourth-class, or one-roomed cabins, from 625,356 to 227,379. By a
+curious coincidence, the _proportion_ of families to houses was the same
+in 1841 and in 1871--one hundred and eleven families to one hundred
+houses. In this way the very great shifting in the _classes_ is all the
+more clearly proved to indicate a real rise in the condition of the
+people.
+
+In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to discuss
+the wages question and the condition of the labouring population. Of the
+actual number of this class I can find no accurate return. But we have
+already seen that the number of families inhabiting the lowest class of
+houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the lowest class of
+labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871 gave the average
+number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100 families, we may
+estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied by 507, or
+1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may be safely
+assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now the money
+wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1_s._ 6_d._ a day in the
+most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in harvest
+time the labourers earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a day. A great many labourers have
+small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count
+directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is that
+the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his family
+can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig,
+&c.--thereby eking out the actual money payment.
+
+The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward
+and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast, potatoes
+and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper. The
+people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of
+feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics
+abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the sea
+that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are
+always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many of the
+labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am told that
+in certain districts there is one day in the year when every family
+among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of fresh
+meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish this
+meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.
+
+The condition of the people being such as I have described, one would
+naturally expect not to find pauperism very prevalent. As a matter of
+fact it is not. The average daily number of paupers in the workhouses
+throughout 1876 was 43,235, and of recipients of out-door relief 31,600:
+bringing up the total to 74,835. The average of persons in receipt of
+relief was 140.6 in 10,000 of population. This daily average represents
+the current subsisting mass of pauperism, and is in a considerable
+measure made up of the old, infirm, and sick. Of able-bodied paupers,
+the males were only 1697 in the daily average of workhouse inmates, and
+the females were 4130. There were 10,134 healthy children under fifteen
+in the workhouses, and the other inmates were either sick in hospital or
+permanently unable to work. These figures seem to be the very reverse of
+alarming. Permanent pauperism is not a very virulent social disorder
+when only two able-bodied persons to every five hundred of the
+population are in receipt of in-door relief, and when the whole
+permanent pauper population barely exceeds fourteen in a thousand. But
+though permanent pauperism may be well in hand, casual pauperism may be
+at a high pitch. Let us see how this matter has stood. I shall first
+take the statistics of 1876, and then try to modify my conclusions by
+such later figures as may be available. In 1876 the population of
+England and Wales stood at 24,244,000, and the total of paupers in
+receipt of relief, in-door and out-door, on the 1st of January of that
+year, was 752,887; Scotland, with a population of 3,527,000, had a total
+pauper population on the 1st of January, 1876, of 66,733. In Ireland, on
+the same date, the total population being 5,321,600, the paupers
+amounted to 77,913. In other words, at a rough estimate, on the 1st of
+January, 1876, about one person in every thirty-three in England and
+Wales was in receipt of relief as a pauper; in Scotland, about one in
+every fifty-three; while in Ireland the proportion was only one in
+sixty-eight. A similar proportion appears in the incidence of the
+poor-rate. In 1876 England and Wales paid at the rate of 6_s._ 0-3/4_d._
+per head of population; Scotland 5_s_. 0-1/2_d._; Ireland only 3_s._
+4_d._
+
+Of course these figures must undergo modification in view of the altered
+circumstances of the present time. The statistics of 1876 are not an
+accurate guide to the facts of 1879. During the last three years there
+has been considerable depression of trade; and it may very well be that
+the returns of this year will indicate an ebb in the tide of prosperity.
+But, unless I am very much mistaken, after making all allowances, it
+will probably be found that Ireland is the part of the United Kingdom
+least affected by the present prolonged commercial crisis.[22]
+
+The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the
+considerable class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of
+wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but
+perhaps not less intelligent class--that of English travellers in
+Ireland--will promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are
+cooked; they will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been
+beset with beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from
+pauperism? Surely the true state of the case is that the people keep out
+of the workhouses merely in order to live on public charity in another
+form?" It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very
+common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national
+scandal. There is, however, something to be said in mitigation of
+judgment, though perhaps not in defence. It is a matter in which figures
+are of little use; for no one could, by any possibility, estimate how
+many persons live wholly by begging. That there are in every community
+some persons who do may be taken as certain. That their number is larger
+in proportion to the bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in
+a Protestant community, is antecedently probable. The theory of the
+Roman Catholic religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to
+be no sin to live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms.
+_Never turn away thy face from any poor man_, is a text acted on by
+devout Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not
+difficult to foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the
+Irish Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of
+indiscriminate almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small
+degree by the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful
+efforts in the direction of the organization of charity. Another
+influence, which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy
+that scandalizes the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The
+habits of centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than
+twenty years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the
+Irish poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is
+limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of Catholic
+chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the roads leading
+to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often beset by little
+knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these are no more
+professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself with pheasant
+shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of excitement
+with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner or more
+vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.
+
+Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would
+exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is
+common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a
+larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply
+of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the
+mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the
+small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to
+show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the
+revenues of the Irish mendicant!
+
+An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete
+without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here
+we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England
+and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of
+drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an
+approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland,
+the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209,
+or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the
+drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous
+proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in
+all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so
+that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England,
+still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same,
+this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is
+rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of
+apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people
+might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on
+greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other
+hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox,
+argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk
+proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make
+an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament,
+and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man,
+when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the
+habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be
+given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force
+is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in
+England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter
+seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a
+quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier
+constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home.
+That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the
+startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we
+come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with
+drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces,
+it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.
+
+The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally
+those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink
+may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an
+indirect fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things
+which he may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of
+poverty, and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring
+then to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876
+only four persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number
+sentenced in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy;
+for the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of
+only about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in
+England were eight times as numerous as in Ireland.[25] But this is not
+all. Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these
+drink is only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly
+every murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of
+intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve
+sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none
+in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as
+representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the
+thirty-two persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were
+executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come to
+sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were
+only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of returns
+of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it is not
+easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the statistics of
+conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the person are
+much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland than in
+England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable
+expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in
+London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel
+anywhere in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the
+apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a
+proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the other
+hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth), we have
+1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties inflicted in
+Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.
+
+Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence, we
+find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against none
+in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against 26 in
+Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against only 69 in
+Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect drink to be
+a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there is no
+assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by violence,
+except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for crime.
+Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for minor
+offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against 10,674 in
+England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for terms of
+years, against 1063 in England.
+
+All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal
+of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is
+true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes,
+especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing
+minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization
+make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that,
+though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy
+keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have time
+for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something to
+do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but this is
+certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges of
+Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white gloves
+instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may be, I
+merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the most
+part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference
+they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken animals
+after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception to the
+rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on the Irish
+character--agrarian outrage--is not to be accounted for by drink. The
+true explanation is familiar to all who really know the country. The
+Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his support, and
+believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself to have a
+moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a belief
+which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be stated
+with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it
+without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his
+hostility to the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment,
+looks on himself as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a
+wronged man (which he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged
+have always been raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply
+a brigand in a frieze coat.
+
+I have no desire to compose an Essay on the Land Question; but it is
+absolutely impracticable to discuss Irish social economy without finding
+the Land Question in one's way. It is the question which most closely
+concerns the industrial classes; for the land is the mainstay of Irish
+industry. It is the pivot upon which all Irish politics turn; for
+although priestly influence counts for a great deal, that influence
+itself depends in great measure on the land hunger of the peasantry. I
+feel that I should be leaving Hamlet out of the play if I did not say a
+few words on the matter. As I have already hinted, the Irish peasant has
+three reasons for his desire to be "rooted in the soil." One is a
+traditional reason. He thinks that his forefathers were unjustly ousted
+by foreign conquerors. His belief rests on an utterly distorted view of
+history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors
+of a few of the existing peasantry might in a sort of sense have been
+called landowners. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be
+equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had
+been the serfs or the slaves of barbarous chieftains. The old Gaelic
+tribal ownership, if left to itself, might or might not have ripened
+into a peasant proprietary; but the only real grievance which the
+existing Gaelic peasantry can allege, is that the English conquest
+forcibly interrupted the natural process of evolution. Moreover, a large
+number of the existing peasants are no true Gael at all, but the
+descendants of Danes, Normans, and the various waves of Saxon settlers
+from Elizabeth to William of Orange. In parts of Ireland there are even
+to be found the descendants of French Huguenots, of Scotch fugitives
+involved in the Stuart insurrections, and of refugees of 1793. That such
+a _colluvies gentium_ should claim to be the heirs of Septs which
+occupied the land
+
+    "Ere the emerald gem of the Western world
+        Had been set in the crown of a stranger,"
+
+is simply a proof of profound ignorance of history. Such, however, is
+the vague traditional belief; and it is complicated with a moral
+sentiment, that he who tills the land has a right to live by the land.
+The sentiment is open to no objection, provided it be understood that
+the land is an instrument of production in which the whole community is
+interested. The cultivator has the same right to live by the land as the
+artisan to live by his handicraft, and no more--that is, both peasant
+and artisan have a right to expect that the social system shall be so
+adjusted that neither shall be unjustly deprived of the fruit of his
+labour. But neither peasant nor artisan can claim that any instrument of
+production shall be used for the sole sake of the producer. Hence, even
+if peasant proprietorship were undeniably the best thing for the
+peasant, it does not follow that he has a moral right to it, unless it
+be good for the whole community as well. This consideration is too
+often neglected by the thorough-going advocates of peasant
+proprietorship. They assume that the interests of the peasants are the
+only interests to be considered. In Ireland, indeed, they are not far
+wrong; for the peasantry _are_ very nearly the whole community. This,
+however, only raises the previous question, whether peasant
+proprietorship would be a success in Ireland--of which hereafter. The
+last and most practical of the agrarian arguments is that a tenant
+evicted is a man ruined. Even this is only partially true, and at most
+is only an argument against capricious eviction. It is conclusive as
+against the system of tenancy at will, or any of those short tenures
+which are, in fact, a standing notice to quit. It holds good in favour
+of peasant proprietorship to this extent--that the ruin of a peasant
+proprietor can only occur through his own fault or misfortune, and not
+through the caprice of a landlord. In short, the discontent of the Irish
+peasantry proves that the Anglo-Irish system of tenure is about the
+worst of all possible systems; but it proves little or nothing in favour
+of peasant ownership.
+
+My own opinion (_valeat quantum_) is that the soil and climate of
+Ireland render the country utterly unfit to maintain a considerable body
+of peasant proprietors; but that, nevertheless, it would be wise and
+politic to establish peasant properties as widely as may be practicable.
+The climate is notoriously damp, and variable in the extreme. Grain
+crops are inferior and precarious--root crops are not much better--even
+meadows are untrustworthy, because of the difficulty of haymaking--but
+Irish pasture is perhaps the best in the world. Natural conditions mark
+out Ireland as a pastoral and cattle-breeding country; and such a
+country is the destined home of _latifundia_. It is not merely that
+cattle require large spaces of pasture; but the trade in cattle requires
+capital, and requires the power of staying through seasons of adversity.
+An attempt to breed or deal in cattle by a class of peasant proprietors,
+acting singly, could only end in ruin; a ruin even more complete than
+bad seasons would bring upon unsuccessful cultivators of grain. Another
+product for which Ireland is eminently fitted is timber.[26] This also
+obviously requires spaces of land, and intervals of idle capital,
+utterly incompatible with any system of small holdings. Nature would
+seem to have marked out Ireland as a country to be thinly populated;
+historical accident once made her one of the most populous of countries,
+and we all know what came of it. The people were dependent on a single
+kind of food; it failed, and misery ensued such as modern Europe had
+never beheld. The scenes of 1847 we may devoutly hope will never be
+witnessed again; but such a season as 1878-79 would be a trial that few
+peasant proprietors could stand. Why then do I say that a peasant
+proprietary ought to be created? Because I believe that in the
+experiment is to be found the sole method of convincing the Irish
+peasants that their true interest lies in quite another direction. The
+peasant now believes that all he wants in order to be prosperous is to
+be "rooted in the soil." It is of no use to appeal to abstract
+reasoning. He knows that he has to pay rent, and that he is liable to
+eviction for non-payment. Carefully as recent legislation has guarded
+him against capricious eviction, he knows that if his landlord chooses
+to pay for turning him out, out he must go. The few of his neighbours
+who do acquire freeholds, he perceives to be comparatively prosperous.
+He does not take into account that the prosperity of the freeholder is
+maintained by precisely the same exceptional energy and thrift which in
+the first instance enabled him to secure the freehold. Besides, it is
+undeniable that _c�teris paribus_ a man who holds rent-free is likely to
+be better off than one who pays rent; and so long as rent is the rule
+and freehold the exception, the few freeholders will seem at least to
+possess an advantage over the many rentpayers. In short, the peasant
+farmer will never cease to believe ownership a panacea for all his ills,
+until he shall have tried it, and failed. Of course it does not
+absolutely follow that the experiment of creating a peasant proprietary
+must needs fail. It may succeed; and then the Irish land problem is
+solved. For the reasons given above, however, I think it would fail. If
+all the holdings of fifteen acres and under (there are 285,000[27] of
+them, or nearly half the whole number of farms in Ireland) were turned
+into peasant properties tomorrow, I believe they would in thirty, or at
+most in fifty, years be recast into large cattle farms, owned probably
+for the most part by joint-stock companies. The process of consolidation
+would be partly the buying out of ruined peasants after some such
+seasons as we are now undergoing; partly a voluntary union of the
+residue, who would find association desirable in order to secure a
+sufficiency of land and capital. But those who might be compelled to
+part with their lands could no longer ascribe their ruin to the tenure
+by which they held. It would be made clear to them and to all concerned
+that it is the laws of Nature and not the laws of England which hinder
+Ireland from maintaining a dense agricultural population.
+
+It may be urged against what I have here said, that it is hardly worth
+while engaging in a social revolution merely in order that the last
+state of things may turn out on the whole very similar to the first. I
+cannot deny the force of this remark; though I may suggest, in my turn,
+that perhaps it is worth while to make some sacrifice for the sake of
+attaining stable equilibrium in the social system. I am persuaded that
+the one great difficulty in Irish affairs is to convince the peasant
+that the law is a power not hostile but friendly to him. This is no easy
+task. It is not so very long since the law actually was the hard master
+it is still supposed to be. Nor is the peasant's own attitude of mind a
+very easy one to deal with. He clamours loudly to be "rooted in the
+soil," or, in other words, to be made absolute owner of his farm; but he
+clamours not less loudly against the absenteeship of his landlord. He
+utterly fails to perceive the inconsistency of his position. He cannot
+eat his cake and have his cake. He cannot be at one and the same time
+tenant to a resident lord of the manor, and owner in fee-simple of his
+own holding. Absolute peasant ownership is _prim� facie_ incompatible
+with the very existence of a landed aristocracy; and it may be some
+perception of this that induces certain of the land agitators to propose
+fixity of tenure at a quit-rent rather than absolute peasant
+proprietorship. But it is clear that this is a mere evasion of the
+difficulty. A landlord, who is merely a rent-charger, has no more motive
+to reside on his estate than if he sold it and lived on the interest of
+the purchase-money. There is no doubt a sense in which the two things
+are not absolutely incompatible. Peasant properties might be intermixed
+with large estates owned by resident landlords. And this would certainly
+constitute a state of things by no means undesirable; in fact, it is
+what might possibly emerge from the experiment I have mentioned above. I
+think it more than probable that a great deal of the land, after such an
+experiment, would fall into the hands of joint-stock companies; but a
+considerable portion might also be bought up by individuals, who might
+choose to become resident landlords. It must, however, be remembered
+that there are many things besides agrarian agitation which tempt Irish
+landlords to become absentees. Residence in Ireland is attended with
+many drawbacks and discomforts, even when a landlord is on the best of
+terms with his tenantry. Absenteeism is no new complaint; Adam Smith
+discussed proposals for an absentee-tax. Its prevalence is not
+uncommonly ascribed to the Union, but it might as well be ascribed to
+the Deluge. The most potent causes of absenteeism in the latter half of
+the nineteenth century are the City of Dublin Steam Navigation Company,
+and the London and North-Western Railway. These, and kindred
+institutions, are also the channels which conduct a vast deal of wealth
+into Ireland; and if absenteeism constitutes a perennial drain on her
+resources, the facilities of locomotion cause the drain to return
+ten-fold.[28] If these facilities did not exist, it does not follow that
+the landlords who remained at home would necessarily be of much use to
+the community. The squires and _squireens_ in Lever's and Maxwell's
+novels are very amusing to read about; but they are a race that nobody
+at the present day would seriously wish to revive. However this may be,
+there is little inducement for the existing landlords to remain resident
+in a country where they are continually threatened, and occasionally
+shot. I cannot help thinking that in the tendency to absenteeism,
+courageous statesmanship might find the means of solving the Land
+problem. There should be little difficulty, one would imagine, in
+persuading a number of existing Irish landlords to part with their
+estates for a reasonable compensation.[29] The Church Surplus is at hand
+to provide the purchase-money. After deducting the sums to be paid to
+the Intermediate Education Board, and to the National School Teachers'
+Pension Fund, there will remain nearly four millions in the hands of the
+Temporalities Commission. This money judiciously advanced to tenant
+farmers would enable a considerable number of them to acquire the
+freehold of their farms, and thus the foundations of a peasant
+proprietary might be laid without any confiscation or disturbance of
+vested rights. The Royal Commission on Agriculture would perhaps be a
+good medium for acquiring information on this subject. They might
+include in the scope of their inquiry the best method of carrying out
+some such scheme as has been here indicated.
+
+Having set out with no intention beyond that of offering a general view
+of a few leading facts and figures relating to Irish affairs, I find
+myself insensibly gliding into a political discussion. So far as I have
+any excuse for this, it must be found in the irrepressible character of
+the Land problem; which, as I before remarked, can by no possibility be
+evaded by any one who writes on Irish social economy. Yet this problem
+itself is in one aspect simply a phase of the struggle going on all over
+the world between, labour and capital. Side by side with this there is
+yet another struggle going on, which is also a phase of a world-wide
+conflict. It is the old story of Priesthood against Free Thought; but in
+Ireland, like nearly all things Irish, it bears a peculiar aspect of its
+own. Many a man here would be amazed to be told that he is fighting on
+the side of the priests; yet the Irish Orange Tory, and to some extent
+even the Irish Evangelical clergyman, is really and truly (though of
+course unconsciously) helping the policy of the Roman Church. But it
+would extend my essay beyond all reasonable limits to discuss this
+matter; and besides, I set out to write on statistics, and not on
+politics.[30]
+
+    EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] The statistics in this Essay are chiefly taken from _Thom's Almanac
+and Official Directory for 1878_. The tables given in that Almanac are
+for the most part brought down no later than 1876. It so happens,
+however, that 1876 is a very convenient date for the purpose of this
+paper. It marks the conclusion of a period of just thirty years from the
+worst crisis of the Potato Famine; and it marks also the conclusion of a
+cycle of commercial inflation, some of whose results were strongly felt
+in Ireland.
+
+I have, of course, consulted other authorities besides _Thom's
+Directory_, but I shall specify these as occasion arises. When no
+special reference is given, my authority is Thom.
+
+[22] While I write _Eason's Almanac for 1879_ has been published. This
+authority gives the total average of paupers daily in receipt of relief
+through 1877 as 78,223, or 146.5 in 10,000 of the population. An
+increase of less than six in ten thousand is not very alarming, and the
+fact seems in some measure to justify the opinion I have ventured to
+express in the text, that Ireland will be found to suffer less from the
+present crisis than other parts of the United Kingdom. It must, however,
+be taken into consideration that the present year (1879) threatens a
+very poor harvest: and this circumstance is absolutely certain to
+enhance whatever distress already exists.
+
+[23] See note on previous page.
+
+[24] The 24-1/4 millions in England and Wales are kept in order by a
+police force of 29,689. In Scotland 3-1/2 millions of population have
+only 3356 policemen. In Ireland, with a population well under 5-1/2
+millions, there are 12,081 policemen. And yet, as will appear presently,
+there is far less crime in Ireland relatively than in either of the
+other kingdoms.
+
+[25] It is only just to admit that the death sentences are not a fair
+test. Too many murders remain undetected, owing to the existence of
+agrarian conspiracy. The number of murders known to have been committed
+is unluckily not to be found in the returns to which I have access. But
+the very fact of their remaining undetected is a proof that they are not
+directly connected with intoxication, for it shows that they are for the
+most part agrarian.
+
+[26] It has been calculated, apparently on trustworthy data, that an
+acre of land planted with larch or fir, at an expense of about �20,
+would be worth �2000 at the end of forty years, besides the intermediate
+yield from clearings of young timber, game cover, and so forth. This is
+a very high return for a small outlay; but it is completely beyond the
+means of any peasant proprietor.
+
+[27] _Eason's Almanac_, 1879. The actual number is 285,464. The total of
+agricultural holdings is 581,963.
+
+[28] I have unfortunately been unable to obtain any statistics of the
+cross-channel trade. I find it stated in _Thom's Directory_ that the
+trade of Belfast alone was valued in the year 1866 at �24,332,000--viz.,
+�12,417,000 imports and �11,915,000 exports. The year 1866 was a bad
+year: so it may be assumed that these figures represent a low average. I
+find no means of estimating the import and export trade of Cork and
+Dublin.
+
+I may mention here that one cause of interruption in the composition of
+this paper was an unsuccessful search for complete trade statistics.
+
+[29] A few of the Home Rule M.P.'s who are now stumping the country on
+the Land grievance are themselves landlords. It has been suggested that
+they should introduce fixity of tenure on their estates, in one or other
+of its various forms. Mr. Errington (who is _not_ one of the stump
+orators of the party) has, I am told, notified his intention to give
+long leases to his tenantry. In a case like this the _argumentum ad
+hominem_, though a perfectly fair one, is a perfectly useless one.
+
+[30] I have referred above (note, p. 463) to my failure to obtain trade
+statistics. This circumstance has caused me to fail also in fully
+carrying out the original plan of this paper. I had intended not only to
+give a general view of the recent condition of the Irish people, but to
+enter somewhat fully into its causes, and discuss the probabilities of
+the future. The great revival in prosperity, which I have imperfectly
+sketched, was closely connected with the cross-channel trade. At
+present, affairs look sufficiently gloomy both here and in England; and
+the forecast of the future depends mainly upon the prospect of revival
+in English trade.
+
+
+
+
+THE DELUGE:
+
+ITS TRADITIONS IN ANCIENT NATIONS.
+
+
+Of all traditions relating to the history of primitive humanity, by far
+the most universal is that of the Deluge. Our present purpose is to pass
+under review the principal versions of it extant among the leading races
+of men. The concordance of these with the Biblical narrative will bring
+out their primary unity, and we shall thus be able to recognize the fact
+of this tradition being one of those which date before the dispersion of
+peoples, go back to the very dawn of the civilized world, and can only
+refer to a real and definite event.
+
+But we have previously to get rid of certain legendary recollections
+erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, their essential
+features forbidding sound criticism to assimilate them therewith. We
+allude to such as refer to local phenomena, and are of historic and
+comparatively recent date. Doubtless the tradition of the great
+primitive cataclysm may have been confused with these, and thus have led
+to an exaggeration of their importance; but the characteristic points of
+the narrative admitted into the Book of Genesis are wanting, and even
+under the legendary form it has assumed these events retain a decidedly
+special and restricted character. To group recollections of this nature
+with those that really relate to the Deluge would be to invalidate,
+rather than confirm, the consequences we are entitled to draw from the
+latter.
+
+Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books of
+China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even
+resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the
+date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous
+to the eighth century B.C., we may yet determine as long subsequent to
+the fully historic periods of Egypt and Babylon.[31] Chinese authors
+describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course
+of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of
+every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot, has
+proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the
+Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above
+catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its banks
+had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were but the
+beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters, carried on
+further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven on the rocky
+face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for contemporaneous
+with these works, and is consequently the most ancient specimen of
+Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears to present an
+intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts
+suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious fact
+connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through ancient
+copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research has
+failed to re-discover the original.
+
+Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the
+legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the
+ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America,
+although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with the
+fundamental historic element.
+
+Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica,
+having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river Funzha
+leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its waters;
+men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few escape by flight
+to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that Botchica broke
+asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, in
+order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next reassembled the
+dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship, and went up
+to heaven, after having lived 500 years in Cundinamarca.
+
+
+I.
+
+_Chaldean and Biblical Narratives._--Of the traditions relating to the
+great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans.
+Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the
+tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes
+nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes
+evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time when
+Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into Palestine.
+
+We have two versions of the Chaldean story--unequally developed indeed,
+but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and
+also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of
+Babylon and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of
+the Greeks.[32] After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the
+Chaldean priest continues thus:--
+
+    "Obart�s Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra)
+    reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the
+    Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred
+    documents as follows:--Cronos (�a) appeared to him in his sleep, and
+    announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the
+    Assyrian month Sivan--a little before the summer solstice), all men
+    should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the
+    beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to
+    writing,[33] and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then
+    to build a vessel, and to enter into it with his family and dearest
+    friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to
+    cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare
+    everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what
+    direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'towards the
+    gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.
+
+    "Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and
+    five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and
+    embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.
+
+    "The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some
+    of the birds. These finding no food nor place to alight on returned
+    to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but
+    they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally,
+    loosed the third time the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros
+    understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof
+    of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain.
+    He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot,
+    worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the
+    gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.
+
+    "Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel not seeing Xisuthros
+    return, descended too and began to seek him, calling him by his
+    name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard
+    commanding them piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was
+    receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell
+    thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his
+    daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour. The
+    voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and
+    conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at
+    Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country
+    in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having
+    heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to
+    Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in
+    Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in
+    Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped
+    from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of
+    witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon,
+    disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities,
+    built temples, and restored Babylon."
+
+By the side of this version, which, interesting though it be, is, after
+all, second hand, we are now able to place an original
+Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the
+first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh and now in
+the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an
+episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chaunt of the great epic of
+the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name
+has not as yet been made out with certainty,[34] being attacked by
+disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult
+the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to
+which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He
+asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his
+obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is
+induced to relate the cataclysm.
+
+By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the
+palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the
+narrative with hardly any breaks.[35] These three copies were, by order
+of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C.,
+from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of
+Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is
+difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian
+scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen
+centuries, at least, before our era, and even probably beyond; it was
+therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with
+Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove
+that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the
+_hieratic_, a character which must have already become difficult to
+decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to
+the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have
+simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand.
+Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the
+original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a
+copy of some still more ancient manuscript, in which the original text
+had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have
+introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these
+preliminary observations I proceed to give integrally the narrative
+ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:--
+
+    "I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my
+    preservation--and tell to thee the decision of the gods.
+
+    "The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on
+    the Euphrates--it was ancient and in it [men did not honour] the
+    gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods--[The gods
+    took counsel on the appeal of] Anu--[a deluge was proposed by]
+    Bel--[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
+
+    "And the god [�a] the immutable lord,--repeated this command in a
+    dream.--I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he
+    said to me:--'Man of Shiruppak, son of Ubaratutu--thou, build a
+    vessel and finish it [quickly].--[By a deluge] I will destroy
+    substance and life.--Cause thou to go up into the vessel the
+    substance of all that has life.--The vessel thou shall build--600
+    cubits shall be the measure of its length--and 60 cubits the amount
+    of its breadth and of its height.--[Launch it] thus on the ocean and
+    cover it with a roof.'--I understood, and I said to �a, my
+    lord:--'[The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus--[when] I
+    shall do it,--young and old [shall laugh at me.]'--[�a opened his
+    mouth and] spoke.--He said to me, his servant:--'[If they laugh at
+    thee] thou shalt say to them: [shall be punished] he who has
+    insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.-- ... like
+    to caverns ... ---- ... I will exercise my judgment on that which is
+    on high and that which is below ... ---- ... Close the vessel ...
+    ---- ... At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,--enter
+    into it and draw the door of the ship towards thee.--Within it, thy
+    grains, thy furniture, thy provisions,--thy riches, thy
+    men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people--the
+    cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the plain that I will
+    assemble--and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy
+    door.'--Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;--he said to �a, his
+    lord:--'No one has made [such a] ship.--On the prow I will
+    fix....--I shall see ... and the vessel ...--the vessel thou
+    commandest me to build [thus]--which in....[36]
+
+    "On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.--In its
+    covering fourteen in all were its rafters--fourteen in all did it
+    count above.--I placed its roof and I covered it.--I embarked in it
+    on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;--I divided
+    the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks
+    through which the water entered in;--I visited the chinks and added
+    what was wanting.--I poured on the exterior three times 3,600
+    measures of asphalte,--and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte
+    within.--Three times 3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the
+    chests of provisions.--I kept 3,600 chests for the nourishment of my
+    family,--and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3,600
+    chests.--For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;--I instituted
+    [rations] for each day.--In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of
+    barrels and of wine--[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of
+    a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the
+    earth.--[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.-- ... of
+    the sun ... the vessel was completed.-- ... strong and--I had
+    carried above and below the furniture of the ship.--[This lading
+    filled the two-thirds.]
+
+    "All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver
+    I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered--all
+    that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered
+    together.--I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants male and
+    female,--the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains,
+    and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend."
+
+    "Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined and----he announced it
+    in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly
+    from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.'----The fixed
+    moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms: 'In the
+    evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven.'----When the
+    evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,----I entered into the
+    vessel and shut my door.----In shutting the vessel, to
+    Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot----I confided this dwelling, with all
+    that it contained.
+
+    "Mu-sheri-ina-namari[37]--rose from the foundations of heaven in a
+    black cloud;--Ramman[38] thundered in the midst of the cloud--and
+    Nabon and Sharru marched before;--they marched, devastating the
+    mountain and the plain;--Nergal[39] the powerful, dragged
+    chastisements after him;--Adar[40] advanced, overthrowing before
+    him;--the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction--in their
+    terrors they agitated the earth.--The inundation of Ramman swelled
+    up to the sky--and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed
+    into a desert.
+
+    "They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;--[they
+    destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.--The
+    terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].--The brother no
+    longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In
+    heaven--the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and--sought a
+    refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[41]--The gods were
+    stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like
+    dogs.--Ishtar wailed like a child,--the great goddess pronounced her
+    discourse:--'Here is humanity returned into mud, and--this is the
+    misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.--So I
+    announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,--for the evil
+    I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.--I am
+    the mother who gave birth to men, and--like to the race of fishes,
+    there they are filling the sea;--and the gods by reason of
+    that--which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with
+    me.'--The gods on their seats were seated in tears--and they held
+    their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
+
+    "Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and
+    the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the
+    seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible
+    water-spout--which had assailed after the fashion of an
+    earthquake--grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and
+    the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
+    observing--and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto
+    seaweeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light
+    smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I
+    wept;--and my tears came over my face.
+
+    "I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points
+    of the horizon; not any continent.--The vessel was borne above the
+    land of Nizir--the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did
+    not permit it to pass over.--A day and a second day the mountain of
+    Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;--the
+    third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and
+    did not permit it to pass over;--the fifth and sixth day the
+    mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass
+    over.--At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a
+    dove. The dove went, turned, and--found no place to light on, and it
+    came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went,
+    turned, and--found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent
+    out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the
+    waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.
+
+    "I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds,
+    and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on
+    the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured
+    vases,[42]--and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood.
+    The gods were seized with the desire of it--the gods were seized
+    with a benevolent desire of it;--and the gods assembled like flies
+    above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the
+    great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their
+    glory (the gods).[43] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will
+    never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave
+    them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!--but never may Bel
+    come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he
+    has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men
+    for the pit.'
+
+    "From far, in drawing near, Bel--saw the vessel, and Bel
+    stopped;--he was filled with anger against the gods and the
+    celestial archangels:--
+
+    "'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the
+    abyss!'--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior
+    Bel:--'What other than �a should have formed this resolution?--for
+    �a possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all.'--�a opened his mouth
+    and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--'O thou, herald of the gods,
+    warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the
+    water-spout of the deluge.--Let the sinner carry the weight of his
+    sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.--Please thyself
+    with this good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it
+    never [shall be violated.]--Instead of thy making a new deluge, let
+    lions appear and reduce the number of men; instead of thy making a
+    new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;--instead
+    of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine and let the earth be
+    [devastated];--instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara[44]
+    appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision
+    of the great gods;--it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and
+    comprehended what the gods had decided.'
+
+    "Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the
+    vessel.--He took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise and
+    made her place herself at my side.--He turned around us and stopped
+    short; he approached our group.--'Until now Khasisatra has made part
+    of perishable humanity;--but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are
+    going to be carried away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will
+    reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'--They carried me away and
+    established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."
+
+This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that, or
+rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides
+striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated,
+that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different
+narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the
+other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final
+editor. Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he
+omitted no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice
+narrated in different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are
+mixed up, it is easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each
+should form a continuous and unbroken narrative. Some critics have
+recently pretended that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and
+Deluge, both cuneiform documents disproved the distinction between the
+two sources of Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its
+composition; that the same repetitions, in effect, were to be found
+there. This was a premature conclusion, drawn from translations very
+imperfect as yet, and requiring thorough revision; and, indeed,
+confining ourselves to the story of the Deluge, such revision, carried
+on according to strict philological principles, does away with the
+arguments that had been based on the version of George Smith. None of
+the repetitions of the final text of Genesis are observable in the
+Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary, decisively confirms the
+distinction made between the two narratives, the Elohist and Jehovist,
+interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. It is with each of
+these separately--when disentangled and compared--that the Chaldean
+narrative coincides in its order--it is not with the result of their
+combination. And nothing could be easier than to demonstrate this by a
+synoptic table, in which the three narratives were collated.
+
+Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference,
+what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its
+own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions of the
+same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on the one
+hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel streams
+proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on both sides
+divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation of the two
+traditions to have taken place at a very remote era, and the one of
+which the Bible affords us the expression to be not merely an edition of
+that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated from a severely
+monotheistic point of view.
+
+The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant
+of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, _t�b�h_, signifies
+"coffer," and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the
+ark; there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no
+pilot. In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have
+been composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a
+reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the
+Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is
+launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with
+bitumen, it is entrusted to a pilot.
+
+The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king, who
+goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants and
+companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who are
+saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's three
+sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction (in
+the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between clean and
+unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered by sevens,
+although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially sacramental
+character.
+
+As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only between
+the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal, but between
+the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform documents measure
+the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus by stadia. Genesis states its
+length and breadth to have been in the proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of
+5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand,
+the fragments of Berosus do not treat of the relative dimensions of
+height and breadth, and the tablet gives them as equal, while the Bible
+speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty of breadth. But these
+differences as to figures have but a secondary importance; nothing so
+liable to alterations and variations in different editions of the same
+narrative. We may observe, however, that in Genesis it is only the
+Elohist--always much addicted to figures--who gives the dimensions of
+the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the Jehovist alone who tells of
+the sending forth of the birds, which occupies a considerable place in
+the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations here between the Biblical
+story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter adding the swallow to
+the dove and the raven, and not attributing to the dove the part of a
+messenger of good tidings, I do not think they go for much. The
+agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of far more importance.
+
+But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the
+absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the
+Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different
+systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions,
+dissimilar in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from
+Chaldea.
+
+By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the ordinal
+numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a lunar year,
+beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October), at the autumnal
+equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the Author of the Targum
+of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi and Kimchi, among the Jewish
+commentators of the Middle Ages; and proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis
+among the moderns. The rain begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark
+the 17th day of the second month--_i.e._, Marcheshvan. The great force
+of the waters lasts 150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month--_i.e._,
+Nisan (March-April)--the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the
+tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the
+mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following
+year--that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox--the waters have
+completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the second
+month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus eleven days--that
+is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365 days. Now, under
+the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria, the rains of late
+autumn begin towards the end of November, and at once the level of the
+Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow of the two rivers
+occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at the end of May, from
+which time the waters go down. At the end of June they have left the
+plains, and from August to November are at their lowest level. Now the
+dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist, and re-stated as we have been
+doing according to Michaelis and Knobel, accord perfectly with these
+phases of the rising and falling of the two Mesopotamian rivers. They
+accord even better in the primitive system which served for
+starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has been so ingeniously
+restored by M. Schr�der,[45] a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days
+in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its greatest height and
+150 for its decrease. According to this system, the leaving of the ark
+must have taken place on the first day of the 601st year of Noah's
+life--that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox.
+Thus the deliverance of the father of the new humanity, as well as the
+Covenant made by God with him and his race, were fixed on the very day
+to which an ancient opinion which has maintained itself among the Jews
+assigned the creation of the world. As to the beginning of the Deluge,
+it occurred, according to the same system, on the 1st day of the third
+month--that is to say, at the commencement of the lunation whose end
+coincided with the Sun's entry into Capricorn, when the conjunction of
+planets brought about periodic deluges according to an astrological
+conception of Chaldean origin, which does not indeed appear a very
+ancient one; but must have been based on data adopted by some of the
+sacerdotal schools of Babylonia as to the epoch of the cataclysm.
+
+It is also with the winter rains, and not with the swelling of the
+Euphrates and Tigris in spring, that the calendrical construction,
+according to which the antediluvian kings or patriarchs have been placed
+in relation with solar mansions (a construction followed in Uruk's Epic
+poem), causes the commencement of the Deluge to coincide. It connects,
+in point of fact, the tradition of the cataclysm with the month of
+Shabut (January-February), and with the sign of Aquarius. Accordingly, I
+find great difficulty in admitting the exactness of the date, 15th of
+Daisios, given in the extract of Alexander Polybister, as that assigned
+by Berosus to the Deluge, for this would make the event occur in the
+middle of the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, in a
+season of complete drought, when the rivers have reached their lowest
+level. I hold this to be an evident error, due not to the author of the
+Chaldean History himself, but to his transcriber. Berosus must have
+written =m�nos ogdou; pempt� kai dekat�= the 15th of the eighth month,
+translating into Greek the Assyrian name of the Arakh-Shanina. And by a
+readily explicable error Cornelius Alexander must have turned it into
+Daisios, which was the eighth month of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar,
+forgetting the difference between the initial point of its year and that
+of the Chaldeo-Assyrian. In reality, then, the date given by Berosus
+only differed by two days from that adopted by the Elohist compiler of
+Genesis. Besides, as Knobel rightly insists, in placing the commencement
+of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th of a month, we place it always at the
+full moon, for it is also with this phase of the light that lights the
+night that popular belief in Egypt and Mesopotamia links the periodic
+rise of Nile or Tigris.
+
+The system of the Jehovist is quite a different one. According to him,
+Jahveh announces the Deluge to Noah only seven days beforehand. The
+waters are at their height for forty days, and decrease during forty
+more. After these eighty days Noah sends out the three birds at
+intervals of seven days, and thus it is on the 21st day after he has
+opened the window of the ark for the first time that he, too, goes out
+of the ark and offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here the phases of the
+cataclysm are evidently calculated on those of the annual spring outflow
+of the Euphrates and Tigris, so that we need not hesitate to assign the
+origin of the very form of the tradition received by the Jehovist
+writer, to the cradle of the race of the Terahites in Chaldea. The
+overflow of the two rivers of Mesopotamia lasts, in fact, for an average
+of seventy-five days from the middle of March to the end of May; and
+twenty-six days later--that is, at the end of the 101 in all (80 + 21 =
+75 + 26 = 101), when the Jehovist makes Noah leave the ark--the lands
+which have been inundated become once more practicable.
+
+What, moreover, in the Jehovist narrative bears a very marked impress of
+Chaldean origin is the part played in it by septennial periods; seven
+days intervening between the announcement and the beginning of the
+Deluge, seven between each sending forth of the birds. That religious
+and mystic importance attached to the heptade which gave rise to the
+conception of the seven days of creation, and to the invention of the
+week, is an essentially Chaldean idea. It is among the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians that we discover its origin and find its most
+numerous applications. The story of Khasisatra, in the poem of Uruk,
+invariably proceeds hebdomadally. The violence of the Deluge lasts seven
+days, and so does the stay of the vessel on Mount Nizir when the waters
+begin to go down. It is true, indeed, that the building of the vessel
+occupies eight instead of seven days; but we must add the time necessary
+for the embarkation of provisions, animals, passengers, and this will
+enable us to calculate the whole duration of Khasisatra's preparations
+between the vision sent him by �a and the moment when he closes the
+vessel at the approach of the rain, as consisting of fourteen days or
+two hebdomades. This being granted, if the poem does not state precisely
+the intervals at which the three birds were sent forth, we are justified
+in applying here the figures used by the Jehovist in Genesis, and
+counting seven days between the first and second sending forth, seven
+between the second and third, and seven, lastly, between the departure
+of the bird which does not return, and the leaving the vessel. The whole
+interval, then, between the warning of �a and the sacrifice of
+Khasisatra, amounts to seven hebdomades--plainly a number intentionally
+assigned. And the whole duration of the Deluge is doubled by the sacred
+writer, who was the author of the Jehovist document, 7 � 2 � 7, instead
+of 7 � 7; that is, fourteen weeks with just three days over, owing to
+the writer having employed the round numbers 40 + 40 = 80 days, instead
+of the precise number seventy-seven days or eleven hebdomades (7 + 4 �
+7), to indicate the interval between the beginning of the diluvian rain
+and the sending forth of the first bird. And now, if we keep count of
+the time between the announcing of the cataclysm by Jahveh and its
+commencement, the figures of the Jehovist are in all 7 � 2 � 7 + 7 days,
+and those of the system of the Chaldean poem 7 � 7. But they are on both
+sides combinations of seven.
+
+Where the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative and that of the Bible absolutely
+diverge, is in their statement of what, after the Deluge, befell the
+righteous man saved from it. According to the figures of the Elohist,
+Noah lives on among his descendants for 350 years, and dies at the age
+of 950. Khasisatra receives the privilege of immortality; is carried
+away "to live like the gods," and transported into "a distant place,"
+where the hero of Uruk goes to visit him in order to learn the secrets
+of life and death. But in the Bible we have something of the same kind
+told us of Noah's great-grandfather Enoch, who "walked with God, and was
+not, because God took him." We see, then, that the Babylonian tradition
+united in the person of Khasisatra facts which the Bible distributes
+between Enoch and Noah, the two whom Holy Scripture equally
+characterizes as having "walked with God."
+
+The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess," erroneously
+attributed to Lucian, acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the
+Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in
+the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce.
+
+    "The generality of people, he says, tell us that the founder of the
+    temple was Deucalion Sisythes, that Deucalion in whose time the
+    great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by
+    the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus:--The actual
+    race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the
+    members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended
+    from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of time. As to the
+    former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride,
+    committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the
+    rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants, accordingly they
+    were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous
+    volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary
+    abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds, and the sea
+    overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water, and
+    all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety,
+    was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was
+    saved:--He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great
+    coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all
+    other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received
+    them all, and while they were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with
+    reciprocal amity which prevented their devouring one another. In
+    this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long
+    as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the
+    Greeks of Deucalion.
+
+    "But to this which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a
+    marvellous narrative:--That in their country a great chasm opened,
+    into which all the waters of the deluge poured. Then Deucalion
+    raised an altar and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to
+    this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated
+    under the temple. Whether it was once large and has now shrunk, I do
+    not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of
+    the event the following is the rite accomplished:--Twice a year sea
+    water is brought to the temple. This is not only done by the
+    priests, but numerous pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and
+    Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bringing water. It is
+    poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft which, narrow as it
+    is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to be in
+    virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the
+    memory of the catastrophe and of the benefits that he received from
+    the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."
+
+It appears to me difficult not to recognize an echo of fables popular
+in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it
+played in the Deluge,--in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran
+respecting the oven _tannur_ which began to bubble and disgorge water
+all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this _tannur_
+has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman
+commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mahomet
+made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that the waters
+of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.
+
+
+II.
+
+_Indian Traditions._--India, in its turn, affords us an account of the
+Deluge, which by its poverty strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible
+and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the
+_�atapatha Br�hmana_ of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the
+first time by M. Max M�ller.
+
+    "One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had
+    washed himself a fish remained in his hands. And it addressed these
+    words to him:--'Protect me and I will save thee.' 'From what wilt
+    thou save me?' 'A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from
+    that I will save thee.' 'How shall I protect thee?' The fish
+    replied: 'While we are small we run great dangers, for fish swallow
+    fish. Keep me at first in a vase; when I become too large for it dig
+    a basin to put me into. When I shall have grown still more, throw me
+    into the ocean; then I shall be preserved from destruction.' Soon it
+    grew a large fish. It said to Manu, 'The very year I shall have
+    reached my full growth the Deluge will happen. Then build a vessel
+    and worship me. When the waters rise, enter the vessel and I will
+    save thee.'
+
+    "After keeping him thus, Manu carried the fish to the sea. In the
+    year indicated Manu built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when
+    the Deluge came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming
+    up to him, and Manu fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of
+    the fish, by which means the latter made it pass over the mountain
+    of the North. The fish said, 'I have saved thee; fasten the vessel
+    to a tree that the water may not sweep it away while thou art on the
+    mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt
+    descend.' Manu descended with the waters, and this is what is called
+    the _descent of Manu_ on the mountain of the North. The deluge had
+    carried away all creatures, and Manu remained alone."
+
+Next in order of date and complication, which always goes on loading the
+narrative more and more with fantastic and parasitical details, comes
+the version in the enormous epic of _Mah�bh�rata_. That of the poem
+called _Bh�gavata-Pur�na_ is still more recent and fabulous. Finally,
+the same tradition forms the subject of an entire poem of very low date,
+the _Matsya-Pur�na_, of which an analysis has been given by the great
+Indian scholar, Wilson.
+
+In the preface to the third volume of his edition of _Bh�gavata-Pur�na_,
+Eugene Burnouf has carefully compared the three narratives known at the
+time he wrote (that of the _�atapatha Br�hmana_ has been since
+discovered), with a view to clearing up the origin of the Indian
+tradition of the Deluge. He points out in a discussion that deserves to
+remain a model of erudition and subtle criticism, that it is absolutely
+wanting in the Vedic hymns, where we only find distant allusions to it
+that seem to belong to a different kind of legend altogether, and also
+that this tradition was primitively foreign to the essentially Indian
+system of _Manvantaras_, or periodic destructions of the world. He
+thence concludes that it must have been imported into India subsequently
+to the adoption of this system, which is, however, very ancient, being
+common to Brahmanism and Buddhism, and therefore inclines to look upon
+it as a Semitic importation that took place in historic times, not,
+indeed, of Genesis, but more probably of the Babylonian tradition.
+
+The discovery of an original edition of the latter confirms the theory
+of the French savant. The leading feature which distinguishes the Indian
+narrative is the part assigned to a god who puts on the form of a fish,
+in order to warn Manu, to guide his vessel and save him from the flood.
+The nature of the metamorphosis is the only fundamental and primitive
+point, for different versions vary as to the personality of the god who
+assumes this form--the _Br�hmana_ leaves it uncertain, the _Mah�bh�rata_
+fixes on Brahma, and the compilers of the _Pur�nas_ on Vishnu. This is
+the more remarkable that this metamorphosis into a fish _Matsyavatara_
+remains isolated in Indian mythology, is foreign to its habitual
+symbolism, and gives rise to no ulterior developments: no trace being
+found in India of that fish-worship which was so important and
+widespread among other ancient people. Burnouf rightly saw in this a
+sign of importation from without, and especially of its Babylonian
+origin, for classic testimony, recently confirmed by native monuments,
+shows us that in the religion of Babylon the conception of
+ichthyomorphic gods held a more prominent place than elsewhere. The part
+played by the divine fish with regard to Manu in the Indian legend, is
+attributed both by the Epic of Uruk and by Berosus to the god �a, who is
+also designated Schalman, "the Saviour." Now this god, whose type of
+representation we now know certainly from Assyrian and Babylonian
+monuments, is essentially the ichthyomorphic god, and his image almost
+invariably combines the forms of fish and man. In astronomical tables
+frequent mention is made of the catasterism of the "fish of �a," which
+is indubitably our sign Pisces, since it presides over the month Adar.
+It is to a connection of ideas based on the diluvian record, that we
+must attribute the placing of Pisces--primarily of the "fish of
+�a"--next to Aquarius, whose relation to the history of the Deluge we
+have already pointed out. Here we have an evident allusion to the part
+of Saviour attributed by the people who invented the Zodiac, to the god
+�a in the flood, and to the idea of an ichthyomorphic nature especially
+belonging to this aspect of his personality. �a is, moreover, the
+Oann�s, lawgiver of the fragments of Berosus, half-man, half-fish, whose
+form, answering to the description given by the Chaldean history, has
+been discovered in the sculptures of Assyrian palaces and on cylinders,
+the Euahan�s of Hygin, and the O�s of Helladios.[46]
+
+Whenever we find among two different peoples one same legend, with as
+_special_ a circumstance which does not spring _naturally_ and
+_necessarily_ from the fundamental facts of the narrative, and when,
+moreover, this circumstance is closely connected with the whole
+religious conceptions of one of these peoples, and remains isolated and
+alien from the customary symbolism of the other, criticism lays it down
+as an absolute rule that we must conclude the legend to have been
+transmitted from the one to the other in an already fixed form, to be a
+foreign importation, superimposed, not fused with the national, and as
+it were genial, traditions of the people, who have received, without
+having created it.
+
+We must also remark that in the _Pur�nas_ it is no longer Manu Vaivasata
+that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different personage,
+the King of the D�sas--_i.e._, fishers, Satyravata, "the man who loves
+justice and truth," strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean Khasisatra.
+Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised,
+though it be of recent date and full of fantastic and often puerile
+details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of _Br�hmana_
+or than the _Mah�bh�rata_, and above all it gives some circumstances
+omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the
+original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a
+circumstance preserved no doubt by the oral tradition--popular and not
+Brahmanic--with which the _Pur�nas_ are so deeply imbued. This has been
+already observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following passage
+of the _Bh�gavata-Pur�na_: "In _seven days_," said Vishnu to Satyravata,
+"the three worlds shall be submerged." There is nothing like this in the
+_Br�hmana_ nor the _Mah�bh�rata_, but in Genesis the Lord says to Noah,
+"_Yet seven days_ and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;" and a
+little further we read, "_After seven days_ the waters of the flood were
+upon the earth." And we have just pointed out the parts played by
+hebdomades as successive periods in that system of the duration of the
+flood, adopted by the author of the Jehovist documents inserted in
+Genesis, as well as by the compiler of the Chaldean Epic of Uruk. Nor
+must we pay less attention to what the _Bh�gavata-Pur�na_ says of the
+directions given by the fish-god to Satyravata for the placing of the
+sacred Scriptures in a safe place in order to preserve them from
+Hayagr�va, a marine horse dwelling in the abyss, and of the conflict of
+the god with this Hayagr�va, who had stolen the Vedas and thus produced
+the cataclysm by disturbing the order of the world. This circumstance
+too is wanting in the more ancient compositions, even in the
+_Mah�bh�rata_, but it is a most important one, and cannot be looked on
+as a spontaneous product of Indian soil, for we recognize in it under
+an Indian garb the very tradition of the interment of the sacred
+writings at Sippara by Khasisatra, such as we have it in the fragments
+of Berosus.
+
+It is the Chaldean form, then, of the tradition that the Indians have
+adopted owing to communications which the commercial relations between
+the countries render historically natural, and they afterwards amplified
+it with the exuberance peculiar to their imagination. But they must have
+adopted it all the more readily because it agreed with a tradition,
+which under a somewhat different form had been brought by their
+ancestors from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race. That the
+recollection of the flood did indeed form part of the original
+groundwork of the legends as to the origin of the world held by this
+great race, is beyond all doubt. For if Indians have accepted the
+Chaldean form of the story, so nearly allied to that of Genesis, all
+other nations of Aryan descent show themselves possessed of entirely
+original versions of the cataclysm which cannot be held to have been
+borrowed either from Babylonian or Hebrew sources.
+
+
+III.
+
+_Traditions of other Aryan Peoples._--Among the Iranians, in the sacred
+books containing the fundamental Zoroastrian doctrines, and dating very
+far back, we meet with a tradition which must assuredly be looked upon
+as a variety of that of the Deluge, though possessing a special
+character, and diverging in some essential particulars from those we
+have been examining. It relates how Yima, who in the original and
+primitive conception was the father of the human race, was warned by
+Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth being about to be devastated by
+a flood. The god ordered Yima to construct a refuge, a square garden,
+_vara_, protected by an enclosure, and to cause the germs of men,
+beasts, and plants to enter it, in order to escape annihilation.
+Accordingly, when the inundation occurred, the garden of Yima with all
+that it contained was alone spared, and the message of safety was
+brought thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy of Ahuramazda.[47]
+
+A comparison has also been made, but erroneously as I think, between the
+Biblical and Chaldean Deluge and a story only found complete in the
+_Bundahesh-pahlavi_;[48] though, as a few of the older books contain
+allusions to some of its circumstances;[49] it must date further back
+than this edition of it, which is recent. Ahuramazda determines to
+destroy the Khaf�tras--_i.e._, the maleficent spirits created by
+Angr�mainyus, the spirit of evil: Tistrya, the genius of the star
+Sirius, descends at his command to earth, and, assuming the form of a
+man, causes it to rain for ten days. The waters cover the earth, and all
+maleficent beings are drowned. A violent wind dries the earth, but some
+germs of the evil spirit's creation remain, and may reappear, therefore
+Tistrya descends again under the form of a white horse, and produces a
+second Deluge by another rainfall of ten days. To prevent him
+accomplishing his task, the demon Apusha assumes the appearance of a
+black horse, and engages in combat; but he is struck with lightning by
+Ahuramazda, as well as the demon �pendjaghra, who had come to his aid.
+Finally, to bring about the complete destruction of evil, Tistrya
+descends the third time under the form of a bull, and produces a third
+Deluge by a third rainfall of ten days, after which the waters divide to
+form the four great and the twenty-four small seas. Now all this relates
+to a cosmogonic fact, anterior to the creation of man. The Khaf�tras,
+from which Tistrya undertakes to purge the earth, are the hurtful and
+venomous beasts created by Angr�mainyus which fervent Mazedans make it a
+duty to destroy in our actual world--such as scorpions, lizards, toads,
+serpents, rats, &c. There is no allusion here to humanity, or the
+punishment of its sins. If we were bent on finding in our Bible any
+parallel to this first rain falling on the surface of the earth--which
+both destroys the hurtful creatures by which it was infested and renders
+it productive of a fertile vegetation--we should turn, not to the
+account of the Deluge, but to what is said in Gen. ii. 5, 6.
+
+The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which
+primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the name
+of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of Boeotia or Attica; a quite
+mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name seemingly
+derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in Sanscrit _�ngha_.
+It is said that in his time the whole land was covered by a flood, whose
+waters reached the sky, and from which he, together with some
+companions, escaped in a vessel.
+
+The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus having
+worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose crimes he was
+wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his father, constructed a
+coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The Deluge came,
+the chest or coffer floated at the mercy of the waves for nine days and
+nine nights, and was finally stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and
+Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and according to the command of Zeus
+re-people the world by throwing behind them "the bones of the
+earth"--namely, stones, which change into men. This Deluge of Deucalion
+is in Grecian tradition what most resembles a universal Deluge. Many
+authors affirm that it extended to the whole earth, and that the whole
+human race perished. At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease
+the manes of its victims, a ceremony called _Hydrophoria_ was observed,
+having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis in Syria,
+that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Phoenician
+importation, and the result of an assimilation established in remote
+antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as
+described by the author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess."[50]
+Close to the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the soil was
+shown, in length but one cubit, through which it was said the waters of
+the Deluge had been swallowed up. Thus, every year, on the third day of
+the festival of the Anthest�ria, a day of mourning consecrated to the
+dead,--that is, on the thirteenth of the month of Anthest�rion, towards
+the beginning of March--it was customary, as at Bambyce, to pour water
+into the fissure, together with flour mixed with honey, poured also into
+the trench dug to the west of the tomb, in the funereal sacrifices of
+the Athenians.
+
+Others, on the contrary, limit Deucalion's flood to Greece, even declare
+that it only destroyed the larger portion of the community, a great many
+men saving themselves on the highest mountains. Thus the Delphian legend
+told how the inhabitants of that town, following the wolves in their
+flight, had taken refuge in a cave on the summit of Parnassus, where
+they built the town of Lycorea, whose foundation is, on the other hand,
+attributed by the Chronicle of Paros to Deucalion, after the
+reproduction by him of a new human race. Later mythographers necessarily
+adopted this idea of several points of simultaneous escape from a desire
+to reconcile the local legends of several places in Greece, which named
+some other than Deucalion as the hero saved from the flood. For
+instance, at Megara it was the eponym of the city Megaros, son of Zeus
+and of one of the nymphs Sithnides, who, warned by the cry of cranes of
+the imminence of the danger, took refuge on Mount Geranien. Again, there
+was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to have escaped the flood by
+rising into the air on wings given him by the nymphs, and it was
+Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had preserved at Dodona. For
+the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero of the Deluge was Merops,
+son of Hyas, who there assembled under his rule the remnant of humanity
+preserved with him. The traditions of Rhodes only supposed the
+Telchines, those of Crete Jasion, to have escaped the cataclysm. In
+Samothracia the same character was attributed to Saon, said to be the
+son of Zeus or of Hermes; he seems only to have been a heroic form of
+the Herm�s Saos or S�cos, the object of special worship in the island, a
+divinity in whom M. Philippe Berges recognizes with good reason a
+Phoenician importation, the Sakan of Canaan identified elsewhere with
+Hermes Dardanos, supposed to have arrived in Samothracia immediately
+after these events, being driven by the Deluge from Arcadia.
+
+In all these flood stories of Greece we cannot doubt that the tradition
+of a cataclysm fatal to the whole of humanity--a tradition common to all
+Aryan peoples--was mixed up, as Knobel rightly observes, more or less
+precisely with local catastrophes produced by extraordinary overflows of
+lakes or rivers, or the rupture of their natural embankments, the
+sinking of some portions of the sea-coast, or tidal waves consequent
+upon earthquakes or sudden upheavals of the ocean bed. Such events were
+frequent in Greece, in the district between Egypt and Palestine, near
+Pelusium and Mount Casius, as well as in the Cimbric Chersonese. The
+Greeks used to relate how often their country had in primitive ages been
+the theatre of such catastrophes. Istros numbered four of these, one of
+which had opened the Straits of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, when the
+waters of the Euxine, rushing into the �gean, submerged the islands and
+neighbouring coasts. This is evidently the Deluge of Samothracia; where
+the inhabitants who succeeded in saving themselves did so only by
+gaining the highest peak of the mountain that rises there; then, in
+gratitude for their preservation, consecrated the whole island by
+surrounding its shores with a belt of altars dedicated to the gods. In
+like manner the tradition of the Deluge of Ogyges seems connected with
+the recollection of an extraordinary rise of the Lake Capa�s, inundating
+the whole of the great Boeotian Valley, a recollection amplified
+later--as is ever the case with legends--by applying to the local
+disaster all the details popularly told of the primitive Deluge which
+had taken place before the separation of the ancestors of the two races,
+Semitic and Aryan. It is also probable that some event that had occurred
+in Thessaly, or rather in the region of Parnassus, determined the
+localization of the legend of Deucalion. Nevertheless, it always
+retained, as we have seen, a more general character than the others,
+whether the Deluge be extended to the whole earth or limited to the
+whole of Greece.
+
+Be that as it may, the different narratives were reconciled by admitting
+three successive Deluges, those of Ogyges, Deucalion, and Dardanos. The
+general opinion pronounced the former the most ancient, placing it 600
+or 250 years before that of Deucalion. But this chronology is far from
+being universally accepted; and the inhabitants of Samothracia maintain
+their Deluge to have been the earliest. Christian chronographers of the
+third and fourth century, as, for instance, Julius Africanus and
+Eusebius, adopted the Hellenic dates of the Deluges of Ogyges and
+Deucalion, and inscribed them in their records as different events from
+the Mosaic Deluge, which, for their part, they fixed at 1000 years
+before that of Ogyges.
+
+In Phrygia the diluvian tradition was as natural as in Greece. The town
+of Apamea derived thence its surname _Kibotos_, or ark, and claimed to
+be the place where the Ark had stopped. Iconium had the like
+pretensions. In the same way the people of Milyas, in Armenia, showed
+the fragments of the Ark on the top of the mountain called Baris; and
+these were also exhibited in early Christian times to pilgrims on
+Ararat, as Berosus tells us that in his day the remnants of the vessel
+of Khasisatra were visited on the Gordyan range.
+
+In the second and third centuries of our era, by means of the syncretic
+infiltration of Jewish and Christian traditions even into minds still
+attached to Paganism, the sacerdotal authorities of Apamea and Phrygia
+had coins struck bearing an open ark, in which the patriarch and his
+wife were seen receiving back the dove with the olive branch, and side
+by side were the two same personages, having left the Ark to retake
+possession of the earth. On the Ark is inscribed the name =N�E=, the
+very form the name assumes in the Septuagint. Thus, at this time the
+Pagan priesthood of the Phrygian city had, we see, adopted the Biblical
+narrative, even down to its names, and had grafted it on the old native
+tradition. They related that a short while before the Deluge there
+reigned a holy man called Annacos, who had predicted it, and occupied
+the throne more than 300 years, an evident reproduction of the Enoch of
+the Bible, who walked with God for 365 years.
+
+As to the branch of the Celts--in the bardic poems of Wales, we have a
+tradition of the Deluge, which, although recent under the concise form
+of the Triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is
+localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible
+catastrophes of the island of Prydain, or Britain, the other two
+consisting of devastation by fire and by drought.
+
+    "The first of these events," it is said, "was the irruption of
+    Llyn-llion, or 'the lake of waves,' and the inundation (_bawdd_) of
+    the whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the
+    exception of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel
+    without rigging, and it was by them that the island of Prydain was
+    re-peopled."[51]
+
+Pictet here observes--
+
+    "Although the triads in their actual form hardly date further than
+    the thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly
+    connected with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a
+    borrowing from Genesis.
+
+    "But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad[52] speaking of the
+    vessel Nefydd-naf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of
+    Llyn-llion, bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much
+    resembles the ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have
+    suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but
+    evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the
+    same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (_ychain
+    bannog_) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyn-llion the _avanc_
+    (beaver or crocodile?) in order that the lake should not overflow.
+    The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering
+    the chaos of bardic monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile
+    we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an indigenous tradition of
+    the Deluge."
+
+We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian
+Ealda.[53] But here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The
+three sons of Borr, Othin, Wili, and We, grandsons of Buri, the first
+man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar or Ice giants, and his
+body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his
+wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it,
+except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and
+reproduces the race. "Thus," Pictet again observes, "the myth only
+belongs to the general tradition through these last features, by which,
+however, we trace it up to a common source."
+
+Of all European peoples the Lithuanians were the last to embrace
+Christianity, and their language remains nearest to the original Aryan.
+They have a legend of the Deluge, the groundwork of which appears very
+ancient, although it has assumed the simple character of a popular tale,
+and some of its details may have been borrowed from Genesis at the time
+of the first Christian missions. According to it[54] the god Pramzimras,
+seeing the whole earth to be full of iniquity, sends two giants, Wandu
+and W�jas (fire and wind), to lay it waste. These overthrew everything
+in their fury, and only a few men saved themselves on a mountain.
+Pramzimras, who was engaged in eating celestial walnuts, dropped a shell
+near the mountain, and in it the men took refuge, the giants respecting
+it. Having escaped from the calamity, they afterwards disperse, and only
+one very aged couple remain in the country, greatly bewailing their
+childless condition. Pramzimras, to console them, sends his rainbow and
+bids them jump "on the bones of the earth," which curiously recalls the
+oracle to Deucalion. The two old people jump nine times, and nine pairs
+are the result, who became the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes.
+
+
+IV.
+
+_Egyptian Traditions._--While the tradition of the Deluge holds so
+considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the
+Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many
+cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion
+to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the
+Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from
+it as well as from the conflagration produced by Pha�ton; they even
+added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to
+that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes
+resembling it. According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected,
+however, of being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had
+himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stel� in hieroglyphical and
+sacred language the principles of all knowledge. After it the second
+Thoth translated into the vulgar tongue the contents of these stel�.
+This would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho
+not speaking of it in what remains to us of his "Dynasties," his only
+complete authentic work. The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic
+religion on this head render it very likely that the above is merely a
+foreign tradition, recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and
+Chaldean origin. "Thus," says M. Maury, "the Seriadic land, where the
+passage in question places these hieroglyphic columns, might very well
+be no other than Chaldea. This tradition, though not in the Bible,
+existed as a popular legend among the Jews at the beginning of our era,
+which confirms our supposition; as the Hebrews might have learnt it
+during the Babylonian captivity. Josephus tells us that the patriarch
+Seth, in order that wisdom and astronomical knowledge should not perish,
+erected, in prevision of the double destruction by fire and water
+predicted by Adam, two columns, the one in brick, the other in stone, on
+which this knowledge was engraved, and which subsisted in the Seriadic
+country." This history is evidently only a variety of the Chaldean
+legend of the terra-cotta tables bearing the divine revelations, and the
+principles of all sciences which �a ordered Khasisatra to bury before
+the Deluge, "in the city of the Sun at Sippara," as we have had it above
+in the extracts from Berosus.
+
+Nevertheless, the Egyptians did admit a destruction by the gods of
+primal men on account of their rebellion and their sins. This event was
+related in a chapter of the sacred books of Thoth, those famous Hermetic
+books of the Egyptian priesthood which are graven on the sides of one of
+the inmost chambers of the funereal hypogeum of Seti the First at
+Thebes. The text has been published and translated by M. Edouard
+Naville.[55]
+
+The scene is laid at the close of the reign of the god R�, the earliest
+terrestrial reign, according to the system of the priests of Thebes, the
+second, according to that of the priests of Memphis, which is the one
+followed by Manetho, who placed at the very origin of things the reign
+of Phtah, previous to that of R�. Irritated by the impiety and crimes of
+the men he has made, the god assembles the other gods to hold counsel
+with them in profound secrecy, "so that men should not see it, nor their
+heart be afraid."
+
+    "Said by R� to Nun:[56] 'Thou, the eldest of the gods, of whom I am
+    born, and ye ancient gods, here are the men who are born from
+    myself; they speak words against me, tell me what you would do in
+    the matter; lo, I have waited, and have not slain them before
+    hearing your words.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Nun: 'My son R�, a greater god than he who
+    has made him and created him, I stand in great fear of thee; do thou
+    deliberate alone.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R�: 'Lo, they take to flight through the
+    country, and their hearts are afraid....'
+
+    "Said by the Gods: 'Let thy face permit, and let those men be
+    smitten who plot evil things, thine enemies, and let none [of them
+    remain.]'"
+
+A goddess, whose name has unfortunately disappeared, but who seems to
+have been Tefnut, identified with Hathor and Sekhet, is then sent to
+accomplish the sentence of destruction.
+
+    "This goddess left, and slew the men upon the earth.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of this God: 'Come in peace, Hathor; thou hast
+    done [what was ordained thee.]'
+
+    "Said by this Goddess: 'Thou art living; for I have been stronger
+    than men, and my heart is satisfied.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R�: 'I am living, for I will rule over them
+    [and I will complete] their ruin.'
+
+    "And lo, Sekhet, during several nights, trod their blood under-foot
+    as far as the town of H�-klinen-su (H�racl�opolis.)"
+
+But the massacre ended, the anger of R� was appeased; he began to repent
+of what he had done. A great expiatory sacrifice succeeded in finally
+calming him. Fruits were gathered throughout Egypt, bruised, and their
+juice mingled with human blood, 7000 pitchers being filled with it and
+presented to the god.
+
+    "And lo, the Majesty of R�, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, comes
+    with the gods in three days of sailing to see these vases of drink,
+    after he had ordered the goddess to slay men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R�: 'This is well; I will protect men
+    because of it.' Said by R�: 'I raise my hand concerning this, to say
+    that I will no more destroy men.'
+
+    "The Majesty of R�, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, commanded in
+    the middle of the night to overthrow the liquid in the vases, and
+    the fields were completely filled with water by the will of this
+    god. The goddess arrived in the morning, and found the fields full
+    of water. Her face grew joyous, and she drank abundantly and went
+    away satisfied. She no more perceived any men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R� to the goddess: 'Come in peace, gracious
+    goddess.'
+
+    "And he caused the young priestesses of Amu to be born.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R� to this goddess: 'Libations shall be made
+    to her at each of the festivals of the new year, under the
+    superintendence of my priestesses.'
+
+    "Hence it comes that libations are made under the superintendence of
+    the priestesses of Hathor by all men since the ancient days."
+
+Nevertheless, some men have escaped the destruction commanded by R�, and
+renewed the population of the earth. As for the solar god who reigns
+over the world, he feels himself old, sick and weary; he has had enough
+of living among men, whom he regrets not to have completely annihilated,
+but has sworn henceforth to spare.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of R�: 'There is a smarting pain that torments
+    me; what is it then that hurts me?' Said by the Majesty of R�: 'I am
+    living, but my heart is weary of being with them [men], and I have
+    in no way destroyed them. That destruction is not one that I have
+    made myself.'
+
+    "Said by the gods who accompany him: 'Away with lassitude, thou hast
+    obtained all thou didst desire.'"
+
+The god R� decides, however, to accept the help of the men of the new
+human race who offer themselves to him to combat his enemies, and a
+great battle takes place, out of which they come victorious. But in
+spite of this success the god, disgusted with earthly life, resolves to
+quit it for ever, and has himself carried into heaven by the goddess
+Nut, who takes the form of a cow. Then he creates a region of delight,
+the fields of Aalu, the Elysium of Egyptian mythology, which he peoples
+with stars. Entering into rest, he assigns to different gods the
+government of different parts of the world. Shu, who is to succeed him
+as king, is to administer celestial matters with Nut; Seb and Nun
+receive the charge of the things of earth and water. Finally, R�, a
+sovereign who has voluntarily abdicated, goes to dwell with Thoth, his
+favourite son, on whom he has bestowed the superintendence of the
+under-world.
+
+Such is this strange narrative, "in which," as M. Naville has well said,
+"in the midst of fantastic and often puerile inventions, we do
+nevertheless find the two terms of existence as understood by the
+ancient Egyptians. R� begins with earth, and passing through heaven
+stops in the region of profundity, Ament, in which he apparently wishes
+to sojourn. This then is a symbolic and religious representation of
+life, which for every Egyptian--and especially for a royal
+conqueror--had to begin and end like the sun. This explains the chapter
+being inscribed in a tomb."
+
+Hence it was the last portion of the narrative--which we can analyse but
+very briefly--the abdication of R� and his retreat, first, in heaven,
+next in the Ament, a symbol of death which is to be followed by
+resurrection as the setting of the sun by its rising--it is this which
+constituted its interest in the conception of the doctrine of a future
+life, illustrated in the decoration of the interior of the tomb of Seti
+I. For our present purpose, on the contrary, it is the beginning of the
+story which constitutes its importance, it is that destruction of primal
+humanity by the gods of which no mention has been hitherto found
+elsewhere. Although the means of destruction employed by R� are quite
+dissimilar, although he does not proceed by submersion but by a massacre
+in which the lion-headed goddess Tefnut or Sekhet, the dreadful form of
+Hathor, is the agent, the other sides of the story bear a sufficiently
+striking analogy to that of the Mosaic or Chaldean Deluge to show that
+it is the special and very individual form assumed in Egypt by that
+tradition. In both we have human corruption exciting divine wrath, and
+punished by a divinely ordained annihilation of the race, from which
+there escapes but a very small number destined to give birth to a new
+humanity. Finally, after the event an expiatory sacrifice appeases the
+celestial anger, and a solemn covenant is made between men and the
+deity, who swears never so to destroy them again. To me, the agreement
+of these principal features outweighs the divergence in detail. And we
+have also to observe how singularly akin is the part ascribed by the
+Egyptian priest to R� with that assigned in the epic poem of Uruk to the
+god Bel, in the deluge of Khasisatra. The Egyptians believed, as did
+other nations, in the destruction of mankind; but as inundation meant
+for them prosperity and life, they changed the primitive tradition; the
+human race, instead of perishing by water, was otherwise exterminated;
+and the inundation--that crowning benefit to the valley of the
+Nile--became in their eyes the sign that the wrath of R� was appeased.
+
+
+V.
+
+_American Stories of the Flood._
+
+    "It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find
+    in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that
+    of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the
+    Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that
+    certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and
+    Aleutian islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought
+    in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those
+    Mongol or Siberian populations,[57] which were fused with the
+    natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American nations, the
+    Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social condition
+    at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a
+    special character, and seems to have been developed on the soil
+    where it flourished. Many very simple inventions, such as the use of
+    weights, were unknown to these people, and this shows that their
+    knowledge was not derived from India or Japan. The attempts that
+    have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia
+    have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides,
+    had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could
+    not have introduced a myth not found in its own Scriptures.[58] The
+    cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the
+    nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore
+    unexplained."
+
+I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of immense
+erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers, and will not
+therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion. Others also, no
+less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness between
+American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible and the
+Chaldeans.
+
+The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they appear to
+have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before
+any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of
+the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli
+or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in
+a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft, made of cypress
+wood (_Cupressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox
+have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs,
+and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly
+in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in Chaldean
+sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife,
+his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was
+essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god
+Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture
+from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth
+was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the
+humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi,
+seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain
+of Colhuacan.
+
+The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as to
+the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus," from
+the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic
+pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual
+one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the
+conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los
+Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after the
+arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous
+traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.
+
+The first age is marked with the cipher 13�400+6, or 5206, which
+Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of the
+period, and Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement,
+from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution of the
+manuscript. This age is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Earth." It is that
+of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac, whose
+end was destruction by famine.
+
+The number of the second age is 12�400+4, or 4804, and it is called
+_Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on Earth of
+Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed into birds,
+and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one human pair
+find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.
+
+As to the third age, _Eh�catonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," its number is
+10�400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane raised
+by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men are
+metamorphosed into monkeys.
+
+Then comes the fourth age, _Atonatiuh_, "Sun of Water," whose number is
+10�400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge.
+All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his
+wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree.
+The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of
+Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards earth. Coxcox and
+Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a
+tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is
+represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.
+
+All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did not
+hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote quite
+recently:
+
+    "The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of
+    America, and Christian writers have not failed to see in it a
+    reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay, in connection with the
+    pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower of Babel. We
+    shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox,
+    among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of
+    flowers, Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of
+    Noah and his wife by joining on to them the story of the ark and the
+    dove. It is enough to observe that all these legends have only been
+    collected and published at a relatively recent period.[59] The first
+    chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity,
+    such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous
+    authors, such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec
+    Camargo, never breathe a word of stories they could not have failed
+    to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find
+    in Mr. Bancroft's[60] work a criticism of these legends, due to Don
+    Jos� Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum, which proves
+    incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and
+    tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which
+    according to him only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs
+    around the central lakes of the plateau of Anahuac."
+
+I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who
+are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which,
+indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And
+this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as
+anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its
+defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or
+Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of
+vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicu� or Mallalcu�y�, is a
+well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of
+Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a
+very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of
+unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves.
+There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two
+divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two
+survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the
+theory of Don Jos� Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been
+interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious
+and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard
+de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only
+removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced
+by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for
+instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the
+existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken,
+for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a
+striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex
+Vaticanus."
+
+The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled
+by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex
+Chimalpopoca_ by Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and
+partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des
+Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history
+of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from
+the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the
+age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the
+age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by
+the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods,
+everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose
+sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual
+appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point
+to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close,
+mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape
+under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water,
+which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the
+Deluge.
+
+Here is the narrative according to Abb� Brasseur's version, held correct
+by Americanists:--
+
+    "This is the sun called _Nahui-atl_, '4 water.'[62] Now the water
+    was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the
+    third and fourth times. When the sun _Nahui-atl_ came there had
+    passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six
+    years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and found themselves
+    changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day
+    all was lost and the day _Nahui-xochitl_ '4 flower,' destroyed all
+    our flesh.
+
+    "And that year was that of _c�-calli_, '1 house,'[63] and the day
+    _Nahui-atl_ all was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water,
+    and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.
+
+    "Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and
+    his spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to
+    hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the
+    month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'
+
+    "Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said:
+    'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'
+
+    "But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water
+    remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they
+    began to see fish.
+
+    "Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they
+    roasted fish.
+
+    "The gods Citlallinicu� and Citlalatonac instantly looking down
+    said: 'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do
+    they thus smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca
+    descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?'
+    And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and heads, and
+    they were transformed into dogs (_chichime_)."
+
+This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the
+North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly
+indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a
+Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.
+
+The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to the
+generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by
+extracts given from it by Abb� Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les
+Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though
+already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so
+strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here,
+too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the
+same order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then
+added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made
+himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants,
+who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl, the
+god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck
+Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself
+sun in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar,
+devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The
+statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca" as to
+the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled by
+this last narrative.
+
+Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are closed
+in the way we have seen.
+
+The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the patronage
+of the goddess Chalchihuitlicu�. The Deluge terminates it, and after
+this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.
+
+We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando d'Alva
+Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose
+pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving
+the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first
+chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic
+ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four
+in all, including the actual period. The first is the _Atonatiuh_, or
+"Sun of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a
+universal deluge. Then comes the _Thlachitonatiuh_, or "Sun of Earth,"
+when the giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of
+the survivors of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing
+the mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth,
+closes this age. It is in the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind,"
+that Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of
+Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames, but
+ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious
+reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished by
+the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys.
+Then begins the present age, _Tlatonatiuh_, or "Sun of Fire," thus
+called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that
+Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and
+if he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place
+in his series of ages.
+
+Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be really
+indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries. We may doubt
+as to some particulars in some of the versions, though this arises
+chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much resemble the
+story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it is
+unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn from
+the Bible--and universally admitted to have existed--that, namely, of
+the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the
+four ages or Yugas of India, and of the _manvantaras_ where the
+destruction of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there
+is an analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch,
+and M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans
+devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from
+India. The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of
+the diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem--ever recurring
+with regard to American civilization--of how far these are spontaneous
+and how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In
+the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem
+negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive
+conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence
+American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were, nor
+attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we frame a
+real American arch�ology on the same scientific basis and by the same
+methods as other arch�ologies. And in this respect Messrs. T. G. M�ller
+and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of their precursors
+in this field of inquiry.
+
+For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with Flood
+stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences. Hence
+I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The Flood
+stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to be one
+of the oldest held by humanity--a tradition so primitive as to be
+anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments
+of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America brought
+from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at the same
+time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively carried it
+into theirs."[64] The fact is that among American peoples this tradition
+may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not borrowed from
+the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot be equally
+confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign
+importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.
+
+Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the
+destruction of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in
+the curious book of _Popol-vuh_ that collection of the mythological
+traditions of Guatemala, written after the conquest in the native
+tongue, by a secret adept of the old religion; discovered, copied, and
+translated into Spanish in the beginning of the last century by the
+Dominican Francisco Ximenez, cur� of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish
+version has been published by M. Schelzer, the original text with a
+French translation by Abb� Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing
+that animals were neither capable of speaking nor of adoring them,
+determined to make men in their own image. They fashioned them at first
+in clay. But those men had no consistency, could not turn their heads;
+spoke, indeed, but understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their
+imperfect work by a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they
+made a man of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far
+superior to the former; they moved and lived, but only like other
+animals; they spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the
+gods. Then Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a
+rain of burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful
+earthquake. All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished,
+with a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of
+white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men:
+Balam-Quitze, "the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the
+night;" Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar
+of the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and
+rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their
+final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a
+light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became
+like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for
+them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the
+Quich�s were born--Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children.
+This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed from
+the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian
+missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as
+usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a
+great flood.
+
+We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias
+Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the
+Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those
+Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great
+numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The
+monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted
+several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years
+after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our
+subject:--
+
+    "_Question by Bobadilla._ Who has created heaven and earth, the
+    stars and moon, man and all else?
+
+    "_Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan)._ Tamagastad and Cippatoval,
+    the one is a man, the other a woman.
+
+    "_Q._ Who created that man and woman?
+
+    "_A._ No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.
+
+    "_Q._ Did they create Christians?
+
+    "_A._ I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and
+    Cippatoval.
+
+    "_Q._ Are there any gods greater than they?
+
+    "_A._ No; we believe them to be the greatest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "_Q._ Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?
+
+    "_A._ They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour
+    like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what
+    Indians eat.
+
+    "_Q._ Who gave them to eat?
+
+    "_A._ Everything belongs to them.
+
+    "_Q._ Where are they now?
+
+    "_A._ In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.
+
+    "_Q._ How did they ascend thither?
+
+    "_A._ I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were
+    born, for they have no father nor mother.
+
+    "_Q._ How do they live at present?
+
+    "_A._ They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds
+    from the place where dwell the _teotes_ (gods).
+
+    "_Q._ Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the
+    _teotes_ created the world it has been destroyed?
+
+    "_A._ Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by
+    water and all became sea.
+
+    "_Q._ How did that man and woman escape?
+
+    "_A._ They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and
+    afterwards they came down to earth and re-made all things as they
+    now are, and we are their issue.
+
+    "_Q._ You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some
+    individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?
+
+    "_A._ No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors
+    told me."
+
+The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue, is
+evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of fire, whose
+cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at Tunga and Sogamosa
+to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us back to the religious
+and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced civilization in the high
+table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to recognize in the
+Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so universally spread
+tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with the memory of a
+local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas had suffered at the
+time of their first settlement. Neither must we forget that Botchica and
+his wicked spouse, who brought about the inundation of Cundinamarca, are
+no other than personifications of the sun and moon, as were the pair
+Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru
+is gentle and beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps
+her brother and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of
+Cundinamarca, on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of
+night and of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."
+
+Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition
+among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it only
+arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha or
+Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of the
+element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no bones,
+and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and filling
+up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the Aymaras, who,
+according to them, had created the earth; and who, issuing from Lake
+Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled the earliest men
+at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the Incas led to his
+undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing his religious
+importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the Sun, come
+upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger brother of
+Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha that the Deluge
+is placed by the writers of very recent date, who mention this event, of
+which the native tradition was unknown to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,
+to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva, and, in short, to all
+authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters. MacCulloch does indeed
+quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors never speak of a Deluge
+involving all humanity; they only say that Viracocha gave laws to the
+earliest men at the close of a primordial period anterior to their
+creation, when the whole surface of the earth had been under water.
+
+Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have been
+found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very nature these
+leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to writing by the
+natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may, in perfectly good
+faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious desire to
+assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have been only
+collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long time in
+contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them more than
+one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements into their
+traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance to those we
+have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, previous to the
+arrival of the Spanish conquerors.
+
+The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea of
+European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a childish
+version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead of a fish
+who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the catastrophe;
+but this brings us back to a myth special to America--that of the
+transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the Flood-story of
+the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+    "The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for
+    several days to run up and down the banks of the river, looking
+    fixedly at the water and howling as in distress. His master was
+    annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered him to go home, upon which
+    he began speaking and revealed the impending calamity, ending his
+    prediction by saying that the only way in which his master and his
+    family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for
+    he would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that
+    there was not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand
+    which would lead to a general inundation in which everything would
+    perish. The man obeyed his dog, was saved with his family, and they
+    repeopled the earth."
+
+It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the
+Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood by
+reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts
+behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women. If the
+report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a very
+singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the Greek
+story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
+
+Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in
+the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and
+North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America among
+the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition as
+current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:--
+
+    "In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the
+    rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming
+    upon the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself with his
+    family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The
+    animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured
+    against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with
+    all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a
+    punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."
+
+According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of
+the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was
+destroyed by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth,
+had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our
+acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways--full of grotesque and
+perplexing touches--in which the man saved from the deluge is called
+Menaboshu.[65] To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the
+diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and
+the founder of existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among
+the Mandans, of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters,
+and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men pierced
+the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned
+all men, with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and
+when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch
+of willow in its beak. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of
+Tezpi and Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the
+native originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition
+among the Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the
+physical peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the
+Missouri led Catlin to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white
+origin.
+
+In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made to a
+very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. The
+whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the
+supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken
+refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The
+Commissioners of the United States who explored New Mexico before its
+annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the
+different native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us
+kindred narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record.
+But for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely
+trusted.
+
+
+VI.
+
+_Polynesian Traditions._--In Oceania even, and not among the Pelagian
+negroes or Papoos,[66] but the Polynesian, racenatives of the
+archipelago of Australasia, the diluvian tradition has been traced,
+mingled with recollections of sudden rises of the sea, which are one of
+the most frequent scourges of those islands. The most noted is that of
+Tahiti, which has been specially referred to the primeval tradition.
+Here it is as given by M. Gaussin,[67] who has published a translation
+of it, as well as the Tahitian text, written by a native named Mar�:--
+
+    "Two men had gone out to sea to fish with the line, Roo and Teahoroa
+    by name. They threw their hooks into the sea, which caught in the
+    hair of the god Ruahatu. They exclaimed, 'A fish!' They drew up the
+    line and saw that it was a man they had caught. At sight of the god
+    they bounded to the other end of their bark, and were half dead with
+    fear. Ruahatu asked them, 'What is this?' The two fishermen replied,
+    'We came to fish, and we did not know that our hooks would catch
+    thee.' The god then said, 'Unfasten my hair;' and they did so. Then
+    Ruahatu asked, 'What are your names?' They replied, 'Roo and
+    Teahoroa.' Ruahatu next said, 'Return to the shore, and tell men
+    that the earth will be covered with water, and all the world will
+    perish. To-morrow morning repair to the islet called Toa-marama; it
+    will be a place of safety for you and your children.'
+
+    "Ruahatu caused the sea to cover the lands. All were covered, and
+    all men perished except Roo, Teahoroa, and their families."
+
+This story, like all in this part of the world currently referred to the
+memory of the Deluge, has assumed the childish character peculiar to
+Polynesian legends, and moreover, as M. Maury justly observes, it may be
+naturally explained by the recollection of one of those tidal waves so
+common in Polynesia. The most essential feature of all traditions
+properly called diluvian is wanting here. The island, observes M. Maury,
+has no resemblance to the Ark.[68] It is true that one of the versions
+of the Tahitian legend states that the two fishermen repaired to
+Toa-marama, not only with their families, but with a pig, a dog, and a
+couple of fowls, which recalls the entry of the animals into the Ark. On
+the other hand, some details of a similar story among the Fijis,
+especially one in which, for many years after the event, canoes were
+kept ready in case of its repetition, far better fit a local phenomenon,
+a tidal wave, than a universal deluge.
+
+However, if all these legends were exclusively related to local
+catastrophes, it would be strange that they should appear and be almost
+similar in a certain number of localities at a great distance from each
+other, and only where the Polynesian race has taken root, or left
+indubitable traces of its passage;--this race, indigenous in the Malay
+Archipelago, not having migrated thence till about the fourth century of
+the Christian era--_i.e._, at a time when, in consequence of the
+communication between India and a portion of Malaysia,[69] the
+Flood-tradition under its Indian form might well have entered in.
+Without, therefore, deciding the question one way or other, we do not
+think that that opinion can absolutely be condemned which finds in these
+Polynesian legends an echo of the tradition of the Deluge, much
+weakened, much changed, and more inextricably confused than anywhere
+else with local disasters of recent date.
+
+The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story
+of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the
+human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now a
+recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily
+invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of
+universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible
+event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors
+of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This
+cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and
+before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races
+were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to
+admit that at as many different points of the globe as we should have to
+assume in order to explain the wide spread of these traditions--local
+phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having
+assumed an identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not
+necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.
+
+Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not
+primitive but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect
+of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
+is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of
+Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is
+undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but
+among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient
+times; and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the
+Bible speaks as being descended from Noah, those of which it gives the
+ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation,
+which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact
+value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the
+other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and
+ethnological significance. In another paper I propose to inquire
+whether, in the conception of the inspired writers, the Deluge really
+was universal, in the sense customarily supposed.
+
+But as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from
+being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having,
+to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
+races--Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or
+Kushite--that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the
+ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity--before the
+ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia
+they together inhabited.
+
+    FRAN�OIS LENORMANT.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] The date of the termination of the works undertaken by Yu, in order
+to repair the damage done by this flood, lies between 2278 and 2062 B.C.
+according to the chronological system adopted.
+
+[32] This work of Berosus was already out of existence in the fourth
+century of our era, when Eusebius of Cesarea, to whom we owe such
+fragments as we possess, wrote. Only two abridgments remained, due to
+later polygraphers, Abydenus and Alexander Polybistor. Eusebius gives
+the version of each editor, the one I quote is that of Alexander.
+
+[33] Abydenus says, "all that composed the scriptures."
+
+[34] He is provisionally called Izdhubar or Ghirdhubar, transcribing for
+want of a more certain method, according to their phonetic value, the
+characters composing the ideographic spelling of his name.
+
+[35] The text is published in "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,"
+vol. iv. pp. 50 and 51. The two principal translations hitherto given
+are those of George Smith and M. Oppert. The one we now offer contains a
+large share of personal work. We avail ourselves of the labours of our
+illustrious precursors, but believe that we have also added some
+important steps towards a precise understanding of the text.
+
+[36] Here several verses are wanting.
+
+[37] "The water of the twilight at break of day," one of the
+personifications of rain.
+
+[38] The god of thunder.
+
+[39] The god of war and death.
+
+[40] The Chaldeo-Assyrian Hercules.
+
+[41] The superior heaven of the fixed stars.
+
+[42] Vases of the measure called in Hebrew _Se�h_. This relates to a
+detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.
+
+[43] These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.
+
+[44] The god of epidemics.
+
+[45] _Studien zur Kritik und Erklarung der Biblischen Urgeschichte_, p.
+150.
+
+[46] Oann�s and Euahan�s belong to an Accadian form: �a-Khan, "�a the
+fish;" O�s to the simple �a, as the Aos of Damascus.
+
+[47] _Vendid�d_, ii. 46.
+
+[48] Chapter vii.
+
+[49] See especially _Yesht_ viii., 13 _Vendid�d_, xix. 135.
+
+[50] It is in virtue of this assimilation that Plutarch (De Solert anim.
+13) speaks of the dove sent out by Deucalion to see if the Deluge had
+ceased, a circumstance mentioned by no other Greek mythographer.
+
+[51] "Myvyrian Arch�ology of Wales," vol. ii. p. 50, triad 13.
+
+[52] _Ibid._ p. 71, triad 97.
+
+[53] Vafthrudnismal, st. 29.
+
+[54] Hanwsch, _Slawischer Mythus_, p. 234.
+
+[55] "Transactions of the Society of Biblical Arch�ology," vol. iv. pp.
+1-19.
+
+[56] Personification of the primordial abyss.
+
+[57] Nevertheless, the Deluge holds an important place among the
+cosmogonic traditions--decidedly original in character--which Reguly has
+found among the Voguls. We also hear of a diluvian story among the
+Eulets or Kalmuks, where it seems to have come in with Buddhism.
+
+[58] We must, however, observe that Buddhist missionaries appear to have
+introduced the diluvian tradition of Judea into China. Gutzlaff, "On
+Buddhism in China," in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1st
+series, vol. xii. p. 78), affirms that he saw its principal episode
+represented in a very fine painting of a temple to the goddess
+Kivan-yin.
+
+[59] Recently published, not recently collected. The date of Pedro de
+los Rios shows this.
+
+[60] "The Native Races of the Pacific States," vol. iii. p. 68.
+
+[61] By a singular alteration of the text it is said that the jaguars
+"were devoured," instead of "they devoured."
+
+[62] From the day of the year when the final cataclysm was supposed to
+have occurred.
+
+[63] This designation of the year accords with the system of Mexican
+cycles, containing four groups of years, each named after some object or
+animal.
+
+[64] "Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose," p. 283.
+
+[65] This name looks like a corruption of that of the Indian Manu
+Vaivasvata.
+
+[66] Except in the Fiji Islands, where the Polynesians have been for
+some time settled among the Melanians, and have only been destroyed by
+these after having infused into the population an element sufficiently
+marked to render the Fijis a mixed rather than a purely black race.
+
+[67] Gaussin: "Du Dialecte de Tahiti et de la Langue polyn�sienne," p.
+235. See also Ellis's "Polynesian Researches."
+
+[68] We may, however, observe that in the Iranian myth of Yima, which we
+have reported above, a square enclosure (_vara_) miraculously preserved
+from the deluge, holds the place of the Biblical Ark and of the vessel
+of Chaldean tradition.
+
+[69] The date of the first establishment of Indian Brahmanists in Java
+remains uncertain, but from the end of the second century B.C. the Greek
+Iambulos (Diod. Sicul. ii. 57) very exactly described as the way of
+writing in this island the syllabic system Kavi, borrowed from India.
+
+
+
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
+
+
+Some time since an article appeared in the _Times_, quoted from the
+_Brisbane Courier_ (an Australian paper of good credit), stating that
+one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be congealed
+for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life, so that
+they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead meat, yet
+on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity. Many
+regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though a few
+days later an article appeared, the opening words of which implied that
+only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken the article _au
+grand s�rieux_. Of course it was a hoax; but it is worthy of notice that
+the editor of the _Brisbane Courier_ had really been misled, as he
+admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him credit.[70]
+
+This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as a
+joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown), did
+good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain
+statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which
+otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose here
+to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some
+of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth
+while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as
+some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative. I
+shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of
+resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in
+America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New York
+paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity some forty
+years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that the two
+stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to seems
+to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, _bien entendu_)
+which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly
+associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right,
+indeed, in saying, _Le style c'est de l'homme m�me_, we can readily
+understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to
+themselves.
+
+It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of
+scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of the
+place where the experiments were made. The history of the wonderful
+Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:--"Many of the
+readers of the _Brisbane Courier_ who know Sydney Harbour will remember
+the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour, which, in a
+succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a chain of lakes
+for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made more than
+ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost sheer into
+the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by white
+beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick
+buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of
+publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now
+established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future
+prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was
+precisely in this tone that the author of the "Lunar Hoax"[71] opened
+his account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build
+an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon
+the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all
+future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks--though probably
+he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by whom this had
+been said,--"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man,
+as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he may now fold
+the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental
+supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the description
+which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's representation of
+the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled banner round
+him, and died like the son of a hoss").
+
+It next becomes necessary to describe the persons engaged in pursuing
+the experiments by which the art of freezing animals alive is to be
+attained. "The gentlemen engaged in this enterprise are Signor Rotura,
+whose researches into the botany and natural history of South America
+have rendered his name eminent; and Mr. James Grant, a pupil of the late
+Mr. Nicolle, so long associated with Mr. Thomas Mort in his freezing
+process. Next to the late Mr. Nicolle, Mr. James Grant can claim
+pre-eminence of knowledge in the science of generating cold, and his
+freezing chamber at Woolhara has long been known as the seat of valuable
+experiments originated in his, Mr. Nicolle's, lifetime." Is it merely an
+accident, by the way, or is it due to the circumstance that exceptional
+powers of invention in general matters are often found in company with
+singular poverty of invention as to details, that two of the names here
+mentioned closely resemble names connected with the Lunar Hoax? It was
+Nicollet who in reality devised the Lunar Hoax, though Richard Alton
+Locke, the reputed author, probably gave to the story its final form;
+and, again, the story purported to come from Dr. Grant, of Glasgow. In
+the earlier narrative, again, as in the later, due care was taken to
+impress readers with the belief that those who had made the discovery,
+or taken part in the work, were worthy of all confidence. Sir W.
+Herschel was the inventor of the optical device by which the inhabitants
+of the moon were to be rendered visible, a plan which "evinced the most
+profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity
+in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and
+cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood,
+determined upon testing it at whatever cost." Among his companions he
+had "Dr. Andrew Grant, Lieutenant Drummond of the Royal Engineers, and a
+large party of the best English mechanics."
+
+The accounts of preliminary researches, doubts, and difficulties are in
+both cases very similar in tone. "It appears that five months ago," says
+the narrator of the Australian hoax, "Signor Rotura called upon Mr.
+Grant to invoke his assistance in a scheme for the transmission of live
+stock to Europe. Signor Rotura averred that he had discovered a South
+American vegetable poison, allied to the well-known _woolara_ (_sic_)
+that had the power of perfectly suspending animation, and that the
+trance thus produced continued until the application of another
+vegetable essence caused the blood to resume its circulation and the
+heart its functions. So perfect, moreover, was this suspension of life
+that Signor Rotura had found in a warm climate decomposition set in at
+the extremities after a week of this living death, and he imagined that
+if the body in this inert state were reduced to a temperature
+sufficiently low to arrest decomposition, the trance might be kept up
+for months, possibly for years. He frankly owned that he had never tried
+this preserving of the tissues by cold, and could not confidently speak
+as to its effect upon the after-restoration of the animal operated on.
+Before he left Mr. Grant he had turned that gentleman's doubts into
+wondering curiosity by experimenting on his dog." The account of this
+experiment I defer for a moment till I have shown how closely in several
+respects this portion of the Australian hoax resembles the corresponding
+part of the American story. It will be observed that the great discovery
+is presented as simply a very surprising development of a process which
+is strictly within the limits, not only of what is possible, but of what
+is known. So also in the case of the Lunar Hoax, the amazing magnifying
+power by which living creatures in the moon were said to have been
+rendered visible, was presented as simply a very remarkable development
+of the familiar properties of the telescope. In both cases, the
+circumstances which in reality limit the possible extension of the
+properties in question were kept conveniently concealed from view. In
+both cases, doubts and difficulties were urged with an apparent
+frankness intended to disarm suspicion. In both cases, also, the
+inventor of the new method by which difficulties were to be overcome is
+represented as in conference with a man of nearly equal skill, who urges
+the doubts naturally suggested by the wonderful nature of the promised
+achievements. In the Lunar Hoax, Sir John Herschel and Sir David
+Brewster are thus represented in conference. Herschel asks whether the
+difficulty arising from deficient illumination may not be overcome by
+effecting a transfusion of artificial light through the focal image.
+Brewster, startled at the novel thought, as he well might be,
+hesitatingly refers "to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of
+incidence," which is effective though glorious in its absurdity. (Yet it
+has been gravely asserted that this nonsense deceived Arago.) "Sir John,
+grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in
+which the refrangibility was arrested by the second speculum and the
+angle of incidence restored by the third" (a bewilderingly ridiculous
+statement). "'And,' continued he, 'why cannot the illuminated
+microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct, and if
+necessary even to magnify, the focal object?' Sir David sprang from his
+chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and leaping half-way to the ceiling"
+(from which we may infer that he was somewhat more than _t�te mont�e_),
+"exclaimed, 'Thou art the man!'"
+
+The method devised in each case being once accepted as sound, the rest
+of course readily follows. In the case of the Lunar Hoax a number of
+discoveries are made which need not here be described[72] (though I
+shall take occasion presently to quote some passages relating to them
+which closely resemble in style certain passages in the Australian
+narrative). In the later hoax, the illustrative experiments are
+forthwith introduced. Signor Rotura, having so far persuaded Mr. Grant
+of the validity of the plan as to induce him to allow a favourite dog to
+be experimented upon, "injected two drops of his liquid, mixed with a
+little glycerine, into a small puncture made in the dog's ear. In three
+or four minutes the animal was perfectly rigid, the four legs stretched
+backward, eyes wide open, pupils very much dilated, and exhibiting
+symptoms very similar to those caused by strychnine, except that there
+had been no previous struggle or pain. Begging his owner to have no
+apprehension for the life of his favourite animal, Signor Rotura lifted
+the dog carefully and placed him on a shelf in a cupboard, where he
+begged he might be left till the following day, when he promised to call
+at ten o'clock and revive the apparently dead brute. Mr. Grant
+continually during that day and night visited the cupboard, and so
+perfectly was life suspended in his favourite--no motion of the pulse or
+heart giving any indication of the possibility of revival--that he
+confesses he felt all the sharpest reproaches of remorse at having
+sacrificed a faithful friend to a doubtful and dangerous experiment. The
+temperature of the body, too, in the first four hours gradually lowered
+to 25 degrees Fahrenheit below ordinary blood temperature, which
+increased his fears as to the result; and by morning the body was as
+cold as in natural death. At ten o'clock next morning, according to
+promise, Signor Rotura presented himself, and laughing at Mr. Grant's
+fears, requested a tub of warm water to be brought. He tested this with
+the thermometer at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" (which, being the temperature
+of freezing water, can hardly be called warm), "and in this laid the
+dog, head under." In reply to Mr. Grant's objections Signor Rotura
+assured him that, as animation must remain entirely suspended until the
+administration of the antidote, no water could be drawn into the lungs,
+and that the immersion of the body was simply to bring it again to a
+blood-heat. After about ten minutes of this bath the body was taken out,
+and another liquid injected in a puncture made in the neck. "Mr. Grant
+tells me," proceeds the veracious narrator, "that the revival of Turk
+was the most startling thing he ever witnessed; and having since seen
+the experiment made upon a sheep, I can fully confirm his statement. The
+dog first showed the return of life in the eye" (winking, doubtless, at
+the joke), "and after five and a half minutes he drew a long breath, and
+the rigidity left his limbs. In a few minutes more he commenced gently
+wagging his tail, and then slowly got up, stretched himself, and trotted
+off as though nothing had happened." From this moment Mr. Grant had full
+faith in Signor Rotura's discovery, and promised him all the assistance
+in his power. They next determined to try freezing the body. But the
+first two experiments were not encouraging. Mr. Grant fortunately did
+not allow his favourite dog to be experimented upon further, so a
+strange dog was put into the freezing room at Mr. Grant's works for four
+days, after having in the first place had his animation suspended by
+Signor Rotura. Although this animal survived so far as to draw a long
+breath, the vital energies appeared too exhausted for a complete rally,
+and the animal died. So also did the next two animals experimented on,
+a cat and a dog. "In the meantime, however, Dr. Barker had been taken
+into their counsels, and at his suggestion respiration was encouraged,
+as in the case of persons drowned, by artificial compression and
+expansion of the lungs. Dr. Barker was of opinion that, as the heart in
+every case began to beat, it was a want of vital force to set the lungs
+in proper motion that caused death. The result showed his surmises to be
+entirely correct. A number of animals whose lives had been sealed up in
+this artificial death have been kept in the freezing chamber from one to
+five weeks, and it is found that though the shock to the system from
+this freezing is very great, it is not increased by duration of time."
+
+I need not follow the hoaxer's account of the buildings erected for the
+further prosecution of these researches. One point, however, may be
+mentioned illustrating the resemblance to which I have already referred
+as existing between this Australian narrative and the Lunar Hoax. In
+describing the works erected at Middle Harbour, the Australian account
+carefully notes that the necessary funds were provided by Mr.
+Christopher Newton, of Pitt Street. In like manner, in the Lunar Hoax we
+are told that the plate-glass required for the optical arrangement
+devised by Sir J. Herschel was "obtained, by consent be it observed,
+from the shop-window of M. Desanges, the jeweller to his ex-majesty
+Charles X., in High Street."
+
+Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which are the
+more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly stated by
+Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in this narrative,
+apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded as beyond the
+range of scientific possibilities:--"Arrived at the works in Middle
+Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr. Grant's
+apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the freezing
+chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here were fourteen
+sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides in a heap,
+_alive_, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present position for
+nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three months.
+Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his shoulder, and
+carried it outside into the other building, where a number of shallow
+cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water taps to each
+tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of these tanks was
+quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor, I meantime
+examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the nineteen-days-dead
+lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come back to us, and many
+of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to me less improbable
+than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the lamb, to all
+appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only difference
+perceptible to me between his condition and actual death being the
+absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained its
+brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is
+heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends
+a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped
+into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three
+minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the
+introduction of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken
+out and placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing
+the wool on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver
+syringe under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green
+liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the
+_Astracharlis_, found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its
+back, Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with
+his knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural
+depression and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was
+struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the
+door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front.
+Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the
+marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a
+discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by
+scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage
+resembling in tone the lively account of the lamb's behaviour when
+released. Herds of agile creatures like antelopes were seen in the moon,
+"abounding in the acclivitous glades of the woods." "This beautiful
+creature afforded us," says the narrator, "the most exquisite amusement.
+The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as
+faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of the
+_camera obscura_. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon
+its beard, it would suddenly bound away, as if conscious of our earthly
+impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent
+nibbling the herbage, say or do to them what we would." And again, a
+little further on, "We fairly laughed at the recognition of so familiar
+an acquaintance as a sheep in so distant a land--a good large sheep,
+which would not have disgraced the farms of Leicestershire or the
+shambles of Leadenhall Market; presently they appeared in great numbers,
+and on reducing the lenses we found them in flocks over a great part of
+the valley. I need not say how desirous we were of finding shepherds to
+these flocks, and even a man with blue apron and rolled-up sleeves would
+have been a welcome sight to us, if not to the sheep; but they fed in
+peace, lords of their own pastures, without either protector or
+destroyer in human shape."
+
+Not less amusing, though more gravely written, is the account of the
+benefits likely to follow from the use of the wonderful process for
+freezing animals alive. Cargoes of live sheep can be readily sent from
+Australia to Europe. Any that cannot be restored to life will still be
+good meat; while the rest can be turned to pasture or driven alive to
+market. With bullocks the case would not be quite so simple, because of
+their greater size and weight, which would render them more difficult
+to handle with safety. The carcass being rendered brittle by freezing,
+they are so much the more liable to injury. "It sounded odd to hear Mr.
+Grant and Signor Rotura laying stress upon the danger of breakage in a
+long voyage." This one can readily imagine.
+
+Some of the remoter consequences of the discovery are touched on by the
+narrator, though but lightly, as if he saw the necessity of keeping his
+wonders within reasonable limits. Signor Rotura, "though he had never
+attempted his experiment on a human being," which was considerate on his
+part, "had no doubt at all as to its perfect safety." He had requested
+Sir Henry Parkes to allow him to operate on the next felon under capital
+sentence. This, by the way, was a compromising statement on our hoaxer's
+part. It requires very little acquaintance with our laws to know that no
+one could allow a felon condemned to death to be experimented on in this
+or in any other manner. Such a man is condemned to die, and to die
+without any preliminary tortures, bodily or mental, other than those
+inseparable from the legally adopted method of bringing death about. He
+can neither be allowed to remain alive after an experiment, and
+necessarily free (because he has not been condemned to other punishment
+than the death penalty), nor can he be first experimented upon and then
+hanged. So that that single sentence in the narrative should have shown
+every one that it was a hoax, even if the inherent absurdity of many
+other parts of the story had not shown this very clearly. As to whether
+a temporary suspension of the vital faculties would affect the longevity
+of the patient, Signor Rotura expressed himself somewhat doubtful; he
+believed, however, that the duration of life might in this way be
+prolonged for years. "I was anxious," says the hoaxer, "to know if a
+period of, say, five years of this inertness were submitted to, whether
+it would be so much cut out of one's life, or if it would be simply five
+years of unconscious existence tacked on to one's sentient life. Signor
+Rotura could give no positive answer, but he believes, as no change
+takes place or can take place while this frozen trance continues, no
+consumption, destruction, or reparation of tissue being possible, it
+would be so many unvalued and profitless years added to a lifetime." Of
+some of the strange ideas suggested by this conception I shall take
+occasion to speak further on; I must for the present turn, however, from
+the consideration of this ingenious hoax to discuss the scientific
+possibilities which underlie the narrative, or at least some parts of
+the narrative.
+
+In the first place, it must be noticed that in the phenomena of
+hibernation we have what at a first view seems closely to resemble the
+results of Signor Rotura's apocryphal experiments. As was remarked in
+the _Times_, the idea underlying the Australian story is that the
+hibernation of animals can be artificially imitated and extended, so
+that as certain animals lie in a state of torpor and insensibility
+throughout the winter months, all animals also may perhaps be caused to
+lie in such a state for an indefinite length of time, if only a suitable
+degree of cold is maintained, and some special contrivance adopted to
+prevent insensibility from passing into death. The phenomena of
+hibernation are indeed so surprising, when rightly understood, that
+inexperienced persons might well believe in almost any wonders resulting
+from the artificial production (which, be it remembered, is altogether
+possible) of the hibernating condition, and the artificial extension of
+this condition to other animals than those which at present hibernate,
+and to long periods of time. It has been justly said, that if
+hibernation had only been noticed among cold-blooded animals, its
+possibility in the case of mammals would have seemed inconceivable. The
+first news that the bat and hedgehog pass into the state of complete
+hibernation, would probably have bean received as either a daring hoax
+or a very gross blunder.
+
+Let us consider what hibernation really is. When, as winter approaches
+and their insect food disappears, the bat and the hedgehog resign
+themselves to torpor, the processes which we are in the habit of
+associating with vitality gradually diminish in activity. The breathing
+becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more slowly, more
+and more feebly. At last the breathing ceases altogether. The
+circulation does not wholly cease, however. So far as is known, the life
+of warm-blooded animals cannot continue after the circulation has
+entirely ceased for more than a certain not very considerable length of
+time.[73] The chemical changes on which animal heat depends, and without
+which there can be no active vitality, cease with the cessation of
+respiration. But dormant vitality is still maintained in hibernation,
+because the heart's fibre, excited to contract by the carbonized blood,
+continues to propel the blood through the torpid body. This slow
+circulation of venous blood continues during the whole period of
+hibernation. It is the only vital process which can be recognised; and
+it is not easy to understand how the life of any warm-blooded animal can
+be maintained in this way. The explanation usually offered is that the
+material conveyed by the absorbents suffices to counterbalance the
+process of waste occasioned by the slow circulation. But this does not
+in reality touch the chief difficulty presented by the phenomena of
+hibernation. So far as mere waste is concerned (as I have elsewhere
+pointed out) the imagined Australian process is as effectual as
+hibernation; in that process, of course the circulation would be as
+completely checked as the respiration; thus there would be no waste, and
+the absorbents (which would also be absolutely dormant) would not have
+to do even that slight amount of work which they accomplish during
+hibernation. Science can only say that the known cases of hibernation
+among warm-blooded animals show that the vital forces may be reduced
+much lower without destroying life, than but for them we should have
+deemed conceivable.
+
+But next let us consider what science has to say as to the artificial
+suspension of vitality. In Dr. Richardson's paper on this subject there
+is much which seems almost as surprising as anything in the Australian
+story. Indeed, he seems scarcely to have felt assured that that story
+really was a hoax. "The statements," he says, "which, under the head of
+'A Wonderful Discovery,' are copied from the _Brisbane Courier_, seem
+greatly to have astonished the reading public. To what extent the
+statements are true or untrue it is impossible to say. The whole may be
+a cleverly-written fiction, and certain of the words and names used
+seem, according to some readers, to suggest that view; but be this so or
+not, I wish to indicate that some part at all events of what is stated
+might be true, and is certainly within the range of possibility." "The
+discovery," he proceeds, "which is described in the communication under
+notice, is not in principle new; on the subject of suspension of
+animation I have myself been making experimental inquiries for
+twenty-five years at least, and have communicated to the scientific
+world many essays, lectures, and demonstrations, relating to it. I have
+twice read papers bearing on this inquiry to the Royal Society, once to
+the British Association for the Advancement of Science, two or three
+times in my lectures on Experimental and Practical Medicine, and
+published one in _Nature_. In respect to the particular point of the
+preservation of animal bodies for food, I dwelt on this topic in the
+lectures delivered before the Society of Arts, in April and May of last
+year (1878), explaining very definitely that the course of research in
+the direction of preservation must ultimately lead to a process by which
+we should keep the structures of animals in a form of suspended
+molecular life." In other words, Dr. Richardson had indicated the
+possibility of doing precisely that which would have constituted the
+chief value of the Australian discovery, if this had been real.
+
+Let us next consider what is known respecting the possibility of
+suspending a conscious and active life. This is first stated in general
+terms by Dr. Richardson, as follows:--"If an animal perfectly free from
+disease be subjected to the action of some chemical agents or physical
+agencies which have the property of reducing to the extremest limit the
+motor forces of the body, the muscular irritability, and the nervous
+stimulus to muscular action, and if the suspension of the muscular
+irritability and of the nervous excitation be made at once and equally,
+the body even of a warm-blooded animal may be brought down to a
+condition so closely resembling death, that the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life." This general statement must be
+carefully studied if the reader desires thoroughly to understand at once
+the power and the limits of the power of science in this direction. The
+motor forces, the muscular irritability, and the nervous stimulus to
+muscular action, can be reduced to a certain extent without destroying
+life, but not absolutely without destroying life. The reduction of the
+muscular irritability must be made at once and equally; if the muscular
+irritability is reduced to its lowest limit while the nervous
+excitation remains unaltered, or is less reduced, death ensues; and
+_vice vers�_, if the nervous excitation is reduced to its lowest limits
+while the muscular irritability remains unaltered, or is little reduced,
+death equally follows. Then it is to be noticed that though when the
+state of seeming death is brought about, the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life, it does not follow that science
+may not find perfectly sure means of detecting cases where life still
+exists but is at its very lowest. Of course all the ordinary tests, in
+which so many place complete reliance--a mirror placed close to the
+mouth, a finger on the pulse, hand, or ear applied to the breast[74]
+over the heart, and so forth--would be utterly inadequate, in such a
+case, to reveal any signs of life. That doctors have been deceived by
+cases of suspended vitality not artificially produced, but presenting
+similar phenomena, is well known. A case in point may not be out of
+place here, as illustrating well certain features of suspended
+animation, and showing the possibility that in _some_ cases
+consciousness may remain, even when the most careful examination detects
+no traces of life. The case is described by Dr. Alexander Crichton, in
+his "Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement." "A young
+lady, who had seemed gradually to sink until she died, had been placed
+in her coffin, careful scrutiny revealing no signs of vitality. On the
+day appointed for her funeral, several hymns were sung before her door.
+She was conscious of all that happened around her, and heard her friends
+lamenting her death. She felt them put on the dead-clothes, and lay her
+in the coffin, which produced an indescribable mental anxiety. She tried
+to cry, but her mind was without power, and could not act on the body.
+It was equally impossible to her to stretch out her arms or to open her
+eyes or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The
+internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the
+funeral hymns began to be sung and when the lid of the coffin was about
+to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the
+first one which gave activity to her mind, and caused it to operate on
+her corporeal frame. Just as the people were about to nail on the lid,
+a kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of the
+body. It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive
+motion was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes
+after, during which fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once
+opened her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek." In this case it
+was considered that the state of trance had been brought about by the
+excessive contractile action of the nervous centres. St. Augustine, by
+the way, remarks in his "De Civitate Dei" on the case of a certain
+priest called Restitutus (appropriately enough), who could when he
+wished withdraw himself from life in such sort that he did not feel when
+twitched or stung, but might even be burned without suffering pain
+except afterwards from the wound so produced. Not only did he not
+struggle or even move, but like a dead person he did not breathe, yet
+afterwards he said that he could hear the voices of those around him (if
+they spoke loudly) as if from a great distance (_de longinquo_).
+
+To return, however, to Dr. Richardson's discussion of the artificial
+suspension of active life.
+
+He recognises three degrees of muscular irritability, to which he has
+given the names of active efficient, passive efficient, and
+negative,--though doubtless he would recognize the probability that the
+line separating the first from the second may not always be easily
+traced, and that, though there is a most definite distinction between
+the second and the third, the actual position of the boundary line has
+not as yet been determined. In other words, so far as the first and
+second states are concerned, there are not two degrees only, but many.
+As regards the third or negative state, which is only another way of
+describing death, there is, of course, only one degree, though the
+evidence as to the existence of this state may be more or less complete
+and obvious. Dr. Richardson defines the active efficient state of
+muscular irritability as that "represented in the ordinary living muscle
+in which the heart is working at full tension, and all parts of the body
+are thoroughly supplied with blood, with perfection of consciousness in
+waking hours, and, in a word, full life." The second, or passive
+efficient state, "is represented in suspended animation, in which the
+heart is working regularly but at low tension, supplying the muscles and
+other parts with sufficient blood to maintain the molecular life, but no
+more." The third of these states--the negative--"is represented when
+there is no motion whatever of blood through the body, as in an animal
+entirely frozen."
+
+With the first and third of these states I have in reality nothing to
+do, unless indeed it could be shown that the third or negative state can
+be produced without causing death. Perhaps in assuming, as I did above,
+that this state is identical with the state of the dead, I was, in fact,
+assuming what science has yet to demonstrate. I may at any rate,
+however, say without fear of valid contradiction, that science has as
+yet never succeeded in showing that this negative state may be attained
+even for a moment without death ensuing; and the probability (almost
+amounting to certainty) is that death and this change of state have in
+every instance been simultaneous. Dr. Richardson speaks of the second
+stage as that in which animation is _usually_ suspended; but he does not
+show that the third stage can even possibly be attained without death.
+
+The second stage, or stage of passive efficiency, closely resembles the
+third, "but differs from it in that, under favouring circumstances, the
+whole of the phenomena of the active efficient stage may be perfectly
+resumed, the heart suddenly enlarging in volume from its filling with
+blood, and reanimating the whole organism by the force of its renewed
+stroke in full tension. So far as we have yet proceeded," continues Dr.
+Richardson, "the whole phenomena of restoration from death are
+accomplished during this stage;" meaning, it would seem, that in all
+instances of restoration the restoration has been from the second, never
+from the third stage. "To those who are not accustomed to see them they
+are no doubt very wonderful, looking like veritable restorations from
+death. They surprise even medical men the first time they are witnessed
+by them." He gives an interesting illustration. At a meeting of the
+British Medical Association at Leeds, "a member of the Association was
+showing to a large audience the action of nitrous oxide gas, using a
+rabbit as the subject of his demonstration. The animal was removed from
+the narcotizing chamber a little too late, for it had ceased to breathe,
+and it was placed on the table to all appearance dead." "At this stage,"
+he proceeds, "I went to the table, and by use of a small pair of
+double-acting bellows restored respiration. In about four minutes there
+was revival of active irritability in the abdominal muscles, and two
+minutes later the animal leaped again into life, as if it had merely
+been asleep. There was nothing remarkable in the fact; but it excited,
+even in so cultivated an audience as was then present, the liveliest
+surprise."
+
+But when we learn the condition necessary that a body which has once
+been reduced to the state of passive efficiency should be restored to
+active life, we recognise that even when science has learned how to
+reduce vitality to a minimum without destroying it, few will care to
+risk the process, either in their own persons or in the case of those
+dear to them. Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular
+irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and
+equally reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and
+the nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls
+the aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word
+which we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or
+crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears to
+the word watery. If all three fluids remain in the aqueous condition,
+"the period during which life may be restored is left undefined. It may
+be a very long period, including weeks, and possibly months, granting
+that decomposition of the tissues is not established; and even after a
+limited process of decomposition, there may be renewal of life in
+cold-blooded animals. But if pectous change begins in any one of the
+structures I have named, it extends like a crystallization quickly
+through all the structures, and thereupon recovery is impossible, for
+the change in one of the parts is sufficient to prevent the restoration
+of all. Thus the heart may be beating, but the blood being pectous it
+beats in vain; or the heart may beat and the blood may flow, but the
+voluntary muscles being pectous the circulating action is vain; or the
+heart may beat, the blood may flow, and the muscles may remain in the
+aqueous condition, but the nerves being pectous the circulating action
+is in vain; or sometimes the heart may come to rest, and the other parts
+may remain susceptible, but the motion of the heart and blood not being
+present to quicken them into activity, their life is in vain." Add to
+this, that the restoration of the motor forces, of the muscular
+irritability, and of the nervous excitation, must be as simultaneous and
+as equal as their reduction had been, and we begin to recognise decided
+objections to the too frequent suspension of animation, even when the
+most perfect artificial means have been devised for bringing about that
+interesting result.
+
+Although, however, we may not feel encouraged to believe that many will
+care to have experiments tried on themselves in this direction, we may
+still examine with interest the results of experimental research and
+experience. These agree in showing that there are means by which active
+life may be suspended, while at the same time the aqueous condition of
+the fluids mentioned above (the blood, the muscular fluid, and the
+nervous fluid, the two latter of which are for convenience called the
+colloidal animal fluids, and are derived from the blood) is retained.
+
+The first and in some respects the most efficient of these means is
+cold. The blood and the colloidal fluids remain in the aqueous condition
+when the body is exposed to cold at freezing-point. "At this same point
+all vital acts, excepting perhaps the motion of the heart" (it is Dr.
+Richardson, be it remembered, who thus uses the significant word
+"perhaps"), "may be temporarily arrested in an animal, and then some
+animals may continue apparently dead for long intervals of time, and may
+yet return to life under conditions favourable to recovery." Dr.
+Richardson gives a singular illustration of this, describing an
+experiment which must have appeared even more surprising to those who
+witnessed it than that in which the rabbit was restored to life. "In one
+of my lectures on death from cold," he says, "which I delivered in the
+winter session of 1867, some fish which during a hard frost had been
+frozen in a tank at Newcastle-on-Tyne, were sent up to me by rail. They
+were produced in the completely frozen state at the lecture, and by
+careful thawing many of them were restored to perfect life. At my
+Croomian lecture on muscular irritability after systemic death, a
+similar fact was illustrated from frogs." It would appear, indeed, that
+so far as cold-blooded animals are concerned, there is no recognisable
+limit to the time during which they may remain thus frozen yet
+afterwards recover. But, even in their case, much skill is required to
+make the recovery sure. "If in thawing them the utmost care is not taken
+to thaw gradually, and at a temperature always below the natural
+temperature of the living animal, the fluids will pass from the frozen
+state through the aqueous into the pectous so rapidly that death from
+pectous change will be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or
+life stage at all." Naturally it is much more difficult to restore life
+in the case of warm-blooded animals. Indeed, Dr. Richardson remarks,
+that in the case of the more complex and differently shielded organs of
+warm-blooded animals, it is next to impossible to thaw equally and
+simultaneously all the colloidal fluids. "In very young animals it can
+be done. Young kittens, a day or two old, that have been drowned in
+ice-cold water, will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a
+certainty, if brought into dry air at a temperature of 98 degrees
+Fahrenheit. The gentlest motion of the body will be sufficient to
+re-start the respiration, and therewith the life."
+
+Remarking on such cases as these, Dr. Richardson notes that the nearest
+natural approach to the stage of passive efficiency is seen in
+hibernating animals. He states, however, that in hibernation the
+complete state of passive efficiency is not produced. He does not accept
+the opinion of those who consider that in true hibernation breathing
+ceases as above described. A slow respiration continues, he believes, as
+well as that low stage of active efficiency of circulation which we have
+already indicated. "The hibernating animal sleeps only; and while
+sleeping it consumes or wastes; and if the cold be prolonged it may die
+from waking." More decisive, because surer, is the evidence derived from
+the possibility of waking the hibernating animals by the common methods
+used for waking a sleeper. This certainly seems to show that animation
+is not positively suspended.
+
+He asks next the question whether an animal like a fish, frozen equally
+through all its structures, is to be regarded as actually dead in the
+strict sense of the word or not, seeing that if it be uniformly and
+equally thawed it may recover from this perfectly frozen state. "In like
+manner," he says, "it may be doubted whether a healthy warm-blooded
+animal suddenly and equally frozen through all its parts is dead,
+although it is not recoverable." If, as seems certainly to be the case,
+the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it some
+inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue,
+some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not
+have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot die
+again. Albeit, the outlook is not encouraging, at any rate so far as the
+use of cold alone for maintaining suspended animation in full-grown
+warm-blooded animals is concerned. Cold will, however, for a long time
+maintain ready for motion active organs locally subject to it Even after
+death this effect of cold "may be locally demonstrated," Dr. Richardson
+tells us, "and has sometimes been so demonstrated to the wonder of the
+world." "For instance, on January 17, in the year 1803, Aldini, the
+nephew of Galvani, created the greatest astonishment in London by a
+series of experiments which he conducted on a malefactor, twenty-six
+years old, named John Forster, who was executed at Newgate, and whose
+body, an hour after execution, was delivered over to Mr. Keate, Master
+of the College of Surgeons, for research. The body had been exposed for
+an hour to an atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point,[75] and from
+that cause, though Aldini does not seem to have recognised the fact, the
+voluntary muscles retained their irritability to such a degree that when
+Aldini began to pass voltaic currents through the body, some of the
+bystanders seem to have concluded that the unfortunate malefactor had
+come again to life. It is significant also that Aldini in his report
+says that his object was not to produce reanimation, but to obtain a
+practical knowledge how far galvanism might be employed as an auxiliary
+to revive persons who were accidentally suffocated, _as though he
+himself were in some doubt_,"--that is, not in doubt only about the
+power of galvanism, but in doubt whether Forster had been restored to
+life for a while, or not! Dr. Richardson has himself repeated, on lower
+animals, these experiments of Aldini's, except that the animals on which
+he has experimented have passed into death under chloroform, not through
+suffocation. His object, in fact, was to determine the best treatment
+for human beings who sink under chloroform and other an�sthetics. He
+finds that in warm weather he fails to get the same results. Noticing
+this, he says, "I experimented at and below the freezing-point, and then
+found that both by the electrical discharge, and by injection of water
+heated to 130 degrees" (again this terrible inexactness of expression)
+"into the muscles through the arteries, active muscular movements could
+be produced in warm-blooded animals many hours after death. Thus, for
+lecture experiment, I have removed one muscle from the body of an animal
+that had slept to death from chloroform, and putting the muscle in a
+glass tube surrounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days
+in a condition for its making a final muscular contraction, and, by
+gently thawing it, have made it, in the act of final contraction, do
+some mechanical work, such as moving a long needle on the face of a
+dial, or discharging a pistol. In muscles so removed from the body and
+preserved ready for motion there is, however, only one final act. For
+as the blood and nervous supply are both cut off from it, there is
+nothing left in it but the reserved something that was fixed by the
+cold. But I do not see any reason why this should not be maintained in
+reservation for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold
+atmosphere."
+
+Cold being, however, obviously insufficient of itself for the suspension
+of active life in warm-blooded animals, at least if such life is
+eventually to be restored, let us next consider some of the agencies
+which either alone or aided by cold may suspend without destroying life.
+
+The first known of all such agencies was mandragora. Dioscorides
+describes a wine, called _morion_, which was made from the leaves and
+the root of mandragora, and possessed properties resembling those of
+chloral hydrate. That it must have been an effective narcotic is shown
+by the circumstance that painful operations were performed on patients
+subjected to its influence, without their suffering the least pain, or
+even feeling. The sleep thus produced lasted several hours. Dr.
+Richardson considers that the use of this agent was probably continued
+until the twelfth or thirteenth century. "From the use of it doubtless
+came," he says, "the Shaksperian legend of Juliet." He strangely omits
+to notice that Shakspeare elsewhere speaks of this narcotic by name,
+where Iago says of Othello:
+
+            "Not poppy, nor mandragora,
+    Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
+    Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep
+    Which thou own'dst yesterday."
+
+Probably the use of mandragora as a narcotic may have continued much
+later than the thirteenth century. In earlier times it was certainly
+used as opium is now used, not for medicinal purposes, but to produce
+for a while an agreeable sensation of dreamy drowsiness. "There were
+those," says Dr. Richardson, in his interesting article on Narcotics in
+the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July last, "who drank of it for taste or
+pleasure, and who were spoken of as 'mandragorites,' as we might speak
+of 'alcoholists' or 'chloralists.' They passed into the land of sleep
+and dream, and waking up in scare and alarm were the screaming mandrakes
+of an ancient civilization." He has himself made the "morion" of the
+ancients, dispensing the prescription of Dioscorides and Pliny. "The
+same chemist, Mr. Hanbury," he says, "who first put chloral into my
+hands for experiment, also procured for me the root of the true
+mandragora. From that root I made the morion, tested it on myself, tried
+its effects, and re-proved, after a lapse perhaps of four or five
+centuries, that it had all the properties originally ascribed to it."
+
+The "deadly nightshade" has similar properties. (In fact, morion was
+originally made from the _Atropa belladonna_, not from its ally the
+_Atropa mandragora_.) In 1851, Dr. Richardson attended two children who
+were poisoned for a time from eating the berries and chewing the leaves
+of the nightshade, which they had gathered near Richmond. They were
+brought home insensible, he says, "and they lay in a condition of
+suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being required to
+detect either the respiration or the movements of the heart; they
+nevertheless recovered."
+
+With the nitrite of amyl, Dr. Richardson has suspended the life of a
+frog for nine days, yet the creature was then restored to full and
+vigorous life. He has shown also that the same power of suspension,
+though in less degree, "could be produced in warm-blooded animals, and
+that the heart of a warm-blooded animal would contract for a period of
+eighteen hours after apparent death." The action of nitrite of amyl
+seems to resemble that of cold. In the pleasing language of the doctors,
+"it prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents
+_rigor mortis_, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous
+centres and cords." So long as this change is prevented, active life can
+be restored. But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred,
+all was over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction
+was the result." From the analogy of some of the symptoms resulting from
+the use of nitrite of amyl with the symptoms of catalepsy, Dr.
+Richardson has "ventured to suggest that under some abnormal conditions
+the human body itself, in its own chemistry, may produce an agent which
+causes the suspended life observed during the cataleptic condition." The
+suggestion has an interest apart from the question of the possibility of
+safely suspending animation for considerable periods of time: it might
+be possible to detect the nature of the agent thus produced by the
+chemistry of the human body (if the theory is correct), and thus to
+learn how its power might be counteracted.
+
+Chloral hydrate seems singularly efficient in producing the semblance of
+death,--so completely, indeed, as to deceive even the elect. Dr.
+Richardson states that at the meeting of the British Association at
+Exeter, some pigeons which had been put to sleep by the needle injection
+of a large dose of chloral, "fell into such complete resemblance of
+death that they passed for dead among an audience containing many
+physiologists and other men of science. For my own part," he proceeds,
+"I could detect no sign of life in them, and they were laid in one of
+the out-offices of the museum of the infirmary as dead. In this
+condition they were left late at night, but in the following morning
+they were found alive, and as well as if nothing hurtful had happened to
+them." Similar effects seem to be produced by the deadly poisons
+cyanogen gas and hydrocyanic acid, though in the following case,
+narrated by Dr. Richardson, the animal experimented upon (not with the
+idea of eventually restoring it to life) belonged to a race so specially
+tenacious of life that some may consider only one of its proverbial nine
+lives to have been affected. In the laboratory of a large drug
+establishment a cat, "by request of its owner, was killed, as was
+assumed, instantaneously and painlessly by a large dose of Scheele's
+acid. The animal appeared to die without a pang, and, presenting every
+appearance of death, was laid in a sink to be removed on the next
+morning. At night the animal was lying still in form of death in the
+tank beneath a tap. In the morning it was found alive and well, but with
+the fur wet from the dropping of water from the tap." This fact was
+communicated to Dr. Richardson by an eminent chemist under whose direct
+observation it occurred, in corroboration of an observation of his own
+similar in character.
+
+Our old friend alcohol (if friend it can be called) possesses the power
+of suspending active vitality without destroying life, or at any rate
+without depriving the muscles of their excitability. Dr. Richardson
+records the case of a drunken man who, while on the ice at the Welsh
+Harp lake, fell into the water through an opening in the ice, and was
+for more than fifteen minutes completely immersed. He was extricated to
+all appearance dead, but under artificial respiration was restored to
+consciousness, though he did not survive for many hours. On the whole,
+alcoholic suspension of life does not appear to be the best method
+available. To test it, the patient must first get "very, very drunk,"
+and even then, like the soldiers in the old song, must go on drinking,
+lest the experiment should terminate simply in the fiasco of a drunken
+sleep.
+
+The last agent for suspending life referred to by Dr. Richardson is pure
+oxygen. But he has not yet obtained such information on the power of
+oxygen in this respect as he hopes to do.
+
+Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics
+and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that much
+is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension of
+animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various chemical
+agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold, together with
+the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended living
+action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative influence the
+process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the news from
+Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been done had
+been effected by the combination of one of the chemical agents above
+named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question which would
+remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle has been developed,
+but whether in matter of detail a new product has been discovered which,
+better than any of the agents we already possess, destroys and suspends
+animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds, "there are, I doubt not,
+hundreds of substances which, like mandragora and nitrite of amyl, would
+suspend the vital process, and it may be a new experimenter has met with
+such an agent. It is not incredible, indeed, that the Indian Fakirs
+possess a vegetable extract or essence which possesses the same power,
+and by means of which they perform their as yet unexplained feat of
+prolonged living burial." But he is careful to note the weak points of
+the Australian story--viz., first, the statement that the method used is
+a secret, "for men of true science know no such word;" secondly, that
+the experimenter has himself to go to America to procure more supplies
+of his agents; and, thirdly, that he requires two agents, one of which
+is an antidote to the other. As respects this third point, he asks very
+pertinently how an antidote can be absorbed and enter into the
+circulation in a body practically dead.
+
+It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax, and a
+mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long distances to
+Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised such important
+results, only to find that there was not a particle of truth in the
+story.
+
+    RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[70] Many fail to see a joke when it is gravely propounded in print, who
+would at once recognise it as such, were it uttered verbally, with
+however serious a countenance. Possibly this is due to the necessary
+absence in the printed account of the indications by which we recognise
+that a speaker is jesting--as a certain expression of countenance, or a
+certain intonation of voice, by which the grave utterer of a spoken jest
+conveys his real meaning. In a paper which recently appeared in the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, Mr. Foster (Thomas of that ilk) propounded very
+gravely the theory that our Nursery Rhymes have in reality had their
+origin in Nature Myths. He explained, for instance, that the rhymes
+relating to Little Jack Horner were originally descriptive of sunrise in
+winter: Little Jack is the sun in winter, the Christmas pie is the
+cloud-covered sky; the thumb represents the sun's first ray piercing
+through the clouds; and Jack's rejoicing means the brightness of full
+sunlight. So also the rhymes beginning Hey Diddle Diddle are shown to be
+of deep and solemn import, all in manifest burlesque of some recent
+extravagant interpretations of certain ancient stories by Goldziher,
+Steinthal, and others. Yet this fun was seriously criticized by more
+than half the critics, by some approvingly, by some otherwise.
+
+[71] For a full account of this clever hoax the reader is referred to my
+"Myths and Marvels of Astronomy."
+
+[72] The most curious are given in the ninth essay of my work referred
+to in the preceding note.
+
+[73] Few probably are aware how long some animals may remain without
+breathing and yet survive. Kittens and puppies have been brought to life
+after being immersed in water for nearly three-quarters of an hour.
+
+[74] Objection has been taken to the italicized words in the following
+passage from "No Thoroughfare" (one of the parts certainly written by
+Dickens and not by Wilkie Collins): "The cry came up: 'His heart still
+beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have cast off the rope, for
+the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him; but I
+am not afraid.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking lower, but his
+heart still beats against mine.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking
+still, and we are deadly cold. _His heart no longer beats against mine._
+Let no one come down to add to our weight. Lower the rope only.' ... The
+cry came up with a deathly silence, 'Raise! softly!' ... She broke from
+them all and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands
+upon _the heart that stood still_." It has been supposed that Dickens
+wilfully departed here from truth, in order to leave the impression on
+the reader that Vendale was assuredly dead. That he wished to convey
+this impression is obvious. He often showed similar care to remove, if
+possible, all hope from the anxious reader's mind (markedly so in his
+latest and unfinished work, where nevertheless any one well acquainted
+with Dickens's manner knows not only that Drood is alive, but that
+disguised as Datchery he was to have watched Jasper to the end). But in
+reality, it has happened more than once that persons have been restored
+to life who have been found in snow-drifts not merely reduced to
+complete insensibility, but without any recognisable heart-beat. Dickens
+had probably heard of such cases when in Switzerland.
+
+[75] Dr. Richardson will certainly excite the contempt of the northern
+professor who rebuked me recently for speaking of heat when I should
+have said temperature. "An atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point"
+is an expression as inadmissible, if we must be punctilious in such
+matters, as the expressions "blood-heat," "a heat of ten degrees," and
+so forth. Possibly, however, it is not desirable to be punctilious when
+there is no possibility of being misunderstood, especially as it may be
+noticed (the Edinburgh professor has often afforded striking
+illustrations of the fact by errors of his own) that too great an effort
+to be punctilious often results in very remarkable incorrectness of
+expression.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED.
+
+IV.--UTILITARIANISM.
+
+
+In some respects Mill's Essays, published under the title
+"Utilitarianism," are among his best writings. They have, in the first
+place, the excellence of brevity. Ninety-six pages, printed in handsome
+type, make but a light task for the student who wishes to enter into the
+intricacies of moral doctrine. Moreover, the last Essay consists of a
+digression concerning the nature and origin of the idea of Justice, and
+it occupies nearly one-third of the whole book. Thus Mill managed to
+compress his discussion of so important a subject as the foundations of
+Moral Right and Wrong into some sixty pleasant pages.
+
+And pleasant pages they certainly are, for they are written in Mill's
+very best style. Now Mill, even when he is most prolix, when he is
+pursuing the intricacies of the most involved points of logic and
+philosophy, can seldom or never be charged with dulness and heaviness.
+His language is too easy, polished, and apparently lucid. In these
+Essays on Utilitarianism, he reaches his own highest standard of style.
+There is hardly any other book in the range of philosophy, so far as my
+reading has gone, which can be read with less effort. There is something
+enticing in the easy flow of sentences and ideas, and without apparent
+difficulty the reader finds himself agreeably borne into the midst of
+the most profound questions of ethical philosophy, questions which have
+been the battle-ground of the human intellect for two thousand five
+hundred years.
+
+Partly to this excellence of style, partly to Mill's immense reputation,
+acquired by other works and in other ways, must we attribute the
+importance which has been generally attached to these ninety-six pages.
+Probably no other modern work of the same small typographical extent has
+been equally discussed, criticized, and admired, unless, indeed, it be
+the Essay on Liberty of the same author. The result is, that Mill has
+been generally regarded as the latest and best expounder of the great
+Utilitarian Doctrine--that doctrine which is, by one and no doubt the
+preponderating school, regarded as the foundation of all moral and
+legislative progress. Many there are who think that, what Hume and Paley
+and Jeremy Bentham began, Mill has carried nearly to perfection in these
+agreeable Essays.
+
+Nothing can be more plain, too, than that Mill himself believed he was
+dutifully expounding the doctrines of his father, of his father's
+friend, the great Bentham, and of the other unquestionable Utilitarians
+among whom he grew up. Mill seems to pride himself upon having been the
+first, not indeed to invent, but to bring into general acceptance the
+name of the school to which he supposed himself to belong. He says:[76]
+"The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the
+first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did not
+invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
+'Annals of the Parish.' After using it as a designation for several
+years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
+resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
+for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
+of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
+term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
+convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution."
+
+In the Autobiography (p. 79), Mill makes a statement to the same effect,
+saying--
+
+    "I did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galt's novels,
+    the 'Annals of the Parish,' in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom
+    the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his
+    parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become utilitarians. With a
+    boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized on the word, and for
+    some years called myself and others by it as a sectarian
+    appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some others
+    holding the opinions it was intended to designate. As those opinions
+    attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and
+    opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when
+    those who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other
+    sectarian characteristics."
+
+It is pointed out, however, by Mr. Sidgwick in his article on
+Benthamism,[77] that Bentham himself suggested the name "Utilitarian,"
+in a letter to Dumont, as far back as June, 1802.
+
+Mill explicitly states that it was his purpose in these Essays on
+Utilitarianism to expound a previously received doctrine of utility.
+Towards the close of his first chapter, containing General Remarks, he
+says (p. 6): "On the present occasion, I shall, without further
+discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something
+towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or
+Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of." He
+proceeds to explain that a preliminary condition of the rational
+acceptance or rejection of a doctrine is that its formula should be
+correctly understood. The very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of the
+Utilitarian formula was the chief obstacle which impeded its reception;
+the main work to be done, therefore, by a Utilitarian writer was to
+clear the doctrine from the grosser misconceptions. Thus the question
+would be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties
+removed. His Essays purport throughout to be a defence and exposition of
+the Utilitarian doctrine.
+
+But one characteristic of Mill's writings is that there is often a wide
+gulf between what he intends and what he achieves. There is even a want
+of security that what he is at any moment urging may not be the logical
+contrary of what he thinks he is urging. This happens to be palpably the
+case with the celebrated Essays before us. Mill explains and defends his
+favourite doctrine with so much affection and so much candour that he
+finally explains himself into the opposite doctrine. Yet with that
+simplicity which is a pleasing feature of his personal character, Mill
+continues to regard himself as a Utilitarian long after he has left the
+grounds of Paley and Bentham. Lines of logical distinction and questions
+of logical consistency are of little account to one who cannot
+distinguish between fact and feeling, between sense and sentiment. It is
+possible that no small part of the favour with which these Essays have
+always been received by the general public is due to the happy way in
+which Mill has combined the bitter and the sweet. The uncompromising
+rigidity of the Benthamist formulas is softened and toned down. An
+apparently scientific treatment is combined with so many noble
+sentiments and high aspirations, that almost any one except a logician
+may be disarmed.
+
+But nothing can endure if it be not logical. These Essays may be very
+agreeable reading; they may make readers congratulate themselves on so
+easily becoming moral philosophers; but they cannot really advance moral
+science if they represent one thing as being another thing. I make it my
+business therefore in this article to show that Mill was intellectually
+unfitted to decide what was utilitarian and what was not. In removing
+the obstacles to the reception of his favourite doctrine he removed its
+landmarks too, and confused everything. It is true that I come rather
+late in the day to show this. Some scores, if not hundreds, of critics
+have shown the same fact more or less clearly. Eminent men of the most
+different schools and tones of thought--such as the Rev. Dr. Martineau,
+Mr. Sidgwick, Dr. Ward, Professor Birks, the late Professor Grote--have
+criticized and refuted Mill time after time.
+
+Since commencing my analysis of Mill's Philosophy, I have been surprised
+to find, too, that some who were supposed to support Mill's school
+through thick and thin, have long since discovered the inconsistencies
+which I would now expose, at such wearisome length as if they were new
+discoveries. Such is the ground which my friend, Professor Croom
+Robertson, takes in his quarterly review, _Mind_, which must be
+considered our best authority on philosophical questions. As to this
+matter of Utilitarianism, a very eminent author, formerly a friend of
+Mill himself, assures me that the subject is quite threshed out, and
+implies that there is no need for me to trouble the public any more
+about it. In fact, it would seem to be allowed within philosophical
+circles that Mill's works are often wrongheaded and unphilosophical. Yet
+these works are supposed to have done so much good that obloquy attaches
+to any one who would seek to diminish the respect paid to them by the
+public at large. Philosophers, and teachers of the last generation at
+least, have done their best to give Mill's groundless philosophy a hold
+upon all the schools and all the press, and yet we of this generation
+are to wait calmly until this influence dissolves of its own accord. We
+are to do nothing to lessen the natural respect paid to the memory of
+the dead, especially of the dead who have unquestionably laboured with
+single-minded purpose for what they considered the good of their
+fellow-creatures. But in nothing is it more true than in philosophy,
+that "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred
+with their bones." Words and false arguments cannot be recalled. Throw a
+stone into the surface of the still sea, and you are powerless to
+prevent the circle of disturbance from spreading more and more widely.
+True it is, that one disturbance may be overcome and apparently
+obliterated by other deeper disturbances; but Mill's works and opinions
+were disseminated by the immense former influence of the united band of
+Benthamist philosophers. He is criticized and discussed and repeated, in
+almost every philosophical work of the last thirty or forty years. He is
+taken throughout the world as the representative of British philosophy,
+and it is not sufficient for a few eminent thinkers in Oxford, or
+Cambridge, or London, or Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, to acknowledge in a
+tacit sort of way that this doctrine and that doctrine is wrong.
+Eventually, no doubt, the opinion of the Lecture Halls and Combination
+Rooms will guide the public opinion; but it may take a generation for
+tacit opinions to permeate society. We must have them distinctly and
+boldly expressed. It is especially to be remembered that the public
+press throughout the English-speaking countries is mostly conducted by
+men educated in the time when Mill's works were entirely predominant.
+These men are now for the most part cut off, by geographical or
+professional obstacles, from the direct influence of Oxford or
+Cambridge. The circle of disturbance has spread beyond the immediate
+reach of those centres of thought. To be brief, I do not believe that
+Mill's immense philosophical influence, founded as it is on confusion of
+thought, will readily collapse. I fear that it may remain as a permanent
+obstacle in the way of sound thinking. _Citius emergit veritas ex
+errore, quam ex confusione._ Had Mill simply erred as did Hobbes about
+elementary geometry, and Berkeley about infinitesimals, it would be
+necessary merely to point out the errors and consign them to merciful
+oblivion. But it is not so easy to consign to oblivion ponderous works
+so full of confusion of thought that every inexperienced and unwarned
+reader is sure to lose his way in them, and to take for profound
+philosophy that which is really a kind of kaleidoscopic presentation of
+philosophic ideas and phrases, in a succession of various but usually
+inconsistent combinations. To the public at large, Mill's works still
+undoubtedly remain as the standard of accurate thinking, and the most
+esteemed repertory of philosophy. I cannot therefore consider my
+criticism superfluous, and at the risk of repeating much that has been
+said by the eminent critics already mentioned, or by others, I must show
+that Mill has thrown ethical philosophy into confusion as far as could
+well be done in ninety-six pages.
+
+The nature of the Utilitarian doctrine is explained by Mill with
+sufficient accuracy in pp. 9 and 10, where he says--
+
+    "The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or
+    the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in
+    proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
+    produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure,
+    and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of
+    pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the
+    theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it
+    includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this
+    is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do
+    not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is
+    grounded--namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only
+    things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are
+    as numerous in the utilitarian as any other scheme) are desirable
+    either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the
+    promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
+
+Mill proceeds to say that such a theory of life excites inveterate
+dislike in many minds, and among them some of the most estimable in
+feeling and purpose. To hold forth no better end than pleasure is felt
+to be utterly mean and grovelling--a doctrine worthy only of swine. Mill
+accordingly proceeds to inquire whether there is anything really
+grovelling in the doctrine--whether, on the contrary, we may not include
+under pleasure, feelings and motives which are in the highest degree
+noble and elevating. The whole inquiry turns upon this question--Do
+pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity? Can a small amount
+of pleasure of very elevated character outweigh a large amount of
+pleasure of low quality? We should never think of estimating pictures by
+their size and number. The productions of West and Fuseli, which were
+the wonder and admiration of our grandparents, can now be bought by the
+square yard, to cover the bare walls of eating-houses and music-halls.
+_Sic transit gloria mundi._ But a choice sketch by Turner sometimes
+sells for many pounds per square inch. It is clear, then, that in the
+opinion of connoisseurs, which must, for our present purpose, be
+considered final, high art is almost wholly a matter of quality. Two
+great pictures by West may be nearly twice as valuable as one; and two
+equally choice sketches by Turner are twice as good as one; but it would
+seem hardly possible in the present day for the disciple of "high art"
+to bring West and Turner into the same category of thought. I suppose
+that even Turner will presently begin to wane before "the higher
+criticism."
+
+A corresponding difficulty lies at the very basis of the Utilitarian
+theory of ethics. The tippler may esteem two pints of beer doubly as
+much as one; the hero may feel double satisfaction in saving two lives
+instead of one; but who shall weigh the pleasure of a pint of beer
+against the pleasure of saving a fellow-creature's life.
+
+Paley, indeed, cut the Gordian knot of this difficulty in a summary
+manner; he denied altogether that there is any difference between
+pleasures, except in continuance and intensity. It must have required
+some moral courage to write the paragraph to be next quoted; yet Paley,
+however much he may be said to have temporized and equivocated about
+oaths and subscription to Articles, cannot be accused of want of
+explicitness in this passage. There is a directness and clear-hitting of
+the point in Paley's writings which always charms me.
+
+    "In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the
+    amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree
+    of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the
+    greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life, is what
+    we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what human
+    happiness consists in. In which inquiry I will omit much usual
+    declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the
+    superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal
+    part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and
+    delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and
+    sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in
+    nothing, but in continuance and intensity: from a just computation
+    of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness,
+    tranquillity, and contentment, of men of different tastes, tempers,
+    stations, and pursuits, every question concerning human happiness
+    must receive its decision."[78]
+
+Bentham, it need hardly be said, adopted the same idea as the basis of
+his ethical and legislative theories. In his uncompromising style he
+tells us[79] that
+
+    "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
+    masters, _pain_ and _pleasure_. It is for them alone to point out
+    what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On
+    the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain
+    of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us
+    in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can
+    make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and
+    confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but
+    in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The
+    _principle of utility_ recognises this subjection, and assumes it
+    for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear
+    the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems
+    which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in
+    caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
+
+Elsewhere Bentham proceeds to show how we may estimate the _values_ of
+pleasures and pains, meaning obviously by _values_ the quantities or
+forces. As these feelings are both the ends and the instruments of the
+moralist and legislator, it especially behoves us to learn how to
+estimate these values aright, and Bentham tells us most distinctly.[80]
+
+    To a person, he says, considered _by himself_, the value of a
+    pleasure or pain considered _by itself_, will be greater or less,
+    according to the four following circumstances. 1. Its _intensity_.
+    2. Its _duration_. 3. Its _certainty_ or _uncertainty_. 4. Its
+    _propinquity_ or _remoteness_. But when the value of any pleasure or
+    pain is to be considered for the purpose of estimating the general
+    tendency of the act, we have to take into account also, 5. The
+    _fecundity_, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of
+    the same kind, that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure; pains, if it
+    be a pain. 6. Its _purity_, or the chance it has of _not_ being
+    followed by sensations of the _opposite_ kind: that is, pains, if it
+    be a pleasure; pleasures, if it be a pain. Finally, when we consider
+    the interests of a number of persons, we must also estimate a
+    pleasure or pain with reference to, 7. Its extent; that is the
+    number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it.
+
+Thus did Bentham clearly and explicitly lay the foundations of the moral
+and political sciences, and to impress these fundamental propositions on
+the memory he framed the following curious mnemonic lines, which may be
+quoted for the sake of their quaintness:--
+
+    "_Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure_----
+    Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
+    Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:
+    If it be public, wide let them _extend_.
+    Such _pains_ avoid, whichever be thy view:
+    If pains _must_ come, let them _extend_ to few."
+
+In all that Bentham says about pleasure and pain, there is not a word
+about the intrinsic superiority of one pleasure to another. He advocates
+our seeking _pure_ pleasures; but with him a pure pleasure was clearly
+defined as one not likely to be followed by feelings of the opposite
+kind; the pleasure of opium-eating, for instance, would be called
+impure, simply because it is likely to lead to bad health and consequent
+pain; if not so followed by evil consequences, the pleasure would be as
+pure as any other pleasure. With Bentham morality became, as it were, a
+question of the ledger and the balance-sheet; all feelings were reduced
+to the same denomination of value, and whenever we indulge in a little
+enjoyment, or endure a pain, the consequences in regard to subsequent
+enjoyment or suffering are to be inexorably scored for or against us, as
+the case may be. Our conduct must be judged wise or foolish according
+as, in the long-run, we find a favourable "hedonic" balance-sheet.
+
+What Mill in his earlier life thought about these foundations of the
+utilitarian doctrine, and the elaborate structure reared therefrom by
+Bentham, he has told us in his Autobiography, pp. 64 to 70. Subsequently
+Mill revolted, as we all know, against the narrowness of the Benthamist
+creed. While wishing to retain[81] the precision of expression, the
+definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague
+generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of Bentham
+and of his own father, James Mill, John Stuart decided to give a wider
+basis and a more free and "genial" character to the utilitarian
+speculations.
+
+Let us consider how Mill proceeded to give this "genial" character to
+the utilitarian philosophy. It must be admitted, he says,[82] that
+utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental
+over bodily pleasures _chiefly_ in the greater permanency, safety,
+uncostliness, &c., of the former--that is, in their circumstantial
+advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. As regards Bentham, at
+least, Mill might have omitted the word _chiefly_. But according to
+Mill, there is no need why they should have taken such a ground.
+
+    "They might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher
+    ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the
+    principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of
+    pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would
+    be absurd, that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
+    considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should
+    be supposed to depend on quantity alone."
+
+Then Mill proceeds to point out, with all the persuasiveness of his best
+style, that there are higher feelings which we would not sacrifice for
+any quantity of a lower feeling. Few human creatures, he holds, would
+consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the
+fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being
+would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus,
+no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, and so
+forth. Mill, in fact, treats us to a good deal of what Paley so
+cynically called the "usual declamation," on the dignity and capacity of
+our nature, and the worthiness of some satisfactions compared with the
+grossness and sensuality of others. It must be allowed that Mill has the
+best of it, at least with the majority of readers. Paley is simply
+brutal as to the way in which he depresses everything to the same level
+of apparent sensuality. Mill overflows with genial and noble
+aspirations; he hardly deigns to count the lower pleasures as worth
+putting in the scale; it is better, he thinks, to be a human being
+dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied
+than a fool satisfied. If the pig or the fool is of a different opinion,
+it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other
+party to the comparison knows both sides. In the pages which follow
+there is much nobleness and elevation of thought. But where is the
+logic? We are nothing if we are not logical. But does Mill, in the
+fervour of his revolt against the cold, narrow restraints of the
+Benthamist formulas, consider the consistency and stability of his
+position? Let us examine in some detail the position to which he has
+brought himself.
+
+It is plain, in the first place, that pleasure is with Mill the ultimate
+purpose of existence; for the philosophy is that of utilitarianism, and
+Mill distinctly assures us (Autobiography, p. 178) that he "never
+ceased to be a utilitarian." We must, of course, distinguish between the
+pleasure of the individual and the pleasure of other individuals of the
+race, between Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism, as Mr. Sidgwick
+calls these very different doctrines. But the happiness of the race is,
+of course, made up of the happiness of its units, so that unless most of
+the individuals pursue a course ensuring happiness, the race cannot be
+happy in the aggregate. Now, to acquire happiness the individual must,
+of course, select that line of conduct which is likely to--that is, will
+in the majority of cases--bring happiness. He must aim at something
+which is capable of being reached. Mill tells us (p. 18) that if by
+happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is
+evident enough that this is impossible to attain.
+
+    "A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases,
+    and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional
+    brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of
+    this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of
+    life were as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness
+    which they meant was not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in
+    an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various
+    pleasures, with a decided predominance of the actual over the
+    passive, and _having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect
+    more from life than it is capable of bestowing_.[83] A life thus
+    composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has
+    always appeared worthy of the name of happiness."
+
+Then Mill goes on to point out what he considers has been sufficient to
+satisfy great numbers of mankind (p. 19):
+
+    "The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either
+    of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose:
+    tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that
+    they can be content with very little pleasure: with much excitement,
+    many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.
+    There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the
+    mass of mankind to unite both."
+
+From these passages we must gather that at any rate the mass of mankind
+will attain happiness if they are satisfied with these main
+constituents, and we are especially told that the foundation of the
+whole utilitarian philosophy (Mill does not specify the substantive to
+which the adjective _whole_ applies in the above quotation, but it must
+from the context be either "utilitarian philosophy," "search for
+happiness," or some closely equivalent idea) is _not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing_.
+
+The question, then, may fairly arise whether upon a fair calculation of
+probabilities they are not wise, upon Mill's own showing, who aim at
+moderate achievements in life, so that in accomplishing these they may
+insure a satisfied life. This seems the more reasonable, if, as Mill
+elsewhere tells us, the nobler feelings are very apt to be killed off by
+the chilly realities of life.
+
+    "Many," he says (p. 14), "who begin with youthful enthusiasm for
+    everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and
+    selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very
+    common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasure
+    in preference to the higher, I believe that before they devote
+    themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become
+    incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
+    natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
+    influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of
+    young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
+    their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which
+    it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher
+    capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose
+    their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity
+    for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior
+    pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because
+    they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only
+    ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
+    questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to
+    both classes of pleasure, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the
+    lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual
+    attempt to combine both."
+
+It would seem, then, that for the mass of mankind there is small
+prospect indeed of achieving happiness through high aspirations. They
+will not have time nor opportunity for indulging them. If they look for
+happiness solely to such aspirations they must be disappointed, and
+cannot have a satisfied life; if they attempt to combine the higher and
+lower lives they are likely to "break down in the ineffectual attempt."
+Now, I submit that, under these circumstances, it is folly, according to
+Mill's scheme of morality, to aim high; it is equivalent to going into a
+life-lottery, in which there are no doubt high prizes to be gained, but
+few and far between. It is simply gambling with hedonic stakes;
+preferring a small chance of high enjoyment to comparative certainty of
+moderate pleasures. Mill clearly admits this when he says (p. 14), "It
+is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
+the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed
+being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the
+world is constituted, is imperfect."
+
+Although, then, "the foundation of the whole" is not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing, we are actually to prefer becoming
+highly endowed, although we cannot expect life to satisfy the
+corresponding aspirations. That is to say, although seeking for
+happiness, we are to prefer the course in which we are approximately
+certain of not obtaining it.
+
+But Mill goes on to give some explanations. He says that the highly
+endowed being can learn to bear the imperfections of his happiness, "if
+they are at all bearable" (p. 14). This is small comfort if they happen
+to be _not at all bearable_, an alternative which is not further pursued
+by Mill. And will not this intolerable fate be most likely to befall
+those whose aspirations have been pitched most highly? But Mill goes on:
+
+    "They (that is, the imperfections of life or happiness?) will not
+    make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the
+    imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which
+    those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being
+    dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
+    dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is
+    of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side
+    of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both
+    sides."
+
+Concerning this position of affairs the most apposite remark I can make
+is contained in the somewhat trite and vulgar saying, "Where ignorance
+is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." If Socrates is pretty sure to be
+dissatisfied, and yet, owing to his wisdom, cannot help wishing to be
+Socrates, he seems to have no chance of that individual happiness which
+depends on being satisfied, and not expecting from life more than it is
+capable of bestowing. The great majority of people who do not know what
+it is like to be Socrates, are surely to be congratulated that they can,
+without scruple or remorse, seek a prize of happiness which there is a
+fair prospect of securing. But Mill tells us that those who choose the
+lower life do so "because they only know their own side of the question.
+The other party to the comparison knows both sides." Then Mill
+introduces a paragraph, already partially quoted, in which he allows
+that men often do, _from infirmity of character_, make their selection
+for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable. Many
+who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, sink in later
+years into indolence and selfishness. The capacity for the nobler
+feelings is easily killed, and men lose their high aspirations because
+they have not time and opportunity for indulging them. I submit that,
+_from Mill's point of view_, these are all valid reasons why they should
+_not_ choose the higher life. We are considering here, not those who
+have always been devoid of the nobler feelings, but those who have in
+earlier life been full of enthusiasm and high aspirations. If such men,
+with few exceptions, decide eventually in favour of the lower life, they
+are parties who _do_ know both sides of the comparison, and deliberately
+choose not to be Socrates, with the prospect of the very imperfect
+happiness (probably involving short rations) which is incident to the
+life of Socrates.
+
+Mill, indeed, calmly assumes that the vote goes in his own and Socrates'
+favour. He says (p. 15):
+
+    "From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there
+    can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of
+    two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most
+    grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from
+    its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by
+    knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among
+    them, must be admitted as final. And there need be the less
+    hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of
+    pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to, even
+    on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining
+    which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
+    pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
+    familiar with both?"
+
+Now, were we dealing with a writer of average logical accuracy there
+would be considerable presumption that when he adduces evidence and
+claims a result in his own favour in this confident way, there would be
+some ground for the claim. But my scrutiny of Mill's "System of Logic"
+has taught me caution in admitting such presumptions in respect of his
+writings, and here is a case in point. He claims that the suffrage of
+the majority is in favour of Socrates' life, although he has admitted
+that the vast majority of men somehow or other elect not to be Socrates.
+He assumes, indeed, that this is because their aspirations have been
+first killed off by unfavourable circumstances; his only residuum of
+fact is contained in this somewhat hesitating conclusion already
+quoted:--
+
+    "It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
+    susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
+    preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in
+    an ineffectual attempt to combine both."
+
+Although, then, millions and millions are continually deciding against
+Socrates' life, for one reason or another (and many in all ages who make
+the ineffectual attempt at a combination break down), Mill gratuitously
+assumes that they are none of them competent witnesses, because they
+must have lost their higher feelings before they could have descended to
+the lower level; then the comparatively few who do choose the higher
+life and succeed in attaining it are adduced as giving a large majority,
+or even a unanimous vote in favour of their own choice. I submit that
+this is a fallacy probably to be best classed as a _petitio principii_;
+Mill entirely begs the question when he assumes that every witness
+against him is an incapacitated witness, because he must have lost his
+capacity for the nobler feelings before he could have decided in favour
+of the lower.
+
+The verdict which Mill takes in favour of his high-quality pleasures is
+entirely that of a packed jury. It is on a par with the verdict which
+would be given by vegetarians in favour of a vegetable diet. No doubt,
+those who call themselves vegetarians would almost unanimously say that
+it is the best and highest diet; but then, all those who have tried such
+diet and found it impracticable have disappeared from the jury, together
+with all those whose common sense, or scientific knowledge, or weak
+state of health, or other circumstances, have prevented them from
+attempting the experiment. By the same method of decision, we might all
+be required to get up at five o'clock in the morning and do four hours
+of head-work before breakfast, because the few hard-headed and
+hard-bodied individuals who do this sort of thing are unanimously of
+opinion that it is a healthly and profitable way of beginning the day.
+
+Of course, it will be understood that I am not denying the moral
+superiority of some pleasures and courses of life over others. I am only
+showing that Mill's attempt to reconcile his ideas on the subject with
+the Utilitarian theory hopelessly fails. The few pleasant pages in which
+he makes this attempt (Utilitarianism, pp. 8-28), form, in fact, a most
+notable piece of sophistical reasoning. Much of the interest of these
+undoubtedly interesting passages arises from the kaleidoscopic way in
+which the standing difficulties of ethical science are woven together,
+as if they were logically coherent in Mill's mode of presentation. The
+ideas involved are as old as Plato and Aristotle. The high aspirations
+correspond to =to kalon= of Plato. The superior man who can judge both
+sides of the question is the =beltistos an�r= of Aristotle. The
+Utilitarian doctrine is that of Epicurus. Now, Mill managed to persuade
+himself that he could in twenty pages reconcile the controversies of
+ages.
+
+Nor is it to be supposed that Bentham, in making his analysis of the
+conditions of pleasure, overlooked the difference of high and low; he
+did not overlook it at all--he analyzed it. A pleasure to be high must
+have the marks of intensity, length, certainty, fruitfulness, and
+purity, or of some of these at least; and when we take Altruism into
+account, the feelings must be of wide extent--that is, fruitful of
+pleasure and devoid of evil to great numbers of people. It is a higher
+pleasure to build a Free Library than to establish a new Race Course;
+not because there is a _Free-Library-building emotion_, which is
+essentially better than a _Race-Course-establishing emotion_, each being
+a simple unanalyzable feeling; but because we may, after the model of
+inquiry given by Bentham, resolve into its elements the effect of one
+action and the other upon the happiness of the community. Thus, we
+should find that Mill proposed to give "geniality" to the Utilitarian
+philosophy by throwing into confusion what it was the very merit of
+Bentham to have distinguished and arranged scientifically. We must hold
+to the dry old Jeremy, if we are to have any chance of progress in
+Ethics. Mill, at some "crisis in his mental history," decided in favour
+of a genial instead of a logical and scientific Ethics, and the result
+is the mixture of sentiment and sophistry contained in the attractive
+pages under review.
+
+In order to treat adequately of Mill's ethical doctrines it would no
+doubt be necessary to go on to other parts of the Essays, and to inquire
+how he treats other moral elements, such as the Social or Altruistic
+Feelings. The existence of such feelings is admitted on p. 46, and,
+indeed, insisted on as a basis of powerful natural sentiment,
+constituting the strength of the Utilitarian morality. But it would be
+an endless work to examine all phases of Mill's doctrines, and to show
+whether or not they are logically consistent _inter se_. They are really
+not worth the trouble. Just let us notice, however, how he treats the
+question whether moral feelings are innate or not. On this point Mill
+gives (p. 45) the following characteristic deliverance:--"If, as is my
+own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to
+reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though these are
+acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our
+nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all
+of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the
+most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired
+capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our
+nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain
+small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
+brought by cultivation to a high degree of development." If life were
+long enough, I should like, with the assistance of the "Methods of
+Ethics," to analyze the ideas involved in this passage. I can merely
+suggest the following questions:--If acquired capacities are equally
+natural with those not acquired, what is the use of introducing a
+distinction without a difference? If moral feelings can spring up
+spontaneously, even in the smallest degree, and then be developed by
+"natural outgrowths," how do any of our feelings differ from natural
+ones? What does Mill mean, at the top of the next page, by speaking of
+"moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation?" Are these
+also not the less natural because they are of artificial creation? If
+not, we should like to know how to draw the line between _acquired_ and
+_artificial_ capacities. How, again, are we to interpret the use of the
+word _natural_, on p. 50, where, speaking of the deeply-rooted
+conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social
+being, he says--
+
+    "This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to
+    their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to
+    those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural
+    feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition
+    of education," &c.
+
+Here a natural feeling is contrasted to the product of education,
+although we were before told that acquired capacities, like speaking,
+building, cultivating, were none the less natural. But I must candidly
+confess that when Mill introduces the words _nature_ and _natural_, I am
+completely baffled. I give it up. I can no longer find any logical marks
+to assist me in tracking out his course of thought. The word _nature_
+may be Mill's key to a profound philosophy; but I rather think it is the
+key to many of his fallacies.
+
+I often amuse myself by trying to imagine what Bentham would have said
+of Benthamism expounded by Mill. Especially would it be interesting to
+hear Bentham on Mill's use of the word "natural." No passage in which
+Bentham analyzes the meaning of "nature," or "natural," occurs to me,
+but the following is his treatment of the word "unnatural," as employed
+in Ethics:--
+
+    "Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent: and there it
+    means something; although nothing to the present purpose. But here
+    it means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps
+    the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean,
+    which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is,
+    the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the disposition
+    he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it."[84]
+
+Would that the grand old man, as he still sits benignly pondering in his
+own proper bones and clothes, in the upper regions of a well-known
+institution, could be got to deliver himself in like style about
+feelings which are _not the less natural because they are acquired_.
+
+Before passing on, however, I must point out, in the extract from p. 45,
+the characteristic habit which Mill has of _minimizing_ things which he
+is obliged to admit. Instead of denying straightforwardly that we have
+moral feelings, he says they are not present in all of us in any
+"perceptible degree." The moral faculty is capable of springing up
+spontaneously "in a certain small degree." This will remind every reader
+of the way in which, in his "Essays on Religion," instead of flatly
+adopting Atheism or Theism, which are clear logical negatives each of
+the other, he concludes that though God is almost proved not to exist,
+He may possibly exist, and we must "imagine" this chance to be as large
+as we can, though it belongs only "to one of the lower degrees of
+probability." Exactly the same manner of meeting a weighty question will
+be discovered again in his demonstration of the non-existence of
+necessary truths. I shall hope to examine carefully his treatment of
+this important part of philosophy on a future occasion. We shall then
+find, I believe, that his argument proves non-existence of such things
+as necessary truths, because those truths which cannot be explained on
+the association principle are very few indeed. I beg pardon for
+introducing an incongruous illustration, but Mill's manner of minimizing
+an all-important admission often irresistibly reminds me of the young
+woman who, being taxed with having borne a child, replied that it was
+only a very small one.
+
+Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it
+is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a
+full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same
+precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis
+is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral
+Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to the
+reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though that is a
+great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and
+nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to the
+establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made a new
+era in philosophy.[85] Mill has been singularly unfortunate from this
+point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic writer
+conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He brought
+to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he ignored that
+which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.
+
+I am aware that, in her Introductory Notice to the Essays on Religion
+(p. viii.), Miss Helen Taylor apologizes for Mill having omitted any
+references to the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine "in passages
+where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or where
+subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner to
+which the Author of these Essays would certainly have referred had their
+works been published before these were written."[86] Here it is implied
+that Mill anticipated the authors of the Evolution philosophy in some of
+their thoughts, and it is a most amiable and pardonable bias which leads
+Miss Taylor to find in the works of one so dear to her that which is not
+there. The fact is that the whole tone of Mill's moral and political
+writings is totally opposed to the teaching of Darwin and Spencer,
+Taylor and Maine. Mill's idea of human nature was that we came into the
+world like lumps of soft clay, to be shaped by the accidents of life, or
+the care of those who educate us. Austin insisted on the evidence which
+history and daily experience afford of "the extraordinary pliability of
+human nature," and Mill borrowed the phrase from him.[87] No phrase
+could better express the misapprehensions of human nature which, it is
+to be hoped, will cease for ever with the last generation of writers.
+Human nature is one of the last things which can be called "pliable."
+Granite rocks can be more easily moulded than the poor savages that hide
+among them. We are all of us full of deep springs of unconquerable
+character, which education may in some degree soften or develop, but can
+neither create nor destroy. The mind can be shaped about as much as the
+body; it may be starved into feebleness, or fed and exercised into
+vigour and fulness; but we start always with inherent hereditary powers
+of growth. The non-recognition of this fact is the great defect in the
+moral system of Bentham. The great Jeremy was accustomed to make short
+work with the things which he did not understand, and it is thus he
+disposes of "the pretended system" of a moral sense:[88]
+
+    "One man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is
+    right and what is wrong, and that it is called a _moral sense_; and
+    then he goes to his work at his ease, and says such a thing is right
+    and such a thing is wrong--Why? because my moral sense tells me it
+    is."
+
+Bentham then bluntly ignored the validity of innate feelings, but this
+omission, though a great defect, did not much diminish the value of his
+analysis of the good and bad effects of actions. Mill discarded the
+admirable Benthamist analysis, but failed to introduce the true
+Evolutionist principles; thus he falls between the two. It is to Herbert
+Spencer we must look for a more truthful philosophy of morals than was
+possible before his time.
+
+The publication of the first part of his Principles of Morality, under
+the title "The Data of Ethics," gives us, in a definite form, and in his
+form, what we could previously only infer from the general course of his
+philosophy and from his brief letter on Utilitarianism addressed to
+Mill. Although but fragments, these writings enable us to see that a
+definite step has been made in a matter debated since the dawn of
+intellect. The moral sense doctrine, so rudely treated by Bentham, is no
+longer incapable of reconciliation with the greatest happiness
+principle, only it now becomes a moving and developable moral sense. An
+absolute and unalterable moral standard was opposed to the palpable fact
+that customs and feelings differ widely, and Paley, on this ground, was
+induced to reject it. Now we perceive that we all have a moral sense;
+but the moral sense of one individual, and still more of one race, may
+differ from that of another individual or race. Each is more or less
+fitted to its circumstances, and the best is ascertained by _eventual
+success_.
+
+At the tail end of an article it is, of course, impossible to discuss
+the grounds or results of the Spencerian philosophy. To me it presents
+itself, in its main features, as unquestionably true; indeed, it is
+already difficult to look back and imagine how philosophers could have
+denied of the human mind and actions what is so obviously true of the
+animal races generally. As a reaction from the old views about innate
+ideas, the philosophers of the eighteenth century wished to believe that
+the human mind was a kind of _tabula rasa_, or _carte blanche_, upon
+which education could impress any character. But if so, why not harness
+the lion, and teach the sheep to drive away the wolf? If the moral, not
+to speak of the physical characteristics of the lower animals, are so
+distinct, why should there not be moral and mental differences among
+ourselves, descending, as we obviously do, from different stocks with
+different physical characteristics? Notice what Mr. Darwin says on this
+point:--
+
+    "Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism'
+    (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a 'powerful natural
+    sentiment,' and as 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian
+    morality;' but on the previous page he says, 'if, as is my own
+    belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+    not for that reason less natural.' It is with hesitation that I
+    venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be
+    disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the
+    lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain and
+    others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual
+    during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at
+    least extremely improbable."[89]
+
+Many persons may be inclined to like the philosophy of Spencer no better
+than that of Mill. But, if the one be true and the other false, liking
+and disliking have no place in the matter. There may be many things
+which we cannot possibly like; but if they are, they are. It is possible
+that the Principles of Evolution, as expounded by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
+may seem as wanting in "geniality" as the formulas of Bentham. There is
+nothing genial, it must be confessed, about the mollusca and other
+cold-blooded organisms with which Mr. Spencer perpetually illustrates
+his principles. Heaven forbid that any one should try to give geniality
+to Mr. Spencer's views of ethics by any operation comparable to that
+which Mill performed upon Benthamism.
+
+Nevertheless, I fully believe that all which is sinister and ungenial in
+the Philosophy of Evolution is either the expression of unquestionable
+facts, or else it is the outcome of misinterpretation. It is impossible
+to see how Mr. Spencer, any more than other people, can explain away the
+existence of pain and evil. Nobody has done this; perhaps nobody ever
+shall do it; certainly systems of Theology will not do it. A true
+philosopher will not expect to solve everything. But if we admit the
+patent fact that pain exists, let us observe also the tendency which
+Spencer and Darwin establish towards its _minimization_. Evolution is a
+striving ever towards the better and the happier. There may be almost
+infinite powers against us, but at least there is a deep-laid scheme
+working towards goodness and happiness. So profound and wide-spread is
+this confederacy of the powers of good, that no failure and no series of
+failures can disconcert it. Let mankind be thrown back a hundred times,
+and a hundred times the better tendencies of evolution will re-assert
+themselves. Paley pointed out how many beautiful contrivances there are
+in the human form, tending to our benefit. Spencer has pointed out that
+the Universe is one deep-laid framework for the production of such
+beneficent contrivances. Paley called upon us to admire such exquisite
+inventions as a hand or an eye. Spencer calls upon us to admire a
+machine which is the most comprehensive of all machines, because it is
+ever engaged in inventing beneficial inventions _ad infinitum_. Such at
+least is my way of regarding his Philosophy.
+
+Darwin, indeed, cautions us against supposing that natural selection
+always leads towards the production of higher and happier types of life.
+Retrogression may result as well as progression. But I apprehend that
+retrogression can only occur where the environment of a living species
+is altered to its detriment. Mankind degenerates when forced, like the
+Esquimaux, to inhabit the Arctic regions. Still in retrograding, in a
+sense, the being becomes more suited to its circumstances--more capable
+therefore of happiness. The inventing machine of Evolution would be
+working badly if it worked otherwise. But, however this may be, we must
+accept the philosophy if it be true, and, for my part, I do so without
+reluctance.
+
+According to Mill, we are little self-dependent gods, fighting with a
+malignant and murderous power called Nature, sure, one would think, to
+be worsted in the struggle. According to Spencer, as I venture to
+interpret his theory, we are the latest manifestation of an
+all-prevailing tendency towards the good--the happy. Creation is not yet
+concluded, and there is no one of us who may not become conscious in his
+heart that he is no Automaton, no mere lump of Protoplasm, but the
+Creature of a Creator.
+
+    W. STANLEY JEVONS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[76] "Utilitarianism," fifth edition, p. 9, foot-note. Except where
+otherwise specified, the references throughout this article will be to
+the pages of the fifth edition of "Utilitarianism."
+
+[77] _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1877, vol. xxi. p. 648.
+
+[78] "The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," Book I. chap.
+vi. 2nd paragraph.
+
+[79] "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," p.
+1.
+
+[80] "Principles," &c. chap. iv. sect. 2-5. The statement is not a
+verbatim extract but an abridgment of the sections named.
+
+[81] "Autobiography," p. 214.
+
+[82] "Utilitarianism," p. 11.
+
+[83] Italicised by the present writer.
+
+[84] "Principles of Morals and Legislation," ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 31.
+
+[85] A very important article by Dr. E. L. Youmans upon Mr. Spencer's
+philosophy has just appeared in the _North American Review_ for October,
+1879. Dr. Youmans traces the history of the Evolution doctrines, and
+proves the originality and independence of Mr. Spencer as regards the
+closely related views of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and Professor Huxley.
+The eminent men in question are no doubt in perfect agreement; but Dr.
+Youmans seems to think that readers in general do not properly
+understand the singular originality and boldness of Mr. Spencer's vast
+and partially accomplished enterprise in philosophy.
+
+[86] Mr. Morley does not seem to countenance any such claims. On the
+contrary, he remarks in his "Critical Miscellanies," p. 324, that Mill's
+Essays lose in interest by not dealing with the Darwinian hypothesis.
+
+[87] "Autobiography," p. 187.
+
+[88] "Principles of Morals," &c., p. 29.
+
+[89] "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," 1871, vol.
+i. p. 71. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Darwin felt the inconsistency
+and confusion of ideas in the passages quoted, although he does not so
+express himself. Otherwise, why does he quote from two pages?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Contemporary Review, October 1879, Vol 36, No. 2
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, November 1879
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: April 23, 2012 [EBook #39517]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
+Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
+been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.</p>
+
+<p>This e-text includes characters that will only display in UTF-8 (Unicode)
+file encoding, including Greek words, e.g. <span class="greek" title="scholê">σχολή</span>.
+If any of these characters do not display properly, or if the apostrophes and quotation marks
+in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts.
+First, make sure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding”
+is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s
+default font. All Greek words have mouse-hover transliterations.</p>
+
+<p>A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+Some inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE<br />CONTEMPORARY<br />REVIEW</h1>
+<h3>VOLUME XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1879</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<table summary="Contents">
+  <tr>
+    <th class="condat" colspan="2">NOVEMBER, 1879.</th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="conpgh">PAGE</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">On Freedom. By Professor Max Müller</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">Mr. Gladstone: Two Studies suggested by his "Gleanings of Past
+      Years." I. By a Liberal.—II. By a Conservative</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_398">398</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">The Ancien Régime and the Revolution in France. By Professor von Sybel</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_432">432</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">What is the Actual Condition of Ireland? By Edward Stanley Robertson</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_451">451</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">The Deluge: Its Traditions in Ancient Nations. By François Lenormant</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_465">465</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">Suspended Animation. By Richard A. Proctor</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_501">501</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="concht">John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested. IV.—Utilitarianism.
+      By Professor W. Stanley Jevons</td>
+    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_521">521</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>ON FREEDOM.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2>
+
+<p>Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent
+forth his plea for Liberty.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the
+elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved
+the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think,
+John Stuart Mill.</p>
+
+<p>But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In
+presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of
+individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him. He
+speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual human
+soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of growing to
+something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes a sacred
+thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is treated as
+sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of individuality, is
+represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every true man to resist
+with might and main, and whose demands, as they cannot be altogether
+ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the lowest level.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so
+warmly and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present
+day be challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers,
+or the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very
+humble to <i>our</i> ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual
+is not accountable to society for his actions so far as they
+concern the interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected
+to social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial
+to the interests of others."</p>
+
+<p>Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle, or
+who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller
+measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago,
+when it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can
+we imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual
+man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could
+more freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his
+theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in which,
+in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of England,
+such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and hard-working
+Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred inheritance to
+their sons and daughters?</p>
+
+<p>Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of
+republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one
+single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each individual
+was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if you wish to
+realize the full blessings of the time in which we live, compare Mill's
+plea for Liberty with another written not much more than two hundred
+years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or boldness to
+Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an individual
+in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls "freedom of
+thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being able to
+think what we like—so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely, such
+freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and we
+should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in solitary
+and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom of
+speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual or
+associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared
+with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all
+other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed
+down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion,
+and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any
+infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority,
+need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even
+sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the
+true ring of honest conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
+love of truth.</p>
+
+<p>It has seemed strange therefore to many readers of Mill, particularly
+on the Continent, that this cry for Liberty, this demand for freedom for
+every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his
+nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all
+countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation
+if it had reached us from Russia; but why should English
+philosophers, of all others, have to protest against the tyranny of
+society? It is true, nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically,
+the individual, unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far
+greater freedom, or rather licence, than in a country like England, which
+governs itself. Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent.
+It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the
+simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than
+astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of those
+who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the doctrines of what is called Nihilism or
+Individualism,<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>—viz.,
+"that society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival of the strongest,
+processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have proved successful
+among wild animals." If there is danger in these doctrines the Government
+is expected to see to it. It may place watchmen at the doors of
+every house and at the corner of every street, but it must not count on
+the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves as special constables,
+or even on the co-operation of public opinion which in England would
+annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one glance of scorn and pity.</p>
+
+<p>In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society,
+if it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his rights, is
+far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany.
+Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how
+to use that softer, but more crushing pressure, that calm, but Gorgon-like
+look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to
+resist.</p>
+
+<p>It is rather against that indirect repression which a well-organized
+society exercises, both through its male and female representatives, that
+Mill's demand for Liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for
+unlimited licence; on the contrary, he would have been the most
+strenuous defender of that balance of power between the weak and the
+strong on which all social life depends. But he resents those smaller
+penalties which society will always inflict on those who disturb its
+dignified peace and comfort:—avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a
+stinging remark. Had Mill any right to complain of these social
+penalties? Would it not rather amount to an interference with
+individual liberty to wish to deprive any individual or any number of
+individuals of those weapons of self-defence? Those who themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+think and speak freely, have hardly a right to complain, if others claim
+the same privilege. Mill himself called the Conservative party the
+stupid party <i>par excellence</i>, and he took great pains to explain that it
+was so, not by accident, but by necessity. Need he wonder if those
+whom he whipped and scourged used their own whips and scourges
+against so merciless a critic?</p>
+
+<p>Freethinkers, and I use that name as a title of honour for all who, like
+Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word, or
+deed, compatible with the freedom of others, are apt to make one mistake.
+Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to be mistrusted
+or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often very
+painful operations as a patient submits to the knife of the surgeon.
+That is not in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always abused
+by his enemies. Society will never yield one inch without resistance, and
+few reformers live long enough to receive the thanks of those whom they
+have reformed. Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament was a triumph
+not often shared by social reformers; it was as exceptional as Bright's
+admission to a seat in the Cabinet, or Stanley's appointment as Dean of
+Westminster. Such anomalies will happen in a country fortunately so
+full of anomalies as England; but, as a rule, a political reformer must
+not be angry if he passes through life without the title of Right Honourable;
+nor should a man, if he will always speak the truth, the whole truth,
+and nothing but the truth, be disappointed if he dies a martyr rather
+than a Bishop.</p>
+
+<p>But granting even that in Mill's time there existed some traces of
+social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the
+journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be
+openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned
+societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of the
+fashionable world? When young lords begin to discuss the propriety
+of limiting the rights of inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid to
+propose curtailing the long vacation, surely we need not complain of
+the intolerance of English society.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian
+friends, who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the
+impression that, however large an amount of political liberty England
+may enjoy, it enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are generally
+willing to be converted so far as London, or other great cities, are
+concerned. But look at your Universities, they say, the nurseries of
+English thought! Can you compare their mediæval spirit, their
+monastic institutions, their scholastic philosophy, with the freshness and
+freedom of the Continental Universities? Strong as these prejudices
+about Oxford and Cambridge have always been, they have become still
+more intense since Professor Helmholtz, in an inaugural address which
+he delivered at his installation as Rector of the University of Berlin, lent
+the authority of his great name to these misconceptions. "The tutors," he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+says,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+"in the English Universities cannot deviate by a hair's-breadth from
+the dogmatic system of the English Church, without exposing themselves
+to the censure of their Archbishops and losing their pupils." In
+German Universities, on the contrary, we are told that the extreme
+conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the boldest speculations within
+the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution, may be propounded without
+let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest apotheosis of Papal
+infallibility.</p>
+
+<p>Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely
+wrong, and the writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a
+more than sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no
+official position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of
+an Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole
+University. Nor does the University, as such, exercise any very strict
+control over the tutors, even when they lecture not to their own
+College only. Each Master of Arts at Oxford claims now the right
+to lecture (<i>venia docendi</i>), and I doubt whether they would ever submit
+to those restrictions which, in Germany, the Faculty imposes on every
+<i>Privat-docent</i>. <i>Privat-docents</i> in German Universities have been rejected
+by the Faculty for incompetence, and silenced for insubordination.
+I know of no such cases at Oxford during my residence of
+more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they should ever
+occur.</p>
+
+<p>As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are
+Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as
+Hobbes, Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by
+Büchner and Vogt.</p>
+
+<p>I know comparisons are odious, and I am the last man who would
+wish to draw comparisons between English and German Universities
+unfavourable to the latter. But with regard to freedom of thought,
+of speech, and action, Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few
+weeks at Oxford, would find that we enjoy a fuller measure of freedom
+here than the Professors and <i>Privat-docents</i> in any Continental
+University. The publications of some of our professors and tutors
+ought at least to have convinced him that if there is less of brave
+words and turbulent talk in their writings, they display throughout a
+determination to speak the truth, which may be matched, but could not
+easily be excelled, by the leaders of thought in France, Germany, or
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The real difference between English and Continental Universities is
+that the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government
+entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences.
+I may here be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+of the University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his colleagues, ventured to tell
+them,<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+"We have still to learn from the English how the greatest independence of the individual is compatible
+with willing submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is
+particularly true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Germany, as
+Professor Helmholtz tells us himself, the last decision in almost all the
+more important affairs of the Universities rests with the Government,
+and he does not deny that in times of political and ecclesiastical tension,
+a most inconsiderate use has been made of that power. There are,
+besides, the less important matters, such as raising of salaries, leave of
+absence, scientific missions, even titles and decorations, all of which
+enable a clever Minister of Instruction to assert his personal influence
+among the less independent members of the University. In Oxford the
+University does not know the Ministry, nor the Ministry the University.
+The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or Conservative, are freely
+discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the academic constituencies, and
+the personal dislike of a Minister or Ministerial Councillor could as little
+injure a professor or tutor as his favour could add one penny to his salary.</p>
+
+<p>But these are minor matters. What gives their own peculiar
+character to the English Universities is a sense of power and responsibility:
+power, because they are the most respected among the
+numerous corporations in the country; responsibility, because the
+higher education of the whole country has been committed to their
+charge. Their only master is public opinion as represented in Parliament,
+their only incentive their own sense of duty. There is no country
+in Europe where Universities hold so exalted a position, and where those
+who have the honour to belong to them may say with greater truth,
+<i>Noblesse oblige</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I know the dangers of self-government, particularly where higher and
+more ideal interests are concerned, and there are probably few who wish
+for a real reform in schools and Universities who have not occasionally
+yielded to the desire for a Dictator, of a Bismarck or a Falk. But such a
+desire springs only from a momentary weakness and despondency; and
+no one who knows the difference between being governed and governing
+oneself, would ever wish to descend from that higher though
+dangerous position to a lower one, however safe and comfortable it
+might seem. No one who has tasted freedom would ever wish to
+exchange it for anything else. Public opinion is sometimes a hard task-master,
+and majorities can be great tyrants to those who want to be
+honest to their own convictions. But in the struggle of all against all,
+each individual feels that he has his rightful place, and that he may
+exercise his rightful influence. If he is beaten, he is beaten in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+fair fight; if he conquers, he has no one else to thank. No
+doubt despotic Governments have often exercised the most beneficial
+patronage in encouraging and rewarding poets, artists, and men of
+science. But men of genius who have conquered the love and admiration
+of a whole nation are greater than those who have gained the
+favour of the most brilliant Courts; and we know how some of the
+fairest reputations have been wrecked on the patronage which they had
+to accept at the hands of powerful Ministers or ambitious Sovereigns.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Mill and his plea for Liberty. Though I can hardly
+believe that, were he still among us, he would claim a larger measure of
+freedom for the individual than is now accorded to every one of us in
+the society in which we move, yet the chief cause on which he founded
+his plea for Liberty, the chief evil which he thought could be remedied
+only if society would allow more elbow-room to individual genius,
+exists in the same degree as in his time—aye, even in a higher degree.
+The principle of Individuality has suffered more at present than perhaps
+at any former period of history. The world is becoming more and more
+gregarious, and what the French call our <i>nature moutonnière</i>, "our mutton-like
+nature," our tendency to leap where any bell-wether has leapt before,
+becomes more and more prevalent in politics, in religion, in art, and
+even in science. M. de Tocqueville expressed his surprise how much
+more Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did
+those of the last generation. The same remark, adds John Stuart
+Mill, might be made of England in a greater degree. "The modern
+<i>régime</i> of public opinion," he writes, "is in an unorganized form
+what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized;
+and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against
+this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed
+Christianity, will tend to become another China."</p>
+
+<p>I fully agree with Mill in recognizing the dangers of uniformity, but
+I doubt whether what he calls the <i>régime</i> of public opinion is alone, or
+even chiefly, answerable for it. No doubt there are some people in
+whose eyes uniformity seems an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
+If all were equally strong, equally educated, equally honest, equally rich,
+equally tall, or equally small, society would seem to them to have
+reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French
+garden, with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers
+and pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp
+the soil with their coiling roots, and overshadow with their dark green
+branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens,
+unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon
+fall into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means but too
+often stagnation, while variety is the surest sign of health and vigour.
+The deepest secret of nature is its love of continued novelty. Its
+tendency, if unrestrained, is towards constantly creating new varieties,
+which, if they fulfil their purpose, become fixed for a time, or, it may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
+be, for ever; while others, after they have fulfilled their purpose, vanish
+to make room for new and stronger types.</p>
+
+<p>The same is the secret of human society. It consists and lives in
+individuals, each being meant to be different from all the others, and to
+contribute his own peculiar share to the common wealth. As no tree is
+like any other tree, and no leaf on the same tree like any other leaf, no
+human being is exactly like any other human being, nor is it meant to
+be. It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human
+souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the
+more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the
+development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in
+no distant future. Such is the mystery of individuality that I do not
+wonder if even those philosophers who, like Mill, reduce the meaning of
+the word <i>sacred</i> to the very smallest compass, see in each individual
+soul something sacred, something to be revered, even where we cannot
+understand it, something to be protected against all vulgar violence.</p>
+
+<p>Where I differ from Mill and his school is on the question as to the
+quarter from whence the epidemic of uniformity springs which threatens
+the free development of modern society. Mill points to the society in
+which we move; to those who are in front of us, to our contemporaries.
+I feel convinced that our real enemies are at our back, and that the
+heaviest chains which are fastened on us are those made, not by the present,
+but by past generations—by our ancestors, not by our contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>It is on this point, on the trammels of individual freedom with which
+we may almost be said to be born into the world, and on the means by
+which we may shake off these old chains, or at all events carry them
+more lightly and gracefully, that I wish to speak to you this evening.</p>
+
+<p>You need not be afraid that I am going to enter upon the much discussed
+subject of heredity, whether in its physiological or psychological
+aspects. It is a favourite subject just now, and the most curious facts
+have been brought together of late to illustrate the working of what is
+called heredity. But the more we know of these facts, the less we seem
+able to comprehend the underlying principle. Inheritance is one of
+those numerous words which by their very simplicity and clearness are
+so apt to darken our counsel. If a father has blue eyes and the son
+has blue eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the
+father stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came
+by inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we
+say very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does <i>inherited</i>
+mean? In no case does it mean what <i>inherited</i> usually means—something
+external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death,
+secured by law to his son. Whatever else inherited may mean, it does
+not mean that. But unfortunately the word is there, it seems almost
+pedantic to challenge its meaning, and people are always grateful if an
+easy word saves them the trouble of hard thought.</p>
+
+<p>Another apparent advantage of the theory of heredity is that it never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
+fails. If the son has blue, and the father black, eyes, all is right
+again, for either the mother, or the grandmother, or some historic or
+prehistoric ancestor, may have had blue eyes, and atavism, we know, will
+assert itself after hundreds and thousands of years.</p>
+
+<p>Do not suppose that I deny the broad facts of what is called by the
+name of heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any
+scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a metaphor,
+quite as bad as the old metaphor of <i>innate ideas</i>; for there is hardly a
+single point of similarity between the process by which a son may share
+the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of his father, and
+that by which, after his father's death, the law secures to the son the possession
+of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his father held in the Funds.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is
+that every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere
+has the consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it
+enters on its journey through life found stronger expression than among
+the Buddhists. What other people call by various names, "fate or providence,"
+"tradition or inheritance," "circumstances or environment,"
+they call <i>Karman</i>, deed—what has been done, whether by ourselves or by
+others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the consequences
+of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil. Originally
+this <i>Karman</i> seems to have been conceived as personal, as the work
+which we ourselves have done in former existences. But, as personally
+we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages, that
+kind of <i>Karman</i>, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the question
+how <i>Karman</i> began, the accumulation of what forms the condition of all
+that exists at present, Buddhism has no answer to give, any more than
+any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists say it began
+with <i>avidyâ</i>, and <i>avidyâ</i> means
+ignorance.<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> They are much more deeply
+interested in the question how <i>Karman</i> may be annihilated, how each
+man may free himself from the influence of <i>Karman</i>, and Nirvâna, the
+highest object of all their dreams, is often defined by Buddhist philosophers
+as "freedom from <i>Karman</i>."<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>What the Buddhists call by the general name of <i>Karman</i>, comprehends
+all influences which the past exercises on the present, both physically
+and mentally.<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+It is not my object to examine or even to name all
+these influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to
+look upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological
+map, and to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere
+under our feet. Difficult as it is to colour a geological map of England,
+it would be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colours to
+mark the different ingredients of the intellectual surface of this island.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>
+That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or
+Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as
+it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now admitted by everybody.
+Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been
+separated many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient
+classical language of India, yet so unbroken is the bond that holds the
+West and East together that in many cases an intelligent Englishman
+might still guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference
+is there between Sanskrit <i>sûnu</i> and English <i>son</i>, between Sanskrit
+<i>duhitar</i> and English <i>daughter</i>, between Sanskrit <i>vid</i>, to know, and
+English <i>to wit</i>, between Sanskrit <i>vaksh</i>, to grow, and English <i>to wax</i>!
+Think how we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Celtic weapon!
+how we dig for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them
+in our museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the
+antiquity of such words as <i>son</i> or <i>daughter</i>, <i>father</i> and <i>mother</i>? There
+are no monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes
+which we call Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those
+English antiquities—as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in
+Grimm's Dictionary of the German, in Littré's Dictionary of the French,
+or in Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language—will
+learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying
+many volumes on logic and psychology.</p>
+
+<p>And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong
+through our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics;
+and in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient
+hieroglyphics have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phœnicia,
+from Phœnicia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to
+England, when we write a capital F
+<img src="images/sym1.jpg" alt="Script F" class="imgsym" />,
+when we draw the top line
+and the smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw
+the two horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient
+Egyptians used for representing the sound of f. They write the
+name of the king whom the Greeks called <i>Cheops</i>, and they themselves
+<i>Chu-fu</i>, like this:<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+<span style="padding-left:1em; padding-right:1em;">
+<img src="images/sym2.jpg" height="100" alt="Sieve, horned serpent and bird representing sounds chu, fu, u"
+style="vertical-align: text-top;" /></span>
+
+Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced
+<i>chu</i>; the second, the horned serpent, <i>fu</i>, and the
+little bird, again, <i>u</i>. In the more cursive or Hieratic writing
+the horned serpent appears as
+<img src="images/sym3.jpg" alt="Hieratic serpent" class="imgsym" />; in the later Demotic as
+<img src="images/sym4.jpg" alt="Demotic serpent" class="imgsym" />
+and
+<img src="images/sym5.jpg" alt="Demotic serpent" class="imgsym" />.
+The Phœnicians, who borrowed their letters from the Hieratic
+Egyptian, wrote <img src="images/sym6.jpg" alt="Phœnician serpent" class="imgsym" />
+and <img src="images/sym7.jpg" alt="Phœnicians serpent" class="imgsym" />. The Greeks, who took their letters from
+the Phœnicians, wrote <img src="images/sym8.jpg" alt="Mirrored F" class="imgsym" />.
+When the Greeks, instead of writing like
+the Phœnicians from right to left, began to write from left to right,
+they turned each letter, and as <img src="images/sym9.jpg" alt="Mirrored K" class="imgsym" />
+became K, our k, so <img src="images/sym10.jpg" alt="Mirrored F" class="imgsym" />, vau, became
+F, the Greek so-called Digamma, the Latin F.</p>
+
+<p>The first letter in <i>Chu-fu</i>, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in the
+transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the
+lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as
+<img src="images/sym11.jpg" alt="Hieratic sieve" class="imgsym" />, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
+Phœnician as <img src="images/sym12.jpg" alt="Phœnician sieve" class="imgsym" />,
+in ancient Greek as <img src="images/sym13.jpg" alt="Greek sieve" class="imgsym" />, which occurs on an inscription
+found at Mycenæ and elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus asper,
+while in Latin it is known to us as the letter
+H.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> In the same
+manner the undulating line of our capital
+<img src="images/sym14.jpg" alt="Script L" class="imgsym" /> still recalls very strikingly
+the bent back of the crouching lion, which in the later hieroglyphic
+inscriptions represents the sound of L.</p>
+
+<p>If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we
+have only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian.
+Why is our hour divided into sixty minutes, our minutes into sixty
+seconds? Would not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a
+hundred minutes have been more natural? We have sixty divisions on
+the dials of our watches simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus,
+who lived in the second century <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span>, accepted the Babylonian system
+of reckoning time, that system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew
+the decimal system, but for practical purposes they counted by <i>sossi</i>
+and <i>sari</i>, the <i>sossos</i> representing 60, the <i>saros</i> 60 × 60, or 3600. From
+Hipparchus that system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about
+150 <span class="smcap lowercase">A.D.</span>, and thence it was carried down the stream of civilization,
+finding its last resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.</p>
+
+<p>And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the
+real reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians
+the art of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has
+been proved that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly
+the sixtieth part of a Babylonian <i>mnâ</i>, or <i>mina</i>. It was nearly equal
+to our sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold
+and silver in a bi-monetary currency had been solved to a certain extent
+in the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and
+silver being fixed at 1 to 13⅓. The silver shekel current in Babylon
+was heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13⅓ to 10, and
+had therefore the value of one-tenth of a gold shekel; and the half
+silver shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one-twentieth
+of a gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be
+looked upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its
+relation of one-twentieth of our gold
+sovereign.<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our
+mental life—namely, our <i>figures</i>, which we call Arabic, because we
+received them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian,
+because they received them from the Indians—in order to show you how
+this nineteenth century of ours is under the sway of centuries long
+past and forgotten; how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by
+those who came before us, and how the intellectual ground on which
+we stand is made up of the detritus of thoughts which were first thought,
+not on these isles nor in Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the
+Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+Now you may well ask <i>Quorsum hæc omnia?</i>—What has all this to
+do with freedom and with the free development of individuality?
+Because a man is born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that
+he is not free to grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties
+of his mind? Are those who came before him, and who left him this
+goodly inheritance, to be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition
+which connects him with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather
+the leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk
+straight?</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to
+say that every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be
+left to form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals,
+and coins. On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal
+more, such as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the
+general name of <i>education</i>, even the most advanced defenders of individualism
+would hold that no child should enter society without submitting,
+or rather without being submitted, to education. Most of us would
+even go further, and make it criminal for parents or even for communities
+to allow children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless
+parents that they are at liberty to do with their children as they like,
+has at last been blown to the winds. I still remember the time when
+pseudo-Liberals were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations,
+such as the Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory
+education. That wicked sophistry, too, has at last been silenced,
+and among the principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the
+necessity of curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children,
+have been Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and
+individualism.<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+A new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the
+day on which "compulsory education" becomes part of their statute-book;
+and I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having
+proved itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying out the principle of
+compulsory education.</p>
+
+<p>But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its
+dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is
+not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity,
+and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.</p>
+
+<p>We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic.
+Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and
+afterwards at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the rest,
+long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for themselves,
+and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe if it
+comes from those in whom the child believes.</p>
+
+<p>Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically,
+and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+English schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the
+keen international race between all the countries of Europe, it handicaps
+the English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at
+statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what
+people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that
+personal and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things,
+and that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible
+things as the English.</p>
+
+<p>But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the
+whole school-time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot something
+be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be turned
+into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the
+powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers,
+or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either
+in gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height
+of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations
+or payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds
+with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to
+call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such
+lessons as, for instance, that <i>th-ough</i> is though, <i>thr-ough</i> is through,
+<i>en-ough</i> is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter believe
+anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into
+elementary schools frighten schoolmasters by the very name of Natural
+Science. But surely every schoolmaster who is worth his salt should
+be able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a
+curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some of
+the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of the
+field and the forest, where, better than in frouzy lecture-rooms, the edge
+of the senses can be sharpened, the chest be widened, and that freedom
+of thought fostered which made England what it was even before the
+days of compulsory education.</p>
+
+<p>But in addressing you here to-night it was my intention to speak of
+the higher rather than of elementary education.</p>
+
+<p>All education, as it now exists in most countries of Europe, may be
+divided into three stages—<i>elementary</i>, <i>scholastic</i>, and <i>academical</i>; or
+call it <i>primary</i>, <i>secondary</i>, and <i>tertiary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most
+civilized countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to
+include under compulsory education anything beyond the very elements
+of knowledge—at least for the present; though, with proper management,
+I know from experience that a well-conducted elementary school
+can afford to provide instruction in extra subjects—such as natural
+science, modern languages, and political economy—and yet, with the
+present system of Government grants, be
+self-supporting.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>The next stage above the elementary is <i>scholastic</i> education, as it is
+supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at
+once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are
+divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are
+called <i>Real-schulen</i>, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of
+mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other,
+called <i>Gymnasia</i> on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of
+instruction.</p>
+
+<p>It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public
+schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention can
+be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In Germany,
+even more perhaps than in England, it is the chief object of a good
+and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible at the
+end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the official
+examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace together, than
+if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys, followed by a number
+of straggling laggards.</p>
+
+<p>And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be
+otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Socratic method is very
+good if we can find the <i>viri Socratici</i> and leisure for discussion. But
+at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery
+<span class="greek" title="scholê">σχολή</span>,
+or leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great
+educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school
+must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as
+they can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty.
+There is an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired
+between the ages of ten and eighteen—rules of grammar, strings of
+vocables, dates, names of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical
+formulas, &amp;c. All depends here on the receptive and retentive powers
+of the mind. The memory has to be strengthened, without being
+overtaxed, till it acts almost mechanically. Learning by heart, I
+believe, cannot be too strongly recommended during the years spent at
+school. There may have been too much of it when, as the Rev. H. C.
+Adams informs us in his "Wykehamica" (p. 357), boys used to say by
+heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one repeated the whole of Virgil,
+nay, when another was able to say the whole of the English Bible by
+rote:—"Put him on where you would, he would go fluently on, as
+long as any one would listen."</p>
+
+<p>No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such
+regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature deposited
+in our memory during our childhood and youth, and taken up from time
+to time in the happy hours of our solitude.</p>
+
+<p>One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on
+the Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman
+classics. The majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and
+they are apt to lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute
+scholarship, and to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+arguments for minute accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is
+done by an exclusive devotion to critical scholarship before we have
+acquired a real familiarity with the principal works of classical literature.
+The time spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar
+and syntax, writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look
+only at our Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions,
+and exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy
+to carry; and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules
+which they have learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming.
+The end of classical teaching at school should be to make our boys
+acquainted not only with the language, but with the literature and
+history, the ancient thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar,
+syntax, or metre, are but means towards that end; they must never be
+mistaken for the end itself. A young man of eighteen, who has
+probably spent on an average ten years in learning Greek and Latin,
+ought to be able to read any of the ordinary Greek or Latin classics
+without much difficulty; nay, with a certain amount of pleasure. He
+might have to consult his dictionary now and then, or guess the
+meaning of certain words; he might also feel doubtful sometimes
+whether certain forms came from
+<span class="greek" title="hiêmi">ἵημι</span>, I send, or
+<span class="greek" title="eimi">εἶμι</span>, I go, or
+<span class="greek" title="eimi">εἰμί</span>,
+I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions. In these matters
+the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical; and whenever I
+meet in the controversies of classical scholars the favourite phrase,
+"Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, this," I generally say to
+myself, "No, he ought not." Anyhow, those who wish to see the
+study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to feel
+convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it can
+be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen
+are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless
+they have seen it before.</p>
+
+<p>Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be
+finished at school. When a young man goes to University, unless he
+means to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to
+enter upon a new career. If he has not learnt by that time so
+much of Greek and Latin as is absolutely necessary in after-life
+for a lawyer, or a student of physical science, or even a clergyman,
+either he or his school is to blame. I do not mean to say that
+it would not be most desirable for every one during his University
+career to attend some lectures on classical literature, on ancient
+history, philosophy, or art. What is to be deprecated is, that the
+University should have to do the work which belongs properly to the
+school.</p>
+
+<p>The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their
+matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge
+ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by
+boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called local
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the
+Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University
+would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at
+Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission
+to the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to
+greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from
+the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish
+it from mere schoolboy work.</p>
+
+<p>Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one
+sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction
+must be chiefly dogmatic, at University it is to be Socratic, for I find
+no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the
+burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the
+words which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are,
+for the most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where
+he knows facts, he does not know their evidence; and where he
+expresses opinions, they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without
+examination.</p>
+
+<p>But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill's prophecies
+might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into
+dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless
+they are diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the
+guardians of the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual
+spontaneity; and it was owing, I believe, to Mill's ignorance of true
+academic teaching that he took so desponding a view of the generation
+growing up under his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma,
+that is, of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge
+is extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the
+spirit of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic
+dogmas be true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because
+to place either truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to
+weaken truth and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as
+true on the authority of others anything which concerns us deeply,
+and which we could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty.
+And, thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet
+objections by argument is generally the first step towards violence and
+persecution.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think of religious dogmas only. They are generally the
+first to rouse inquiry, even during our schoolboy days, and they are by
+no means the most difficult to deal with. Dogma often rages where we
+least expect it. Among scientific men the theory of evolution is at
+present becoming, or has become, a dogma. What is the result? No
+objections are listened to, no difficulties recognized, and a man like Virchow,
+himself the strongest supporter of evolution, who has the moral courage
+to say that the descent of man from any ape whatsoever is, as yet,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+before the tribunal of scientific zoology, "not proven," is howled down in
+Germany in a manner worthy of Ephesians and Galatians. But at present I
+am thinking not so much of any special dogmas, but rather of that dogmatic
+state of mind which is the almost inevitable result of the teaching at school.
+I think of the whole intellect, what has been called the <i>intellectus sibi
+permissus</i>, and I maintain that it is the object of academic teaching to
+rouse that intellect out of its slumber by questions not less startling than
+when Galileo asked the world whether the sun was really moving and the
+earth stood still; or when Kant asked whether time and space were objects,
+or necessary forms of our sensuous intuition. Till our opinions have thus
+been tested and stood the test, we can hardly call them our own.</p>
+
+<p>How true this is with regard to religion has been boldly expressed by
+Bishop Beveridge.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Being conscious to myself," he writes in his "Private Thoughts on Religion,"
+"how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond the rest, as being
+that religion whereinto I was born and baptized; that which the supreme authority
+has enjoined and my parents educated me in; that which every one I meet
+withal highly approves of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued profession,
+made almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and suspicious
+of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to entertain it any longer
+without being convinced, by solid and substantial arguments, of the truth and
+certainty of it."</p></div>
+
+<p>This is bold and manly language from a Bishop nearly two hundred
+years ago, and I certainly think that the time has come when some of
+the divinity lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge might well be employed
+in placing a knowledge of the sacred books of other religions
+within the reach of undergraduates. Many of the difficulties—most of
+them of our own making—with regard to the origin, the handing
+down, the later corruptions and misinterpretations of sacred texts,
+would find their natural solution, if it was shown how exactly the
+same difficulties arose and had to be dealt with by theologians of other
+creeds. If some—ay, if many—of the doctrines of Christianity were
+met with in other religions also, surely that would not affect their
+value, or diminish their truth; while nothing, I feel certain, would more
+effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true place in
+the historical development of the human mind than to place it side by side
+with the other religions of the world. In the series of translations of
+the "Sacred Books of the East," of which the first three volumes have
+just appeared,<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+I wished myself to include a new translation of the Old
+and New Testaments; and when that series is finished it will, I believe,
+be admitted that nowhere would these two books have had a grander
+setting, or have shone with a brighter light, than surrounded by the Veda,
+the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripi<i>t</i>aka, and the Qur'än.</p>
+
+<p>But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only,
+or even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+teaching must be Socratic, not dogmatic. The evil of dogmatic teaching
+lies much deeper, and spreads much further.</p>
+
+<p>Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves,
+which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every
+word we use require careful examination and revision? It is not
+enough to say that language assists our thoughts or colours them, or
+possibly obscures them. No, we know now that language and thought
+are indivisible. It was not from poverty of expression that the Greek
+called reason and language by the same word,
+<span class="greek" title="logos">λόγος</span>. It was because
+they knew that, though we may distinguish between thought and speech,
+as we distinguish between body and soul, it is as impossible to tear the
+one by violence away from the other as it is to separate the concave
+side of a lens from its convex side. This is something to learn and to
+understand, for, if properly understood, it will supply the key to most
+of our intellectual puzzles, and serve as the safest thread through the
+whole labyrinth of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>"It is evident," as Hobbes
+remarks,<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+"that truth and falsity have no place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though
+some brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may
+be affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason
+fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or
+false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore,
+as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of
+speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the
+same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man,
+so from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For
+speech has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old
+of Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are
+ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them."</p>
+
+<p>Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.</p>
+
+<p>Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even
+the greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the
+terms <i>genus</i>, <i>species</i>, and <i>individual</i> occupy a very prominent place.
+The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the Realists,
+of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true meaning of
+these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach the received
+meaning of <i>genus</i> and <i>species</i>; and if a boy can trace these terms back
+to Aristotle's
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span> and
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span>, and show in what sense that philosopher
+used them, every examiner would be satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>But the time comes when we have to act as our own examiners, and
+when we have to give an account to ourselves of such words as <i>genus</i>
+and <i>species</i>. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a <i>species</i> and
+a <i>genus</i> walking about in broad daylight; but a little consideration
+will show us that these words express subjective concepts, and that, if
+the whole world were silent, there would never have been a thought of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+a <i>genus</i> or a <i>species</i>. There are languages in which we look in vain for
+corresponding words; and if we had been born in such a language,
+these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to us,
+directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent
+them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance,
+according to him, all living beings would constitute a <i>genus</i>, men a
+<i>species</i>, and Socrates an <i>individual</i>.</p>
+
+<p>No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define
+these terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always
+remember that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not
+their own. The true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to
+learn to think our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century,
+to watch their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face
+to face with those who first found and framed both words and thoughts.
+If we do this with <i>genus</i> and <i>species</i>, we shall find that the words which
+Aristotle defined—viz.,
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span> and
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span>—had originally a very different
+and far more useful application than that which he gave to them.
+<span class="greek" title="Genos">Γένος</span>,
+<i>genus</i>, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only
+as were known to have a common origin, however they might differ in
+outward appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound,
+or, according to Darwin, the ape and the man.
+<span class="greek" title="Eidos">Εἶδος</span> or species, on
+the contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as
+had the same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or
+not, as if we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed,
+horned, winged, or blue animals.</p>
+
+<p>That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural justification
+we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same thoughts
+found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find <em class="gesperrt"><i>g</i>âti</em>, generation, used
+in the sense of <i>genus</i>, and opposed to <em class="gesperrt">âk<i>ri</i>ti</em>, appearance, used in the
+sense of <i>species</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently
+(much as we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological
+classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance,
+might be called a
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, the <i>gens</i> or clan was a
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, the nation
+(gnatio) was a
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, the whole human kith and kin was a
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>; in
+fact, all that was descended from common ancestors was a true
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>.
+There is no obscurity of thought in this.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side, taking
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> or species in its original sense, one
+man might be said to be like another in his
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> or appearance. An
+ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> or species or
+appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin.
+People might also speak of different
+<span class="greek" title="eidê">εἴδη</span> or forms or classes of things,
+such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armour, without committing
+themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common descent.</p>
+
+<p>Often it would happen that things belonging to the same
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, such
+as the white man and the negro, differed in their
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> or appearance;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+often also that things belonging to the same
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span>, such as eatables,
+differed in their
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two
+terms, instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other
+by the philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was
+called a <i>genus</i>, might from another be called a species, and <i>vice versâ</i>.
+Human beings, for instance, were now called a <i>species</i>, all living
+beings a <i>genus</i>, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what
+is older than logic—viz., language, thought, or fact. According to language,
+according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings
+constitute a
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span>, or generation, so long as they are supposed to have
+common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can
+only say that they form an
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span>—that is, agree in certain appearances,
+until it has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest
+in admitting at least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal
+world.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>In tracing the history of these two words,
+<span class="greek" title="genos">γένος</span> and
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span>, you may
+see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy,
+from Plato's ideas down to Hegel's <i>Idee</i>. The question of <i>genera</i>, their
+origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural philosophers,
+who, after long controversies about the origin and classification of
+<i>genera</i> and <i>species</i>, seem at last, thanks to the clear sight of Darwin, to
+have arrived at the old truth which was prefigured in language—namely,
+that Nature knows nothing but <i>genera</i>, or generations, to be traced
+back to a limited number of ancestors, and that the so-called <i>species</i> are
+only <i>genera</i>, whose genealogical descent is <i>as yet</i> more or less obscure.</p>
+
+<p>But the question as to the nature of the
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> became a vital question
+in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in
+every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what
+constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was
+that form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women
+descended from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name
+of heredity. But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it
+was that, while all individual women came and went and vanished, the
+form in which they were cast remained the same?</p>
+
+<p>Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very
+question what
+<span class="greek" title="eidos">εἶδος</span> or species or form was, and where these things
+were kept, changed those words from predicates into subjects.
+<span class="greek" title="Eidos">Εἶδος</span> was
+conceived as something independent and substantial, something within or
+above the individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and
+eternal. Soon there arose as many
+<span class="greek" title="eidê">εἴδη</span> or forms or types as there
+were general concepts. They were considered the only true realities of
+which the phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth
+away. Here we have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the
+various systems of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+opinions that ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is
+nowhere found except in the many
+(<span class="greek" title="to hen para ta polla">τὸ ἕν παρὰ τὰ πολλά</span>),
+was strenuously defended by Aristotle and his
+followers.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the
+Middle Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as
+heretics because they declared that <i>animal</i>, <i>man</i>, or <i>woman</i> were mere
+names, and that they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal
+animal, an ideal man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or
+metaphysical types of the ordinary animal, the individual man, the single
+woman. Those philosophers, called <i>Nominalists</i>, in opposition to the
+<i>Realists</i>, declared that all general terms were <i>names only</i>, and that
+nothing could claim reality but the individual.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again
+between Locke and Leibniz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to
+say that the knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by
+the science of language alone, which teaches us that there is and
+can be no such thing as "a name only." That phrase ought to be
+banished from all works on philosophy. A name is and always has been
+the subjective side of our knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible
+without an objective side as a key is without a lock. It is
+useless to ask which of the two is the more real, for they are real only
+by being, not two, but one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism.
+But there is a higher Nominalism, which might better be called the
+Science of Language, and which teaches us that, apart from sensuous
+perception, all human knowledge is by names and by names only, and
+that the object of names is always the general.</p>
+
+<p>This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how
+names and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted
+to very careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What
+I mean by academic teaching and academic study is exactly this
+process of snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words,
+this tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought,
+this living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole
+history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to differ
+from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is
+awed by them, even though he may have read very little of their
+writings. This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction.
+Now, at University, a young student might hear the following,
+by no means respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from
+one of the greatest English scholars and philosophers:—"There is
+nothing so absurd that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who
+was one of them, have not some of them maintained; and I believe
+that scarce anything can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy
+than that which now is called Aristotle's Metaphysics; or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+more repugnant to government than much of that he hath said in his
+Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part of his Ethics." I am
+far from approving this judgment, but I think that the shock
+which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so mercilessly
+broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources; it
+makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed
+on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes.
+He will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his
+own mind the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient
+philosopher. He will judge of their truth without being swayed by
+the authority of a great name, and probably in the end value what is
+valuable in Aristotle, or Plato, or any other great philosopher far more
+highly and honestly than if he had never seen them trodden under foot.</p>
+
+<p>But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely
+iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of
+the schools. Far from it! But I do look upon them as meant
+to freshen the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake
+our mind to its very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to
+throw them down, but to make them grasp all the more firmly the
+hard soil of fact and truth! "<i>Stand upright on thy feet</i>" ought to be
+written over the gate of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity
+and sequacity which Mill saw approaching from China, and which since
+his time has made such rapid progress Westward, is ever to be stayed.</p>
+
+<p>Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers
+which it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany—so far as my
+own experience goes—students are often left too much to themselves,
+and it is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally
+recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance
+and encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all.</p>
+
+<p>There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere
+lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student
+might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are
+useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if
+they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs
+from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact,
+they have less the character of a show-window than of a workshop. Half
+an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than
+a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right
+spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor
+Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the
+memory of my own University life," he writes, "and the impression
+which a man like Johannes Müller, the professor of physiology, made
+on us, I must set the highest value on the personal intercourse with
+teachers from whom one learns how thought works on independent
+heads. Whoever has come in contact but once with one or several
+first-class men will find his intellectual standard changed for life."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of academic
+freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of constant
+personal control. It is often thought that English undergraduates
+could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom which is
+granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to choose
+their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own
+teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and
+untrue. Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and
+the best way to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived
+long enough in English and in German Universities to know that the
+intellectual fibre is as strong and sound in the English as in the German
+youth. But if you supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with
+bladders—nay, if you insist on his using them—he will use them, but he
+will probably never learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary,
+and depend on it, after a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps,
+he will use his arms and his legs, and he will swim. If young men do
+not learn to use their arms, their legs, their muscles, their senses, their
+brain, and their heart too, during the bright years of their University
+life, when are they to learn it? True, there are thousands who never
+learn it, and who float happily on through life buoyed up on mere
+bladders. The worst that can happen to them is that some day the
+bladders may burst, and they may be left stranded or drowned. But
+these are not the men whom England wants to fight her battles. It
+has often been pointed out of late that many of those who, during this
+century, have borne the brunt of the battle in the intellectual warfare
+in England, have not been trained at our Universities, while others who
+have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and have distinguished themselves
+in after-life, have openly declared that they attended hardly any
+lectures in college, or that they derived no benefit from them. What
+can be the ground of that? Not that there is less work done at
+Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a different spirit.
+It is free in Germany; it has now become almost compulsory in
+England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend, when
+I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a real
+pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on the
+history of art, on modern history, on the science of language, or on
+philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the
+subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of
+learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from
+mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the
+freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between
+cramming and examinations.</p>
+
+<p>And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends
+of academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity,
+may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine
+for intellectual levelling—<i>Examination</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
+There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny
+of examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which
+they are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join
+in that outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured
+to address to the <i>Times</i>, in very imperfect English, were in favour of
+examinations. They were signed <i>La Carrière ouverte</i>, and were written
+long before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember,
+too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in public,
+was in favour of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when the
+first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in establishing
+the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an
+examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system
+in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and
+written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it would
+be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of appointment
+by patronage.</p>
+
+<p>But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal
+the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are
+conducted, and by the results which they produce. As you are interested
+yourselves at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of
+examinations, you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few
+remarks on the safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations.</p>
+
+<p>All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been
+taught; they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which
+pupils are taught.</p>
+
+<p>Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the
+eyes of his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to
+produce shallowness and dishonesty.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts
+were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is
+lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is gaining
+marks in examinations.</p>
+
+<p>In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil,
+all pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural examiners
+and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the
+report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the
+principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public
+schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives them
+the right to enter the University, they know that their success depends
+far more on the work which they have done during the years at school,
+than on the work done on the few days of their examination. There are
+outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work done at
+schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they have
+to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare, and
+they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality of the
+school authorities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>
+To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level
+of lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to
+dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows <i>not</i>,
+he can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in
+finding out <i>how much</i> a candidate knows, he can never find out <i>how</i> he
+knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have
+watched their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the
+examiner, for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their
+teachers.</p>
+
+<p>I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters,
+and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties.
+Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than dishonest,
+and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters were
+rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would
+be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing
+false witness in favour of their pupils.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed
+before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a
+good examination should be honour, not pounds, shillings, and pence.
+The mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships
+and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized
+very widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is
+generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his usefulness
+in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he will entail on
+his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his teacher the loss of
+pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.</p>
+
+<p>It is always said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the
+sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in
+England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive
+costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it
+seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the majority
+of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and exhibitions at
+school or at University are boys whose parents have been able to pay the
+highest price for their children's previous education. If all these prizes were
+abolished, and the funds thus set free used to lessen the price of education
+at school and in college, I believe that the sons of poor parents
+would be far more benefited than by the present system. It might also
+be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case of the sons of poor
+parents, who were doing well at school from year to year; and, in order
+to guard against favouritism, an examination, particularly <i>vivâ voce</i>,
+before all the masters of a school, possibly even with some outside examiner,
+might be useful. But the present system bids fair to degenerate
+into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder if, sooner or later, the
+two-year olds entered for the race have to be watched by their trainer
+that they may not be overfed or drugged against the day of the race. It
+has come to this, that schools are bidding for clever boys in order to run
+them in the races, and in France, I read, that parents actually extort
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+money from schools by threatening to take away the young racers that
+are likely to win the
+Derby.<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the
+same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that
+every University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right
+to demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other
+for a degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia,
+in France, and in England to change and improve the old academic
+tradition, but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural
+system, has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right.</p>
+
+<p>If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to
+be admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of schoolmasters,
+and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim
+in their public lectures. Besides this, it is almost inevitable, if the
+Universities surrender the right of a matriculation-examination, that
+they should lower, not only their own standard, but likewise the
+standard of public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like
+over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite
+sure, at the end of each term or each year that the pupils confided to
+them have done at least some work. This kind of forced labour may
+do some good to the incorrigibly idle, but it does the greatest harm to all
+the rest. If there is an examination at the end of each year, there can
+be no freedom left for any independent work. Both teachers and
+taught will be guided by the same pole-star—examinations; no deviation
+from the beaten track will be considered safe, and all the pleasure
+derived from work done for its own sake, and all the just pride and joy,
+which those only know who have ever ventured out by themselves on
+the open sea of knowledge, must be lost.</p>
+
+<p>We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the brilliant show of
+examination papers.</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly marvellous what an amount of knowledge candidates
+will produce before their examiners; but those who have been both
+examined and examiners know best how fleeting that knowledge is,
+and how different from that other knowledge which has been acquired
+slowly and quietly, for its own sake, for our own sake, without a
+thought as to whether it would ever pay at examinations or not. A
+candidate, after giving most glibly the dates and the titles of the
+principal works of Cobbett, Gibbon, Burke, Adam Smith, and David
+Hume, was asked whether he had ever seen any of their writings, and
+he had to answer, No. Another, who was asked which of the works of
+Pheidias he had seen, replied that he had only read the first two books.
+That is the kind of dishonest knowledge which is fostered by too
+frequent examinations. There are two kinds of knowledge, the one
+that enters into our very blood, the other which we carry about in our
+pockets. Those who read for examinations have generally their pockets
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+cram full; those who work on quietly and have their whole heart in
+their work are often discouraged at the small amount of their knowledge,
+at the little life-blood they have made. But what they have
+learnt has really become their own, has invigorated their whole frame,
+and in the end they have often proved the strongest and happiest men
+in the battle of life.</p>
+
+<p>Omniscience is at present the bane of all our knowledge. From the
+day he leaves school and enters the University a man ought to make up
+his mind that in many things he must remain either altogether ignorant,
+or be satisfied with knowledge at second-hand. Thus only can he
+clear the deck for action. And the sooner he finds out what his own
+work is to be, the more useful and delightful will be his life at University
+and later. There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge,
+there is hardly one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called
+hobbies ought to be utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if
+we wish our Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle,
+Grote, or Darwin. I do not say that in an examination for a University
+degree a minimum of what is now called general culture should not be
+insisted on; but in addition to that, far more freedom ought to be given
+to the examiner to let each candidate produce his own individual work.
+This is done to a far greater extent in Continental than in English
+Universities, and the examinations are therefore mostly confided to the
+members of the <i>Senatus Academicus</i>, consisting of the most experienced
+teachers, and the most eminent representatives of the different branches
+of knowledge in the University. Their object is not to find out how
+many marks each candidate may gain by answering a larger or smaller
+number of questions, and then to place them in order before the world
+like so many organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by
+the work he has done during his three or four years at University,
+has acquired that vigour of thought, that maturity of judgment, and
+that special knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic status,
+to a degree, with or without special honours. Such a degree confers no
+material advantages;<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+it does not entitle its holder to any employment
+in Church or State; it does not vouch even for his being a fit person to
+be made an Archbishop or Prime Minister. All this is left to the later
+struggle for life; and in that struggle it seems as if those who, after
+having surveyed the vast field of human knowledge, have settled on a
+few acres of their own and cultivated them as they were never cultivated
+before, who have worked hard and have tasted the true joy and happiness
+of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always
+depended on themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations
+delighted to follow as their royal leaders in their onward march towards
+greater enlightenment, greater happiness, and greater freedom.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up. No one can read Mill's Essay "On Liberty" at the present
+moment without feeling that even during the short period of the last
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+twenty years the cause which he advocated so strongly and passionately,
+the cause of individual freedom, has made rapid progress, aye,
+has carried the day. In no country <i>may</i> a man be so entirely himself,
+so true to himself and yet loyal to society, as in England.</p>
+
+<p>But, although the enemy whose encroachments Mill feared most and
+resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own
+bounds,—though such names as Dissent and Nonconformity, which were
+formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the poison
+which they once contained,—Mill's principal fears have nevertheless not
+been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw approaching
+with its attendant evils of feebleness, indifference, and sequacity, has
+been spreading more widely than ever in his days.</p>
+
+<p>It has even been maintained that the very freedom which every
+individual now enjoys has been detrimental to the growth of individuality;
+that you must have an Inquisition if you want to see martyrs;
+that you must have despotism and tyranny to call forth heroes. The
+very measures which Mill and his friends advocated so warmly, compulsory
+education and competitive examinations, are pointed out as
+having chiefly contributed to produce that large array of pass-men, that
+dead level of uninteresting excellence, which is the <i>beau idéal</i> of a
+Chinese Mandarin, while it frightened and disheartened such men as
+Humboldt, Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.</p>
+
+<p>There may be some truth in all this, but it is certainly not the
+whole truth. Education, as it has to be carried on, whether in
+elementary or in public schools, is no doubt a heavy weight which
+might well press down the most independent spirit; it is, in fact,
+neither more nor less than placing, in a systematized form, on the
+shoulders of every generation the ever-increasing mass of knowledge,
+experience, custom, and tradition that has been accumulated by former
+generations. We need not wonder, therefore, if in some schools all
+spring, all vigour, all joyousness of work is crushed out under that load
+of names and dates, of anomalous verbs and syntactic rules, of mathematical
+formulas and geometrical axioms, which boys are expected to
+bring up for competitive examinations.</p>
+
+<p>But a remedy has been provided, and we are ourselves to blame if
+we do not avail ourselves of it to the fullest extent. Europe erected
+its Universities, and called them the homes of the Liberal Arts, and
+determined that between the slavery of the school and the routine of
+practical life every man should have at least three years of freedom.
+What Socrates and his great pupil Plato had done for the youth of
+Greece,<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+these new academies were to do for the youth of Italy,
+France, England, Spain, and Germany; and, though with varying
+success, they have done it. The mediæval and modern Universities
+have been from century to century the homes of free thought. Here
+the most eminent men have spent their lives, not merely in retailing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+traditional knowledge, as at school, but in extending the frontiers of
+science in all directions. Here, in close intercourse with their teachers,
+or under their immediate guidance, generation after generation of
+boys, fresh from school, have grown up into men during the three
+years of their academic life. Here, for the first time, each man has
+been encouraged to dare to be himself, to follow his own tastes, to
+depend on his own judgment, to try the wings of his mind, and, lo,
+like young eagles thrown out of their nest, they could fly. Here the
+old knowledge accumulated at school was tested, and new knowledge
+acquired straight from the fountain-head. Here knowledge ceased to
+be a mere burden, and became a power invigorating the whole mind,
+like snow which during winter lies cold and heavy on the meadows,
+but when it is touched by the sun of spring melts away, and fructifies
+the ground for a rich harvest.</p>
+
+<p>That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they
+continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that
+real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and
+superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more
+will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity"
+which Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all
+society.</p>
+
+<p>Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities.
+There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings
+than your Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure
+the real benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of
+a University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is
+really wanted are men who have done good work in their life, and who
+are willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think
+for themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic
+stage in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others,
+be they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he
+works from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the
+conquest of truth. Those only who have passed through that stage
+know the real blessings of work. To the world at large they may
+seem mere drudges—but the world does not know the triumphant joy
+with which the true mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain
+walls that once seemed unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High
+Alps, and away from the fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city,
+revels alone, in freedom of thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the
+freedom of the highest faith.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">F. Max Müller.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written down in 1854. It
+was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January, 1855, that the thought first arose of
+converting it into a volume, and it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his
+Autobiography speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows himself
+one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty." "None of my writings," he
+says, "have been either so carefully composed or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final
+revision was to have been the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife
+had arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by his wife's
+death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have
+written (with the possible exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with
+mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which the changes
+progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into stronger relief: the importance,
+to man and society, of a large variety of character, and of giving full freedom to
+human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all settled concepts, from
+all inherited restraints and impediments which hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect
+with the historical drag tied to its foot."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universitäten, Rede beim Antritt
+des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, am 15 October 1877,
+gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen observer of
+English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the October number of the <i>Nineteenth
+Century</i>, remarks: "Nowhere is there greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere
+do people renounce it more readily of their own accord."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, p. 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+"As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the consequences of all
+its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the
+long chain of life, inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or been;
+and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there where they left it."—Rhys
+Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, p. 104.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+Mémoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phénicien, par E. de Rougé, Paris, 1874.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+See Brandis, "Das Münzwesen."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+"Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the
+education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen?
+Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth?"—<i>On Liberty</i>,
+p. 188.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+<i>Times</i>, January 25, 1879.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
+"Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.; Clarendon Press,
+Oxford, 1879.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+"Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language," <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, June, 1873, p. 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
+Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+L. Noiré, "Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen," 1878, p. 9.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>MR. GLADSTONE.</h2>
+
+<h4>TWO STUDIES SUGGESTED BY HIS "GLEANINGS OF PAST YEARS."</h4>
+
+<div class="blockright"><p><i>Gleanings of Past Years: 1843-1878.</i> By the Right
+Hon. W. E. <span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>, M.P. Seven vols. London:
+John Murray.</p></div>
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p>Lord Beaconsfield and his party are still holding on. All the
+over-praised Disraelian craft has dwindled somehow to this merely
+muscular operation. An attempt is, indeed, made to disguise the attitude
+by keeping strict silence, and arranging the facial expression of the
+Cabinet, if not of the Party, in a way not agreeing with the strain;
+but the country is fast finding out that the real posture of the
+Conservatives at this moment is that of clutching at office, and
+nothing more. However, no amount of not talking about the elections
+will put them off finally. In his most efficient days Lord Beaconsfield
+was hardly clever enough to operate upon the almanack, and a certain
+terrible date is approaching upon him with increasing swiftness. It
+will be rather humiliating at last for a Premier to be brought up by
+the day of the month, and to be reminded by the great officials of
+Parliament what year of Our Lord it is. But these latter personages are
+partly paid for watching the efflux of time, and no doubt they will do
+their duty. It may be unpleasant for them to have to tell Lord Beaconsfield
+that dates make it impossible for him to go on any longer, but
+they must get what consolation they can from the remembrance that it is
+the first time they ever had to say this to a Minister. Several Parliaments
+in our history have been nicknamed rather uglily, but it is likely that the
+Beaconsfield House of Commons will be known under a description more
+humiliating than any, because so inescapeably accurate. It will literally
+be the run-to-the-last-dregs Parliament, and when, on there not being
+another moment left, the dissolution has necessarily to be ordered, the
+not-any-longer-to-be-put-off elections will take place.</p>
+
+<p>When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand
+whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form
+towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+written at the head of this paper—Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen
+will at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far
+north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand that
+wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes the
+centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be too
+near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that with
+Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few yards
+further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not unlikely
+that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the speech at
+Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without warning.
+The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to calculate than the
+final one of the Parliamentary calendar—that, namely, of Mr. Gladstone's
+appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed that they are already
+anxiously counting the days of the dwindling interval. Whenever he
+gives instructions for his hustings to be put up, the Conservatives will
+have to send for their own carpenters, and order planks.</p>
+
+<p>The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before
+he again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may
+not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It is,
+in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious hard
+work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the passing
+hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a special
+matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he has
+left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him. The
+result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation
+of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands
+wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds.
+Lately, it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind
+the country of his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as
+an old man. But without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute
+the register, we may say that he has scarcely got anybody to
+believe it. He has gone on felling trees, writing letters and articles, and
+publishing volumes, with utterances of more and better speeches between
+than anybody else can make, in a way which has led not a few to
+congratulate themselves that he was not any younger. In particular, his
+opponents, so soon as they found out that his announcement of retirement
+into ease meant that he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work
+a little harder in another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he
+had pledged himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather
+to complain that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something
+to be said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr.
+Gladstone's side at the time obviously was that the Conservatives were
+themselves not to do anything in particular. It was to be a time of
+stagnation, and they have not kept to that understanding; no sooner had
+he turned his back than they began to swagger up and down the world as
+Imperialists. They have risked the highest interests of the empire and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+have made England figure on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed
+and blustering for war. Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by
+foregoing all patriotism. It was too much to ask from an old-fashioned
+English statesman, who had always himself stood on the side of freedom
+and peace, and had grown accustomed to seeing his country ranged there
+too. However, we will speak again a little later on this point of his
+announced retirement.</p>
+
+<p>It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman
+now before the public with an official record which can in any way be
+set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of
+time and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House
+of Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not
+many, who have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no
+one whose Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office
+forty-five years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first
+appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then
+he stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone.
+The latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more
+than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been Under-Secretary
+for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade and
+Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary
+for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once.
+There is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in
+him who has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to
+show. Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
+Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a
+group of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not
+very distant date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served
+under and those whom he commanded; including in the association
+with him some whom he attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might
+scarcely fully apply; for Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office,
+and Mr. Bright in one. These latter were achievements of personal
+influence which may fairly rank a trifle higher than merely taking
+precedence of a Duke in a Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has
+happened in his time in the way of legislation and social reform, and
+his connection with it, it may be said, speaking generally, that he has
+witnessed the political and economical remoulding of this kingdom; and,
+taking all things together, has helped it forward in more ways than
+anybody else who still survives. If while Mr. Bright lives his name must
+always have the honour of first mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws
+is spoken of, it was Mr. Gladstone who wrought out all the details of
+Peel's fiscal reforms. He too it was who, much later, gave effect to
+Cobden's negotiation of the French Commercial Treaty; and also,
+again, made the best bargain that could be made when that first
+international arrangement lapsed. Every amelioration bearing on
+taxation and trade in our time has been naturally fated in some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
+way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So, too, it was his conversion,
+or rather his progress, on the question of the Franchise—proved by
+his bringing in of the Russell measure—which made the immediate
+granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory trick of the last
+Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote was but a sinister
+gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from England to the sister
+country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be then seen that it was Mr.
+Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church and by his
+Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If the Roman Catholics get a
+University now, they will only get what he offered them years ago. The
+prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some day to give to Mr. Gladstone's
+memory a splendid revenge for the ingratitude she showed to the man
+who brought legislating for Ireland into vogue. If we shift our regard to
+diplomacy, the future is still clearly with him in several of the chiefest
+international arrangements this generation has witnessed. When the
+Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and forgotten by everybody but historians and
+bookworms, the Treaty of Washington will be a living, ruling precedent
+between the mighty English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic;
+and on the day that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples
+of those regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves,
+the then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off
+our hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's
+name with the cession of the Ionian Islands.</p>
+
+<p>In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune
+with posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles.
+It is the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own,
+they put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular
+impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving
+auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But
+if, apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance
+for the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his
+foreign policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must
+not be defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all
+this was once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a
+Peelite. Of that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never
+could be a party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle
+region of ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has
+never ceased to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in
+this country is a political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental
+force. Mr. Gladstone's greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was
+the slowly but ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound,
+robust Liberal; but he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness
+of popular progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper
+of it in ways which showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may
+scrutinize his career more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look
+down lower than these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+and, if we do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms,
+less showy, but very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism
+in the grain of every one of them. It was under his auspices that the
+Civil Service was thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of
+the Lords, with Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving
+us cheap newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a
+whole web of legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr.
+Forster gave to the country its first national educational scheme;
+but for him Mr. Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering
+the principle of our military organization from long-period enlistments
+to the short-term service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing
+to thrust upon him the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the
+army, because they think the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks
+to their resistance of the reform, was the only means of effecting it,
+lends itself to a taunt. Add to this list, the fact that although he, at
+first, for easily seen reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the
+earlier days when he was Conservative, did not favour University
+Reform, yet he finally lent himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to
+understand the successive outcries raised against him in the higher
+social quarters. He gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient
+reasons for their dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone
+was as certain in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on
+his shoulder, before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past
+its time.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up
+his political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of
+his having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was
+always for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who
+once ensconced in a shire—say, in Buckinghamshire—remain there as
+long as they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of
+view. Mr. Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself
+turned out of constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was
+always for the same reason—he became too big for them. Among his
+highest distinctions are these,—he is the resigner of Newark, the
+rejected of Oxford, the loser of South Lancashire. The thing has
+occurred too often to admit of a casual explanation. It was not for
+Liberalism, as it is now understood, that he, when still in his youth,
+offended the mighty Duke of Newcastle and had to give up Newark,
+but it was for reasoned-out consistency which gave hope of Liberalism.
+He would not stultify his intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase
+of the Maynooth Grant in contradiction of his own book on Church and
+State. But all the world knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat
+developed that he quitted Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire
+was that he had for years been too busy in pushing forward
+reforms on all hands. It was a noble vanquishment for him, whatever
+it was for his party, for Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>
+how we will, the result still comes out to his honour. He, for
+conscience' sake, offended the great patron on whom his whole prospects
+then depended, remaining out of Parliament for a time; later, he went
+over with Peel, knowing that it meant an ineffective hanging between
+two parties for an indefinite time, sharing the hopes and chances of
+neither; when Lord Derby came into power, he refused office on its
+being offered. In a word, he has evidenced his sincerity and proved
+his patriotism in every way for which it is allowed to other men to
+claim honour. When a man has risked personal prospects, refused
+place, held office in all its kinds, left one lagging constituency after
+another behind him, and finally, by sheer insisting on rapid progress,
+temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of his countrymen throughout
+the whole nation, as the last general election showed that he had, what
+more is there left for him to do for his country? Only one thing
+remained: the sacrificing his retirement after the formal announcement
+of the close of his career, and, afresh taking up his old post in the
+front of the battle as if he were still young and had place and public
+life to secure, striving his hardest a last time for the sake of his principles
+and his party. It is this final possibility of sacrificing ease and
+renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone undertakes in the Midlothian
+campaign now so very soon to be opened by him.</p>
+
+<p>The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed
+to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more
+completely than is common when he again draws to him the national
+gaze, as he of necessity will do.</p>
+
+<p>But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem
+for Mr. Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a
+field of industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the
+man himself needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking
+of the ex-Premier, for instance, just as we might talk of any
+politician, and Mr. Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has
+throughout been so much more than that. It is perfectly true
+that there is no public man among us who has projected less
+of a special atmosphere of personality than he has through which
+his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with his work to
+think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr. Gladstone's only
+mannerism has been that of superior excellence of thinking, speaking,
+and doing. Anybody else might have done and said what he has
+uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability and industry.
+His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the others, lies in
+his having developed more of these two simple, old-fashioned things than
+his best contemporaries. He has invented no mysteries, traded in no
+artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only a plain common air lies
+along his track, in which, if we perhaps except two or three points
+where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly seen in white light,
+without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style has been the old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch earnestness
+and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone, however, has
+not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the public mind, he
+has done something larger and better. He has kept all the three
+kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our general
+thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If we put
+aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has had
+so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two generations
+as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed out,—that
+if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the
+canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most
+men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but
+in Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has
+not been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made
+time, nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside
+Parliament as within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a
+university out of Mr. Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine
+student and reverencer of Art; next mark off a reviewer and general
+<i>littérateur</i> whom professed authors will respectfully make room for in
+their ranks; and not only is there still left, solid and firm, the great
+Parliamentary Minister, but of the scattered fragments a couple of
+Bishops might easily be made, with, if nothing at all is to be wasted,
+several preachers for the denominations. The latter would be derived
+from a morsel or two of material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not
+fully aware of as being in his composition. It is not very easy to give
+a complete impression offhand of such a multiform personage as this.
+We must take him a little simpler. The general effect of it all has been,
+as we said above, that the mental activity of the community in all
+matters relating to politics and practical affairs has had to take its rate
+and much of its scale largely from him, and he has been thinking with
+the speed, not of the old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of
+ethical and religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to
+everything. In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone
+has made upon the community has been that of an intellect weaponed
+with a perfectly fluent tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of
+pens, occupying the very highest national posts, ceaselessly going on
+reasoning, insisting upon doing it, whether the reasoning might
+occasionally go wrong or not, just as if thinking, speaking, and writing
+were man's right employment. His chief opponents would, perhaps,
+hesitate in flatly saying that they were not; but, at any rate, they
+have continually been wanting him to stop. Nearly all the complaint
+that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves itself into a charge that
+he has thought and spoken and written too much. The accusation is
+one which it would task a great many men to lay themselves open to;
+it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of us. Above all, he has
+kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly the other side might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so well; if only this promptest,
+quickest ratiocination on the part of a practical politician in our times
+had not, as it progressed, brought him ever nearer to the conclusions
+of Liberalism. He has, we are, however, rather ashamed to admit,
+had to suffer from his own party for this unusualness of mental
+activity. Our practical politics for generations past had been carried
+on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a hand-to-mouth principle
+of mere party expediency, that even some Liberals were surprised
+when he brought a little subtlety of intellect into public life. It
+was enough to make a smaller man despair of his countrymen's
+sanity when he found that for years many of them could not
+distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer
+of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>To speak plainly, there was never such a humiliating spectacle
+of public stolidity as that which for so long a time was witnessed in the
+popular mystification as to Mr. Gladstone's religious position. It went
+for nothing that his first critical Parliamentary step was to give up his
+seat rather than vote more money to Maynooth; nobody seemed to bear
+in mind that as far back as 1852 he both predicted and publicly hoped for
+the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, and that ten years
+later Sir George Bowyer openly attacked him on that very point in
+Parliament; it did not avail that he it was who paved the way for the
+unification of Italy by dragging into the light before all Europe the
+prison secrets of Neapolitan tyranny. Because he had the good sense
+to oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the loyalty to remain on
+terms of friendship with the companions of his youth after they became
+Puseyites, and avowed that he held the same views as to Church doctrine
+which some of the greatest Church of England divines taught, he was
+called on to explain, every month or so, that he was not a Jesuit. Not
+until he published his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, and by so
+doing threw all the Roman Catholics in England and elsewhere into
+a white heat of rage, was the silliness quite exploded. It is true that
+the dull public might plead that a real profession of religiousness on
+the part of a leading politician was such a novelty that it might be
+excused being a little puzzled, and believing the worst in its perplexity.
+Worst or best, Mr. Gladstone has gone on speaking and writing about
+his religion just as if a man's ethics and faith ought to have some
+connection with his politics, and, as time has passed, people appear to
+think it less strange. This non-reticence on the score of religion has
+made more serious the impression Mr. Gladstone has produced upon
+the public mind; but in reality it is no specialty in his mode of
+public thinking, but only a necessary part of it. He tracks his commonest
+politics to their fundamental principles, and makes of them a
+system. He has always in his reasoning to go back to history, and
+this has delayed his advance in comparison with men who dispense
+with that; but there never yet was a public man who explained so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>
+fully as Mr. Gladstone the reasons of his changes. All the progress
+of his mind is to be traced in speeches, articles, pamphlets, volumes.
+He has given too much explanation, not too little, for his mind has an
+insatiability for reasons. Most people are content when they get hold
+of a good one; but he wants three or four—in fact, all that can be got
+by searching for; and if it be true, as it certainly is, that he likes the
+last to have a little subtlety about it, long-sustained thinking cannot
+take people too deep in politics, whatever it may do now and then in
+religion. For instance, on the question of Reform Mr. Gladstone has
+certainly exhausted the process, having at last got at the final ideal
+argument. It turns out, as he stated it to Mr. Lowe, to be this,—that,
+apart from, or rather in addition to, all the hard reasons of justice and
+safety that Mr. Bright can urge for extending the franchise, the vote
+ought to be given because it has an educative power, and will make
+our humbler fellow-countrymen better citizens. It is open to any one,
+who is stupid enough, to call that argument subtle, but no one can deny
+that it is truly Liberal. There is not a man among us to-day who keeps
+the main Liberal issues so broad and clear as Mr. Gladstone does, and
+this simply because he will get to a principle. He adds a tremendous
+multiplicity of ideas in the way of side issues, but, as we above put it,
+they are all reasons in addition. There is a very simple test of it,—he
+has never recanted a single article of his Liberal progress, never gone
+back a single step. This hardly can be said of either Mr. Lowe or a
+few others who might be named. It could not even be said of so
+thorough a Liberal as Earl Russell. Mr. Gladstone's alleged over-refining
+has ended in placing and keeping him in the practical lead of his party, at a
+time of life when many born in the faith grow faint-hearted. Even the
+one bit of mysticism which his political feeling has developed—namely,
+the belief that the popular judgment is truest of all in very large matters—is
+only the full flowering of the popular trust which every Liberal
+professes to have. The bulk of the nation will forgive him that excess of
+political belief, if it be an excess, for it is the last compliment a statesman
+can pay them, and they have but to merit it, and it then turns to Mr.
+Gladstone's praise as well as theirs. But, at any rate, it will not do for
+Liberals to set out to argue the point with Mr. Gladstone, or they will
+quickly find themselves tripped up by a principle; for it is no sentimentality
+in him which underlies the view, but completed logic and
+wide recollection of historical instances.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, although it was necessary in trying to reproduce the general
+impression Mr. Gladstone has made upon his contemporaries to speak
+of this alleged over-refining, what is meant by it has been after all a
+kind of superfluity of mental operation. His intricacy of thinking has
+never hindered his activity; least of all living men has Mr. Gladstone
+been a dreamer. He stands in history as a reviser of fiscal policies; an
+introducer of new administrative modes; a widener of the boundaries of
+political rights; a ceaseless overthrower of public abuses. From first to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>
+last he has been, as the hatred of his opponents has too well witnessed,
+a man of practice. You may add to this that he reasons too minutely,
+if you like; but it was not by a transcendental casuistry of politics that
+he wearied the country: it was by his enormous energy in ceaselessly
+proposing wide sweeping measures. The casuistry was all in addition.
+The over-refining of Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, been of a wholly different
+kind from what is common among men; it has consisted in finding
+justifications afterwards for very prompt vigorous doing. Examine, if
+any one thinks it worth while at this time of day, the Ewelme Rectory
+case, or the issue of the Royal Warrant on Purchase, or the Collier
+appointment, and it will appear that it was for bold decision in
+taking a practical step that he was arraigned as much as for subsequently
+finding too many reasons for it. For ourselves, as we have
+not set out to apologize for Mr. Gladstone (men of his dimensions
+must be taken as they are), but simply to put down hints recalling
+more fully than is usual the great features of his career, there is
+no need for our not saying that we wish he had in some cases dispensed
+with these arguments in excess of the conclusion. In some
+instances it is as wise after all, though not so clever, to be satisfied
+with urging one good reason, and not to confuse ordinary people
+by adding five or six more not so good, the risk being that there
+will be a bad one among them. But the fact remains that Mr. Gladstone
+has not busied himself in tying mental knots for the purpose of
+entanglement; he has indulged in no such waste of time. The mental
+puzzle has always referred to some practical doing. Owing to this, his
+opponents have had to admit his mental sincerity, while accusing him
+of over-subtlety. It nearly all turned, in fact, into the psychological
+question of whether Mr. Gladstone's mind had not at one part of its
+machinery a twist, and in the meantime while this point was being discussed
+he went on carrying his measures. If there were Liberals who
+did not quite follow him in his defence of the issue of the Royal
+Warrant, when he drew distinctions between prerogative and statutory
+power, they had not the least doubt that in abolishing purchase he had
+effected a capital Liberal reform, and they might hope that his reasoning
+as well as his practice was right. Is Mr. Gladstone to be the only
+one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be allowed? The hullabaloo
+which was raised when somebody could say that he had broken through
+a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though from this one politician
+perfection was expected, which was not an ill compliment at bottom;
+and any admirers who may admit that perfection was not always got,
+do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this world goes, and may
+still think him the most upright of our public men. His mental
+machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like it for
+rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it; his
+mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply arguments
+to the last shred of the material which any case in hand affords.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>
+But, to return to the main point,—it never leaves go of the real business.
+Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his voluminous
+writing, has, with the one exception of his classical studies, been no
+mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of special objects.
+These productions have been meant to frame public opinion, and to
+give him openings for legislation, if that became possible. He has
+used the press because it had become the hugest instrument of the time
+he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of multiplying books that
+Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to practically influencing men.</p>
+
+<p>This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends—this
+iron determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend
+upon his power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and
+popular persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as
+the final imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was
+always meant for a Liberal. A man of this kind might be born
+a Conservative; it might take him time to break fully with old
+ties; but for him to stay finally in the ranks where thought was
+allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were looked on with toleration,
+and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others, was an impossibility.
+Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a born
+financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for
+publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His
+whole life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has
+had in it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social
+condition of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too
+much upon them to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper
+circle, which so foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing
+itself the nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has
+been subjected to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his
+father was a baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford.
+Nobles have been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as
+his official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed
+the whole of his long career without a sparkle of the glitter of
+adventitious display: that proudest title of all, which it is not in the
+power of the Crown to bestow but only to take away—"the Great
+Commoner"—has descended upon him, and is still his. Then he has
+fenced himself off with no stiffness of manner; the only dignity he has
+assumed has been the natural seriousness of ardent sincerity, warning off
+triflers only. To everybody else he has been accessible; any person
+could impose on him the trouble of a written reply. His post-cards
+were known to be public property. But putting aside that joke,
+which is now worn bare, scarcely has any one so fully and ungrudgingly
+accepted the responsibilities of his position. He has been the public's
+faithful, ready servant in every particular. Nor has it been mere complaisance,
+or a drudging of mechanical industry; he has exhibited a real
+faculty of interesting himself in all that anybody has been doing actively
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>
+and well. To say that he is the only statesman who, while clinging to
+the Church of England, has commanded the sympathies of the Dissenters,
+might provoke an enemy, embittered by the fact, to reply that he had
+tactical reasons for trying to do that; but it could have been nothing
+else than real width of mind and a robust versatility which enabled this
+High Churchman largely to divide impartial admiration between the
+Evangelical party and the Romanists, pointing out fully and exactly
+what is to be praised in each. Any one who wishes it can find the
+estimates set out in detail in the third and seventh volumes of "The
+Gleanings." This wide range of intellectual appreciation is really as
+much a characteristic of Mr. Gladstone as has been his unyielding
+tenacity and doctrinal hold within the limits of his personal confession
+of belief. He, a firm acceptor of the tenets of sacramental efficacy, apostolical
+succession, and the authority of the Church in her own sphere, could
+take up the semi-rationalistic book "Ecce Homo," and turn it round-and-round
+admiringly as a most curious and valuable mental production.
+Nothing in which thought was really shown has escaped his notice, or
+failed to arouse his interest. He has bent his look on Secularism, as
+a scientific inquirer might scrutinize a new species, and he has stooped
+to quote Mr. Bradlaugh. In one place you will find him, very likely
+on the page after giving a passage from Isaiah or the Psalms, citing the
+old poet Dunbar, or speaking of Rowe or Swift, or alluding to Rousseau;
+while long before it became a fashion he had words of sympathizing
+praise for Shelley, selecting, of all other places, <i>The Quarterly Review</i> to
+print them in. But, perhaps, the clearest proof of all, alike of his
+power to bear testimony in spite of personal disliking, and his standing
+hard and fast upon a principle when he has reached it, is that he, whom
+Macaulay nearly half a century ago described as "a young man of unblemished
+character," and whom his Lordship, if he were now alive,
+would speak of as "the old man with personal fame unspotted," could
+step aside in one of his articles to recognize the public debt due to Jack
+Wilkes as a helper forward of our freedom. Wherever a national
+service has been done, Mr. Gladstone's eulogy always has been ready.</p>
+
+<p>Down to this point we have not spared so much as a hint to his magnificent
+oratory, his unsurpassed debating skill, his not infrequent successes
+in literary style. These were not the things that anybody
+needed reminding of, and that necessity was the prescribed limit of our
+self-imposed task. Who has forgotten when the expounding of the
+Budget was the greatest intellectual treat of the Session, when sugar
+and railway duties and tea became natural themes for eloquence, and
+the unfolding of the surplus was breathlessly waited for like the <i>dénouement</i>
+of a novelist's plot? Those scenes are long past, it is true, but
+the echoes of them can still be heard, for each year since has brought a
+disappointing reminder to awaken them. But the matchless vigour and
+splendour of his debating fence has never slackened, never weakened;
+the only privilege of the older generation in respect of it, is that they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+can boast to have witnessed more of it, not to have seen better displays.
+As to his writings, there least of all is any reminder wanted, for
+he presents the public with an improving specimen each month. If any
+one laid themselves out to find fault with Mr. Gladstone's literature, the
+very worst thing they could discover to say of it, would be that it still
+was oratory, only written down.</p>
+
+<p>This is the man who, after a few weeks of leisure, reappears next
+month in Midlothian; first in the field, as if that appearance was his by
+right of custom. How well he compares with the rest of our older
+party leaders! Mr. Bright, grown a little pursy, though also stricken
+by domestic misfortune, rests rather inertly on his laurels, which certainly
+are plentiful enough to invite repose; Mr. Forster has never succeeded
+in quite finding his way out of the clauses of his own Education
+Act, where he sees himself confronted with the Church of England at
+the end of so many vistas, that he is lost in admiration of its architecture;
+Mr. Goschen, by some strange weakness (which, let us hope, is
+only temporary) has got a scare from meeting the County Franchise
+wearing Joseph Arch's coat and hat; while Mr. Lowe is riding hobbies,
+bicycle-wise, in and out before the very select constituency of the London
+University, with readers of <i>The Fortnightly Review</i> for outside spectators,
+just by way of showing off his little feats of mental gymnastic. In the
+meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the veteran of them all, is putting on his
+harness for a fresh contest, a riper, better Liberal to-day than on any
+previous day of fight. It is for the younger men to rally round him.</p>
+
+<p>But, before taking our leave of Mr. Gladstone, we have finally to enlarge
+our view of him. Early in these remarks it seemed well to give a very
+hasty summary of his whole career; but there remains to be attempted
+an exact sketch of his actual position in respect of opinions and practical
+relations at the moment when he ceased to be Minister. Let us, first
+of all, at this moment when a Brummagem Imperialism is only yet half-faded,
+recall what was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the historic position
+and natural function of England among the nations; for it has been
+craftily made to appear that he was willing, and indeed anxious, for this
+country to efface itself. In 1870, when he was still at the height of
+power, he published in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i> his article on "Germany,
+France, and England," and the following was the view he then put
+forward of the international obligations and duties of his country, in spite
+of the sea dividing us from other lands:—</p>
+
+<p>"Yet we are not isolated.... With vast multitudes of persons in
+each of the Continental countries we have constant relations, both of
+personal and commercial intercourse, which grow from year to year;
+and as, happily, we have no conflict of interests, real or supposed, nor
+scope for evil passions afforded by our peaceful rivalry, there is nothing
+to hinder the self-acting growth of concord.... So far from this
+implying either a condition or a policy of isolation, it marks out England
+as the appropriate object of the general confidence.... All that is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span>
+wanted is that she should discharge the functions, which are likely more
+and more to accrue to her, modestly, kindly, impartially.... But
+in order that she may act fully up to a part of such high distinction,
+the kingdom of Queen Victoria must be in all things worthy of it. The
+world-wide cares and responsibilities with which the British people have
+charged themselves are really beyond the ordinary measure of human
+strength; and until a recent period it seemed the opinion of our rulers
+that we could not do better than extend them yet further, wherever an
+opening could easily, or even decently, be found. With this avidity
+for material extension was joined a preternatural and morbid sensibility.
+Russia at the Amoor, America at the Fee-jee or the Sandwich Islands,
+France in New Caledonia or Cochin China—all these, and the like, were
+held to be good reasons for a feverish excitement lest other nations
+should do for themselves but the fiftieth part of what we have done for
+ourselves.... The secret of strength lies in keeping some proportion
+between the burden and the back."</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to ask whether this is a policy combining dignified
+patriotism and prudently-restrained common sense? Compare it for a
+moment with the gewgaw skimble-skamble diplomatic sensationalism
+with which we have been presented since. But let us go a little more
+into detail as to Mr. Gladstone's standing with reference to international
+relations. This present Government has perhaps forgotten that there is
+such a nation in the world as the United States of America; but Mr.
+Gladstone kept it well in mind, and we suppose every one will admit
+that he, of all statesmen, stands well with that people of our own blood,
+who very shortly will be the most powerful community upon the earth,
+and the one with whom we shall, for all time, have most to do. However,
+we will keep within the bounds of Europe. It is the fashion now
+to give precedence to Germany. Well, Mr. Gladstone was among the
+first to predict the success of Prussia, and she is not likely to forget
+who it was who preserved neutrality at a moment most critical to her.
+Is it France that he is not on good relations with? Why this Minister, who
+invited her wine trade, and strove unceasingly to increase commerce to and
+fro across the Channel, and who is for giving further and further political
+rights to his countrymen, is the only English statesman whom the bulk
+of Frenchmen can understand. To them our Tories must be as antiquated
+as their own Royalists. Italy is a growing Power in the European
+comity, and who is there among our statesmen who can in her fair cities
+arouse half the enthusiasm he can? He is, literally, the only English
+politician they familiarly know. With Austria, it is true, he during
+the recent war lost patience for a moment, but her conduct since has
+told that her rulers must at the time have known that he had good
+reasons for it; and no one has more fully appreciated the difficulties of
+Austria's position than he has done, or was more early in giving her, years
+ago, the very counsel which she has since proved was the wisest for her.
+There remains one other great Power to be named—Russia; the State
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>
+with whom we shall have directly of necessity to stand face to face in the
+far East, and with whom terms will in the end have somehow to be made.
+It is urged against Mr. Gladstone that he has not rendered himself
+obnoxious enough to this remaining Power—that is, that he did not
+incapacitate himself for negotiating with her, and, having postponed
+defiance of her, might make some peaceful arrangement. Can any
+friend of peace think this a very grievous accusation? Mr. Gladstone
+has gained this position of goodwill all round at what cost?—that of
+having fallen into disfavour with the Turks. That is his one terrible
+disqualification for affairs; or, if you wish to be precisely exhaustive,
+and at the same time to elicit the absurdity fully, you may add to it
+that he has irritated the Bourbons. It is quite true, and we, indeed,
+wish to put it clearly forward, that he was for abating a little of our
+national swagger, and was prepared to see, and to welcome, advancement
+in other nations. But every well-grounded Liberal knows that it
+is only on those two conditions that England can permanently pursue
+her own paths of industrial development, and the world make progress.
+Mr. Gladstone's single sin in reference to our external relations was his
+readiness to favour those two results.</p>
+
+<p>But how does he show when a last view is taken of him from within
+our politics? Here, again, first look to the circumference. In dealing
+with the colonies, he was for all being put in possession of a free autonomy,
+and then urging them to self-reliance—in those ways welding them into
+the integrity of the empire; and as to India, he insisted that we should
+strive more and more to realize what he termed the generous conception
+of a moral trusteeship, to be administered for the benefit of those over
+whom we rule. Here, once more, we get the true ring of a sound
+Liberalism, for those are the only principles, we venture to affirm, on
+which such an empire as this of ours can ever be made permanent. Treating
+the colonies as babies and biting the thumb at Russia, even from the
+most scientific frontier India can furnish, though you shout "Empress"
+from it as loudly as you will, has nothing truly English about it.
+Empire is not kept in such a mawkish, artificial manner.</p>
+
+<p>But now narrow the gaze within our own home limits. The chief
+domestic questions for the British public are these,—extension of the
+County Franchise, the Redistribution of Seats, the Disestablishment of
+the Church, and Retrenchment of Expenditure. The Land Question
+will yet have to grow, and may not ripen in his time. But on three of
+the above pending matters Mr. Gladstone stands at the very front. He
+is for making our field cultivators citizens no less than our artizans; he
+is for re-allotting members in a manner which will give us a Parliament
+truly representative; and it is hardly necessary to speak of economical
+benefits in connection with the Minister who used the nation to
+reduction of taxation and surpluses arriving together, and whose last
+promise under that head was the total abolition of the Income Tax.
+On the other of these great domestic matters, that which stands third
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>
+in the above list, the Disestablishment of the Church, it has seemed to
+advanced Liberals that Mr. Gladstone has lagged. But the lively fear
+of his opponents on this very matter is full of hope. Since he last
+dissented from Mr. Miall's motion, he has written a very significant
+phrase in an article in this Review. In treating of "The Courses of
+Religious Thought," when reviewing the churches of the United States
+and of the British Colonies he spoke of their vigorous growth, "far from
+the possibly chilling shadow of National Establishments of Religion." In
+that phrase, for a man so practical as is Mr. Gladstone, Disestablishment
+seems to cast its shadow before, and not a few persons on the other side
+of the question shivered from the chilliness it made. But these topics
+of the first class do not depend upon any one statesman; the biggest of
+men have these capital problems thrust upon them; all that you
+can do is to take note how a leader stands in reference to them.
+And the above is Mr. Gladstone's standing. But there was another
+class of legislative reforms which he was the man to have gone in search
+of. In one of his most recent articles he has given us a hint of a dream
+of this kind which was in his mind. He stated it thus:—"Our
+currency, our local government, our liquor laws, portions even of our
+taxation, remain in a state either positively disgraceful, or at the least
+inviting and demanding improvement." That programme of the further
+benefits which we should have owed to Mr. Gladstone was put aside by the
+giddiness of twenty-five or thirty constituencies at the last elections, but it
+will fittingly serve to give the finishing touch to our presentation of
+him in this paper. Liberals have, in fact, to thank him for offering more
+of reform and of benefit than the country would let him give it. Splendid
+as his achievements have been, he really had others in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>Is it too late? is the question that naturally arises. Certainly there
+is no hope of having the five years of administration by him which
+we have lost since 1874. That is irretrievable; and if Mr. Gladstone
+felt then his growing years, and had a wish to finish other tasks apart
+from politics, he is no younger now; while the aims of his purposed
+leisure must have been greatly interfered with by his partial recall
+to affairs owing to the dangers to which freedom in Bulgaria and our
+own national credit were exposed. It is wholly a matter for Mr.
+Gladstone to decide. If the next elections go in favour of the
+Liberals, all the world knows that office is there for him to take or
+to leave. Earl Granville, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Hartington would,
+we need not say, be among the first even to urge it as far as it was right
+to do so, and the whole party would welcome him back to power with a
+shout of joy. Who knows? Mr. Gladstone's patriotism is great, and our
+financial muddle will, also, be very great about that time. Between the
+two he might be tempted; he may yet do us the final service of putting the
+national finances right again. It is, we repeat, wholly for him to say.
+Earlier in this paper a further word was promised on the subject of
+his retirement; but, upon second thoughts, it scarcely seems necessary.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>
+Mr. Gladstone was too experienced in Parliamentary doings
+not to know that the Conservatives would take care to keep enough
+of their majority until time itself forced them back to the unwished-for
+hustings. He did his party not an atom of practical injury by
+retiring; rather, it was a good opportunity for giving a younger leader
+practice. It would be quite idle, on the other hand, to argue with
+his opponents for complaining that he did not retire enough. He has
+made speeches, they say; he has written articles in every organ there
+is; he has even republished previous writings. As we before said, they
+have themselves to blame for it in great measure: if they wanted Mr.
+Gladstone to stay in retirement, they should have carefully kept quiet.
+Instead of that they made a noise before his door, disturbing him in his
+studies. What more natural than that he should come out? He did so,
+and found that, disguised like harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which
+they call Imperialism, they were playing high jinks with Britain's
+reputation and the chances of freedom for the oppressed in the East. It
+was too much for him; but if they complain of the number of the weapons
+he attacked them with, we know that it would have been impossible for
+him to please them there. They never have been satisfied on that
+score. What they really find fault with are the blows they got.</p>
+
+<p>And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining
+that he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland;
+the real fact being that they wish he had gone much farther still.
+They never are sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them.
+We leave them anxiously listening for his approach again unto these
+shores, knowing very well that to their thinking they will hear his
+voice all too soon.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">A Liberal.</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p>Description is said to be only possible by comparing, and when one
+is asked to sketch Mr. Gladstone, how is it to be set about? His
+admirers will have it that he has been a very great Minister, so that
+if we adopt the comparative method, we ought to look high for
+standards. Shall we match him alongside Bismarck or Cavour? The
+latter, to give him precedence, stands renowned for building up his
+country in evil days, when every omen was against her. But Mr.
+Gladstone, succeeding to power when England was in the full tide of
+prosperity and at the height of fame, gave up her prospects, and would
+have acquiesced in her decadence. There is no likeness whatever
+between him and Cavour. Then take Bismarck. The great German
+Chancellor shares with the Italian Minister the glory of having widened
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+the bounds and raised the position of his land, and he stands now head
+and shoulders above all in the midst of the diplomatic world a very
+Colossus. But Mr. Gladstone is and has always been outside that world
+altogether. Prince Bismarck has his hand on all the springs of action, and
+will let pass no chance of exalting his country. Mr. Gladstone, we repeat,
+never made the slightest impression in the regions of diplomacy;
+Courts did not know him, foreign statesmen left him out of their
+reckoning of the men that had to be dealt with. The great international
+achievements for which he has alone been talked of have been
+the surrender of British territory and the paying down of English
+money lavishly to another State for preposterous claims. But it
+will be said that it is not fair to Mr. Gladstone to compare him to
+Prince Bismarck and Count Cavour, for they were men who found their
+country in unusual circumstances. Look, then, to names in our own
+history. Pitt must not be spoken of for the reasons just allowed in the
+other cases; but there are Canning and Palmerston. How does
+Mr. Gladstone look alongside them? He has himself more than
+once alluded to Canning, as if not unwilling to be thought to have
+received his mantle. It was, however, always only in connection with
+Greece that he spoke of Canning; but that Minister looked much
+farther than the Mediterranean. One would have thought that so fine
+a rhetorician as Mr. Gladstone would not have forgotten the famous
+phrase in which Canning claimed to have called the New World into
+existence to redress the balance of the Old. Lord Palmerston was
+without any such fine phrases, but in foreign affairs he acted boldly,
+though he had to fall back on a musty Latin quotation to describe it.
+Every Englishman, however, understood Latin when their Minister said,
+<i>Civis Romanus sum</i>. Yet neither of these Ministers at any part of their
+career lived in times more stirring than Mr. Gladstone has done, nor
+when the interests of England were more endangered. He has still later
+had magnificent opportunities, but he did worse than lose them.</p>
+
+<p>From all this, it would seem that, whether we look abroad or at home,
+there is no possibility of describing Mr. Gladstone by hints of comparison
+with these historical personages. What is said in that way
+appears, in fact, to turn into contrast; which is, also, itself a mode of
+delineation, though not usually of the kind the chief object of it
+wishes. We can find no Minister to couple along with him as having
+deliberately despaired of his country. However, Mr. Gladstone is
+certainly great in some way, for although other nations while we were
+under his sway were gradually losing sight of England herself as well as
+of him, he was making plenty of noise all the time at home. If it should
+turn out, as we go on, that he was not a great Minister but a great
+orator, that would seem to account for both the things. If Bismarck
+and Cavour have made affairs, Mr. Gladstone has made speeches,
+beating them as much in that as they did him in the other respect.
+But it is not exactly the same thing to the countries the men represent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+It is, therefore, under a humbler, more domestic aspect than that
+of this high supreme style of Minister which we have first tried that
+we must begin Mr. Gladstone's portraiture. The task may be divided
+into two portions. There is the opinion which we Conservatives hold
+of the general influence and effect he has had upon our national interests,
+in which we may be credited with at least trying to estimate his acts and
+measures on their merits; and, besides that, there is a judgment of
+him from a narrower party view, arising out of his historic relation to
+ourselves. We will take the latter first.</p>
+
+<p>To hear Liberals talk, one might suppose that Conservatives had
+always cherished a special hatred against Mr. Gladstone simply for
+ceasing to be a Tory and becoming a Radical. That the Conservatives
+rather late in his career came to show much irritation against Mr. Gladstone
+is perfectly correct; but it was, as I hope to show as I go on, for
+very different reasons than simply because he had made one Conservative
+less and one Liberal more. A great political party has no such
+immortal animosities as that supposes: party feeling is not based
+on merely sentimental grounds. Both sides are used to losing men.
+It is the common fate of Parliamentary warfare. Now and then,
+some rather idle person who has time to waste in going back a long
+way in his recollections bethinks himself that Lord Beaconsfield was
+not always a Conservative; but we never yet heard of any one among
+the party challenging sympathy for him on the score that he had
+been hunted by the Liberals through half a century or so for having
+deserted them. Yet it will be admitted that Lord Beaconsfield has
+injured the Liberals more than ever Mr. Gladstone has done the
+Conservatives. What is the reason, then, of this difference of alleged
+treatment in the two cases? The answer may be given in half a
+sentence,—Lord Beaconsfield, alike when he was Mr. Disraeli and
+since, has always fought fair. That is enough in politics to make
+your opponents acquiesce in your being such; but Mr. Gladstone
+as his career developed surprised and puzzled everybody, his own friends
+included; and those who blame the Conservatives for, in the end,
+losing temper and showing exasperation, should bear in mind that
+he finally produced the very same effect upon the country at large.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while following this point a little further, for it would not
+be of much use attempting to sketch Mr. Gladstone if we are supposed
+to dislike him from some mere party instinct. Will anybody be good
+enough to tell us when this inscrutable emotion of hatred of Mr. Gladstone
+arose? Liberals are not supposed to be strong in history, but they
+have very short memories indeed if they have forgotten both their own
+career and his. Why, in 1852—that is, in the twentieth year of
+Mr. Gladstone's Parliamentary life—the Conservatives were offering
+him office, which was not refused by him with over-much promptness.
+For nearly fourteen years after that he was retained as the representative
+of the University of Oxford. It is, in fact, not yet very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>
+much more than a dozen years since this victim of political persecution,
+and present champion of the Radicals, was quietly ensconced
+in a seat for what is sometimes spoken of as the head-quarters of
+Toryism. He has roved a good deal among the constituencies since,
+but he was then willing to have gone on remaining at Oxford, if
+his constituents had also been willing to have been made laughing-stocks
+by letting him remain. Surely a man who represented Tory electors until
+he was getting fast on for sixty could scarcely up to that point have been
+much hunted and worried for Liberal principles. To speak plainly,
+there never was so late a conversion made of so much histrionic use as
+this of Mr. Gladstone's. But though it has suited both his and his
+present party's ends, it rather puzzles plain people who have kept their
+recollections a little trim to think that if he lives on into senatorial
+decrepitude, he will never have sat for Radical constituencies anything
+like so long a time as he did for Conservative ones. For between
+thirty and forty years this Liberal ex-Premier was a Tory member.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, a glance at the right honourable gentleman's wonderfully
+prosperous career will show that in the list of our public men he has
+of all others made the fewest, the briefest, the least sacrifices either for
+principle or party. There are very simple ways of testing it; Mr.
+Gladstone has not been out of office long enough for a man who was
+innocent of business prudence in his career. He has, in fact, reaped
+the official spoils of two parties, if not of three. The dates and appointments
+are on record for anybody to trace out. On the very face of it,
+a man who has served under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Russell,
+and then come out as a full-blown Liberal Prime Minister himself,
+must of necessity be said to offer rather a miscellaneous career.
+His warmest admirer must admit that he has been either the most fortunate
+or else the most prudent of men; and, as we do not wish to be
+stingy in our recognition of his skill, we prefer to compliment him
+by attributing his great prosperity throughout so many years and
+under so many different chiefs to his prudence.</p>
+
+<p>If this very hasty review of Mr. Gladstone's chronicle does not agree
+with the impression of him which is the prevailing one on the Liberal
+side, it is the one which the bare facts of his career would produce on
+every side if they could be seen without the misleading effect of his
+very fine words and exceedingly solemn attitudes. Very fortunately
+for him it is only the Conservatives who have a full and accurate recollection
+of Mr. Gladstone. They have necessarily observed him continuously
+from their own unshifting party position, and so have been able
+to perceive in a way that hardly was practicable to the Liberals, who
+were always shifting and struggling among themselves, how invariably
+and consistently his announcements of change of view have hit with the
+opportunities for improvement of his Parliamentary position. On every
+occasion, to the very moment, so soon as a Liberal question had fully ripened,
+Mr. Gladstone presented himself to pluck it. It was so with Reform, it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>
+was so with Church Rates, it was so with University Reform, it was so
+with the Ballot, it was so with the spoliation of the Irish Church and the
+unsettling of the Irish landowners, and it is so with the County Franchise,
+and it will be so once more, if the Liberals ever get into power again,
+with the English Church and the English Land Laws. Mr. Bright, Mr.
+Miall, and all the Radicals have drudged for many a year for Mr. Gladstone,
+who, when all the outdoor work has been done, has always
+allowed himself to be persuaded to bring in the Measure just in the nick
+of time, and, by expounding it in a very fine speech, has robbed its
+actual originators of two-thirds of the credit of making it possible.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for the Conservatives, though he never had the courage to
+attack a question of the very first class himself in the way of initiative, he
+had an insatiable ambition for meddling with smaller ones, and by making
+vents in these ways for his restlessness and his ambition, he finally
+ruined all that his skilful prudence in the larger affairs had gained him,
+disgusting the country till it determined to get him off its hands at any
+price. Still, that is not just now the point in question.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone's so slowly passing through all the stages from Conservatism
+to Radicalism has had this effect,—that while all other public
+men of his standing have grown more or less antiquated in steady loyal
+service to their party, and by presenting a fixed if monotonous aspect to
+the public, this one Parliamentary personage kept a perennial freshness,
+simply by skilfully dividing his prolonged career into distinct periods and
+going on changing. Some political section has been always welcoming
+Mr. Gladstone newly into its ranks and to its spoils, for, as we have said,
+the two things unfailingly went together; and the shouts with which he
+was received were always strengthened by fainter murmurs of applause
+from other sections more advanced along the line, who hoped to receive
+him themselves later on. They did so. Really to each one of them he was
+a recruit from the last party. To the Palmerstonians he ought at the
+most to have been only a Peelite; to the Liberals at worst only a
+Palmerstonian. But by a surprising adroitness, it was always made to
+appear that in all his migrations from party to party, he joined each
+successive group as a new retreater from the Tories. It certainly was
+true in one sense; he was always going further away from them. But
+for all party purposes and reckoning, he had as much left them when
+he joined Palmerston as when he shook hands with Mr. Bright and
+took his place in front of the Radicals.</p>
+
+<p>These are only a first handful of specimens of a certain unfairness in
+Mr. Gladstone's position and career from first to last, from which he
+has largely profited, and which very naturally irked his opponents, who
+have had to suffer its inconveniences. He has posed as a sort of political
+orphan left lonely in the Parliamentary world at the death of Peel, who
+has been persecuted by wicked Tories from one Chancellorship of the
+Exchequer to another, until they finally drove him into the Premiership,
+but all this time he was successfully seceding from them, though they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+continued in pursuit. It must have been Mr. Gladstone's portentous
+earnestness of demeanour which has covered up from the general public
+a joke so huge and prolonged as this, preventing everybody from seeing
+that such a tale did not agree with his unprecedented prosperity. But
+if in these ways he has kept himself interesting to the country, and fresh
+and surprising for every group he has in rotation joined, both he and
+his changes have long been stale to the Conservatives. They are able
+to look along his whole track, and seeing him from behind, know him as
+a Peelite, a follower of Aberdeen, a Palmerstonian, a Russellite, and a
+Radical. They are debarred from applying his own name to the last
+stage, and calling him a Gladstonian. Strangely enough, and indeed
+very significantly, that term has never taken root in our politics.
+There really have never been any Gladstonians: no one ever was
+or ever will be called by that title. Mr. Gladstone will end his
+days and depart without founding any school; he will stand recorded
+only as the acceptor of office from those who did so, and the passer
+of other people's measures. But in political life a man who attains
+the first rank of conspicuousness without founding a line may fairly
+be suspected. It will be found that he has been too busy in a narrower
+way,—looking after not questions but himself. To that very
+small party, numerically reckoned, consisting of only one member,
+Mr. Gladstone has been consistently and untiringly faithful. He
+has challenged for it sympathy in all the ways to which his very fine
+oratory has lent itself, and he has not neglected the humbler art of perpetual
+advertisement, keeping it by means of the press and the platform
+ever before the public eye. But when he finally leaves us it is certain
+to vanish entirely.</p>
+
+<p>Very likely some ardent Radical, whose mind is so full of having got Mr.
+Gladstone at last that he forgets, or perhaps never knew, how many grades
+and shades of politicians have in succession enjoyed him before, will say
+that in all this we are only railing at Mr. Gladstone's success. His success!
+In order to describe Mr. Gladstone, we had first to write retrospectively,
+take in his earlier phases, and to look generally at his whole history.
+In that retrospect, down to a late point in it, he was exceedingly
+prosperous; but we never meant to say that he had been very successful
+since the beginning of 1874. There is not the slightest need
+for any Conservative to feel bitter against Mr. Gladstone now on any
+grounds of personal envy. He has done them the greatest service of any
+public man for three generations; and at any time he might have individually
+prospered as much as he liked for them, if it had been possible
+for him to do it without injuring his country. It is to this more
+serious examination of his career that we now go.</p>
+
+<p>Not that we propose to entangle ourselves in the minute details of it,
+for that is in no way necessary. We have already in part explained
+why we may, in such a sketch as this, drop out many years of his political
+life. For a great length of time Mr. Gladstone was only a Budget-maker.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
+It is true he made them for Governments that were not
+Conservative, but he still was considered nearly a Conservative outside
+his financial handicraft. And here, again, part of the explanation
+we earlier gave applies. There is not the slightest reason why any
+Conservative should pause long to consider Mr. Gladstone as the
+passer of the Ballot, or even as the disestablisher of the Irish
+Church and the interferer with the rights of landed property in Ireland.
+The only thing special to be said about him in connection with these
+things as distinguishing him from the ruck of Liberals would be, that he
+was a very late ex-Tory, and at the time a professed High Churchman. He
+somehow got the Liberals to let him write his name across every one
+of those measures so soon as it was seen that they would pass, and he
+has made the legislation in that way seem to be his; but the Conservatives
+know with whom they had really to deal in the inception and
+the pushing forward of those movements, and it was not Mr. Gladstone.
+The real men were Mr. Bright, Mr. Dillwyn, Mr. Miall, and those who
+for many a year worked with them while Mr. Gladstone was never heard
+of, never thought of, in connection with the matters they had always
+matured before he had anything to do with them.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was it on account of these affairs that Mr. Gladstone's fall
+occurred when it came, which is another reason why it would be waste
+of time to discuss them in connection with him. Who is proposing to
+alter these things now that they have been fought out between the great
+parties of the State and decided? As a supplement to his Irish Land
+Bill, we now have the Irish peasants refusing to pay any rent at all:
+but in these days when a thing is done in our Parliament it is done.
+The Conservatives, in spite of the majority at their back, have never put
+forward a finger to touch those settlements, nor do they mean to do so;
+and yet not only our own country, but all Europe, and indeed realms
+farther away still, have been keenly aware that the Beaconsfield
+Ministry has been very busy for years undoing something that Mr.
+Gladstone had done.</p>
+
+<p>What was this gigantic task, which was not the repealing of
+legislation, or the passing of statutes of any kind, but which required
+courage and effort more arduous than those things? There must
+have been some cause for the bursts of applause which have again
+and again echoed on our shores from all parts of the civilized globe
+at something that was going on. It was, we hasten to answer, the
+rehabilitation of England in the eyes of the world,—the restoration
+of her ancient power as a factor in the enforcement and administration
+of public right among the nations. Somehow, coincidently with
+Mr. Gladstone's prosperity as a Minister, England, his country, had
+sunk, and in exactly answering ratio, and was sinking lower and
+lower still daily. He was very famous, or at least very notorious, at
+home, but the renown of Britain abroad was clouding; and our people
+never will bear that, as history had shown before. This man, who at heart
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+was but a financier, and who ought in the fitness of things never to
+have risen higher in office than a Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose
+function it should have been to find funds for some one else as a Prime
+Minister capable of a policy in the higher international politics befitting
+an Empire, was conducting our foreign affairs in the spirit of a commercial
+traveller; willing to effect a little saving by giving up a group of
+islands in one part or a bit of territory in another, and to effect an
+economy at another time by backing out of a treaty. Though, at the
+same time, if anybody insisted, and there loomed, however distantly, a
+possibility of war, he would pay the money down in a hurry by millions,
+as he did in the Alabama case. We should have had all the world insisting
+very soon, making peace more costly than war itself, besides the shame of
+unjustifiable surrender.</p>
+
+<p>But we were spared all this; though the undoing of the humiliation, as
+far as it had gone, has fully occupied Mr. Gladstone's successors ever since.</p>
+
+<p>This is the great accusation which the Conservatives have to bring
+against Mr. Gladstone—that of having degraded the position of his
+country; and an arraignment more fatal than this cannot be made in the
+case of a chief Minister. It is not alone the Conservatives who make
+it. Did not Earl Russell, Liberal though he was, find enough English
+blood in his aged veins when writing his last book, to say that Mr.
+Gladstone had dragged the name of England through the mire? But
+it would not be quite accurate to put this forward as the full
+explanation of Mr. Gladstone's sudden tumble from office; for it was
+not until after that occurred that the bulk of people quite knew the
+whole extent of the injury he had worked in this respect. The Conservative
+leaders guessed it, but they knew more about foreign affairs
+than the rank and file of the nation. Everybody, of course, high and
+low, was aware that he had unasked given up the Ionian Islands because
+of some literary reasons which he had come upon in writing books about
+Homer, that he had surrendered territory in the San Juan Boundary
+Question, and that he had quietly gone to Geneva and paid America,
+not indeed all she asked,—for even with Britain's wealth the whole
+of the first modest request would only have been found with difficulty,—but
+he had counted down a sum that made Brother Jonathan's
+shrewd eyes twinkle with joy. The country, from these events
+following one another, had come to have a very uneasy feeling that
+somehow under his auspices everything was going against us abroad.
+Still it was only later that it was made fully apparent how completely
+England was effaced; not until the three Emperors had begun to
+settle the rearrangement of Eastern Europe, without so much as saying
+to Great Britain, "By your leave." There is difficulty when looking back
+now to prevent oneself from suffering some illusion in this respect;
+but it is a fact, and we may be glad of it, that Englishmen did not until
+it was roughly forced upon them suppose beforehand that their position
+had dwindled to quite so low an ebb.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>
+At the elections of 1874, there was no distinct foreign policy before
+the public, for though there were many on the Conservative side who
+sympathized with France in her adversity, and saw clearly that Germany's
+mutilation of her territory meant trouble in time to come, not a
+voice was raised in deprecation of our neutrality. But, for the
+matter of that, it may be just as correctly said that there was no
+matured domestic question before the country, for it will not be
+supposed that there was a single Tory any more than a Liberal who
+wished the Income Tax to be retained on his shoulders. It was hardly
+for proposing to do away with that impost that everybody voted so unanimously
+against Mr. Gladstone; they only did so at the polling-booths in
+spite of his proposing it, which somehow seems rather mysterious. If his
+opponents were not proposing to recall any of the recent legislation, and
+if there was no special question of foreign affairs pending, and if nobody
+had any desire not to be lightened of taxation, how was it, pray, that Mr.
+Gladstone was so ignominiously hurled from power? In reality, there
+is not the slightest difficulty about it—Mr. Gladstone was decisively
+rejected by his countrymen, not on any question of policy, either home
+or foreign, but because of the <i>personal impression</i> he had slowly but
+surely imprinted on their minds. The real issue before the country was
+whether it would have any more of Mr. Gladstone, and it said No.</p>
+
+<p>It is a common artifice on the part of his apologisers to insinuate
+that he had wearied the nation by offering it too many things
+for its good. But neither individuals nor communities are much in
+the habit of refusing gifts; it is the one thing, and nearly the only
+thing, in this world for which there is an excellent reason whenever
+so strange a proceeding happens. There is another way of
+representing the matter, one much less complimentary but far more
+true—the country was sick of Mr. Gladstone. Even the sight of
+Mr. Lowe standing at his side with four millions of surplus in
+his hands was not enough to tempt them. The promise to abolish the
+Income Tax was the most tremendous bribe ever offered to the constituencies,
+but, to their credit, it did not corrupt them. They would
+not accept Mr. Gladstone any longer at any price whatever. The
+believers in democracy, and Mr. Gladstone in particular, according to
+some of his very latest reasonings, ought to have accepted this universal
+disgust as being a popular inspiration. However, they have done
+nothing of the kind, but avow that it was a public delusion, which they
+at first hinted would be temporary; but if the public is liable to
+delusions, and to fits of them which continue for seven or eight years
+at a stretch, for that is now the duration of this one, what becomes of
+these very radical gentlemen's democracy? For it is not really open to
+them to plead, though they will go on doing it, that the people's eyes
+were dazzled by a glitter of diplomatic success, and their blood infuriated
+by a skilfully aroused anti-Russian feeling. It is not open to
+them for a simple reason, but a very conclusive one: the elections came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+before anything of this could have happened; and the elections themselves
+arrived with the suddenness they did owing to something which had
+preceded them—namely, a steady run of Ministerial defeats in the
+by-contests, wherever a vacancy occurred in a constituency. Mr.
+Gladstone avowed all this in the address with which he startled the
+Greenwich electors and the whole country, though he and his friends
+have never mentioned the fact since. It was for the purpose of
+putting all things right that the elections which put them all more
+wrong still were so unexpectedly ordered. It was not because of being
+intoxicated by the diplomatic triumph of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
+Salisbury at Berlin—which did not occur till years after—that the
+constituencies rejected Mr. Gladstone. We have no wish to be unnecessarily
+impolite, but the true reason for it was that which we have
+named already—they had come not to like Mr. Gladstone. If we
+trace that fact backwards in a natural way, we shall find that one cause
+of it was that they felt the honour and the interest of England were
+not safe in his hands; but this was only one among other causes. It
+swelled afterwards into the biggest reason of all, and now practically
+includes all the others; but, at the moment, it was not actually known
+that the safety of England was about to be imperilled.</p>
+
+<p>The voters were affected by other reasons. What were those other
+reasons? The public must have known them pretty clearly at the
+time, since it acted so promptly and decidedly upon them, and it,
+therefore, ought not to need very much recalling of them now, for the
+time, after all, is not so very long ago. But it may be as well to go
+into them a little, since it was through the incidents furnishing them
+that the general public was led to form the very same estimate
+of Mr. Gladstone which the Conservatives had held for about a
+score of years before. At last the popular judgment coincided with
+that of his Parliamentary opponents, and he fell from power. But
+any one who will give a moment's consideration to the cases of the
+Collier appointment, the Ewelme Rectory affair, and the issue of the
+Royal Warrant on purchase in the army, will see that we are right in
+affirming that Mr. Gladstone's ignominious expulsion from office was
+owing to moral rather than political causes. It stands recorded that this
+Minister, who had put religious professions in the front of his politics
+in a way novel to public life, had to defend his conduct over and over
+again in the House of Commons by quoting the mere letter of the law.
+Parliament became not unlike the Old Bailey when a legal wrangle is
+going on over the technicalities of an indictment; and the unwonted
+spectacle of Lord Chief Justices accusing a theological Premier of
+having somehow evaded a statute was not made any less unedifying
+by Mr. Gladstone showing great skill in being his own attorney.
+Everybody must admit that he certainly did that.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to recall each of the cases in very few words. An Act
+of Parliament had been passed with a view to strengthening the Judicial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, as this Court was one of Appeal,
+it stood to reason that those appointed to it to revise other Judges'
+decisions should have had judicial experience themselves. It was expressly
+provided in the Act that those to be raised to this Court should
+be already Judges. To the surprise of the whole country, Sir Robert
+Collier, well known as Mr. Gladstone's Attorney-General, and, therefore,
+conspicuously only a waiter for a judgeship, not a judge already,
+was announced as the filler of one of these vacancies, before half the
+readers of the newspapers knew that he had ceased to be Attorney-General.
+It turned out, however, that he was in reality a judge at the
+moment, and that he had been one for some few moments previously,
+having, in fact, sat on the bench of the Common Pleas for just two
+days. There is not space to follow Mr. Gladstone's wonderful reasoning,
+but it chiefly turned on a point so fine as this, that what the Act meant
+to stipulate was not experience, but <i>status</i>. In other words, that a
+man should be made a judge of one kind for five minutes, in order to be
+turned into one of another kind, just for the say of the thing.
+Amazed members of the Legislature which had passed the enactment protested
+that they were not so foolishly subtle as this, and that they had
+never, before Mr. Gladstone mentioned it, thought of any such distinction
+as that between <i>status</i> and experience.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not the only instance in which he has told people
+what they had intended better than they knew, and all differently.
+In the Ewelme Rectory business he would have it that when a statute
+said Oxford it meant Cambridge, or at least that its specifying Oxford
+did not signify, or that it included Cambridge, or, in fact, might be
+construed to prescribe anything else which it did not say and which
+was contrary to what everybody had thought of it before. However,
+here, again, as the lawyers would otherwise have been troublesome, the
+technicality was found to have been formally complied with. The
+words of the enactment did really require that the man who was to be
+made rector of Ewelme parish should be a member of Oxford Convocation,
+and Mr. Harvey, Mr. Gladstone's friend, who had been educated
+at Cambridge, and who, until that living became vacant, had never
+dreamed of connection with Oxford, was made a member of the Convocation,
+in order to receive the living. Of course, Mr. Gladstone argued
+that Mr. Harvey's being a Master of Arts was enough, though the
+statute said nothing of that, and everybody else had thought it expressly
+stated a certain University where the Master of Arts was to come
+from.</p>
+
+<p>But let us go on to the third case, that of the issue of the Royal
+Warrant abolishing purchase. Not a few of the Liberals who exulted at
+the success of the party measure had a misgiving at the way in which
+it was secured. It was felt to be a victory which could not be repeated,
+and one of a style which, if they who snatched it had been Conservatives,
+would have thrown the country into a convulsion. The most violent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+act in the name of the Crown which the oldest man living in England has
+witnessed, was counselled by Mr. Gladstone. Because the Lords, in
+the exercise of the power which the Constitution gives them,
+were not willing instantly to pass his Bill for giving an entirely new
+social aspect to the army, he caused the Queen to do nothing short of
+superseding them entirely, and practically reduced the Constitution at a
+stroke to the Commons and the Crown. It is just now part of the
+tactics of the Liberals to protest against some imagined wish to bring
+in "personal rule." If any such preposterous design existed, it would
+be Mr. Gladstone's own act which would be fallen back upon for the
+precedent. The feeling which has best enabled the most thoughtful
+among Englishmen to understand the kind of shock which foreigners
+experience on the occurrence of one of the political earthquakes which
+they call on the Continent by the name <i>coup d'état</i>, was that which ran
+through the country when Mr. Gladstone announced that there was
+nothing for the Lords to discuss, that he had advised the Queen to issue
+a Royal Warrant. We had lost all recollection of the particular sensation,
+but he brought back just a twinge of it. Mr. Gladstone, however,
+can do Radical acts and then explain them historically. Once more we
+found ourselves all inextricably entangled in his casuistry. He now
+argued that the Royal Warrant had not been issued by exercise of prerogative,
+but in strict pursuance of statutory power, there being some
+Act of the Georges to that effect, which ordinary people had forgotten.
+It is not necessary to follow the thing further. In the end, Mr.
+Gladstone became too clever for the country. Even the dullest began
+to perceive that Mr. Gladstone could conscientiously do whatever he
+liked. The more subtly he argued, the more plain John Bull got
+puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>It may, at first sight, seem tasking the public memory too much to
+ask people if they remember the tension there was in the political
+atmosphere towards the end of Mr. Gladstone's career. But a very
+great many will not have forgotten it. The political weather is so far
+like the other sort that it is only borne in mind for its badness; that,
+however, was a terrible season. At the last, Mr. Gladstone seemed to
+have got into the air, and he did not improve the climate. He may urge,
+certainly, that Mr. Lowe had made himself very obnoxious, that Mr.
+Ayrton had been found to be intolerable, and that the great trade of the
+publicans, with all its supporters, was in arms against Mr. Bruce.
+That is all true; the country disliked each one of these his chief colleagues.
+But neither Mr. Lowe's hard cynicism, nor Mr. Ayrton's dogmatic
+inæstheticism, nor Mr. Bruce's stolid mechanical interference, stirred
+the large keen dissatisfaction which Mr. Gladstone's own incomprehensibility
+in the end did. He gave men's consciences a shock, and none
+of the others affected to feel so deeply as that: it was only he who
+had stood forward as a political moralist, and then set everybody by the
+ears discussing his conduct. It was the same outside Parliament and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>
+within it. Everybody was arguing Mr. Gladstone; nobody could make
+him out, nobody felt safe, or could imagine what was coming next. If
+the atmosphere had but been charged a little more with him, England
+would not have been worth living in. Luckily the elections came, and
+the air was cleared.</p>
+
+<p>But if in the more exaggerated instances we have above spoken of, the
+general public became aware of a certain obliquity, an unreliability, a
+dissatisfied restlessness, an imperiousness in Mr. Gladstone, the Conservatives
+had been more or less continuously aware of those qualities
+for many years. They, as we said earlier, have had to observe the
+right hon. gentleman closer, more continuously, and it would be easy
+for any one of them who is of middle age to give from his own memory
+a string of instances, just the same in kind as those above, though not
+so broadly striking, beginning much earlier in his career, and coming
+down much later. Very recently, Lord Salisbury at Manchester
+recalled Mr. Gladstone's dealings with his Oxford constituents in
+reference to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. But his lordship
+courteously spared his opponent the details. Has the world forgotten
+the famous letter to Dr. Hannah, bearing the date of June,
+1865, written, as Mr. Gladstone himself with unlooked-for <i>naïveté</i>
+admits in his "Chapter of Autobiography," for the appeasing of doubts?
+He in it asserted, first of all, that the question was "remote and
+apparently out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day;"
+second, he avowed that he was probably going "to be silent" on the
+topic; third, he said that "he scarcely expected ever to be called on to
+share in such a measure;" and, as his finishing words, spoke of it as "a
+question lying at a distance he could not measure." These were far too
+many causes for not doing a thing, and the Conservatives accordingly
+began to look out. In 1869, Mr. Gladstone disestablished the Irish
+Church. The "remoteness" and the "distance which was not
+measurable" somehow came to be packed within these two dates,—1865-9.
+What had so hurried matters? Well, one can only recall
+what had happened in the interim, and among the events there had
+been these two occurrences—he had been expelled from Oxford and
+rejected by South Lancashire. The like suddenness attended his conversion
+on the subject of the Ballot. After half a lifetime of opposition,
+he one fine morning announced that it must pass, hardly a hint of
+warning having been given beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>But his whole career has shown this suddenness of advance,
+at distinct periods, which, as we have said, always coincided with
+the brightening of the prospects of the respective agitations. It
+is true, as is earlier pointed out, that he took something like
+a quarter of a century to travel the ground between the Conservative
+starting-point and the Radical position, but the length of
+time was not owing to his creeping between the bounds; he has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
+traversed it at successive leaps, standing still between, and, at
+the places where he remained stationary, there was always the
+warm shelter of office. This style of progress has characterized him
+down to the present moment. As late as 1874 he told a deputation
+that he did not consider the question of the County Franchise
+ripe. There has been a good deal of very indifferent weather
+since then; but whether or not the field crops have matured, it
+seems now that the agricultural labourer has been growing fast.
+Mr. Joseph Arch has been the sun that has shone upon him, and Mr.
+Gladstone, as usual, is quite ready to reap the harvest. Examples
+might be multiplied manifold. Take the boasted case of the Liberal
+surplus, of which we have never ceased to hear—just as if Mr. Lowe
+and Mr. Gladstone had between them coined the money. Its history,
+stated in three words, was this: Mr. Lowe had mulcted the public in
+an unnecessary twopence of Income Tax, and, instead of shamefully
+confessing the incompetency it showed in a Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, presented himself before the constituencies, on the eve of
+the elections, with his hands full of gold, and with the air of presenting
+it to them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone, great financier as he is, was not above profiting by
+his subordinate's miscalculation. Instead of administering a rebuke,
+as a good journeyman might have been expected to do to a bad
+apprentice, he patted Mr. Lowe on the back. Indeed, in the Greenwich
+address, when he so magniloquently spoke of the money being
+given back in the shape of abolishing the Income Tax, he seemed to
+take some credit to himself.</p>
+
+<p>It will be beginning, perforce, to dawn upon the reader that this was
+a Minister very difficult to be dealt with by an Opposition. If we had
+space in this paper, a part of the task of sketching Mr. Gladstone
+would be to point out how injuriously he has confused the demarcation
+of parties; how unscrupulous he has been in seeking allies which on
+no principle of fair classification belonged to him. It may be nothing
+that he can half apologize for Irish Obstructionists—the Liberals have
+always exploited Irish members. But this very high Churchman, who
+clings to a tenet so ridiculous in the eyes of Dissenters as apostolical
+succession, can figure in Dr. Joseph Parker's chapel, and
+betray a close and not uncomplimentary knowledge of the trust-deed
+of the Rev. Newman Hall's congregation. This austere gentleman,
+who, when inquiring into the "Theses of Erastus" (see his article),
+finds out that moral offences are at the root and source of all heresy,
+has a kindly word for such free-thinkers as happen to be also political
+leaders of the working men—Mr. Bradlaugh, for example. This
+objector to divorce, on such stupendously elevated grounds as that we
+are all members of a mystical body, and who cannot bring himself to
+allow more than a civil marriage to a deceased wife's sister, mingles in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>
+the ruck of Radicals. But if he has what they must think ecclesiastical
+crotchets, he always manages them with most skilful prudence. If he
+has to satisfy his most private feelings by bringing in no fewer than six
+resolutions in more or less opposition to the Public Worship Bill, he
+can withdraw them again. But was this the gentleman to champion
+Radicals and Dissenters? An Opposition which had to keep its own
+consistent lines, and which was closely restricted as to its allies, was at
+a perpetual disadvantage with one whose own opinions, subtle and
+complicated as they might be, cut him off from nobody who could be
+of aid.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the country itself, at a certain rather tardy point,
+rallied its patriotism in that spontaneous way which always practically
+reinforces the Conservative party. The "Alabama" claims gave those
+who did not meddle much in politics their first shock, while for more
+thoughtful persons it brought back a reminiscence of the surrender of
+the Ionian Islands; and when, later, the public saw him stand tamely
+by while Russia tore up the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris,
+every student of our history knew that Mr. Gladstone's fate was sealed.
+The nation, stirred by arousings of the deeper instincts of the English
+character, at last reckoned with him on general grounds—dislike of
+his personal demeanour, and dread of what he was bringing on the
+country. It refused to be won either by the finest oratory or the
+prospect of reduced taxation.</p>
+
+<p>The Conservatives came into power on the highest tide of popular
+feeling which living Englishmen have witnessed. But the change was
+too late to prevent mischief; Russia, encouraged by England's effacement
+during Mr. Gladstone's sway, had matured her further plans, and
+had already put her secret intrigues into motion. The Treaty of San
+Stefano showed plainly what her plan was, and just as clearly does
+everybody not blinded by party feeling now know that to Russia's
+amazement, and amidst the surprised and grateful admiration of the whole
+civilized globe, the present Ministry have thwarted that plan and made
+England again safe and famous. It would be a waste of time to retrace
+the details: a summary of them is to be found in Lord Salisbury's
+Manchester speech. What alone further concerns us here is the manner
+in which Mr. Gladstone has borne himself in Opposition. We have
+already seen how he did so as a Minister. It was understood, indeed,
+that he had retired, with something which was meant to pass for dignity,
+though to the eyes of the nation there was never anything which was
+not sulk which had so much the look of it. However, on the plea that
+something had happened in the world, he was quickly back again in
+front, elbowing Lord Hartington aside. Speeches, in Parliament and
+out, articles in every magazine, republication in pamphlet and volume,
+letters to everybody, which, practically, meant to all the newspapers:
+there never was such an active resuscitation of one who had so publicly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+become politically defunct. It is, however, not for coming to life
+again that we find fault with Mr. Gladstone, for, in truth, we always
+expected it.</p>
+
+<p>Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he
+has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be
+made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope,
+and other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his
+back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy,
+and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very
+necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's
+own tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some
+other negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government
+was charged with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional
+usage imposed no limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits
+had not been transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord
+Northbrook had acted with spirit years before, that war would never
+have been necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked,
+he and the Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had
+been at great pains to get himself and his Government into a difficulty.
+Why Mr. Gladstone has had so little to say about the Cape war is a
+mystery, which may be explained some day; all that can now be said of
+it is that it shows a striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though
+his industry was gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware
+that his renewal of them, though we suppose it must go on, having
+been arranged so long and announced so pompously, is a trifle late,
+with the Cape war ended, our troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi
+Bazar, and checkmated, scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany.
+However, no doubt we shall have some very fine speeches, proving that
+nothing of this ought to have happened, or that it won't last long, or
+that the Beaconsfield Administration did not bring it about, or any
+thing else, just as reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many
+different ways by a practised orator.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's
+success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of
+his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation
+in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so irresistibly
+points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no
+matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a
+party, cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive
+occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making
+his very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous
+in hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the
+rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have
+been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that
+we are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied
+them that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+or of Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of
+the wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take
+the first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the
+fact was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how
+the sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone
+as a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which
+they could all join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of
+unanimity and cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it
+he has been very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and
+seemingly slow in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the
+outset even precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful
+orator, even quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage,
+so largely prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed,
+and to do so for a long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end,
+and that completely.</p>
+
+<p>His temperament made that nearly certain. He was always too
+busy making speeches, or writing for the press, or answering letters,
+to be any power in social life. A strange kind of semi-recluse,
+but combining with bookworm habits a passion for speechifying
+and for using the penny post, was not likely to conciliate London,
+and he never did. By-and-by he was railing at the Clubs,
+because they did not agree with him; and then he had next to appeal
+from the metropolitan journals to the superior politicians and brighter
+wits who preside over the provincial newspapers. All this prognosticated
+failure. Even his special gifts and the kind of successes which
+fell to him turned into the means of helping it. His turn for figures
+not unnaturally made immediate economy his great object, forgetful of
+the larger connection in such a land as ours between an imperial position
+in the world and the preservation of our commerce, and overlooking
+also the costliness of reasserting our position when a crisis came;
+while his ready eloquence, having no longer open to it the old patriotic
+themes, had to expend itself in the adornment of British abnegation,
+and the excited applause given to his rhetoric was mistaken by him for
+assent to his views, till he was amazed to find himself suddenly quite
+out of accord with the nation, and falling, he knew not why, headlong
+from power.</p>
+
+<p>Even to this hour he seems never to have had the least misgiving
+that the man who could speak with such complacency
+of the trading supremacy of the world passing to America (see his
+article on "Kin Beyond the Sea"), and who could urge as a reason
+for our not caring to interfere in Egypt that it would be the egg of a
+North African empire (see his article on "Aggression on Egypt and
+Freedom in the East"), was not the man to be England's Minister. But
+the country had found it out even before he wrote those articles; his
+threatening his countrymen with the calamity of finding another
+empire on their hands, in the only part of the world yet remaining
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
+to be explored and civilized, has only proved that they were right, and
+will not terrify Englishmen.</p>
+
+<p>But a fluent orator has always left to him a kind of gambler's hope of
+retrieving everything by talking. Mr. Gladstone is going to alter everything
+by making a dozen or two of speeches in Scotland. Are these
+Midlothian harangues to be longer than that made at Greenwich, or
+more numerous than those uttered in Lancashire? They may be as
+fine as they will for anything it signifies to Conservatives, if the result
+is only again the same as on the other occasions, and it is hardly likely
+that he will persuade Englishmen now amidst their returning renown to
+despair of the future of England.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">A Conservative.</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE
+REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockright">
+<p><i>Histoire de l'Ancien Régime</i>, par <span class="smcap">Henri Taine</span>. Paris.<br />
+<i>Histoire de la Revolution française</i>, par <span class="smcap">Henri Taine</span>. Paris.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien Régime
+and the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon
+monarchy, he ended with these words:—"I have now reached the
+threshold of the great Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it,
+but perhaps I may soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no
+longer consider its causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to
+pass judgment on the society that has proceeded from it."</p>
+
+<p>Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his
+purpose, a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be
+regretted, and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken
+to fill up the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected
+task—the description, namely, of modern France as the outcome
+of the immense transformation which the Revolution brought upon
+the Old French State. The fundamental principles which appear so
+clearly and sharply in Tocqueville's development are prominent in
+Taine's; the activity of the earlier author prepared the ground for
+the later to build on. But we must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently
+independent, and his descriptions more striking, broad, and
+richly coloured than those of his precursor, while the material contents
+of his work are often different. But what, in spite of this, constitutes
+the resemblance between the two men is, their having for basis a
+common conception both of the State and what it presupposes, and of
+the historian and his task. It is the very opposite of the manner of
+thinking entertained in the eighteenth century which, without any heed
+to the peculiar character of the necessities of a given people, was bent
+on constructing, according to simple rules of reason and natural
+law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very striking manner,
+declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he observes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>
+"I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a large
+number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide as
+to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist
+or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist,
+and I was nothing of the kind—nay, I was nothing at all, and envied
+those who had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a
+constitution as they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new,
+or most simple plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial
+castle, a burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a
+cottage, and each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only
+proper dwelling, the only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me
+this seemed an utter mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed
+be able to say what house they admire, but some experience is needed
+to teach them what house they need, whether it be commodious and
+lasting, stands the weather well, and harmonizes with the customs,
+occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We here in France have
+never been content with our political erections; in the course of eighty
+years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them thirteen times. Other
+nations have acted differently, and found their advantage in so doing.
+They have preserved an old, substantial building, enlarged, built around,
+and beautified it according to their needs, but never attempted to build
+an ideal house at one stroke, according to the rules of pure reason. It
+would therefore appear that the sudden invention of an entirely new,
+and at the same time suitable and durable constitution is an undertaking
+that transcends human capacity. The political and social form
+which a people permanently assumes is no matter of choice, but fixed
+by its character and its past. It must be suited to its idiosyncrasy,
+even in the minutest points, or it will crack and fall. Therefore we
+must know ourselves before we can discover what the proper constitution
+for us is. We must invert the accustomed method, and first form to
+ourselves a picture of the nation before we sketch a constitution. At
+the same time this is a far harder and wider task than the one hitherto
+in favour. What inquiries into past and present, what labour in all
+domains of thought and action, are needed to understand with precision
+and completeness the nature and growth of a great people through
+centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting out first empty
+discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as regards myself,
+I shall not think of a political opinion until I have learnt to know
+France."</p>
+
+<p>From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of
+course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that
+corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the
+course of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their
+historical representation of it—Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and
+Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at
+the beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span>
+would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut
+and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was
+pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were
+owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the worthlessness
+of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke real interest
+in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main point—our party is
+right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of mind more than to
+any other hindrances we may attribute the small advance made, up to
+the middle of our century, in the knowledge of facts, in the history of
+the Revolution; this is what explains the else inexplicable phenomenon
+that, spite of the large interest felt in the period, no history of
+Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as yet been written.
+For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine, spite of the
+strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of their material,
+have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly see.</p>
+
+<p>Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the
+writing of such a history. With firm and decided political principles
+of their own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge
+only. Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge
+of the political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old
+saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but
+to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed
+from which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and
+working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce
+upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves
+in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by
+a contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question:
+"How can Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous
+work the utter corruption of the Ancien Régime, place the Revolution in
+his second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were
+so completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in
+utterly destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics
+who, after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be
+a thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment, proclaimed
+him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed,
+certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain inconsistencies
+do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an historical
+standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first volume paints
+the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather should we
+have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had sprung a
+healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no other
+soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien Régime; it
+was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been fostered,
+and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had received its
+stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all relations were dislocated,
+political feeling perverted, all portions of the people filled with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>
+bitter hatred against the State and each other, how should pupils in
+such a school amidst the final shock of catastrophes show themselves
+men of ripe experience, practical wisdom, and determined energy? He
+who has once taken in this simple truth will be much inclined to a mild
+judgment of individual men and parties; at all events, he will not be
+able abruptly to take sides either for or against the Ancien Régime or
+the Revolution. For one thing will have grown clear to him, that the
+Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but the undeniable offspring, of
+the old condition of things.</p>
+
+<p>That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first
+order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded
+on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are
+cited, as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only
+French, but foreign authorities—English more especially—while
+German are hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of
+thoroughly explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge
+is frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt
+to follow the general line of thought running through the book, and
+now and then to controvert it on certain points.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's
+inquiries led. The centralized government of France is by no means a
+creation of our century, but a production of the Ancien Régime. Since
+the days of Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and
+delegates had taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public
+works and plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people.
+The elementary principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution,
+of independent local administration and commercial freedom,
+were destroyed thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost
+sovereigns in the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government,
+preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests,
+and consequently imposed taxes and corvées upon their dependents,
+while often successfully resisting royal aggression—all these magnates
+were now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the
+royal bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity—thenceforth, as
+hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The
+King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation
+for their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents—always at
+the cost of the people—were heaped upon them. Thus the popular
+hatred went on intensifying with every generation, and was at length
+the source and essential element of the great Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject.
+Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads
+and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord
+lived in the midst of his dependents—his own interest was identical
+with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional
+ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic
+government divided the landowners from the people, and by the unjustified
+continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in opposition.
+For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and farmer
+had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of chase,
+his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not inconsiderable
+number of the higher middle classes gained the special
+privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were
+only increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy
+service by exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one
+hand, and of the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully
+and precisely than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation
+has brought out a still more appalling condition than had been
+imagined. After the State, the Church, and the landlord had received
+their rates, the share of the farmer in the proceeds of his land never
+amounted to more than a half, and often his taxes rose to eighty per
+cent. of his income. On the other hand, the privileged classes paid
+at least a fifth less than the just proportion, and knew how to obtain on
+a yearly average at least a hundred millions in the shape of presents,
+pensions, &amp;c. With increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought
+of any care to be taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and
+magnates streamed towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of
+them was from their unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus
+France fell asunder into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal
+knowledge or common interest, divided by contempt and hatred—worlds
+that lived on side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance,
+and luxury, and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty,
+wretchedness, ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and
+devouring bitterness of heart—a condition such as no other nation of
+Christian Europe had ever before come to.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of
+authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a
+part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led
+into error.</p>
+
+<p>I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which
+treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal
+officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of this
+centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville,
+but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it
+made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the
+political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred the
+general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher classes
+and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the historian should
+not forget the actual achievements of this great bureaucracy. Under
+Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and economical beginnings
+of modern France. It, for the first time in France, rendered throughout
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>
+a century a burghers' war an impossible thing, and it stimulated internal
+traffic by roads and canals, which gave rise to countless industrial
+and commercial undertakings. Later, under Turgot and Necker, it
+waged, on behalf of the people, war against the pressure of privileges,
+thought primarily of reform and progress, and saw with bitter regret the
+defeat of its popular efforts by the opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville
+himself tells how the Liberal parties before the Revolution thought
+more of reforms than liberties—that is to say, they expected the improvement
+of their condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy.
+It came to a Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the
+feeble hand of Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges
+fell for ever, but after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew
+in order a second time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the
+French people throughout three generations. It seems therefore a
+mistake to paint this institution so out and out black. We may
+lament that it has not merely done nothing to educate the French in
+political liberty, but has as much as possible stifled liberty and the very
+sense of it among them. But how without it, under the circumstances
+that succeeded to the religious wars and the Fronde, anything like a positive
+constitution ever could have arisen in France, De Tocqueville does
+not say. We are indeed amazed when Taine, in his enumeration of the
+privileged classes as those luxurious idlers, those once political servants
+who had now renounced all political influence, numbers, as third with the
+clergy and nobility, the King—the head of that Government, which was
+only too zealous in working, and thereby drew all the power of the State
+to itself and excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here
+there is an evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by
+the circumstance that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and
+debauchery with the worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate
+successor spent much of his time and energy in Court etiquette
+and the chase. For the reign of Louis XVI. was from first to last
+spent in efforts, by the setting aside of feudal privileges, alike to
+strengthen the Crown and promote the good of the people, and in no
+case can it be more incorrect to look upon the Crown as a devouring
+parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This brings me back to
+my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side of his picture
+of society under the Ancien Régime written the history of its last
+monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this misconception.</p>
+
+<p>But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of
+the higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished
+personages had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials
+appeared to the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted
+the army as a mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there,
+there was no question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling
+and care of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and
+abbots drew immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span>
+fair dames, but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the
+affair of needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their
+ambition and interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To
+shine there was the object of their distinguished lives. And as the French
+people have ever been largely endowed with grace and <i>esprit</i>, these efforts
+resulted in a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social
+intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of <i>bon ton</i>, such as the world
+never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a great nation
+had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite society
+its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and sacrifice
+mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of character to the
+promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end of existence
+was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and action were
+rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life should be spent
+in society was the most pressing requirement of politeness, the
+reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes unendurable.
+The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed itself became
+the law of this great world, and the consequences were felt on all sides.
+Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion came to be held
+unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an offence against
+manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any strong
+passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of conventionality.
+Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself gracefully,
+and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting variety into
+the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as welcome as
+sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or labour, for the
+aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind of knowledge
+was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it followed that all
+mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of its content but
+the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the service of enjoyment,
+such was the motto of this society. Genial originality, unconscious
+creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly antipathetic
+there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves subservient
+to the ruling mood.</p>
+
+<p>A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics
+of good society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary
+theories of its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development
+of this process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's
+work, for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth
+century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such
+extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out
+the continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus
+gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history.
+Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural science
+since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe, by which a
+way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of men, in opposition
+to the speculative and theological conceptions of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span>
+Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive
+method, the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to
+all intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment
+as the only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having
+been at once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural
+science, the next step was to apply the tone of thought they had
+engendered to the phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also
+to demand thorough investigation by the one true authority—criticism.
+Whatever the consequence of this investigation might in particular cases
+be, the very fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing,
+<i>as such</i>, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected
+to that of critical reason—this betokened a new epoch in the world's
+history, and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress
+in politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual
+culture. It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such
+positive results, its application should be thorough and universal. No
+naturalist delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he
+has considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages, compared
+it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just through
+the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that analysis leads
+him to the comprehension of universal truth. And according to this
+same rule, in order to arrive at a just and practicable idea of reform for
+any State, a great mass of special observations by technically practised
+and prepared eyes would have been required; legal, economical, and
+historical inquiries made; the peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of
+the epoch and stage of culture, must have been known; the not merely
+personal but collective functions of human nature in their bases and
+action investigated: for only when all this had been accomplished could it
+be asserted that the organism of the State and its laws had been dealt
+with after the manner of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now
+in a condition to judge of single actualities according to these laws.</p>
+
+<p>How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the
+very opposite occurred—that politicians, stimulated by young natural
+science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive
+method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a
+few abstract principles?</p>
+
+<p>Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the influence
+of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal
+tendency.</p>
+
+<p>The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but
+idle existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual
+excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every littérateur
+who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual structure
+of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to devote
+himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than this distinguished
+class. They and they alone were in a position to secure him
+praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most natural
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span>
+that the writer should conform to requirements upon the satisfaction of
+which his literary career was so absolutely dependent. We have now
+to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent tone of thought
+among the highest class. First a horror of all thoroughness, all enduring
+and laborious perseverance, all deep earnestness and spiritual
+recollection. For all this was the very opposite of enjoyment and diversion,
+it was a falling into the deadly sin of tediousness. It was desirable,
+indeed, to have much and varied knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by
+vivid and pungent discussion, to reach the quintessence of the most
+interesting points and conclusions. Consequently the author's productions
+became restless, many-sided, and superficial. The mass of
+information in every department of knowledge which Voltaire, for
+instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the working out and
+application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and frivolous. To this
+was added the dislike the public of the time had to any individual
+peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into one conventional
+form—an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to the historical sense.
+For such men as these the world was comprehended in what they called the
+great world; they had lost the power of imagining that there was
+or ever had been an existence outside of it and absolutely unlike it; or if
+in any particular case the astounding fact could not be entirely concealed,
+it was understood that among cultivated persons it could never
+be given any importance. Even on the stage it was no longer considered
+becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or Iroquois, should speak
+in their own natural manner; they were all alike rendered polite,
+sententious, and fluent as their distinguished audience. Each local and
+individual tone was rubbed away, every person of the drama was but a
+mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence of the author. As
+with the drama, so with other literature. Taine correctly observes
+that if we read an English romance of the period, we have before our
+eyes a section of the English people; but a French one, though widely
+varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French salon, and that
+only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how could any one
+come to the study of the State by means of difficult and distant
+researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he remained
+solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but exercised
+very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to turn
+over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for some
+ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the
+falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to
+the complicated task of judging any individual State and its constitution
+according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its
+historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man
+dreamt of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require
+anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with disapproval.
+It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span>
+pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any
+subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most intelligent,
+yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting conversation.
+In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal effort was
+pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be commonplace, and in
+every case to bring forward new and amazing truths. Accordingly
+speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but so much the
+more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the progress was
+regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken never to skip
+over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker became
+rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every subject
+to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society was
+delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most advanced
+views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to deviate from
+real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning
+of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle
+of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the foundations
+of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to distinguished
+society. Disgust at their own impotence and the omnipotence of royal
+officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy, vexation at some personal
+neglect at Court,—altogether there was cause enough for malicious satisfaction
+when philosophers, by biting criticisms, made clear the standpoint
+of burdensome potentates. And when an ever-growing and strengthening
+Materialism taught the doctrine of physical enjoyment and judicious
+selfishness as the guiding principle of human conduct, it only spoke
+out what had half-unconsciously been the sum of all the motives and
+activities of high society. But above all, theories were but theories,
+merely conversation, excitement, pastime. The nobles declaimed against
+obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant to keep his own rightful
+possessions, and among these were privileges and feudal rights. They
+felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the ignorant masses, because they
+professed humanitarianism and liberalism, and spoke against superstition
+and subordination. That these much-admired theories might by-and-by
+become common to the whole community, and then bring
+about horrible explosions—of this they had not the remotest suspicion.
+Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a thing to the ladies of
+Versailles, would have been looked upon as we should look upon a
+prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next century cats and dogs,
+instead of men, were to be lords of creation.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose
+co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up.
+It was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its
+rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present
+actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulæ and commonplaces.
+When the construction of the best State was to be set about, common
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>
+characteristics were collected from the natural history of mankind, such
+as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure, the capacity of
+forming, from sensations, representations and conclusions. These
+characteristics were merely put together as the concept man,
+and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a mathematical
+formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since all men had
+the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must render it
+possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a natural
+capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to employ
+the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left free, or
+in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically pointed out
+to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great majority of
+men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than thought,
+was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact that
+each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared to
+them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that
+conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one
+of the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied
+that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly
+guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional
+order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was altogether
+outside their range of thought.</p>
+
+<p>But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions.
+The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to
+powder. Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of
+the hoary unrighteousness of the Old Régime could make a stand; the
+pity was that, according to its own principles, the former found it impossible
+to attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.</p>
+
+<p>But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing
+ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political
+constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material
+for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and
+anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that
+miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane
+God unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the
+positive statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that
+the so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized
+matter. True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau
+declared his faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the
+one all the more resolutely contended against the divine institution of
+the Church, and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines
+of Sin and Justification. However different each may have been from
+the other, they waged in common a war for life and death against the
+Church, the war of utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong
+in saying that the Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a
+feudal and aristocratic institution; that after it had lost its wealth and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span>
+privileges, democratic society recognized how strong a democratic
+momentum the Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up
+with increased warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt
+Taine's record is the more correct one. The Revolution knew well
+that it desired not the wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and
+not the partisans of the Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers
+were largely swelled by the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about
+the elevation of the Church in our own century.</p>
+
+<p>If we now contemplate somewhat more narrowly the Constitutional
+theory of the illumination, we shall discern two characteristic and
+prominent features, which, on the one hand, show its descent from the
+innermost core of the Ancien Régime, and, on the other, very energetically
+determined the whole course of the Revolution. The ideal state deduced
+from the universal characteristics of mankind was as cosmopolitan as
+levelling. Just as on the stage of the period, Frenchman and savage,
+ancient Greek and modern Parisian, spoke the same language,—that of
+the salons of Versailles,—so political theories recognized neither
+Frenchman nor Englishman, Catholic nor Protestant, educated nor uneducated,
+only Man in general. They never considered what institutions
+would be adequate, in France, to the needs and capacities of the
+educated ranks and uneducated masses, or how far the habits and
+opinions of their nation would render the adoption of a foreign institution
+practicable or injurious; rather they formulated the rights of
+men, of abstract instead of actually existing men, and were convinced
+that a constitution based thereupon was for all men, and consequently
+for all peoples, the only good, and therefore the only lawful one. And
+just as clear as the equality of nations under the new political law,
+appeared the equality of all men in the new State, by which was meant
+not merely a claim to equal protection by law, or equal facility in
+obtaining one's rights, but a demand for the realization of an inborn
+and material equality of rights. This, as is well known, was the point
+on which Rousseau took his stand, and gave the last and decisive
+direction to the impending democratic revolution. Taine justly
+observes how frequently, in spite of their common principles, Rousseau's
+character and way of life led him to take different views
+from those of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. The deepest and most
+unqualified indignation of these last was inspired by what they called
+superstition, stupidity, and priestcraft, the transformation of the old
+State being with them more an affair of the intellect than the feelings,
+a conclusion drawn from their universal theory and an ideal requirement
+of philanthropy. It was generosity that led them to appear as the
+advocates of the poor and their woes, while they themselves were high
+in the approval and favour of the best society. Rousseau, on the other
+hand, had himself led the life of the proletaire; in the nervous excitability
+and measureless vanity which made him almost prouder of his
+weaknesses and vices than of the greatness and strength of his talents
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>
+he—poor, often hungry, not seldom degraded and reviled—had filled
+himself with burning wrath against the favoured of earthly fortune,
+the noble and the rich, the revellers in idleness and luxury. This
+growing hatred he transferred to the State and the laws which had
+produced so unrighteous a contrast between man and man. Men, he
+maintained, were in their original condition good, because equal. It was
+the State, culture, society, that first introduced inequality, and vice and
+crime thereby. The existing order was not merely incompetent, as the
+Encyclopædists asserted, but hurtful, poisonous, deadly. And, in contrast
+to it, he sketches a picture of the true human State.</p>
+
+<p>Equal and good men assemble in their natural condition to think on
+the basis of their future State. Each endows the new community
+with all liberty and property, in order to receive back an equal share of
+the management and the possessions of the whole. But this whole is
+omnipotent. No laws bind its will, for its will is the source of all law.
+No king, no official, no superior rules over it; each individual is only
+empowered to act, so far and so long as he upholds the plenipotence of
+the sovereign mass. It is not the upper classes who command the
+people, but the people which require obedience from its officers and
+throws them away when they no longer please it. For individual
+liberty there is here no place; but owing to the equality of all, the free
+will of the masses joyously and harmoniously prevails.</p>
+
+<p>For a season these doctrines only served to afford a welcome mental
+stimulant to the minds, if not of the nobility, of the cultivated and
+property-possessing classes. The higher, and soon the lower, bourgeoisie
+inflated themselves with these views. At this period they shared
+certain of the privileges of the nobles, filled numerous and prominent
+offices in the State, gave to the nation its largest number of famous
+thinkers and poets, promoted industry and commerce, and daily increased
+in wealth, while the nobles, by their extravagance, ruined themselves
+financially. The former were, therefore, full of the consciousness
+of their own dignity, and found the continued precedence claimed by
+the nobles to be unendurable. They believed with inward satisfaction
+in this doctrine of the equality of all men and the sovereignty of the
+whole. For, instead of the privileged, it seemed to them self-evident
+that owing to their culture they, the hitherto unprivileged, ought to stand
+out prominently among the people as leaders of that governing
+whole. Thus the state of freedom and equality would be the state of
+pure reason as well, and, therefore, the leading position could not fail
+to fall to them, the masters of reasonable discussion. Meanwhile the
+mass of the poor, wholly cut off from the sources of culture and the
+mental movements of their country, for long years knew nothing of this
+absolute governing power which, according to the new discoveries, inalienably
+belonged to it, and was so surprisingly soon to fall into its
+lap. The only change in their condition, and thus the only preparation
+for their future sovereignty, was an increase of outward distress and of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span>
+inward confusion and embitterment; and then came the time when the
+small circle to which education and enjoyment were limited, and the State
+power they wielded, fell into internal demoralization, strife of factions, and
+financial embarrassments, till the very Crown itself was obliged to summon
+popular forces to war against the privileged. All the springs of State
+machinery refused to work, coffers were empty, authorities and classes at
+bitter internecine strife, the army unreliable and undisciplined. It was
+under circumstances like these that the mass of the people in towns and
+villages heard from their candidates, advocates, and demagogues, what
+in truth their rights were. In their ignorance and want, their rudeness
+and embitterment, they suddenly learnt that for them—as sovereign—limits,
+obligations, authority no longer existed, that the old corruption
+and slavish condition was to be thoroughly got rid of, and that then
+everything would belong to them. They listened with greedy ears, and
+rushed forward to trample under foot whatever sought to contest these
+rights of theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The highest and noblest aims lured the century on, and animated the
+hearts of countless worthy men: liberty, well-being, and culture for
+all, no difference between man and man but that of talent and virtue,
+fraternity among all citizens in the State and all nations on the earth;
+these were the ideals that 1780 proclaimed to the world and the future,
+and therefore the French still love to speak of the deathless principles
+and fair days of this first epoch of the Revolution. All this,
+Thiers tells us, would have been admirably realized had not evil-hearted
+emigrants and foreign Powers by their malignant attacks, driven the
+most humane of all Revolutions into desperation, a fight for existence,
+and bloodshed. All would have gone well, says Louis Blanc, had not the
+wicked Thermidorians, on the occasion of Robespierre's fall, brought in a
+policy of vice and self-seeking instead of one of virtue and brotherly love.
+Probably, on the other side the Vosges, eighty men out of every hundred
+adopt one or other of these views, and so it is easily intelligible that
+the merciless facts by which Taine shatters these fair pictures should be
+received with repugnance and surprise by his countrymen. The contrast
+between such a reality and such an ideal is indeed enormous; fair days,
+or so much even as one fair day in the course of the Revolution, can
+no longer be spoken of; in the very hour when absolute monarchy
+collapsed, a wild, rude, and cruel anarchy covered the land, filling
+France with violence and crime of every kind for a decade, and lastly
+causing an unparalleled despotism to appear to the French people
+salvation and deliverance. The conclusion is unavoidable, either the
+ideal was good for nothing, and the Coblentz emigrants had right on
+their side against the nation, or the French people had set about their
+high task in a quite impracticable way, and their historical fame has
+this time to be limited to the motto, <i>In magnis voluisse sat est</i>. Neither
+of these alternatives will have a pleasing sound in the ears of a Liberal
+Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span>
+But, pleasing or not, the facts are indisputable, and up to the present
+time each new investigation of authentic documents has only served to
+give them a wider range and a more assured basis. We have seen the
+end of the Ancien Régime. The nobles of the former State were
+unnerved by idleness, debilitated by enjoyment, degraded by immorality;
+never had the aristocracy of a great nation fallen and been brushed
+away from the soil of their country, making so feeble a resistance.
+The leaders of the movement followed a political teaching based on a most
+one-sided and therefore radically false conception of human nature, and
+had no idea of the real nature of their fellow-citizens, or of the principles
+and needs of genuine political life. Finally the masses were unmoved
+by any political thought whatever, but were darkly conscious of their
+own wretched state up to the present time, and their hatred of those who
+had, or were supposed to have, occasioned it, were credulous and impressionable,
+and penetrated with the rightfulness of their wildest passions
+and desires. With such materials as these it is possible indeed to
+blow up an old and half-useless house, but not to construct on its ruins
+a well-planned and lasting new one.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Taine shows by details from documents contemporaneous with
+the events, how, even before the opening of the National Assembly,
+the condition of things was out of joint at a hundred points. Tumults
+and plunder, disobedience to authorities, and maltreatment of obnoxious
+persons, were the order of the day; public officials were spiritless, and
+dared not command the already murmuring troops to restore order.
+The first weeks of the Assembly brought hot discussions as to the
+union of the three orders, attempts at reactionary State measures, and
+the taking of the Bastille. Excitement grew from day to day; the suspense
+throughout the country was tremendous. With the Parisian catastrophes
+the whole Ancien Régime rocked and gave way from side to side;
+and not merely privileges and feudal rights, but all State authorities
+vanished at one blow, or at the first threat from an armed mob resigned
+their functions. The French nation had positively no government, no
+laws, no police, no taxation. In place of these they had journals, clubs,
+societies, popular songs, and Lynch law; security for person and property
+no longer existed; every one did according to his heart's desire till a
+stronger than he preferred the opposite and knocked him down. This
+state of anarchy actually went on thus till the culmination of the
+Reign of Terror; every now and then it quieted down here or there, to
+burst out the following day at some other point with redoubled fury.
+In the midst of the omnipresent turmoil and confusion, the King, a
+powerless prisoner, sat in the Tuileries. The only quarter which
+afforded a possibility of the restoration of the State was the National
+Assembly, which was sufficiently respected and popular both with the
+people and the National Guard, to have enforced obedience had it set
+about it the right way. But there were two reasons which forbade the
+adoption of that way. One was that the Assembly was deprived of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>
+free action by the ruling theory of the Rights of Man, Liberty and
+Equality. This included the rights of resistance against oppression,
+and accordingly every citizen might at any moment consider himself
+oppressed and authorized in resisting. It had been borne in upon
+these sovereign citizens that the will of the sovereign people stood
+higher than that of its representatives, and that the people was at any
+time capable of re-entering upon the direct exercise of its sovereignty.
+It is plain that under the influence of theories such as these any
+control over street-riots and local deeds of violence was a difficult, if
+not hopeless task. And, on the same ground, it was impracticable to
+attempt any control or regulation of press or clubs, which looked upon
+their boundless activity as the highest expression and most precious
+jewel of revolutionary liberty. As, according to theory, State officials
+were to be, not the lords, but the servants of the sovereign people, it
+became expedient that they should not be named by the Central
+Government, but chosen, and that only for a short time, by the citizens.
+In the same spirit the affairs of Government were entrusted not to
+individual officials, but to deliberating colleagues; while, as to the
+passing of laws, the principle of equality rendered impossible the
+formation of an Upper House, or any finally decisive action on the part
+of the King. Thus the Government remained powerless, legislation
+was hasty and uncertain, the lower classes unmanageable, and on very
+many occasions it was plain that club orators and journalists who knew
+how to flatter the demands of the masses bent both Government and
+National Assembly beneath their sway. More than once there arose
+indignation in the Assembly at so unworthy and dangerous a condition;
+but at each attempt to grapple with and remove it, the fear
+of a monarchical or aristocratic reaction fell upon it and paralyzed
+its action.</p>
+
+<p>In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and
+proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the authority
+of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the army, and
+energetic organization of Government, extensive powers conferred on the
+police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice. But how then? If
+power were thus conferred upon the Government to restrain proletaires
+and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the National Assembly
+against the head of the reinforced Government, against the King, who
+had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in defenceless subjection?
+This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit invariably triumphing at the
+National Assembly. The present fear of the violence of the crowd
+attendant at the sittings combined with the apprehension of a future
+monarchical reaction. When, some years later, at the organization of the
+Republican Government, the weakness of authority was again felt, more
+than one orator freely declared the existing arrangements to be undoubtedly
+bad throughout, and to be amended as soon as possible; owned that
+this had, indeed, been perfectly known at the time of their creation in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>
+1790, but that they were intentionally framed thus, in the interests of
+liberty, to prevent the King from exercising any power. Enough—the
+Constitutional Assembly did nothing to surround personal safety and
+political order with any inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did
+much to open the door wide to the passionate and arbitrary action of the
+masses. We may say that they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the
+horrors of the Terror, and had the sad beginnings of that development
+before their eyes, without even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most
+especially in the economical department: the colossal transformation
+of the laws of property in France, which brought half the soil into new
+hands, and irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic
+paths, was out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.</p>
+
+<p>For more than twenty years I have, in my "History of the Revolution
+Period," established these circumstances from authentic documents, and
+thus given repeated offence to the French public. I may therefore be
+permitted to feel all the greater satisfaction at such a distinguished
+investigator as Taine, after drawing forth numberless documents from
+Parisian archives, coming to absolutely the same conclusion. All I
+have heard in the way of objection to his statements is utterly
+unimportant. As it is not possible to drive the facts he has proved
+from original documents out of existence, the observation is made that
+though his information may be true, it is one-sided; that while he
+never wearies of describing revolts and misdeeds, he does not sufficiently
+point out in how many places the Civil Guard bravely and loyally
+upheld civil order. Taine would be the last to dispute this fact; had
+it not been so there would have been no longer any France left in the
+nineteenth century. But he would venture to inquire whether praise
+be deserved by an Assembly which, as ruler of a great State, surrendered
+without resistance now the third of it, now the half, during three years, to
+a bloody anarchy; whether we can speak of "fair days" or "humane
+Revolution," when in this short period six horrible Jacqueries laid the
+land waste, when countless political murders remained unpunished, and
+military <i>émeutes</i> and ecclesiastical brawls thrust the weapons of civil
+war into the hands of the masses. We are told of a pure and ideal
+inspiration then filling millions of liberty-loving and patriotic spirits;
+and well may we call that a fair time in which noble aims and infinite
+hopes set all pulses beating higher, and stimulate a whole people to
+youthful efforts, and fill it with fresh and energetic life. Yes, there
+were moments of golden dreams and illusions like these. Only they
+should have lasted longer. It is not through their feelings, speeches,
+wishes, but their deeds, that nations assume their historical position
+and receive their historical sentence. Taine writes the last, indeed,
+with an incisive pen, and often with glaring colours, but essentially he
+gives nothing but what follows by indissoluble sequence from the
+facts of the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>
+work, or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a
+whole. Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances;
+I must be satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first
+months of the Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was
+identical in town and country, and the lawless violence of artisans and
+peasants pursued the same ends by the same means, one of the most
+prominent features of the later phase, the Terror, was the gradual
+introduction of a war of interest between the people of the capital and
+the villages. The more the power of the Mountain and the Parisian
+Commune increased, the more absolutely the booty of the Revolution
+fell to the share of the town proletaires, at the cost not only of the
+great landed proprietors, but the small farmers as well. Our first
+impression at the aspect of this rivalry is the selfishness and greed of
+the Parisian demagogues; but we may easily convince ourselves that
+these could never have attained to so extended an activity if existing
+circumstances had not offered the possibility of a class war. But for
+any disquisition on this subject, or allusion to the causes that, in the
+first years of the Revolution, prepared its way, we look through
+Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the representation of the Ancien
+Régime, his attention is pre-eminently turned to social relations connected
+with the land. Had he with an equally comprehensive and
+minute care studied the different strata, the interests and wants of the
+town population, the problem alluded to would have solved itself.</p>
+
+<p>It is with admirable insight and incontrovertible reasoning that
+Taine shows the logical untenableness and practical mischief of
+the theory of equality, both in the writings of Rousseau and the
+action of the Constituent Assembly. He proves the contradiction
+between this equality and the very nature of man, and how, consequently,
+pure democracy rendered the development of political liberty
+unattainable. In perfect agreement with Tocqueville, he points to the
+absolute necessity, under the circumstances of the time, of aristocratic
+institutions, for the creation and preservation of a free State, and explains
+how deeply seated these are in the needs and claims of human nature.
+This portion of his work is indeed masterly; and the more widely extended
+the equalitarian superstition among the Liberal parties of our day,
+the more one could desire Taine's views to exercise a strong and wide-spread
+influence. But, on the other hand, it appears to me that by this
+very conception of political institutions, our author has been led to
+show himself something more than just in the sentence he passes on the
+representatives of this period, the nobles and prelates of 1789. This is
+one of the few incongruities already alluded to between the first and
+second volume. After reading of the luxury, artificiality, and idleness
+of aristocratic society in the former, and coming with the author to the
+conviction that terrible consequences must attend such a condition, one
+is surprised to find in the latter that these privileged ones were the best,
+the most discerning and patriotic portion of the nation, whose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>
+annihilation or exile brought about the same injurious results that the
+expulsion of the Huguenots had done. This contradiction is not cleared
+up by the fact that in the years immediately preceding the Revolution,
+and chiefly through the influence of Rousseau, a sentimental humanity
+had prevailed in high circles, that here, too, it was the fashion to speak
+of a return to an idyllic life of nature, of universal brotherly love, and
+of the relief of every form of distress. For these transformations
+remained, in point of fact, only fanciful phrases of the salons. When
+Louis XVI., Turgot, and Calonne, really desired to set about such philanthropic
+reforms in good earnest, it was, as we have already seen, these
+sentimental nobles themselves who hindered their effort, and by nullifying
+reform brought about the Revolution. When the catastrophe
+came, many of them had sufficient insight into the new position of
+affairs to make haste and repudiate those privileges which throughout
+the land had been already trampled under foot by an unchained people.
+The horrible persecution to which they were subjected, in utter disregard
+of all existing rights and all human feeling, with bloodthirsty cruelty
+and shameless greed, must ever insure for the victims the compassion
+and sympathy of every right-minded observer; and in order fully to
+justify revolutionary laws against emigrants, one would be driven to
+advance sophisms only, not arguments. But all this does not affect the
+question, whether, as Taine assumes, these persecuted ones did hold a
+distinguished place in the nation for political virtue, intellectual culture,
+and capacity for action. Neighbouring nations, so far as I know,
+without exception took at the time an entirely different view. Doubtless,
+there were among the emigrants many who won respect and regard in
+the regions whither their flight had led them. But the great majority,
+by their thoughtless arrogance, mutual bickerings, and shameless
+frivolity, left behind them a bad reputation; whereas a hundred years
+before the exiled Huguenots, by their unity, earnestness, and industry,
+won, wherever they went, the respect and gratitude of their new
+countrymen.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Heinrich von Sybel.</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF IRELAND?</h2>
+
+<p>Returning to settle in Ireland after an absence that began more
+than twenty years ago, I found two things strongly claiming my
+attention. One, was the very great advance in material well-being
+which my country appeared to have made. The other, was the fact
+that both Englishmen and Irishmen appeared resolutely to ignore this
+progress. Nearly all who write and speak about Ireland, either dwell
+upon her grievances or assume poverty as her normal condition. I
+know not of any who have attempted to record her returning prosperity.
+Yet there are few facts in modern history better worthy of notice than
+the advance in material wealth which has taken place in Ireland during
+the thirty years between 1846 and 1876.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1879 marks the close of just one-third of a century from
+the great famine. The first thirty years of this period, 1846-76, were
+years of continual advance in well-being. From 1877 and down to the
+present year a reaction has been going on, which is largely connected
+with a general depression of trade all over the world. For reasons
+which will appear hereafter, I do not hold that this reaction is likely to be
+permanent.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that at the beginning of that period the country was in the
+very lowest depths of poverty and depression. The starting-point
+therefore was a very backward one: and the wonder is that so much
+advance should have been made, considering not only the backwardness
+of the starting-point but the difficulties of the road.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not attempt to depict the state of things which prevailed at
+the close of the great potato famine. The condition of the country is
+well known; the facts are in the recollection of many persons now
+living; and the evidence is within the reach of all inquirers. I may
+safely assume that Ireland then was among the very poorest of all the
+countries in Europe. What is her position now?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>
+In discussing the social condition of any country, the population
+question naturally comes to the front. Is the population pressing
+unduly on the means of subsistence? then there is something wrong,
+and until this is set right progress is impossible. On the other hand, if
+the population is so sparse as to leave the resources of the country undeveloped,
+there is also something wrong, though in this case the evil
+is far less. The population, such as it is, may be prosperous and
+advancing, though it is not producing all it might.</p>
+
+<p>The former was notoriously the state of things in Ireland before
+1847.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+In 1845 (the year immediately preceding the famine) the population
+was at the highest point it attained during the present century, and
+probably the highest it ever reached. It was estimated at 8,295,061.
+In 1847, the year when the famine was at its height, the numbers are
+given as 8,025,274. In 1875, just thirty years after the maximum, the
+numbers had fallen to 5,309,494. In 1877 they were estimated at
+5,338,906, showing an increase over 1875 of 29,412.</p>
+
+<p>It is a familiar fact that the population of 1845 and 1847 was excessive.
+Whether the present population may not be defective in regard
+of productive power is a question not without importance, but not
+immediately relevant. What we are now dealing with is the material
+welfare of the existing population; and it is clear that five millions can
+live where eight cannot. But are the five millions better off in some
+proportion to the price the country has paid for the decrease in population?
+And is there a real advance in the condition of the people,
+not a mere rise out of beggary and starvation?</p>
+
+<p>In attempting an answer to a question of this nature, one looks
+naturally to the rate of wages first. But this test is an imperfect one:
+partly because local variations are still considerable; partly because
+money payments in many places and among large classes are more or
+less supplemented by subsistence drawn directly from the land.
+Besides, a mere increase in money wages may mean little or nothing,
+unless the increased wages possess increased purchasing power, and there
+be at the same time an upward tendency in the standard of living.
+Putting aside the wages question accordingly (to be discussed hereafter),
+let us try to find other indications of the extent and nature of the
+changes in the people's condition since the famine. A test of some
+value, though not absolutely conclusive by itself, will be afforded by
+changes in the area of farms. It is notorious that one of the causes
+which most contributed to bring about the famine and its miseries was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span>
+the small size of holdings. Now the census returns show that from
+1851, very shortly after the famine, there has been a steady decrease in
+the number of farms under fifteen acres, and a steady increase in the
+number of farms between fifteen and thirty acres, as well as in farms
+exceeding thirty acres in area. Up to 1861 the number of holdings
+not exceeding fifteen acres had declined fifty-five per cent., while those
+above fifteen acres had increased 133 per cent. The number of farms
+between fifteen and thirty acres was in 1861 double what it had been in
+1841, and the farms above thirty acres amounted in 1861 to 157,833,
+against 48,625, which had been their number twenty years before.
+Between 1861 and 1871 farms under fifteen acres decreased by 12,548,
+and farms above thirty acres increased by 1470. According to the
+latest returns (1875) the farms not exceeding one acre in area were
+51,459; those of one to five acres were 69,098; those of five to fifteen
+acres, 166,959; fifteen to thirty acres, 137,669; the total above thirty
+acres being 160,298 holdings.</p>
+
+<p>This distribution of the land seems to indicate a considerable improvement
+compared with the state of things prevailing before the
+famine. Unfortunately the increase in the size of holdings has not
+been attended by a corresponding decrease in the number held on an
+insecure tenure. Tenancy at will continues to be the rule, and permanency
+the exception, in our land tenure. I have made an attempt
+to estimate roughly the classes of landholders. The "Domesday" list
+of proprietors of land gives the number of owners of one acre and
+under ten as 6892, holding 28,968 acres, or an average of a little over
+four acres each: between ten acres and fifty there are 7746 owners,
+holding 195,525 acres, or an average a little over twenty-six acres:
+between fifty acres and a hundred there are 3479 owners, holding
+250,147 acres, or an average of just under seventy-two acres. These
+make up a body of small proprietors, owning from one to a hundred
+acres, numbering 18,117. <i>Eason's Almanac</i> for 1879, which has been
+published while I write, estimates the number of "proprietors in fee"
+of agricultural holdings at 20,217. The same authority gives the
+number of leaseholders in perpetuity as 10,298; for terms of years
+exceeding thirty-one as 13,712; for thirty-one years and under, 47,623
+(many of which may be short leases); and of leases for lives, or lives
+and years alternative, as 63,759. The number of tenancies at will is
+526,628, or 77.2 per cent, of the whole number of holdings. These
+statistics were collected in 1870, and they have doubtless been in some
+degree modified by the working of the Church Act and the Land Act.
+I have omitted from my extracts from the Domesday list the proprietors
+of under one acre. These are given in <i>Thom's Directory</i> as 36,144,
+holding 9065 acres; but their holdings do not affect the present
+question, as they are mostly non-agricultural. The estimate in <i>Eason's
+Almanac</i> purports to relate wholly to agricultural holdings. Domesday
+includes all classes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>
+Another index of the condition of a people may be found in the way
+they are housed. Mean and comfortless dwellings imply not only a low
+standard of comfort, but often a low morality. Let us see how this
+matter has stood in Ireland. The Census Commissioners of 1841
+divided the dwellings of the people into four classes. The fourth, or
+lowest, comprised all mud cabins having only one room. Of this class
+there were in all Ireland, according to the 1841 census, 491,278. In
+the last census, 1871, the number had fallen to 155,675. The third-class
+dwellings were also built of mud, but contained three or four
+rooms, with windows; the latter convenience being by no means
+universally present in the one-roomed cabin of the fourth class. Of
+the third class the census of 1841 enumerated 533,297; by 1871 this
+number had fallen to 357,126. The second class are described as good
+farmhouses, and in towns, houses having from five to nine rooms. Of this
+class in 1841 there were 264,184; and in 1871 the number had increased
+to 387,660. The first class of houses increased during the same period
+from 40,080 to 60,919. Let us see now in what way the population
+has been distributed in the different classes of houses. In 1841 the
+number of families occupying first-class houses was 31,333. In 1871
+the number had risen to 49,693. During the same period the number
+of families in second-class houses rose from 241,664 to 357,752. On
+the other hand, the families in third-class houses decreased from
+574,386 to 432,774; and those in the fourth-class, or one-roomed
+cabins, from 625,356 to 227,379. By a curious coincidence, the <i>proportion</i>
+of families to houses was the same in 1841 and in 1871—one
+hundred and eleven families to one hundred houses. In this way the
+very great shifting in the <i>classes</i> is all the more clearly proved to indicate
+a real rise in the condition of the people.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to
+discuss the wages question and the condition of the labouring population.
+Of the actual number of this class I can find no accurate return.
+But we have already seen that the number of families inhabiting the
+lowest class of houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the
+lowest class of labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871
+gave the average number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100
+families, we may estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied
+by 507, or 1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may
+be safely assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now
+the money wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a day
+in the most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in
+harvest time the labourers earn 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a day. A great many labourers
+have small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count
+directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is
+that the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his
+family can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig,
+&amp;c.—thereby eking out the actual money payment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>
+The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward
+and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast,
+potatoes and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper.
+The people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of
+feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics
+abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the
+sea that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are
+always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many
+of the labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am
+told that in certain districts there is one day in the year when every
+family among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of
+fresh meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish
+this meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the people being such as I have described, one
+would naturally expect not to find pauperism very prevalent. As a
+matter of fact it is not. The average daily number of paupers in the
+workhouses throughout 1876 was 43,235, and of recipients of out-door
+relief 31,600: bringing up the total to 74,835. The average of persons
+in receipt of relief was 140.6 in 10,000 of population. This daily
+average represents the current subsisting mass of pauperism, and is in a
+considerable measure made up of the old, infirm, and sick. Of able-bodied
+paupers, the males were only 1697 in the daily average of
+workhouse inmates, and the females were 4130. There were 10,134
+healthy children under fifteen in the workhouses, and the other inmates
+were either sick in hospital or permanently unable to work. These
+figures seem to be the very reverse of alarming. Permanent pauperism
+is not a very virulent social disorder when only two able-bodied persons
+to every five hundred of the population are in receipt of in-door relief,
+and when the whole permanent pauper population barely exceeds fourteen
+in a thousand. But though permanent pauperism may be well in hand,
+casual pauperism may be at a high pitch. Let us see how this matter
+has stood. I shall first take the statistics of 1876, and then try to
+modify my conclusions by such later figures as may be available. In
+1876 the population of England and Wales stood at 24,244,000, and
+the total of paupers in receipt of relief, in-door and out-door, on the
+1st of January of that year, was 752,887; Scotland, with a population
+of 3,527,000, had a total pauper population on the 1st of January,
+1876, of 66,733. In Ireland, on the same date, the total population
+being 5,321,600, the paupers amounted to 77,913. In other words, at
+a rough estimate, on the 1st of January, 1876, about one person in
+every thirty-three in England and Wales was in receipt of relief as a
+pauper; in Scotland, about one in every fifty-three; while in Ireland
+the proportion was only one in sixty-eight. A similar proportion
+appears in the incidence of the poor-rate. In 1876 England and Wales
+paid at the rate of 6<i>s.</i> 0¾<i>d.</i> per head of population; Scotland 5<i>s</i>. 0½<i>d.</i>;
+Ireland only 3<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>
+Of course these figures must undergo modification in view of the
+altered circumstances of the present time. The statistics of 1876 are
+not an accurate guide to the facts of 1879. During the last three
+years there has been considerable depression of trade; and it may very
+well be that the returns of this year will indicate an ebb in the tide of
+prosperity. But, unless I am very much mistaken, after making all
+allowances, it will probably be found that Ireland is the part of the
+United Kingdom least affected by the present prolonged commercial
+crisis.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the considerable
+class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of
+wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but
+perhaps not less intelligent class—that of English travellers in Ireland—will
+promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are cooked; they
+will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been beset with
+beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from pauperism? Surely
+the true state of the case is that the people keep out of the workhouses
+merely in order to live on public charity in another form?" It cannot, I
+regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very common in Ireland; so
+common as to be little less than a national scandal. There is, however,
+something to be said in mitigation of judgment, though perhaps not in
+defence. It is a matter in which figures are of little use; for no one
+could, by any possibility, estimate how many persons live wholly by
+begging. That there are in every community some persons who do may
+be taken as certain. That their number is larger in proportion to the
+bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in a Protestant community,
+is antecedently probable. The theory of the Roman Catholic
+religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to be no sin to
+live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms. <i>Never turn
+away thy face from any poor man</i>, is a text acted on by devout
+Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not difficult to
+foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the Irish
+Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of indiscriminate
+almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small degree by
+the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful efforts
+in the direction of the organization of charity. Another influence,
+which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy that scandalizes
+the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The habits of
+centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than twenty
+years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the Irish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span>
+poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is
+limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of
+Catholic chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the
+roads leading to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often
+beset by little knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these
+are no more professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself
+with pheasant shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of
+excitement with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner
+or more vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.</p>
+
+<p>Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would
+exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is common,
+pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a
+larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious
+supply of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are
+supplied, the mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point
+of view the small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred
+to,<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>
+seems to show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely
+touched the revenues of the Irish mendicant!</p>
+
+<p>An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete
+without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime.
+Here we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in
+England and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the
+number of drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at
+an approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In
+Scotland, the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested
+numbered 26,209, or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population
+being 5,321,600, the drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253;
+showing the enormous proportion of one in every 47 of the people.
+Of course these figures in all three kingdoms include very many cases of
+repeated conviction, so that it would not be fair to say that one man in
+every 118 in England, still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard.
+All the same, this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing.
+It is rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion
+of apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and
+some people might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended
+mainly on greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police.
+On the other hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very
+flagrant paradox, argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for
+being drunk proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes
+less to make an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in
+temperament, and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually
+temperate man, when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very
+promptly; the habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another
+reason that may be given for the state of things here indicated, is that
+the police force is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span>
+than in England or Scotland;<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>
+and as, for reasons which will be
+hereafter seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to
+expend a quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the
+busier constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly
+home. That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about
+the startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when
+we come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime
+with drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces,
+it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.</p>
+
+<p>The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally
+those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink
+may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an indirect
+fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things which he
+may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of poverty,
+and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring then
+to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876 only four
+persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number sentenced
+in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy; for
+the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of only
+about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in England
+were eight times as numerous as in
+Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> But this is not all.
+Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these drink is
+only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly every
+murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of
+intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve
+sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none
+in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as
+representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the thirty-two
+persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were
+executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come
+to sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were
+only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of
+returns of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it
+is not easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the
+statistics of conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the
+person are much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland
+than in England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable
+expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in
+London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel anywhere
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span>
+in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the
+apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a
+proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the
+other hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth),
+we have 1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties
+inflicted in Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.</p>
+
+<p>Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence,
+we find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against
+none in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against
+26 in Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against
+only 69 in Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect
+drink to be a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there
+is no assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by
+violence, except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for
+crime. Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for
+minor offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against
+10,674 in England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for
+terms of years, against 1063 in England.</p>
+
+<p>All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal
+of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is
+true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes,
+especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing
+minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization
+make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that,
+though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy
+keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have
+time for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something
+to do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but
+this is certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges
+of Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white
+gloves instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may
+be, I merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the
+most part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference
+they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken
+animals after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception
+to the rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on
+the Irish character—agrarian outrage—is not to be accounted for by
+drink. The true explanation is familiar to all who really know the
+country. The Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his
+support, and believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself
+to have a moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a
+belief which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be
+stated with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it
+without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his hostility to
+the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment, looks on himself
+as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a wronged man (which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span>
+he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged have always been
+raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply a brigand in a
+frieze coat.</p>
+
+<p>I have no desire to compose an Essay on the Land Question; but it
+is absolutely impracticable to discuss Irish social economy without finding
+the Land Question in one's way. It is the question which most
+closely concerns the industrial classes; for the land is the mainstay of
+Irish industry. It is the pivot upon which all Irish politics turn; for
+although priestly influence counts for a great deal, that influence itself
+depends in great measure on the land hunger of the peasantry. I feel
+that I should be leaving Hamlet out of the play if I did not say a few
+words on the matter. As I have already hinted, the Irish peasant has
+three reasons for his desire to be "rooted in the soil." One is a traditional
+reason. He thinks that his forefathers were unjustly ousted by
+foreign conquerors. His belief rests on an utterly distorted view of
+history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors
+of a few of the existing peasantry might in a sort of sense have been
+called landowners. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be
+equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had been
+the serfs or the slaves of barbarous chieftains. The old Gaelic tribal
+ownership, if left to itself, might or might not have ripened into a
+peasant proprietary; but the only real grievance which the existing
+Gaelic peasantry can allege, is that the English conquest forcibly interrupted
+the natural process of evolution. Moreover, a large number of
+the existing peasants are no true Gael at all, but the descendants of
+Danes, Normans, and the various waves of Saxon settlers from Elizabeth
+to William of Orange. In parts of Ireland there are even to be found
+the descendants of French Huguenots, of Scotch fugitives involved in the
+Stuart insurrections, and of refugees of 1793. That such a <i>colluvies
+gentium</i> should claim to be the heirs of Septs which occupied the land</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Ere the emerald gem of the Western world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had been set in the crown of a stranger,"<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>is simply a proof of profound ignorance of history. Such, however, is
+the vague traditional belief; and it is complicated with a moral sentiment,
+that he who tills the land has a right to live by the land. The
+sentiment is open to no objection, provided it be understood that the
+land is an instrument of production in which the whole community is
+interested. The cultivator has the same right to live by the land as
+the artisan to live by his handicraft, and no more—that is, both peasant
+and artisan have a right to expect that the social system shall be so
+adjusted that neither shall be unjustly deprived of the fruit of his
+labour. But neither peasant nor artisan can claim that any instrument
+of production shall be used for the sole sake of the producer.
+Hence, even if peasant proprietorship were undeniably the best thing
+for the peasant, it does not follow that he has a moral right to it, unless
+it be good for the whole community as well. This consideration is too
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span>
+often neglected by the thorough-going advocates of peasant proprietorship.
+They assume that the interests of the peasants are the only
+interests to be considered. In Ireland, indeed, they are not far wrong;
+for the peasantry <i>are</i> very nearly the whole community. This, however,
+only raises the previous question, whether peasant proprietorship
+would be a success in Ireland—of which hereafter. The last and most
+practical of the agrarian arguments is that a tenant evicted is a man
+ruined. Even this is only partially true, and at most is only an argument
+against capricious eviction. It is conclusive as against the system
+of tenancy at will, or any of those short tenures which are, in fact, a
+standing notice to quit. It holds good in favour of peasant proprietorship
+to this extent—that the ruin of a peasant proprietor can only
+occur through his own fault or misfortune, and not through the caprice
+of a landlord. In short, the discontent of the Irish peasantry proves
+that the Anglo-Irish system of tenure is about the worst of all possible
+systems; but it proves little or nothing in favour of peasant ownership.</p>
+
+<p>My own opinion (<i>valeat quantum</i>) is that the soil and climate of
+Ireland render the country utterly unfit to maintain a considerable
+body of peasant proprietors; but that, nevertheless, it would be wise
+and politic to establish peasant properties as widely as may be practicable.
+The climate is notoriously damp, and variable in the extreme.
+Grain crops are inferior and precarious—root crops are not much better—even
+meadows are untrustworthy, because of the difficulty of haymaking—but
+Irish pasture is perhaps the best in the world. Natural
+conditions mark out Ireland as a pastoral and cattle-breeding country;
+and such a country is the destined home of <i>latifundia</i>. It is not
+merely that cattle require large spaces of pasture; but the trade in
+cattle requires capital, and requires the power of staying through seasons
+of adversity. An attempt to breed or deal in cattle by a class of
+peasant proprietors, acting singly, could only end in ruin; a ruin even
+more complete than bad seasons would bring upon unsuccessful cultivators
+of grain. Another product for which Ireland is eminently fitted
+is timber.<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+This also obviously requires spaces of land, and intervals
+of idle capital, utterly incompatible with any system of small holdings.
+Nature would seem to have marked out Ireland as a country to be
+thinly populated; historical accident once made her one of the most
+populous of countries, and we all know what came of it. The people
+were dependent on a single kind of food; it failed, and misery ensued
+such as modern Europe had never beheld. The scenes of 1847 we may
+devoutly hope will never be witnessed again; but such a season as
+1878-79 would be a trial that few peasant proprietors could stand.
+Why then do I say that a peasant proprietary ought to be created?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>
+Because I believe that in the experiment is to be found the sole method
+of convincing the Irish peasants that their true interest lies in quite
+another direction. The peasant now believes that all he wants in
+order to be prosperous is to be "rooted in the soil." It is of no use to
+appeal to abstract reasoning. He knows that he has to pay rent, and
+that he is liable to eviction for non-payment. Carefully as recent legislation
+has guarded him against capricious eviction, he knows that if his
+landlord chooses to pay for turning him out, out he must go. The few
+of his neighbours who do acquire freeholds, he perceives to be comparatively
+prosperous. He does not take into account that the
+prosperity of the freeholder is maintained by precisely the same
+exceptional energy and thrift which in the first instance enabled him to
+secure the freehold. Besides, it is undeniable that <i>cæteris paribus</i> a
+man who holds rent-free is likely to be better off than one who pays
+rent; and so long as rent is the rule and freehold the exception, the
+few freeholders will seem at least to possess an advantage over the
+many rentpayers. In short, the peasant farmer will never cease to
+believe ownership a panacea for all his ills, until he shall have tried
+it, and failed. Of course it does not absolutely follow that the
+experiment of creating a peasant proprietary must needs fail. It may
+succeed; and then the Irish land problem is solved. For the reasons
+given above, however, I think it would fail. If all the holdings of fifteen acres and under (there are
+285,000<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>
+of them, or nearly half the whole number of farms in Ireland) were turned into peasant properties tomorrow,
+I believe they would in thirty, or at most in fifty, years be
+recast into large cattle farms, owned probably for the most part by
+joint-stock companies. The process of consolidation would be partly
+the buying out of ruined peasants after some such seasons as we are
+now undergoing; partly a voluntary union of the residue, who would
+find association desirable in order to secure a sufficiency of land and
+capital. But those who might be compelled to part with their lands
+could no longer ascribe their ruin to the tenure by which they held. It
+would be made clear to them and to all concerned that it is the laws of
+Nature and not the laws of England which hinder Ireland from maintaining
+a dense agricultural population.</p>
+
+<p>It may be urged against what I have here said, that it is hardly
+worth while engaging in a social revolution merely in order that the
+last state of things may turn out on the whole very similar to the first.
+I cannot deny the force of this remark; though I may suggest, in my
+turn, that perhaps it is worth while to make some sacrifice for the sake
+of attaining stable equilibrium in the social system. I am persuaded
+that the one great difficulty in Irish affairs is to convince the peasant
+that the law is a power not hostile but friendly to him. This is no
+easy task. It is not so very long since the law actually was the hard
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span>
+master it is still supposed to be. Nor is the peasant's own attitude of
+mind a very easy one to deal with. He clamours loudly to be "rooted
+in the soil," or, in other words, to be made absolute owner of his farm;
+but he clamours not less loudly against the absenteeship of his landlord.
+He utterly fails to perceive the inconsistency of his position.
+He cannot eat his cake and have his cake. He cannot be at
+one and the same time tenant to a resident lord of the manor, and
+owner in fee-simple of his own holding. Absolute peasant ownership
+is <i>primâ facie</i> incompatible with the very existence of a landed aristocracy;
+and it may be some perception of this that induces certain of
+the land agitators to propose fixity of tenure at a quit-rent rather than
+absolute peasant proprietorship. But it is clear that this is a mere
+evasion of the difficulty. A landlord, who is merely a rent-charger,
+has no more motive to reside on his estate than if he sold it and lived
+on the interest of the purchase-money. There is no doubt a sense
+in which the two things are not absolutely incompatible. Peasant
+properties might be intermixed with large estates owned by resident
+landlords. And this would certainly constitute a state of things by no
+means undesirable; in fact, it is what might possibly emerge from the
+experiment I have mentioned above. I think it more than probable
+that a great deal of the land, after such an experiment, would fall into
+the hands of joint-stock companies; but a considerable portion might
+also be bought up by individuals, who might choose to become resident
+landlords. It must, however, be remembered that there are many
+things besides agrarian agitation which tempt Irish landlords to become
+absentees. Residence in Ireland is attended with many drawbacks and
+discomforts, even when a landlord is on the best of terms with his
+tenantry. Absenteeism is no new complaint; Adam Smith discussed
+proposals for an absentee-tax. Its prevalence is not uncommonly
+ascribed to the Union, but it might as well be ascribed to the
+Deluge. The most potent causes of absenteeism in the latter
+half of the nineteenth century are the City of Dublin Steam
+Navigation Company, and the London and North-Western Railway.
+These, and kindred institutions, are also the channels which conduct a
+vast deal of wealth into Ireland; and if absenteeism constitutes a
+perennial drain on her resources, the facilities of locomotion cause the
+drain to return ten-fold.<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>
+If these facilities did not exist, it does not
+follow that the landlords who remained at home would necessarily be of
+much use to the community. The squires and <i>squireens</i> in Lever's
+and Maxwell's novels are very amusing to read about; but they are a
+race that nobody at the present day would seriously wish to revive.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span>
+However this may be, there is little inducement for the existing landlords
+to remain resident in a country where they are continually
+threatened, and occasionally shot. I cannot help thinking that in the
+tendency to absenteeism, courageous statesmanship might find the
+means of solving the Land problem. There should be little difficulty,
+one would imagine, in persuading a number of existing Irish landlords
+to part with their estates for a reasonable
+compensation.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> The Church
+Surplus is at hand to provide the purchase-money. After deducting
+the sums to be paid to the Intermediate Education Board, and to the
+National School Teachers' Pension Fund, there will remain nearly four
+millions in the hands of the Temporalities Commission. This money
+judiciously advanced to tenant farmers would enable a considerable
+number of them to acquire the freehold of their farms, and thus the
+foundations of a peasant proprietary might be laid without any confiscation
+or disturbance of vested rights. The Royal Commission on
+Agriculture would perhaps be a good medium for acquiring information on
+this subject. They might include in the scope of their inquiry the best
+method of carrying out some such scheme as has been here indicated.</p>
+
+<p>Having set out with no intention beyond that of offering a general
+view of a few leading facts and figures relating to Irish affairs, I find
+myself insensibly gliding into a political discussion. So far as I have
+any excuse for this, it must be found in the irrepressible character of
+the Land problem; which, as I before remarked, can by no possibility
+be evaded by any one who writes on Irish social economy. Yet this
+problem itself is in one aspect simply a phase of the struggle going on
+all over the world between, labour and capital. Side by side with this
+there is yet another struggle going on, which is also a phase of a
+world-wide conflict. It is the old story of Priesthood against Free
+Thought; but in Ireland, like nearly all things Irish, it bears a peculiar
+aspect of its own. Many a man here would be amazed to be told that he is
+fighting on the side of the priests; yet the Irish Orange Tory, and to
+some extent even the Irish Evangelical clergyman, is really and truly
+(though of course unconsciously) helping the policy of the Roman
+Church. But it would extend my essay beyond all reasonable limits to
+discuss this matter; and besides, I set out to write on statistics, and not
+on politics.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Edward Stanley Robertson.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+The statistics in this Essay are chiefly taken from <i>Thom's Almanac and Official
+Directory for 1878</i>. The tables given in that Almanac are for the most part brought down
+no later than 1876. It so happens, however, that 1876 is a very convenient date for the
+purpose of this paper. It marks the conclusion of a period of just thirty years from the
+worst crisis of the Potato Famine; and it marks also the conclusion of a cycle of commercial
+inflation, some of whose results were strongly felt in Ireland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have, of course, consulted other authorities besides <i>Thom's Directory</i>, but I shall
+specify these as occasion arises. When no special reference is given, my authority is
+Thom.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+While I write <i>Eason's Almanac for 1879</i> has been published. This authority gives
+the total average of paupers daily in receipt of relief through 1877 as 78,223, or 146.5
+in 10,000 of the population. An increase of less than six in ten thousand is not very
+alarming, and the fact seems in some measure to justify the opinion I have ventured to
+express in the text, that Ireland will be found to suffer less from the present crisis than
+other parts of the United Kingdom. It must, however, be taken into consideration that
+the present year (1879) threatens a very poor harvest: and this circumstance is absolutely
+certain to enhance whatever distress already exists.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+See note on previous page.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+The 24¼ millions in England and Wales are kept in order by a police force of 29,689.
+In Scotland 3½ millions of population have only 3356 policemen. In Ireland, with
+a population well under 5½ millions, there are 12,081 policemen. And yet, as will
+appear presently, there is far less crime in Ireland relatively than in either of the other
+kingdoms.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+It is only just to admit that the death sentences are not a fair test. Too many murders
+remain undetected, owing to the existence of agrarian conspiracy. The number of murders
+known to have been committed is unluckily not to be found in the returns to which I have
+access. But the very fact of their remaining undetected is a proof that they are not directly
+connected with intoxication, for it shows that they are for the most part agrarian.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+It has been calculated, apparently on trustworthy data, that an acre of land planted with
+larch or fir, at an expense of about £20, would be worth £2000 at the end of forty
+years, besides the intermediate yield from clearings of young timber, game cover, and so forth.
+This is a very high return for a small outlay; but it is completely beyond the means of any
+peasant proprietor.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+<i>Eason's Almanac</i>, 1879. The actual number is 285,464. The total of agricultural
+holdings is 581,963.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+I have unfortunately been unable to obtain any statistics of the cross-channel trade. I
+find it stated in <i>Thom's Directory</i> that the trade of Belfast alone was valued in the year
+1866 at £24,332,000—viz., £12,417,000 imports and £11,915,000 exports. The year 1866
+was a bad year: so it may be assumed that these figures represent a low average. I find
+no means of estimating the import and export trade of Cork and Dublin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I may mention here that one cause of interruption in the composition of this paper was
+an unsuccessful search for complete trade statistics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+A few of the Home Rule M.P.'s who are now stumping the country on the Land
+grievance are themselves landlords. It has been suggested that they should introduce
+fixity of tenure on their estates, in one or other of its various forms. Mr. Errington (who
+is <i>not</i> one of the stump orators of the party) has, I am told, notified his intention to
+give long leases to his tenantry. In a case like this the <i>argumentum ad hominem</i>, though a
+perfectly fair one, is a perfectly useless one.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+I have referred above (note, p. 463) to my failure to obtain trade statistics.
+This circumstance has caused me to fail also in fully carrying out the original plan of this
+paper. I had intended not only to give a general view of the recent condition of the Irish
+people, but to enter somewhat fully into its causes, and discuss the probabilities of the
+future. The great revival in prosperity, which I have imperfectly sketched, was closely
+connected with the cross-channel trade. At present, affairs look sufficiently gloomy both
+here and in England; and the forecast of the future depends mainly upon the prospect of
+revival in English trade.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE DELUGE:</h2>
+
+<h4>ITS TRADITIONS IN ANCIENT NATIONS.</h4>
+
+<p>Of all traditions relating to the history of primitive humanity, by
+far the most universal is that of the Deluge. Our present purpose
+is to pass under review the principal versions of it extant among the
+leading races of men. The concordance of these with the Biblical
+narrative will bring out their primary unity, and we shall thus be
+able to recognize the fact of this tradition being one of those which
+date before the dispersion of peoples, go back to the very dawn of the
+civilized world, and can only refer to a real and definite event.</p>
+
+<p>But we have previously to get rid of certain legendary recollections
+erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, their essential features
+forbidding sound criticism to assimilate them therewith. We allude to
+such as refer to local phenomena, and are of historic and comparatively
+recent date. Doubtless the tradition of the great primitive cataclysm
+may have been confused with these, and thus have led to an exaggeration
+of their importance; but the characteristic points of the narrative
+admitted into the Book of Genesis are wanting, and even under the
+legendary form it has assumed these events retain a decidedly special
+and restricted character. To group recollections of this nature with
+those that really relate to the Deluge would be to invalidate, rather
+than confirm, the consequences we are entitled to draw from the latter.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books
+of China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even
+resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the
+date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous
+to the eighth century <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span>, we may yet determine as long subsequent
+to the fully historic periods of Egypt and
+Babylon.<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>
+Chinese authors
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span>
+describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course
+of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of
+every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot,
+has proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the
+Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above
+catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its
+banks had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were
+but the beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters,
+carried on further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven
+on the rocky face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for
+contemporaneous with these works, and is consequently the most
+ancient specimen of Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears
+to present an intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the
+doubts suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious
+fact connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through
+ancient copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research
+has failed to re-discover the original.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the
+legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the
+ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America,
+although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with
+the fundamental historic element.</p>
+
+<p>Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica,
+having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river
+Funzha leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its
+waters; men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few
+escape by flight to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that
+Botchica broke asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and
+Tequendama, in order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next
+reassembled the dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship,
+and went up to heaven, after having lived 500 years in
+Cundinamarca.</p>
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p><i>Chaldean and Biblical Narratives.</i>—Of the traditions relating to the
+great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans.
+Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the
+tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes
+nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes
+evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time
+when Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into
+Palestine.</p>
+
+<p>We have two versions of the Chaldean story—unequally developed
+indeed, but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently
+known, and also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the
+sacred books of Babylon and introduced into the history that he wrote
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>
+for the use of the Greeks.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>
+After speaking of the last nine antediluvian
+kings, the Chaldean priest continues thus:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Obartès Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra) reigned
+eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the Great Deluge took
+place, the history of which is told in the sacred documents as follows:—Cronos
+(Êa) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of
+the month of Daisios (the Assyrian month Sivan—a little before the summer
+solstice), all men should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to
+take the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to
+writing,<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>
+and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then to build a
+vessel, and to enter into it with his family and dearest friends; to place in this
+vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds
+to enter it; lastly, to prepare everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros
+inquired in what direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'towards
+the gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.</p>
+
+<p>"Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and five broad;
+he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and embarked his wife, his
+children, and his intimate friends.</p>
+
+<p>"The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some of
+the birds. These finding no food nor place to alight on returned to the ship.
+A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but they returned again to the
+vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally, loosed the third time the birds came no
+more back. Then Xisuthros understood that the earth was bare. He made an
+opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a
+mountain. He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot,
+worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the gods; at the
+same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel not seeing Xisuthros return,
+descended too and began to seek him, calling him by his name. They
+saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard commanding them
+piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was receiving the reward of his
+piety in being carried away to dwell thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and
+that his wife, his daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour.
+The voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and conformably to
+the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at Sippara in order to transmit
+them to men. It added that the country in which they found themselves was
+Armenia. These, then, having heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and
+returned on foot to Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally
+landed in Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in
+Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its
+fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the
+companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings left at
+Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and restored Babylon."</p></div>
+
+<p>By the side of this version, which, interesting though it be, is, after
+all, second hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian
+edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on
+the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh and now in the British
+Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in
+the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chaunt of the great epic of the town of
+Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name has not as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span>
+yet been made out with
+certainty,<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>
+being attacked by disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult the patriarch saved
+from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to which the gods
+have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He asks Khasisatra
+to reveal the secret of the events which led to his obtaining the
+privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is induced to relate the
+cataclysm.</p>
+
+<p>By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of
+the palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the narrative with hardly any
+breaks.<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
+These three copies were, by order of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal,
+made in the eighth century <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span>,
+from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of
+Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is
+difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian
+scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen
+centuries, at least, before our era, and even probably beyond; it was
+therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with
+Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove
+that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the
+<i>hieratic</i>, a character which must have already become difficult
+to decipher in the eighth century <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span>, as the copyists have differed as
+to the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have
+simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand.
+Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the
+original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a
+copy of some still more ancient manuscript, in which the original text
+had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists
+have introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With
+these preliminary observations I proceed to give integrally the narrative
+ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my preservation—and tell to
+thee the decision of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>"The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on the
+Euphrates—it was ancient and in it [men did not honour] the gods. [I alone,
+I was] their servant, to the great gods—[The gods took counsel on the appeal
+of] Anu—[a deluge was proposed by] Bel—[and approved by Nabon, Nergal
+and] Adar.</p>
+
+<p>"And the god [Êa] the immutable lord,—repeated this command in a
+dream.—I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he said to me:—'Man
+of Shiruppak, son of Ubaratutu—thou, build a vessel and finish it
+[quickly].—[By a deluge] I will destroy substance and life.—Cause thou to go
+up into the vessel the substance of all that has life.—The vessel thou shall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span>
+build—600 cubits shall be the measure of its length—and 60 cubits the amount
+of its breadth and of its height.—[Launch it] thus on the ocean and cover it
+with a roof.'—I understood, and I said to Êa, my lord:—'[The vessel] that
+thou commandest me to build thus—[when] I shall do it,—young and old [shall
+laugh at me.]'—[Êa opened his mouth and] spoke.—He said to me, his
+servant:—'[If they laugh at thee] thou shalt say to them: [shall be punished]
+he who has insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.— ...
+like to caverns ... —— ... I will exercise my judgment on that which
+is on high and that which is below ... —— ... Close the vessel ...
+—— ... At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,—enter into it
+and draw the door of the ship towards thee.—Within it, thy grains, thy
+furniture, thy provisions,—thy riches, thy men-servants, and thy maid-servants,
+and thy young people—the cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the plain
+that I will assemble—and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy door.'—Khasisatra
+opened his mouth and spoke;—he said to Êa, his lord:—'No one
+has made [such a] ship.—On the prow I will fix....—I shall see ...
+and the vessel ...—the vessel thou commandest me to build [thus]—which
+in....<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>"On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.—In its covering
+fourteen in all were its rafters—fourteen in all did it count above.—I placed its
+roof and I covered it.—I embarked in it on the sixth day; I divided its floors
+on the seventh;—I divided the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped
+up the chinks through which the water entered in;—I visited the chinks and
+added what was wanting.—I poured on the exterior three times 3,600 measures
+of asphalte,—and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte within.—Three times
+3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the chests of provisions.—I kept 3,600
+chests for the nourishment of my family,—and the mariners divided among
+themselves twice 3,600 chests.—For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;—I instituted
+[rations] for each day.—In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of barrels and
+of wine—[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of a river, [of provisions]
+in quantity like to the dust of the earth.—[To arrange them in] the chests I set
+my hand to.— ... of the sun ... the vessel was completed.— ...
+strong and—I had carried above and below the furniture of the ship.—[This
+lading filled the two-thirds.]</p>
+
+<p>"All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver I gathered
+together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered—all that I possessed of the
+substance of life of every kind I gathered together.—I made all ascend into the
+vessel; my servants male and female,—the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of
+the plains, and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend."</p>
+
+<p>"Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined and——he announced
+it in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from
+heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.'——The fixed moment had
+arrived, which he announced in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to
+rain abundantly from heaven.'——When the evening of that day arrived, I was
+afraid,——I entered into the vessel and shut my door.——In shutting the vessel,
+to Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot——I confided this dwelling, with all that it
+contained.</p>
+
+<p>"Mu-sheri-ina-namari<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>—rose
+from the foundations of heaven in a black
+cloud;—Ramman<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>
+thundered in the midst of the cloud—and Nabon and Sharru
+marched before;—they marched, devastating the mountain and the
+plain;—Nergal<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>
+the powerful, dragged chastisements after
+him;—Adar<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>
+advanced, overthrowing before him;—the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction—in
+their terrors they agitated the earth.—The inundation of Ramman swelled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>
+up to the sky—and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed into a
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>"They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;—[they destroyed]
+the living beings of the surface of the earth.—The terrible [Deluge] on men
+swelled up to [heaven].—The brother no longer saw his brother; men no
+longer knew each other. In heaven—the gods became afraid of the water-spout,
+and—sought a refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of
+Anu.<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>—The
+gods were stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like dogs.—Ishtar
+wailed like a child,—the great goddess pronounced her discourse:—'Here
+is humanity returned into mud, and—this is the misfortune that I have announced
+in the presence of the gods.—So I announced the misfortune in the presence of
+the gods,—for the evil I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are
+mine.—I am the mother who gave birth to men, and—like to the race of fishes,
+there they are filling the sea;—and the gods by reason of that—which the
+archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with me.'—The gods on their seats were
+seated in tears—and they held their lips closed, [revolving] future things.</p>
+
+<p>"Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and the
+diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the seventh day
+the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible water-spout—which had assailed
+after the fashion of an earthquake—grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the
+wind and the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
+observing—and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto seaweeds
+the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light smote on my
+face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I wept;—and my tears came
+over my face.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points of the
+horizon; not any continent.—The vessel was borne above the land of Nizir—the
+mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.—A
+day and a second day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did
+not permit it to pass over;—the third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir
+arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;—the fifth and sixth
+day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass
+over.—At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a dove. The
+dove went, turned, and—found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent
+out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went, turned, and—found no place to
+light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a raven; the raven went and
+saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.</p>
+
+<p>"I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds, and I offered
+a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on the peak of the mountain;
+seven by seven I disposed the measured
+vases,<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>—and
+beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood. The gods were seized with the desire of it—the gods were
+seized with a benevolent desire of it;—and the gods assembled like flies above the
+master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the great goddess raised
+the great zones that Anu has made for their glory
+(the gods).<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> These gods,
+luminous crystal before me, I will never leave them; in that day I prayed that
+I might never leave them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!—but never
+may Bel come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he has
+made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men for the pit.'</p>
+
+<p>"From far, in drawing near, Bel—saw the vessel, and Bel stopped;—he was
+filled with anger against the gods and the celestial archangels:—</p>
+
+<p>"'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the abyss!'—Adar
+opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior Bel:—'What other
+than Êa should have formed this resolution?—for Êa possesses knowledge and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span>
+[he foresees] all.'—Êa opened his mouth and spake; he said to the warrior
+Bel:—'O thou, herald of the gods, warrior,—as thou didst not master thyself,
+thou hast made the water-spout of the deluge.—Let the sinner carry the weight
+of his sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.—Please thyself with this
+good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it never [shall be
+violated.]—Instead of thy making a new deluge, let lions appear and reduce
+the number of men; instead of thy making a new deluge, let hyenas appear
+and reduce the number of men;—instead of thy making a new deluge, let there
+be famine and let the earth be [devastated];—instead of thy making a new
+deluge, let Dibbara<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>
+appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed
+the decision of the great gods;—it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and
+comprehended what the gods had decided.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the vessel.—He took
+my hand and made me rise.—He made my wife rise and made her place herself
+at my side.—He turned around us and stopped short; he approached our
+group.—'Until now Khasisatra has made part of perishable humanity;—but lo,
+now, Khasisatra and his wife are going to be carried away to live like the gods,—and
+Khasisatra will reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'—They carried me
+away and established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."</p></div>
+
+<p>This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that,
+or rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides
+striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated,
+that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different
+narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the
+other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final editor.
+Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he omitted
+no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice narrated in
+different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are mixed up, it is
+easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each should form a continuous
+and unbroken narrative. Some critics have recently pretended
+that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and Deluge, both cuneiform
+documents disproved the distinction between the two sources of
+Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its composition; that the same
+repetitions, in effect, were to be found there. This was a premature
+conclusion, drawn from translations very imperfect as yet, and requiring
+thorough revision; and, indeed, confining ourselves to the story of the
+Deluge, such revision, carried on according to strict philological principles,
+does away with the arguments that had been based on the
+version of George Smith. None of the repetitions of the final text of
+Genesis are observable in the Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary,
+decisively confirms the distinction made between the two narratives,
+the Elohist and Jehovist, interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch.
+It is with each of these separately—when disentangled and
+compared—that the Chaldean narrative coincides in its order—it is not
+with the result of their combination. And nothing could be easier
+than to demonstrate this by a synoptic table, in which the three narratives
+were collated.</p>
+
+<p>Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span>
+what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its
+own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions
+of the same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on
+the one hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel
+streams proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on
+both sides divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation
+of the two traditions to have taken place at a very remote era,
+and the one of which the Bible affords us the expression to be not
+merely an edition of that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated
+from a severely monotheistic point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant
+of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, <i>têbâh</i>, signifies "coffer,"
+and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the ark;
+there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no pilot.
+In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have been
+composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a
+reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the
+Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is
+launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with bitumen,
+it is entrusted to a pilot.</p>
+
+<p>The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king,
+who goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants
+and companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who
+are saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's
+three sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction
+(in the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between
+clean and unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered
+by sevens, although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially
+sacramental character.</p>
+
+<p>As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only
+between the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal,
+but between the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform
+documents measure the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus
+by stadia. Genesis states its length and breadth to have been in the
+proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of 5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum
+of 10 to 1. On the other hand, the fragments of Berosus do not treat
+of the relative dimensions of height and breadth, and the tablet gives
+them as equal, while the Bible speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty
+of breadth. But these differences as to figures have but a secondary
+importance; nothing so liable to alterations and variations in different
+editions of the same narrative. We may observe, however, that in
+Genesis it is only the Elohist—always much addicted to figures—who
+gives the dimensions of the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the
+Jehovist alone who tells of the sending forth of the birds, which occupies
+a considerable place in the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations
+here between the Biblical story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>
+adding the swallow to the dove and the raven, and not attributing to
+the dove the part of a messenger of good tidings, I do not think they
+go for much. The agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of
+far more importance.</p>
+
+<p>But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the
+absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the
+Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the Chaldeo-Babylonian
+narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different
+systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions, dissimilar
+in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from
+Chaldea.</p>
+
+<p>By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the
+ordinal numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a
+lunar year, beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October),
+at the autumnal equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the
+Author of the Targum of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi
+and Kimchi, among the Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages; and
+proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis among the moderns. The rain
+begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark the 17th day of the
+second month—<i>i.e.</i>, Marcheshvan. The great force of the waters lasts
+150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month—<i>i.e.</i>, Nisan
+(March-April)—the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the tenth
+month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the
+mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following
+year—that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox—the waters
+have completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the
+second month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus
+eleven days—that is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365
+days. Now, under the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria,
+the rains of late autumn begin towards the end of November, and at
+once the level of the Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow
+of the two rivers occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at
+the end of May, from which time the waters go down. At the end of
+June they have left the plains, and from August to November are at
+their lowest level. Now the dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist,
+and re-stated as we have been doing according to Michaelis and Knobel,
+accord perfectly with these phases of the rising and falling of the two
+Mesopotamian rivers. They accord even better in the primitive system
+which served for starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has
+been so ingeniously restored by
+M. Schræder,<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>
+a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its
+greatest height and 150 for its decrease. According to this system,
+the leaving of the ark must have taken place on the first day of the
+601st year of Noah's life—that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the
+autumnal equinox. Thus the deliverance of the father of the new
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span>
+humanity, as well as the Covenant made by God with him and his
+race, were fixed on the very day to which an ancient opinion which
+has maintained itself among the Jews assigned the creation of the
+world. As to the beginning of the Deluge, it occurred, according to
+the same system, on the 1st day of the third month—that is to say,
+at the commencement of the lunation whose end coincided with
+the Sun's entry into Capricorn, when the conjunction of planets
+brought about periodic deluges according to an astrological conception
+of Chaldean origin, which does not indeed appear a very ancient one;
+but must have been based on data adopted by some of the sacerdotal
+schools of Babylonia as to the epoch of the cataclysm.</p>
+
+<p>It is also with the winter rains, and not with the swelling of the
+Euphrates and Tigris in spring, that the calendrical construction, according
+to which the antediluvian kings or patriarchs have been placed in
+relation with solar mansions (a construction followed in Uruk's Epic
+poem), causes the commencement of the Deluge to coincide. It connects,
+in point of fact, the tradition of the cataclysm with the month of
+Shabut (January-February), and with the sign of Aquarius. Accordingly,
+I find great difficulty in admitting the exactness of the date, 15th of
+Daisios, given in the extract of Alexander Polybister, as that assigned
+by Berosus to the Deluge, for this would make the event occur in the
+middle of the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, in a
+season of complete drought, when the rivers have reached their lowest
+level. I hold this to be an evident error, due not to the author of the
+Chaldean History himself, but to his transcriber. Berosus must have
+written
+<span class="greek" title="mênos ogdou; pemptê kai dekatê">μηνὸς ὀγδόυ· πέμπτῃ καὶ δεκάτῃ</span>
+the 15th of the eighth month, translating into Greek the Assyrian name of the Arakh-Shanina.
+And by a readily explicable error Cornelius Alexander must have turned
+it into Daisios, which was the eighth month of the Syro-Macedonian
+Calendar, forgetting the difference between the initial point of its year
+and that of the Chaldeo-Assyrian. In reality, then, the date given by
+Berosus only differed by two days from that adopted by the Elohist
+compiler of Genesis. Besides, as Knobel rightly insists, in placing the
+commencement of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th of a month, we
+place it always at the full moon, for it is also with this phase of the
+light that lights the night that popular belief in Egypt and Mesopotamia
+links the periodic rise of Nile or Tigris.</p>
+
+<p>The system of the Jehovist is quite a different one. According to
+him, Jahveh announces the Deluge to Noah only seven days beforehand.
+The waters are at their height for forty days, and decrease
+during forty more. After these eighty days Noah sends out the three
+birds at intervals of seven days, and thus it is on the 21st day after he
+has opened the window of the ark for the first time that he, too, goes
+out of the ark and offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here the phases of
+the cataclysm are evidently calculated on those of the annual spring
+outflow of the Euphrates and Tigris, so that we need not hesitate to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>
+assign the origin of the very form of the tradition received by the
+Jehovist writer, to the cradle of the race of the Terahites in Chaldea.
+The overflow of the two rivers of Mesopotamia lasts, in fact, for an average
+of seventy-five days from the middle of March to the end of May; and
+twenty-six days later—that is, at the end of the 101 in all (80 + 21 =
+75 + 26 = 101), when the Jehovist makes Noah leave the ark—the lands
+which have been inundated become once more practicable.</p>
+
+<p>What, moreover, in the Jehovist narrative bears a very marked
+impress of Chaldean origin is the part played in it by septennial
+periods; seven days intervening between the announcement and the
+beginning of the Deluge, seven between each sending forth of the
+birds. That religious and mystic importance attached to the heptade
+which gave rise to the conception of the seven days of creation, and to
+the invention of the week, is an essentially Chaldean idea. It is among
+the Chaldeo-Babylonians that we discover its origin and find its most
+numerous applications. The story of Khasisatra, in the poem of Uruk,
+invariably proceeds hebdomadally. The violence of the Deluge lasts
+seven days, and so does the stay of the vessel on Mount Nizir
+when the waters begin to go down. It is true, indeed, that the building
+of the vessel occupies eight instead of seven days; but we must add
+the time necessary for the embarkation of provisions, animals, passengers,
+and this will enable us to calculate the whole duration of Khasisatra's
+preparations between the vision sent him by Êa and the moment when
+he closes the vessel at the approach of the rain, as consisting of fourteen
+days or two hebdomades. This being granted, if the poem does not
+state precisely the intervals at which the three birds were sent forth,
+we are justified in applying here the figures used by the Jehovist in
+Genesis, and counting seven days between the first and second sending
+forth, seven between the second and third, and seven, lastly, between
+the departure of the bird which does not return, and the leaving the
+vessel. The whole interval, then, between the warning of Êa and the
+sacrifice of Khasisatra, amounts to seven hebdomades—plainly a number
+intentionally assigned. And the whole duration of the Deluge is
+doubled by the sacred writer, who was the author of the Jehovist
+document, 7 × 2 × 7, instead of 7 × 7; that is, fourteen weeks with just
+three days over, owing to the writer having employed the round
+numbers 40 + 40 = 80 days, instead of the precise number seventy-seven
+days or eleven hebdomades (7 + 4 × 7), to indicate the interval
+between the beginning of the diluvian rain and the sending forth of
+the first bird. And now, if we keep count of the time between the
+announcing of the cataclysm by Jahveh and its commencement, the
+figures of the Jehovist are in all 7 × 2 × 7 + 7 days, and those of the
+system of the Chaldean poem 7 × 7. But they are on both sides combinations
+of seven.</p>
+
+<p>Where the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative and that of the Bible
+absolutely diverge, is in their statement of what, after the Deluge,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span>
+befell the righteous man saved from it. According to the figures of the
+Elohist, Noah lives on among his descendants for 350 years, and dies
+at the age of 950. Khasisatra receives the privilege of immortality;
+is carried away "to live like the gods," and transported into "a distant
+place," where the hero of Uruk goes to visit him in order to
+learn the secrets of life and death. But in the Bible we have something
+of the same kind told us of Noah's great-grandfather Enoch, who
+"walked with God, and was not, because God took him." We see,
+then, that the Babylonian tradition united in the person of Khasisatra
+facts which the Bible distributes between Enoch and Noah, the two
+whom Holy Scripture equally characterizes as having "walked with
+God."</p>
+
+<p>The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess," erroneously
+attributed to Lucian, acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the
+Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in
+the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The generality of people, he says, tell us that the founder of the temple
+was Deucalion Sisythes, that Deucalion in whose time the great inundation
+occurred. I have also heard the account given by the Greeks themselves of
+Deucalion; the myth runs thus:—The actual race of men is not the first, for
+there was a previous one, all the members of which perished. We belong to a
+second race, descended from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of
+time. As to the former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and
+pride, committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the
+rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants, accordingly they were punished
+by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous volumes of water
+issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary abundance began to fall; the
+rivers left their beds, and the sea overflowed its shores; the whole earth was
+covered with water, and all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue
+and piety, was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was
+saved:—He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great coffer that he
+had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all other terrestrial animals came
+to seek refuge with him. He received them all, and while they were in the
+coffer Zeus inspired them with reciprocal amity which prevented their devouring
+one another. In this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as
+long as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the Greeks
+of Deucalion.</p>
+
+<p>"But to this which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a marvellous
+narrative:—That in their country a great chasm opened, into which all the waters
+of the deluge poured. Then Deucalion raised an altar and dedicated a temple
+to Hera (Atargatis) close to this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow,
+and situated under the temple. Whether it was once large and has now shrunk,
+I do not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of the
+event the following is the rite accomplished:—Twice a year sea water is
+brought to the temple. This is not only done by the priests, but numerous
+pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and Arabia, and even from beyond the
+Euphrates, bringing water. It is poured out in the temple and goes into the
+cleft which, narrow as it is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to
+be in virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the memory of
+the catastrophe and of the benefits that he received from the gods. Such is the
+ancient tradition of the temple."</p></div>
+
+<p>It appears to me difficult not to recognize an echo of fables popular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>
+in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it
+played in the Deluge,—in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran
+respecting the oven <i>tannur</i> which began to bubble and disgorge water
+all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this
+<i>tannur</i> has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman
+commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which
+Mahomet made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that
+the waters of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.</p>
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p><i>Indian Traditions.</i>—India, in its turn, affords us an account of the
+Deluge, which by its poverty strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible
+and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the
+<i>Çatapatha Brâhmana</i> of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the
+first time by M. Max Müller.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had
+washed himself a fish remained in his hands. And it addressed these words to
+him:—'Protect me and I will save thee.' 'From what wilt thou save me?'
+'A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from that I will save thee.' 'How
+shall I protect thee?' The fish replied: 'While we are small we run great dangers,
+for fish swallow fish. Keep me at first in a vase; when I become too large for
+it dig a basin to put me into. When I shall have grown still more, throw me
+into the ocean; then I shall be preserved from destruction.' Soon it grew a
+large fish. It said to Manu, 'The very year I shall have reached my full growth
+the Deluge will happen. Then build a vessel and worship me. When the waters
+rise, enter the vessel and I will save thee.'</p>
+
+<p>"After keeping him thus, Manu carried the fish to the sea. In the year
+indicated Manu built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when the Deluge
+came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming up to him, and
+Manu fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of the fish, by which means the
+latter made it pass over the mountain of the North. The fish said, 'I have saved
+thee; fasten the vessel to a tree that the water may not sweep it away
+while thou art on the mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou
+shalt descend.' Manu descended with the waters, and this is what is called the
+<i>descent of Manu</i> on the mountain of the North. The deluge had carried away
+all creatures, and Manu remained alone."</p></div>
+
+<p>Next in order of date and complication, which always goes on loading
+the narrative more and more with fantastic and parasitical details, comes
+the version in the enormous epic of <i>Mahâbhârata</i>. That of the poem
+called <i>Bhâgavata-Purâna</i> is still more recent and fabulous. Finally, the
+same tradition forms the subject of an entire poem of very low date, the
+<i>Matsya-Purâna</i>, of which an analysis has been given by the great Indian
+scholar, Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface to the third volume of his edition of <i>Bhâgavata-Purâna</i>,
+Eugene Burnouf has carefully compared the three narratives known at
+the time he wrote (that of the <i>Çatapatha Brâhmana</i> has been since
+discovered), with a view to clearing up the origin of the Indian tradition
+of the Deluge. He points out in a discussion that deserves to remain a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span>
+model of erudition and subtle criticism, that it is absolutely wanting in
+the Vedic hymns, where we only find distant allusions to it that
+seem to belong to a different kind of legend altogether, and also
+that this tradition was primitively foreign to the essentially Indian
+system of <i>Manvantaras</i>, or periodic destructions of the world. He
+thence concludes that it must have been imported into India
+subsequently to the adoption of this system, which is, however, very
+ancient, being common to Brahmanism and Buddhism, and therefore
+inclines to look upon it as a Semitic importation that took place in
+historic times, not, indeed, of Genesis, but more probably of the Babylonian
+tradition.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of an original edition of the latter confirms the theory
+of the French savant. The leading feature which distinguishes the
+Indian narrative is the part assigned to a god who puts on the form of
+a fish, in order to warn Manu, to guide his vessel and save him from the
+flood. The nature of the metamorphosis is the only fundamental and
+primitive point, for different versions vary as to the personality of the
+god who assumes this form—the <i>Brâhmana</i> leaves it uncertain, the <i>Mahâbhârata</i>
+fixes on Brahma, and the compilers of the <i>Purânas</i> on Vishnu.
+This is the more remarkable that this metamorphosis into a fish
+<i>Matsyavatara</i> remains isolated in Indian mythology, is foreign to its
+habitual symbolism, and gives rise to no ulterior developments: no trace
+being found in India of that fish-worship which was so important and
+widespread among other ancient people. Burnouf rightly saw in this
+a sign of importation from without, and especially of its Babylonian
+origin, for classic testimony, recently confirmed by native monuments,
+shows us that in the religion of Babylon the conception of ichthyomorphic
+gods held a more prominent place than elsewhere. The part played
+by the divine fish with regard to Manu in the Indian legend, is attributed
+both by the Epic of Uruk and by Berosus to the god Êa, who is
+also designated Schalman, "the Saviour." Now this god, whose type
+of representation we now know certainly from Assyrian and Babylonian
+monuments, is essentially the ichthyomorphic god, and his image almost
+invariably combines the forms of fish and man. In astronomical tables
+frequent mention is made of the catasterism of the "fish of Êa," which
+is indubitably our sign Pisces, since it presides over the month Adar.
+It is to a connection of ideas based on the diluvian record, that we must
+attribute the placing of Pisces—primarily of the "fish of Êa"—next
+to Aquarius, whose relation to the history of the Deluge we have already
+pointed out. Here we have an evident allusion to the part of Saviour
+attributed by the people who invented the Zodiac, to the god Êa in the
+flood, and to the idea of an ichthyomorphic nature especially belonging
+to this aspect of his personality. Êa is, moreover, the Oannès, lawgiver
+of the fragments of Berosus, half-man, half-fish, whose form, answering
+to the description given by the Chaldean history, has been discovered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>
+in the sculptures of Assyrian palaces and on cylinders, the Euahanès
+of Hygin, and the Oès of
+Helladios.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>Whenever we find among two different peoples one same legend, with
+as <i>special</i> a circumstance which does not spring <i>naturally</i> and <i>necessarily</i>
+from the fundamental facts of the narrative, and when, moreover, this
+circumstance is closely connected with the whole religious conceptions of
+one of these peoples, and remains isolated and alien from the customary
+symbolism of the other, criticism lays it down as an absolute rule that
+we must conclude the legend to have been transmitted from the one to the
+other in an already fixed form, to be a foreign importation, superimposed,
+not fused with the national, and as it were genial, traditions of
+the people, who have received, without having created it.</p>
+
+<p>We must also remark that in the <i>Purânas</i> it is no longer Manu
+Vaivasata that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different
+personage, the King of the Dâsas—<i>i.e.</i>, fishers, Satyravata, "the man
+who loves justice and truth," strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean
+Khasisatra. Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge
+to be despised, though it be of recent date and full of fantastic and
+often puerile details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of
+<i>Brâhmana</i> or than the <i>Mahâbhârata</i>, and above all it gives some circumstances
+omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged
+to the original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend;
+a circumstance preserved no doubt by the oral tradition—popular and
+not Brahmanic—with which the <i>Purânas</i> are so deeply imbued. This
+has been already observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following
+passage of the <i>Bhâgavata-Purâna</i>: "In <i>seven days</i>," said Vishnu
+to Satyravata, "the three worlds shall be submerged." There is
+nothing like this in the <i>Brâhmana</i> nor the <i>Mahâbhârata</i>, but in Genesis
+the Lord says to Noah, "<i>Yet seven days</i> and I will cause it to rain
+upon the earth;" and a little further we read, "<i>After seven days</i> the
+waters of the flood were upon the earth." And we have just pointed
+out the parts played by hebdomades as successive periods in that system
+of the duration of the flood, adopted by the author of the Jehovist
+documents inserted in Genesis, as well as by the compiler of the
+Chaldean Epic of Uruk. Nor must we pay less attention to what the
+<i>Bhâgavata-Purâna</i> says of the directions given by the fish-god to
+Satyravata for the placing of the sacred Scriptures in a safe place in
+order to preserve them from Hayagrîva, a marine horse dwelling in
+the abyss, and of the conflict of the god with this Hayagrîva, who had
+stolen the Vedas and thus produced the cataclysm by disturbing the
+order of the world. This circumstance too is wanting in the more
+ancient compositions, even in the <i>Mahâbhârata</i>, but it is a most important
+one, and cannot be looked on as a spontaneous product of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span>
+Indian soil, for we recognize in it under an Indian garb the very tradition
+of the interment of the sacred writings at Sippara by Khasisatra,
+such as we have it in the fragments of Berosus.</p>
+
+<p>It is the Chaldean form, then, of the tradition that the Indians have
+adopted owing to communications which the commercial relations
+between the countries render historically natural, and they afterwards
+amplified it with the exuberance peculiar to their imagination. But
+they must have adopted it all the more readily because it agreed with a
+tradition, which under a somewhat different form had been brought by
+their ancestors from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race. That the
+recollection of the flood did indeed form part of the original groundwork
+of the legends as to the origin of the world held by this great
+race, is beyond all doubt. For if Indians have accepted the Chaldean
+form of the story, so nearly allied to that of Genesis, all other nations
+of Aryan descent show themselves possessed of entirely original versions
+of the cataclysm which cannot be held to have been borrowed either
+from Babylonian or Hebrew sources.</p>
+
+<h4>III.</h4>
+
+<p><i>Traditions of other Aryan Peoples.</i>—Among the Iranians, in the
+sacred books containing the fundamental Zoroastrian doctrines, and
+dating very far back, we meet with a tradition which must assuredly be
+looked upon as a variety of that of the Deluge, though possessing a
+special character, and diverging in some essential particulars from those
+we have been examining. It relates how Yima, who in the original and
+primitive conception was the father of the human race, was warned
+by Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth being about to be devastated
+by a flood. The god ordered Yima to construct a refuge, a square
+garden, <i>vara</i>, protected by an enclosure, and to cause the germs of men,
+beasts, and plants to enter it, in order to escape annihilation. Accordingly,
+when the inundation occurred, the garden of Yima with all that
+it contained was alone spared, and the message of safety was brought
+thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy of
+Ahuramazda.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>A comparison has also been made, but erroneously as I think, between
+the Biblical and Chaldean Deluge and a story only found complete
+in the <i>Bundahesh-pahlavi</i>;<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+though, as a few of the older books contain allusions to some of its
+circumstances;<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+it must date further back than this edition of it, which is recent. Ahuramazda determines to
+destroy the Khafçtras—<i>i.e.</i>, the maleficent spirits created by Angrômainyus,
+the spirit of evil: Tistrya, the genius of the star Sirius, descends at his
+command to earth, and, assuming the form of a man, causes it to rain
+for ten days. The waters cover the earth, and all maleficent beings are
+drowned. A violent wind dries the earth, but some germs of the evil
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span>
+spirit's creation remain, and may reappear, therefore Tistrya descends
+again under the form of a white horse, and produces a second Deluge
+by another rainfall of ten days. To prevent him accomplishing his
+task, the demon Apusha assumes the appearance of a black horse, and
+engages in combat; but he is struck with lightning by Ahuramazda, as
+well as the demon Çpendjaghra, who had come to his aid. Finally, to
+bring about the complete destruction of evil, Tistrya descends the third
+time under the form of a bull, and produces a third Deluge by a third
+rainfall of ten days, after which the waters divide to form the four
+great and the twenty-four small seas. Now all this relates to a cosmogonic
+fact, anterior to the creation of man. The Khafçtras, from
+which Tistrya undertakes to purge the earth, are the hurtful and
+venomous beasts created by Angrômainyus which fervent Mazedans
+make it a duty to destroy in our actual world—such as scorpions,
+lizards, toads, serpents, rats, &amp;c. There is no allusion here to humanity,
+or the punishment of its sins. If we were bent on finding in our Bible
+any parallel to this first rain falling on the surface of the earth—which
+both destroys the hurtful creatures by which it was infested and renders
+it productive of a fertile vegetation—we should turn, not to the account
+of the Deluge, but to what is said in Gen. ii. 5, 6.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which
+primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the
+name of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of Bœotia or Attica;
+a quite mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name
+seemingly derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in
+Sanscrit <i>Ângha</i>. It is said that in his time the whole land was covered
+by a flood, whose waters reached the sky, and from which he, together
+with some companions, escaped in a vessel.</p>
+
+<p>The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus
+having worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose
+crimes he was wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his
+father, constructed a coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife,
+Pyrrha. The Deluge came, the chest or coffer floated at the mercy of
+the waves for nine days and nine nights, and was finally stranded on
+Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and
+according to the command of Zeus re-people the world by throwing
+behind them "the bones of the earth"—namely, stones, which change
+into men. This Deluge of Deucalion is in Grecian tradition what most
+resembles a universal Deluge. Many authors affirm that it extended to
+the whole earth, and that the whole human race perished. At Athens, in
+memory of the event, and to appease the manes of its victims, a ceremony
+called <i>Hydrophoria</i> was observed, having so close a resemblance to that
+in use at Hierapolis in Syria, that we can hardly fail to look upon it as
+a Syro-Phœnician importation, and the result of an assimilation established
+in remote antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of
+Khasisatra, as described by the author of the treatise "On the Syrian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span>
+Goddess."<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>
+Close to the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the
+soil was shown, in length but one cubit, through which it was said the
+waters of the Deluge had been swallowed up. Thus, every year, on the
+third day of the festival of the Anthestéria, a day of mourning consecrated
+to the dead,—that is, on the thirteenth of the month of Anthestérion,
+towards the beginning of March—it was customary, as at Bambyce, to
+pour water into the fissure, together with flour mixed with honey,
+poured also into the trench dug to the west of the tomb, in the funereal
+sacrifices of the Athenians.</p>
+
+<p>Others, on the contrary, limit Deucalion's flood to Greece, even declare
+that it only destroyed the larger portion of the community, a great many
+men saving themselves on the highest mountains. Thus the Delphian
+legend told how the inhabitants of that town, following the wolves in
+their flight, had taken refuge in a cave on the summit of Parnassus,
+where they built the town of Lycorea, whose foundation is, on the other
+hand, attributed by the Chronicle of Paros to Deucalion, after the reproduction
+by him of a new human race. Later mythographers
+necessarily adopted this idea of several points of simultaneous escape
+from a desire to reconcile the local legends of several places in Greece,
+which named some other than Deucalion as the hero saved from the
+flood. For instance, at Megara it was the eponym of the city Megaros,
+son of Zeus and of one of the nymphs Sithnides, who, warned by the
+cry of cranes of the imminence of the danger, took refuge on Mount
+Geranien. Again, there was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to
+have escaped the flood by rising into the air on wings given him by the
+nymphs, and it was Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had
+preserved at Dodona. For the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero
+of the Deluge was Merops, son of Hyas, who there assembled under
+his rule the remnant of humanity preserved with him. The traditions
+of Rhodes only supposed the Telchines, those of Crete Jasion, to have
+escaped the cataclysm. In Samothracia the same character was attributed
+to Saon, said to be the son of Zeus or of Hermes; he seems only
+to have been a heroic form of the Hermès Saos or Sôcos, the object
+of special worship in the island, a divinity in whom M. Philippe
+Berges recognizes with good reason a Phœnician importation, the
+Sakan of Canaan identified elsewhere with Hermes Dardanos, supposed
+to have arrived in Samothracia immediately after these events,
+being driven by the Deluge from Arcadia.</p>
+
+<p>In all these flood stories of Greece we cannot doubt that the
+tradition of a cataclysm fatal to the whole of humanity—a tradition
+common to all Aryan peoples—was mixed up, as Knobel rightly
+observes, more or less precisely with local catastrophes produced by
+extraordinary overflows of lakes or rivers, or the rupture of their natural
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span>
+embankments, the sinking of some portions of the sea-coast, or tidal
+waves consequent upon earthquakes or sudden upheavals of the ocean bed.
+Such events were frequent in Greece, in the district between Egypt and
+Palestine, near Pelusium and Mount Casius, as well as in the Cimbric
+Chersonese. The Greeks used to relate how often their country had in
+primitive ages been the theatre of such catastrophes. Istros numbered
+four of these, one of which had opened the Straits of the Bosphorus
+and Hellespont, when the waters of the Euxine, rushing into the
+Ægean, submerged the islands and neighbouring coasts. This is
+evidently the Deluge of Samothracia; where the inhabitants who
+succeeded in saving themselves did so only by gaining the highest
+peak of the mountain that rises there; then, in gratitude for their
+preservation, consecrated the whole island by surrounding its shores
+with a belt of altars dedicated to the gods. In like manner the tradition
+of the Deluge of Ogyges seems connected with the recollection of
+an extraordinary rise of the Lake Capaïs, inundating the whole of the
+great Bœotian Valley, a recollection amplified later—as is ever the case
+with legends—by applying to the local disaster all the details popularly told
+of the primitive Deluge which had taken place before the separation of
+the ancestors of the two races, Semitic and Aryan. It is also probable
+that some event that had occurred in Thessaly, or rather in the region
+of Parnassus, determined the localization of the legend of Deucalion.
+Nevertheless, it always retained, as we have seen, a more general
+character than the others, whether the Deluge be extended to the
+whole earth or limited to the whole of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the different narratives were reconciled by
+admitting three successive Deluges, those of Ogyges, Deucalion, and
+Dardanos. The general opinion pronounced the former the most
+ancient, placing it 600 or 250 years before that of Deucalion. But
+this chronology is far from being universally accepted; and the inhabitants
+of Samothracia maintain their Deluge to have been the earliest.
+Christian chronographers of the third and fourth century, as, for
+instance, Julius Africanus and Eusebius, adopted the Hellenic dates of
+the Deluges of Ogyges and Deucalion, and inscribed them in their
+records as different events from the Mosaic Deluge, which, for their part,
+they fixed at 1000 years before that of Ogyges.</p>
+
+<p>In Phrygia the diluvian tradition was as natural as in Greece. The
+town of Apamea derived thence its surname <i>Kibotos</i>, or ark, and
+claimed to be the place where the Ark had stopped. Iconium had the
+like pretensions. In the same way the people of Milyas, in Armenia,
+showed the fragments of the Ark on the top of the mountain called
+Baris; and these were also exhibited in early Christian times to pilgrims
+on Ararat, as Berosus tells us that in his day the remnants of the
+vessel of Khasisatra were visited on the Gordyan range.</p>
+
+<p>In the second and third centuries of our era, by means of the
+syncretic infiltration of Jewish and Christian traditions even into minds
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span>
+still attached to Paganism, the sacerdotal authorities of Apamea and
+Phrygia had coins struck bearing an open ark, in which the patriarch
+and his wife were seen receiving back the dove with the olive branch,
+and side by side were the two same personages, having left the Ark to
+retake possession of the earth. On the Ark is inscribed the name
+<span class="greek" title="NÔE">ΝΩΕ</span>, the very form the name assumes in the Septuagint. Thus, at
+this time the Pagan priesthood of the Phrygian city had, we see,
+adopted the Biblical narrative, even down to its names, and had grafted
+it on the old native tradition. They related that a short while before
+the Deluge there reigned a holy man called Annacos, who had predicted
+it, and occupied the throne more than 300 years, an evident reproduction
+of the Enoch of the Bible, who walked with God for 365 years.</p>
+
+<p>As to the branch of the Celts—in the bardic poems of Wales, we have
+a tradition of the Deluge, which, although recent under the concise
+form of the Triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend
+is localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible
+catastrophes of the island of Prydain, or Britain, the other two consisting
+of devastation by fire and by drought.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The first of these events," it is said, "was the irruption of Llyn-llion, or 'the
+lake of waves,' and the inundation (<i>bawdd</i>) of the whole country, by which all
+mankind was drowned with the exception of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who saved
+themselves in a vessel without rigging, and it was by them that the island of
+Prydain was re-peopled."<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Pictet here observes—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Although the triads in their actual form hardly date further than the thirteenth
+or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly connected with very
+ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a borrowing from Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is not so, perhaps, with another
+triad<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>
+speaking of the vessel Nefydd-naf-Neifion,
+which at the time of the overflow of Llyn-llion, bore a pair of all
+living creatures, and rather too much resembles the ark of Noah. The very name
+of the patriarch may have suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning,
+but evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the same
+triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (<i>ychain bannog</i>) of Hu
+the mighty, who drew out of Llyn-llion the <i>avanc</i> (beaver or crocodile?)
+in order that the lake should not overflow. The meaning of these enigmas
+could only be hoped from deciphering the chaos of bardic monuments of the
+Welsh middle age; but meanwhile we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed
+an indigenous tradition of the Deluge."</p></div>
+
+<p>We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian
+Ealda.<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>
+But here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth.
+The three sons of Borr, Othin, Wili, and We, grandsons of Buri, the
+first man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar or Ice giants, and
+his body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows
+from his wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned
+in it, except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and
+reproduces the race. "Thus," Pictet again observes, "the myth only
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span>
+belongs to the general tradition through these last features, by which,
+however, we trace it up to a common source."</p>
+
+<p>Of all European peoples the Lithuanians were the last to embrace
+Christianity, and their language remains nearest to the original Aryan.
+They have a legend of the Deluge, the groundwork of which appears
+very ancient, although it has assumed the simple character of a popular
+tale, and some of its details may have been borrowed from Genesis at the
+time of the first Christian missions. According to
+it<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> the god Pramzimras,
+seeing the whole earth to be full of iniquity, sends two giants, Wandu
+and Wêjas (fire and wind), to lay it waste. These overthrew everything
+in their fury, and only a few men saved themselves on a mountain.
+Pramzimras, who was engaged in eating celestial walnuts, dropped a shell
+near the mountain, and in it the men took refuge, the giants respecting
+it. Having escaped from the calamity, they afterwards disperse, and
+only one very aged couple remain in the country, greatly bewailing their
+childless condition. Pramzimras, to console them, sends his rainbow
+and bids them jump "on the bones of the earth," which curiously recalls
+the oracle to Deucalion. The two old people jump nine times, and nine
+pairs are the result, who became the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian
+tribes.</p>
+
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+
+<p><i>Egyptian Traditions.</i>—While the tradition of the Deluge holds so
+considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the
+Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many
+cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to
+this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the
+Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from
+it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaëton; they even
+added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to
+that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes resembling
+it. According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected, however, of
+being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had himself,
+before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelæ in hieroglyphical and sacred
+language the principles of all knowledge. After it the second Thoth
+translated into the vulgar tongue the contents of these stelæ. This
+would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho
+not speaking of it in what remains to us of his "Dynasties," his only
+complete authentic work. The silence of all other myths of the
+Pharaonic religion on this head render it very likely that the above is
+merely a foreign tradition, recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic
+and Chaldean origin. "Thus," says M. Maury, "the Seriadic land,
+where the passage in question places these hieroglyphic columns, might
+very well be no other than Chaldea. This tradition, though not in the
+Bible, existed as a popular legend among the Jews at the beginning
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span>
+of our era, which confirms our supposition; as the Hebrews might
+have learnt it during the Babylonian captivity. Josephus tells us that
+the patriarch Seth, in order that wisdom and astronomical knowledge
+should not perish, erected, in prevision of the double destruction by fire
+and water predicted by Adam, two columns, the one in brick, the other
+in stone, on which this knowledge was engraved, and which subsisted in
+the Seriadic country." This history is evidently only a variety of the
+Chaldean legend of the terra-cotta tables bearing the divine revelations,
+and the principles of all sciences which Êa ordered Khasisatra to bury
+before the Deluge, "in the city of the Sun at Sippara," as we have had
+it above in the extracts from Berosus.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the Egyptians did admit a destruction by the gods of
+primal men on account of their rebellion and their sins. This event
+was related in a chapter of the sacred books of Thoth, those famous
+Hermetic books of the Egyptian priesthood which are graven on the
+sides of one of the inmost chambers of the funereal hypogeum of Seti
+the First at Thebes. The text has been published and translated by
+M. Edouard Naville.<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>The scene is laid at the close of the reign of the god Râ, the earliest
+terrestrial reign, according to the system of the priests of Thebes, the
+second, according to that of the priests of Memphis, which is the one
+followed by Manetho, who placed at the very origin of things the reign
+of Phtah, previous to that of Râ. Irritated by the impiety and crimes
+of the men he has made, the god assembles the other gods to hold
+counsel with them in profound secrecy, "so that men should not see it,
+nor their heart be afraid."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Said by Râ to
+Nun:<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>
+'Thou, the eldest of the gods, of whom I am born, and
+ye ancient gods, here are the men who are born from myself; they speak words
+against me, tell me what you would do in the matter; lo, I have waited, and
+have not slain them before hearing your words.'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Nun: 'My son Râ, a greater god than he who has
+made him and created him, I stand in great fear of thee; do thou deliberate
+alone.'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'Lo, they take to flight through the country,
+and their hearts are afraid....'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Gods: 'Let thy face permit, and let those men be smitten who
+plot evil things, thine enemies, and let none [of them remain.]'"</p></div>
+
+<p>A goddess, whose name has unfortunately disappeared, but who seems
+to have been Tefnut, identified with Hathor and Sekhet, is then sent
+to accomplish the sentence of destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This goddess left, and slew the men upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of this God: 'Come in peace, Hathor; thou hast done
+[what was ordained thee.]'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by this Goddess: 'Thou art living; for I have been stronger than men,
+and my heart is satisfied.'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'I am living, for I will rule over them [and
+I will complete] their ruin.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span>
+"And lo, Sekhet, during several nights, trod their blood under-foot as far as
+the town of Hâ-klinen-su (Héracléopolis.)"</p></div>
+
+<p>But the massacre ended, the anger of Râ was appeased; he began to
+repent of what he had done. A great expiatory sacrifice succeeded in
+finally calming him. Fruits were gathered throughout Egypt, bruised,
+and their juice mingled with human blood, 7000 pitchers being filled with
+it and presented to the god.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And lo, the Majesty of Râ, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, comes with
+the gods in three days of sailing to see these vases of drink, after he had ordered
+the goddess to slay men.</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'This is well; I will protect men because
+of it.' Said by Râ: 'I raise my hand concerning this, to say that I will no more
+destroy men.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Majesty of Râ, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, commanded in the
+middle of the night to overthrow the liquid in the vases, and the fields were
+completely filled with water by the will of this god. The goddess arrived in
+the morning, and found the fields full of water. Her face grew joyous, and she
+drank abundantly and went away satisfied. She no more perceived any men.</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ to the goddess: 'Come in peace, gracious
+goddess.'</p>
+
+<p>"And he caused the young priestesses of Amu to be born.</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ to this goddess: 'Libations shall be made to her
+at each of the festivals of the new year, under the superintendence of my
+priestesses.'</p>
+
+<p>"Hence it comes that libations are made under the superintendence of the
+priestesses of Hathor by all men since the ancient days."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, some men have escaped the destruction commanded by
+Râ, and renewed the population of the earth. As for the solar god
+who reigns over the world, he feels himself old, sick and weary; he has
+had enough of living among men, whom he regrets not to have
+completely annihilated, but has sworn henceforth to spare.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'There is a smarting pain that torments me;
+what is it then that hurts me?' Said by the Majesty of Râ: 'I am living,
+but my heart is weary of being with them [men], and I have in no way destroyed
+them. That destruction is not one that I have made myself.'</p>
+
+<p>"Said by the gods who accompany him: 'Away with lassitude, thou hast
+obtained all thou didst desire.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The god Râ decides, however, to accept the help of the men of the
+new human race who offer themselves to him to combat his enemies,
+and a great battle takes place, out of which they come victorious. But
+in spite of this success the god, disgusted with earthly life, resolves to quit
+it for ever, and has himself carried into heaven by the goddess Nut, who
+takes the form of a cow. Then he creates a region of delight, the
+fields of Aalu, the Elysium of Egyptian mythology, which he peoples
+with stars. Entering into rest, he assigns to different gods the government
+of different parts of the world. Shu, who is to succeed him as
+king, is to administer celestial matters with Nut; Seb and Nun receive
+the charge of the things of earth and water. Finally, Râ, a sovereign
+who has voluntarily abdicated, goes to dwell with Thoth, his favourite
+son, on whom he has bestowed the superintendence of the under-world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span>
+Such is this strange narrative, "in which," as M. Naville has well
+said, "in the midst of fantastic and often puerile inventions, we do nevertheless
+find the two terms of existence as understood by the ancient
+Egyptians. Râ begins with earth, and passing through heaven stops in
+the region of profundity, Ament, in which he apparently wishes to
+sojourn. This then is a symbolic and religious representation of life,
+which for every Egyptian—and especially for a royal conqueror—had to
+begin and end like the sun. This explains the chapter being inscribed
+in a tomb."</p>
+
+<p>Hence it was the last portion of the narrative—which we can analyse
+but very briefly—the abdication of Râ and his retreat, first, in heaven,
+next in the Ament, a symbol of death which is to be followed by resurrection
+as the setting of the sun by its rising—it is this which constituted
+its interest in the conception of the doctrine of a future life,
+illustrated in the decoration of the interior of the tomb of Seti I.
+For our present purpose, on the contrary, it is the beginning of the
+story which constitutes its importance, it is that destruction of primal
+humanity by the gods of which no mention has been hitherto found
+elsewhere. Although the means of destruction employed by Râ are
+quite dissimilar, although he does not proceed by submersion but by
+a massacre in which the lion-headed goddess Tefnut or Sekhet, the
+dreadful form of Hathor, is the agent, the other sides of the story bear
+a sufficiently striking analogy to that of the Mosaic or Chaldean
+Deluge to show that it is the special and very individual form assumed
+in Egypt by that tradition. In both we have human corruption exciting
+divine wrath, and punished by a divinely ordained annihilation of the
+race, from which there escapes but a very small number destined to
+give birth to a new humanity. Finally, after the event an expiatory
+sacrifice appeases the celestial anger, and a solemn covenant is made
+between men and the deity, who swears never so to destroy them again.
+To me, the agreement of these principal features outweighs the divergence
+in detail. And we have also to observe how singularly akin is the part
+ascribed by the Egyptian priest to Râ with that assigned in the epic
+poem of Uruk to the god Bel, in the deluge of Khasisatra. The
+Egyptians believed, as did other nations, in the destruction of mankind;
+but as inundation meant for them prosperity and life, they changed the
+primitive tradition; the human race, instead of perishing by water, was
+otherwise exterminated; and the inundation—that crowning benefit to
+the valley of the Nile—became in their eyes the sign that the wrath of
+Râ was appeased.</p>
+
+<h4>V.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>American Stories of the Flood.</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find
+in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that of the
+Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the Old World.
+It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that certainly took place
+from Asia into North America by the Kourile and Aleutian islands, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span>
+still does so in our day, should have brought in these memories, since no trace is
+found of them among those Mongol or Siberian
+populations,<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> which were fused
+with the natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American
+nations, the Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social
+condition at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a special
+character, and seems to have been developed on the soil where it flourished.
+Many very simple inventions, such as the use of weights, were unknown
+to these people, and this shows that their knowledge was not derived from India
+or Japan. The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of Mexican
+civilization to Asia have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts.
+Besides, had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could
+not have introduced a myth not found in its own
+Scriptures.<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> The cause of these
+similarities between the diluvian traditions of the nations of the New World
+and that of the Bible remains therefore unexplained."</p></div>
+
+<p>I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of
+immense erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers,
+and will not therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion.
+Others also, no less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness
+between American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible
+and the Chaldeans.</p>
+
+<p>The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they
+appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic
+paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these
+documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called
+by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together
+with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions,
+on a raft, made of cypress wood (<i>Cupressus disticha</i>). Paintings retracing
+the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs,
+Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter
+is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as we have it in
+Genesis and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a
+spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain,
+whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race.
+When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should
+retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the
+carcases with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent
+out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a
+leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began
+to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan.</p>
+
+<p>The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as
+to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus,"
+from the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic
+pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span>
+one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the
+conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de
+los Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after
+the arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous
+traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.</p>
+
+<p>The first age is marked with the cipher 13×400+6, or 5206, which
+Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of
+the period, and Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement,
+from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution
+of the manuscript. This age is called <i>Tlatonatiuh</i>, "Sun of Earth."
+It is that of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac,
+whose end was destruction by famine.</p>
+
+<p>The number of the second age is 12×400+4, or 4804, and it is
+called <i>Tlatonatiuh</i>, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on
+Earth of Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed
+into birds, and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one
+human pair find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.</p>
+
+<p>As to the third age, <i>Ehécatonatiuh</i>, "Sun of Wind," its number is
+10×400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane
+raised by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men
+are metamorphosed into monkeys.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes the fourth age, <i>Atonatiuh</i>, "Sun of Water," whose
+number is 10×400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a
+veritable deluge. All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception
+of one man and his wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the
+trunk of a cypress-tree. The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess
+of waters, and consort of Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards
+earth. Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are
+seen seated on a tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters.
+This flood is represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.</p>
+
+<p>All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did
+not hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote
+quite recently:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of America, and Christian
+writers have not failed to see in it a reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay,
+in connection with the pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower
+of Babel. We shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox,
+among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of flowers,
+Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of Noah and his wife
+by joining on to them the story of the ark and the dove. It is enough to observe
+that all these legends have only been collected and published at a relatively
+recent period.<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+The first chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity,
+such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous authors,
+such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec Camargo, never breathe
+a word of stories they could not have failed to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find in
+Mr. Bancroft's<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a>
+work a criticism of these legends, due to Don José Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span>
+which proves incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and
+tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which according to him
+only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs around the central lakes of the
+plateau of Anahuac."</p></div>
+
+<p>I much fear that the <i>tendency</i> here is not on the side of writers
+who are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian;
+which, indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few
+among them. And this tendency, when resolved at any cost to
+attack the Bible, is as anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical
+argument in its defence. No doubt the identical character of
+Xochiquetzal or Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain
+and of vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicué or Mallalcuéyé, is a
+well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of
+Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a
+very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of
+unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves.
+There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two
+divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two
+survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to
+the theory of Don José Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have
+been interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious
+and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M.
+Girard de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it
+only removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally
+forced by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as
+for instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still
+the existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be
+shaken, for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming
+in a striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex
+Vaticanus."</p>
+
+<p>The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled
+by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called <i>Codex
+Chimalpopoca</i> by Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis
+and partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des
+Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history of
+the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from the
+way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the age of
+jaguars, who devour the primordial
+giants;<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+the second, the age of wind;
+at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by the hurricane,
+and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods, everything
+was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose
+sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual
+appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point
+to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close, mankind
+is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span>
+the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water, which immediately
+precedes our present epoch, and closes with the Deluge.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the narrative according to Abbé Brasseur's version, held
+correct by Americanists:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This is the sun called <i>Nahui-atl</i>,
+'4 water.'<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>
+Now the water was tranquil
+for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the third and fourth times. When
+the sun <i>Nahui-atl</i> came there had passed away four hundred years, plus two
+ages, plus seventy-six years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and
+found themselves changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a
+single day all was lost and the day <i>Nahui-xochitl</i> '4 flower,' destroyed all our
+flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"And that year was that of <i>cé-calli</i>,
+'1 house,'<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>
+and the day <i>Nahui-atl</i> all was
+lost. Even the mountains sank into the water, and the water remained tranquil
+for fifty-two springs.</p>
+
+<p>"Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and his
+spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to hollow out a
+great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the month Tozontli the water
+approaches the sky.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said: 'Thou
+shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'</p>
+
+<p>"But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water remained calm,
+for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they began to see fish.</p>
+
+<p>"Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they roasted fish.</p>
+
+<p>"The gods Citlallinicué and Citlalatonac instantly looking down said: 'Divine
+Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do they thus smoke the sky?'
+At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who
+has made this fire here?' And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and
+heads, and they were transformed into dogs (<i>chichime</i>)."</p></div>
+
+<p>This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the
+North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly
+indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a
+Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.</p>
+
+<p>The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to
+the generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by
+extracts given from it by Abbé Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les
+Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though
+already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so
+strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here,
+too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the same
+order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."</p>
+
+<p>The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then
+added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made
+himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants,
+who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl,
+the god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck Tezcatlipoca
+with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself sun
+in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span>
+devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The
+statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca"
+as to the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled
+by this last narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are
+closed in the way we have seen.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the
+patronage of the goddess Chalchihuitlicué. The Deluge terminates it,
+and after this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.</p>
+
+<p>We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando
+d'Alva Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose
+pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving
+the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first
+chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic
+ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four
+in all, including the actual period. The first is the <i>Atonatiuh</i>, or "Sun
+of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a universal
+deluge. Then comes the <i>Thlachitonatiuh</i>, or "Sun of Earth," when the
+giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of the survivors
+of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing the
+mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth, closes
+this age. It is in the third age, <i>Ehecatonatiuh</i>, "Sun of Wind," that
+Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of
+Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames,
+but ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious
+reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished
+by the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys.
+Then begins the present age, <i>Tlatonatiuh</i>, or "Sun of Fire," thus
+called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that
+Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and if
+he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place in his
+series of ages.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be
+really indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries.
+We may doubt as to some particulars in some of the versions, though
+this arises chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much
+resemble the story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it
+is unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn
+from the Bible—and universally admitted to have existed—that, namely, of
+the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the
+four ages or Yugas of India, and of the <i>manvantaras</i> where the destruction
+of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there is an
+analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch, and
+M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans
+devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from India.
+The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span>
+diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem—ever recurring with
+regard to American civilization—of how far these are spontaneous and
+how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In
+the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem
+negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive
+conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence
+American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were,
+nor attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we
+frame a real American archæology on the same scientific basis and by
+the same methods as other archæologies. And in this respect Messrs.
+T. G. Müller and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of
+their precursors in this field of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with
+Flood stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences.
+Hence I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The
+Flood stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to
+be one of the oldest held by humanity—a tradition so primitive as
+to be anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments
+of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America
+brought from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at
+the same time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively
+carried it into theirs."<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>
+The fact is that among American peoples this
+tradition may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not
+borrowed from the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot
+be equally confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign
+importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the destruction
+of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in the curious book
+of <i>Popol-vuh</i> that collection of the mythological traditions of Guatemala,
+written after the conquest in the native tongue, by a secret adept of
+the old religion; discovered, copied, and translated into Spanish in the
+beginning of the last century by the Dominican Francisco Ximenez, curé
+of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish version has been published by
+M. Schelzer, the original text with a French translation by Abbé
+Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing that animals were neither
+capable of speaking nor of adoring them, determined to make men in
+their own image. They fashioned them at first in clay. But those men
+had no consistency, could not turn their heads; spoke, indeed, but
+understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their imperfect work by
+a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they made a man
+of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far superior to
+the former; they moved and lived, but only like other animals; they
+spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the gods. Then
+Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a rain of
+burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful earthquake.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span>
+All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished, with
+a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of
+white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men: Balam-Quitze,
+"the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the night;"
+Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar of
+the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and
+rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their
+final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a
+light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became
+like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for
+them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the
+Quichés were born—Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children.
+This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed
+from the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian
+missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as
+usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a
+great flood.</p>
+
+<p>We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias
+Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the
+Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those
+Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great
+numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted.
+The monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted
+several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years
+after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our subject:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Question by Bobadilla.</i> Who has created heaven and earth, the stars and
+moon, man and all else?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan).</i> Tamagastad and Cippatoval, the one
+is a man, the other a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Who created that man and woman?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Did they create Christians?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and Cippatoval.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Are there any gods greater than they?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> No; we believe them to be the greatest.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour like us
+Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what Indians eat.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Who gave them to eat?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> Everything belongs to them.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Where are they now?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> How did they ascend thither?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were born,
+for they have no father nor mother.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> How do they live at present?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds from the
+place where dwell the <i>teotes</i> (gods).</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the <i>teotes</i> created the
+world it has been destroyed?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span>
+"<i>A.</i> Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by water and
+all became sea.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> How did that man and woman escape?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and afterwards they
+came down to earth and re-made all things as they now are, and we are their
+issue.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some
+individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A.</i> No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors
+told me."</p></div>
+
+<p>The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue,
+is evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of
+fire, whose cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at
+Tunga and Sogamosa to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us
+back to the religious and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced
+civilization in the high table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to
+recognize in the Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so
+universally spread tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with
+the memory of a local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas
+had suffered at the time of their first settlement. Neither must we
+forget that Botchica and his wicked spouse, who brought about the
+inundation of Cundinamarca, are no other than personifications of
+the sun and moon, as were the pair Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello
+in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru is gentle and
+beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps her brother
+and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of Cundinamarca,
+on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of night and
+of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."</p>
+
+<p>Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition
+among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it
+only arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha
+or Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of
+the element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no
+bones, and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and
+filling up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the
+Aymaras, who, according to them, had created the earth; and who,
+issuing from Lake Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled
+the earliest men at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the
+Incas led to his undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing
+his religious importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the
+Sun, come upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger
+brother of Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha
+that the Deluge is placed by the writers of very recent date, who
+mention this event, of which the native tradition was unknown to the
+Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva,
+and, in short, to all authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters.
+MacCulloch does indeed quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors
+never speak of a Deluge involving all humanity; they only say that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span>
+Viracocha gave laws to the earliest men at the close of a primordial
+period anterior to their creation, when the whole surface of the earth
+had been under water.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have
+been found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very
+nature these leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to
+writing by the natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may,
+in perfectly good faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious
+desire to assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have
+been only collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long
+time in contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them
+more than one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements
+into their traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance
+to those we have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and
+Nicaragua, previous to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea
+of European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a
+childish version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead
+of a fish who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the
+catastrophe; but this brings us back to a myth special to America—that
+of the transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the
+Flood-story of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for several days to
+run up and down the banks of the river, looking fixedly at the water and howling
+as in distress. His master was annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered
+him to go home, upon which he began speaking and revealed the impending
+calamity, ending his prediction by saying that the only way in which his master
+and his family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for he
+would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that there was
+not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand which would lead to a
+general inundation in which everything would perish. The man obeyed his dog,
+was saved with his family, and they repeopled the earth."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the
+Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood
+by reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts
+behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women.
+If the report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a
+very singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the
+Greek story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.</p>
+
+<p>Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in
+the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and
+North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America
+among the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition
+as current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the rising sun.
+Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming upon the earth, he
+built a raft, on which he saved himself with his family and all the animals. He
+floated thus for several months. The animals, who at that time spoke, loudly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span>
+complained and murmured against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which
+he landed with all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a
+punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."</p></div>
+
+<p>According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley
+of the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was destroyed
+by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth, had
+changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our acquaintance
+with the version of the Chippeways—full of grotesque and perplexing
+touches—in which the man saved from the deluge is called
+Menaboshu.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>
+To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the diver, out of his
+bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and the founder of
+existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among the Mandans,
+of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters, and that when
+one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men pierced the shell of
+the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men, with
+the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth
+re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in
+its beak. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of Tezpi and
+Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the native
+originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition among the
+Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the physical
+peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the Missouri led Catlin
+to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white origin.</p>
+
+<p>In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made
+to a very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth.
+The whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the
+supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken
+refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The Commissioners
+of the United States who explored New Mexico before its
+annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the different
+native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us kindred
+narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record. But
+for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely trusted.</p>
+
+<h4>VI.</h4>
+
+<p><i>Polynesian Traditions.</i>—In Oceania even, and not among the Pelagian
+negroes or Papoos,<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>
+but the Polynesian, racenatives of the archipelago
+of Australasia, the diluvian tradition has been traced, mingled with recollections
+of sudden rises of the sea, which are one of the most frequent
+scourges of those islands. The most noted is that of Tahiti, which
+has been specially referred to the primeval tradition. Here it is as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+given by M. Gaussin,<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>
+who has published a translation of it, as well as
+the Tahitian text, written by a native named Maré:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Two men had gone out to sea to fish with the line, Roo and Teahoroa by
+name. They threw their hooks into the sea, which caught in the hair of the
+god Ruahatu. They exclaimed, 'A fish!' They drew up the line and saw that
+it was a man they had caught. At sight of the god they bounded to the other
+end of their bark, and were half dead with fear. Ruahatu asked them, 'What
+is this?' The two fishermen replied, 'We came to fish, and we did not know
+that our hooks would catch thee.' The god then said, 'Unfasten my hair;' and
+they did so. Then Ruahatu asked, 'What are your names?' They replied,
+'Roo and Teahoroa.' Ruahatu next said, 'Return to the shore, and tell men
+that the earth will be covered with water, and all the world will perish.
+To-morrow morning repair to the islet called Toa-marama; it will be a place of
+safety for you and your children.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ruahatu caused the sea to cover the lands. All were covered, and all
+men perished except Roo, Teahoroa, and their families."</p></div>
+
+<p>This story, like all in this part of the world currently referred to
+the memory of the Deluge, has assumed the childish character peculiar
+to Polynesian legends, and moreover, as M. Maury justly observes, it
+may be naturally explained by the recollection of one of those tidal
+waves so common in Polynesia. The most essential feature of all
+traditions properly called diluvian is wanting here. The island,
+observes M. Maury, has no resemblance to the
+Ark.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> It is true that
+one of the versions of the Tahitian legend states that the two fishermen
+repaired to Toa-marama, not only with their families, but with a pig, a
+dog, and a couple of fowls, which recalls the entry of the animals into
+the Ark. On the other hand, some details of a similar story among
+the Fijis, especially one in which, for many years after the event,
+canoes were kept ready in case of its repetition, far better fit a local
+phenomenon, a tidal wave, than a universal deluge.</p>
+
+<p>However, if all these legends were exclusively related to local
+catastrophes, it would be strange that they should appear and be
+almost similar in a certain number of localities at a great distance
+from each other, and only where the Polynesian race has taken root, or
+left indubitable traces of its passage;—this race, indigenous in the
+Malay Archipelago, not having migrated thence till about the fourth
+century of the Christian era—<i>i.e.</i>, at a time when, in consequence of the
+communication between India and a portion of
+Malaysia,<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> the Flood-tradition
+under its Indian form might well have entered in. Without,
+therefore, deciding the question one way or other, we do not think that
+that opinion can absolutely be condemned which finds in these Polynesian
+legends an echo of the tradition of the Deluge, much weakened,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span>
+much changed, and more inextricably confused than anywhere else with
+local disasters of recent date.</p>
+
+<p>The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story of
+the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the human
+race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now a recollection
+thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No
+religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It
+must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully
+impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race, as
+never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm
+must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion
+of the families from which the principal races were to spring;
+for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that at as
+many different points of the globe as we should have to assume in
+order to explain the wide spread of these traditions—local phenomena so
+exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having assumed an
+identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not necessarily
+have occurred to the mind in such cases.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not primitive
+but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect of
+an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
+is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of Oceania.
+There will still remain three great races to which it is undoubtedly peculiar,
+who have not borrowed it from each other, but among whom the
+tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient times; and
+these three races are precisely the only ones of which the Bible speaks
+as being descended from Noah, those of which it gives the ethnic filiation
+in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation, which I hold to
+be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact value to the tradition
+as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the other hand, it may lead
+to giving it a more limited geographical and ethnological significance.
+In another paper I propose to inquire whether, in the conception of the
+inspired writers, the Deluge really was universal, in the sense customarily
+supposed.</p>
+
+<p>But as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far
+from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact,
+having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
+races—Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or
+Kushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient
+world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors
+of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together
+inhabited.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">François Lenormant.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
+The date of the termination of the works undertaken by Yu, in order to repair the
+damage done by this flood, lies between 2278 and 2062 <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span> according to the chronological
+system adopted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
+This work of Berosus was already out of existence in the fourth century of our era,
+when Eusebius of Cesarea, to whom we owe such fragments as we possess, wrote. Only
+two abridgments remained, due to later polygraphers, Abydenus and Alexander Polybistor.
+Eusebius gives the version of each editor, the one I quote is that of Alexander.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
+Abydenus says, "all that composed the scriptures."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
+He is provisionally called Izdhubar or Ghirdhubar, transcribing for want of a more
+certain method, according to their phonetic value, the characters composing the ideographic
+spelling of his name.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+The text is published in "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," vol. iv. pp. 50 and 51.
+The two principal translations hitherto given are those of George Smith and M. Oppert.
+The one we now offer contains a large share of personal work. We avail ourselves of the
+labours of our illustrious precursors, but believe that we have also added some important
+steps towards a precise understanding of the text.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
+Here several verses are wanting.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
+"The water of the twilight at break of day," one of the personifications of rain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>
+The god of thunder.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+The god of war and death.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
+The Chaldeo-Assyrian Hercules.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
+The superior heaven of the fixed stars.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
+Vases of the measure called in Hebrew <i>Seäh</i>. This relates to a detail of the ritualistic
+prescriptions for sacrifice.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
+These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
+The god of epidemics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
+<i>Studien zur Kritik und Erklarung der Biblischen Urgeschichte</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
+Oannès and Euahanès belong to an Accadian form: Êa-Khan, "Êa the fish;" Oès to
+the simple Êa, as the Aos of Damascus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
+<i>Vendidâd</i>, ii. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+Chapter vii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
+See especially <i>Yesht</i> viii., 13 <i>Vendidâd</i>, xix. 135.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
+It is in virtue of this assimilation that Plutarch (De Solert anim. 13) speaks of the
+dove sent out by Deucalion to see if the Deluge had ceased, a circumstance mentioned by
+no other Greek mythographer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
+"Myvyrian Archæology of Wales," vol. ii. p. 50, triad 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
+<i>Ibid.</i> p. 71, triad 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
+Vafthrudnismal, st. 29.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+Hanwsch, <i>Slawischer Mythus</i>, p. 234.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
+"Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology," vol. iv. pp. 1-19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+Personification of the primordial abyss.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
+Nevertheless, the Deluge holds an important place among the cosmogonic traditions—decidedly
+original in character—which Reguly has found among the Voguls. We also hear
+of a diluvian story among the Eulets or Kalmuks, where it seems to have come in with
+Buddhism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
+We must, however, observe that Buddhist missionaries appear to have introduced the
+diluvian tradition of Judea into China. Gutzlaff, "On Buddhism in China," in the Journal
+of the Royal Asiatic Society (1st series, vol. xii. p. 78), affirms that he saw its principal
+episode represented in a very fine painting of a temple to the goddess Kivan-yin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
+Recently published, not recently collected. The date of Pedro de los Rios shows this.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
+"The Native Races of the Pacific States," vol. iii. p. 68.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
+By a singular alteration of the text it is said that the jaguars "were devoured," instead
+of "they devoured."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
+From the day of the year when the final cataclysm was supposed to have occurred.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
+This designation of the year accords with the system of Mexican cycles, containing four
+groups of years, each named after some object or animal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
+"Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose," p. 283.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+This name looks like a corruption of that of the Indian Manu Vaivasvata.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
+Except in the Fiji Islands, where the Polynesians have been for some time settled among
+the Melanians, and have only been destroyed by these after having infused into the population
+an element sufficiently marked to render the Fijis a mixed rather than a purely
+black race.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
+Gaussin: "Du Dialecte de Tahiti et de la Langue polynésienne," p. 235. See also Ellis's
+"Polynesian Researches."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
+We may, however, observe that in the Iranian myth of Yima, which we have reported
+above, a square enclosure (<i>vara</i>) miraculously preserved from the deluge, holds the place of
+the Biblical Ark and of the vessel of Chaldean tradition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
+The date of the first establishment of Indian Brahmanists in Java remains uncertain, but
+from the end of the second century <span class="smcap lowercase">B.C.</span> the Greek Iambulos (Diod. Sicul. ii. 57) very
+exactly described as the way of writing in this island the syllabic system Kavi, borrowed
+from India.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>SUSPENDED ANIMATION.</h2>
+
+<p>Some time since an article appeared in the <i>Times</i>, quoted from the
+<i>Brisbane Courier</i> (an Australian paper of good credit), stating
+that one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be
+congealed for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life,
+so that they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead
+meat, yet on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity.
+Many regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though
+a few days later an article appeared, the opening words of which
+implied that only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken
+the article <i>au grand sérieux</i>. Of course it was a hoax; but it is
+worthy of notice that the editor of the <i>Brisbane Courier</i> had really been
+misled, as he admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him
+credit.<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as
+a joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown),
+did good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain
+statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which
+otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span>
+here to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some
+of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth
+while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as
+some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative.
+I shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of
+resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in
+America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New
+York paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity
+some forty years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that
+the two stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to
+seems to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, <i>bien entendu</i>)
+which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly
+associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right,
+indeed, in saying, <i>Le style c'est de l'homme même</i>, we can readily
+understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of
+scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of
+the place where the experiments were made. The history of the
+wonderful Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:—"Many
+of the readers of the <i>Brisbane Courier</i> who know Sydney Harbour will
+remember the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour,
+which, in a succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a
+chain of lakes for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made
+more than ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost
+sheer into the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by
+white beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick
+buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of
+publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now
+established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future
+prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was
+precisely in this tone that the author of the
+"Lunar Hoax"<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> opened his
+account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build an
+imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon
+the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through
+all future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks—though
+probably he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by
+whom this had been said,—"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary
+regalia of man, as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he
+may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his
+mental supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the
+description which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's
+representation of the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled
+banner round him, and died like the son of a hoss").</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span>
+It next becomes necessary to describe the persons engaged in pursuing
+the experiments by which the art of freezing animals alive is to
+be attained. "The gentlemen engaged in this enterprise are Signor
+Rotura, whose researches into the botany and natural history of South
+America have rendered his name eminent; and Mr. James Grant, a
+pupil of the late Mr. Nicolle, so long associated with Mr. Thomas Mort
+in his freezing process. Next to the late Mr. Nicolle, Mr. James Grant
+can claim pre-eminence of knowledge in the science of generating cold,
+and his freezing chamber at Woolhara has long been known as the
+seat of valuable experiments originated in his, Mr. Nicolle's, lifetime."
+Is it merely an accident, by the way, or is it due to the circumstance
+that exceptional powers of invention in general matters are often found
+in company with singular poverty of invention as to details, that two of
+the names here mentioned closely resemble names connected with the
+Lunar Hoax? It was Nicollet who in reality devised the Lunar Hoax,
+though Richard Alton Locke, the reputed author, probably gave to
+the story its final form; and, again, the story purported to come from
+Dr. Grant, of Glasgow. In the earlier narrative, again, as in the later,
+due care was taken to impress readers with the belief that those who
+had made the discovery, or taken part in the work, were worthy of all
+confidence. Sir W. Herschel was the inventor of the optical device by
+which the inhabitants of the moon were to be rendered visible, a plan
+which "evinced the most profound research in optical science, and the
+most dexterous ingenuity in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir
+John Herschel, nursed and cradled in the observatory, and a practical
+astronomer from his boyhood, determined upon testing it at whatever
+cost." Among his companions he had "Dr. Andrew Grant, Lieutenant
+Drummond of the Royal Engineers, and a large party of the best
+English mechanics."</p>
+
+<p>The accounts of preliminary researches, doubts, and difficulties are in
+both cases very similar in tone. "It appears that five months ago,"
+says the narrator of the Australian hoax, "Signor Rotura called upon
+Mr. Grant to invoke his assistance in a scheme for the transmission of
+live stock to Europe. Signor Rotura averred that he had discovered a
+South American vegetable poison, allied to the well-known <i>woolara</i> (<i>sic</i>)
+that had the power of perfectly suspending animation, and that the
+trance thus produced continued until the application of another vegetable
+essence caused the blood to resume its circulation and the heart its functions.
+So perfect, moreover, was this suspension of life that Signor
+Rotura had found in a warm climate decomposition set in at the extremities
+after a week of this living death, and he imagined that if the
+body in this inert state were reduced to a temperature sufficiently low
+to arrest decomposition, the trance might be kept up for months,
+possibly for years. He frankly owned that he had never tried this preserving
+of the tissues by cold, and could not confidently speak as to its
+effect upon the after-restoration of the animal operated on. Before he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span>
+left Mr. Grant he had turned that gentleman's doubts into wondering
+curiosity by experimenting on his dog." The account of this experiment
+I defer for a moment till I have shown how closely in several respects
+this portion of the Australian hoax resembles the corresponding part of
+the American story. It will be observed that the great discovery is
+presented as simply a very surprising development of a process which is
+strictly within the limits, not only of what is possible, but of what is
+known. So also in the case of the Lunar Hoax, the amazing magnifying
+power by which living creatures in the moon were said to have been
+rendered visible, was presented as simply a very remarkable development
+of the familiar properties of the telescope. In both cases, the circumstances
+which in reality limit the possible extension of the properties
+in question were kept conveniently concealed from view. In
+both cases, doubts and difficulties were urged with an apparent frankness
+intended to disarm suspicion. In both cases, also, the inventor of the
+new method by which difficulties were to be overcome is represented as
+in conference with a man of nearly equal skill, who urges the doubts
+naturally suggested by the wonderful nature of the promised achievements.
+In the Lunar Hoax, Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster
+are thus represented in conference. Herschel asks whether the difficulty
+arising from deficient illumination may not be overcome by
+effecting a transfusion of artificial light through the focal image.
+Brewster, startled at the novel thought, as he well might be, hesitatingly
+refers "to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence," which
+is effective though glorious in its absurdity. (Yet it has been gravely
+asserted that this nonsense deceived Arago.) "Sir John, grown more
+confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in which
+the refrangibility was arrested by the second speculum and the angle of
+incidence restored by the third" (a bewilderingly ridiculous statement).
+"'And,' continued he, 'why cannot the illuminated microscope, say the
+hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct, and if necessary even to
+magnify, the focal object?' Sir David sprang from his chair in an
+ecstasy of conviction, and leaping half-way to the ceiling" (from which
+we may infer that he was somewhat more than <i>tête montée</i>), "exclaimed,
+'Thou art the man!'"</p>
+
+<p>The method devised in each case being once accepted as sound, the
+rest of course readily follows. In the case of the Lunar Hoax a number
+of discoveries are made which need not here be
+described<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> (though I
+shall take occasion presently to quote some passages relating to them
+which closely resemble in style certain passages in the Australian narrative).
+In the later hoax, the illustrative experiments are forthwith
+introduced. Signor Rotura, having so far persuaded Mr. Grant of the
+validity of the plan as to induce him to allow a favourite dog to be experimented
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span>
+upon, "injected two drops of his liquid, mixed with a little
+glycerine, into a small puncture made in the dog's ear. In three or four
+minutes the animal was perfectly rigid, the four legs stretched backward,
+eyes wide open, pupils very much dilated, and exhibiting symptoms
+very similar to those caused by strychnine, except that there had been no
+previous struggle or pain. Begging his owner to have no apprehension
+for the life of his favourite animal, Signor Rotura lifted the dog carefully
+and placed him on a shelf in a cupboard, where he begged he might be
+left till the following day, when he promised to call at ten o'clock and
+revive the apparently dead brute. Mr. Grant continually during that
+day and night visited the cupboard, and so perfectly was life suspended
+in his favourite—no motion of the pulse or heart giving any indication
+of the possibility of revival—that he confesses he felt all the sharpest
+reproaches of remorse at having sacrificed a faithful friend to a doubtful
+and dangerous experiment. The temperature of the body, too, in the
+first four hours gradually lowered to 25 degrees Fahrenheit below ordinary
+blood temperature, which increased his fears as to the result; and by morning
+the body was as cold as in natural death. At ten o'clock next morning,
+according to promise, Signor Rotura presented himself, and laughing
+at Mr. Grant's fears, requested a tub of warm water to be brought.
+He tested this with the thermometer at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" (which,
+being the temperature of freezing water, can hardly be called warm),
+"and in this laid the dog, head under." In reply to Mr. Grant's
+objections Signor Rotura assured him that, as animation must remain
+entirely suspended until the administration of the antidote, no water
+could be drawn into the lungs, and that the immersion of the body was
+simply to bring it again to a blood-heat. After about ten minutes of
+this bath the body was taken out, and another liquid injected in a
+puncture made in the neck. "Mr. Grant tells me," proceeds the veracious
+narrator, "that the revival of Turk was the most startling thing
+he ever witnessed; and having since seen the experiment made upon a
+sheep, I can fully confirm his statement. The dog first showed the return
+of life in the eye" (winking, doubtless, at the joke), "and after five and a
+half minutes he drew a long breath, and the rigidity left his limbs. In a
+few minutes more he commenced gently wagging his tail, and then slowly
+got up, stretched himself, and trotted off as though nothing had happened."
+From this moment Mr. Grant had full faith in Signor Rotura's
+discovery, and promised him all the assistance in his power. They next
+determined to try freezing the body. But the first two experiments
+were not encouraging. Mr. Grant fortunately did not allow his favourite
+dog to be experimented upon further, so a strange dog was put into the
+freezing room at Mr. Grant's works for four days, after having in the first
+place had his animation suspended by Signor Rotura. Although this
+animal survived so far as to draw a long breath, the vital energies
+appeared too exhausted for a complete rally, and the animal died. So
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>
+also did the next two animals experimented on, a cat and a dog. "In
+the meantime, however, Dr. Barker had been taken into their counsels,
+and at his suggestion respiration was encouraged, as in the case of persons
+drowned, by artificial compression and expansion of the lungs. Dr.
+Barker was of opinion that, as the heart in every case began to beat, it
+was a want of vital force to set the lungs in proper motion that caused
+death. The result showed his surmises to be entirely correct. A
+number of animals whose lives had been sealed up in this artificial
+death have been kept in the freezing chamber from one to five weeks,
+and it is found that though the shock to the system from this freezing
+is very great, it is not increased by duration of time."</p>
+
+<p>I need not follow the hoaxer's account of the buildings erected for
+the further prosecution of these researches. One point, however, may
+be mentioned illustrating the resemblance to which I have already
+referred as existing between this Australian narrative and the Lunar
+Hoax. In describing the works erected at Middle Harbour, the
+Australian account carefully notes that the necessary funds were
+provided by Mr. Christopher Newton, of Pitt Street. In like manner,
+in the Lunar Hoax we are told that the plate-glass required for the
+optical arrangement devised by Sir J. Herschel was "obtained, by
+consent be it observed, from the shop-window of M. Desanges, the
+jeweller to his ex-majesty Charles X., in High Street."</p>
+
+<p>Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which
+are the more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly
+stated by Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in
+this narrative, apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded
+as beyond the range of scientific possibilities:—"Arrived at the works
+in Middle Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr.
+Grant's apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the
+freezing chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here
+were fourteen sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides
+in a heap, <i>alive</i>, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present
+position for nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three
+months. Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his
+shoulder, and carried it outside into the other building, where a number
+of shallow cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water
+taps to each tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of
+these tanks was quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor,
+I meantime examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the
+nineteen-days-dead lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come
+back to us, and many of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to
+me less improbable than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the
+lamb, to all appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only
+difference perceptible to me between his condition and actual death
+being the absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained
+its brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>
+heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends
+a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped
+into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three
+minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the introduction
+of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken out and
+placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing the wool
+on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver syringe
+under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green
+liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the <i>Astracharlis</i>,
+found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its back,
+Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with his
+knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural depression
+and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was
+struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the
+door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front.
+Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the
+marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a
+discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by
+scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage
+resembling in tone the lively account of the lamb's behaviour when
+released. Herds of agile creatures like antelopes were seen in the
+moon, "abounding in the acclivitous glades of the woods." "This
+beautiful creature afforded us," says the narrator, "the most exquisite
+amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted
+canvas was as faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few
+yards of the <i>camera obscura</i>. Frequently, when attempting to put our
+fingers upon its beard, it would suddenly bound away, as if conscious of
+our earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we
+could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or do to them what we
+would." And again, a little further on, "We fairly laughed at the
+recognition of so familiar an acquaintance as a sheep in so distant a
+land—a good large sheep, which would not have disgraced the farms of
+Leicestershire or the shambles of Leadenhall Market; presently they
+appeared in great numbers, and on reducing the lenses we found them
+in flocks over a great part of the valley. I need not say how desirous
+we were of finding shepherds to these flocks, and even a man with blue
+apron and rolled-up sleeves would have been a welcome sight to us, if
+not to the sheep; but they fed in peace, lords of their own pastures,
+without either protector or destroyer in human shape."</p>
+
+<p>Not less amusing, though more gravely written, is the account of
+the benefits likely to follow from the use of the wonderful process for
+freezing animals alive. Cargoes of live sheep can be readily sent from
+Australia to Europe. Any that cannot be restored to life will still be
+good meat; while the rest can be turned to pasture or driven alive to
+market. With bullocks the case would not be quite so simple, because
+of their greater size and weight, which would render them more difficult
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span>
+to handle with safety. The carcass being rendered brittle by freezing,
+they are so much the more liable to injury. "It sounded odd to hear
+Mr. Grant and Signor Rotura laying stress upon the danger of breakage
+in a long voyage." This one can readily imagine.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the remoter consequences of the discovery are touched on
+by the narrator, though but lightly, as if he saw the necessity of keeping
+his wonders within reasonable limits. Signor Rotura, "though he had
+never attempted his experiment on a human being," which was considerate
+on his part, "had no doubt at all as to its perfect safety." He
+had requested Sir Henry Parkes to allow him to operate on the next
+felon under capital sentence. This, by the way, was a compromising
+statement on our hoaxer's part. It requires very little acquaintance
+with our laws to know that no one could allow a felon condemned to
+death to be experimented on in this or in any other manner. Such a
+man is condemned to die, and to die without any preliminary tortures,
+bodily or mental, other than those inseparable from the legally adopted
+method of bringing death about. He can neither be allowed to remain
+alive after an experiment, and necessarily free (because he has not been
+condemned to other punishment than the death penalty), nor can he be
+first experimented upon and then hanged. So that that single sentence
+in the narrative should have shown every one that it was a hoax, even
+if the inherent absurdity of many other parts of the story had not
+shown this very clearly. As to whether a temporary suspension of the
+vital faculties would affect the longevity of the patient, Signor Rotura
+expressed himself somewhat doubtful; he believed, however, that the
+duration of life might in this way be prolonged for years. "I was
+anxious," says the hoaxer, "to know if a period of, say, five years of
+this inertness were submitted to, whether it would be so much cut out
+of one's life, or if it would be simply five years of unconscious existence
+tacked on to one's sentient life. Signor Rotura could give no positive
+answer, but he believes, as no change takes place or can take place
+while this frozen trance continues, no consumption, destruction, or
+reparation of tissue being possible, it would be so many unvalued and
+profitless years added to a lifetime." Of some of the strange ideas
+suggested by this conception I shall take occasion to speak further on;
+I must for the present turn, however, from the consideration of this
+ingenious hoax to discuss the scientific possibilities which underlie the
+narrative, or at least some parts of the narrative.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it must be noticed that in the phenomena of hibernation
+we have what at a first view seems closely to resemble the results
+of Signor Rotura's apocryphal experiments. As was remarked in the
+<i>Times</i>, the idea underlying the Australian story is that the hibernation of
+animals can be artificially imitated and extended, so that as certain
+animals lie in a state of torpor and insensibility throughout the winter
+months, all animals also may perhaps be caused to lie in such a state for
+an indefinite length of time, if only a suitable degree of cold is maintained,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span>
+and some special contrivance adopted to prevent insensibility from passing
+into death. The phenomena of hibernation are indeed so surprising,
+when rightly understood, that inexperienced persons might well believe
+in almost any wonders resulting from the artificial production (which, be
+it remembered, is altogether possible) of the hibernating condition, and
+the artificial extension of this condition to other animals than those which
+at present hibernate, and to long periods of time. It has been justly
+said, that if hibernation had only been noticed among cold-blooded
+animals, its possibility in the case of mammals would have seemed inconceivable.
+The first news that the bat and hedgehog pass into the state of
+complete hibernation, would probably have bean received as either a
+daring hoax or a very gross blunder.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider what hibernation really is. When, as winter approaches
+and their insect food disappears, the bat and the hedgehog
+resign themselves to torpor, the processes which we are in the habit of
+associating with vitality gradually diminish in activity. The breathing
+becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more slowly, more
+and more feebly. At last the breathing ceases altogether. The circulation
+does not wholly cease, however. So far as is known, the life of
+warm-blooded animals cannot continue after the circulation has entirely
+ceased for more than a certain not very considerable length of
+time.<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a>
+The chemical changes on which animal heat depends, and without which
+there can be no active vitality, cease with the cessation of respiration.
+But dormant vitality is still maintained in hibernation, because the
+heart's fibre, excited to contract by the carbonized blood, continues to
+propel the blood through the torpid body. This slow circulation of
+venous blood continues during the whole period of hibernation. It is
+the only vital process which can be recognised; and it is not easy to
+understand how the life of any warm-blooded animal can be maintained
+in this way. The explanation usually offered is that the material conveyed
+by the absorbents suffices to counterbalance the process of waste
+occasioned by the slow circulation. But this does not in reality touch
+the chief difficulty presented by the phenomena of hibernation.
+So far as mere waste is concerned (as I have elsewhere pointed
+out) the imagined Australian process is as effectual as hibernation; in
+that process, of course the circulation would be as completely checked as
+the respiration; thus there would be no waste, and the absorbents (which
+would also be absolutely dormant) would not have to do even that slight
+amount of work which they accomplish during hibernation. Science
+can only say that the known cases of hibernation among warm-blooded
+animals show that the vital forces may be reduced much lower without
+destroying life, than but for them we should have deemed conceivable.</p>
+
+<p>But next let us consider what science has to say as to the artificial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span>
+suspension of vitality. In Dr. Richardson's paper on this subject there is
+much which seems almost as surprising as anything in the Australian
+story. Indeed, he seems scarcely to have felt assured that that story
+really was a hoax. "The statements," he says, "which, under the head
+of 'A Wonderful Discovery,' are copied from the <i>Brisbane Courier</i>, seem
+greatly to have astonished the reading public. To what extent the
+statements are true or untrue it is impossible to say. The whole may
+be a cleverly-written fiction, and certain of the words and names used
+seem, according to some readers, to suggest that view; but be this so
+or not, I wish to indicate that some part at all events of what is stated
+might be true, and is certainly within the range of possibility." "The
+discovery," he proceeds, "which is described in the communication under
+notice, is not in principle new; on the subject of suspension of animation
+I have myself been making experimental inquiries for twenty-five
+years at least, and have communicated to the scientific world many
+essays, lectures, and demonstrations, relating to it. I have twice read
+papers bearing on this inquiry to the Royal Society, once to the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science, two or three times in my
+lectures on Experimental and Practical Medicine, and published one in
+<i>Nature</i>. In respect to the particular point of the preservation of animal
+bodies for food, I dwelt on this topic in the lectures delivered before the
+Society of Arts, in April and May of last year (1878), explaining very
+definitely that the course of research in the direction of preservation
+must ultimately lead to a process by which we should keep the structures
+of animals in a form of suspended molecular life." In other words, Dr.
+Richardson had indicated the possibility of doing precisely that which
+would have constituted the chief value of the Australian discovery, if
+this had been real.</p>
+
+<p>Let us next consider what is known respecting the possibility of
+suspending a conscious and active life. This is first stated in general
+terms by Dr. Richardson, as follows:—"If an animal perfectly free from
+disease be subjected to the action of some chemical agents or physical
+agencies which have the property of reducing to the extremest limit the
+motor forces of the body, the muscular irritability, and the nervous
+stimulus to muscular action, and if the suspension of the muscular
+irritability and of the nervous excitation be made at once and equally,
+the body even of a warm-blooded animal may be brought down to a
+condition so closely resembling death, that the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life." This general statement
+must be carefully studied if the reader desires thoroughly to understand
+at once the power and the limits of the power of science in this direction.
+The motor forces, the muscular irritability, and the nervous
+stimulus to muscular action, can be reduced to a certain extent without
+destroying life, but not absolutely without destroying life. The
+reduction of the muscular irritability must be made at once and equally;
+if the muscular irritability is reduced to its lowest limit while the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>
+nervous excitation remains unaltered, or is less reduced, death ensues; and
+<i>vice versâ</i>, if the nervous excitation is reduced to its lowest limits while
+the muscular irritability remains unaltered, or is little reduced, death
+equally follows. Then it is to be noticed that though when the state of
+seeming death is brought about, the most careful examination may fail to
+detect any signs of life, it does not follow that science may not find
+perfectly sure means of detecting cases where life still exists but is at
+its very lowest. Of course all the ordinary tests, in which so many
+place complete reliance—a mirror placed close to the mouth, a finger
+on the pulse, hand, or ear applied to the
+breast<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> over the heart, and so
+forth—would be utterly inadequate, in such a case, to reveal any signs of
+life. That doctors have been deceived by cases of suspended vitality
+not artificially produced, but presenting similar phenomena, is well
+known. A case in point may not be out of place here, as illustrating
+well certain features of suspended animation, and showing the possibility
+that in <i>some</i> cases consciousness may remain, even when the most careful
+examination detects no traces of life. The case is described by Dr.
+Alexander Crichton, in his "Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of
+Mental Derangement." "A young lady, who had seemed gradually to
+sink until she died, had been placed in her coffin, careful scrutiny
+revealing no signs of vitality. On the day appointed for her funeral,
+several hymns were sung before her door. She was conscious of all
+that happened around her, and heard her friends lamenting her death.
+She felt them put on the dead-clothes, and lay her in the coffin, which
+produced an indescribable mental anxiety. She tried to cry, but her
+mind was without power, and could not act on the body. It was
+equally impossible to her to stretch out her arms or to open her eyes
+or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The internal
+anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the funeral
+hymns began to be sung and when the lid of the coffin was about to be
+nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first
+one which gave activity to her mind, and caused it to operate on
+her corporeal frame. Just as the people were about to nail on the lid, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span>
+kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of the body.
+It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive motion
+was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes after,
+during which fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once opened
+her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek." In this case it was considered
+that the state of trance had been brought about by the excessive
+contractile action of the nervous centres. St. Augustine, by the way,
+remarks in his "De Civitate Dei" on the case of a certain priest called
+Restitutus (appropriately enough), who could when he wished withdraw
+himself from life in such sort that he did not feel when twitched or
+stung, but might even be burned without suffering pain except afterwards
+from the wound so produced. Not only did he not struggle or
+even move, but like a dead person he did not breathe, yet afterwards he
+said that he could hear the voices of those around him (if they spoke
+loudly) as if from a great distance (<i>de longinquo</i>).</p>
+
+<p>To return, however, to Dr. Richardson's discussion of the artificial
+suspension of active life.</p>
+
+<p>He recognises three degrees of muscular irritability, to which he has
+given the names of active efficient, passive efficient, and negative,—though
+doubtless he would recognize the probability that the line separating
+the first from the second may not always be easily traced, and that,
+though there is a most definite distinction between the second and the
+third, the actual position of the boundary line has not as yet been determined.
+In other words, so far as the first and second states are
+concerned, there are not two degrees only, but many. As regards the
+third or negative state, which is only another way of describing death,
+there is, of course, only one degree, though the evidence as to the
+existence of this state may be more or less complete and obvious. Dr.
+Richardson defines the active efficient state of muscular irritability as
+that "represented in the ordinary living muscle in which the heart is
+working at full tension, and all parts of the body are thoroughly
+supplied with blood, with perfection of consciousness in waking hours,
+and, in a word, full life." The second, or passive efficient state, "is
+represented in suspended animation, in which the heart is working
+regularly but at low tension, supplying the muscles and other parts with
+sufficient blood to maintain the molecular life, but no more." The
+third of these states—the negative—"is represented when there is no
+motion whatever of blood through the body, as in an animal entirely
+frozen."</p>
+
+<p>With the first and third of these states I have in reality nothing to
+do, unless indeed it could be shown that the third or negative state can
+be produced without causing death. Perhaps in assuming, as I did
+above, that this state is identical with the state of the dead, I was,
+in fact, assuming what science has yet to demonstrate. I may at any
+rate, however, say without fear of valid contradiction, that science has
+as yet never succeeded in showing that this negative state may be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span>
+attained even for a moment without death ensuing; and the probability
+(almost amounting to certainty) is that death and this change of state
+have in every instance been simultaneous. Dr. Richardson speaks of
+the second stage as that in which animation is <i>usually</i> suspended; but
+he does not show that the third stage can even possibly be attained
+without death.</p>
+
+<p>The second stage, or stage of passive efficiency, closely resembles the
+third, "but differs from it in that, under favouring circumstances, the
+whole of the phenomena of the active efficient stage may be perfectly
+resumed, the heart suddenly enlarging in volume from its filling with
+blood, and reanimating the whole organism by the force of its renewed
+stroke in full tension. So far as we have yet proceeded," continues
+Dr. Richardson, "the whole phenomena of restoration from death are
+accomplished during this stage;" meaning, it would seem, that in all
+instances of restoration the restoration has been from the second, never
+from the third stage. "To those who are not accustomed to see them
+they are no doubt very wonderful, looking like veritable restorations
+from death. They surprise even medical men the first time they are
+witnessed by them." He gives an interesting illustration. At a meeting
+of the British Medical Association at Leeds, "a member of the Association
+was showing to a large audience the action of nitrous oxide gas,
+using a rabbit as the subject of his demonstration. The animal was
+removed from the narcotizing chamber a little too late, for it had ceased
+to breathe, and it was placed on the table to all appearance dead." "At
+this stage," he proceeds, "I went to the table, and by use of a small
+pair of double-acting bellows restored respiration. In about four
+minutes there was revival of active irritability in the abdominal
+muscles, and two minutes later the animal leaped again into life, as
+if it had merely been asleep. There was nothing remarkable in the
+fact; but it excited, even in so cultivated an audience as was then
+present, the liveliest surprise."</p>
+
+<p>But when we learn the condition necessary that a body which has
+once been reduced to the state of passive efficiency should be restored
+to active life, we recognise that even when science has learned how to
+reduce vitality to a minimum without destroying it, few will care to
+risk the process, either in their own persons or in the case of those dear
+to them. Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular
+irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and equally
+reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and the
+nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls the
+aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word which
+we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or
+crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears
+to the word watery. If all three fluids remain in the aqueous condition,
+"the period during which life may be restored is left undefined.
+It may be a very long period, including weeks, and possibly months,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span>
+granting that decomposition of the tissues is not established; and even
+after a limited process of decomposition, there may be renewal of life
+in cold-blooded animals. But if pectous change begins in any one of
+the structures I have named, it extends like a crystallization quickly
+through all the structures, and thereupon recovery is impossible, for the
+change in one of the parts is sufficient to prevent the restoration of all.
+Thus the heart may be beating, but the blood being pectous it beats in
+vain; or the heart may beat and the blood may flow, but the voluntary
+muscles being pectous the circulating action is vain; or the heart may
+beat, the blood may flow, and the muscles may remain in the aqueous
+condition, but the nerves being pectous the circulating action is in vain;
+or sometimes the heart may come to rest, and the other parts may
+remain susceptible, but the motion of the heart and blood not being
+present to quicken them into activity, their life is in vain." Add to
+this, that the restoration of the motor forces, of the muscular irritability,
+and of the nervous excitation, must be as simultaneous and as equal as
+their reduction had been, and we begin to recognise decided objections
+to the too frequent suspension of animation, even when the most perfect
+artificial means have been devised for bringing about that interesting
+result.</p>
+
+<p>Although, however, we may not feel encouraged to believe that many
+will care to have experiments tried on themselves in this direction, we
+may still examine with interest the results of experimental research and
+experience. These agree in showing that there are means by which
+active life may be suspended, while at the same time the aqueous condition
+of the fluids mentioned above (the blood, the muscular fluid, and
+the nervous fluid, the two latter of which are for convenience called the
+colloidal animal fluids, and are derived from the blood) is retained.</p>
+
+<p>The first and in some respects the most efficient of these means is
+cold. The blood and the colloidal fluids remain in the aqueous
+condition when the body is exposed to cold at freezing-point. "At
+this same point all vital acts, excepting perhaps the motion of the
+heart" (it is Dr. Richardson, be it remembered, who thus uses the
+significant word "perhaps"), "may be temporarily arrested in an animal,
+and then some animals may continue apparently dead for long intervals
+of time, and may yet return to life under conditions favourable to
+recovery." Dr. Richardson gives a singular illustration of this,
+describing an experiment which must have appeared even more
+surprising to those who witnessed it than that in which the rabbit was
+restored to life. "In one of my lectures on death from cold," he
+says, "which I delivered in the winter session of 1867, some fish
+which during a hard frost had been frozen in a tank at Newcastle-on-Tyne,
+were sent up to me by rail. They were produced in the
+completely frozen state at the lecture, and by careful thawing many
+of them were restored to perfect life. At my Croomian lecture on
+muscular irritability after systemic death, a similar fact was illustrated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span>
+from frogs." It would appear, indeed, that so far as cold-blooded
+animals are concerned, there is no recognisable limit to the time during
+which they may remain thus frozen yet afterwards recover. But, even
+in their case, much skill is required to make the recovery sure. "If in
+thawing them the utmost care is not taken to thaw gradually, and at a
+temperature always below the natural temperature of the living animal,
+the fluids will pass from the frozen state through the aqueous into the
+pectous so rapidly that death from pectous change will be pronounced
+without perceiving any intermediate or life stage at all." Naturally it
+is much more difficult to restore life in the case of warm-blooded
+animals. Indeed, Dr. Richardson remarks, that in the case of the
+more complex and differently shielded organs of warm-blooded animals,
+it is next to impossible to thaw equally and simultaneously all the
+colloidal fluids. "In very young animals it can be done. Young
+kittens, a day or two old, that have been drowned in ice-cold water,
+will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a certainty, if brought
+into dry air at a temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit. The gentlest
+motion of the body will be sufficient to re-start the respiration, and
+therewith the life."</p>
+
+<p>Remarking on such cases as these, Dr. Richardson notes that the
+nearest natural approach to the stage of passive efficiency is seen in
+hibernating animals. He states, however, that in hibernation the
+complete state of passive efficiency is not produced. He does not
+accept the opinion of those who consider that in true hibernation
+breathing ceases as above described. A slow respiration continues, he
+believes, as well as that low stage of active efficiency of circulation
+which we have already indicated. "The hibernating animal sleeps
+only; and while sleeping it consumes or wastes; and if the cold be
+prolonged it may die from waking." More decisive, because surer, is
+the evidence derived from the possibility of waking the hibernating
+animals by the common methods used for waking a sleeper. This
+certainly seems to show that animation is not positively suspended.</p>
+
+<p>He asks next the question whether an animal like a fish, frozen
+equally through all its structures, is to be regarded as actually dead in
+the strict sense of the word or not, seeing that if it be uniformly and
+equally thawed it may recover from this perfectly frozen state. "In
+like manner," he says, "it may be doubted whether a healthy warm-blooded
+animal suddenly and equally frozen through all its parts is
+dead, although it is not recoverable." If, as seems certainly to be the
+case, the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it
+some inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue,
+some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not
+have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot
+die again. Albeit, the outlook is not encouraging, at any rate so far
+as the use of cold alone for maintaining suspended animation in full-grown
+warm-blooded animals is concerned. Cold will, however, for a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span>
+long time maintain ready for motion active organs locally subject to it
+Even after death this effect of cold "may be locally demonstrated,"
+Dr. Richardson tells us, "and has sometimes been so demonstrated to
+the wonder of the world." "For instance, on January 17, in the year
+1803, Aldini, the nephew of Galvani, created the greatest astonishment
+in London by a series of experiments which he conducted on a
+malefactor, twenty-six years old, named John Forster, who was executed
+at Newgate, and whose body, an hour after execution, was delivered
+over to Mr. Keate, Master of the College of Surgeons, for research.
+The body had been exposed for an hour to an atmosphere two degrees
+below freezing-point,<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a>
+and from that cause, though Aldini does not
+seem to have recognised the fact, the voluntary muscles retained their
+irritability to such a degree that when Aldini began to pass voltaic currents
+through the body, some of the bystanders seem to have concluded that
+the unfortunate malefactor had come again to life. It is significant
+also that Aldini in his report says that his object was not to produce
+reanimation, but to obtain a practical knowledge how far galvanism
+might be employed as an auxiliary to revive persons who were accidentally
+suffocated, <i>as though he himself were in some doubt</i>,"—that is,
+not in doubt only about the power of galvanism, but in doubt whether
+Forster had been restored to life for a while, or not! Dr. Richardson
+has himself repeated, on lower animals, these experiments of Aldini's,
+except that the animals on which he has experimented have passed into
+death under chloroform, not through suffocation. His object, in fact,
+was to determine the best treatment for human beings who sink under
+chloroform and other anæsthetics. He finds that in warm weather he
+fails to get the same results. Noticing this, he says, "I experimented
+at and below the freezing-point, and then found that both by the
+electrical discharge, and by injection of water heated to 130 degrees"
+(again this terrible inexactness of expression) "into the muscles through
+the arteries, active muscular movements could be produced in warm-blooded
+animals many hours after death. Thus, for lecture experiment,
+I have removed one muscle from the body of an animal that had slept
+to death from chloroform, and putting the muscle in a glass tube
+surrounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days in a condition
+for its making a final muscular contraction, and, by gently
+thawing it, have made it, in the act of final contraction, do some
+mechanical work, such as moving a long needle on the face of a dial, or
+discharging a pistol. In muscles so removed from the body and preserved
+ready for motion there is, however, only one final act. For as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span>
+the blood and nervous supply are both cut off from it, there is nothing
+left in it but the reserved something that was fixed by the cold. But I
+do not see any reason why this should not be maintained in reservation
+for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>Cold being, however, obviously insufficient of itself for the suspension
+of active life in warm-blooded animals, at least if such life is eventually
+to be restored, let us next consider some of the agencies which either
+alone or aided by cold may suspend without destroying life.</p>
+
+<p>The first known of all such agencies was mandragora. Dioscorides
+describes a wine, called <i>morion</i>, which was made from the leaves and
+the root of mandragora, and possessed properties resembling those of
+chloral hydrate. That it must have been an effective narcotic is shown
+by the circumstance that painful operations were performed on patients
+subjected to its influence, without their suffering the least pain, or even
+feeling. The sleep thus produced lasted several hours. Dr. Richardson
+considers that the use of this agent was probably continued until the
+twelfth or thirteenth century. "From the use of it doubtless came,"
+he says, "the Shaksperian legend of Juliet." He strangely omits to
+notice that Shakspeare elsewhere speaks of this narcotic by name,
+where Iago says of Othello:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i4">"Not poppy, nor mandragora,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which thou own'dst yesterday."<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Probably the use of mandragora as a narcotic may have continued much
+later than the thirteenth century. In earlier times it was certainly used as
+opium is now used, not for medicinal purposes, but to produce for
+a while an agreeable sensation of dreamy drowsiness. "There were
+those," says Dr. Richardson, in his interesting article on Narcotics in the
+<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span> for July last, "who drank of it for taste or
+pleasure, and who were spoken of as 'mandragorites,' as we might speak
+of 'alcoholists' or 'chloralists.' They passed into the land of sleep
+and dream, and waking up in scare and alarm were the screaming mandrakes
+of an ancient civilization." He has himself made the "morion"
+of the ancients, dispensing the prescription of Dioscorides and Pliny.
+"The same chemist, Mr. Hanbury," he says, "who first put chloral into
+my hands for experiment, also procured for me the root of the true
+mandragora. From that root I made the morion, tested it on myself,
+tried its effects, and re-proved, after a lapse perhaps of four or five
+centuries, that it had all the properties originally ascribed to it."</p>
+
+<p>The "deadly nightshade" has similar properties. (In fact, morion
+was originally made from the <i>Atropa belladonna</i>, not from its ally
+the <i>Atropa mandragora</i>.) In 1851, Dr. Richardson attended two
+children who were poisoned for a time from eating the berries and
+chewing the leaves of the nightshade, which they had gathered near
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span>
+Richmond. They were brought home insensible, he says, "and they lay
+in a condition of suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being
+required to detect either the respiration or the movements of the heart;
+they nevertheless recovered."</p>
+
+<p>With the nitrite of amyl, Dr. Richardson has suspended the life of a
+frog for nine days, yet the creature was then restored to full and vigorous
+life. He has shown also that the same power of suspension, though in
+less degree, "could be produced in warm-blooded animals, and that the
+heart of a warm-blooded animal would contract for a period of eighteen
+hours after apparent death." The action of nitrite of amyl seems to
+resemble that of cold. In the pleasing language of the doctors, "it
+prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents <i>rigor
+mortis</i>, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous centres and
+cords." So long as this change is prevented, active life can be restored.
+But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred, all was
+over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction was the
+result." From the analogy of some of the symptoms resulting from the
+use of nitrite of amyl with the symptoms of catalepsy, Dr. Richardson
+has "ventured to suggest that under some abnormal conditions the
+human body itself, in its own chemistry, may produce an agent which
+causes the suspended life observed during the cataleptic condition."
+The suggestion has an interest apart from the question of the possibility
+of safely suspending animation for considerable periods of time: it
+might be possible to detect the nature of the agent thus produced by
+the chemistry of the human body (if the theory is correct), and thus to
+learn how its power might be counteracted.</p>
+
+<p>Chloral hydrate seems singularly efficient in producing the semblance
+of death,—so completely, indeed, as to deceive even the elect. Dr.
+Richardson states that at the meeting of the British Association at
+Exeter, some pigeons which had been put to sleep by the needle injection
+of a large dose of chloral, "fell into such complete resemblance of
+death that they passed for dead among an audience containing many
+physiologists and other men of science. For my own part," he proceeds,
+"I could detect no sign of life in them, and they were laid in one of
+the out-offices of the museum of the infirmary as dead. In this condition
+they were left late at night, but in the following morning they
+were found alive, and as well as if nothing hurtful had happened to
+them." Similar effects seem to be produced by the deadly poisons
+cyanogen gas and hydrocyanic acid, though in the following case,
+narrated by Dr. Richardson, the animal experimented upon (not with
+the idea of eventually restoring it to life) belonged to a race so
+specially tenacious of life that some may consider only one of its proverbial
+nine lives to have been affected. In the laboratory of a large
+drug establishment a cat, "by request of its owner, was killed, as was
+assumed, instantaneously and painlessly by a large dose of Scheele's
+acid. The animal appeared to die without a pang, and, presenting every
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span>
+appearance of death, was laid in a sink to be removed on the next
+morning. At night the animal was lying still in form of death in the
+tank beneath a tap. In the morning it was found alive and well, but
+with the fur wet from the dropping of water from the tap." This fact
+was communicated to Dr. Richardson by an eminent chemist under
+whose direct observation it occurred, in corroboration of an observation
+of his own similar in character.</p>
+
+<p>Our old friend alcohol (if friend it can be called) possesses the power
+of suspending active vitality without destroying life, or at any rate
+without depriving the muscles of their excitability. Dr. Richardson
+records the case of a drunken man who, while on the ice at the Welsh
+Harp lake, fell into the water through an opening in the ice, and was
+for more than fifteen minutes completely immersed. He was extricated
+to all appearance dead, but under artificial respiration was restored to
+consciousness, though he did not survive for many hours. On the
+whole, alcoholic suspension of life does not appear to be the best
+method available. To test it, the patient must first get "very, very
+drunk," and even then, like the soldiers in the old song, must go on
+drinking, lest the experiment should terminate simply in the fiasco of a
+drunken sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The last agent for suspending life referred to by Dr. Richardson is
+pure oxygen. But he has not yet obtained such information on the
+power of oxygen in this respect as he hopes to do.</p>
+
+<p>Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics
+and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that
+much is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension
+of animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various
+chemical agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold,
+together with the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended
+living action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative
+influence the process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the
+news from Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been
+done had been effected by the combination of one of the chemical
+agents above named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question
+which would remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle
+has been developed, but whether in matter of detail a new product has
+been discovered which, better than any of the agents we already possess,
+destroys and suspends animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds,
+"there are, I doubt not, hundreds of substances which, like mandragora
+and nitrite of amyl, would suspend the vital process, and it may be a
+new experimenter has met with such an agent. It is not incredible,
+indeed, that the Indian Fakirs possess a vegetable extract or essence
+which possesses the same power, and by means of which they perform
+their as yet unexplained feat of prolonged living burial." But he is
+careful to note the weak points of the Australian story—viz., first, the
+statement that the method used is a secret, "for men of true science
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span>
+know no such word;" secondly, that the experimenter has himself to
+go to America to procure more supplies of his agents; and, thirdly, that
+he requires two agents, one of which is an antidote to the other. As
+respects this third point, he asks very pertinently how an antidote
+can be absorbed and enter into the circulation in a body practically
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax,
+and a mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long
+distances to Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised
+such important results, only to find that there was not a particle of
+truth in the story.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Richard A. Proctor.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+Many fail to see a joke when it is gravely propounded in print, who would at once
+recognise it as such, were it uttered verbally, with however serious a countenance. Possibly
+this is due to the necessary absence in the printed account of the indications by which we
+recognise that a speaker is jesting—as a certain expression of countenance, or a certain
+intonation of voice, by which the grave utterer of a spoken jest conveys his real meaning.
+In a paper which recently appeared in the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>, Mr. Foster (Thomas of that
+ilk) propounded very gravely the theory that our Nursery Rhymes have in reality had
+their origin in Nature Myths. He explained, for instance, that the rhymes relating to
+Little Jack Horner were originally descriptive of sunrise in winter: Little Jack is the sun
+in winter, the Christmas pie is the cloud-covered sky; the thumb represents the sun's first
+ray piercing through the clouds; and Jack's rejoicing means the brightness of full sunlight.
+So also the rhymes beginning Hey Diddle Diddle are shown to be of deep and solemn import,
+all in manifest burlesque of some recent extravagant interpretations of certain ancient
+stories by Goldziher, Steinthal, and others. Yet this fun was seriously criticized by more
+than half the critics, by some approvingly, by some otherwise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
+For a full account of this clever hoax the reader is referred to my "Myths and Marvels
+of Astronomy."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
+The most curious are given in the ninth essay of my work referred to in the preceding
+note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
+Few probably are aware how long some animals may remain without breathing and yet
+survive. Kittens and puppies have been brought to life after being immersed in water for
+nearly three-quarters of an hour.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
+Objection has been taken to the italicized words in the following passage from "No
+Thoroughfare" (one of the parts certainly written by Dickens and not by Wilkie Collins):
+"The cry came up: 'His heart still beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have
+cast off the rope, for the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him;
+but I am not afraid.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking lower, but his heart still beats
+against mine.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking still, and we are deadly cold.
+<i>His heart no longer beats against mine.</i> Let no one come down to add to our weight. Lower
+the rope only.' ... The cry came up with a deathly silence, 'Raise! softly!' ...
+She broke from them all and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands upon
+<i>the heart that stood still</i>." It has been supposed that Dickens wilfully departed here from
+truth, in order to leave the impression on the reader that Vendale was assuredly dead.
+That he wished to convey this impression is obvious. He often showed similar care to
+remove, if possible, all hope from the anxious reader's mind (markedly so in his latest and
+unfinished work, where nevertheless any one well acquainted with Dickens's manner knows
+not only that Drood is alive, but that disguised as Datchery he was to have watched Jasper
+to the end). But in reality, it has happened more than once that persons have been restored
+to life who have been found in snow-drifts not merely reduced to complete insensibility,
+but without any recognisable heart-beat. Dickens had probably heard of such cases when
+in Switzerland.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+Dr. Richardson will certainly excite the contempt of the northern professor who rebuked
+me recently for speaking of heat when I should have said temperature. "An
+atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point" is an expression as inadmissible, if we must
+be punctilious in such matters, as the expressions "blood-heat," "a heat of ten degrees,"
+and so forth. Possibly, however, it is not desirable to be punctilious when there is no
+possibility of being misunderstood, especially as it may be noticed (the Edinburgh professor
+has often afforded striking illustrations of the fact by errors of his own) that too great an
+effort to be punctilious often results in very remarkable incorrectness of expression.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED.</h2>
+
+<h4>IV.—<span class="smcap">Utilitarianism</span>.</h4>
+
+<p>In some respects Mill's Essays, published under the title "Utilitarianism,"
+are among his best writings. They have, in the first place,
+the excellence of brevity. Ninety-six pages, printed in handsome type,
+make but a light task for the student who wishes to enter into the intricacies
+of moral doctrine. Moreover, the last Essay consists of a
+digression concerning the nature and origin of the idea of Justice, and it
+occupies nearly one-third of the whole book. Thus Mill managed to
+compress his discussion of so important a subject as the foundations of
+Moral Right and Wrong into some sixty pleasant pages.</p>
+
+<p>And pleasant pages they certainly are, for they are written in Mill's
+very best style. Now Mill, even when he is most prolix, when he is
+pursuing the intricacies of the most involved points of logic and philosophy,
+can seldom or never be charged with dulness and heaviness. His
+language is too easy, polished, and apparently lucid. In these Essays
+on Utilitarianism, he reaches his own highest standard of style. There
+is hardly any other book in the range of philosophy, so far as my reading
+has gone, which can be read with less effort. There is something
+enticing in the easy flow of sentences and ideas, and without apparent
+difficulty the reader finds himself agreeably borne into the midst of
+the most profound questions of ethical philosophy, questions which
+have been the battle-ground of the human intellect for two thousand
+five hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>Partly to this excellence of style, partly to Mill's immense reputation,
+acquired by other works and in other ways, must we attribute the importance
+which has been generally attached to these ninety-six pages.
+Probably no other modern work of the same small typographical extent
+has been equally discussed, criticized, and admired, unless, indeed, it be
+the Essay on Liberty of the same author. The result is, that Mill has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span>
+been generally regarded as the latest and best expounder of the great
+Utilitarian Doctrine—that doctrine which is, by one and no doubt the
+preponderating school, regarded as the foundation of all moral and
+legislative progress. Many there are who think that, what Hume and
+Paley and Jeremy Bentham began, Mill has carried nearly to perfection
+in these agreeable Essays.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more plain, too, than that Mill himself believed he
+was dutifully expounding the doctrines of his father, of his father's
+friend, the great Bentham, and of the other unquestionable Utilitarians
+among whom he grew up. Mill seems to pride himself upon having
+been the first, not indeed to invent, but to bring into general acceptance
+the name of the school to which he supposed himself to belong.
+He says:<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>
+"The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to
+be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did
+not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
+'Annals of the Parish.' After using it as a designation for several
+years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
+resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a
+name for one single opinion, not a set of opinions—to denote the recognition
+of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it—the
+term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases,
+a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution."</p>
+
+<p>In the Autobiography (p. 79), Mill makes a statement to the same
+effect, saying—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galt's novels, the 'Annals
+of the Parish,' in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed
+autobiography, is represented as warning his parishioners not to leave the
+Gospel and become utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner
+I seized on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as a
+sectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some others holding
+the opinions it was intended to designate. As those opinions attracted more
+notice, the term was repeated by strangers and opponents, and got into rather
+common use just about the time when those who had originally assumed it, laid
+down that along with other sectarian characteristics."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is pointed out, however, by Mr. Sidgwick in his article on
+Benthamism,<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>
+that Bentham himself suggested the name "Utilitarian,"
+in a letter to Dumont, as far back as June, 1802.</p>
+
+<p>Mill explicitly states that it was his purpose in these Essays on
+Utilitarianism to expound a previously received doctrine of utility. Towards
+the close of his first chapter, containing General Remarks, he
+says (p. 6): "On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion
+of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards
+the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness
+theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of." He proceeds to
+explain that a preliminary condition of the rational acceptance or rejection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span>
+of a doctrine is that its formula should be correctly understood.
+The very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of the Utilitarian formula
+was the chief obstacle which impeded its reception; the main work to
+be done, therefore, by a Utilitarian writer was to clear the doctrine
+from the grosser misconceptions. Thus the question would be greatly
+simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties removed. His Essays
+purport throughout to be a defence and exposition of the Utilitarian
+doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>But one characteristic of Mill's writings is that there is often a wide
+gulf between what he intends and what he achieves. There is even a
+want of security that what he is at any moment urging may not be the
+logical contrary of what he thinks he is urging. This happens to be
+palpably the case with the celebrated Essays before us. Mill explains
+and defends his favourite doctrine with so much affection and so much
+candour that he finally explains himself into the opposite doctrine.
+Yet with that simplicity which is a pleasing feature of his personal
+character, Mill continues to regard himself as a Utilitarian long after
+he has left the grounds of Paley and Bentham. Lines of logical
+distinction and questions of logical consistency are of little account to
+one who cannot distinguish between fact and feeling, between sense and
+sentiment. It is possible that no small part of the favour with which
+these Essays have always been received by the general public is due to
+the happy way in which Mill has combined the bitter and the sweet.
+The uncompromising rigidity of the Benthamist formulas is softened
+and toned down. An apparently scientific treatment is combined with
+so many noble sentiments and high aspirations, that almost any one
+except a logician may be disarmed.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing can endure if it be not logical. These Essays may be
+very agreeable reading; they may make readers congratulate themselves
+on so easily becoming moral philosophers; but they cannot really
+advance moral science if they represent one thing as being another
+thing. I make it my business therefore in this article to show that
+Mill was intellectually unfitted to decide what was utilitarian and what
+was not. In removing the obstacles to the reception of his favourite
+doctrine he removed its landmarks too, and confused everything. It is
+true that I come rather late in the day to show this. Some scores, if not
+hundreds, of critics have shown the same fact more or less clearly.
+Eminent men of the most different schools and tones of thought—such
+as the Rev. Dr. Martineau, Mr. Sidgwick, Dr. Ward, Professor Birks,
+the late Professor Grote—have criticized and refuted Mill time after
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Since commencing my analysis of Mill's Philosophy, I have been
+surprised to find, too, that some who were supposed to support Mill's
+school through thick and thin, have long since discovered the inconsistencies
+which I would now expose, at such wearisome length as if they
+were new discoveries. Such is the ground which my friend, Professor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span>
+Croom Robertson, takes in his quarterly review, <i>Mind</i>, which must
+be considered our best authority on philosophical questions. As
+to this matter of Utilitarianism, a very eminent author, formerly a
+friend of Mill himself, assures me that the subject is quite threshed
+out, and implies that there is no need for me to trouble the public any
+more about it. In fact, it would seem to be allowed within philosophical
+circles that Mill's works are often wrongheaded and unphilosophical.
+Yet these works are supposed to have done so much good that obloquy
+attaches to any one who would seek to diminish the respect paid to
+them by the public at large. Philosophers, and teachers of the last
+generation at least, have done their best to give Mill's groundless philosophy
+a hold upon all the schools and all the press, and yet we of this
+generation are to wait calmly until this influence dissolves of its own
+accord. We are to do nothing to lessen the natural respect paid to the
+memory of the dead, especially of the dead who have unquestionably
+laboured with single-minded purpose for what they considered the good
+of their fellow-creatures. But in nothing is it more true than in philosophy,
+that "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft
+interred with their bones." Words and false arguments cannot be
+recalled. Throw a stone into the surface of the still sea, and you are
+powerless to prevent the circle of disturbance from spreading more and
+more widely. True it is, that one disturbance may be overcome and
+apparently obliterated by other deeper disturbances; but Mill's works
+and opinions were disseminated by the immense former influence of the
+united band of Benthamist philosophers. He is criticized and discussed
+and repeated, in almost every philosophical work of the last thirty or
+forty years. He is taken throughout the world as the representative of
+British philosophy, and it is not sufficient for a few eminent thinkers in
+Oxford, or Cambridge, or London, or Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, to acknowledge
+in a tacit sort of way that this doctrine and that doctrine is
+wrong. Eventually, no doubt, the opinion of the Lecture Halls and
+Combination Rooms will guide the public opinion; but it may take a
+generation for tacit opinions to permeate society. We must have them
+distinctly and boldly expressed. It is especially to be remembered that the
+public press throughout the English-speaking countries is mostly conducted
+by men educated in the time when Mill's works were entirely
+predominant. These men are now for the most part cut off, by geographical
+or professional obstacles, from the direct influence of Oxford
+or Cambridge. The circle of disturbance has spread beyond the immediate
+reach of those centres of thought. To be brief, I do not believe
+that Mill's immense philosophical influence, founded as it is on confusion
+of thought, will readily collapse. I fear that it may remain as
+a permanent obstacle in the way of sound thinking. <i>Citius emergit
+veritas ex errore, quam ex confusione.</i> Had Mill simply erred as did
+Hobbes about elementary geometry, and Berkeley about infinitesimals,
+it would be necessary merely to point out the errors and consign them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span>
+to merciful oblivion. But it is not so easy to consign to oblivion ponderous
+works so full of confusion of thought that every inexperienced
+and unwarned reader is sure to lose his way in them, and to take for
+profound philosophy that which is really a kind of kaleidoscopic presentation
+of philosophic ideas and phrases, in a succession of various
+but usually inconsistent combinations. To the public at large, Mill's
+works still undoubtedly remain as the standard of accurate thinking,
+and the most esteemed repertory of philosophy. I cannot therefore
+consider my criticism superfluous, and at the risk of repeating much that
+has been said by the eminent critics already mentioned, or by others, I
+must show that Mill has thrown ethical philosophy into confusion as
+far as could well be done in ninety-six pages.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the Utilitarian doctrine is explained by Mill with
+sufficient accuracy in pp. 9 and 10, where he says—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest
+Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to
+promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By
+happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain,
+and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set
+up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it
+includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an
+open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of
+life on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure, and
+freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable
+things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as any other scheme) are desirable
+either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion
+of pleasure and the prevention of pain."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mill proceeds to say that such a theory of life excites inveterate
+dislike in many minds, and among them some of the most estimable in
+feeling and purpose. To hold forth no better end than pleasure is felt
+to be utterly mean and grovelling—a doctrine worthy only of swine.
+Mill accordingly proceeds to inquire whether there is anything really
+grovelling in the doctrine—whether, on the contrary, we may not include
+under pleasure, feelings and motives which are in the highest
+degree noble and elevating. The whole inquiry turns upon this question—Do
+pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity? Can a
+small amount of pleasure of very elevated character outweigh a large
+amount of pleasure of low quality? We should never think of estimating
+pictures by their size and number. The productions of West
+and Fuseli, which were the wonder and admiration of our grandparents,
+can now be bought by the square yard, to cover the
+bare walls of eating-houses and music-halls. <i>Sic transit gloria
+mundi.</i> But a choice sketch by Turner sometimes sells for many
+pounds per square inch. It is clear, then, that in the opinion of connoisseurs,
+which must, for our present purpose, be considered final, high
+art is almost wholly a matter of quality. Two great pictures by West
+may be nearly twice as valuable as one; and two equally choice
+sketches by Turner are twice as good as one; but it would seem
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span>
+hardly possible in the present day for the disciple of "high art" to
+bring West and Turner into the same category of thought. I suppose
+that even Turner will presently begin to wane before "the higher
+criticism."</p>
+
+<p>A corresponding difficulty lies at the very basis of the Utilitarian
+theory of ethics. The tippler may esteem two pints of beer doubly as
+much as one; the hero may feel double satisfaction in saving two lives
+instead of one; but who shall weigh the pleasure of a pint of beer
+against the pleasure of saving a fellow-creature's life.</p>
+
+<p>Paley, indeed, cut the Gordian knot of this difficulty in a summary
+manner; he denied altogether that there is any difference
+between pleasures, except in continuance and intensity. It must have
+required some moral courage to write the paragraph to be next quoted;
+yet Paley, however much he may be said to have temporized and
+equivocated about oaths and subscription to Articles, cannot be accused
+of want of explicitness in this passage. There is a directness and clear-hitting
+of the point in Paley's writings which always charms me.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the amount
+or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree of happiness
+depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the greatest quantity of it
+ordinarily attainable in human life, is what we mean by happiness, when we
+inquire or pronounce what human happiness consists in. In which inquiry I
+will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the
+superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our
+constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions,
+or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that
+pleasures differ in nothing, but in continuance and intensity: from a just computation
+of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness,
+tranquillity, and contentment, of men of different tastes, tempers, stations, and
+pursuits, every question concerning human happiness must receive its
+decision."<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Bentham, it need hardly be said, adopted the same idea as the basis
+of his ethical and legislative theories. In his uncompromising style he
+tells us<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
+<i>pain</i> and <i>pleasure</i>. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well
+as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and
+wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.
+They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can
+make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.
+In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will
+remain subject to it all the while. The <i>principle of utility</i> recognises this subjection,
+and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is
+to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which
+attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of
+reason, in darkness instead of light."</p></div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere Bentham proceeds to show how we may estimate the <i>values</i>
+of pleasures and pains, meaning obviously by <i>values</i> the quantities or
+forces. As these feelings are both the ends and the instruments of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span>
+moralist and legislator, it especially behoves us to learn how to estimate
+these values aright, and Bentham tells us most
+distinctly.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>To a person, he says, considered <i>by himself</i>, the value of a pleasure or pain
+considered <i>by itself</i>, will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances.
+1. Its <i>intensity</i>. 2. Its <i>duration</i>. 3. Its <i>certainty</i> or <i>uncertainty</i>.
+4. Its <i>propinquity</i> or <i>remoteness</i>. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is
+to be considered for the purpose of estimating the general tendency of the act,
+we have to take into account also, 5. The <i>fecundity</i>, or the chance it has of being
+followed by sensations of the same kind, that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure;
+pains, if it be a pain. 6. Its <i>purity</i>, or the chance it has of <i>not</i> being followed by
+sensations of the <i>opposite</i> kind: that is, pains, if it be a pleasure; pleasures, if it
+be a pain. Finally, when we consider the interests of a number of persons, we
+must also estimate a pleasure or pain with reference to, 7. Its extent; that is the
+number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it.</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus did Bentham clearly and explicitly lay the foundations of the
+moral and political sciences, and to impress these fundamental propositions
+on the memory he framed the following curious mnemonic lines,
+which may be quoted for the sake of their quaintness:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"<i>Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure</i>——<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If it be public, wide let them <i>extend</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such <i>pains</i> avoid, whichever be thy view:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If pains <i>must</i> come, let them <i>extend</i> to few."<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In all that Bentham says about pleasure and pain, there is not a
+word about the intrinsic superiority of one pleasure to another. He
+advocates our seeking <i>pure</i> pleasures; but with him a pure pleasure was
+clearly defined as one not likely to be followed by feelings of the
+opposite kind; the pleasure of opium-eating, for instance, would be
+called impure, simply because it is likely to lead to bad health and
+consequent pain; if not so followed by evil consequences, the pleasure
+would be as pure as any other pleasure. With Bentham morality
+became, as it were, a question of the ledger and the balance-sheet;
+all feelings were reduced to the same denomination of value, and whenever
+we indulge in a little enjoyment, or endure a pain, the consequences
+in regard to subsequent enjoyment or suffering are to be inexorably
+scored for or against us, as the case may be. Our conduct must be
+judged wise or foolish according as, in the long-run, we find a favourable
+"hedonic" balance-sheet.</p>
+
+<p>What Mill in his earlier life thought about these foundations of the
+utilitarian doctrine, and the elaborate structure reared therefrom by
+Bentham, he has told us in his Autobiography, pp. 64 to 70. Subsequently
+Mill revolted, as we all know, against the narrowness of the
+Benthamist creed. While wishing to
+retain<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+the precision of expression, the definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and
+vague generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span>
+Bentham and of his own father, James Mill, John Stuart decided to
+give a wider basis and a more free and "genial" character to the utilitarian
+speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider how Mill proceeded to give this "genial" character
+to the utilitarian philosophy. It must be admitted, he
+says,<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> that
+utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over
+bodily pleasures <i>chiefly</i> in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &amp;c.,
+of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in
+their intrinsic nature. As regards Bentham, at least, Mill might have
+omitted the word <i>chiefly</i>. But according to Mill, there is no need why
+they should have taken such a ground.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"They might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground,
+with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to
+recognise the fact, that some <i>kinds</i> of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable
+than others. It would be absurd, that while, in estimating all other things,
+quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be
+supposed to depend on quantity alone."</p></div>
+
+<p>Then Mill proceeds to point out, with all the persuasiveness of his best
+style, that there are higher feelings which we would not sacrifice for any
+quantity of a lower feeling. Few human creatures, he holds, would
+consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of
+the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being
+would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus,
+no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, and so
+forth. Mill, in fact, treats us to a good deal of what Paley so cynically
+called the "usual declamation," on the dignity and capacity of our
+nature, and the worthiness of some satisfactions compared with the
+grossness and sensuality of others. It must be allowed that Mill has
+the best of it, at least with the majority of readers. Paley is simply
+brutal as to the way in which he depresses everything to the same level
+of apparent sensuality. Mill overflows with genial and noble aspirations;
+he hardly deigns to count the lower pleasures as worth putting
+in the scale; it is better, he thinks, to be a human being dissatisfied than
+a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
+If the pig or the fool is of a different opinion, it is because they only
+know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison
+knows both sides. In the pages which follow there is much
+nobleness and elevation of thought. But where is the logic? We
+are nothing if we are not logical. But does Mill, in the fervour of his
+revolt against the cold, narrow restraints of the Benthamist formulas,
+consider the consistency and stability of his position? Let us examine
+in some detail the position to which he has brought himself.</p>
+
+<p>It is plain, in the first place, that pleasure is with Mill the ultimate
+purpose of existence; for the philosophy is that of utilitarianism, and
+Mill distinctly assures us (Autobiography, p. 178) that he "never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span>
+ceased to be a utilitarian." We must, of course, distinguish between
+the pleasure of the individual and the pleasure of other individuals of
+the race, between Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism, as Mr.
+Sidgwick calls these very different doctrines. But the happiness of the
+race is, of course, made up of the happiness of its units, so that unless
+most of the individuals pursue a course ensuring happiness, the race
+cannot be happy in the aggregate. Now, to acquire happiness the
+individual must, of course, select that line of conduct which is likely
+to—that is, will in the majority of cases—bring happiness. He must aim
+at something which is capable of being reached. Mill tells us (p. 18)
+that if by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement,
+it is evident enough that this is impossible to attain.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with
+some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment,
+not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who have
+taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware as those who taunt
+them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture; but moments
+of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various
+pleasures, with a decided predominance of the actual over the passive, and <i>having
+as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of
+bestowing</i>.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to
+obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of happiness."</p></div>
+
+<p>Then Mill goes on to point out what he considers has been sufficient
+to satisfy great numbers of mankind (p. 19):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either of which
+by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity, and excitement.
+With much tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little
+pleasure: with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable
+quantity of pain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even
+the mass of mankind to unite both."</p></div>
+
+<p>From these passages we must gather that at any rate the mass of
+mankind will attain happiness if they are satisfied with these main
+constituents, and we are especially told that the foundation of the
+whole utilitarian philosophy (Mill does not specify the substantive to
+which the adjective <i>whole</i> applies in the above quotation, but it must
+from the context be either "utilitarian philosophy," "search for happiness,"
+or some closely equivalent idea) is <i>not to expect from life more
+than it is capable of bestowing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The question, then, may fairly arise whether upon a fair calculation
+of probabilities they are not wise, upon Mill's own showing, who aim
+at moderate achievements in life, so that in accomplishing these they
+may insure a satisfied life. This seems the more reasonable, if, as
+Mill elsewhere tells us, the nobler feelings are very apt to be killed off
+by the chilly realities of life.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Many," he says (p. 14), "who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything
+noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness. But
+I do not believe that those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span>
+choose the lower description of pleasure in preference to the higher, I believe
+that before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already
+become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
+natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by
+mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies
+away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the
+society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher
+capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual
+tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they
+addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them,
+but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only
+ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether
+any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasure, ever
+knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have
+broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both."</p></div>
+
+<p>It would seem, then, that for the mass of mankind there is small
+prospect indeed of achieving happiness through high aspirations. They
+will not have time nor opportunity for indulging them. If they look
+for happiness solely to such aspirations they must be disappointed, and
+cannot have a satisfied life; if they attempt to combine the higher and
+lower lives they are likely to "break down in the ineffectual attempt."
+Now, I submit that, under these circumstances, it is folly, according to
+Mill's scheme of morality, to aim high; it is equivalent to going into a
+life-lottery, in which there are no doubt high prizes to be gained, but
+few and far between. It is simply gambling with hedonic stakes;
+preferring a small chance of high enjoyment to comparative certainty
+of moderate pleasures. Mill clearly admits this when he says (p. 14),
+"It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are
+low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a
+highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he
+can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect."</p>
+
+<p>Although, then, "the foundation of the whole" is not to expect from
+life more than it is capable of bestowing, we are actually to prefer
+becoming highly endowed, although we cannot expect life to satisfy
+the corresponding aspirations. That is to say, although seeking for
+happiness, we are to prefer the course in which we are approximately
+certain of not obtaining it.</p>
+
+<p>But Mill goes on to give some explanations. He says that the
+highly endowed being can learn to bear the imperfections of his happiness,
+"if they are at all bearable" (p. 14). This is small comfort if
+they happen to be <i>not at all bearable</i>, an alternative which is not further
+pursued by Mill. And will not this intolerable fate be most likely to
+befall those whose aspirations have been pitched most highly? But
+Mill goes on:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"They (that is, the imperfections of life or happiness?) will not make him envy
+the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he
+feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a
+human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied,
+than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span>
+because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the
+comparison knows both sides."</p></div>
+
+<p>Concerning this position of affairs the most apposite remark I can
+make is contained in the somewhat trite and vulgar saying, "Where
+ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." If Socrates is pretty sure to
+be dissatisfied, and yet, owing to his wisdom, cannot help wishing to be
+Socrates, he seems to have no chance of that individual happiness which
+depends on being satisfied, and not expecting from life more than it is
+capable of bestowing. The great majority of people who do not know
+what it is like to be Socrates, are surely to be congratulated that they
+can, without scruple or remorse, seek a prize of happiness which there
+is a fair prospect of securing. But Mill tells us that those who choose
+the lower life do so "because they only know their own side of the
+question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides." Then
+Mill introduces a paragraph, already partially quoted, in which he
+allows that men often do, <i>from infirmity of character</i>, make their
+selection for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less
+valuable. Many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything
+noble, sink in later years into indolence and selfishness. The capacity
+for the nobler feelings is easily killed, and men lose their high aspirations
+because they have not time and opportunity for indulging them.
+I submit that, <i>from Mill's point of view</i>, these are all valid reasons
+why they should <i>not</i> choose the higher life. We are considering here,
+not those who have always been devoid of the nobler feelings, but
+those who have in earlier life been full of enthusiasm and high aspirations.
+If such men, with few exceptions, decide eventually in favour
+of the lower life, they are parties who <i>do</i> know both sides of the comparison,
+and deliberately choose not to be Socrates, with the prospect
+of the very imperfect happiness (probably involving short rations) which
+is incident to the life of Socrates.</p>
+
+<p>Mill, indeed, calmly assumes that the vote goes in his own and
+Socrates' favour. He says (p. 15):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no
+appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which
+of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its
+moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified
+by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them,
+must be admitted as final. And there need be the less hesitation to accept this
+judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to
+be referred to, even on the question of quantity. What means are there of
+determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable
+sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are familiar with both?"</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, were we dealing with a writer of average logical accuracy
+there would be considerable presumption that when he adduces evidence
+and claims a result in his own favour in this confident way, there would
+be some ground for the claim. But my scrutiny of Mill's "System of
+Logic" has taught me caution in admitting such presumptions in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span>
+respect of his writings, and here is a case in point. He claims that the
+suffrage of the majority is in favour of Socrates' life, although he has
+admitted that the vast majority of men somehow or other elect not to
+be Socrates. He assumes, indeed, that this is because their aspirations
+have been first killed off by unfavourable circumstances; his only residuum
+of fact is contained in this somewhat hesitating conclusion already
+quoted:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible
+to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower;
+though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine
+both."</p></div>
+
+<p>Although, then, millions and millions are continually deciding
+against Socrates' life, for one reason or another (and many in all ages
+who make the ineffectual attempt at a combination break down), Mill
+gratuitously assumes that they are none of them competent witnesses,
+because they must have lost their higher feelings before they could
+have descended to the lower level; then the comparatively few who do
+choose the higher life and succeed in attaining it are adduced as giving
+a large majority, or even a unanimous vote in favour of their own choice.
+I submit that this is a fallacy probably to be best classed as a <i>petitio
+principii</i>; Mill entirely begs the question when he assumes that every
+witness against him is an incapacitated witness, because he must have
+lost his capacity for the nobler feelings before he could have decided in
+favour of the lower.</p>
+
+<p>The verdict which Mill takes in favour of his high-quality pleasures
+is entirely that of a packed jury. It is on a par with the verdict which
+would be given by vegetarians in favour of a vegetable diet. No doubt,
+those who call themselves vegetarians would almost unanimously say
+that it is the best and highest diet; but then, all those who have tried
+such diet and found it impracticable have disappeared from the jury,
+together with all those whose common sense, or scientific knowledge, or
+weak state of health, or other circumstances, have prevented them from
+attempting the experiment. By the same method of decision, we might
+all be required to get up at five o'clock in the morning and do four
+hours of head-work before breakfast, because the few hard-headed and
+hard-bodied individuals who do this sort of thing are unanimously of
+opinion that it is a healthly and profitable way of beginning the day.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it will be understood that I am not denying the moral
+superiority of some pleasures and courses of life over others. I am
+only showing that Mill's attempt to reconcile his ideas on the subject
+with the Utilitarian theory hopelessly fails. The few pleasant pages
+in which he makes this attempt (Utilitarianism, pp. 8-28), form, in fact,
+a most notable piece of sophistical reasoning. Much of the interest of
+these undoubtedly interesting passages arises from the kaleidoscopic
+way in which the standing difficulties of ethical science are woven
+together, as if they were logically coherent in Mill's mode of presentation.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span>
+The ideas involved are as old as Plato and Aristotle. The high
+aspirations correspond to
+<span class="greek" title="to kalon">τὸ καλὸν</span> of Plato. The superior man who can
+judge both sides of the question is the
+<span class="greek" title="beltistos anêr">βέλτιστος ἀνήρ</span> of Aristotle.
+The Utilitarian doctrine is that of Epicurus. Now, Mill managed to
+persuade himself that he could in twenty pages reconcile the controversies
+of ages.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it to be supposed that Bentham, in making his analysis of the
+conditions of pleasure, overlooked the difference of high and low; he
+did not overlook it at all—he analyzed it. A pleasure to be high must
+have the marks of intensity, length, certainty, fruitfulness, and purity,
+or of some of these at least; and when we take Altruism into account,
+the feelings must be of wide extent—that is, fruitful of pleasure and
+devoid of evil to great numbers of people. It is a higher pleasure to
+build a Free Library than to establish a new Race Course; not
+because there is a <i>Free-Library-building emotion</i>, which is essentially
+better than a <i>Race-Course-establishing emotion</i>, each being a simple
+unanalyzable feeling; but because we may, after the model of inquiry
+given by Bentham, resolve into its elements the effect of one action and
+the other upon the happiness of the community. Thus, we should
+find that Mill proposed to give "geniality" to the Utilitarian philosophy
+by throwing into confusion what it was the very merit of Bentham
+to have distinguished and arranged scientifically. We must hold to the
+dry old Jeremy, if we are to have any chance of progress in Ethics.
+Mill, at some "crisis in his mental history," decided in favour of a genial
+instead of a logical and scientific Ethics, and the result is the mixture
+of sentiment and sophistry contained in the attractive pages under
+review.</p>
+
+<p>In order to treat adequately of Mill's ethical doctrines it would no
+doubt be necessary to go on to other parts of the Essays, and to inquire
+how he treats other moral elements, such as the Social or
+Altruistic Feelings. The existence of such feelings is admitted on
+p. 46, and, indeed, insisted on as a basis of powerful natural sentiment,
+constituting the strength of the Utilitarian morality. But it would
+be an endless work to examine all phases of Mill's doctrines, and to
+show whether or not they are logically consistent <i>inter se</i>. They are
+really not worth the trouble. Just let us notice, however, how he
+treats the question whether moral feelings are innate or not. On this
+point Mill gives (p. 45) the following characteristic deliverance:—"If,
+as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired,
+they are not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to
+speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though these
+are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our
+nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all of
+us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the
+most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired
+capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span>
+our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a
+certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of
+being brought by cultivation to a high degree of development." If
+life were long enough, I should like, with the assistance of the
+"Methods of Ethics," to analyze the ideas involved in this passage.
+I can merely suggest the following questions:—If acquired capacities
+are equally natural with those not acquired, what is the use of introducing
+a distinction without a difference? If moral feelings can spring
+up spontaneously, even in the smallest degree, and then be developed
+by "natural outgrowths," how do any of our feelings differ from
+natural ones? What does Mill mean, at the top of the next page, by
+speaking of "moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation?"
+Are these also not the less natural because they are of artificial creation?
+If not, we should like to know how to draw the line between
+<i>acquired</i> and <i>artificial</i> capacities. How, again, are we to interpret the
+use of the word <i>natural</i>, on p. 50, where, speaking of the deeply-rooted
+conception which every individual even now has of himself as a
+social being, he says—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to their selfish
+feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses
+all the characters of a natural feeling. It does not present itself to their minds
+as a superstition of education," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<p>Here a natural feeling is contrasted to the product of education,
+although we were before told that acquired capacities, like speaking,
+building, cultivating, were none the less natural. But I must candidly
+confess that when Mill introduces the words <i>nature</i> and <i>natural</i>, I am
+completely baffled. I give it up. I can no longer find any logical
+marks to assist me in tracking out his course of thought. The word
+<i>nature</i> may be Mill's key to a profound philosophy; but I rather think
+it is the key to many of his fallacies.</p>
+
+<p>I often amuse myself by trying to imagine what Bentham would
+have said of Benthamism expounded by Mill. Especially would it be
+interesting to hear Bentham on Mill's use of the word "natural." No
+passage in which Bentham analyzes the meaning of "nature," or
+"natural," occurs to me, but the following is his treatment of the word
+"unnatural," as employed in Ethics:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent: and there it means
+something; although nothing to the present purpose. But here it means no such
+thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps the great complaint. It therefore
+means nothing; nothing, I mean, which there is in the act itself. All it can
+serve to express is, the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the disposition
+he is in to be angry at the thoughts of
+it."<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Would that the grand old man, as he still sits benignly pondering in
+his own proper bones and clothes, in the upper regions of a well-known
+institution, could be got to deliver himself in like style about
+feelings which are <i>not the less natural because they are acquired</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span>
+Before passing on, however, I must point out, in the extract from
+p. 45, the characteristic habit which Mill has of <i>minimizing</i> things
+which he is obliged to admit. Instead of denying straightforwardly
+that we have moral feelings, he says they are not present in all of us in
+any "perceptible degree." The moral faculty is capable of springing
+up spontaneously "in a certain small degree." This will remind every
+reader of the way in which, in his "Essays on Religion," instead of flatly
+adopting Atheism or Theism, which are clear logical negatives each of
+the other, he concludes that though God is almost proved not to exist,
+He may possibly exist, and we must "imagine" this chance to be as
+large as we can, though it belongs only "to one of the lower degrees of
+probability." Exactly the same manner of meeting a weighty question
+will be discovered again in his demonstration of the non-existence of
+necessary truths. I shall hope to examine carefully his treatment of
+this important part of philosophy on a future occasion. We shall then
+find, I believe, that his argument proves non-existence of such things as
+necessary truths, because those truths which cannot be explained on the
+association principle are very few indeed. I beg pardon for introducing
+an incongruous illustration, but Mill's manner of minimizing an all-important
+admission often irresistibly reminds me of the young woman
+who, being taxed with having borne a child, replied that it was only a
+very small one.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it
+is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a
+full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same
+precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis
+is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral
+Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to
+the reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though
+that is a great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and
+nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to
+the establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made
+a new era in philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+Mill has been singularly unfortunate from
+this point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic
+writer conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He
+brought to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he
+ignored that which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.</p>
+
+<p>I am aware that, in her Introductory Notice to the Essays on
+Religion (p. viii.), Miss Helen Taylor apologizes for Mill having omitted
+any references to the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine "in
+passages where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span>
+where subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner
+to which the Author of these Essays would certainly have referred
+had their works been published before these were
+written."<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> Here it
+is implied that Mill anticipated the authors of the Evolution philosophy
+in some of their thoughts, and it is a most amiable and pardonable
+bias which leads Miss Taylor to find in the works of one so dear
+to her that which is not there. The fact is that the whole tone of
+Mill's moral and political writings is totally opposed to the teaching of
+Darwin and Spencer, Taylor and Maine. Mill's idea of human nature
+was that we came into the world like lumps of soft clay, to be
+shaped by the accidents of life, or the care of those who educate us.
+Austin insisted on the evidence which history and daily experience
+afford of "the extraordinary pliability of human nature," and Mill
+borrowed the phrase from him.<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>
+No phrase could better express the
+misapprehensions of human nature which, it is to be hoped, will cease
+for ever with the last generation of writers. Human nature is one of
+the last things which can be called "pliable." Granite rocks can be
+more easily moulded than the poor savages that hide among them. We
+are all of us full of deep springs of unconquerable character, which
+education may in some degree soften or develop, but can neither create
+nor destroy. The mind can be shaped about as much as the body; it
+may be starved into feebleness, or fed and exercised into vigour and
+fulness; but we start always with inherent hereditary powers of
+growth. The non-recognition of this fact is the great defect in the
+moral system of Bentham. The great Jeremy was accustomed to make
+short work with the things which he did not understand, and it is thus
+he disposes of "the pretended system" of a moral
+sense:<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and
+what is wrong, and that it is called a <i>moral sense</i>; and then he goes to his work
+at his ease, and says such a thing is right and such a thing is wrong—Why?
+because my moral sense tells me it is."</p></div>
+
+<p>Bentham then bluntly ignored the validity of innate feelings, but
+this omission, though a great defect, did not much diminish the value
+of his analysis of the good and bad effects of actions. Mill discarded
+the admirable Benthamist analysis, but failed to introduce the true
+Evolutionist principles; thus he falls between the two. It is to Herbert
+Spencer we must look for a more truthful philosophy of morals
+than was possible before his time.</p>
+
+<p>The publication of the first part of his Principles of Morality, under
+the title "The Data of Ethics," gives us, in a definite form, and in his
+form, what we could previously only infer from the general course of
+his philosophy and from his brief letter on Utilitarianism addressed to
+Mill. Although but fragments, these writings enable us to see that a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span>
+definite step has been made in a matter debated since the dawn of intellect.
+The moral sense doctrine, so rudely treated by Bentham, is
+no longer incapable of reconciliation with the greatest happiness principle,
+only it now becomes a moving and developable moral sense. An
+absolute and unalterable moral standard was opposed to the palpable
+fact that customs and feelings differ widely, and Paley, on this ground,
+was induced to reject it. Now we perceive that we all have a moral
+sense; but the moral sense of one individual, and still more of one race,
+may differ from that of another individual or race. Each is more or
+less fitted to its circumstances, and the best is ascertained by <i>eventual
+success</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At the tail end of an article it is, of course, impossible to discuss the
+grounds or results of the Spencerian philosophy. To me it presents
+itself, in its main features, as unquestionably true; indeed, it is already
+difficult to look back and imagine how philosophers could have denied
+of the human mind and actions what is so obviously true of the animal
+races generally. As a reaction from the old views about innate ideas,
+the philosophers of the eighteenth century wished to believe that the
+human mind was a kind of <i>tabula rasa</i>, or <i>carte blanche</i>, upon which
+education could impress any character. But if so, why not harness the
+lion, and teach the sheep to drive away the wolf? If the moral, not to
+speak of the physical characteristics of the lower animals, are so distinct,
+why should there not be moral and mental differences among ourselves,
+descending, as we obviously do, from different stocks with different
+physical characteristics? Notice what Mr. Darwin says on this point:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism' (1864, p. 46),
+of the social feelings as a 'powerful natural sentiment,' and as 'the natural basis
+of sentiment for utilitarian morality;' but on the previous page he says, 'if,
+as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+not for that reason less natural.' It is with hesitation that I venture to differ
+from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings
+are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in
+man? Mr. Bain and others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual
+during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at least
+extremely improbable."<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Many persons may be inclined to like the philosophy of Spencer no
+better than that of Mill. But, if the one be true and the other false,
+liking and disliking have no place in the matter. There may be many
+things which we cannot possibly like; but if they are, they are. It is
+possible that the Principles of Evolution, as expounded by Mr. Herbert
+Spencer, may seem as wanting in "geniality" as the formulas of
+Bentham. There is nothing genial, it must be confessed, about the
+mollusca and other cold-blooded organisms with which Mr. Spencer
+perpetually illustrates his principles. Heaven forbid that any one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span>
+should try to give geniality to Mr. Spencer's views of ethics by any
+operation comparable to that which Mill performed upon Benthamism.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I fully believe that all which is sinister and ungenial
+in the Philosophy of Evolution is either the expression of unquestionable
+facts, or else it is the outcome of misinterpretation. It is impossible to
+see how Mr. Spencer, any more than other people, can explain away
+the existence of pain and evil. Nobody has done this; perhaps nobody
+ever shall do it; certainly systems of Theology will not do it. A true
+philosopher will not expect to solve everything. But if we admit the patent
+fact that pain exists, let us observe also the tendency which Spencer and
+Darwin establish towards its <i>minimization</i>. Evolution is a striving ever
+towards the better and the happier. There may be almost infinite
+powers against us, but at least there is a deep-laid scheme working
+towards goodness and happiness. So profound and wide-spread is this
+confederacy of the powers of good, that no failure and no series of
+failures can disconcert it. Let mankind be thrown back a hundred
+times, and a hundred times the better tendencies of evolution will
+re-assert themselves. Paley pointed out how many beautiful contrivances
+there are in the human form, tending to our benefit. Spencer
+has pointed out that the Universe is one deep-laid framework for the
+production of such beneficent contrivances. Paley called upon us to
+admire such exquisite inventions as a hand or an eye. Spencer calls
+upon us to admire a machine which is the most comprehensive of all
+machines, because it is ever engaged in inventing beneficial inventions
+<i>ad infinitum</i>. Such at least is my way of regarding his Philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin, indeed, cautions us against supposing that natural selection
+always leads towards the production of higher and happier types of
+life. Retrogression may result as well as progression. But I apprehend
+that retrogression can only occur where the environment of a living
+species is altered to its detriment. Mankind degenerates when forced,
+like the Esquimaux, to inhabit the Arctic regions. Still in retrograding,
+in a sense, the being becomes more suited to its circumstances—more
+capable therefore of happiness. The inventing machine of Evolution
+would be working badly if it worked otherwise. But, however this may
+be, we must accept the philosophy if it be true, and, for my part, I do
+so without reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>According to Mill, we are little self-dependent gods, fighting with a
+malignant and murderous power called Nature, sure, one would think,
+to be worsted in the struggle. According to Spencer, as I venture to
+interpret his theory, we are the latest manifestation of an all-prevailing
+tendency towards the good—the happy. Creation is not yet concluded,
+and there is no one of us who may not become conscious in his heart
+that he is no Automaton, no mere lump of Protoplasm, but the Creature
+of a Creator.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">W. Stanley Jevons.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a>
+"Utilitarianism," fifth edition, p. 9, foot-note. Except where otherwise specified, the
+references throughout this article will be to the pages of the fifth edition of "Utilitarianism."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
+<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, May, 1877, vol. xxi. p. 648.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
+"The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," Book I. chap. vi. 2nd paragraph.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
+"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," p. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
+"Principles," &amp;c. chap. iv. sect. 2-5. The statement is not a verbatim extract but an
+abridgment of the sections named.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
+"Autobiography," p. 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
+"Utilitarianism," p. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
+Italicised by the present writer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
+"Principles of Morals and Legislation," ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
+A very important article by Dr. E. L. Youmans upon Mr. Spencer's philosophy has
+just appeared in the <i>North American Review</i> for October, 1879. Dr. Youmans traces the
+history of the Evolution doctrines, and proves the originality and independence of Mr.
+Spencer as regards the closely related views of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and Professor
+Huxley. The eminent men in question are no doubt in perfect agreement; but Dr. Youmans
+seems to think that readers in general do not properly understand the singular originality
+and boldness of Mr. Spencer's vast and partially accomplished enterprise in philosophy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
+Mr. Morley does not seem to countenance any such claims. On the contrary, he remarks
+in his "Critical Miscellanies," p. 324, that Mill's Essays lose in interest by not dealing
+with the Darwinian hypothesis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a>
+"Autobiography," p. 187.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
+"Principles of Morals," &amp;c., p. 29.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
+"The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," 1871, vol. i. p. 71. I cannot
+help thinking that Mr. Darwin felt the inconsistency and confusion of ideas in the passages
+quoted, although he does not so express himself. Otherwise, why does he quote from two
+pages?</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, November 1879
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: April 23, 2012 [EBook #39517]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
+Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
+been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.
+
+_Italic words_ have been enclosed in underscores. *Gesperrt* (spaced)
+letters have been enclosed in asterisks. Greek letters have been
+transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =schole=. Symbols such
+as hieroglyphics or script letters have been represented using braces,
+e.g. {symbol}. As the oe ligature cannot be included in this format, it
+has been replaced with the separate letters, e.g. "Phoenician".
+
+A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. Some
+inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+             THE
+         CONTEMPORARY
+            REVIEW
+
+  VOLUME XXXVI. NOVEMBER, 1879
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  NOVEMBER, 1879.
+                                                                    PAGE
+  On Freedom. By Professor Max Muller                                369
+
+  Mr. Gladstone: Two Studies suggested by his "Gleanings of Past
+    Years." I. By a Liberal.--II. By a Conservative                  398
+
+  The Ancien Regime and the Revolution in France. By Professor
+    von Sybel                                                        432
+
+  What is the Actual Condition of Ireland? By Edward Stanley
+    Robertson                                                        451
+
+  The Deluge: Its Traditions in Ancient Nations. By Francois
+    Lenormant                                                        465
+
+  Suspended Animation. By Richard A. Proctor                         501
+
+  John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested. IV.--Utilitarianism.
+    By Professor W. Stanley Jevons                                   521
+
+
+
+
+ON FREEDOM.[1]
+
+
+Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth
+his plea for Liberty.[2]
+
+If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the
+elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved
+the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John
+Stuart Mill.
+
+But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In
+presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of
+individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him.
+He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual
+human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of
+growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes
+a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is
+treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of
+individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every
+true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they
+cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the
+lowest level.
+
+I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly
+and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be
+challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or
+the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble
+to _our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is
+not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the
+interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to
+social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to
+the interests of others."
+
+Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle,
+or who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller
+measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when
+it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we
+imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual
+man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more
+freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his
+theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in
+which, in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of
+England, such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and
+hard-working Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred
+inheritance to their sons and daughters?
+
+Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of
+republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one
+single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each
+individual was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if
+you wish to realize the full blessings of the time in which we live,
+compare Mill's plea for Liberty with another written not much more than
+two hundred years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or
+boldness to Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an
+individual in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls
+"freedom of thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being
+able to think what we like--so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely,
+such freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and
+we should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in
+solitary and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom
+of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual
+or associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared
+with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all
+other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed
+down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over.
+
+It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion,
+and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any
+infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority,
+need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even
+sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the
+true ring of honest conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish
+love of truth.
+
+It has seemed strange therefore to many readers of Mill, particularly on
+the Continent, that this cry for Liberty, this demand for freedom for
+every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his
+nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all
+countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation
+if it had reached us from Russia; but why should English philosophers,
+of all others, have to protest against the tyranny of society? It is
+true, nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically, the
+individual, unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far greater
+freedom, or rather licence, than in a country like England, which
+governs itself. Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent.
+It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the
+simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than
+astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of
+those who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the
+doctrines of what is called Nihilism or Individualism,[3]--viz., "that
+society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival
+of the strongest, processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have
+proved successful among wild animals." If there is danger in these
+doctrines the Government is expected to see to it. It may place watchmen
+at the doors of every house and at the corner of every street, but it
+must not count on the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves
+as special constables, or even on the co-operation of public opinion
+which in England would annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one glance
+of scorn and pity.
+
+In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society,
+if it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his
+rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in
+Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows
+how to use that softer, but more crushing pressure, that calm, but
+Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to
+resist.
+
+It is rather against that indirect repression which a well-organized
+society exercises, both through its male and female representatives,
+that Mill's demand for Liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for
+unlimited licence; on the contrary, he would have been the most
+strenuous defender of that balance of power between the weak and the
+strong on which all social life depends. But he resents those smaller
+penalties which society will always inflict on those who disturb its
+dignified peace and comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a
+stinging remark. Had Mill any right to complain of these social
+penalties? Would it not rather amount to an interference with individual
+liberty to wish to deprive any individual or any number of individuals
+of those weapons of self-defence? Those who themselves think and speak
+freely, have hardly a right to complain, if others claim the same
+privilege. Mill himself called the Conservative party the stupid party
+_par excellence_, and he took great pains to explain that it was so, not
+by accident, but by necessity. Need he wonder if those whom he whipped
+and scourged used their own whips and scourges against so merciless a
+critic?
+
+Freethinkers, and I use that name as a title of honour for all who, like
+Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word,
+or deed, compatible with the freedom of others, are apt to make one
+mistake. Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to
+be mistrusted or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often
+very painful operations as a patient submits to the knife of the
+surgeon. That is not in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always
+abused by his enemies. Society will never yield one inch without
+resistance, and few reformers live long enough to receive the thanks of
+those whom they have reformed. Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament
+was a triumph not often shared by social reformers; it was as
+exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat in the Cabinet, or Stanley's
+appointment as Dean of Westminster. Such anomalies will happen in a
+country fortunately so full of anomalies as England; but, as a rule, a
+political reformer must not be angry if he passes through life without
+the title of Right Honourable; nor should a man, if he will always speak
+the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, be disappointed
+if he dies a martyr rather than a Bishop.
+
+But granting even that in Mill's time there existed some traces of
+social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the
+journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be
+openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned
+societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of
+the fashionable world? When young lords begin to discuss the propriety
+of limiting the rights of inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid
+to propose curtailing the long vacation, surely we need not complain of
+the intolerance of English society.
+
+Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian
+friends, who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the
+impression that, however large an amount of political liberty England
+may enjoy, it enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are
+generally willing to be converted so far as London, or other great
+cities, are concerned. But look at your Universities, they say, the
+nurseries of English thought! Can you compare their mediaeval spirit,
+their monastic institutions, their scholastic philosophy, with the
+freshness and freedom of the Continental Universities? Strong as these
+prejudices about Oxford and Cambridge have always been, they have become
+still more intense since Professor Helmholtz, in an inaugural address
+which he delivered at his installation as Rector of the University of
+Berlin, lent the authority of his great name to these misconceptions.
+"The tutors," he says,[4] "in the English Universities cannot deviate
+by a hair's-breadth from the dogmatic system of the English Church,
+without exposing themselves to the censure of their Archbishops and
+losing their pupils." In German Universities, on the contrary, we are
+told that the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the
+boldest speculations within the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution,
+may be propounded without let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest
+apotheosis of Papal infallibility.
+
+Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely wrong,
+and the writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a more than
+sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no official
+position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of an
+Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole University.
+Nor does the University, as such, exercise any very strict control over
+the tutors, even when they lecture not to their own College only. Each
+Master of Arts at Oxford claims now the right to lecture (_venia
+docendi_), and I doubt whether they would ever submit to those
+restrictions which, in Germany, the Faculty imposes on every
+_Privat-docent_. _Privat-docents_ in German Universities have been
+rejected by the Faculty for incompetence, and silenced for
+insubordination. I know of no such cases at Oxford during my residence
+of more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they should
+ever occur.
+
+As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are
+Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as
+Hobbes, Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by
+Buchner and Vogt.
+
+I know comparisons are odious, and I am the last man who would wish to
+draw comparisons between English and German Universities unfavourable to
+the latter. But with regard to freedom of thought, of speech, and
+action, Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few weeks at
+Oxford, would find that we enjoy a fuller measure of freedom here than
+the Professors and _Privat-docents_ in any Continental University. The
+publications of some of our professors and tutors ought at least to have
+convinced him that if there is less of brave words and turbulent talk in
+their writings, they display throughout a determination to speak the
+truth, which may be matched, but could not easily be excelled, by the
+leaders of thought in France, Germany, or Italy.
+
+The real difference between English and Continental Universities is that
+the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government
+entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences. I may
+here be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor of the
+University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his
+colleagues, ventured to tell them,[5] "We have still to learn from the
+English how the greatest independence of the individual is compatible
+with willing submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is
+particularly true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Germany, as
+Professor Helmholtz tells us himself, the last decision in almost all
+the more important affairs of the Universities rests with the
+Government, and he does not deny that in times of political and
+ecclesiastical tension, a most inconsiderate use has been made of that
+power. There are, besides, the less important matters, such as raising
+of salaries, leave of absence, scientific missions, even titles and
+decorations, all of which enable a clever Minister of Instruction to
+assert his personal influence among the less independent members of the
+University. In Oxford the University does not know the Ministry, nor the
+Ministry the University. The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or
+Conservative, are freely discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the
+academic constituencies, and the personal dislike of a Minister or
+Ministerial Councillor could as little injure a professor or tutor as
+his favour could add one penny to his salary.
+
+But these are minor matters. What gives their own peculiar character to
+the English Universities is a sense of power and responsibility: power,
+because they are the most respected among the numerous corporations in
+the country; responsibility, because the higher education of the whole
+country has been committed to their charge. Their only master is public
+opinion as represented in Parliament, their only incentive their own
+sense of duty. There is no country in Europe where Universities hold so
+exalted a position, and where those who have the honour to belong to
+them may say with greater truth, _Noblesse oblige_.
+
+I know the dangers of self-government, particularly where higher and
+more ideal interests are concerned, and there are probably few who wish
+for a real reform in schools and Universities who have not occasionally
+yielded to the desire for a Dictator, of a Bismarck or a Falk. But such
+a desire springs only from a momentary weakness and despondency; and no
+one who knows the difference between being governed and governing
+oneself, would ever wish to descend from that higher though dangerous
+position to a lower one, however safe and comfortable it might seem. No
+one who has tasted freedom would ever wish to exchange it for anything
+else. Public opinion is sometimes a hard task-master, and majorities can
+be great tyrants to those who want to be honest to their own
+convictions. But in the struggle of all against all, each individual
+feels that he has his rightful place, and that he may exercise his
+rightful influence. If he is beaten, he is beaten in fair fight; if he
+conquers, he has no one else to thank. No doubt despotic Governments
+have often exercised the most beneficial patronage in encouraging and
+rewarding poets, artists, and men of science. But men of genius who have
+conquered the love and admiration of a whole nation are greater than
+those who have gained the favour of the most brilliant Courts; and we
+know how some of the fairest reputations have been wrecked on the
+patronage which they had to accept at the hands of powerful Ministers or
+ambitious Sovereigns.
+
+But to return to Mill and his plea for Liberty. Though I can hardly
+believe that, were he still among us, he would claim a larger measure of
+freedom for the individual than is now accorded to every one of us in
+the society in which we move, yet the chief cause on which he founded
+his plea for Liberty, the chief evil which he thought could be remedied
+only if society would allow more elbow-room to individual genius, exists
+in the same degree as in his time--aye, even in a higher degree. The
+principle of Individuality has suffered more at present than perhaps at
+any former period of history. The world is becoming more and more
+gregarious, and what the French call our _nature moutonniere_, "our
+mutton-like nature," our tendency to leap where any bell-wether has
+leapt before, becomes more and more prevalent in politics, in religion,
+in art, and even in science. M. de Tocqueville expressed his surprise
+how much more Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did
+those of the last generation. The same remark, adds John Stuart Mill,
+might be made of England in a greater degree. "The modern _regime_ of
+public opinion," he writes, "is in an unorganized form what the Chinese
+educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless
+individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this
+yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed
+Christianity, will tend to become another China."
+
+I fully agree with Mill in recognizing the dangers of uniformity, but I
+doubt whether what he calls the _regime_ of public opinion is alone, or
+even chiefly, answerable for it. No doubt there are some people in whose
+eyes uniformity seems an advantage rather than a disadvantage. If all
+were equally strong, equally educated, equally honest, equally rich,
+equally tall, or equally small, society would seem to them to have
+reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French garden,
+with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers and
+pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp
+the soil with their coiling roots, and overshadow with their dark green
+branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens,
+unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon fall
+into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means but too often
+stagnation, while variety is the surest sign of health and vigour. The
+deepest secret of nature is its love of continued novelty. Its tendency,
+if unrestrained, is towards constantly creating new varieties, which, if
+they fulfil their purpose, become fixed for a time, or, it may be, for
+ever; while others, after they have fulfilled their purpose, vanish to
+make room for new and stronger types.
+
+The same is the secret of human society. It consists and lives in
+individuals, each being meant to be different from all the others, and
+to contribute his own peculiar share to the common wealth. As no tree is
+like any other tree, and no leaf on the same tree like any other leaf,
+no human being is exactly like any other human being, nor is it meant to
+be. It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human
+souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the
+more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the
+development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in
+no distant future. Such is the mystery of individuality that I do not
+wonder if even those philosophers who, like Mill, reduce the meaning of
+the word _sacred_ to the very smallest compass, see in each individual
+soul something sacred, something to be revered, even where we cannot
+understand it, something to be protected against all vulgar violence.
+
+Where I differ from Mill and his school is on the question as to the
+quarter from whence the epidemic of uniformity springs which threatens
+the free development of modern society. Mill points to the society in
+which we move; to those who are in front of us, to our contemporaries. I
+feel convinced that our real enemies are at our back, and that the
+heaviest chains which are fastened on us are those made, not by the
+present, but by past generations--by our ancestors, not by our
+contemporaries.
+
+It is on this point, on the trammels of individual freedom with which we
+may almost be said to be born into the world, and on the means by which
+we may shake off these old chains, or at all events carry them more
+lightly and gracefully, that I wish to speak to you this evening.
+
+You need not be afraid that I am going to enter upon the much discussed
+subject of heredity, whether in its physiological or psychological
+aspects. It is a favourite subject just now, and the most curious facts
+have been brought together of late to illustrate the working of what is
+called heredity. But the more we know of these facts, the less we seem
+able to comprehend the underlying principle. Inheritance is one of those
+numerous words which by their very simplicity and clearness are so apt
+to darken our counsel. If a father has blue eyes and the son has blue
+eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the father
+stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came by
+inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we say
+very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does _inherited_
+mean? In no case does it mean what _inherited_ usually means--something
+external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death,
+secured by law to his son. Whatever else inherited may mean, it does not
+mean that. But unfortunately the word is there, it seems almost pedantic
+to challenge its meaning, and people are always grateful if an easy word
+saves them the trouble of hard thought.
+
+Another apparent advantage of the theory of heredity is that it never
+fails. If the son has blue, and the father black, eyes, all is right
+again, for either the mother, or the grandmother, or some historic or
+prehistoric ancestor, may have had blue eyes, and atavism, we know, will
+assert itself after hundreds and thousands of years.
+
+Do not suppose that I deny the broad facts of what is called by the name
+of heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any
+scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a
+metaphor, quite as bad as the old metaphor of _innate ideas_; for there
+is hardly a single point of similarity between the process by which a
+son may share the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of
+his father, and that by which, after his father's death, the law secures
+to the son the possession of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his
+father held in the Funds.
+
+But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is that
+every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere has the
+consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it enters
+on its journey through life found stronger expression than among the
+Buddhists. What other people call by various names, "fate or
+providence," "tradition or inheritance," "circumstances or environment,"
+they call _Karman_, deed--what has been done, whether by ourselves or by
+others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the
+consequences of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil.
+Originally this _Karman_ seems to have been conceived as personal, as
+the work which we ourselves have done in former existences. But, as
+personally we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages,
+that kind of _Karman_, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the
+question how _Karman_ began, the accumulation of what forms the
+condition of all that exists at present, Buddhism has no answer to give,
+any more than any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists
+say it began with _avidya_, and _avidya_ means ignorance.[6] They are
+much more deeply interested in the question how _Karman_ may be
+annihilated, how each man may free himself from the influence of
+_Karman_, and Nirvana, the highest object of all their dreams, is often
+defined by Buddhist philosophers as "freedom from _Karman_."[7]
+
+What the Buddhists call by the general name of _Karman_, comprehends all
+influences which the past exercises on the present, both physically and
+mentally.[8] It is not my object to examine or even to name all these
+influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to look
+upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological map, and
+to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere under our
+feet. Difficult as it is to colour a geological map of England, it would
+be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colours to mark
+the different ingredients of the intellectual surface of this island.
+
+That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or
+Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as
+it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now admitted by everybody.
+Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been separated
+many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient classical
+language of India, yet so unbroken is the bond that holds the West and
+East together that in many cases an intelligent Englishman might still
+guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference is there
+between Sanskrit _sunu_ and English _son_, between Sanskrit _duhitar_
+and English _daughter_, between Sanskrit _vid_, to know, and English _to
+wit_, between Sanskrit _vaksh_, to grow, and English _to wax_! Think how
+we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Celtic weapon! how we dig
+for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them in our
+museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the antiquity of such
+words as _son_ or _daughter_, _father_ and _mother_? There are no
+monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call
+Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English
+antiquities--as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm's
+Dictionary of the German, in Littre's Dictionary of the French, or in
+Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language--will
+learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many
+volumes on logic and psychology.
+
+And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong through
+our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics; and
+in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hieroglyphics
+have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia
+to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we
+write a capital F {script F}, when we draw the top line and the
+smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two
+horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient Egyptians
+used for representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king
+whom the Greeks called _Cheops_, and they themselves _Chu-fu_, like
+this:[9]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+    +---------+
+    | sieve   |   chu
+    | serpent |   fu
+    | bird    |   u
+    +---------+
+]
+
+Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced _chu_; the second,
+the horned serpent, _fu_, and the little bird, again, _u_. In the more
+cursive or Hieratic writing the horned serpent appears as
+{symbol}; in the later Demotic as {symbol} and
+{symbol}. The Phoenicians, who borrowed their letters from the
+Hieratic Egyptian, wrote {symbol} and {symbol}. The
+Greeks, who took their letters from the Phoenicians, wrote
+{symbol}. When the Greeks, instead of writing like the
+Phoenicians from right to left, began to write from left to right,
+they turned each letter, and as {symbol} became K, our k, so
+{symbol}, vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, the Latin
+F.
+
+The first letter in _Chu-fu_, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in
+the transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the
+lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as
+{symbol}, in Phoenician as {symbol}, in ancient Greek
+as {symbol}, which occurs on an inscription found at Mycenae and
+elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus asper, while in Latin it is known
+to us as the letter H.[10] In the same manner the undulating line of our
+capital {script L} still recalls very strikingly the bent back of
+the crouching lion, which in the later hieroglyphic inscriptions
+represents the sound of L.
+
+If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we have
+only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian. Why is our
+hour divided into sixty minutes, our minutes into sixty seconds? Would
+not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a hundred minutes have
+been more natural? We have sixty divisions on the dials of our watches
+simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second
+century B.C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that
+system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but
+for practical purposes they counted by _sossi_ and _sari_, the _sossos_
+representing 60, the _saros_ 60 � 60, or 3600. From Hipparchus that
+system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about 150 A.D., and
+thence it was carried down the stream of civilization, finding its last
+resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.
+
+And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the real
+reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians the art
+of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has been proved
+that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly the sixtieth
+part of a Babylonian _mna_, or _mina_. It was nearly equal to our
+sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold and
+silver in a bi-monetary currency had been solved to a certain extent in
+the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and silver
+being fixed at 1 to 13-1/3. The silver shekel current in Babylon was
+heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13-1/3 to 10, and had
+therefore the value of one-tenth of a gold shekel; and the half silver
+shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one-twentieth of a
+gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be looked
+upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its relation
+of one-twentieth of our gold sovereign.[11]
+
+I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our mental
+life--namely, our _figures_, which we call Arabic, because we received
+them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian, because they
+received them from the Indians--in order to show you how this nineteenth
+century of ours is under the sway of centuries long past and forgotten;
+how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by those who came before
+us, and how the intellectual ground on which we stand is made up of the
+detritus of thoughts which were first thought, not on these isles nor in
+Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the
+Indus.
+
+Now you may well ask _Quorsum haec omnia?_--What has all this to do with
+freedom and with the free development of individuality? Because a man is
+born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that he is not free to
+grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties of his mind? Are
+those who came before him, and who left him this goodly inheritance, to
+be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition which connects him
+with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather the
+leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk straight?
+
+Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to say that
+every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be left to
+form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals, and coins.
+On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal more, such
+as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the general name of
+_education_, even the most advanced defenders of individualism would
+hold that no child should enter society without submitting, or rather
+without being submitted, to education. Most of us would even go further,
+and make it criminal for parents or even for communities to allow
+children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless parents that
+they are at liberty to do with their children as they like, has at last
+been blown to the winds. I still remember the time when pseudo-Liberals
+were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations, such as the
+Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory education.
+That wicked sophistry, too, has at last been silenced, and among the
+principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the necessity of
+curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children, have been
+Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and individualism.[12] A
+new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the day
+on which "compulsory education" becomes part of their statute-book; and
+I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having proved
+itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying out the principle of
+compulsory education.
+
+But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its
+dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is
+not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity,
+and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.
+
+We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic.
+Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and
+afterwards at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the
+rest, long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for
+themselves, and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe
+if it comes from those in whom the child believes.
+
+Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically,
+and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English
+schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen
+international race between all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the
+English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at
+statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what
+people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that personal
+and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things, and
+that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible things
+as the English.
+
+But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the
+whole school-time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot
+something be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be
+turned into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the
+powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers,
+or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either in
+gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height
+of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations or
+payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds
+with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to
+call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such
+lessons as, for instance, that _th-ough_ is though, _thr-ough_ is
+through, _en-ough_ is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter
+believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into
+elementary schools frighten schoolmasters by the very name of Natural
+Science. But surely every schoolmaster who is worth his salt should be
+able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a
+curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some
+of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of
+the field and the forest, where, better than in frouzy lecture-rooms,
+the edge of the senses can be sharpened, the chest be widened, and that
+freedom of thought fostered which made England what it was even before
+the days of compulsory education.
+
+But in addressing you here to-night it was my intention to speak of the
+higher rather than of elementary education.
+
+All education, as it now exists in most countries of Europe, may be
+divided into three stages--_elementary_, _scholastic_, and _academical_;
+or call it _primary_, _secondary_, and _tertiary_.
+
+Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most civilized
+countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to include under
+compulsory education anything beyond the very elements of knowledge--at
+least for the present; though, with proper management, I know from
+experience that a well-conducted elementary school can afford to provide
+instruction in extra subjects--such as natural science, modern
+languages, and political economy--and yet, with the present system of
+Government grants, be self-supporting.[13]
+
+The next stage above the elementary is _scholastic_ education, as it is
+supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as
+the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at
+once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are
+divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are called
+_Real-schulen_, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of
+mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other,
+called _Gymnasia_ on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of
+instruction.
+
+It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public
+schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention
+can be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In
+Germany, even more perhaps than in England, it is the chief object of a
+good and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible
+at the end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the
+official examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace
+together, than if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys,
+followed by a number of straggling laggards.
+
+And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be
+otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Socratic method is very
+good if we can find the _viri Socratici_ and leisure for discussion. But
+at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery =schole=,
+or leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great
+educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school
+must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as they
+can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty. There is
+an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages
+of ten and eighteen--rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names
+of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, &c. All depends
+here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has
+to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost
+mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too strongly
+recommended during the years spent at school. There may have been too
+much of it when, as the Rev. H. C. Adams informs us in his "Wykehamica"
+(p. 357), boys used to say by heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one
+repeated the whole of Virgil, nay, when another was able to say the
+whole of the English Bible by rote:--"Put him on where you would, he
+would go fluently on, as long as any one would listen."
+
+No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such
+regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature
+deposited in our memory during our childhood and youth, and taken up
+from time to time in the happy hours of our solitude.
+
+One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on the
+Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman classics. The
+majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and they are apt to
+lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute scholarship, and
+to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the arguments for minute
+accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is done by an exclusive
+devotion to critical scholarship before we have acquired a real
+familiarity with the principal works of classical literature. The time
+spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar and syntax,
+writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look only at our
+Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions, and
+exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy to carry;
+and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules which they have
+learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of
+classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted not
+only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient
+thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are
+but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end
+itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average
+ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of
+the ordinary Greek or Latin classics without much difficulty; nay, with
+a certain amount of pleasure. He might have to consult his dictionary
+now and then, or guess the meaning of certain words; he might also feel
+doubtful sometimes whether certain forms came from =hiemi=, I send, or
+=eimi=, I go, or =eimi=, I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions.
+In these matters the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical;
+and whenever I meet in the controversies of classical scholars the
+favourite phrase, "Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, this," I
+generally say to myself, "No, he ought not." Anyhow, those who wish to
+see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to
+feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it
+can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen
+are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless
+they have seen it before.
+
+Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be
+finished at school. When a young man goes to University, unless he means
+to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a
+new career. If he has not learnt by that time so much of Greek and Latin
+as is absolutely necessary in after-life for a lawyer, or a student of
+physical science, or even a clergyman, either he or his school is to
+blame. I do not mean to say that it would not be most desirable for
+every one during his University career to attend some lectures on
+classical literature, on ancient history, philosophy, or art. What is to
+be deprecated is, that the University should have to do the work which
+belongs properly to the school.
+
+The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their
+matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge
+ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by
+boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called
+local examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the
+Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University
+would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at
+Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission to
+the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to
+greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from
+the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish
+it from mere schoolboy work.
+
+Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one
+sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction
+must be chiefly dogmatic, at University it is to be Socratic, for I find
+no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the
+burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the words
+which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are, for the
+most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where he knows
+facts, he does not know their evidence; and where he expresses opinions,
+they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without examination.
+
+But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill's prophecies
+might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into
+dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless they are
+diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the guardians of
+the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual spontaneity; and it
+was owing, I believe, to Mill's ignorance of true academic teaching that
+he took so desponding a view of the generation growing up under his
+eyes.
+
+When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma, that is,
+of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge is
+extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the spirit
+of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic dogmas be
+true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because to place either
+truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth
+and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the
+authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we
+could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And,
+thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by
+argument is generally the first step towards violence and persecution.
+
+I do not think of religious dogmas only. They are generally the first to
+rouse inquiry, even during our schoolboy days, and they are by no means
+the most difficult to deal with. Dogma often rages where we least expect
+it. Among scientific men the theory of evolution is at present becoming,
+or has become, a dogma. What is the result? No objections are listened
+to, no difficulties recognized, and a man like Virchow, himself the
+strongest supporter of evolution, who has the moral courage to say that
+the descent of man from any ape whatsoever is, as yet, before the
+tribunal of scientific zoology, "not proven," is howled down in Germany
+in a manner worthy of Ephesians and Galatians. But at present I am
+thinking not so much of any special dogmas, but rather of that dogmatic
+state of mind which is the almost inevitable result of the teaching at
+school. I think of the whole intellect, what has been called the
+_intellectus sibi permissus_, and I maintain that it is the object of
+academic teaching to rouse that intellect out of its slumber by
+questions not less startling than when Galileo asked the world whether
+the sun was really moving and the earth stood still; or when Kant asked
+whether time and space were objects, or necessary forms of our sensuous
+intuition. Till our opinions have thus been tested and stood the test,
+we can hardly call them our own.
+
+How true this is with regard to religion has been boldly expressed by
+Bishop Beveridge.
+
+    "Being conscious to myself," he writes in his "Private Thoughts on
+    Religion," "how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond
+    the rest, as being that religion whereinto I was born and baptized;
+    that which the supreme authority has enjoined and my parents
+    educated me in; that which every one I meet withal highly approves
+    of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued profession, made
+    almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and
+    suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to
+    entertain it any longer without being convinced, by solid and
+    substantial arguments, of the truth and certainty of it."
+
+This is bold and manly language from a Bishop nearly two hundred years
+ago, and I certainly think that the time has come when some of the
+divinity lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge might well be employed in
+placing a knowledge of the sacred books of other religions within the
+reach of undergraduates. Many of the difficulties--most of them of our
+own making--with regard to the origin, the handing down, the later
+corruptions and misinterpretations of sacred texts, would find their
+natural solution, if it was shown how exactly the same difficulties
+arose and had to be dealt with by theologians of other creeds. If
+some--ay, if many--of the doctrines of Christianity were met with in
+other religions also, surely that would not affect their value, or
+diminish their truth; while nothing, I feel certain, would more
+effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true
+place in the historical development of the human mind than to place it
+side by side with the other religions of the world. In the series of
+translations of the "Sacred Books of the East," of which the first three
+volumes have just appeared,[14] I wished myself to include a new
+translation of the Old and New Testaments; and when that series is
+finished it will, I believe, be admitted that nowhere would these two
+books have had a grander setting, or have shone with a brighter light,
+than surrounded by the Veda, the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka,
+and the Qur'an.
+
+But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only, or
+even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academic teaching
+must be Socratic, not dogmatic. The evil of dogmatic teaching lies much
+deeper, and spreads much further.
+
+Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves,
+which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every word
+we use require careful examination and revision? It is not enough to say
+that language assists our thoughts or colours them, or possibly obscures
+them. No, we know now that language and thought are indivisible. It was
+not from poverty of expression that the Greek called reason and language
+by the same word, =logos=. It was because they knew that, though we may
+distinguish between thought and speech, as we distinguish between body
+and soul, it is as impossible to tear the one by violence away from the
+other as it is to separate the concave side of a lens from its convex
+side. This is something to learn and to understand, for, if properly
+understood, it will supply the key to most of our intellectual puzzles,
+and serve as the safest thread through the whole labyrinth of
+philosophy.
+
+"It is evident," as Hobbes remarks,[15] "that truth and falsity have no
+place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though some
+brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may be
+affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason
+fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or
+false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore,
+as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of
+speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the
+same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so
+from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For speech
+has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of
+Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are
+ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them."
+
+Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.
+
+Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even the
+greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the
+terms _genus_, _species_, and _individual_ occupy a very prominent
+place. The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the
+Realists, of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true
+meaning of these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach
+the received meaning of _genus_ and _species_; and if a boy can trace
+these terms back to Aristotle's =genos= and =eidos=, and show in what
+sense that philosopher used them, every examiner would be satisfied.
+
+But the time comes when we have to act as our own examiners, and when we
+have to give an account to ourselves of such words as _genus_ and
+_species_. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a _species_
+and a _genus_ walking about in broad daylight; but a little
+consideration will show us that these words express subjective concepts,
+and that, if the whole world were silent, there would never have been a
+thought of a _genus_ or a _species_. There are languages in which we
+look in vain for corresponding words; and if we had been born in such a
+language, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to
+us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent
+them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance,
+according to him, all living beings would constitute a _genus_, men a
+_species_, and Socrates an _individual_.
+
+No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these
+terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember
+that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The
+true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think
+our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch
+their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with
+those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this
+with _genus_ and _species_, we shall find that the words which Aristotle
+defined--viz., =genos= and =eidos=--had originally a very different and
+far more useful application than that which he gave to them. =Genos=,
+_genus_, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as
+were known to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward
+appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound, or,
+according to Darwin, the ape and the man. =Eidos= or species, on the
+contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the
+same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if
+we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed, horned,
+winged, or blue animals.
+
+That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural
+justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same
+thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find *_g_ati*,
+generation, used in the sense of _genus_, and opposed to *ak_ri_ti*,
+appearance, used in the sense of _species_.
+
+So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as
+we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological
+classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be
+called a =genos=, the _gens_ or clan was a =genos=, the nation (gnatio)
+was a =genos=, the whole human kith and kin was a =genos=; in fact, all
+that was descended from common ancestors was a true =genos=. There is no
+obscurity of thought in this.
+
+On the other side, taking =eidos= or species in its original sense, one
+man might be said to be like another in his =eidos= or appearance. An
+ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same =eidos= or species
+or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin.
+People might also speak of different =eide= or forms or classes of
+things, such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armour, without
+committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common
+descent.
+
+Often it would happen that things belonging to the same =genos=, such as
+the white man and the negro, differed in their =eidos= or appearance;
+often also that things belonging to the same =eidos=, such as eatables,
+differed in their =genos=, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.
+
+All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two terms,
+instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other by the
+philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was called a
+_genus_, might from another be called a species, and _vice versa_. Human
+beings, for instance, were now called a _species_, all living beings a
+_genus_, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what is
+older than logic--viz., language, thought, or fact. According to
+language, according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings
+constitute a =genos=, or generation, so long as they are supposed to
+have common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can only
+say that they form an =eidos=--that is, agree in certain appearances,
+until it has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest in
+admitting at least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal
+world.[16]
+
+In tracing the history of these two words, =genos= and =eidos=, you may
+see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy,
+from Plato's ideas down to Hegel's _Idee_. The question of _genera_,
+their origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural
+philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and
+classification of _genera_ and _species_, seem at last, thanks to the
+clear sight of Darwin, to have arrived at the old truth which was
+prefigured in language--namely, that Nature knows nothing but _genera_,
+or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and
+that the so-called _species_ are only _genera_, whose genealogical
+descent is _as yet_ more or less obscure.
+
+But the question as to the nature of the =eidos= became a vital question
+in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in
+every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what
+constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that
+form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended
+from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity.
+But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all
+individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they were
+cast remained the same?
+
+Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very question
+what =eidos= or species or form was, and where these things were kept,
+changed those words from predicates into subjects. =Eidos= was conceived
+as something independent and substantial, something within or above the
+individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal.
+Soon there arose as many =eide= or forms or types as there were general
+concepts. They were considered the only true realities of which the
+phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth away. Here we
+have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the various systems
+of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite opinions that
+ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found
+except in the many (=to hen para ta polla=), was strenuously defended by
+Aristotle and his followers.[17]
+
+The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the Middle
+Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as heretics because
+they declared that _animal_, _man_, or _woman_ were mere names, and that
+they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal animal, an ideal
+man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or metaphysical
+types of the ordinary animal, the individual man, the single woman.
+Those philosophers, called _Nominalists_, in opposition to the
+_Realists_, declared that all general terms were _names only_, and that
+nothing could claim reality but the individual.
+
+We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again between
+Locke and Leibniz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to say that the
+knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by the science of
+language alone, which teaches us that there is and can be no such thing
+as "a name only." That phrase ought to be banished from all works on
+philosophy. A name is and always has been the subjective side of our
+knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible without an
+objective side as a key is without a lock. It is useless to ask which of
+the two is the more real, for they are real only by being, not two, but
+one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism. But there is a higher
+Nominalism, which might better be called the Science of Language, and
+which teaches us that, apart from sensuous perception, all human
+knowledge is by names and by names only, and that the object of names is
+always the general.
+
+This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how names
+and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted to very
+careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What I mean by
+academic teaching and academic study is exactly this process of
+snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words, this
+tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought, this
+living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole
+history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to
+differ from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin.
+
+Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is awed
+by them, even though he may have read very little of their writings.
+This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction. Now, at
+University, a young student might hear the following, by no means
+respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from one of the
+greatest English scholars and philosophers:--"There is nothing so absurd
+that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was one of them, have
+not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce anything can be
+more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called
+Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of
+that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part
+of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that
+the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so
+mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources;
+it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed
+on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes. He
+will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind
+the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He
+will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a
+great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle,
+or Plato, or any other great philosopher far more highly and honestly
+than if he had never seen them trodden under foot.
+
+But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely
+iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of
+the schools. Far from it! But I do look upon them as meant to freshen
+the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake our mind to its
+very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down,
+but to make them grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and
+truth! "_Stand upright on thy feet_" ought to be written over the gate
+of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill
+saw approaching from China, and which since his time has made such rapid
+progress Westward, is ever to be stayed.
+
+Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which
+it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany--so far as my own
+experience goes--students are often left too much to themselves, and it
+is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally
+recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance and
+encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all.
+
+There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere
+lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student
+might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are
+useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if
+they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs
+from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact,
+they have less the character of a show-window than of a workshop. Half
+an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than
+a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right
+spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor
+Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the memory of my
+own University life," he writes, "and the impression which a man like
+Johannes Muller, the professor of physiology, made on us, I must set the
+highest value on the personal intercourse with teachers from whom one
+learns how thought works on independent heads. Whoever has come in
+contact but once with one or several first-class men will find his
+intellectual standard changed for life."
+
+In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of
+academic freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of
+constant personal control. It is often thought that English
+undergraduates could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom
+which is granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to
+choose their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own
+teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and untrue.
+Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and the best way
+to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived long enough in
+English and in German Universities to know that the intellectual fibre
+is as strong and sound in the English as in the German youth. But if you
+supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with bladders--nay, if you
+insist on his using them--he will use them, but he will probably never
+learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary, and depend on it, after
+a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps, he will use his arms and
+his legs, and he will swim. If young men do not learn to use their arms,
+their legs, their muscles, their senses, their brain, and their heart
+too, during the bright years of their University life, when are they to
+learn it? True, there are thousands who never learn it, and who float
+happily on through life buoyed up on mere bladders. The worst that can
+happen to them is that some day the bladders may burst, and they may be
+left stranded or drowned. But these are not the men whom England wants
+to fight her battles. It has often been pointed out of late that many of
+those who, during this century, have borne the brunt of the battle in
+the intellectual warfare in England, have not been trained at our
+Universities, while others who have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and
+have distinguished themselves in after-life, have openly declared that
+they attended hardly any lectures in college, or that they derived no
+benefit from them. What can be the ground of that? Not that there is
+less work done at Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a
+different spirit. It is free in Germany; it has now become almost
+compulsory in England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend,
+when I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a
+real pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on
+the history of art, on modern history, on the science of language, or on
+philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the
+subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of
+learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from
+mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the
+freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between
+cramming and examinations.
+
+And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends of
+academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity,
+may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine for
+intellectual levelling--_Examination_.
+
+There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of
+examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they
+are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that
+outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to
+address to the _Times_, in very imperfect English, were in favour of
+examinations. They were signed _La Carriere ouverte_, and were written
+long before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember,
+too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in
+public, was in favour of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when
+the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in
+establishing the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an
+examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system
+in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and
+written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it
+would be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of
+appointment by patronage.
+
+But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal
+the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are conducted,
+and by the results which they produce. As you are interested yourselves
+at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of examinations,
+you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few remarks on the
+safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations.
+
+All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been taught;
+they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which pupils are
+taught.
+
+Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the eyes of
+his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to produce
+shallowness and dishonesty.
+
+Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts
+were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is
+lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is
+gaining marks in examinations.
+
+In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil, all
+pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural
+examiners and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the
+report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the
+principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public
+schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives
+them the right to enter the University, they know that their success
+depends far more on the work which they have done during the years at
+school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination.
+There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work
+done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they
+have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare,
+and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality
+of the school authorities.
+
+To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level of
+lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to
+dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows _not_, he
+can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in
+finding out _how much_ a candidate knows, he can never find out _how_ he
+knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have watched
+their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the examiner,
+for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their teachers.
+
+I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters,
+and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties.
+Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than
+dishonest, and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters
+were rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would
+be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing
+false witness in favour of their pupils.
+
+Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed
+before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a
+good examination should be honour, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The
+mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships
+and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very
+widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is
+generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his
+usefulness in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he
+will entail on his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his
+teacher the loss of pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.
+
+It is always said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the
+sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in
+England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive
+costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it
+seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the
+majority of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and
+exhibitions at school or at University are boys whose parents have been
+able to pay the highest price for their children's previous education.
+If all these prizes were abolished, and the funds thus set free used to
+lessen the price of education at school and in college, I believe that
+the sons of poor parents would be far more benefited than by the present
+system. It might also be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case
+of the sons of poor parents, who were doing well at school from year to
+year; and, in order to guard against favouritism, an examination,
+particularly _viva voce_, before all the masters of a school, possibly
+even with some outside examiner, might be useful. But the present system
+bids fair to degenerate into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder
+if, sooner or later, the two-year olds entered for the race have to be
+watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against
+the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for
+clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read,
+that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take
+away the young racers that are likely to win the Derby.[18]
+
+If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the
+same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that every
+University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right to
+demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other for a
+degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia, in
+France, and in England to change and improve the old academic tradition,
+but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural system,
+has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right.
+
+If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to be
+admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of schoolmasters,
+and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim in
+their public lectures. Besides this, it is almost inevitable, if the
+Universities surrender the right of a matriculation-examination, that
+they should lower, not only their own standard, but likewise the
+standard of public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like
+over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite
+sure, at the end of each term or each year that the pupils confided to
+them have done at least some work. This kind of forced labour may do
+some good to the incorrigibly idle, but it does the greatest harm to all
+the rest. If there is an examination at the end of each year, there can
+be no freedom left for any independent work. Both teachers and taught
+will be guided by the same pole-star--examinations; no deviation from
+the beaten track will be considered safe, and all the pleasure derived
+from work done for its own sake, and all the just pride and joy, which
+those only know who have ever ventured out by themselves on the open sea
+of knowledge, must be lost.
+
+We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the brilliant show of
+examination papers.
+
+It is certainly marvellous what an amount of knowledge candidates will
+produce before their examiners; but those who have been both examined
+and examiners know best how fleeting that knowledge is, and how
+different from that other knowledge which has been acquired slowly and
+quietly, for its own sake, for our own sake, without a thought as to
+whether it would ever pay at examinations or not. A candidate, after
+giving most glibly the dates and the titles of the principal works of
+Cobbett, Gibbon, Burke, Adam Smith, and David Hume, was asked whether he
+had ever seen any of their writings, and he had to answer, No. Another,
+who was asked which of the works of Pheidias he had seen, replied that
+he had only read the first two books. That is the kind of dishonest
+knowledge which is fostered by too frequent examinations. There are two
+kinds of knowledge, the one that enters into our very blood, the other
+which we carry about in our pockets. Those who read for examinations
+have generally their pockets cram full; those who work on quietly and
+have their whole heart in their work are often discouraged at the small
+amount of their knowledge, at the little life-blood they have made. But
+what they have learnt has really become their own, has invigorated their
+whole frame, and in the end they have often proved the strongest and
+happiest men in the battle of life.
+
+Omniscience is at present the bane of all our knowledge. From the day he
+leaves school and enters the University a man ought to make up his mind
+that in many things he must remain either altogether ignorant, or be
+satisfied with knowledge at second-hand. Thus only can he clear the deck
+for action. And the sooner he finds out what his own work is to be, the
+more useful and delightful will be his life at University and later.
+There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge, there is hardly
+one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called hobbies ought to be
+utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if we wish our
+Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle, Grote, or
+Darwin. I do not say that in an examination for a University degree a
+minimum of what is now called general culture should not be insisted on;
+but in addition to that, far more freedom ought to be given to the
+examiner to let each candidate produce his own individual work. This is
+done to a far greater extent in Continental than in English
+Universities, and the examinations are therefore mostly confided to the
+members of the _Senatus Academicus_, consisting of the most experienced
+teachers, and the most eminent representatives of the different branches
+of knowledge in the University. Their object is not to find out how many
+marks each candidate may gain by answering a larger or smaller number of
+questions, and then to place them in order before the world like so many
+organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by the work he has
+done during his three or four years at University, has acquired that
+vigour of thought, that maturity of judgment, and that special
+knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic status, to a degree,
+with or without special honours. Such a degree confers no material
+advantages;[19] it does not entitle its holder to any employment in
+Church or State; it does not vouch even for his being a fit person to be
+made an Archbishop or Prime Minister. All this is left to the later
+struggle for life; and in that struggle it seems as if those who, after
+having surveyed the vast field of human knowledge, have settled on a few
+acres of their own and cultivated them as they were never cultivated
+before, who have worked hard and have tasted the true joy and happiness
+of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always depended on
+themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations delighted to
+follow as their royal leaders in their onward march towards greater
+enlightenment, greater happiness, and greater freedom.
+
+To sum up. No one can read Mill's Essay "On Liberty" at the present
+moment without feeling that even during the short period of the last
+twenty years the cause which he advocated so strongly and passionately,
+the cause of individual freedom, has made rapid progress, aye, has
+carried the day. In no country _may_ a man be so entirely himself, so
+true to himself and yet loyal to society, as in England.
+
+But, although the enemy whose encroachments Mill feared most and
+resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own
+bounds,--though such names as Dissent and Nonconformity, which were
+formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the
+poison which they once contained,--Mill's principal fears have
+nevertheless not been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw
+approaching with its attendant evils of feebleness, indifference, and
+sequacity, has been spreading more widely than ever in his days.
+
+It has even been maintained that the very freedom which every individual
+now enjoys has been detrimental to the growth of individuality; that you
+must have an Inquisition if you want to see martyrs; that you must have
+despotism and tyranny to call forth heroes. The very measures which Mill
+and his friends advocated so warmly, compulsory education and
+competitive examinations, are pointed out as having chiefly contributed
+to produce that large array of pass-men, that dead level of
+uninteresting excellence, which is the _beau ideal_ of a Chinese
+Mandarin, while it frightened and disheartened such men as Humboldt,
+Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.
+
+There may be some truth in all this, but it is certainly not the whole
+truth. Education, as it has to be carried on, whether in elementary or
+in public schools, is no doubt a heavy weight which might well press
+down the most independent spirit; it is, in fact, neither more nor less
+than placing, in a systematized form, on the shoulders of every
+generation the ever-increasing mass of knowledge, experience, custom,
+and tradition that has been accumulated by former generations. We need
+not wonder, therefore, if in some schools all spring, all vigour, all
+joyousness of work is crushed out under that load of names and dates, of
+anomalous verbs and syntactic rules, of mathematical formulas and
+geometrical axioms, which boys are expected to bring up for competitive
+examinations.
+
+But a remedy has been provided, and we are ourselves to blame if we do
+not avail ourselves of it to the fullest extent. Europe erected its
+Universities, and called them the homes of the Liberal Arts, and
+determined that between the slavery of the school and the routine of
+practical life every man should have at least three years of freedom.
+What Socrates and his great pupil Plato had done for the youth of
+Greece,[20] these new academies were to do for the youth of Italy,
+France, England, Spain, and Germany; and, though with varying success,
+they have done it. The mediaeval and modern Universities have been from
+century to century the homes of free thought. Here the most eminent men
+have spent their lives, not merely in retailing traditional knowledge,
+as at school, but in extending the frontiers of science in all
+directions. Here, in close intercourse with their teachers, or under
+their immediate guidance, generation after generation of boys, fresh
+from school, have grown up into men during the three years of their
+academic life. Here, for the first time, each man has been encouraged to
+dare to be himself, to follow his own tastes, to depend on his own
+judgment, to try the wings of his mind, and, lo, like young eagles
+thrown out of their nest, they could fly. Here the old knowledge
+accumulated at school was tested, and new knowledge acquired straight
+from the fountain-head. Here knowledge ceased to be a mere burden, and
+became a power invigorating the whole mind, like snow which during
+winter lies cold and heavy on the meadows, but when it is touched by the
+sun of spring melts away, and fructifies the ground for a rich harvest.
+
+That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they
+continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that
+real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and
+superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more
+will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity" which
+Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.
+
+Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities.
+There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings
+than your Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure the
+real benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of a
+University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is
+really wanted are men who have done good work in their life, and who are
+willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think for
+themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic stage
+in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others, be
+they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he works
+from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the
+conquest of truth. Those only who have passed through that stage know
+the real blessings of work. To the world at large they may seem mere
+drudges--but the world does not know the triumphant joy with which the
+true mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain walls that once seemed
+unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High Alps, and away from
+the fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city, revels alone, in
+freedom of thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the freedom of the
+highest faith.
+
+    F. MAX MULLER.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute.
+
+[2] Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written
+down in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January,
+1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume, and
+it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his Autobiography
+speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows
+himself one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty."
+"None of my writings," he says, "have been either so carefully composed
+or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final revision was to have been
+the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife had
+arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by
+his wife's death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive
+longer than anything else that I have written (with the possible
+exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with mine
+has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which
+the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring
+out into stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large
+variety of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to
+expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."
+
+[3] Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all
+settled concepts, from all inherited restraints and impediments which
+hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect with the historical drag
+tied to its foot."
+
+[4] Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universitaten, Rede
+beim Antritt des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat in
+Berlin, am 15 October 1877, gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.
+
+[5] Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen
+observer of English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the
+October number of the _Nineteenth Century_, remarks: "Nowhere is there
+greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere do people
+renounce it more readily of their own accord."
+
+[6] Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.
+
+[7] _Ibid._, p. 39.
+
+[8] "As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the
+consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of
+pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life,
+inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or
+been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there
+where they left it."--Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, p. 104.
+
+[9] Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.
+
+[10] Memoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phenicien, par E. de
+Rouge, Paris, 1874.
+
+[11] See Brandis, "Das Munzwesen."
+
+[12] "Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should
+require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every
+human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid
+to recognize and assert this truth?"--_On Liberty_, p. 188.
+
+[13] _Times_, January 25, 1879.
+
+[14] "Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.;
+Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879.
+
+[15] "Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.
+
+[16] Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language," _Fraser's
+Magazine_, June, 1873, p. 26.
+
+[17] Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.
+
+[18] L. Noire, "Padagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."
+
+[19] Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.
+
+[20] Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen,"
+1878, p. 9.
+
+
+
+
+MR. GLADSTONE.
+
+TWO STUDIES SUGGESTED BY HIS "GLEANINGS OF PAST YEARS."
+
+    _Gleanings of Past Years: 1843-1878._ By the Right Hon. W. E.
+    GLADSTONE, M.P. Seven vols. London: John Murray.
+
+
+I.
+
+Lord Beaconsfield and his party are still holding on. All the
+over-praised Disraelian craft has dwindled somehow to this merely
+muscular operation. An attempt is, indeed, made to disguise the attitude
+by keeping strict silence, and arranging the facial expression of the
+Cabinet, if not of the Party, in a way not agreeing with the strain; but
+the country is fast finding out that the real posture of the
+Conservatives at this moment is that of clutching at office, and nothing
+more. However, no amount of not talking about the elections will put
+them off finally. In his most efficient days Lord Beaconsfield was
+hardly clever enough to operate upon the almanack, and a certain
+terrible date is approaching upon him with increasing swiftness. It will
+be rather humiliating at last for a Premier to be brought up by the day
+of the month, and to be reminded by the great officials of Parliament
+what year of Our Lord it is. But these latter personages are partly paid
+for watching the efflux of time, and no doubt they will do their duty.
+It may be unpleasant for them to have to tell Lord Beaconsfield that
+dates make it impossible for him to go on any longer, but they must get
+what consolation they can from the remembrance that it is the first time
+they ever had to say this to a Minister. Several Parliaments in our
+history have been nicknamed rather uglily, but it is likely that the
+Beaconsfield House of Commons will be known under a description more
+humiliating than any, because so inescapeably accurate. It will
+literally be the run-to-the-last-dregs Parliament, and when, on there
+not being another moment left, the dissolution has necessarily to be
+ordered, the not-any-longer-to-be-put-off elections will take place.
+
+When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand
+whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form
+towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is
+written at the head of this paper--Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen will
+at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far
+north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand
+that wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes
+the centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be
+too near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that
+with Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few
+yards further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not
+unlikely that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the
+speech at Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without
+warning. The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to
+calculate than the final one of the Parliamentary calendar--that,
+namely, of Mr. Gladstone's appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed
+that they are already anxiously counting the days of the dwindling
+interval. Whenever he gives instructions for his hustings to be put up,
+the Conservatives will have to send for their own carpenters, and order
+planks.
+
+The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before he
+again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may
+not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It
+is, in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious
+hard work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the
+passing hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a
+special matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he
+has left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him.
+The result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation
+of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands
+wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds. Lately,
+it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind the country of
+his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as an old man. But
+without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute the register, we
+may say that he has scarcely got anybody to believe it. He has gone on
+felling trees, writing letters and articles, and publishing volumes,
+with utterances of more and better speeches between than anybody else
+can make, in a way which has led not a few to congratulate themselves
+that he was not any younger. In particular, his opponents, so soon as
+they found out that his announcement of retirement into ease meant that
+he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work a little harder in
+another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he had pledged
+himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather to complain
+that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something to be
+said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr. Gladstone's side at
+the time obviously was that the Conservatives were themselves not to do
+anything in particular. It was to be a time of stagnation, and they have
+not kept to that understanding; no sooner had he turned his back than
+they began to swagger up and down the world as Imperialists. They have
+risked the highest interests of the empire and have made England figure
+on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed and blustering for war.
+Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by foregoing all patriotism. It was
+too much to ask from an old-fashioned English statesman, who had always
+himself stood on the side of freedom and peace, and had grown accustomed
+to seeing his country ranged there too. However, we will speak again a
+little later on this point of his announced retirement.
+
+It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman
+now before the public with an official record which can in any way be
+set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of time
+and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House of
+Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not many, who
+have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no one whose
+Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office forty-five
+years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first
+appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then he
+stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone. The
+latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more
+than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade
+and Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary
+for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once. There
+is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in him who
+has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to show.
+Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
+Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a group
+of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not very distant
+date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served under and those
+whom he commanded; including in the association with him some whom he
+attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might scarcely fully apply; for
+Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office, and Mr. Bright in one.
+These latter were achievements of personal influence which may fairly
+rank a trifle higher than merely taking precedence of a Duke in a
+Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has happened in his time in the
+way of legislation and social reform, and his connection with it, it may
+be said, speaking generally, that he has witnessed the political and
+economical remoulding of this kingdom; and, taking all things together,
+has helped it forward in more ways than anybody else who still survives.
+If while Mr. Bright lives his name must always have the honour of first
+mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws is spoken of, it was Mr.
+Gladstone who wrought out all the details of Peel's fiscal reforms. He
+too it was who, much later, gave effect to Cobden's negotiation of the
+French Commercial Treaty; and also, again, made the best bargain that
+could be made when that first international arrangement lapsed. Every
+amelioration bearing on taxation and trade in our time has been
+naturally fated in some way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So,
+too, it was his conversion, or rather his progress, on the question of
+the Franchise--proved by his bringing in of the Russell measure--which
+made the immediate granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory
+trick of the last Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote
+was but a sinister gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from
+England to the sister country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be
+then seen that it was Mr. Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the
+Irish Church and by his Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If
+the Roman Catholics get a University now, they will only get what he
+offered them years ago. The prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some
+day to give to Mr. Gladstone's memory a splendid revenge for the
+ingratitude she showed to the man who brought legislating for Ireland
+into vogue. If we shift our regard to diplomacy, the future is still
+clearly with him in several of the chiefest international arrangements
+this generation has witnessed. When the Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and
+forgotten by everybody but historians and bookworms, the Treaty of
+Washington will be a living, ruling precedent between the mighty
+English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic; and on the day
+that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples of those
+regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves, the
+then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off our
+hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's name
+with the cession of the Ionian Islands.
+
+In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune with
+posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles. It is
+the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own, they
+put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular
+impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving
+auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But if,
+apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance for
+the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his foreign
+policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must not be
+defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all this was
+once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a Peelite. Of
+that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never could be a
+party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle region of
+ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has never ceased
+to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in this country is a
+political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental force. Mr. Gladstone's
+greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was the slowly but
+ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound, robust Liberal; but
+he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness of popular
+progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper of it in ways which
+showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may scrutinize his career
+more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look down lower than
+these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating; and, if we
+do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms, less showy, but
+very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism in the grain of
+every one of them. It was under his auspices that the Civil Service was
+thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of the Lords, with
+Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving us cheap
+newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a whole web of
+legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr. Forster gave to
+the country its first national educational scheme; but for him Mr.
+Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering the principle of our
+military organization from long-period enlistments to the short-term
+service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing to thrust upon him
+the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the army, because they think
+the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks to their resistance of the
+reform, was the only means of effecting it, lends itself to a taunt. Add
+to this list, the fact that although he, at first, for easily seen
+reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the earlier days when he
+was Conservative, did not favour University Reform, yet he finally lent
+himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to understand the
+successive outcries raised against him in the higher social quarters. He
+gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient reasons for their
+dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone was as certain
+in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on his shoulder,
+before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past its time.
+
+But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up his
+political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of his
+having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was always
+for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who once
+ensconced in a shire--say, in Buckinghamshire--remain there as long as
+they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of view. Mr.
+Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself turned out of
+constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was always for the
+same reason--he became too big for them. Among his highest distinctions
+are these,--he is the resigner of Newark, the rejected of Oxford, the
+loser of South Lancashire. The thing has occurred too often to admit of
+a casual explanation. It was not for Liberalism, as it is now
+understood, that he, when still in his youth, offended the mighty Duke
+of Newcastle and had to give up Newark, but it was for reasoned-out
+consistency which gave hope of Liberalism. He would not stultify his
+intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase of the Maynooth Grant
+in contradiction of his own book on Church and State. But all the world
+knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat developed that he quitted
+Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire was that he had for
+years been too busy in pushing forward reforms on all hands. It was a
+noble vanquishment for him, whatever it was for his party, for
+Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career how we will, the result
+still comes out to his honour. He, for conscience' sake, offended the
+great patron on whom his whole prospects then depended, remaining out of
+Parliament for a time; later, he went over with Peel, knowing that it
+meant an ineffective hanging between two parties for an indefinite time,
+sharing the hopes and chances of neither; when Lord Derby came into
+power, he refused office on its being offered. In a word, he has
+evidenced his sincerity and proved his patriotism in every way for which
+it is allowed to other men to claim honour. When a man has risked
+personal prospects, refused place, held office in all its kinds, left
+one lagging constituency after another behind him, and finally, by sheer
+insisting on rapid progress, temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of
+his countrymen throughout the whole nation, as the last general election
+showed that he had, what more is there left for him to do for his
+country? Only one thing remained: the sacrificing his retirement after
+the formal announcement of the close of his career, and, afresh taking
+up his old post in the front of the battle as if he were still young and
+had place and public life to secure, striving his hardest a last time
+for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final
+possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone
+undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by
+him.
+
+The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed
+to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more
+completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze,
+as he of necessity will do.
+
+But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr.
+Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of
+industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself
+needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier,
+for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr.
+Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much
+more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among
+us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he
+has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with
+his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr.
+Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of
+thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said
+what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability
+and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the
+others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple,
+old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no
+mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only
+a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except
+two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly
+seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style
+has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch
+earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone,
+however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the
+public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all
+the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our
+general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If
+we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has
+had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two
+generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed
+out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the
+canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most
+men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in
+Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not
+been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time,
+nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as
+within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr.
+Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer of Art;
+next mark off a reviewer and general _litterateur_ whom professed
+authors will respectfully make room for in their ranks; and not only is
+there still left, solid and firm, the great Parliamentary Minister, but
+of the scattered fragments a couple of Bishops might easily be made,
+with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several preachers for the
+denominations. The latter would be derived from a morsel or two of
+material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not fully aware of as being in
+his composition. It is not very easy to give a complete impression
+offhand of such a multiform personage as this. We must take him a little
+simpler. The general effect of it all has been, as we said above, that
+the mental activity of the community in all matters relating to politics
+and practical affairs has had to take its rate and much of its scale
+largely from him, and he has been thinking with the speed, not of the
+old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of ethical and
+religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to everything.
+In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone has made upon the
+community has been that of an intellect weaponed with a perfectly fluent
+tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of pens, occupying the very
+highest national posts, ceaselessly going on reasoning, insisting upon
+doing it, whether the reasoning might occasionally go wrong or not, just
+as if thinking, speaking, and writing were man's right employment. His
+chief opponents would, perhaps, hesitate in flatly saying that they were
+not; but, at any rate, they have continually been wanting him to stop.
+Nearly all the complaint that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves
+itself into a charge that he has thought and spoken and written too
+much. The accusation is one which it would task a great many men to lay
+themselves open to; it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of
+us. Above all, he has kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly
+the other side might have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so
+well; if only this promptest, quickest ratiocination on the part of a
+practical politician in our times had not, as it progressed, brought him
+ever nearer to the conclusions of Liberalism. He has, we are, however,
+rather ashamed to admit, had to suffer from his own party for this
+unusualness of mental activity. Our practical politics for generations
+past had been carried on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a
+hand-to-mouth principle of mere party expediency, that even some
+Liberals were surprised when he brought a little subtlety of intellect
+into public life. It was enough to make a smaller man despair of his
+countrymen's sanity when he found that for years many of them could not
+distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer of Rome.
+
+To speak plainly, there was never such a humiliating spectacle of public
+stolidity as that which for so long a time was witnessed in the popular
+mystification as to Mr. Gladstone's religious position. It went for
+nothing that his first critical Parliamentary step was to give up his
+seat rather than vote more money to Maynooth; nobody seemed to bear in
+mind that as far back as 1852 he both predicted and publicly hoped for
+the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, and that ten years
+later Sir George Bowyer openly attacked him on that very point in
+Parliament; it did not avail that he it was who paved the way for the
+unification of Italy by dragging into the light before all Europe the
+prison secrets of Neapolitan tyranny. Because he had the good sense to
+oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the loyalty to remain on
+terms of friendship with the companions of his youth after they became
+Puseyites, and avowed that he held the same views as to Church doctrine
+which some of the greatest Church of England divines taught, he was
+called on to explain, every month or so, that he was not a Jesuit. Not
+until he published his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, and by so doing
+threw all the Roman Catholics in England and elsewhere into a white heat
+of rage, was the silliness quite exploded. It is true that the dull
+public might plead that a real profession of religiousness on the part
+of a leading politician was such a novelty that it might be excused
+being a little puzzled, and believing the worst in its perplexity. Worst
+or best, Mr. Gladstone has gone on speaking and writing about his
+religion just as if a man's ethics and faith ought to have some
+connection with his politics, and, as time has passed, people appear to
+think it less strange. This non-reticence on the score of religion has
+made more serious the impression Mr. Gladstone has produced upon the
+public mind; but in reality it is no specialty in his mode of public
+thinking, but only a necessary part of it. He tracks his commonest
+politics to their fundamental principles, and makes of them a system. He
+has always in his reasoning to go back to history, and this has delayed
+his advance in comparison with men who dispense with that; but there
+never yet was a public man who explained so fully as Mr. Gladstone the
+reasons of his changes. All the progress of his mind is to be traced in
+speeches, articles, pamphlets, volumes. He has given too much
+explanation, not too little, for his mind has an insatiability for
+reasons. Most people are content when they get hold of a good one; but
+he wants three or four--in fact, all that can be got by searching for;
+and if it be true, as it certainly is, that he likes the last to have a
+little subtlety about it, long-sustained thinking cannot take people too
+deep in politics, whatever it may do now and then in religion. For
+instance, on the question of Reform Mr. Gladstone has certainly
+exhausted the process, having at last got at the final ideal argument.
+It turns out, as he stated it to Mr. Lowe, to be this,--that, apart
+from, or rather in addition to, all the hard reasons of justice and
+safety that Mr. Bright can urge for extending the franchise, the vote
+ought to be given because it has an educative power, and will make our
+humbler fellow-countrymen better citizens. It is open to any one, who is
+stupid enough, to call that argument subtle, but no one can deny that it
+is truly Liberal. There is not a man among us to-day who keeps the main
+Liberal issues so broad and clear as Mr. Gladstone does, and this simply
+because he will get to a principle. He adds a tremendous multiplicity of
+ideas in the way of side issues, but, as we above put it, they are all
+reasons in addition. There is a very simple test of it,--he has never
+recanted a single article of his Liberal progress, never gone back a
+single step. This hardly can be said of either Mr. Lowe or a few others
+who might be named. It could not even be said of so thorough a Liberal
+as Earl Russell. Mr. Gladstone's alleged over-refining has ended in
+placing and keeping him in the practical lead of his party, at a time of
+life when many born in the faith grow faint-hearted. Even the one bit of
+mysticism which his political feeling has developed--namely, the belief
+that the popular judgment is truest of all in very large matters--is
+only the full flowering of the popular trust which every Liberal
+professes to have. The bulk of the nation will forgive him that excess
+of political belief, if it be an excess, for it is the last compliment a
+statesman can pay them, and they have but to merit it, and it then turns
+to Mr. Gladstone's praise as well as theirs. But, at any rate, it will
+not do for Liberals to set out to argue the point with Mr. Gladstone, or
+they will quickly find themselves tripped up by a principle; for it is
+no sentimentality in him which underlies the view, but completed logic
+and wide recollection of historical instances.
+
+Indeed, although it was necessary in trying to reproduce the general
+impression Mr. Gladstone has made upon his contemporaries to speak of
+this alleged over-refining, what is meant by it has been after all a
+kind of superfluity of mental operation. His intricacy of thinking has
+never hindered his activity; least of all living men has Mr. Gladstone
+been a dreamer. He stands in history as a reviser of fiscal policies; an
+introducer of new administrative modes; a widener of the boundaries of
+political rights; a ceaseless overthrower of public abuses. From first
+to last he has been, as the hatred of his opponents has too well
+witnessed, a man of practice. You may add to this that he reasons too
+minutely, if you like; but it was not by a transcendental casuistry of
+politics that he wearied the country: it was by his enormous energy in
+ceaselessly proposing wide sweeping measures. The casuistry was all in
+addition. The over-refining of Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, been of a
+wholly different kind from what is common among men; it has consisted in
+finding justifications afterwards for very prompt vigorous doing.
+Examine, if any one thinks it worth while at this time of day, the
+Ewelme Rectory case, or the issue of the Royal Warrant on Purchase, or
+the Collier appointment, and it will appear that it was for bold
+decision in taking a practical step that he was arraigned as much as for
+subsequently finding too many reasons for it. For ourselves, as we have
+not set out to apologize for Mr. Gladstone (men of his dimensions must
+be taken as they are), but simply to put down hints recalling more fully
+than is usual the great features of his career, there is no need for our
+not saying that we wish he had in some cases dispensed with these
+arguments in excess of the conclusion. In some instances it is as wise
+after all, though not so clever, to be satisfied with urging one good
+reason, and not to confuse ordinary people by adding five or six more
+not so good, the risk being that there will be a bad one among them. But
+the fact remains that Mr. Gladstone has not busied himself in tying
+mental knots for the purpose of entanglement; he has indulged in no such
+waste of time. The mental puzzle has always referred to some practical
+doing. Owing to this, his opponents have had to admit his mental
+sincerity, while accusing him of over-subtlety. It nearly all turned, in
+fact, into the psychological question of whether Mr. Gladstone's mind
+had not at one part of its machinery a twist, and in the meantime while
+this point was being discussed he went on carrying his measures. If
+there were Liberals who did not quite follow him in his defence of the
+issue of the Royal Warrant, when he drew distinctions between
+prerogative and statutory power, they had not the least doubt that in
+abolishing purchase he had effected a capital Liberal reform, and they
+might hope that his reasoning as well as his practice was right. Is Mr.
+Gladstone to be the only one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be
+allowed? The hullabaloo which was raised when somebody could say that he
+had broken through a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though
+from this one politician perfection was expected, which was not an ill
+compliment at bottom; and any admirers who may admit that perfection was
+not always got, do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this
+world goes, and may still think him the most upright of our public men.
+His mental machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like
+it for rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it;
+his mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply
+arguments to the last shred of the material which any case in hand
+affords. But, to return to the main point,--it never leaves go of the
+real business. Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his
+voluminous writing, has, with the one exception of his classical
+studies, been no mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of
+special objects. These productions have been meant to frame public
+opinion, and to give him openings for legislation, if that became
+possible. He has used the press because it had become the hugest
+instrument of the time he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of
+multiplying books that Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to
+practically influencing men.
+
+This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends--this iron
+determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend upon his
+power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and popular
+persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as the final
+imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was always meant for a
+Liberal. A man of this kind might be born a Conservative; it might take
+him time to break fully with old ties; but for him to stay finally in
+the ranks where thought was allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were
+looked on with toleration, and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others,
+was an impossibility. Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a
+born financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for
+publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His whole
+life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has had in
+it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social condition
+of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too much upon them
+to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper circle, which so
+foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing itself the
+nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has been subjected
+to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his father was a
+baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. Nobles have
+been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as his
+official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed the whole
+of his long career without a sparkle of the glitter of adventitious
+display: that proudest title of all, which it is not in the power of the
+Crown to bestow but only to take away--"the Great Commoner"--has
+descended upon him, and is still his. Then he has fenced himself off
+with no stiffness of manner; the only dignity he has assumed has been
+the natural seriousness of ardent sincerity, warning off triflers only.
+To everybody else he has been accessible; any person could impose on him
+the trouble of a written reply. His post-cards were known to be public
+property. But putting aside that joke, which is now worn bare, scarcely
+has any one so fully and ungrudgingly accepted the responsibilities of
+his position. He has been the public's faithful, ready servant in every
+particular. Nor has it been mere complaisance, or a drudging of
+mechanical industry; he has exhibited a real faculty of interesting
+himself in all that anybody has been doing actively and well. To say
+that he is the only statesman who, while clinging to the Church of
+England, has commanded the sympathies of the Dissenters, might provoke
+an enemy, embittered by the fact, to reply that he had tactical reasons
+for trying to do that; but it could have been nothing else than real
+width of mind and a robust versatility which enabled this High Churchman
+largely to divide impartial admiration between the Evangelical party and
+the Romanists, pointing out fully and exactly what is to be praised in
+each. Any one who wishes it can find the estimates set out in detail in
+the third and seventh volumes of "The Gleanings." This wide range of
+intellectual appreciation is really as much a characteristic of Mr.
+Gladstone as has been his unyielding tenacity and doctrinal hold within
+the limits of his personal confession of belief. He, a firm acceptor of
+the tenets of sacramental efficacy, apostolical succession, and the
+authority of the Church in her own sphere, could take up the
+semi-rationalistic book "Ecce Homo," and turn it round-and-round
+admiringly as a most curious and valuable mental production. Nothing in
+which thought was really shown has escaped his notice, or failed to
+arouse his interest. He has bent his look on Secularism, as a scientific
+inquirer might scrutinize a new species, and he has stooped to quote Mr.
+Bradlaugh. In one place you will find him, very likely on the page after
+giving a passage from Isaiah or the Psalms, citing the old poet Dunbar,
+or speaking of Rowe or Swift, or alluding to Rousseau; while long before
+it became a fashion he had words of sympathizing praise for Shelley,
+selecting, of all other places, _The Quarterly Review_ to print them in.
+But, perhaps, the clearest proof of all, alike of his power to bear
+testimony in spite of personal disliking, and his standing hard and fast
+upon a principle when he has reached it, is that he, whom Macaulay
+nearly half a century ago described as "a young man of unblemished
+character," and whom his Lordship, if he were now alive, would speak of
+as "the old man with personal fame unspotted," could step aside in one
+of his articles to recognize the public debt due to Jack Wilkes as a
+helper forward of our freedom. Wherever a national service has been
+done, Mr. Gladstone's eulogy always has been ready.
+
+Down to this point we have not spared so much as a hint to his
+magnificent oratory, his unsurpassed debating skill, his not infrequent
+successes in literary style. These were not the things that anybody
+needed reminding of, and that necessity was the prescribed limit of our
+self-imposed task. Who has forgotten when the expounding of the Budget
+was the greatest intellectual treat of the Session, when sugar and
+railway duties and tea became natural themes for eloquence, and the
+unfolding of the surplus was breathlessly waited for like the
+_denouement_ of a novelist's plot? Those scenes are long past, it is
+true, but the echoes of them can still be heard, for each year since has
+brought a disappointing reminder to awaken them. But the matchless
+vigour and splendour of his debating fence has never slackened, never
+weakened; the only privilege of the older generation in respect of it,
+is that they can boast to have witnessed more of it, not to have seen
+better displays. As to his writings, there least of all is any reminder
+wanted, for he presents the public with an improving specimen each
+month. If any one laid themselves out to find fault with Mr. Gladstone's
+literature, the very worst thing they could discover to say of it, would
+be that it still was oratory, only written down.
+
+This is the man who, after a few weeks of leisure, reappears next month
+in Midlothian; first in the field, as if that appearance was his by
+right of custom. How well he compares with the rest of our older party
+leaders! Mr. Bright, grown a little pursy, though also stricken by
+domestic misfortune, rests rather inertly on his laurels, which
+certainly are plentiful enough to invite repose; Mr. Forster has never
+succeeded in quite finding his way out of the clauses of his own
+Education Act, where he sees himself confronted with the Church of
+England at the end of so many vistas, that he is lost in admiration of
+its architecture; Mr. Goschen, by some strange weakness (which, let us
+hope, is only temporary) has got a scare from meeting the County
+Franchise wearing Joseph Arch's coat and hat; while Mr. Lowe is riding
+hobbies, bicycle-wise, in and out before the very select constituency of
+the London University, with readers of _The Fortnightly Review_ for
+outside spectators, just by way of showing off his little feats of
+mental gymnastic. In the meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the veteran of them
+all, is putting on his harness for a fresh contest, a riper, better
+Liberal to-day than on any previous day of fight. It is for the younger
+men to rally round him.
+
+But, before taking our leave of Mr. Gladstone, we have finally to
+enlarge our view of him. Early in these remarks it seemed well to give a
+very hasty summary of his whole career; but there remains to be
+attempted an exact sketch of his actual position in respect of opinions
+and practical relations at the moment when he ceased to be Minister. Let
+us, first of all, at this moment when a Brummagem Imperialism is only
+yet half-faded, recall what was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the historic
+position and natural function of England among the nations; for it has
+been craftily made to appear that he was willing, and indeed anxious,
+for this country to efface itself. In 1870, when he was still at the
+height of power, he published in _The Edinburgh Review_ his article on
+"Germany, France, and England," and the following was the view he then
+put forward of the international obligations and duties of his country,
+in spite of the sea dividing us from other lands:--
+
+"Yet we are not isolated.... With vast multitudes of persons in each of
+the Continental countries we have constant relations, both of personal
+and commercial intercourse, which grow from year to year; and as,
+happily, we have no conflict of interests, real or supposed, nor scope
+for evil passions afforded by our peaceful rivalry, there is nothing to
+hinder the self-acting growth of concord.... So far from this implying
+either a condition or a policy of isolation, it marks out England as the
+appropriate object of the general confidence.... All that is wanted is
+that she should discharge the functions, which are likely more and more
+to accrue to her, modestly, kindly, impartially.... But in order that
+she may act fully up to a part of such high distinction, the kingdom of
+Queen Victoria must be in all things worthy of it. The world-wide cares
+and responsibilities with which the British people have charged
+themselves are really beyond the ordinary measure of human strength; and
+until a recent period it seemed the opinion of our rulers that we could
+not do better than extend them yet further, wherever an opening could
+easily, or even decently, be found. With this avidity for material
+extension was joined a preternatural and morbid sensibility. Russia at
+the Amoor, America at the Fee-jee or the Sandwich Islands, France in New
+Caledonia or Cochin China--all these, and the like, were held to be good
+reasons for a feverish excitement lest other nations should do for
+themselves but the fiftieth part of what we have done for ourselves....
+The secret of strength lies in keeping some proportion between the
+burden and the back."
+
+Is it necessary to ask whether this is a policy combining dignified
+patriotism and prudently-restrained common sense? Compare it for a
+moment with the gewgaw skimble-skamble diplomatic sensationalism with
+which we have been presented since. But let us go a little more into
+detail as to Mr. Gladstone's standing with reference to international
+relations. This present Government has perhaps forgotten that there is
+such a nation in the world as the United States of America; but Mr.
+Gladstone kept it well in mind, and we suppose every one will admit that
+he, of all statesmen, stands well with that people of our own blood, who
+very shortly will be the most powerful community upon the earth, and the
+one with whom we shall, for all time, have most to do. However, we will
+keep within the bounds of Europe. It is the fashion now to give
+precedence to Germany. Well, Mr. Gladstone was among the first to
+predict the success of Prussia, and she is not likely to forget who it
+was who preserved neutrality at a moment most critical to her. Is it
+France that he is not on good relations with? Why this Minister, who
+invited her wine trade, and strove unceasingly to increase commerce to
+and fro across the Channel, and who is for giving further and further
+political rights to his countrymen, is the only English statesman whom
+the bulk of Frenchmen can understand. To them our Tories must be as
+antiquated as their own Royalists. Italy is a growing Power in the
+European comity, and who is there among our statesmen who can in her
+fair cities arouse half the enthusiasm he can? He is, literally, the
+only English politician they familiarly know. With Austria, it is true,
+he during the recent war lost patience for a moment, but her conduct
+since has told that her rulers must at the time have known that he had
+good reasons for it; and no one has more fully appreciated the
+difficulties of Austria's position than he has done, or was more early
+in giving her, years ago, the very counsel which she has since proved
+was the wisest for her. There remains one other great Power to be
+named--Russia; the State with whom we shall have directly of necessity
+to stand face to face in the far East, and with whom terms will in the
+end have somehow to be made. It is urged against Mr. Gladstone that he
+has not rendered himself obnoxious enough to this remaining Power--that
+is, that he did not incapacitate himself for negotiating with her, and,
+having postponed defiance of her, might make some peaceful arrangement.
+Can any friend of peace think this a very grievous accusation? Mr.
+Gladstone has gained this position of goodwill all round at what
+cost?--that of having fallen into disfavour with the Turks. That is his
+one terrible disqualification for affairs; or, if you wish to be
+precisely exhaustive, and at the same time to elicit the absurdity
+fully, you may add to it that he has irritated the Bourbons. It is quite
+true, and we, indeed, wish to put it clearly forward, that he was for
+abating a little of our national swagger, and was prepared to see, and
+to welcome, advancement in other nations. But every well-grounded
+Liberal knows that it is only on those two conditions that England can
+permanently pursue her own paths of industrial development, and the
+world make progress. Mr. Gladstone's single sin in reference to our
+external relations was his readiness to favour those two results.
+
+But how does he show when a last view is taken of him from within our
+politics? Here, again, first look to the circumference. In dealing with
+the colonies, he was for all being put in possession of a free autonomy,
+and then urging them to self-reliance--in those ways welding them into
+the integrity of the empire; and as to India, he insisted that we should
+strive more and more to realize what he termed the generous conception
+of a moral trusteeship, to be administered for the benefit of those over
+whom we rule. Here, once more, we get the true ring of a sound
+Liberalism, for those are the only principles, we venture to affirm, on
+which such an empire as this of ours can ever be made permanent.
+Treating the colonies as babies and biting the thumb at Russia, even
+from the most scientific frontier India can furnish, though you shout
+"Empress" from it as loudly as you will, has nothing truly English about
+it. Empire is not kept in such a mawkish, artificial manner.
+
+But now narrow the gaze within our own home limits. The chief domestic
+questions for the British public are these,--extension of the County
+Franchise, the Redistribution of Seats, the Disestablishment of the
+Church, and Retrenchment of Expenditure. The Land Question will yet have
+to grow, and may not ripen in his time. But on three of the above
+pending matters Mr. Gladstone stands at the very front. He is for making
+our field cultivators citizens no less than our artizans; he is for
+re-allotting members in a manner which will give us a Parliament truly
+representative; and it is hardly necessary to speak of economical
+benefits in connection with the Minister who used the nation to
+reduction of taxation and surpluses arriving together, and whose last
+promise under that head was the total abolition of the Income Tax. On
+the other of these great domestic matters, that which stands third in
+the above list, the Disestablishment of the Church, it has seemed to
+advanced Liberals that Mr. Gladstone has lagged. But the lively fear of
+his opponents on this very matter is full of hope. Since he last
+dissented from Mr. Miall's motion, he has written a very significant
+phrase in an article in this Review. In treating of "The Courses of
+Religious Thought," when reviewing the churches of the United States and
+of the British Colonies he spoke of their vigorous growth, "far from the
+possibly chilling shadow of National Establishments of Religion." In
+that phrase, for a man so practical as is Mr. Gladstone,
+Disestablishment seems to cast its shadow before, and not a few persons
+on the other side of the question shivered from the chilliness it made.
+But these topics of the first class do not depend upon any one
+statesman; the biggest of men have these capital problems thrust upon
+them; all that you can do is to take note how a leader stands in
+reference to them. And the above is Mr. Gladstone's standing. But there
+was another class of legislative reforms which he was the man to have
+gone in search of. In one of his most recent articles he has given us a
+hint of a dream of this kind which was in his mind. He stated it
+thus:--"Our currency, our local government, our liquor laws, portions
+even of our taxation, remain in a state either positively disgraceful,
+or at the least inviting and demanding improvement." That programme of
+the further benefits which we should have owed to Mr. Gladstone was put
+aside by the giddiness of twenty-five or thirty constituencies at the
+last elections, but it will fittingly serve to give the finishing touch
+to our presentation of him in this paper. Liberals have, in fact, to
+thank him for offering more of reform and of benefit than the country
+would let him give it. Splendid as his achievements have been, he really
+had others in reserve.
+
+Is it too late? is the question that naturally arises. Certainly there
+is no hope of having the five years of administration by him which we
+have lost since 1874. That is irretrievable; and if Mr. Gladstone felt
+then his growing years, and had a wish to finish other tasks apart from
+politics, he is no younger now; while the aims of his purposed leisure
+must have been greatly interfered with by his partial recall to affairs
+owing to the dangers to which freedom in Bulgaria and our own national
+credit were exposed. It is wholly a matter for Mr. Gladstone to decide.
+If the next elections go in favour of the Liberals, all the world knows
+that office is there for him to take or to leave. Earl Granville, the
+Duke of Argyll, Lord Hartington would, we need not say, be among the
+first even to urge it as far as it was right to do so, and the whole
+party would welcome him back to power with a shout of joy. Who knows?
+Mr. Gladstone's patriotism is great, and our financial muddle will,
+also, be very great about that time. Between the two he might be
+tempted; he may yet do us the final service of putting the national
+finances right again. It is, we repeat, wholly for him to say. Earlier
+in this paper a further word was promised on the subject of his
+retirement; but, upon second thoughts, it scarcely seems necessary. Mr.
+Gladstone was too experienced in Parliamentary doings not to know that
+the Conservatives would take care to keep enough of their majority until
+time itself forced them back to the unwished-for hustings. He did his
+party not an atom of practical injury by retiring; rather, it was a good
+opportunity for giving a younger leader practice. It would be quite
+idle, on the other hand, to argue with his opponents for complaining
+that he did not retire enough. He has made speeches, they say; he has
+written articles in every organ there is; he has even republished
+previous writings. As we before said, they have themselves to blame for
+it in great measure: if they wanted Mr. Gladstone to stay in retirement,
+they should have carefully kept quiet. Instead of that they made a noise
+before his door, disturbing him in his studies. What more natural than
+that he should come out? He did so, and found that, disguised like
+harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which they call Imperialism, they
+were playing high jinks with Britain's reputation and the chances of
+freedom for the oppressed in the East. It was too much for him; but if
+they complain of the number of the weapons he attacked them with, we
+know that it would have been impossible for him to please them there.
+They never have been satisfied on that score. What they really find
+fault with are the blows they got.
+
+And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining that
+he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland; the real fact
+being that they wish he had gone much farther still. They never are
+sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them. We leave them
+anxiously listening for his approach again unto these shores, knowing
+very well that to their thinking they will hear his voice all too soon.
+
+    A LIBERAL.
+
+
+II.
+
+Description is said to be only possible by comparing, and when one is
+asked to sketch Mr. Gladstone, how is it to be set about? His admirers
+will have it that he has been a very great Minister, so that if we adopt
+the comparative method, we ought to look high for standards. Shall we
+match him alongside Bismarck or Cavour? The latter, to give him
+precedence, stands renowned for building up his country in evil days,
+when every omen was against her. But Mr. Gladstone, succeeding to power
+when England was in the full tide of prosperity and at the height of
+fame, gave up her prospects, and would have acquiesced in her decadence.
+There is no likeness whatever between him and Cavour. Then take
+Bismarck. The great German Chancellor shares with the Italian Minister
+the glory of having widened the bounds and raised the position of his
+land, and he stands now head and shoulders above all in the midst of the
+diplomatic world a very Colossus. But Mr. Gladstone is and has always
+been outside that world altogether. Prince Bismarck has his hand on all
+the springs of action, and will let pass no chance of exalting his
+country. Mr. Gladstone, we repeat, never made the slightest impression
+in the regions of diplomacy; Courts did not know him, foreign statesmen
+left him out of their reckoning of the men that had to be dealt with.
+The great international achievements for which he has alone been talked
+of have been the surrender of British territory and the paying down of
+English money lavishly to another State for preposterous claims. But it
+will be said that it is not fair to Mr. Gladstone to compare him to
+Prince Bismarck and Count Cavour, for they were men who found their
+country in unusual circumstances. Look, then, to names in our own
+history. Pitt must not be spoken of for the reasons just allowed in the
+other cases; but there are Canning and Palmerston. How does Mr.
+Gladstone look alongside them? He has himself more than once alluded to
+Canning, as if not unwilling to be thought to have received his mantle.
+It was, however, always only in connection with Greece that he spoke of
+Canning; but that Minister looked much farther than the Mediterranean.
+One would have thought that so fine a rhetorician as Mr. Gladstone would
+not have forgotten the famous phrase in which Canning claimed to have
+called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
+Lord Palmerston was without any such fine phrases, but in foreign
+affairs he acted boldly, though he had to fall back on a musty Latin
+quotation to describe it. Every Englishman, however, understood Latin
+when their Minister said, _Civis Romanus sum_. Yet neither of these
+Ministers at any part of their career lived in times more stirring than
+Mr. Gladstone has done, nor when the interests of England were more
+endangered. He has still later had magnificent opportunities, but he did
+worse than lose them.
+
+From all this, it would seem that, whether we look abroad or at home,
+there is no possibility of describing Mr. Gladstone by hints of
+comparison with these historical personages. What is said in that way
+appears, in fact, to turn into contrast; which is, also, itself a mode
+of delineation, though not usually of the kind the chief object of it
+wishes. We can find no Minister to couple along with him as having
+deliberately despaired of his country. However, Mr. Gladstone is
+certainly great in some way, for although other nations while we were
+under his sway were gradually losing sight of England herself as well as
+of him, he was making plenty of noise all the time at home. If it should
+turn out, as we go on, that he was not a great Minister but a great
+orator, that would seem to account for both the things. If Bismarck and
+Cavour have made affairs, Mr. Gladstone has made speeches, beating them
+as much in that as they did him in the other respect. But it is not
+exactly the same thing to the countries the men represent.
+
+It is, therefore, under a humbler, more domestic aspect than that of
+this high supreme style of Minister which we have first tried that we
+must begin Mr. Gladstone's portraiture. The task may be divided into two
+portions. There is the opinion which we Conservatives hold of the
+general influence and effect he has had upon our national interests, in
+which we may be credited with at least trying to estimate his acts and
+measures on their merits; and, besides that, there is a judgment of him
+from a narrower party view, arising out of his historic relation to
+ourselves. We will take the latter first.
+
+To hear Liberals talk, one might suppose that Conservatives had always
+cherished a special hatred against Mr. Gladstone simply for ceasing to
+be a Tory and becoming a Radical. That the Conservatives rather late in
+his career came to show much irritation against Mr. Gladstone is
+perfectly correct; but it was, as I hope to show as I go on, for very
+different reasons than simply because he had made one Conservative less
+and one Liberal more. A great political party has no such immortal
+animosities as that supposes: party feeling is not based on merely
+sentimental grounds. Both sides are used to losing men. It is the common
+fate of Parliamentary warfare. Now and then, some rather idle person who
+has time to waste in going back a long way in his recollections bethinks
+himself that Lord Beaconsfield was not always a Conservative; but we
+never yet heard of any one among the party challenging sympathy for him
+on the score that he had been hunted by the Liberals through half a
+century or so for having deserted them. Yet it will be admitted that
+Lord Beaconsfield has injured the Liberals more than ever Mr. Gladstone
+has done the Conservatives. What is the reason, then, of this difference
+of alleged treatment in the two cases? The answer may be given in half a
+sentence,--Lord Beaconsfield, alike when he was Mr. Disraeli and since,
+has always fought fair. That is enough in politics to make your
+opponents acquiesce in your being such; but Mr. Gladstone as his career
+developed surprised and puzzled everybody, his own friends included; and
+those who blame the Conservatives for, in the end, losing temper and
+showing exasperation, should bear in mind that he finally produced the
+very same effect upon the country at large.
+
+It is worth while following this point a little further, for it would
+not be of much use attempting to sketch Mr. Gladstone if we are supposed
+to dislike him from some mere party instinct. Will anybody be good
+enough to tell us when this inscrutable emotion of hatred of Mr.
+Gladstone arose? Liberals are not supposed to be strong in history, but
+they have very short memories indeed if they have forgotten both their
+own career and his. Why, in 1852--that is, in the twentieth year of Mr.
+Gladstone's Parliamentary life--the Conservatives were offering him
+office, which was not refused by him with over-much promptness. For
+nearly fourteen years after that he was retained as the representative
+of the University of Oxford. It is, in fact, not yet very much more
+than a dozen years since this victim of political persecution, and
+present champion of the Radicals, was quietly ensconced in a seat for
+what is sometimes spoken of as the head-quarters of Toryism. He has
+roved a good deal among the constituencies since, but he was then
+willing to have gone on remaining at Oxford, if his constituents had
+also been willing to have been made laughing-stocks by letting him
+remain. Surely a man who represented Tory electors until he was getting
+fast on for sixty could scarcely up to that point have been much hunted
+and worried for Liberal principles. To speak plainly, there never was so
+late a conversion made of so much histrionic use as this of Mr.
+Gladstone's. But though it has suited both his and his present party's
+ends, it rather puzzles plain people who have kept their recollections a
+little trim to think that if he lives on into senatorial decrepitude, he
+will never have sat for Radical constituencies anything like so long a
+time as he did for Conservative ones. For between thirty and forty years
+this Liberal ex-Premier was a Tory member.
+
+In fact, a glance at the right honourable gentleman's wonderfully
+prosperous career will show that in the list of our public men he has of
+all others made the fewest, the briefest, the least sacrifices either
+for principle or party. There are very simple ways of testing it; Mr.
+Gladstone has not been out of office long enough for a man who was
+innocent of business prudence in his career. He has, in fact, reaped the
+official spoils of two parties, if not of three. The dates and
+appointments are on record for anybody to trace out. On the very face of
+it, a man who has served under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Russell,
+and then come out as a full-blown Liberal Prime Minister himself, must
+of necessity be said to offer rather a miscellaneous career. His warmest
+admirer must admit that he has been either the most fortunate or else
+the most prudent of men; and, as we do not wish to be stingy in our
+recognition of his skill, we prefer to compliment him by attributing his
+great prosperity throughout so many years and under so many different
+chiefs to his prudence.
+
+If this very hasty review of Mr. Gladstone's chronicle does not agree
+with the impression of him which is the prevailing one on the Liberal
+side, it is the one which the bare facts of his career would produce on
+every side if they could be seen without the misleading effect of his
+very fine words and exceedingly solemn attitudes. Very fortunately for
+him it is only the Conservatives who have a full and accurate
+recollection of Mr. Gladstone. They have necessarily observed him
+continuously from their own unshifting party position, and so have been
+able to perceive in a way that hardly was practicable to the Liberals,
+who were always shifting and struggling among themselves, how invariably
+and consistently his announcements of change of view have hit with the
+opportunities for improvement of his Parliamentary position. On every
+occasion, to the very moment, so soon as a Liberal question had fully
+ripened, Mr. Gladstone presented himself to pluck it. It was so with
+Reform, it was so with Church Rates, it was so with University Reform,
+it was so with the Ballot, it was so with the spoliation of the Irish
+Church and the unsettling of the Irish landowners, and it is so with the
+County Franchise, and it will be so once more, if the Liberals ever get
+into power again, with the English Church and the English Land Laws. Mr.
+Bright, Mr. Miall, and all the Radicals have drudged for many a year for
+Mr. Gladstone, who, when all the outdoor work has been done, has always
+allowed himself to be persuaded to bring in the Measure just in the nick
+of time, and, by expounding it in a very fine speech, has robbed its
+actual originators of two-thirds of the credit of making it possible.
+
+Luckily for the Conservatives, though he never had the courage to attack
+a question of the very first class himself in the way of initiative, he
+had an insatiable ambition for meddling with smaller ones, and by making
+vents in these ways for his restlessness and his ambition, he finally
+ruined all that his skilful prudence in the larger affairs had gained
+him, disgusting the country till it determined to get him off its hands
+at any price. Still, that is not just now the point in question.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's so slowly passing through all the stages from
+Conservatism to Radicalism has had this effect,--that while all other
+public men of his standing have grown more or less antiquated in steady
+loyal service to their party, and by presenting a fixed if monotonous
+aspect to the public, this one Parliamentary personage kept a perennial
+freshness, simply by skilfully dividing his prolonged career into
+distinct periods and going on changing. Some political section has been
+always welcoming Mr. Gladstone newly into its ranks and to its spoils,
+for, as we have said, the two things unfailingly went together; and the
+shouts with which he was received were always strengthened by fainter
+murmurs of applause from other sections more advanced along the line,
+who hoped to receive him themselves later on. They did so. Really to
+each one of them he was a recruit from the last party. To the
+Palmerstonians he ought at the most to have been only a Peelite; to the
+Liberals at worst only a Palmerstonian. But by a surprising adroitness,
+it was always made to appear that in all his migrations from party to
+party, he joined each successive group as a new retreater from the
+Tories. It certainly was true in one sense; he was always going further
+away from them. But for all party purposes and reckoning, he had as much
+left them when he joined Palmerston as when he shook hands with Mr.
+Bright and took his place in front of the Radicals.
+
+These are only a first handful of specimens of a certain unfairness in
+Mr. Gladstone's position and career from first to last, from which he
+has largely profited, and which very naturally irked his opponents, who
+have had to suffer its inconveniences. He has posed as a sort of
+political orphan left lonely in the Parliamentary world at the death of
+Peel, who has been persecuted by wicked Tories from one Chancellorship
+of the Exchequer to another, until they finally drove him into the
+Premiership, but all this time he was successfully seceding from them,
+though they continued in pursuit. It must have been Mr. Gladstone's
+portentous earnestness of demeanour which has covered up from the
+general public a joke so huge and prolonged as this, preventing
+everybody from seeing that such a tale did not agree with his
+unprecedented prosperity. But if in these ways he has kept himself
+interesting to the country, and fresh and surprising for every group he
+has in rotation joined, both he and his changes have long been stale to
+the Conservatives. They are able to look along his whole track, and
+seeing him from behind, know him as a Peelite, a follower of Aberdeen, a
+Palmerstonian, a Russellite, and a Radical. They are debarred from
+applying his own name to the last stage, and calling him a Gladstonian.
+Strangely enough, and indeed very significantly, that term has never
+taken root in our politics. There really have never been any
+Gladstonians: no one ever was or ever will be called by that title. Mr.
+Gladstone will end his days and depart without founding any school; he
+will stand recorded only as the acceptor of office from those who did
+so, and the passer of other people's measures. But in political life a
+man who attains the first rank of conspicuousness without founding a
+line may fairly be suspected. It will be found that he has been too busy
+in a narrower way,--looking after not questions but himself. To that
+very small party, numerically reckoned, consisting of only one member,
+Mr. Gladstone has been consistently and untiringly faithful. He has
+challenged for it sympathy in all the ways to which his very fine
+oratory has lent itself, and he has not neglected the humbler art of
+perpetual advertisement, keeping it by means of the press and the
+platform ever before the public eye. But when he finally leaves us it is
+certain to vanish entirely.
+
+Very likely some ardent Radical, whose mind is so full of having got Mr.
+Gladstone at last that he forgets, or perhaps never knew, how many
+grades and shades of politicians have in succession enjoyed him before,
+will say that in all this we are only railing at Mr. Gladstone's
+success. His success! In order to describe Mr. Gladstone, we had first
+to write retrospectively, take in his earlier phases, and to look
+generally at his whole history. In that retrospect, down to a late point
+in it, he was exceedingly prosperous; but we never meant to say that he
+had been very successful since the beginning of 1874. There is not the
+slightest need for any Conservative to feel bitter against Mr. Gladstone
+now on any grounds of personal envy. He has done them the greatest
+service of any public man for three generations; and at any time he
+might have individually prospered as much as he liked for them, if it
+had been possible for him to do it without injuring his country. It is
+to this more serious examination of his career that we now go.
+
+Not that we propose to entangle ourselves in the minute details of it,
+for that is in no way necessary. We have already in part explained why
+we may, in such a sketch as this, drop out many years of his political
+life. For a great length of time Mr. Gladstone was only a Budget-maker.
+It is true he made them for Governments that were not Conservative, but
+he still was considered nearly a Conservative outside his financial
+handicraft. And here, again, part of the explanation we earlier gave
+applies. There is not the slightest reason why any Conservative should
+pause long to consider Mr. Gladstone as the passer of the Ballot, or
+even as the disestablisher of the Irish Church and the interferer with
+the rights of landed property in Ireland. The only thing special to be
+said about him in connection with these things as distinguishing him
+from the ruck of Liberals would be, that he was a very late ex-Tory, and
+at the time a professed High Churchman. He somehow got the Liberals to
+let him write his name across every one of those measures so soon as it
+was seen that they would pass, and he has made the legislation in that
+way seem to be his; but the Conservatives know with whom they had really
+to deal in the inception and the pushing forward of those movements, and
+it was not Mr. Gladstone. The real men were Mr. Bright, Mr. Dillwyn, Mr.
+Miall, and those who for many a year worked with them while Mr.
+Gladstone was never heard of, never thought of, in connection with the
+matters they had always matured before he had anything to do with them.
+
+Nor was it on account of these affairs that Mr. Gladstone's fall
+occurred when it came, which is another reason why it would be waste of
+time to discuss them in connection with him. Who is proposing to alter
+these things now that they have been fought out between the great
+parties of the State and decided? As a supplement to his Irish Land
+Bill, we now have the Irish peasants refusing to pay any rent at all:
+but in these days when a thing is done in our Parliament it is done. The
+Conservatives, in spite of the majority at their back, have never put
+forward a finger to touch those settlements, nor do they mean to do so;
+and yet not only our own country, but all Europe, and indeed realms
+farther away still, have been keenly aware that the Beaconsfield
+Ministry has been very busy for years undoing something that Mr.
+Gladstone had done.
+
+What was this gigantic task, which was not the repealing of legislation,
+or the passing of statutes of any kind, but which required courage and
+effort more arduous than those things? There must have been some cause
+for the bursts of applause which have again and again echoed on our
+shores from all parts of the civilized globe at something that was going
+on. It was, we hasten to answer, the rehabilitation of England in the
+eyes of the world,--the restoration of her ancient power as a factor in
+the enforcement and administration of public right among the nations.
+Somehow, coincidently with Mr. Gladstone's prosperity as a Minister,
+England, his country, had sunk, and in exactly answering ratio, and was
+sinking lower and lower still daily. He was very famous, or at least
+very notorious, at home, but the renown of Britain abroad was clouding;
+and our people never will bear that, as history had shown before. This
+man, who at heart was but a financier, and who ought in the fitness of
+things never to have risen higher in office than a Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, whose function it should have been to find funds for some one
+else as a Prime Minister capable of a policy in the higher international
+politics befitting an Empire, was conducting our foreign affairs in the
+spirit of a commercial traveller; willing to effect a little saving by
+giving up a group of islands in one part or a bit of territory in
+another, and to effect an economy at another time by backing out of a
+treaty. Though, at the same time, if anybody insisted, and there loomed,
+however distantly, a possibility of war, he would pay the money down in
+a hurry by millions, as he did in the Alabama case. We should have had
+all the world insisting very soon, making peace more costly than war
+itself, besides the shame of unjustifiable surrender.
+
+But we were spared all this; though the undoing of the humiliation, as
+far as it had gone, has fully occupied Mr. Gladstone's successors ever
+since.
+
+This is the great accusation which the Conservatives have to bring
+against Mr. Gladstone--that of having degraded the position of his
+country; and an arraignment more fatal than this cannot be made in the
+case of a chief Minister. It is not alone the Conservatives who make it.
+Did not Earl Russell, Liberal though he was, find enough English blood
+in his aged veins when writing his last book, to say that Mr. Gladstone
+had dragged the name of England through the mire? But it would not be
+quite accurate to put this forward as the full explanation of Mr.
+Gladstone's sudden tumble from office; for it was not until after that
+occurred that the bulk of people quite knew the whole extent of the
+injury he had worked in this respect. The Conservative leaders guessed
+it, but they knew more about foreign affairs than the rank and file of
+the nation. Everybody, of course, high and low, was aware that he had
+unasked given up the Ionian Islands because of some literary reasons
+which he had come upon in writing books about Homer, that he had
+surrendered territory in the San Juan Boundary Question, and that he had
+quietly gone to Geneva and paid America, not indeed all she asked,--for
+even with Britain's wealth the whole of the first modest request would
+only have been found with difficulty,--but he had counted down a sum
+that made Brother Jonathan's shrewd eyes twinkle with joy. The country,
+from these events following one another, had come to have a very uneasy
+feeling that somehow under his auspices everything was going against us
+abroad. Still it was only later that it was made fully apparent how
+completely England was effaced; not until the three Emperors had begun
+to settle the rearrangement of Eastern Europe, without so much as saying
+to Great Britain, "By your leave." There is difficulty when looking back
+now to prevent oneself from suffering some illusion in this respect; but
+it is a fact, and we may be glad of it, that Englishmen did not until it
+was roughly forced upon them suppose beforehand that their position had
+dwindled to quite so low an ebb.
+
+At the elections of 1874, there was no distinct foreign policy before
+the public, for though there were many on the Conservative side who
+sympathized with France in her adversity, and saw clearly that Germany's
+mutilation of her territory meant trouble in time to come, not a voice
+was raised in deprecation of our neutrality. But, for the matter of
+that, it may be just as correctly said that there was no matured
+domestic question before the country, for it will not be supposed that
+there was a single Tory any more than a Liberal who wished the Income
+Tax to be retained on his shoulders. It was hardly for proposing to do
+away with that impost that everybody voted so unanimously against Mr.
+Gladstone; they only did so at the polling-booths in spite of his
+proposing it, which somehow seems rather mysterious. If his opponents
+were not proposing to recall any of the recent legislation, and if there
+was no special question of foreign affairs pending, and if nobody had
+any desire not to be lightened of taxation, how was it, pray, that Mr.
+Gladstone was so ignominiously hurled from power? In reality, there is
+not the slightest difficulty about it--Mr. Gladstone was decisively
+rejected by his countrymen, not on any question of policy, either home
+or foreign, but because of the _personal impression_ he had slowly but
+surely imprinted on their minds. The real issue before the country was
+whether it would have any more of Mr. Gladstone, and it said No.
+
+It is a common artifice on the part of his apologisers to insinuate that
+he had wearied the nation by offering it too many things for its good.
+But neither individuals nor communities are much in the habit of
+refusing gifts; it is the one thing, and nearly the only thing, in this
+world for which there is an excellent reason whenever so strange a
+proceeding happens. There is another way of representing the matter, one
+much less complimentary but far more true--the country was sick of Mr.
+Gladstone. Even the sight of Mr. Lowe standing at his side with four
+millions of surplus in his hands was not enough to tempt them. The
+promise to abolish the Income Tax was the most tremendous bribe ever
+offered to the constituencies, but, to their credit, it did not corrupt
+them. They would not accept Mr. Gladstone any longer at any price
+whatever. The believers in democracy, and Mr. Gladstone in particular,
+according to some of his very latest reasonings, ought to have accepted
+this universal disgust as being a popular inspiration. However, they
+have done nothing of the kind, but avow that it was a public delusion,
+which they at first hinted would be temporary; but if the public is
+liable to delusions, and to fits of them which continue for seven or
+eight years at a stretch, for that is now the duration of this one, what
+becomes of these very radical gentlemen's democracy? For it is not
+really open to them to plead, though they will go on doing it, that the
+people's eyes were dazzled by a glitter of diplomatic success, and their
+blood infuriated by a skilfully aroused anti-Russian feeling. It is not
+open to them for a simple reason, but a very conclusive one: the
+elections came before anything of this could have happened; and the
+elections themselves arrived with the suddenness they did owing to
+something which had preceded them--namely, a steady run of Ministerial
+defeats in the by-contests, wherever a vacancy occurred in a
+constituency. Mr. Gladstone avowed all this in the address with which he
+startled the Greenwich electors and the whole country, though he and his
+friends have never mentioned the fact since. It was for the purpose of
+putting all things right that the elections which put them all more
+wrong still were so unexpectedly ordered. It was not because of being
+intoxicated by the diplomatic triumph of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
+Salisbury at Berlin--which did not occur till years after--that the
+constituencies rejected Mr. Gladstone. We have no wish to be
+unnecessarily impolite, but the true reason for it was that which we
+have named already--they had come not to like Mr. Gladstone. If we trace
+that fact backwards in a natural way, we shall find that one cause of it
+was that they felt the honour and the interest of England were not safe
+in his hands; but this was only one among other causes. It swelled
+afterwards into the biggest reason of all, and now practically includes
+all the others; but, at the moment, it was not actually known that the
+safety of England was about to be imperilled.
+
+The voters were affected by other reasons. What were those other
+reasons? The public must have known them pretty clearly at the time,
+since it acted so promptly and decidedly upon them, and it, therefore,
+ought not to need very much recalling of them now, for the time, after
+all, is not so very long ago. But it may be as well to go into them a
+little, since it was through the incidents furnishing them that the
+general public was led to form the very same estimate of Mr. Gladstone
+which the Conservatives had held for about a score of years before. At
+last the popular judgment coincided with that of his Parliamentary
+opponents, and he fell from power. But any one who will give a moment's
+consideration to the cases of the Collier appointment, the Ewelme
+Rectory affair, and the issue of the Royal Warrant on purchase in the
+army, will see that we are right in affirming that Mr. Gladstone's
+ignominious expulsion from office was owing to moral rather than
+political causes. It stands recorded that this Minister, who had put
+religious professions in the front of his politics in a way novel to
+public life, had to defend his conduct over and over again in the House
+of Commons by quoting the mere letter of the law. Parliament became not
+unlike the Old Bailey when a legal wrangle is going on over the
+technicalities of an indictment; and the unwonted spectacle of Lord
+Chief Justices accusing a theological Premier of having somehow evaded a
+statute was not made any less unedifying by Mr. Gladstone showing great
+skill in being his own attorney. Everybody must admit that he certainly
+did that.
+
+It is possible to recall each of the cases in very few words. An Act of
+Parliament had been passed with a view to strengthening the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, as this Court was one of Appeal, it
+stood to reason that those appointed to it to revise other Judges'
+decisions should have had judicial experience themselves. It was
+expressly provided in the Act that those to be raised to this Court
+should be already Judges. To the surprise of the whole country, Sir
+Robert Collier, well known as Mr. Gladstone's Attorney-General, and,
+therefore, conspicuously only a waiter for a judgeship, not a judge
+already, was announced as the filler of one of these vacancies, before
+half the readers of the newspapers knew that he had ceased to be
+Attorney-General. It turned out, however, that he was in reality a judge
+at the moment, and that he had been one for some few moments previously,
+having, in fact, sat on the bench of the Common Pleas for just two days.
+There is not space to follow Mr. Gladstone's wonderful reasoning, but it
+chiefly turned on a point so fine as this, that what the Act meant to
+stipulate was not experience, but _status_. In other words, that a man
+should be made a judge of one kind for five minutes, in order to be
+turned into one of another kind, just for the say of the thing. Amazed
+members of the Legislature which had passed the enactment protested that
+they were not so foolishly subtle as this, and that they had never,
+before Mr. Gladstone mentioned it, thought of any such distinction as
+that between _status_ and experience.
+
+But this was not the only instance in which he has told people what they
+had intended better than they knew, and all differently. In the Ewelme
+Rectory business he would have it that when a statute said Oxford it
+meant Cambridge, or at least that its specifying Oxford did not signify,
+or that it included Cambridge, or, in fact, might be construed to
+prescribe anything else which it did not say and which was contrary to
+what everybody had thought of it before. However, here, again, as the
+lawyers would otherwise have been troublesome, the technicality was
+found to have been formally complied with. The words of the enactment
+did really require that the man who was to be made rector of Ewelme
+parish should be a member of Oxford Convocation, and Mr. Harvey, Mr.
+Gladstone's friend, who had been educated at Cambridge, and who, until
+that living became vacant, had never dreamed of connection with Oxford,
+was made a member of the Convocation, in order to receive the living. Of
+course, Mr. Gladstone argued that Mr. Harvey's being a Master of Arts
+was enough, though the statute said nothing of that, and everybody else
+had thought it expressly stated a certain University where the Master of
+Arts was to come from.
+
+But let us go on to the third case, that of the issue of the Royal
+Warrant abolishing purchase. Not a few of the Liberals who exulted at
+the success of the party measure had a misgiving at the way in which it
+was secured. It was felt to be a victory which could not be repeated,
+and one of a style which, if they who snatched it had been
+Conservatives, would have thrown the country into a convulsion. The most
+violent act in the name of the Crown which the oldest man living in
+England has witnessed, was counselled by Mr. Gladstone. Because the
+Lords, in the exercise of the power which the Constitution gives them,
+were not willing instantly to pass his Bill for giving an entirely new
+social aspect to the army, he caused the Queen to do nothing short of
+superseding them entirely, and practically reduced the Constitution at a
+stroke to the Commons and the Crown. It is just now part of the tactics
+of the Liberals to protest against some imagined wish to bring in
+"personal rule." If any such preposterous design existed, it would be
+Mr. Gladstone's own act which would be fallen back upon for the
+precedent. The feeling which has best enabled the most thoughtful among
+Englishmen to understand the kind of shock which foreigners experience
+on the occurrence of one of the political earthquakes which they call on
+the Continent by the name _coup d'etat_, was that which ran through the
+country when Mr. Gladstone announced that there was nothing for the
+Lords to discuss, that he had advised the Queen to issue a Royal
+Warrant. We had lost all recollection of the particular sensation, but
+he brought back just a twinge of it. Mr. Gladstone, however, can do
+Radical acts and then explain them historically. Once more we found
+ourselves all inextricably entangled in his casuistry. He now argued
+that the Royal Warrant had not been issued by exercise of prerogative,
+but in strict pursuance of statutory power, there being some Act of the
+Georges to that effect, which ordinary people had forgotten. It is not
+necessary to follow the thing further. In the end, Mr. Gladstone became
+too clever for the country. Even the dullest began to perceive that Mr.
+Gladstone could conscientiously do whatever he liked. The more subtly he
+argued, the more plain John Bull got puzzled.
+
+It may, at first sight, seem tasking the public memory too much to ask
+people if they remember the tension there was in the political
+atmosphere towards the end of Mr. Gladstone's career. But a very great
+many will not have forgotten it. The political weather is so far like
+the other sort that it is only borne in mind for its badness; that,
+however, was a terrible season. At the last, Mr. Gladstone seemed to
+have got into the air, and he did not improve the climate. He may urge,
+certainly, that Mr. Lowe had made himself very obnoxious, that Mr.
+Ayrton had been found to be intolerable, and that the great trade of the
+publicans, with all its supporters, was in arms against Mr. Bruce. That
+is all true; the country disliked each one of these his chief
+colleagues. But neither Mr. Lowe's hard cynicism, nor Mr. Ayrton's
+dogmatic inaestheticism, nor Mr. Bruce's stolid mechanical interference,
+stirred the large keen dissatisfaction which Mr. Gladstone's own
+incomprehensibility in the end did. He gave men's consciences a shock,
+and none of the others affected to feel so deeply as that: it was only
+he who had stood forward as a political moralist, and then set everybody
+by the ears discussing his conduct. It was the same outside Parliament
+and within it. Everybody was arguing Mr. Gladstone; nobody could make
+him out, nobody felt safe, or could imagine what was coming next. If the
+atmosphere had but been charged a little more with him, England would
+not have been worth living in. Luckily the elections came, and the air
+was cleared.
+
+But if in the more exaggerated instances we have above spoken of, the
+general public became aware of a certain obliquity, an unreliability, a
+dissatisfied restlessness, an imperiousness in Mr. Gladstone, the
+Conservatives had been more or less continuously aware of those
+qualities for many years. They, as we said earlier, have had to observe
+the right hon. gentleman closer, more continuously, and it would be easy
+for any one of them who is of middle age to give from his own memory a
+string of instances, just the same in kind as those above, though not so
+broadly striking, beginning much earlier in his career, and coming down
+much later. Very recently, Lord Salisbury at Manchester recalled Mr.
+Gladstone's dealings with his Oxford constituents in reference to the
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. But his lordship courteously
+spared his opponent the details. Has the world forgotten the famous
+letter to Dr. Hannah, bearing the date of June, 1865, written, as Mr.
+Gladstone himself with unlooked-for _naivete_ admits in his "Chapter of
+Autobiography," for the appeasing of doubts? He in it asserted, first of
+all, that the question was "remote and apparently out of all bearing on
+the practical politics of the day;" second, he avowed that he was
+probably going "to be silent" on the topic; third, he said that "he
+scarcely expected ever to be called on to share in such a measure;" and,
+as his finishing words, spoke of it as "a question lying at a distance
+he could not measure." These were far too many causes for not doing a
+thing, and the Conservatives accordingly began to look out. In 1869, Mr.
+Gladstone disestablished the Irish Church. The "remoteness" and the
+"distance which was not measurable" somehow came to be packed within
+these two dates,--1865-9. What had so hurried matters? Well, one can
+only recall what had happened in the interim, and among the events there
+had been these two occurrences--he had been expelled from Oxford and
+rejected by South Lancashire. The like suddenness attended his
+conversion on the subject of the Ballot. After half a lifetime of
+opposition, he one fine morning announced that it must pass, hardly a
+hint of warning having been given beforehand.
+
+But his whole career has shown this suddenness of advance, at distinct
+periods, which, as we have said, always coincided with the brightening
+of the prospects of the respective agitations. It is true, as is earlier
+pointed out, that he took something like a quarter of a century to
+travel the ground between the Conservative starting-point and the
+Radical position, but the length of time was not owing to his creeping
+between the bounds; he has traversed it at successive leaps, standing
+still between, and, at the places where he remained stationary, there
+was always the warm shelter of office. This style of progress has
+characterized him down to the present moment. As late as 1874 he told a
+deputation that he did not consider the question of the County Franchise
+ripe. There has been a good deal of very indifferent weather since then;
+but whether or not the field crops have matured, it seems now that the
+agricultural labourer has been growing fast. Mr. Joseph Arch has been
+the sun that has shone upon him, and Mr. Gladstone, as usual, is quite
+ready to reap the harvest. Examples might be multiplied manifold. Take
+the boasted case of the Liberal surplus, of which we have never ceased
+to hear--just as if Mr. Lowe and Mr. Gladstone had between them coined
+the money. Its history, stated in three words, was this: Mr. Lowe had
+mulcted the public in an unnecessary twopence of Income Tax, and,
+instead of shamefully confessing the incompetency it showed in a
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented himself before the
+constituencies, on the eve of the elections, with his hands full of
+gold, and with the air of presenting it to them.
+
+Mr. Gladstone, great financier as he is, was not above profiting by his
+subordinate's miscalculation. Instead of administering a rebuke, as a
+good journeyman might have been expected to do to a bad apprentice, he
+patted Mr. Lowe on the back. Indeed, in the Greenwich address, when he
+so magniloquently spoke of the money being given back in the shape of
+abolishing the Income Tax, he seemed to take some credit to himself.
+
+It will be beginning, perforce, to dawn upon the reader that this was a
+Minister very difficult to be dealt with by an Opposition. If we had
+space in this paper, a part of the task of sketching Mr. Gladstone would
+be to point out how injuriously he has confused the demarcation of
+parties; how unscrupulous he has been in seeking allies which on no
+principle of fair classification belonged to him. It may be nothing that
+he can half apologize for Irish Obstructionists--the Liberals have
+always exploited Irish members. But this very high Churchman, who clings
+to a tenet so ridiculous in the eyes of Dissenters as apostolical
+succession, can figure in Dr. Joseph Parker's chapel, and betray a close
+and not uncomplimentary knowledge of the trust-deed of the Rev. Newman
+Hall's congregation. This austere gentleman, who, when inquiring into
+the "Theses of Erastus" (see his article), finds out that moral offences
+are at the root and source of all heresy, has a kindly word for such
+free-thinkers as happen to be also political leaders of the working
+men--Mr. Bradlaugh, for example. This objector to divorce, on such
+stupendously elevated grounds as that we are all members of a mystical
+body, and who cannot bring himself to allow more than a civil marriage
+to a deceased wife's sister, mingles in the ruck of Radicals. But if he
+has what they must think ecclesiastical crotchets, he always manages
+them with most skilful prudence. If he has to satisfy his most private
+feelings by bringing in no fewer than six resolutions in more or less
+opposition to the Public Worship Bill, he can withdraw them again. But
+was this the gentleman to champion Radicals and Dissenters? An
+Opposition which had to keep its own consistent lines, and which was
+closely restricted as to its allies, was at a perpetual disadvantage
+with one whose own opinions, subtle and complicated as they might be,
+cut him off from nobody who could be of aid.
+
+Fortunately the country itself, at a certain rather tardy point, rallied
+its patriotism in that spontaneous way which always practically
+reinforces the Conservative party. The "Alabama" claims gave those who
+did not meddle much in politics their first shock, while for more
+thoughtful persons it brought back a reminiscence of the surrender of
+the Ionian Islands; and when, later, the public saw him stand tamely by
+while Russia tore up the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, every
+student of our history knew that Mr. Gladstone's fate was sealed. The
+nation, stirred by arousings of the deeper instincts of the English
+character, at last reckoned with him on general grounds--dislike of his
+personal demeanour, and dread of what he was bringing on the country. It
+refused to be won either by the finest oratory or the prospect of
+reduced taxation.
+
+The Conservatives came into power on the highest tide of popular feeling
+which living Englishmen have witnessed. But the change was too late to
+prevent mischief; Russia, encouraged by England's effacement during Mr.
+Gladstone's sway, had matured her further plans, and had already put her
+secret intrigues into motion. The Treaty of San Stefano showed plainly
+what her plan was, and just as clearly does everybody not blinded by
+party feeling now know that to Russia's amazement, and amidst the
+surprised and grateful admiration of the whole civilized globe, the
+present Ministry have thwarted that plan and made England again safe and
+famous. It would be a waste of time to retrace the details: a summary of
+them is to be found in Lord Salisbury's Manchester speech. What alone
+further concerns us here is the manner in which Mr. Gladstone has borne
+himself in Opposition. We have already seen how he did so as a Minister.
+It was understood, indeed, that he had retired, with something which was
+meant to pass for dignity, though to the eyes of the nation there was
+never anything which was not sulk which had so much the look of it.
+However, on the plea that something had happened in the world, he was
+quickly back again in front, elbowing Lord Hartington aside. Speeches,
+in Parliament and out, articles in every magazine, republication in
+pamphlet and volume, letters to everybody, which, practically, meant to
+all the newspapers: there never was such an active resuscitation of one
+who had so publicly become politically defunct. It is, however, not for
+coming to life again that we find fault with Mr. Gladstone, for, in
+truth, we always expected it.
+
+Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he
+has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be
+made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope, and
+other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his
+back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy,
+and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very
+necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's own
+tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some other
+negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government was charged
+with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional usage imposed no
+limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits had not been
+transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord Northbrook had
+acted with spirit years before, that war would never have been
+necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked, he and the
+Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had been at great pains
+to get himself and his Government into a difficulty. Why Mr. Gladstone
+has had so little to say about the Cape war is a mystery, which may be
+explained some day; all that can now be said of it is that it shows a
+striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though his industry was
+gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware that his renewal of
+them, though we suppose it must go on, having been arranged so long and
+announced so pompously, is a trifle late, with the Cape war ended, our
+troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi Bazar, and checkmated,
+scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany. However, no doubt we
+shall have some very fine speeches, proving that nothing of this ought
+to have happened, or that it won't last long, or that the Beaconsfield
+Administration did not bring it about, or any thing else, just as
+reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many different ways by a
+practised orator.
+
+What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's
+success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of
+his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation
+in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so
+irresistibly points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no
+matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a party,
+cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive
+occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making his
+very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous in
+hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the
+rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have
+been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that we
+are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied them
+that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen or of
+Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of the
+wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take the
+first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the fact
+was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how the
+sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone as
+a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which they could all
+join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of unanimity and
+cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it he has been
+very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and seemingly slow
+in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the outset even
+precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful orator, even
+quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage, so largely
+prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed, and to do so for a
+long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end, and that
+completely.
+
+His temperament made that nearly certain. He was always too busy making
+speeches, or writing for the press, or answering letters, to be any
+power in social life. A strange kind of semi-recluse, but combining with
+bookworm habits a passion for speechifying and for using the penny post,
+was not likely to conciliate London, and he never did. By-and-by he was
+railing at the Clubs, because they did not agree with him; and then he
+had next to appeal from the metropolitan journals to the superior
+politicians and brighter wits who preside over the provincial
+newspapers. All this prognosticated failure. Even his special gifts and
+the kind of successes which fell to him turned into the means of helping
+it. His turn for figures not unnaturally made immediate economy his
+great object, forgetful of the larger connection in such a land as ours
+between an imperial position in the world and the preservation of our
+commerce, and overlooking also the costliness of reasserting our
+position when a crisis came; while his ready eloquence, having no longer
+open to it the old patriotic themes, had to expend itself in the
+adornment of British abnegation, and the excited applause given to his
+rhetoric was mistaken by him for assent to his views, till he was amazed
+to find himself suddenly quite out of accord with the nation, and
+falling, he knew not why, headlong from power.
+
+Even to this hour he seems never to have had the least misgiving that
+the man who could speak with such complacency of the trading supremacy
+of the world passing to America (see his article on "Kin Beyond the
+Sea"), and who could urge as a reason for our not caring to interfere in
+Egypt that it would be the egg of a North African empire (see his
+article on "Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East"), was not the
+man to be England's Minister. But the country had found it out even
+before he wrote those articles; his threatening his countrymen with the
+calamity of finding another empire on their hands, in the only part of
+the world yet remaining to be explored and civilized, has only proved
+that they were right, and will not terrify Englishmen.
+
+But a fluent orator has always left to him a kind of gambler's hope of
+retrieving everything by talking. Mr. Gladstone is going to alter
+everything by making a dozen or two of speeches in Scotland. Are these
+Midlothian harangues to be longer than that made at Greenwich, or more
+numerous than those uttered in Lancashire? They may be as fine as they
+will for anything it signifies to Conservatives, if the result is only
+again the same as on the other occasions, and it is hardly likely that
+he will persuade Englishmen now amidst their returning renown to despair
+of the future of England.
+
+    A CONSERVATIVE.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANCIEN REGIME AND THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
+
+    _Histoire de l'Ancien Regime_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+    _Histoire de la Revolution francaise_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
+
+
+When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien Regime and
+the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy, he
+ended with these words:--"I have now reached the threshold of the great
+Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it, but perhaps I may
+soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no longer consider its
+causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to pass judgment on
+the society that has proceeded from it."
+
+Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his purpose,
+a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be regretted,
+and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken to fill up
+the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected task--the
+description, namely, of modern France as the outcome of the immense
+transformation which the Revolution brought upon the Old French State.
+The fundamental principles which appear so clearly and sharply in
+Tocqueville's development are prominent in Taine's; the activity of the
+earlier author prepared the ground for the later to build on. But we
+must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently independent, and his
+descriptions more striking, broad, and richly coloured than those of his
+precursor, while the material contents of his work are often different.
+But what, in spite of this, constitutes the resemblance between the two
+men is, their having for basis a common conception both of the State and
+what it presupposes, and of the historian and his task. It is the very
+opposite of the manner of thinking entertained in the eighteenth century
+which, without any heed to the peculiar character of the necessities of
+a given people, was bent on constructing, according to simple rules of
+reason and natural law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very
+striking manner, declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he
+observes, "I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a
+large number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide
+as to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist
+or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist, and I
+was nothing of the kind--nay, I was nothing at all, and envied those who
+had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a constitution as
+they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new, or most simple
+plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial castle, a
+burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a cottage, and
+each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only proper dwelling, the
+only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me this seemed an utter
+mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed be able to say what house
+they admire, but some experience is needed to teach them what house they
+need, whether it be commodious and lasting, stands the weather well, and
+harmonizes with the customs, occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We
+here in France have never been content with our political erections; in
+the course of eighty years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them
+thirteen times. Other nations have acted differently, and found their
+advantage in so doing. They have preserved an old, substantial building,
+enlarged, built around, and beautified it according to their needs, but
+never attempted to build an ideal house at one stroke, according to the
+rules of pure reason. It would therefore appear that the sudden
+invention of an entirely new, and at the same time suitable and durable
+constitution is an undertaking that transcends human capacity. The
+political and social form which a people permanently assumes is no
+matter of choice, but fixed by its character and its past. It must be
+suited to its idiosyncrasy, even in the minutest points, or it will
+crack and fall. Therefore we must know ourselves before we can discover
+what the proper constitution for us is. We must invert the accustomed
+method, and first form to ourselves a picture of the nation before we
+sketch a constitution. At the same time this is a far harder and wider
+task than the one hitherto in favour. What inquiries into past and
+present, what labour in all domains of thought and action, are needed to
+understand with precision and completeness the nature and growth of a
+great people through centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting
+out first empty discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as
+regards myself, I shall not think of a political opinion until I have
+learnt to know France."
+
+From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of
+course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that
+corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the course
+of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their historical
+representation of it--Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and
+Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at the
+beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at
+would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut
+and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was
+pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were
+owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the
+worthlessness of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke
+real interest in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main
+point--our party is right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of
+mind more than to any other hindrances we may attribute the small
+advance made, up to the middle of our century, in the knowledge of
+facts, in the history of the Revolution; this is what explains the else
+inexplicable phenomenon that, spite of the large interest felt in the
+period, no history of Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as
+yet been written. For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine,
+spite of the strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of
+their material, have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly
+see.
+
+Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the writing
+of such a history. With firm and decided political principles of their
+own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge only.
+Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge of the
+political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old
+saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but
+to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed from
+which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and
+working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce
+upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves
+in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by a
+contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question: "How can
+Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous work the
+utter corruption of the Ancien Regime, place the Revolution in his
+second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were so
+completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in utterly
+destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics who,
+after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be a
+thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment,
+proclaimed him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed,
+certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain
+inconsistencies do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an
+historical standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first
+volume paints the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather
+should we have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had
+sprung a healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no
+other soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien Regime; it
+was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been
+fostered, and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had
+received its stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all
+relations were dislocated, political feeling perverted, all portions of
+the people filled with bitter hatred against the State and each other,
+how should pupils in such a school amidst the final shock of
+catastrophes show themselves men of ripe experience, practical wisdom,
+and determined energy? He who has once taken in this simple truth will
+be much inclined to a mild judgment of individual men and parties; at
+all events, he will not be able abruptly to take sides either for or
+against the Ancien Regime or the Revolution. For one thing will have
+grown clear to him, that the Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but
+the undeniable offspring, of the old condition of things.
+
+That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first
+order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded
+on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited,
+as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French,
+but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are
+hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly
+explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is
+frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to
+follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and
+then to controvert it on certain points.
+
+It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries
+led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of
+our century, but a production of the Ancien Regime. Since the days of
+Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had
+taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and
+plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary
+principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of
+independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed
+thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in
+the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government,
+preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and
+consequently imposed taxes and corvees upon their dependents, while
+often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were
+now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal
+bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as
+hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The
+King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for
+their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the
+cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went
+on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and
+essential element of the great Revolution.
+
+It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject.
+Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads
+and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord
+lived in the midst of his dependents--his own interest was identical
+with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional
+ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State
+attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic
+government divided the landowners from the people, and by the
+unjustified continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in
+opposition. For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and
+farmer had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of
+chase, his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not
+inconsiderable number of the higher middle classes gained the special
+privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were only
+increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy service by
+exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one hand, and of
+the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully and precisely
+than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation has brought out a
+still more appalling condition than had been imagined. After the State,
+the Church, and the landlord had received their rates, the share of the
+farmer in the proceeds of his land never amounted to more than a half,
+and often his taxes rose to eighty per cent. of his income. On the other
+hand, the privileged classes paid at least a fifth less than the just
+proportion, and knew how to obtain on a yearly average at least a
+hundred millions in the shape of presents, pensions, &c. With
+increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought of any care to be
+taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and magnates streamed
+towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of them was from their
+unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus France fell asunder
+into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal knowledge or
+common interest, divided by contempt and hatred--worlds that lived on
+side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance, and luxury,
+and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty, wretchedness,
+ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and devouring
+bitterness of heart--a condition such as no other nation of Christian
+Europe had ever before come to.
+
+Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of
+authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a
+part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led
+into error.
+
+I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which
+treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal
+officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of
+this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville,
+but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it
+made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the
+political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred
+the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher
+classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the
+historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great
+bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and
+economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in
+France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible
+thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which
+gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later,
+under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against
+the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress,
+and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the
+opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal
+parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than
+liberties--that is to say, they expected the improvement of their
+condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a
+Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of
+Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but
+after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second
+time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people
+throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this
+institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely
+done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much
+as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how
+without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars
+and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have
+arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when
+Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious
+idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all
+political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the
+King--the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in
+working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and
+excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an
+evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance
+that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the
+worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of
+his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of
+Louis XVI. was from first to last spent in efforts, by the setting aside
+of feudal privileges, alike to strengthen the Crown and promote the good
+of the people, and in no case can it be more incorrect to look upon the
+Crown as a devouring parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This
+brings me back to my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side
+of his picture of society under the Ancien Regime written the history of
+its last monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this
+misconception.
+
+But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of the
+higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished personages
+had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials appeared to
+the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted the army as a
+mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there, there was no
+question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling and care
+of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and abbots drew
+immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to fair dames,
+but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the affair of
+needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their ambition and
+interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To shine there was the
+object of their distinguished lives. And as the French people have ever
+been largely endowed with grace and _esprit_, these efforts resulted in
+a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social
+intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of _bon ton_, such as
+the world never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a
+great nation had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite
+society its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and
+sacrifice mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of
+character to the promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end
+of existence was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and
+action were rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life
+should be spent in society was the most pressing requirement of
+politeness, the reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes
+unendurable. The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed
+itself became the law of this great world, and the consequences were
+felt on all sides. Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion
+came to be held unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an
+offence against manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any
+strong passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of
+conventionality. Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself
+gracefully, and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting
+variety into the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as
+welcome as sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or
+labour, for the aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind
+of knowledge was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it
+followed that all mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of
+its content but the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the
+service of enjoyment, such was the motto of this society. Genial
+originality, unconscious creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly
+antipathetic there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves
+subservient to the ruling mood.
+
+A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics of good
+society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary theories of
+its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development of this
+process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's work,
+for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth
+century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such
+extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out the
+continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus
+gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history.
+Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural
+science since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe,
+by which a way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of
+men, in opposition to the speculative and theological conceptions of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive method,
+the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to all
+intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment as the
+only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having been at
+once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural science, the
+next step was to apply the tone of thought they had engendered to the
+phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also to demand thorough
+investigation by the one true authority--criticism. Whatever the
+consequence of this investigation might in particular cases be, the very
+fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing, _as
+such_, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected to that
+of critical reason--this betokened a new epoch in the world's history,
+and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress in
+politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual culture.
+It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such positive
+results, its application should be thorough and universal. No naturalist
+delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he has
+considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages,
+compared it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just
+through the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that
+analysis leads him to the comprehension of universal truth. And
+according to this same rule, in order to arrive at a just and
+practicable idea of reform for any State, a great mass of special
+observations by technically practised and prepared eyes would have been
+required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the
+peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of
+culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective
+functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for
+only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the
+organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner
+of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of
+single actualities according to these laws.
+
+How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very
+opposite occurred--that politicians, stimulated by young natural
+science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive
+method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a
+few abstract principles?
+
+Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the
+influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal
+tendency.
+
+The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle
+existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual
+excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every
+litterateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual
+structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to
+devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than
+this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to
+secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most
+natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the
+satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent.
+We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent
+tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all
+thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep
+earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very
+opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly
+sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied
+knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to
+reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions.
+Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and
+superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge
+which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the
+working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and
+frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to
+any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into
+one conventional form--an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to
+the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended
+in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of
+imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and
+absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact
+could not be entirely concealed, it was understood that among cultivated
+persons it could never be given any importance. Even on the stage it was
+no longer considered becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or
+Iroquois, should speak in their own natural manner; they were all alike
+rendered polite, sententious, and fluent as their distinguished
+audience. Each local and individual tone was rubbed away, every person
+of the drama was but a mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence
+of the author. As with the drama, so with other literature. Taine
+correctly observes that if we read an English romance of the period, we
+have before our eyes a section of the English people; but a French one,
+though widely varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French
+salon, and that only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how
+could any one come to the study of the State by means of difficult and
+distant researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he
+remained solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but
+exercised very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to
+turn over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for
+some ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the
+falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to
+the complicated task of judging any individual State and its
+constitution according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its
+historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man dreamt
+of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require
+anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with
+disapproval. It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a
+pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any
+subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most
+intelligent, yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting
+conversation. In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal
+effort was pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be
+commonplace, and in every case to bring forward new and amazing truths.
+Accordingly speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but
+so much the more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the
+progress was regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken
+never to skip over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker
+became rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every
+subject to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society
+was delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most
+advanced views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to
+deviate from real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.
+
+That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning
+of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle
+of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the
+foundations of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to
+distinguished society. Disgust at their own impotence and the
+omnipotence of royal officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy,
+vexation at some personal neglect at Court,--altogether there was cause
+enough for malicious satisfaction when philosophers, by biting
+criticisms, made clear the standpoint of burdensome potentates. And when
+an ever-growing and strengthening Materialism taught the doctrine of
+physical enjoyment and judicious selfishness as the guiding principle of
+human conduct, it only spoke out what had half-unconsciously been the
+sum of all the motives and activities of high society. But above all,
+theories were but theories, merely conversation, excitement, pastime.
+The nobles declaimed against obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant
+to keep his own rightful possessions, and among these were privileges
+and feudal rights. They felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the
+ignorant masses, because they professed humanitarianism and liberalism,
+and spoke against superstition and subordination. That these
+much-admired theories might by-and-by become common to the whole
+community, and then bring about horrible explosions--of this they had
+not the remotest suspicion. Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a
+thing to the ladies of Versailles, would have been looked upon as we
+should look upon a prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next
+century cats and dogs, instead of men, were to be lords of creation.
+
+This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose
+co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It
+was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its
+rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present
+actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulae and
+commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set
+about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history
+of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure,
+the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and
+conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the
+concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a
+mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since
+all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must
+render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a
+natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to
+employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left
+free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically
+pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great
+majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than
+thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact
+that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared
+to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that
+conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of
+the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied
+that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly
+guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional
+order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was
+altogether outside their range of thought.
+
+But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions.
+The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to powder.
+Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of the hoary
+unrighteousness of the Old Regime could make a stand; the pity was that,
+according to its own principles, the former found it impossible to
+attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.
+
+But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing
+ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political
+constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material
+for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and
+anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that
+miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane God
+unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the positive
+statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that the
+so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized matter.
+True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau declared his
+faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the one all the
+more resolutely contended against the divine institution of the Church,
+and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines of Sin and
+Justification. However different each may have been from the other, they
+waged in common a war for life and death against the Church, the war of
+utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong in saying that the
+Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a feudal and aristocratic
+institution; that after it had lost its wealth and privileges,
+democratic society recognized how strong a democratic momentum the
+Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up with increased
+warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt Taine's record is
+the more correct one. The Revolution knew well that it desired not the
+wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and not the partisans of the
+Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers were largely swelled by
+the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about the elevation of the
+Church in our own century.
+
+If we now contemplate somewhat more narrowly the Constitutional theory
+of the illumination, we shall discern two characteristic and prominent
+features, which, on the one hand, show its descent from the innermost
+core of the Ancien Regime, and, on the other, very energetically
+determined the whole course of the Revolution. The ideal state deduced
+from the universal characteristics of mankind was as cosmopolitan as
+levelling. Just as on the stage of the period, Frenchman and savage,
+ancient Greek and modern Parisian, spoke the same language,--that of the
+salons of Versailles,--so political theories recognized neither
+Frenchman nor Englishman, Catholic nor Protestant, educated nor
+uneducated, only Man in general. They never considered what institutions
+would be adequate, in France, to the needs and capacities of the
+educated ranks and uneducated masses, or how far the habits and opinions
+of their nation would render the adoption of a foreign institution
+practicable or injurious; rather they formulated the rights of men, of
+abstract instead of actually existing men, and were convinced that a
+constitution based thereupon was for all men, and consequently for all
+peoples, the only good, and therefore the only lawful one. And just as
+clear as the equality of nations under the new political law, appeared
+the equality of all men in the new State, by which was meant not merely
+a claim to equal protection by law, or equal facility in obtaining one's
+rights, but a demand for the realization of an inborn and material
+equality of rights. This, as is well known, was the point on which
+Rousseau took his stand, and gave the last and decisive direction to the
+impending democratic revolution. Taine justly observes how frequently,
+in spite of their common principles, Rousseau's character and way of
+life led him to take different views from those of Voltaire and the
+Encyclopaedists. The deepest and most unqualified indignation of these
+last was inspired by what they called superstition, stupidity, and
+priestcraft, the transformation of the old State being with them more an
+affair of the intellect than the feelings, a conclusion drawn from their
+universal theory and an ideal requirement of philanthropy. It was
+generosity that led them to appear as the advocates of the poor and
+their woes, while they themselves were high in the approval and favour
+of the best society. Rousseau, on the other hand, had himself led the
+life of the proletaire; in the nervous excitability and measureless
+vanity which made him almost prouder of his weaknesses and vices than of
+the greatness and strength of his talents he--poor, often hungry, not
+seldom degraded and reviled--had filled himself with burning wrath
+against the favoured of earthly fortune, the noble and the rich, the
+revellers in idleness and luxury. This growing hatred he transferred to
+the State and the laws which had produced so unrighteous a contrast
+between man and man. Men, he maintained, were in their original
+condition good, because equal. It was the State, culture, society, that
+first introduced inequality, and vice and crime thereby. The existing
+order was not merely incompetent, as the Encyclopaedists asserted, but
+hurtful, poisonous, deadly. And, in contrast to it, he sketches a
+picture of the true human State.
+
+Equal and good men assemble in their natural condition to think on the
+basis of their future State. Each endows the new community with all
+liberty and property, in order to receive back an equal share of the
+management and the possessions of the whole. But this whole is
+omnipotent. No laws bind its will, for its will is the source of all
+law. No king, no official, no superior rules over it; each individual is
+only empowered to act, so far and so long as he upholds the plenipotence
+of the sovereign mass. It is not the upper classes who command the
+people, but the people which require obedience from its officers and
+throws them away when they no longer please it. For individual liberty
+there is here no place; but owing to the equality of all, the free will
+of the masses joyously and harmoniously prevails.
+
+For a season these doctrines only served to afford a welcome mental
+stimulant to the minds, if not of the nobility, of the cultivated and
+property-possessing classes. The higher, and soon the lower, bourgeoisie
+inflated themselves with these views. At this period they shared certain
+of the privileges of the nobles, filled numerous and prominent offices
+in the State, gave to the nation its largest number of famous thinkers
+and poets, promoted industry and commerce, and daily increased in
+wealth, while the nobles, by their extravagance, ruined themselves
+financially. The former were, therefore, full of the consciousness of
+their own dignity, and found the continued precedence claimed by the
+nobles to be unendurable. They believed with inward satisfaction in this
+doctrine of the equality of all men and the sovereignty of the whole.
+For, instead of the privileged, it seemed to them self-evident that
+owing to their culture they, the hitherto unprivileged, ought to stand
+out prominently among the people as leaders of that governing whole.
+Thus the state of freedom and equality would be the state of pure reason
+as well, and, therefore, the leading position could not fail to fall to
+them, the masters of reasonable discussion. Meanwhile the mass of the
+poor, wholly cut off from the sources of culture and the mental
+movements of their country, for long years knew nothing of this absolute
+governing power which, according to the new discoveries, inalienably
+belonged to it, and was so surprisingly soon to fall into its lap. The
+only change in their condition, and thus the only preparation for their
+future sovereignty, was an increase of outward distress and of inward
+confusion and embitterment; and then came the time when the small circle
+to which education and enjoyment were limited, and the State power they
+wielded, fell into internal demoralization, strife of factions, and
+financial embarrassments, till the very Crown itself was obliged to
+summon popular forces to war against the privileged. All the springs of
+State machinery refused to work, coffers were empty, authorities and
+classes at bitter internecine strife, the army unreliable and
+undisciplined. It was under circumstances like these that the mass of
+the people in towns and villages heard from their candidates, advocates,
+and demagogues, what in truth their rights were. In their ignorance and
+want, their rudeness and embitterment, they suddenly learnt that for
+them--as sovereign--limits, obligations, authority no longer existed,
+that the old corruption and slavish condition was to be thoroughly got
+rid of, and that then everything would belong to them. They listened
+with greedy ears, and rushed forward to trample under foot whatever
+sought to contest these rights of theirs.
+
+The highest and noblest aims lured the century on, and animated the
+hearts of countless worthy men: liberty, well-being, and culture for
+all, no difference between man and man but that of talent and virtue,
+fraternity among all citizens in the State and all nations on the earth;
+these were the ideals that 1780 proclaimed to the world and the future,
+and therefore the French still love to speak of the deathless principles
+and fair days of this first epoch of the Revolution. All this, Thiers
+tells us, would have been admirably realized had not evil-hearted
+emigrants and foreign Powers by their malignant attacks, driven the most
+humane of all Revolutions into desperation, a fight for existence, and
+bloodshed. All would have gone well, says Louis Blanc, had not the
+wicked Thermidorians, on the occasion of Robespierre's fall, brought in
+a policy of vice and self-seeking instead of one of virtue and brotherly
+love. Probably, on the other side the Vosges, eighty men out of every
+hundred adopt one or other of these views, and so it is easily
+intelligible that the merciless facts by which Taine shatters these fair
+pictures should be received with repugnance and surprise by his
+countrymen. The contrast between such a reality and such an ideal is
+indeed enormous; fair days, or so much even as one fair day in the
+course of the Revolution, can no longer be spoken of; in the very hour
+when absolute monarchy collapsed, a wild, rude, and cruel anarchy
+covered the land, filling France with violence and crime of every kind
+for a decade, and lastly causing an unparalleled despotism to appear to
+the French people salvation and deliverance. The conclusion is
+unavoidable, either the ideal was good for nothing, and the Coblentz
+emigrants had right on their side against the nation, or the French
+people had set about their high task in a quite impracticable way, and
+their historical fame has this time to be limited to the motto, _In
+magnis voluisse sat est_. Neither of these alternatives will have a
+pleasing sound in the ears of a Liberal Frenchman.
+
+But, pleasing or not, the facts are indisputable, and up to the present
+time each new investigation of authentic documents has only served to
+give them a wider range and a more assured basis. We have seen the end
+of the Ancien Regime. The nobles of the former State were unnerved by
+idleness, debilitated by enjoyment, degraded by immorality; never had
+the aristocracy of a great nation fallen and been brushed away from the
+soil of their country, making so feeble a resistance. The leaders of the
+movement followed a political teaching based on a most one-sided and
+therefore radically false conception of human nature, and had no idea of
+the real nature of their fellow-citizens, or of the principles and needs
+of genuine political life. Finally the masses were unmoved by any
+political thought whatever, but were darkly conscious of their own
+wretched state up to the present time, and their hatred of those who
+had, or were supposed to have, occasioned it, were credulous and
+impressionable, and penetrated with the rightfulness of their wildest
+passions and desires. With such materials as these it is possible indeed
+to blow up an old and half-useless house, but not to construct on its
+ruins a well-planned and lasting new one.
+
+Thus Taine shows by details from documents contemporaneous with the
+events, how, even before the opening of the National Assembly, the
+condition of things was out of joint at a hundred points. Tumults and
+plunder, disobedience to authorities, and maltreatment of obnoxious
+persons, were the order of the day; public officials were spiritless,
+and dared not command the already murmuring troops to restore order. The
+first weeks of the Assembly brought hot discussions as to the union of
+the three orders, attempts at reactionary State measures, and the taking
+of the Bastille. Excitement grew from day to day; the suspense
+throughout the country was tremendous. With the Parisian catastrophes
+the whole Ancien Regime rocked and gave way from side to side; and not
+merely privileges and feudal rights, but all State authorities vanished
+at one blow, or at the first threat from an armed mob resigned their
+functions. The French nation had positively no government, no laws, no
+police, no taxation. In place of these they had journals, clubs,
+societies, popular songs, and Lynch law; security for person and
+property no longer existed; every one did according to his heart's
+desire till a stronger than he preferred the opposite and knocked him
+down. This state of anarchy actually went on thus till the culmination
+of the Reign of Terror; every now and then it quieted down here or
+there, to burst out the following day at some other point with redoubled
+fury. In the midst of the omnipresent turmoil and confusion, the King, a
+powerless prisoner, sat in the Tuileries. The only quarter which
+afforded a possibility of the restoration of the State was the National
+Assembly, which was sufficiently respected and popular both with the
+people and the National Guard, to have enforced obedience had it set
+about it the right way. But there were two reasons which forbade the
+adoption of that way. One was that the Assembly was deprived of free
+action by the ruling theory of the Rights of Man, Liberty and Equality.
+This included the rights of resistance against oppression, and
+accordingly every citizen might at any moment consider himself oppressed
+and authorized in resisting. It had been borne in upon these sovereign
+citizens that the will of the sovereign people stood higher than that of
+its representatives, and that the people was at any time capable of
+re-entering upon the direct exercise of its sovereignty. It is plain
+that under the influence of theories such as these any control over
+street-riots and local deeds of violence was a difficult, if not
+hopeless task. And, on the same ground, it was impracticable to attempt
+any control or regulation of press or clubs, which looked upon their
+boundless activity as the highest expression and most precious jewel of
+revolutionary liberty. As, according to theory, State officials were to
+be, not the lords, but the servants of the sovereign people, it became
+expedient that they should not be named by the Central Government, but
+chosen, and that only for a short time, by the citizens. In the same
+spirit the affairs of Government were entrusted not to individual
+officials, but to deliberating colleagues; while, as to the passing of
+laws, the principle of equality rendered impossible the formation of an
+Upper House, or any finally decisive action on the part of the King.
+Thus the Government remained powerless, legislation was hasty and
+uncertain, the lower classes unmanageable, and on very many occasions it
+was plain that club orators and journalists who knew how to flatter the
+demands of the masses bent both Government and National Assembly beneath
+their sway. More than once there arose indignation in the Assembly at so
+unworthy and dangerous a condition; but at each attempt to grapple with
+and remove it, the fear of a monarchical or aristocratic reaction fell
+upon it and paralyzed its action.
+
+In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and
+proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the
+authority of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the
+army, and energetic organization of Government, extensive powers
+conferred on the police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice.
+But how then? If power were thus conferred upon the Government to
+restrain proletaires and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the
+National Assembly against the head of the reinforced Government, against
+the King, who had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in
+defenceless subjection? This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit
+invariably triumphing at the National Assembly. The present fear of the
+violence of the crowd attendant at the sittings combined with the
+apprehension of a future monarchical reaction. When, some years later,
+at the organization of the Republican Government, the weakness of
+authority was again felt, more than one orator freely declared the
+existing arrangements to be undoubtedly bad throughout, and to be
+amended as soon as possible; owned that this had, indeed, been perfectly
+known at the time of their creation in 1790, but that they were
+intentionally framed thus, in the interests of liberty, to prevent the
+King from exercising any power. Enough--the Constitutional Assembly did
+nothing to surround personal safety and political order with any
+inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did much to open the door wide
+to the passionate and arbitrary action of the masses. We may say that
+they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the horrors of the Terror, and
+had the sad beginnings of that development before their eyes, without
+even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most especially in the
+economical department: the colossal transformation of the laws of
+property in France, which brought half the soil into new hands, and
+irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic paths, was
+out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.
+
+For more than twenty years I have, in my "History of the Revolution
+Period," established these circumstances from authentic documents, and
+thus given repeated offence to the French public. I may therefore be
+permitted to feel all the greater satisfaction at such a distinguished
+investigator as Taine, after drawing forth numberless documents from
+Parisian archives, coming to absolutely the same conclusion. All I have
+heard in the way of objection to his statements is utterly unimportant.
+As it is not possible to drive the facts he has proved from original
+documents out of existence, the observation is made that though his
+information may be true, it is one-sided; that while he never wearies of
+describing revolts and misdeeds, he does not sufficiently point out in
+how many places the Civil Guard bravely and loyally upheld civil order.
+Taine would be the last to dispute this fact; had it not been so there
+would have been no longer any France left in the nineteenth century. But
+he would venture to inquire whether praise be deserved by an Assembly
+which, as ruler of a great State, surrendered without resistance now the
+third of it, now the half, during three years, to a bloody anarchy;
+whether we can speak of "fair days" or "humane Revolution," when in this
+short period six horrible Jacqueries laid the land waste, when countless
+political murders remained unpunished, and military _emeutes_ and
+ecclesiastical brawls thrust the weapons of civil war into the hands of
+the masses. We are told of a pure and ideal inspiration then filling
+millions of liberty-loving and patriotic spirits; and well may we call
+that a fair time in which noble aims and infinite hopes set all pulses
+beating higher, and stimulate a whole people to youthful efforts, and
+fill it with fresh and energetic life. Yes, there were moments of golden
+dreams and illusions like these. Only they should have lasted longer. It
+is not through their feelings, speeches, wishes, but their deeds, that
+nations assume their historical position and receive their historical
+sentence. Taine writes the last, indeed, with an incisive pen, and often
+with glaring colours, but essentially he gives nothing but what follows
+by indissoluble sequence from the facts of the Revolution.
+
+On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his work,
+or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a whole.
+Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances; I must be
+satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first months of the
+Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was identical in town and
+country, and the lawless violence of artisans and peasants pursued the
+same ends by the same means, one of the most prominent features of the
+later phase, the Terror, was the gradual introduction of a war of
+interest between the people of the capital and the villages. The more
+the power of the Mountain and the Parisian Commune increased, the more
+absolutely the booty of the Revolution fell to the share of the town
+proletaires, at the cost not only of the great landed proprietors, but
+the small farmers as well. Our first impression at the aspect of this
+rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we
+may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so
+extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the
+possibility of a class war. But for any disquisition on this subject, or
+allusion to the causes that, in the first years of the Revolution,
+prepared its way, we look through Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the
+representation of the Ancien Regime, his attention is pre-eminently
+turned to social relations connected with the land. Had he with an
+equally comprehensive and minute care studied the different strata, the
+interests and wants of the town population, the problem alluded to would
+have solved itself.
+
+It is with admirable insight and incontrovertible reasoning that Taine
+shows the logical untenableness and practical mischief of the theory of
+equality, both in the writings of Rousseau and the action of the
+Constituent Assembly. He proves the contradiction between this equality
+and the very nature of man, and how, consequently, pure democracy
+rendered the development of political liberty unattainable. In perfect
+agreement with Tocqueville, he points to the absolute necessity, under
+the circumstances of the time, of aristocratic institutions, for the
+creation and preservation of a free State, and explains how deeply
+seated these are in the needs and claims of human nature. This portion
+of his work is indeed masterly; and the more widely extended the
+equalitarian superstition among the Liberal parties of our day, the more
+one could desire Taine's views to exercise a strong and wide-spread
+influence. But, on the other hand, it appears to me that by this very
+conception of political institutions, our author has been led to show
+himself something more than just in the sentence he passes on the
+representatives of this period, the nobles and prelates of 1789. This is
+one of the few incongruities already alluded to between the first and
+second volume. After reading of the luxury, artificiality, and idleness
+of aristocratic society in the former, and coming with the author to the
+conviction that terrible consequences must attend such a condition, one
+is surprised to find in the latter that these privileged ones were the
+best, the most discerning and patriotic portion of the nation, whose
+annihilation or exile brought about the same injurious results that the
+expulsion of the Huguenots had done. This contradiction is not cleared
+up by the fact that in the years immediately preceding the Revolution,
+and chiefly through the influence of Rousseau, a sentimental humanity
+had prevailed in high circles, that here, too, it was the fashion to
+speak of a return to an idyllic life of nature, of universal brotherly
+love, and of the relief of every form of distress. For these
+transformations remained, in point of fact, only fanciful phrases of the
+salons. When Louis XVI., Turgot, and Calonne, really desired to set
+about such philanthropic reforms in good earnest, it was, as we have
+already seen, these sentimental nobles themselves who hindered their
+effort, and by nullifying reform brought about the Revolution. When the
+catastrophe came, many of them had sufficient insight into the new
+position of affairs to make haste and repudiate those privileges which
+throughout the land had been already trampled under foot by an unchained
+people. The horrible persecution to which they were subjected, in utter
+disregard of all existing rights and all human feeling, with
+bloodthirsty cruelty and shameless greed, must ever insure for the
+victims the compassion and sympathy of every right-minded observer; and
+in order fully to justify revolutionary laws against emigrants, one
+would be driven to advance sophisms only, not arguments. But all this
+does not affect the question, whether, as Taine assumes, these
+persecuted ones did hold a distinguished place in the nation for
+political virtue, intellectual culture, and capacity for action.
+Neighbouring nations, so far as I know, without exception took at the
+time an entirely different view. Doubtless, there were among the
+emigrants many who won respect and regard in the regions whither their
+flight had led them. But the great majority, by their thoughtless
+arrogance, mutual bickerings, and shameless frivolity, left behind them
+a bad reputation; whereas a hundred years before the exiled Huguenots,
+by their unity, earnestness, and industry, won, wherever they went, the
+respect and gratitude of their new countrymen.
+
+    HEINRICH VON SYBEL.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF IRELAND?
+
+
+Returning to settle in Ireland after an absence that began more than
+twenty years ago, I found two things strongly claiming my attention.
+One, was the very great advance in material well-being which my country
+appeared to have made. The other, was the fact that both Englishmen and
+Irishmen appeared resolutely to ignore this progress. Nearly all who
+write and speak about Ireland, either dwell upon her grievances or
+assume poverty as her normal condition. I know not of any who have
+attempted to record her returning prosperity. Yet there are few facts in
+modern history better worthy of notice than the advance in material
+wealth which has taken place in Ireland during the thirty years between
+1846 and 1876.
+
+The year 1879 marks the close of just one-third of a century from the
+great famine. The first thirty years of this period, 1846-76, were years
+of continual advance in well-being. From 1877 and down to the present
+year a reaction has been going on, which is largely connected with a
+general depression of trade all over the world. For reasons which will
+appear hereafter, I do not hold that this reaction is likely to be
+permanent.
+
+It is true that at the beginning of that period the country was in the
+very lowest depths of poverty and depression. The starting-point
+therefore was a very backward one: and the wonder is that so much
+advance should have been made, considering not only the backwardness of
+the starting-point but the difficulties of the road.
+
+I shall not attempt to depict the state of things which prevailed at the
+close of the great potato famine. The condition of the country is well
+known; the facts are in the recollection of many persons now living; and
+the evidence is within the reach of all inquirers. I may safely assume
+that Ireland then was among the very poorest of all the countries in
+Europe. What is her position now?
+
+In discussing the social condition of any country, the population
+question naturally comes to the front. Is the population pressing unduly
+on the means of subsistence? then there is something wrong, and until
+this is set right progress is impossible. On the other hand, if the
+population is so sparse as to leave the resources of the country
+undeveloped, there is also something wrong, though in this case the evil
+is far less. The population, such as it is, may be prosperous and
+advancing, though it is not producing all it might.
+
+The former was notoriously the state of things in Ireland before
+1847.[21] In 1845 (the year immediately preceding the famine) the
+population was at the highest point it attained during the present
+century, and probably the highest it ever reached. It was estimated at
+8,295,061. In 1847, the year when the famine was at its height, the
+numbers are given as 8,025,274. In 1875, just thirty years after the
+maximum, the numbers had fallen to 5,309,494. In 1877 they were
+estimated at 5,338,906, showing an increase over 1875 of 29,412.
+
+It is a familiar fact that the population of 1845 and 1847 was
+excessive. Whether the present population may not be defective in regard
+of productive power is a question not without importance, but not
+immediately relevant. What we are now dealing with is the material
+welfare of the existing population; and it is clear that five millions
+can live where eight cannot. But are the five millions better off in
+some proportion to the price the country has paid for the decrease in
+population? And is there a real advance in the condition of the people,
+not a mere rise out of beggary and starvation?
+
+In attempting an answer to a question of this nature, one looks
+naturally to the rate of wages first. But this test is an imperfect one:
+partly because local variations are still considerable; partly because
+money payments in many places and among large classes are more or less
+supplemented by subsistence drawn directly from the land. Besides, a
+mere increase in money wages may mean little or nothing, unless the
+increased wages possess increased purchasing power, and there be at the
+same time an upward tendency in the standard of living. Putting aside
+the wages question accordingly (to be discussed hereafter), let us try
+to find other indications of the extent and nature of the changes in the
+people's condition since the famine. A test of some value, though not
+absolutely conclusive by itself, will be afforded by changes in the area
+of farms. It is notorious that one of the causes which most contributed
+to bring about the famine and its miseries was the small size of
+holdings. Now the census returns show that from 1851, very shortly after
+the famine, there has been a steady decrease in the number of farms
+under fifteen acres, and a steady increase in the number of farms
+between fifteen and thirty acres, as well as in farms exceeding thirty
+acres in area. Up to 1861 the number of holdings not exceeding fifteen
+acres had declined fifty-five per cent., while those above fifteen acres
+had increased 133 per cent. The number of farms between fifteen and
+thirty acres was in 1861 double what it had been in 1841, and the farms
+above thirty acres amounted in 1861 to 157,833, against 48,625, which
+had been their number twenty years before. Between 1861 and 1871 farms
+under fifteen acres decreased by 12,548, and farms above thirty acres
+increased by 1470. According to the latest returns (1875) the farms not
+exceeding one acre in area were 51,459; those of one to five acres were
+69,098; those of five to fifteen acres, 166,959; fifteen to thirty
+acres, 137,669; the total above thirty acres being 160,298 holdings.
+
+This distribution of the land seems to indicate a considerable
+improvement compared with the state of things prevailing before the
+famine. Unfortunately the increase in the size of holdings has not been
+attended by a corresponding decrease in the number held on an insecure
+tenure. Tenancy at will continues to be the rule, and permanency the
+exception, in our land tenure. I have made an attempt to estimate
+roughly the classes of landholders. The "Domesday" list of proprietors
+of land gives the number of owners of one acre and under ten as 6892,
+holding 28,968 acres, or an average of a little over four acres each:
+between ten acres and fifty there are 7746 owners, holding 195,525
+acres, or an average a little over twenty-six acres: between fifty acres
+and a hundred there are 3479 owners, holding 250,147 acres, or an
+average of just under seventy-two acres. These make up a body of small
+proprietors, owning from one to a hundred acres, numbering 18,117.
+_Eason's Almanac_ for 1879, which has been published while I write,
+estimates the number of "proprietors in fee" of agricultural holdings at
+20,217. The same authority gives the number of leaseholders in
+perpetuity as 10,298; for terms of years exceeding thirty-one as 13,712;
+for thirty-one years and under, 47,623 (many of which may be short
+leases); and of leases for lives, or lives and years alternative, as
+63,759. The number of tenancies at will is 526,628, or 77.2 per cent, of
+the whole number of holdings. These statistics were collected in 1870,
+and they have doubtless been in some degree modified by the working of
+the Church Act and the Land Act. I have omitted from my extracts from
+the Domesday list the proprietors of under one acre. These are given in
+_Thom's Directory_ as 36,144, holding 9065 acres; but their holdings do
+not affect the present question, as they are mostly non-agricultural.
+The estimate in _Eason's Almanac_ purports to relate wholly to
+agricultural holdings. Domesday includes all classes.
+
+Another index of the condition of a people may be found in the way they
+are housed. Mean and comfortless dwellings imply not only a low standard
+of comfort, but often a low morality. Let us see how this matter has
+stood in Ireland. The Census Commissioners of 1841 divided the dwellings
+of the people into four classes. The fourth, or lowest, comprised all
+mud cabins having only one room. Of this class there were in all
+Ireland, according to the 1841 census, 491,278. In the last census,
+1871, the number had fallen to 155,675. The third-class dwellings were
+also built of mud, but contained three or four rooms, with windows; the
+latter convenience being by no means universally present in the
+one-roomed cabin of the fourth class. Of the third class the census of
+1841 enumerated 533,297; by 1871 this number had fallen to 357,126. The
+second class are described as good farmhouses, and in towns, houses
+having from five to nine rooms. Of this class in 1841 there were
+264,184; and in 1871 the number had increased to 387,660. The first
+class of houses increased during the same period from 40,080 to 60,919.
+Let us see now in what way the population has been distributed in the
+different classes of houses. In 1841 the number of families occupying
+first-class houses was 31,333. In 1871 the number had risen to 49,693.
+During the same period the number of families in second-class houses
+rose from 241,664 to 357,752. On the other hand, the families in
+third-class houses decreased from 574,386 to 432,774; and those in the
+fourth-class, or one-roomed cabins, from 625,356 to 227,379. By a
+curious coincidence, the _proportion_ of families to houses was the same
+in 1841 and in 1871--one hundred and eleven families to one hundred
+houses. In this way the very great shifting in the _classes_ is all the
+more clearly proved to indicate a real rise in the condition of the
+people.
+
+In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to discuss
+the wages question and the condition of the labouring population. Of the
+actual number of this class I can find no accurate return. But we have
+already seen that the number of families inhabiting the lowest class of
+houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the lowest class of
+labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871 gave the average
+number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100 families, we may
+estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied by 507, or
+1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may be safely
+assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now the money
+wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1_s._ 6_d._ a day in the
+most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in harvest
+time the labourers earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a day. A great many labourers have
+small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count
+directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is that
+the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his family
+can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig,
+&c.--thereby eking out the actual money payment.
+
+The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward
+and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast, potatoes
+and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper. The
+people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of
+feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics
+abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the sea
+that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are
+always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many of the
+labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am told that
+in certain districts there is one day in the year when every family
+among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of fresh
+meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish this
+meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.
+
+The condition of the people being such as I have described, one would
+naturally expect not to find pauperism very prevalent. As a matter of
+fact it is not. The average daily number of paupers in the workhouses
+throughout 1876 was 43,235, and of recipients of out-door relief 31,600:
+bringing up the total to 74,835. The average of persons in receipt of
+relief was 140.6 in 10,000 of population. This daily average represents
+the current subsisting mass of pauperism, and is in a considerable
+measure made up of the old, infirm, and sick. Of able-bodied paupers,
+the males were only 1697 in the daily average of workhouse inmates, and
+the females were 4130. There were 10,134 healthy children under fifteen
+in the workhouses, and the other inmates were either sick in hospital or
+permanently unable to work. These figures seem to be the very reverse of
+alarming. Permanent pauperism is not a very virulent social disorder
+when only two able-bodied persons to every five hundred of the
+population are in receipt of in-door relief, and when the whole
+permanent pauper population barely exceeds fourteen in a thousand. But
+though permanent pauperism may be well in hand, casual pauperism may be
+at a high pitch. Let us see how this matter has stood. I shall first
+take the statistics of 1876, and then try to modify my conclusions by
+such later figures as may be available. In 1876 the population of
+England and Wales stood at 24,244,000, and the total of paupers in
+receipt of relief, in-door and out-door, on the 1st of January of that
+year, was 752,887; Scotland, with a population of 3,527,000, had a total
+pauper population on the 1st of January, 1876, of 66,733. In Ireland, on
+the same date, the total population being 5,321,600, the paupers
+amounted to 77,913. In other words, at a rough estimate, on the 1st of
+January, 1876, about one person in every thirty-three in England and
+Wales was in receipt of relief as a pauper; in Scotland, about one in
+every fifty-three; while in Ireland the proportion was only one in
+sixty-eight. A similar proportion appears in the incidence of the
+poor-rate. In 1876 England and Wales paid at the rate of 6_s._ 0-3/4_d._
+per head of population; Scotland 5_s_. 0-1/2_d._; Ireland only 3_s._
+4_d._
+
+Of course these figures must undergo modification in view of the altered
+circumstances of the present time. The statistics of 1876 are not an
+accurate guide to the facts of 1879. During the last three years there
+has been considerable depression of trade; and it may very well be that
+the returns of this year will indicate an ebb in the tide of prosperity.
+But, unless I am very much mistaken, after making all allowances, it
+will probably be found that Ireland is the part of the United Kingdom
+least affected by the present prolonged commercial crisis.[22]
+
+The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the
+considerable class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of
+wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but
+perhaps not less intelligent class--that of English travellers in
+Ireland--will promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are
+cooked; they will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been
+beset with beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from
+pauperism? Surely the true state of the case is that the people keep out
+of the workhouses merely in order to live on public charity in another
+form?" It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very
+common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national
+scandal. There is, however, something to be said in mitigation of
+judgment, though perhaps not in defence. It is a matter in which figures
+are of little use; for no one could, by any possibility, estimate how
+many persons live wholly by begging. That there are in every community
+some persons who do may be taken as certain. That their number is larger
+in proportion to the bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in
+a Protestant community, is antecedently probable. The theory of the
+Roman Catholic religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to
+be no sin to live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms.
+_Never turn away thy face from any poor man_, is a text acted on by
+devout Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not
+difficult to foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the
+Irish Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of
+indiscriminate almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small
+degree by the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful
+efforts in the direction of the organization of charity. Another
+influence, which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy
+that scandalizes the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The
+habits of centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than
+twenty years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the
+Irish poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is
+limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of Catholic
+chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the roads leading
+to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often beset by little
+knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these are no more
+professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself with pheasant
+shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of excitement
+with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner or more
+vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.
+
+Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would
+exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is
+common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a
+larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply
+of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the
+mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the
+small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to
+show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the
+revenues of the Irish mendicant!
+
+An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete
+without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here
+we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England
+and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of
+drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an
+approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland,
+the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209,
+or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the
+drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous
+proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in
+all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so
+that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England,
+still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same,
+this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is
+rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of
+apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people
+might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on
+greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other
+hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox,
+argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk
+proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make
+an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament,
+and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man,
+when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the
+habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be
+given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force
+is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in
+England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter
+seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a
+quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier
+constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home.
+That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the
+startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we
+come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with
+drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces,
+it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.
+
+The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally
+those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink
+may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an
+indirect fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things
+which he may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of
+poverty, and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring
+then to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876
+only four persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number
+sentenced in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy;
+for the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of
+only about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in
+England were eight times as numerous as in Ireland.[25] But this is not
+all. Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these
+drink is only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly
+every murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of
+intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve
+sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none
+in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as
+representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the
+thirty-two persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were
+executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come to
+sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were
+only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of returns
+of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it is not
+easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the statistics of
+conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the person are
+much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland than in
+England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable
+expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in
+London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel
+anywhere in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the
+apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a
+proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the other
+hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth), we have
+1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties inflicted in
+Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.
+
+Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence, we
+find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against none
+in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against 26 in
+Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against only 69 in
+Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect drink to be
+a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there is no
+assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by violence,
+except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for crime.
+Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for minor
+offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against 10,674 in
+England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for terms of
+years, against 1063 in England.
+
+All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal
+of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is
+true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes,
+especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing
+minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization
+make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that,
+though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy
+keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have time
+for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something to
+do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but this is
+certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges of
+Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white gloves
+instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may be, I
+merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the most
+part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference
+they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken animals
+after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception to the
+rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on the Irish
+character--agrarian outrage--is not to be accounted for by drink. The
+true explanation is familiar to all who really know the country. The
+Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his support, and
+believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself to have a
+moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a belief
+which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be stated
+with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it
+without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his
+hostility to the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment,
+looks on himself as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a
+wronged man (which he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged
+have always been raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply
+a brigand in a frieze coat.
+
+I have no desire to compose an Essay on the Land Question; but it is
+absolutely impracticable to discuss Irish social economy without finding
+the Land Question in one's way. It is the question which most closely
+concerns the industrial classes; for the land is the mainstay of Irish
+industry. It is the pivot upon which all Irish politics turn; for
+although priestly influence counts for a great deal, that influence
+itself depends in great measure on the land hunger of the peasantry. I
+feel that I should be leaving Hamlet out of the play if I did not say a
+few words on the matter. As I have already hinted, the Irish peasant has
+three reasons for his desire to be "rooted in the soil." One is a
+traditional reason. He thinks that his forefathers were unjustly ousted
+by foreign conquerors. His belief rests on an utterly distorted view of
+history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors
+of a few of the existing peasantry might in a sort of sense have been
+called landowners. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be
+equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had
+been the serfs or the slaves of barbarous chieftains. The old Gaelic
+tribal ownership, if left to itself, might or might not have ripened
+into a peasant proprietary; but the only real grievance which the
+existing Gaelic peasantry can allege, is that the English conquest
+forcibly interrupted the natural process of evolution. Moreover, a large
+number of the existing peasants are no true Gael at all, but the
+descendants of Danes, Normans, and the various waves of Saxon settlers
+from Elizabeth to William of Orange. In parts of Ireland there are even
+to be found the descendants of French Huguenots, of Scotch fugitives
+involved in the Stuart insurrections, and of refugees of 1793. That such
+a _colluvies gentium_ should claim to be the heirs of Septs which
+occupied the land
+
+    "Ere the emerald gem of the Western world
+        Had been set in the crown of a stranger,"
+
+is simply a proof of profound ignorance of history. Such, however, is
+the vague traditional belief; and it is complicated with a moral
+sentiment, that he who tills the land has a right to live by the land.
+The sentiment is open to no objection, provided it be understood that
+the land is an instrument of production in which the whole community is
+interested. The cultivator has the same right to live by the land as the
+artisan to live by his handicraft, and no more--that is, both peasant
+and artisan have a right to expect that the social system shall be so
+adjusted that neither shall be unjustly deprived of the fruit of his
+labour. But neither peasant nor artisan can claim that any instrument of
+production shall be used for the sole sake of the producer. Hence, even
+if peasant proprietorship were undeniably the best thing for the
+peasant, it does not follow that he has a moral right to it, unless it
+be good for the whole community as well. This consideration is too
+often neglected by the thorough-going advocates of peasant
+proprietorship. They assume that the interests of the peasants are the
+only interests to be considered. In Ireland, indeed, they are not far
+wrong; for the peasantry _are_ very nearly the whole community. This,
+however, only raises the previous question, whether peasant
+proprietorship would be a success in Ireland--of which hereafter. The
+last and most practical of the agrarian arguments is that a tenant
+evicted is a man ruined. Even this is only partially true, and at most
+is only an argument against capricious eviction. It is conclusive as
+against the system of tenancy at will, or any of those short tenures
+which are, in fact, a standing notice to quit. It holds good in favour
+of peasant proprietorship to this extent--that the ruin of a peasant
+proprietor can only occur through his own fault or misfortune, and not
+through the caprice of a landlord. In short, the discontent of the Irish
+peasantry proves that the Anglo-Irish system of tenure is about the
+worst of all possible systems; but it proves little or nothing in favour
+of peasant ownership.
+
+My own opinion (_valeat quantum_) is that the soil and climate of
+Ireland render the country utterly unfit to maintain a considerable body
+of peasant proprietors; but that, nevertheless, it would be wise and
+politic to establish peasant properties as widely as may be practicable.
+The climate is notoriously damp, and variable in the extreme. Grain
+crops are inferior and precarious--root crops are not much better--even
+meadows are untrustworthy, because of the difficulty of haymaking--but
+Irish pasture is perhaps the best in the world. Natural conditions mark
+out Ireland as a pastoral and cattle-breeding country; and such a
+country is the destined home of _latifundia_. It is not merely that
+cattle require large spaces of pasture; but the trade in cattle requires
+capital, and requires the power of staying through seasons of adversity.
+An attempt to breed or deal in cattle by a class of peasant proprietors,
+acting singly, could only end in ruin; a ruin even more complete than
+bad seasons would bring upon unsuccessful cultivators of grain. Another
+product for which Ireland is eminently fitted is timber.[26] This also
+obviously requires spaces of land, and intervals of idle capital,
+utterly incompatible with any system of small holdings. Nature would
+seem to have marked out Ireland as a country to be thinly populated;
+historical accident once made her one of the most populous of countries,
+and we all know what came of it. The people were dependent on a single
+kind of food; it failed, and misery ensued such as modern Europe had
+never beheld. The scenes of 1847 we may devoutly hope will never be
+witnessed again; but such a season as 1878-79 would be a trial that few
+peasant proprietors could stand. Why then do I say that a peasant
+proprietary ought to be created? Because I believe that in the
+experiment is to be found the sole method of convincing the Irish
+peasants that their true interest lies in quite another direction. The
+peasant now believes that all he wants in order to be prosperous is to
+be "rooted in the soil." It is of no use to appeal to abstract
+reasoning. He knows that he has to pay rent, and that he is liable to
+eviction for non-payment. Carefully as recent legislation has guarded
+him against capricious eviction, he knows that if his landlord chooses
+to pay for turning him out, out he must go. The few of his neighbours
+who do acquire freeholds, he perceives to be comparatively prosperous.
+He does not take into account that the prosperity of the freeholder is
+maintained by precisely the same exceptional energy and thrift which in
+the first instance enabled him to secure the freehold. Besides, it is
+undeniable that _caeteris paribus_ a man who holds rent-free is likely to
+be better off than one who pays rent; and so long as rent is the rule
+and freehold the exception, the few freeholders will seem at least to
+possess an advantage over the many rentpayers. In short, the peasant
+farmer will never cease to believe ownership a panacea for all his ills,
+until he shall have tried it, and failed. Of course it does not
+absolutely follow that the experiment of creating a peasant proprietary
+must needs fail. It may succeed; and then the Irish land problem is
+solved. For the reasons given above, however, I think it would fail. If
+all the holdings of fifteen acres and under (there are 285,000[27] of
+them, or nearly half the whole number of farms in Ireland) were turned
+into peasant properties tomorrow, I believe they would in thirty, or at
+most in fifty, years be recast into large cattle farms, owned probably
+for the most part by joint-stock companies. The process of consolidation
+would be partly the buying out of ruined peasants after some such
+seasons as we are now undergoing; partly a voluntary union of the
+residue, who would find association desirable in order to secure a
+sufficiency of land and capital. But those who might be compelled to
+part with their lands could no longer ascribe their ruin to the tenure
+by which they held. It would be made clear to them and to all concerned
+that it is the laws of Nature and not the laws of England which hinder
+Ireland from maintaining a dense agricultural population.
+
+It may be urged against what I have here said, that it is hardly worth
+while engaging in a social revolution merely in order that the last
+state of things may turn out on the whole very similar to the first. I
+cannot deny the force of this remark; though I may suggest, in my turn,
+that perhaps it is worth while to make some sacrifice for the sake of
+attaining stable equilibrium in the social system. I am persuaded that
+the one great difficulty in Irish affairs is to convince the peasant
+that the law is a power not hostile but friendly to him. This is no easy
+task. It is not so very long since the law actually was the hard master
+it is still supposed to be. Nor is the peasant's own attitude of mind a
+very easy one to deal with. He clamours loudly to be "rooted in the
+soil," or, in other words, to be made absolute owner of his farm; but he
+clamours not less loudly against the absenteeship of his landlord. He
+utterly fails to perceive the inconsistency of his position. He cannot
+eat his cake and have his cake. He cannot be at one and the same time
+tenant to a resident lord of the manor, and owner in fee-simple of his
+own holding. Absolute peasant ownership is _prima facie_ incompatible
+with the very existence of a landed aristocracy; and it may be some
+perception of this that induces certain of the land agitators to propose
+fixity of tenure at a quit-rent rather than absolute peasant
+proprietorship. But it is clear that this is a mere evasion of the
+difficulty. A landlord, who is merely a rent-charger, has no more motive
+to reside on his estate than if he sold it and lived on the interest of
+the purchase-money. There is no doubt a sense in which the two things
+are not absolutely incompatible. Peasant properties might be intermixed
+with large estates owned by resident landlords. And this would certainly
+constitute a state of things by no means undesirable; in fact, it is
+what might possibly emerge from the experiment I have mentioned above. I
+think it more than probable that a great deal of the land, after such an
+experiment, would fall into the hands of joint-stock companies; but a
+considerable portion might also be bought up by individuals, who might
+choose to become resident landlords. It must, however, be remembered
+that there are many things besides agrarian agitation which tempt Irish
+landlords to become absentees. Residence in Ireland is attended with
+many drawbacks and discomforts, even when a landlord is on the best of
+terms with his tenantry. Absenteeism is no new complaint; Adam Smith
+discussed proposals for an absentee-tax. Its prevalence is not
+uncommonly ascribed to the Union, but it might as well be ascribed to
+the Deluge. The most potent causes of absenteeism in the latter half of
+the nineteenth century are the City of Dublin Steam Navigation Company,
+and the London and North-Western Railway. These, and kindred
+institutions, are also the channels which conduct a vast deal of wealth
+into Ireland; and if absenteeism constitutes a perennial drain on her
+resources, the facilities of locomotion cause the drain to return
+ten-fold.[28] If these facilities did not exist, it does not follow that
+the landlords who remained at home would necessarily be of much use to
+the community. The squires and _squireens_ in Lever's and Maxwell's
+novels are very amusing to read about; but they are a race that nobody
+at the present day would seriously wish to revive. However this may be,
+there is little inducement for the existing landlords to remain resident
+in a country where they are continually threatened, and occasionally
+shot. I cannot help thinking that in the tendency to absenteeism,
+courageous statesmanship might find the means of solving the Land
+problem. There should be little difficulty, one would imagine, in
+persuading a number of existing Irish landlords to part with their
+estates for a reasonable compensation.[29] The Church Surplus is at hand
+to provide the purchase-money. After deducting the sums to be paid to
+the Intermediate Education Board, and to the National School Teachers'
+Pension Fund, there will remain nearly four millions in the hands of the
+Temporalities Commission. This money judiciously advanced to tenant
+farmers would enable a considerable number of them to acquire the
+freehold of their farms, and thus the foundations of a peasant
+proprietary might be laid without any confiscation or disturbance of
+vested rights. The Royal Commission on Agriculture would perhaps be a
+good medium for acquiring information on this subject. They might
+include in the scope of their inquiry the best method of carrying out
+some such scheme as has been here indicated.
+
+Having set out with no intention beyond that of offering a general view
+of a few leading facts and figures relating to Irish affairs, I find
+myself insensibly gliding into a political discussion. So far as I have
+any excuse for this, it must be found in the irrepressible character of
+the Land problem; which, as I before remarked, can by no possibility be
+evaded by any one who writes on Irish social economy. Yet this problem
+itself is in one aspect simply a phase of the struggle going on all over
+the world between, labour and capital. Side by side with this there is
+yet another struggle going on, which is also a phase of a world-wide
+conflict. It is the old story of Priesthood against Free Thought; but in
+Ireland, like nearly all things Irish, it bears a peculiar aspect of its
+own. Many a man here would be amazed to be told that he is fighting on
+the side of the priests; yet the Irish Orange Tory, and to some extent
+even the Irish Evangelical clergyman, is really and truly (though of
+course unconsciously) helping the policy of the Roman Church. But it
+would extend my essay beyond all reasonable limits to discuss this
+matter; and besides, I set out to write on statistics, and not on
+politics.[30]
+
+    EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] The statistics in this Essay are chiefly taken from _Thom's Almanac
+and Official Directory for 1878_. The tables given in that Almanac are
+for the most part brought down no later than 1876. It so happens,
+however, that 1876 is a very convenient date for the purpose of this
+paper. It marks the conclusion of a period of just thirty years from the
+worst crisis of the Potato Famine; and it marks also the conclusion of a
+cycle of commercial inflation, some of whose results were strongly felt
+in Ireland.
+
+I have, of course, consulted other authorities besides _Thom's
+Directory_, but I shall specify these as occasion arises. When no
+special reference is given, my authority is Thom.
+
+[22] While I write _Eason's Almanac for 1879_ has been published. This
+authority gives the total average of paupers daily in receipt of relief
+through 1877 as 78,223, or 146.5 in 10,000 of the population. An
+increase of less than six in ten thousand is not very alarming, and the
+fact seems in some measure to justify the opinion I have ventured to
+express in the text, that Ireland will be found to suffer less from the
+present crisis than other parts of the United Kingdom. It must, however,
+be taken into consideration that the present year (1879) threatens a
+very poor harvest: and this circumstance is absolutely certain to
+enhance whatever distress already exists.
+
+[23] See note on previous page.
+
+[24] The 24-1/4 millions in England and Wales are kept in order by a
+police force of 29,689. In Scotland 3-1/2 millions of population have
+only 3356 policemen. In Ireland, with a population well under 5-1/2
+millions, there are 12,081 policemen. And yet, as will appear presently,
+there is far less crime in Ireland relatively than in either of the
+other kingdoms.
+
+[25] It is only just to admit that the death sentences are not a fair
+test. Too many murders remain undetected, owing to the existence of
+agrarian conspiracy. The number of murders known to have been committed
+is unluckily not to be found in the returns to which I have access. But
+the very fact of their remaining undetected is a proof that they are not
+directly connected with intoxication, for it shows that they are for the
+most part agrarian.
+
+[26] It has been calculated, apparently on trustworthy data, that an
+acre of land planted with larch or fir, at an expense of about �20,
+would be worth �2000 at the end of forty years, besides the intermediate
+yield from clearings of young timber, game cover, and so forth. This is
+a very high return for a small outlay; but it is completely beyond the
+means of any peasant proprietor.
+
+[27] _Eason's Almanac_, 1879. The actual number is 285,464. The total of
+agricultural holdings is 581,963.
+
+[28] I have unfortunately been unable to obtain any statistics of the
+cross-channel trade. I find it stated in _Thom's Directory_ that the
+trade of Belfast alone was valued in the year 1866 at �24,332,000--viz.,
+�12,417,000 imports and �11,915,000 exports. The year 1866 was a bad
+year: so it may be assumed that these figures represent a low average. I
+find no means of estimating the import and export trade of Cork and
+Dublin.
+
+I may mention here that one cause of interruption in the composition of
+this paper was an unsuccessful search for complete trade statistics.
+
+[29] A few of the Home Rule M.P.'s who are now stumping the country on
+the Land grievance are themselves landlords. It has been suggested that
+they should introduce fixity of tenure on their estates, in one or other
+of its various forms. Mr. Errington (who is _not_ one of the stump
+orators of the party) has, I am told, notified his intention to give
+long leases to his tenantry. In a case like this the _argumentum ad
+hominem_, though a perfectly fair one, is a perfectly useless one.
+
+[30] I have referred above (note, p. 463) to my failure to obtain trade
+statistics. This circumstance has caused me to fail also in fully
+carrying out the original plan of this paper. I had intended not only to
+give a general view of the recent condition of the Irish people, but to
+enter somewhat fully into its causes, and discuss the probabilities of
+the future. The great revival in prosperity, which I have imperfectly
+sketched, was closely connected with the cross-channel trade. At
+present, affairs look sufficiently gloomy both here and in England; and
+the forecast of the future depends mainly upon the prospect of revival
+in English trade.
+
+
+
+
+THE DELUGE:
+
+ITS TRADITIONS IN ANCIENT NATIONS.
+
+
+Of all traditions relating to the history of primitive humanity, by far
+the most universal is that of the Deluge. Our present purpose is to pass
+under review the principal versions of it extant among the leading races
+of men. The concordance of these with the Biblical narrative will bring
+out their primary unity, and we shall thus be able to recognize the fact
+of this tradition being one of those which date before the dispersion of
+peoples, go back to the very dawn of the civilized world, and can only
+refer to a real and definite event.
+
+But we have previously to get rid of certain legendary recollections
+erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, their essential
+features forbidding sound criticism to assimilate them therewith. We
+allude to such as refer to local phenomena, and are of historic and
+comparatively recent date. Doubtless the tradition of the great
+primitive cataclysm may have been confused with these, and thus have led
+to an exaggeration of their importance; but the characteristic points of
+the narrative admitted into the Book of Genesis are wanting, and even
+under the legendary form it has assumed these events retain a decidedly
+special and restricted character. To group recollections of this nature
+with those that really relate to the Deluge would be to invalidate,
+rather than confirm, the consequences we are entitled to draw from the
+latter.
+
+Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books of
+China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even
+resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the
+date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous
+to the eighth century B.C., we may yet determine as long subsequent to
+the fully historic periods of Egypt and Babylon.[31] Chinese authors
+describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course
+of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of
+every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot, has
+proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the
+Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above
+catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its banks
+had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were but the
+beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters, carried on
+further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven on the rocky
+face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for contemporaneous
+with these works, and is consequently the most ancient specimen of
+Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears to present an
+intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts
+suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious fact
+connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through ancient
+copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research has
+failed to re-discover the original.
+
+Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the
+legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the
+ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America,
+although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with the
+fundamental historic element.
+
+Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica,
+having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river Funzha
+leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its waters;
+men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few escape by flight
+to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that Botchica broke
+asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, in
+order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next reassembled the
+dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship, and went up
+to heaven, after having lived 500 years in Cundinamarca.
+
+
+I.
+
+_Chaldean and Biblical Narratives._--Of the traditions relating to the
+great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans.
+Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the
+tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes
+nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes
+evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time when
+Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into Palestine.
+
+We have two versions of the Chaldean story--unequally developed indeed,
+but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and
+also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of
+Babylon and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of
+the Greeks.[32] After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the
+Chaldean priest continues thus:--
+
+    "Obartes Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra)
+    reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the
+    Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred
+    documents as follows:--Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and
+    announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the
+    Assyrian month Sivan--a little before the summer solstice), all men
+    should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the
+    beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to
+    writing,[33] and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then
+    to build a vessel, and to enter into it with his family and dearest
+    friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to
+    cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare
+    everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what
+    direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'towards the
+    gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.
+
+    "Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and
+    five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and
+    embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.
+
+    "The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some
+    of the birds. These finding no food nor place to alight on returned
+    to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but
+    they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally,
+    loosed the third time the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros
+    understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof
+    of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain.
+    He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot,
+    worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the
+    gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.
+
+    "Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel not seeing Xisuthros
+    return, descended too and began to seek him, calling him by his
+    name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard
+    commanding them piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was
+    receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell
+    thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his
+    daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour. The
+    voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and
+    conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at
+    Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country
+    in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having
+    heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to
+    Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in
+    Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in
+    Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped
+    from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of
+    witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon,
+    disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities,
+    built temples, and restored Babylon."
+
+By the side of this version, which, interesting though it be, is, after
+all, second hand, we are now able to place an original
+Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the
+first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh and now in
+the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an
+episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chaunt of the great epic of
+the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name
+has not as yet been made out with certainty,[34] being attacked by
+disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult
+the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to
+which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He
+asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his
+obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is
+induced to relate the cataclysm.
+
+By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the
+palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the
+narrative with hardly any breaks.[35] These three copies were, by order
+of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C.,
+from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of
+Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is
+difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian
+scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen
+centuries, at least, before our era, and even probably beyond; it was
+therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with
+Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove
+that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the
+_hieratic_, a character which must have already become difficult to
+decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to
+the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have
+simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand.
+Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the
+original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a
+copy of some still more ancient manuscript, in which the original text
+had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have
+introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these
+preliminary observations I proceed to give integrally the narrative
+ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:--
+
+    "I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my
+    preservation--and tell to thee the decision of the gods.
+
+    "The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on
+    the Euphrates--it was ancient and in it [men did not honour] the
+    gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods--[The gods
+    took counsel on the appeal of] Anu--[a deluge was proposed by]
+    Bel--[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
+
+    "And the god [Ea] the immutable lord,--repeated this command in a
+    dream.--I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he
+    said to me:--'Man of Shiruppak, son of Ubaratutu--thou, build a
+    vessel and finish it [quickly].--[By a deluge] I will destroy
+    substance and life.--Cause thou to go up into the vessel the
+    substance of all that has life.--The vessel thou shall build--600
+    cubits shall be the measure of its length--and 60 cubits the amount
+    of its breadth and of its height.--[Launch it] thus on the ocean and
+    cover it with a roof.'--I understood, and I said to Ea, my
+    lord:--'[The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus--[when] I
+    shall do it,--young and old [shall laugh at me.]'--[Ea opened his
+    mouth and] spoke.--He said to me, his servant:--'[If they laugh at
+    thee] thou shalt say to them: [shall be punished] he who has
+    insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.-- ... like
+    to caverns ... ---- ... I will exercise my judgment on that which is
+    on high and that which is below ... ---- ... Close the vessel ...
+    ---- ... At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,--enter
+    into it and draw the door of the ship towards thee.--Within it, thy
+    grains, thy furniture, thy provisions,--thy riches, thy
+    men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people--the
+    cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the plain that I will
+    assemble--and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy
+    door.'--Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;--he said to Ea, his
+    lord:--'No one has made [such a] ship.--On the prow I will
+    fix....--I shall see ... and the vessel ...--the vessel thou
+    commandest me to build [thus]--which in....[36]
+
+    "On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.--In its
+    covering fourteen in all were its rafters--fourteen in all did it
+    count above.--I placed its roof and I covered it.--I embarked in it
+    on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;--I divided
+    the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks
+    through which the water entered in;--I visited the chinks and added
+    what was wanting.--I poured on the exterior three times 3,600
+    measures of asphalte,--and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte
+    within.--Three times 3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the
+    chests of provisions.--I kept 3,600 chests for the nourishment of my
+    family,--and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3,600
+    chests.--For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;--I instituted
+    [rations] for each day.--In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of
+    barrels and of wine--[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of
+    a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the
+    earth.--[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.-- ... of
+    the sun ... the vessel was completed.-- ... strong and--I had
+    carried above and below the furniture of the ship.--[This lading
+    filled the two-thirds.]
+
+    "All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver
+    I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered--all
+    that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered
+    together.--I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants male and
+    female,--the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains,
+    and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend."
+
+    "Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined and----he announced it
+    in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly
+    from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.'----The fixed
+    moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms: 'In the
+    evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven.'----When the
+    evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,----I entered into the
+    vessel and shut my door.----In shutting the vessel, to
+    Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot----I confided this dwelling, with all
+    that it contained.
+
+    "Mu-sheri-ina-namari[37]--rose from the foundations of heaven in a
+    black cloud;--Ramman[38] thundered in the midst of the cloud--and
+    Nabon and Sharru marched before;--they marched, devastating the
+    mountain and the plain;--Nergal[39] the powerful, dragged
+    chastisements after him;--Adar[40] advanced, overthrowing before
+    him;--the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction--in their
+    terrors they agitated the earth.--The inundation of Ramman swelled
+    up to the sky--and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed
+    into a desert.
+
+    "They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;--[they
+    destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.--The
+    terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].--The brother no
+    longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In
+    heaven--the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and--sought a
+    refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[41]--The gods were
+    stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like
+    dogs.--Ishtar wailed like a child,--the great goddess pronounced her
+    discourse:--'Here is humanity returned into mud, and--this is the
+    misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.--So I
+    announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,--for the evil
+    I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.--I am
+    the mother who gave birth to men, and--like to the race of fishes,
+    there they are filling the sea;--and the gods by reason of
+    that--which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with
+    me.'--The gods on their seats were seated in tears--and they held
+    their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
+
+    "Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and
+    the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the
+    seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible
+    water-spout--which had assailed after the fashion of an
+    earthquake--grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and
+    the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
+    observing--and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto
+    seaweeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light
+    smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I
+    wept;--and my tears came over my face.
+
+    "I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points
+    of the horizon; not any continent.--The vessel was borne above the
+    land of Nizir--the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did
+    not permit it to pass over.--A day and a second day the mountain of
+    Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;--the
+    third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and
+    did not permit it to pass over;--the fifth and sixth day the
+    mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass
+    over.--At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a
+    dove. The dove went, turned, and--found no place to light on, and it
+    came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went,
+    turned, and--found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent
+    out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the
+    waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.
+
+    "I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds,
+    and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on
+    the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured
+    vases,[42]--and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood.
+    The gods were seized with the desire of it--the gods were seized
+    with a benevolent desire of it;--and the gods assembled like flies
+    above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the
+    great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their
+    glory (the gods).[43] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will
+    never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave
+    them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!--but never may Bel
+    come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he
+    has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men
+    for the pit.'
+
+    "From far, in drawing near, Bel--saw the vessel, and Bel
+    stopped;--he was filled with anger against the gods and the
+    celestial archangels:--
+
+    "'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the
+    abyss!'--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior
+    Bel:--'What other than Ea should have formed this resolution?--for
+    Ea possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all.'--Ea opened his mouth
+    and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--'O thou, herald of the gods,
+    warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the
+    water-spout of the deluge.--Let the sinner carry the weight of his
+    sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.--Please thyself
+    with this good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it
+    never [shall be violated.]--Instead of thy making a new deluge, let
+    lions appear and reduce the number of men; instead of thy making a
+    new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;--instead
+    of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine and let the earth be
+    [devastated];--instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara[44]
+    appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision
+    of the great gods;--it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and
+    comprehended what the gods had decided.'
+
+    "Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the
+    vessel.--He took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise and
+    made her place herself at my side.--He turned around us and stopped
+    short; he approached our group.--'Until now Khasisatra has made part
+    of perishable humanity;--but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are
+    going to be carried away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will
+    reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'--They carried me away and
+    established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."
+
+This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that, or
+rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides
+striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated,
+that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different
+narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the
+other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final
+editor. Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he
+omitted no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice
+narrated in different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are
+mixed up, it is easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each
+should form a continuous and unbroken narrative. Some critics have
+recently pretended that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and
+Deluge, both cuneiform documents disproved the distinction between the
+two sources of Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its
+composition; that the same repetitions, in effect, were to be found
+there. This was a premature conclusion, drawn from translations very
+imperfect as yet, and requiring thorough revision; and, indeed,
+confining ourselves to the story of the Deluge, such revision, carried
+on according to strict philological principles, does away with the
+arguments that had been based on the version of George Smith. None of
+the repetitions of the final text of Genesis are observable in the
+Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary, decisively confirms the
+distinction made between the two narratives, the Elohist and Jehovist,
+interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. It is with each of
+these separately--when disentangled and compared--that the Chaldean
+narrative coincides in its order--it is not with the result of their
+combination. And nothing could be easier than to demonstrate this by a
+synoptic table, in which the three narratives were collated.
+
+Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference,
+what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its
+own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions of the
+same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on the one
+hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel streams
+proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on both sides
+divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation of the two
+traditions to have taken place at a very remote era, and the one of
+which the Bible affords us the expression to be not merely an edition of
+that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated from a severely
+monotheistic point of view.
+
+The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant
+of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, _tebah_, signifies
+"coffer," and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the
+ark; there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no
+pilot. In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have
+been composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a
+reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the
+Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is
+launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with
+bitumen, it is entrusted to a pilot.
+
+The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king, who
+goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants and
+companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who are
+saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's three
+sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction (in
+the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between clean and
+unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered by sevens,
+although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially sacramental
+character.
+
+As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only between
+the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal, but between
+the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform documents measure
+the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus by stadia. Genesis states its
+length and breadth to have been in the proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of
+5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand,
+the fragments of Berosus do not treat of the relative dimensions of
+height and breadth, and the tablet gives them as equal, while the Bible
+speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty of breadth. But these
+differences as to figures have but a secondary importance; nothing so
+liable to alterations and variations in different editions of the same
+narrative. We may observe, however, that in Genesis it is only the
+Elohist--always much addicted to figures--who gives the dimensions of
+the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the Jehovist alone who tells of
+the sending forth of the birds, which occupies a considerable place in
+the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations here between the Biblical
+story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter adding the swallow to
+the dove and the raven, and not attributing to the dove the part of a
+messenger of good tidings, I do not think they go for much. The
+agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of far more importance.
+
+But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the
+absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the
+Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different
+systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions,
+dissimilar in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from
+Chaldea.
+
+By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the ordinal
+numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a lunar year,
+beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October), at the autumnal
+equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the Author of the Targum
+of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi and Kimchi, among the Jewish
+commentators of the Middle Ages; and proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis
+among the moderns. The rain begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark
+the 17th day of the second month--_i.e._, Marcheshvan. The great force
+of the waters lasts 150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month--_i.e._,
+Nisan (March-April)--the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the
+tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the
+mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following
+year--that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox--the waters have
+completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the second
+month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus eleven days--that
+is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365 days. Now, under
+the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria, the rains of late
+autumn begin towards the end of November, and at once the level of the
+Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow of the two rivers
+occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at the end of May, from
+which time the waters go down. At the end of June they have left the
+plains, and from August to November are at their lowest level. Now the
+dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist, and re-stated as we have been
+doing according to Michaelis and Knobel, accord perfectly with these
+phases of the rising and falling of the two Mesopotamian rivers. They
+accord even better in the primitive system which served for
+starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has been so ingeniously
+restored by M. Schraeder,[45] a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days
+in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its greatest height and
+150 for its decrease. According to this system, the leaving of the ark
+must have taken place on the first day of the 601st year of Noah's
+life--that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox.
+Thus the deliverance of the father of the new humanity, as well as the
+Covenant made by God with him and his race, were fixed on the very day
+to which an ancient opinion which has maintained itself among the Jews
+assigned the creation of the world. As to the beginning of the Deluge,
+it occurred, according to the same system, on the 1st day of the third
+month--that is to say, at the commencement of the lunation whose end
+coincided with the Sun's entry into Capricorn, when the conjunction of
+planets brought about periodic deluges according to an astrological
+conception of Chaldean origin, which does not indeed appear a very
+ancient one; but must have been based on data adopted by some of the
+sacerdotal schools of Babylonia as to the epoch of the cataclysm.
+
+It is also with the winter rains, and not with the swelling of the
+Euphrates and Tigris in spring, that the calendrical construction,
+according to which the antediluvian kings or patriarchs have been placed
+in relation with solar mansions (a construction followed in Uruk's Epic
+poem), causes the commencement of the Deluge to coincide. It connects,
+in point of fact, the tradition of the cataclysm with the month of
+Shabut (January-February), and with the sign of Aquarius. Accordingly, I
+find great difficulty in admitting the exactness of the date, 15th of
+Daisios, given in the extract of Alexander Polybister, as that assigned
+by Berosus to the Deluge, for this would make the event occur in the
+middle of the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, in a
+season of complete drought, when the rivers have reached their lowest
+level. I hold this to be an evident error, due not to the author of the
+Chaldean History himself, but to his transcriber. Berosus must have
+written =menos ogdou; pempte kai dekate= the 15th of the eighth month,
+translating into Greek the Assyrian name of the Arakh-Shanina. And by a
+readily explicable error Cornelius Alexander must have turned it into
+Daisios, which was the eighth month of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar,
+forgetting the difference between the initial point of its year and that
+of the Chaldeo-Assyrian. In reality, then, the date given by Berosus
+only differed by two days from that adopted by the Elohist compiler of
+Genesis. Besides, as Knobel rightly insists, in placing the commencement
+of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th of a month, we place it always at the
+full moon, for it is also with this phase of the light that lights the
+night that popular belief in Egypt and Mesopotamia links the periodic
+rise of Nile or Tigris.
+
+The system of the Jehovist is quite a different one. According to him,
+Jahveh announces the Deluge to Noah only seven days beforehand. The
+waters are at their height for forty days, and decrease during forty
+more. After these eighty days Noah sends out the three birds at
+intervals of seven days, and thus it is on the 21st day after he has
+opened the window of the ark for the first time that he, too, goes out
+of the ark and offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here the phases of the
+cataclysm are evidently calculated on those of the annual spring outflow
+of the Euphrates and Tigris, so that we need not hesitate to assign the
+origin of the very form of the tradition received by the Jehovist
+writer, to the cradle of the race of the Terahites in Chaldea. The
+overflow of the two rivers of Mesopotamia lasts, in fact, for an average
+of seventy-five days from the middle of March to the end of May; and
+twenty-six days later--that is, at the end of the 101 in all (80 + 21 =
+75 + 26 = 101), when the Jehovist makes Noah leave the ark--the lands
+which have been inundated become once more practicable.
+
+What, moreover, in the Jehovist narrative bears a very marked impress of
+Chaldean origin is the part played in it by septennial periods; seven
+days intervening between the announcement and the beginning of the
+Deluge, seven between each sending forth of the birds. That religious
+and mystic importance attached to the heptade which gave rise to the
+conception of the seven days of creation, and to the invention of the
+week, is an essentially Chaldean idea. It is among the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians that we discover its origin and find its most
+numerous applications. The story of Khasisatra, in the poem of Uruk,
+invariably proceeds hebdomadally. The violence of the Deluge lasts seven
+days, and so does the stay of the vessel on Mount Nizir when the waters
+begin to go down. It is true, indeed, that the building of the vessel
+occupies eight instead of seven days; but we must add the time necessary
+for the embarkation of provisions, animals, passengers, and this will
+enable us to calculate the whole duration of Khasisatra's preparations
+between the vision sent him by Ea and the moment when he closes the
+vessel at the approach of the rain, as consisting of fourteen days or
+two hebdomades. This being granted, if the poem does not state precisely
+the intervals at which the three birds were sent forth, we are justified
+in applying here the figures used by the Jehovist in Genesis, and
+counting seven days between the first and second sending forth, seven
+between the second and third, and seven, lastly, between the departure
+of the bird which does not return, and the leaving the vessel. The whole
+interval, then, between the warning of Ea and the sacrifice of
+Khasisatra, amounts to seven hebdomades--plainly a number intentionally
+assigned. And the whole duration of the Deluge is doubled by the sacred
+writer, who was the author of the Jehovist document, 7 � 2 � 7, instead
+of 7 � 7; that is, fourteen weeks with just three days over, owing to
+the writer having employed the round numbers 40 + 40 = 80 days, instead
+of the precise number seventy-seven days or eleven hebdomades (7 + 4 �
+7), to indicate the interval between the beginning of the diluvian rain
+and the sending forth of the first bird. And now, if we keep count of
+the time between the announcing of the cataclysm by Jahveh and its
+commencement, the figures of the Jehovist are in all 7 � 2 � 7 + 7 days,
+and those of the system of the Chaldean poem 7 � 7. But they are on both
+sides combinations of seven.
+
+Where the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative and that of the Bible absolutely
+diverge, is in their statement of what, after the Deluge, befell the
+righteous man saved from it. According to the figures of the Elohist,
+Noah lives on among his descendants for 350 years, and dies at the age
+of 950. Khasisatra receives the privilege of immortality; is carried
+away "to live like the gods," and transported into "a distant place,"
+where the hero of Uruk goes to visit him in order to learn the secrets
+of life and death. But in the Bible we have something of the same kind
+told us of Noah's great-grandfather Enoch, who "walked with God, and was
+not, because God took him." We see, then, that the Babylonian tradition
+united in the person of Khasisatra facts which the Bible distributes
+between Enoch and Noah, the two whom Holy Scripture equally
+characterizes as having "walked with God."
+
+The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess," erroneously
+attributed to Lucian, acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the
+Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in
+the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce.
+
+    "The generality of people, he says, tell us that the founder of the
+    temple was Deucalion Sisythes, that Deucalion in whose time the
+    great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by
+    the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus:--The actual
+    race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the
+    members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended
+    from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of time. As to the
+    former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride,
+    committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the
+    rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants, accordingly they
+    were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous
+    volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary
+    abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds, and the sea
+    overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water, and
+    all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety,
+    was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was
+    saved:--He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great
+    coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all
+    other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received
+    them all, and while they were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with
+    reciprocal amity which prevented their devouring one another. In
+    this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long
+    as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the
+    Greeks of Deucalion.
+
+    "But to this which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a
+    marvellous narrative:--That in their country a great chasm opened,
+    into which all the waters of the deluge poured. Then Deucalion
+    raised an altar and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to
+    this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated
+    under the temple. Whether it was once large and has now shrunk, I do
+    not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of
+    the event the following is the rite accomplished:--Twice a year sea
+    water is brought to the temple. This is not only done by the
+    priests, but numerous pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and
+    Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bringing water. It is
+    poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft which, narrow as it
+    is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to be in
+    virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the
+    memory of the catastrophe and of the benefits that he received from
+    the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."
+
+It appears to me difficult not to recognize an echo of fables popular
+in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it
+played in the Deluge,--in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran
+respecting the oven _tannur_ which began to bubble and disgorge water
+all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this _tannur_
+has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman
+commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mahomet
+made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that the waters
+of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.
+
+
+II.
+
+_Indian Traditions._--India, in its turn, affords us an account of the
+Deluge, which by its poverty strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible
+and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the
+_Catapatha Brahmana_ of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the
+first time by M. Max Muller.
+
+    "One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had
+    washed himself a fish remained in his hands. And it addressed these
+    words to him:--'Protect me and I will save thee.' 'From what wilt
+    thou save me?' 'A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from
+    that I will save thee.' 'How shall I protect thee?' The fish
+    replied: 'While we are small we run great dangers, for fish swallow
+    fish. Keep me at first in a vase; when I become too large for it dig
+    a basin to put me into. When I shall have grown still more, throw me
+    into the ocean; then I shall be preserved from destruction.' Soon it
+    grew a large fish. It said to Manu, 'The very year I shall have
+    reached my full growth the Deluge will happen. Then build a vessel
+    and worship me. When the waters rise, enter the vessel and I will
+    save thee.'
+
+    "After keeping him thus, Manu carried the fish to the sea. In the
+    year indicated Manu built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when
+    the Deluge came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming
+    up to him, and Manu fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of
+    the fish, by which means the latter made it pass over the mountain
+    of the North. The fish said, 'I have saved thee; fasten the vessel
+    to a tree that the water may not sweep it away while thou art on the
+    mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt
+    descend.' Manu descended with the waters, and this is what is called
+    the _descent of Manu_ on the mountain of the North. The deluge had
+    carried away all creatures, and Manu remained alone."
+
+Next in order of date and complication, which always goes on loading the
+narrative more and more with fantastic and parasitical details, comes
+the version in the enormous epic of _Mahabharata_. That of the poem
+called _Bhagavata-Purana_ is still more recent and fabulous. Finally,
+the same tradition forms the subject of an entire poem of very low date,
+the _Matsya-Purana_, of which an analysis has been given by the great
+Indian scholar, Wilson.
+
+In the preface to the third volume of his edition of _Bhagavata-Purana_,
+Eugene Burnouf has carefully compared the three narratives known at the
+time he wrote (that of the _Catapatha Brahmana_ has been since
+discovered), with a view to clearing up the origin of the Indian
+tradition of the Deluge. He points out in a discussion that deserves to
+remain a model of erudition and subtle criticism, that it is absolutely
+wanting in the Vedic hymns, where we only find distant allusions to it
+that seem to belong to a different kind of legend altogether, and also
+that this tradition was primitively foreign to the essentially Indian
+system of _Manvantaras_, or periodic destructions of the world. He
+thence concludes that it must have been imported into India subsequently
+to the adoption of this system, which is, however, very ancient, being
+common to Brahmanism and Buddhism, and therefore inclines to look upon
+it as a Semitic importation that took place in historic times, not,
+indeed, of Genesis, but more probably of the Babylonian tradition.
+
+The discovery of an original edition of the latter confirms the theory
+of the French savant. The leading feature which distinguishes the Indian
+narrative is the part assigned to a god who puts on the form of a fish,
+in order to warn Manu, to guide his vessel and save him from the flood.
+The nature of the metamorphosis is the only fundamental and primitive
+point, for different versions vary as to the personality of the god who
+assumes this form--the _Brahmana_ leaves it uncertain, the _Mahabharata_
+fixes on Brahma, and the compilers of the _Puranas_ on Vishnu. This is
+the more remarkable that this metamorphosis into a fish _Matsyavatara_
+remains isolated in Indian mythology, is foreign to its habitual
+symbolism, and gives rise to no ulterior developments: no trace being
+found in India of that fish-worship which was so important and
+widespread among other ancient people. Burnouf rightly saw in this a
+sign of importation from without, and especially of its Babylonian
+origin, for classic testimony, recently confirmed by native monuments,
+shows us that in the religion of Babylon the conception of
+ichthyomorphic gods held a more prominent place than elsewhere. The part
+played by the divine fish with regard to Manu in the Indian legend, is
+attributed both by the Epic of Uruk and by Berosus to the god Ea, who is
+also designated Schalman, "the Saviour." Now this god, whose type of
+representation we now know certainly from Assyrian and Babylonian
+monuments, is essentially the ichthyomorphic god, and his image almost
+invariably combines the forms of fish and man. In astronomical tables
+frequent mention is made of the catasterism of the "fish of Ea," which
+is indubitably our sign Pisces, since it presides over the month Adar.
+It is to a connection of ideas based on the diluvian record, that we
+must attribute the placing of Pisces--primarily of the "fish of
+Ea"--next to Aquarius, whose relation to the history of the Deluge we
+have already pointed out. Here we have an evident allusion to the part
+of Saviour attributed by the people who invented the Zodiac, to the god
+Ea in the flood, and to the idea of an ichthyomorphic nature especially
+belonging to this aspect of his personality. Ea is, moreover, the
+Oannes, lawgiver of the fragments of Berosus, half-man, half-fish, whose
+form, answering to the description given by the Chaldean history, has
+been discovered in the sculptures of Assyrian palaces and on cylinders,
+the Euahanes of Hygin, and the Oes of Helladios.[46]
+
+Whenever we find among two different peoples one same legend, with as
+_special_ a circumstance which does not spring _naturally_ and
+_necessarily_ from the fundamental facts of the narrative, and when,
+moreover, this circumstance is closely connected with the whole
+religious conceptions of one of these peoples, and remains isolated and
+alien from the customary symbolism of the other, criticism lays it down
+as an absolute rule that we must conclude the legend to have been
+transmitted from the one to the other in an already fixed form, to be a
+foreign importation, superimposed, not fused with the national, and as
+it were genial, traditions of the people, who have received, without
+having created it.
+
+We must also remark that in the _Puranas_ it is no longer Manu Vaivasata
+that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different personage,
+the King of the Dasas--_i.e._, fishers, Satyravata, "the man who loves
+justice and truth," strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean Khasisatra.
+Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised,
+though it be of recent date and full of fantastic and often puerile
+details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of _Brahmana_
+or than the _Mahabharata_, and above all it gives some circumstances
+omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the
+original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a
+circumstance preserved no doubt by the oral tradition--popular and not
+Brahmanic--with which the _Puranas_ are so deeply imbued. This has been
+already observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following passage
+of the _Bhagavata-Purana_: "In _seven days_," said Vishnu to Satyravata,
+"the three worlds shall be submerged." There is nothing like this in the
+_Brahmana_ nor the _Mahabharata_, but in Genesis the Lord says to Noah,
+"_Yet seven days_ and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;" and a
+little further we read, "_After seven days_ the waters of the flood were
+upon the earth." And we have just pointed out the parts played by
+hebdomades as successive periods in that system of the duration of the
+flood, adopted by the author of the Jehovist documents inserted in
+Genesis, as well as by the compiler of the Chaldean Epic of Uruk. Nor
+must we pay less attention to what the _Bhagavata-Purana_ says of the
+directions given by the fish-god to Satyravata for the placing of the
+sacred Scriptures in a safe place in order to preserve them from
+Hayagriva, a marine horse dwelling in the abyss, and of the conflict of
+the god with this Hayagriva, who had stolen the Vedas and thus produced
+the cataclysm by disturbing the order of the world. This circumstance
+too is wanting in the more ancient compositions, even in the
+_Mahabharata_, but it is a most important one, and cannot be looked on
+as a spontaneous product of Indian soil, for we recognize in it under
+an Indian garb the very tradition of the interment of the sacred
+writings at Sippara by Khasisatra, such as we have it in the fragments
+of Berosus.
+
+It is the Chaldean form, then, of the tradition that the Indians have
+adopted owing to communications which the commercial relations between
+the countries render historically natural, and they afterwards amplified
+it with the exuberance peculiar to their imagination. But they must have
+adopted it all the more readily because it agreed with a tradition,
+which under a somewhat different form had been brought by their
+ancestors from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race. That the
+recollection of the flood did indeed form part of the original
+groundwork of the legends as to the origin of the world held by this
+great race, is beyond all doubt. For if Indians have accepted the
+Chaldean form of the story, so nearly allied to that of Genesis, all
+other nations of Aryan descent show themselves possessed of entirely
+original versions of the cataclysm which cannot be held to have been
+borrowed either from Babylonian or Hebrew sources.
+
+
+III.
+
+_Traditions of other Aryan Peoples._--Among the Iranians, in the sacred
+books containing the fundamental Zoroastrian doctrines, and dating very
+far back, we meet with a tradition which must assuredly be looked upon
+as a variety of that of the Deluge, though possessing a special
+character, and diverging in some essential particulars from those we
+have been examining. It relates how Yima, who in the original and
+primitive conception was the father of the human race, was warned by
+Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth being about to be devastated by
+a flood. The god ordered Yima to construct a refuge, a square garden,
+_vara_, protected by an enclosure, and to cause the germs of men,
+beasts, and plants to enter it, in order to escape annihilation.
+Accordingly, when the inundation occurred, the garden of Yima with all
+that it contained was alone spared, and the message of safety was
+brought thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy of Ahuramazda.[47]
+
+A comparison has also been made, but erroneously as I think, between the
+Biblical and Chaldean Deluge and a story only found complete in the
+_Bundahesh-pahlavi_;[48] though, as a few of the older books contain
+allusions to some of its circumstances;[49] it must date further back
+than this edition of it, which is recent. Ahuramazda determines to
+destroy the Khafctras--_i.e._, the maleficent spirits created by
+Angromainyus, the spirit of evil: Tistrya, the genius of the star
+Sirius, descends at his command to earth, and, assuming the form of a
+man, causes it to rain for ten days. The waters cover the earth, and all
+maleficent beings are drowned. A violent wind dries the earth, but some
+germs of the evil spirit's creation remain, and may reappear, therefore
+Tistrya descends again under the form of a white horse, and produces a
+second Deluge by another rainfall of ten days. To prevent him
+accomplishing his task, the demon Apusha assumes the appearance of a
+black horse, and engages in combat; but he is struck with lightning by
+Ahuramazda, as well as the demon Cpendjaghra, who had come to his aid.
+Finally, to bring about the complete destruction of evil, Tistrya
+descends the third time under the form of a bull, and produces a third
+Deluge by a third rainfall of ten days, after which the waters divide to
+form the four great and the twenty-four small seas. Now all this relates
+to a cosmogonic fact, anterior to the creation of man. The Khafctras,
+from which Tistrya undertakes to purge the earth, are the hurtful and
+venomous beasts created by Angromainyus which fervent Mazedans make it a
+duty to destroy in our actual world--such as scorpions, lizards, toads,
+serpents, rats, &c. There is no allusion here to humanity, or the
+punishment of its sins. If we were bent on finding in our Bible any
+parallel to this first rain falling on the surface of the earth--which
+both destroys the hurtful creatures by which it was infested and renders
+it productive of a fertile vegetation--we should turn, not to the
+account of the Deluge, but to what is said in Gen. ii. 5, 6.
+
+The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which
+primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the name
+of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of Boeotia or Attica; a quite
+mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name seemingly
+derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in Sanscrit _Angha_.
+It is said that in his time the whole land was covered by a flood, whose
+waters reached the sky, and from which he, together with some
+companions, escaped in a vessel.
+
+The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus having
+worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose crimes he was
+wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his father, constructed a
+coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The Deluge came,
+the chest or coffer floated at the mercy of the waves for nine days and
+nine nights, and was finally stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and
+Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and according to the command of Zeus
+re-people the world by throwing behind them "the bones of the
+earth"--namely, stones, which change into men. This Deluge of Deucalion
+is in Grecian tradition what most resembles a universal Deluge. Many
+authors affirm that it extended to the whole earth, and that the whole
+human race perished. At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease
+the manes of its victims, a ceremony called _Hydrophoria_ was observed,
+having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis in Syria,
+that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Phoenician
+importation, and the result of an assimilation established in remote
+antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as
+described by the author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess."[50]
+Close to the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the soil was
+shown, in length but one cubit, through which it was said the waters of
+the Deluge had been swallowed up. Thus, every year, on the third day of
+the festival of the Anthesteria, a day of mourning consecrated to the
+dead,--that is, on the thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion, towards
+the beginning of March--it was customary, as at Bambyce, to pour water
+into the fissure, together with flour mixed with honey, poured also into
+the trench dug to the west of the tomb, in the funereal sacrifices of
+the Athenians.
+
+Others, on the contrary, limit Deucalion's flood to Greece, even declare
+that it only destroyed the larger portion of the community, a great many
+men saving themselves on the highest mountains. Thus the Delphian legend
+told how the inhabitants of that town, following the wolves in their
+flight, had taken refuge in a cave on the summit of Parnassus, where
+they built the town of Lycorea, whose foundation is, on the other hand,
+attributed by the Chronicle of Paros to Deucalion, after the
+reproduction by him of a new human race. Later mythographers necessarily
+adopted this idea of several points of simultaneous escape from a desire
+to reconcile the local legends of several places in Greece, which named
+some other than Deucalion as the hero saved from the flood. For
+instance, at Megara it was the eponym of the city Megaros, son of Zeus
+and of one of the nymphs Sithnides, who, warned by the cry of cranes of
+the imminence of the danger, took refuge on Mount Geranien. Again, there
+was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to have escaped the flood by
+rising into the air on wings given him by the nymphs, and it was
+Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had preserved at Dodona. For
+the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero of the Deluge was Merops,
+son of Hyas, who there assembled under his rule the remnant of humanity
+preserved with him. The traditions of Rhodes only supposed the
+Telchines, those of Crete Jasion, to have escaped the cataclysm. In
+Samothracia the same character was attributed to Saon, said to be the
+son of Zeus or of Hermes; he seems only to have been a heroic form of
+the Hermes Saos or Socos, the object of special worship in the island, a
+divinity in whom M. Philippe Berges recognizes with good reason a
+Phoenician importation, the Sakan of Canaan identified elsewhere with
+Hermes Dardanos, supposed to have arrived in Samothracia immediately
+after these events, being driven by the Deluge from Arcadia.
+
+In all these flood stories of Greece we cannot doubt that the tradition
+of a cataclysm fatal to the whole of humanity--a tradition common to all
+Aryan peoples--was mixed up, as Knobel rightly observes, more or less
+precisely with local catastrophes produced by extraordinary overflows of
+lakes or rivers, or the rupture of their natural embankments, the
+sinking of some portions of the sea-coast, or tidal waves consequent
+upon earthquakes or sudden upheavals of the ocean bed. Such events were
+frequent in Greece, in the district between Egypt and Palestine, near
+Pelusium and Mount Casius, as well as in the Cimbric Chersonese. The
+Greeks used to relate how often their country had in primitive ages been
+the theatre of such catastrophes. Istros numbered four of these, one of
+which had opened the Straits of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, when the
+waters of the Euxine, rushing into the Aegean, submerged the islands and
+neighbouring coasts. This is evidently the Deluge of Samothracia; where
+the inhabitants who succeeded in saving themselves did so only by
+gaining the highest peak of the mountain that rises there; then, in
+gratitude for their preservation, consecrated the whole island by
+surrounding its shores with a belt of altars dedicated to the gods. In
+like manner the tradition of the Deluge of Ogyges seems connected with
+the recollection of an extraordinary rise of the Lake Capais, inundating
+the whole of the great Boeotian Valley, a recollection amplified
+later--as is ever the case with legends--by applying to the local
+disaster all the details popularly told of the primitive Deluge which
+had taken place before the separation of the ancestors of the two races,
+Semitic and Aryan. It is also probable that some event that had occurred
+in Thessaly, or rather in the region of Parnassus, determined the
+localization of the legend of Deucalion. Nevertheless, it always
+retained, as we have seen, a more general character than the others,
+whether the Deluge be extended to the whole earth or limited to the
+whole of Greece.
+
+Be that as it may, the different narratives were reconciled by admitting
+three successive Deluges, those of Ogyges, Deucalion, and Dardanos. The
+general opinion pronounced the former the most ancient, placing it 600
+or 250 years before that of Deucalion. But this chronology is far from
+being universally accepted; and the inhabitants of Samothracia maintain
+their Deluge to have been the earliest. Christian chronographers of the
+third and fourth century, as, for instance, Julius Africanus and
+Eusebius, adopted the Hellenic dates of the Deluges of Ogyges and
+Deucalion, and inscribed them in their records as different events from
+the Mosaic Deluge, which, for their part, they fixed at 1000 years
+before that of Ogyges.
+
+In Phrygia the diluvian tradition was as natural as in Greece. The town
+of Apamea derived thence its surname _Kibotos_, or ark, and claimed to
+be the place where the Ark had stopped. Iconium had the like
+pretensions. In the same way the people of Milyas, in Armenia, showed
+the fragments of the Ark on the top of the mountain called Baris; and
+these were also exhibited in early Christian times to pilgrims on
+Ararat, as Berosus tells us that in his day the remnants of the vessel
+of Khasisatra were visited on the Gordyan range.
+
+In the second and third centuries of our era, by means of the syncretic
+infiltration of Jewish and Christian traditions even into minds still
+attached to Paganism, the sacerdotal authorities of Apamea and Phrygia
+had coins struck bearing an open ark, in which the patriarch and his
+wife were seen receiving back the dove with the olive branch, and side
+by side were the two same personages, having left the Ark to retake
+possession of the earth. On the Ark is inscribed the name =NOE=, the
+very form the name assumes in the Septuagint. Thus, at this time the
+Pagan priesthood of the Phrygian city had, we see, adopted the Biblical
+narrative, even down to its names, and had grafted it on the old native
+tradition. They related that a short while before the Deluge there
+reigned a holy man called Annacos, who had predicted it, and occupied
+the throne more than 300 years, an evident reproduction of the Enoch of
+the Bible, who walked with God for 365 years.
+
+As to the branch of the Celts--in the bardic poems of Wales, we have a
+tradition of the Deluge, which, although recent under the concise form
+of the Triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is
+localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible
+catastrophes of the island of Prydain, or Britain, the other two
+consisting of devastation by fire and by drought.
+
+    "The first of these events," it is said, "was the irruption of
+    Llyn-llion, or 'the lake of waves,' and the inundation (_bawdd_) of
+    the whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the
+    exception of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel
+    without rigging, and it was by them that the island of Prydain was
+    re-peopled."[51]
+
+Pictet here observes--
+
+    "Although the triads in their actual form hardly date further than
+    the thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly
+    connected with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a
+    borrowing from Genesis.
+
+    "But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad[52] speaking of the
+    vessel Nefydd-naf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of
+    Llyn-llion, bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much
+    resembles the ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have
+    suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but
+    evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the
+    same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (_ychain
+    bannog_) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyn-llion the _avanc_
+    (beaver or crocodile?) in order that the lake should not overflow.
+    The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering
+    the chaos of bardic monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile
+    we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an indigenous tradition of
+    the Deluge."
+
+We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian
+Ealda.[53] But here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The
+three sons of Borr, Othin, Wili, and We, grandsons of Buri, the first
+man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar or Ice giants, and his
+body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his
+wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it,
+except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and
+reproduces the race. "Thus," Pictet again observes, "the myth only
+belongs to the general tradition through these last features, by which,
+however, we trace it up to a common source."
+
+Of all European peoples the Lithuanians were the last to embrace
+Christianity, and their language remains nearest to the original Aryan.
+They have a legend of the Deluge, the groundwork of which appears very
+ancient, although it has assumed the simple character of a popular tale,
+and some of its details may have been borrowed from Genesis at the time
+of the first Christian missions. According to it[54] the god Pramzimras,
+seeing the whole earth to be full of iniquity, sends two giants, Wandu
+and Wejas (fire and wind), to lay it waste. These overthrew everything
+in their fury, and only a few men saved themselves on a mountain.
+Pramzimras, who was engaged in eating celestial walnuts, dropped a shell
+near the mountain, and in it the men took refuge, the giants respecting
+it. Having escaped from the calamity, they afterwards disperse, and only
+one very aged couple remain in the country, greatly bewailing their
+childless condition. Pramzimras, to console them, sends his rainbow and
+bids them jump "on the bones of the earth," which curiously recalls the
+oracle to Deucalion. The two old people jump nine times, and nine pairs
+are the result, who became the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes.
+
+
+IV.
+
+_Egyptian Traditions._--While the tradition of the Deluge holds so
+considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the
+Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many
+cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion
+to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the
+Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from
+it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaeton; they even
+added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to
+that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes
+resembling it. According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected,
+however, of being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had
+himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelae in hieroglyphical and
+sacred language the principles of all knowledge. After it the second
+Thoth translated into the vulgar tongue the contents of these stelae.
+This would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho
+not speaking of it in what remains to us of his "Dynasties," his only
+complete authentic work. The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic
+religion on this head render it very likely that the above is merely a
+foreign tradition, recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and
+Chaldean origin. "Thus," says M. Maury, "the Seriadic land, where the
+passage in question places these hieroglyphic columns, might very well
+be no other than Chaldea. This tradition, though not in the Bible,
+existed as a popular legend among the Jews at the beginning of our era,
+which confirms our supposition; as the Hebrews might have learnt it
+during the Babylonian captivity. Josephus tells us that the patriarch
+Seth, in order that wisdom and astronomical knowledge should not perish,
+erected, in prevision of the double destruction by fire and water
+predicted by Adam, two columns, the one in brick, the other in stone, on
+which this knowledge was engraved, and which subsisted in the Seriadic
+country." This history is evidently only a variety of the Chaldean
+legend of the terra-cotta tables bearing the divine revelations, and the
+principles of all sciences which Ea ordered Khasisatra to bury before
+the Deluge, "in the city of the Sun at Sippara," as we have had it above
+in the extracts from Berosus.
+
+Nevertheless, the Egyptians did admit a destruction by the gods of
+primal men on account of their rebellion and their sins. This event was
+related in a chapter of the sacred books of Thoth, those famous Hermetic
+books of the Egyptian priesthood which are graven on the sides of one of
+the inmost chambers of the funereal hypogeum of Seti the First at
+Thebes. The text has been published and translated by M. Edouard
+Naville.[55]
+
+The scene is laid at the close of the reign of the god Ra, the earliest
+terrestrial reign, according to the system of the priests of Thebes, the
+second, according to that of the priests of Memphis, which is the one
+followed by Manetho, who placed at the very origin of things the reign
+of Phtah, previous to that of Ra. Irritated by the impiety and crimes of
+the men he has made, the god assembles the other gods to hold counsel
+with them in profound secrecy, "so that men should not see it, nor their
+heart be afraid."
+
+    "Said by Ra to Nun:[56] 'Thou, the eldest of the gods, of whom I am
+    born, and ye ancient gods, here are the men who are born from
+    myself; they speak words against me, tell me what you would do in
+    the matter; lo, I have waited, and have not slain them before
+    hearing your words.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Nun: 'My son Ra, a greater god than he who
+    has made him and created him, I stand in great fear of thee; do thou
+    deliberate alone.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'Lo, they take to flight through the
+    country, and their hearts are afraid....'
+
+    "Said by the Gods: 'Let thy face permit, and let those men be
+    smitten who plot evil things, thine enemies, and let none [of them
+    remain.]'"
+
+A goddess, whose name has unfortunately disappeared, but who seems to
+have been Tefnut, identified with Hathor and Sekhet, is then sent to
+accomplish the sentence of destruction.
+
+    "This goddess left, and slew the men upon the earth.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of this God: 'Come in peace, Hathor; thou hast
+    done [what was ordained thee.]'
+
+    "Said by this Goddess: 'Thou art living; for I have been stronger
+    than men, and my heart is satisfied.'
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'I am living, for I will rule over them
+    [and I will complete] their ruin.'
+
+    "And lo, Sekhet, during several nights, trod their blood under-foot
+    as far as the town of Ha-klinen-su (Heracleopolis.)"
+
+But the massacre ended, the anger of Ra was appeased; he began to repent
+of what he had done. A great expiatory sacrifice succeeded in finally
+calming him. Fruits were gathered throughout Egypt, bruised, and their
+juice mingled with human blood, 7000 pitchers being filled with it and
+presented to the god.
+
+    "And lo, the Majesty of Ra, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, comes
+    with the gods in three days of sailing to see these vases of drink,
+    after he had ordered the goddess to slay men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'This is well; I will protect men
+    because of it.' Said by Ra: 'I raise my hand concerning this, to say
+    that I will no more destroy men.'
+
+    "The Majesty of Ra, the god of Upper and Lower Egypt, commanded in
+    the middle of the night to overthrow the liquid in the vases, and
+    the fields were completely filled with water by the will of this
+    god. The goddess arrived in the morning, and found the fields full
+    of water. Her face grew joyous, and she drank abundantly and went
+    away satisfied. She no more perceived any men.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra to the goddess: 'Come in peace, gracious
+    goddess.'
+
+    "And he caused the young priestesses of Amu to be born.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra to this goddess: 'Libations shall be made
+    to her at each of the festivals of the new year, under the
+    superintendence of my priestesses.'
+
+    "Hence it comes that libations are made under the superintendence of
+    the priestesses of Hathor by all men since the ancient days."
+
+Nevertheless, some men have escaped the destruction commanded by Ra, and
+renewed the population of the earth. As for the solar god who reigns
+over the world, he feels himself old, sick and weary; he has had enough
+of living among men, whom he regrets not to have completely annihilated,
+but has sworn henceforth to spare.
+
+    "Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'There is a smarting pain that torments
+    me; what is it then that hurts me?' Said by the Majesty of Ra: 'I am
+    living, but my heart is weary of being with them [men], and I have
+    in no way destroyed them. That destruction is not one that I have
+    made myself.'
+
+    "Said by the gods who accompany him: 'Away with lassitude, thou hast
+    obtained all thou didst desire.'"
+
+The god Ra decides, however, to accept the help of the men of the new
+human race who offer themselves to him to combat his enemies, and a
+great battle takes place, out of which they come victorious. But in
+spite of this success the god, disgusted with earthly life, resolves to
+quit it for ever, and has himself carried into heaven by the goddess
+Nut, who takes the form of a cow. Then he creates a region of delight,
+the fields of Aalu, the Elysium of Egyptian mythology, which he peoples
+with stars. Entering into rest, he assigns to different gods the
+government of different parts of the world. Shu, who is to succeed him
+as king, is to administer celestial matters with Nut; Seb and Nun
+receive the charge of the things of earth and water. Finally, Ra, a
+sovereign who has voluntarily abdicated, goes to dwell with Thoth, his
+favourite son, on whom he has bestowed the superintendence of the
+under-world.
+
+Such is this strange narrative, "in which," as M. Naville has well said,
+"in the midst of fantastic and often puerile inventions, we do
+nevertheless find the two terms of existence as understood by the
+ancient Egyptians. Ra begins with earth, and passing through heaven
+stops in the region of profundity, Ament, in which he apparently wishes
+to sojourn. This then is a symbolic and religious representation of
+life, which for every Egyptian--and especially for a royal
+conqueror--had to begin and end like the sun. This explains the chapter
+being inscribed in a tomb."
+
+Hence it was the last portion of the narrative--which we can analyse but
+very briefly--the abdication of Ra and his retreat, first, in heaven,
+next in the Ament, a symbol of death which is to be followed by
+resurrection as the setting of the sun by its rising--it is this which
+constituted its interest in the conception of the doctrine of a future
+life, illustrated in the decoration of the interior of the tomb of Seti
+I. For our present purpose, on the contrary, it is the beginning of the
+story which constitutes its importance, it is that destruction of primal
+humanity by the gods of which no mention has been hitherto found
+elsewhere. Although the means of destruction employed by Ra are quite
+dissimilar, although he does not proceed by submersion but by a massacre
+in which the lion-headed goddess Tefnut or Sekhet, the dreadful form of
+Hathor, is the agent, the other sides of the story bear a sufficiently
+striking analogy to that of the Mosaic or Chaldean Deluge to show that
+it is the special and very individual form assumed in Egypt by that
+tradition. In both we have human corruption exciting divine wrath, and
+punished by a divinely ordained annihilation of the race, from which
+there escapes but a very small number destined to give birth to a new
+humanity. Finally, after the event an expiatory sacrifice appeases the
+celestial anger, and a solemn covenant is made between men and the
+deity, who swears never so to destroy them again. To me, the agreement
+of these principal features outweighs the divergence in detail. And we
+have also to observe how singularly akin is the part ascribed by the
+Egyptian priest to Ra with that assigned in the epic poem of Uruk to the
+god Bel, in the deluge of Khasisatra. The Egyptians believed, as did
+other nations, in the destruction of mankind; but as inundation meant
+for them prosperity and life, they changed the primitive tradition; the
+human race, instead of perishing by water, was otherwise exterminated;
+and the inundation--that crowning benefit to the valley of the
+Nile--became in their eyes the sign that the wrath of Ra was appeased.
+
+
+V.
+
+_American Stories of the Flood._
+
+    "It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find
+    in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that
+    of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the
+    Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that
+    certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and
+    Aleutian islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought
+    in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those
+    Mongol or Siberian populations,[57] which were fused with the
+    natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American nations, the
+    Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social condition
+    at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a
+    special character, and seems to have been developed on the soil
+    where it flourished. Many very simple inventions, such as the use of
+    weights, were unknown to these people, and this shows that their
+    knowledge was not derived from India or Japan. The attempts that
+    have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia
+    have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides,
+    had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could
+    not have introduced a myth not found in its own Scriptures.[58] The
+    cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the
+    nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore
+    unexplained."
+
+I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of immense
+erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers, and will not
+therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion. Others also, no
+less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness between
+American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible and the
+Chaldeans.
+
+The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they appear to
+have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before
+any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of
+the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli
+or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in
+a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft, made of cypress
+wood (_Cupressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox
+have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs,
+and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly
+in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in Chaldean
+sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife,
+his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was
+essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god
+Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture
+from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth
+was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the
+humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi,
+seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain
+of Colhuacan.
+
+The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as to
+the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus," from
+the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic
+pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual
+one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the
+conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los
+Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after the
+arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous
+traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.
+
+The first age is marked with the cipher 13�400+6, or 5206, which
+Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of the
+period, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement,
+from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution of the
+manuscript. This age is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Earth." It is that
+of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac, whose
+end was destruction by famine.
+
+The number of the second age is 12�400+4, or 4804, and it is called
+_Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on Earth of
+Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed into birds,
+and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one human pair
+find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.
+
+As to the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," its number is
+10�400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane raised
+by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men are
+metamorphosed into monkeys.
+
+Then comes the fourth age, _Atonatiuh_, "Sun of Water," whose number is
+10�400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge.
+All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his
+wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree.
+The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of
+Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards earth. Coxcox and
+Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a
+tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is
+represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.
+
+All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did not
+hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote quite
+recently:
+
+    "The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of
+    America, and Christian writers have not failed to see in it a
+    reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay, in connection with the
+    pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower of Babel. We
+    shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox,
+    among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of
+    flowers, Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of
+    Noah and his wife by joining on to them the story of the ark and the
+    dove. It is enough to observe that all these legends have only been
+    collected and published at a relatively recent period.[59] The first
+    chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity,
+    such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous
+    authors, such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec
+    Camargo, never breathe a word of stories they could not have failed
+    to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find
+    in Mr. Bancroft's[60] work a criticism of these legends, due to Don
+    Jose Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum, which proves
+    incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and
+    tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which
+    according to him only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs
+    around the central lakes of the plateau of Anahuac."
+
+I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who
+are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which,
+indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And
+this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as
+anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its
+defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or
+Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of
+vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicue or Mallalcueye, is a
+well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of
+Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a
+very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of
+unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves.
+There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two
+divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two
+survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the
+theory of Don Jose Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been
+interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious
+and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard
+de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only
+removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced
+by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for
+instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the
+existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken,
+for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a
+striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex
+Vaticanus."
+
+The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled
+by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex
+Chimalpopoca_ by Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and
+partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des
+Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history
+of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from
+the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the
+age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the
+age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by
+the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods,
+everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose
+sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual
+appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point
+to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close,
+mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape
+under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water,
+which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the
+Deluge.
+
+Here is the narrative according to Abbe Brasseur's version, held correct
+by Americanists:--
+
+    "This is the sun called _Nahui-atl_, '4 water.'[62] Now the water
+    was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the
+    third and fourth times. When the sun _Nahui-atl_ came there had
+    passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six
+    years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and found themselves
+    changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day
+    all was lost and the day _Nahui-xochitl_ '4 flower,' destroyed all
+    our flesh.
+
+    "And that year was that of _ce-calli_, '1 house,'[63] and the day
+    _Nahui-atl_ all was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water,
+    and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.
+
+    "Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and
+    his spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to
+    hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the
+    month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'
+
+    "Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said:
+    'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'
+
+    "But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water
+    remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they
+    began to see fish.
+
+    "Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they
+    roasted fish.
+
+    "The gods Citlallinicue and Citlalatonac instantly looking down
+    said: 'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do
+    they thus smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca
+    descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?'
+    And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and heads, and
+    they were transformed into dogs (_chichime_)."
+
+This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the
+North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly
+indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a
+Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.
+
+The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to the
+generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by
+extracts given from it by Abbe Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les
+Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though
+already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so
+strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here,
+too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the
+same order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then
+added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made
+himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants,
+who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl, the
+god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck
+Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself
+sun in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar,
+devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The
+statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca" as to
+the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled by
+this last narrative.
+
+Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are closed
+in the way we have seen.
+
+The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the patronage
+of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue. The Deluge terminates it, and after
+this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.
+
+We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando d'Alva
+Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose
+pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving
+the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first
+chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic
+ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four
+in all, including the actual period. The first is the _Atonatiuh_, or
+"Sun of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a
+universal deluge. Then comes the _Thlachitonatiuh_, or "Sun of Earth,"
+when the giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of
+the survivors of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing
+the mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth,
+closes this age. It is in the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind,"
+that Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of
+Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames, but
+ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious
+reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished by
+the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys.
+Then begins the present age, _Tlatonatiuh_, or "Sun of Fire," thus
+called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that
+Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and
+if he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place
+in his series of ages.
+
+Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be really
+indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries. We may doubt
+as to some particulars in some of the versions, though this arises
+chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much resemble the
+story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it is
+unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn from
+the Bible--and universally admitted to have existed--that, namely, of
+the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the
+four ages or Yugas of India, and of the _manvantaras_ where the
+destruction of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there
+is an analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch,
+and M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans
+devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from
+India. The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of
+the diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem--ever recurring
+with regard to American civilization--of how far these are spontaneous
+and how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In
+the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem
+negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive
+conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence
+American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were, nor
+attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we frame a
+real American archaeology on the same scientific basis and by the same
+methods as other archaeologies. And in this respect Messrs. T. G. Muller
+and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of their precursors
+in this field of inquiry.
+
+For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with Flood
+stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences. Hence
+I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The Flood
+stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to be one
+of the oldest held by humanity--a tradition so primitive as to be
+anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments
+of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America brought
+from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at the same
+time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively carried it
+into theirs."[64] The fact is that among American peoples this tradition
+may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not borrowed from
+the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot be equally
+confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign
+importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.
+
+Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the
+destruction of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in
+the curious book of _Popol-vuh_ that collection of the mythological
+traditions of Guatemala, written after the conquest in the native
+tongue, by a secret adept of the old religion; discovered, copied, and
+translated into Spanish in the beginning of the last century by the
+Dominican Francisco Ximenez, cure of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish
+version has been published by M. Schelzer, the original text with a
+French translation by Abbe Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing
+that animals were neither capable of speaking nor of adoring them,
+determined to make men in their own image. They fashioned them at first
+in clay. But those men had no consistency, could not turn their heads;
+spoke, indeed, but understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their
+imperfect work by a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they
+made a man of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far
+superior to the former; they moved and lived, but only like other
+animals; they spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the
+gods. Then Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a
+rain of burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful
+earthquake. All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished,
+with a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of
+white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men:
+Balam-Quitze, "the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the
+night;" Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar
+of the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and
+rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their
+final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a
+light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became
+like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for
+them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the
+Quiches were born--Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children.
+This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed from
+the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian
+missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as
+usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a
+great flood.
+
+We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias
+Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the
+Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those
+Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great
+numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The
+monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted
+several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years
+after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our
+subject:--
+
+    "_Question by Bobadilla._ Who has created heaven and earth, the
+    stars and moon, man and all else?
+
+    "_Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan)._ Tamagastad and Cippatoval,
+    the one is a man, the other a woman.
+
+    "_Q._ Who created that man and woman?
+
+    "_A._ No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.
+
+    "_Q._ Did they create Christians?
+
+    "_A._ I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and
+    Cippatoval.
+
+    "_Q._ Are there any gods greater than they?
+
+    "_A._ No; we believe them to be the greatest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "_Q._ Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?
+
+    "_A._ They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour
+    like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what
+    Indians eat.
+
+    "_Q._ Who gave them to eat?
+
+    "_A._ Everything belongs to them.
+
+    "_Q._ Where are they now?
+
+    "_A._ In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.
+
+    "_Q._ How did they ascend thither?
+
+    "_A._ I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were
+    born, for they have no father nor mother.
+
+    "_Q._ How do they live at present?
+
+    "_A._ They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds
+    from the place where dwell the _teotes_ (gods).
+
+    "_Q._ Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the
+    _teotes_ created the world it has been destroyed?
+
+    "_A._ Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by
+    water and all became sea.
+
+    "_Q._ How did that man and woman escape?
+
+    "_A._ They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and
+    afterwards they came down to earth and re-made all things as they
+    now are, and we are their issue.
+
+    "_Q._ You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some
+    individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?
+
+    "_A._ No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors
+    told me."
+
+The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue, is
+evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of fire, whose
+cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at Tunga and Sogamosa
+to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us back to the religious
+and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced civilization in the high
+table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to recognize in the
+Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so universally spread
+tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with the memory of a
+local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas had suffered at the
+time of their first settlement. Neither must we forget that Botchica and
+his wicked spouse, who brought about the inundation of Cundinamarca, are
+no other than personifications of the sun and moon, as were the pair
+Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru
+is gentle and beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps
+her brother and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of
+Cundinamarca, on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of
+night and of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."
+
+Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition
+among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it only
+arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha or
+Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of the
+element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no bones,
+and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and filling
+up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the Aymaras, who,
+according to them, had created the earth; and who, issuing from Lake
+Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled the earliest men
+at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the Incas led to his
+undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing his religious
+importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the Sun, come
+upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger brother of
+Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha that the Deluge
+is placed by the writers of very recent date, who mention this event, of
+which the native tradition was unknown to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,
+to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva, and, in short, to all
+authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters. MacCulloch does indeed
+quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors never speak of a Deluge
+involving all humanity; they only say that Viracocha gave laws to the
+earliest men at the close of a primordial period anterior to their
+creation, when the whole surface of the earth had been under water.
+
+Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have been
+found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very nature these
+leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to writing by the
+natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may, in perfectly good
+faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious desire to
+assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have been only
+collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long time in
+contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them more than
+one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements into their
+traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance to those we
+have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, previous to the
+arrival of the Spanish conquerors.
+
+The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea of
+European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a childish
+version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead of a fish
+who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the catastrophe;
+but this brings us back to a myth special to America--that of the
+transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the Flood-story of
+the "Codex Chimalpopoca."
+
+    "The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for
+    several days to run up and down the banks of the river, looking
+    fixedly at the water and howling as in distress. His master was
+    annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered him to go home, upon which
+    he began speaking and revealed the impending calamity, ending his
+    prediction by saying that the only way in which his master and his
+    family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for
+    he would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that
+    there was not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand
+    which would lead to a general inundation in which everything would
+    perish. The man obeyed his dog, was saved with his family, and they
+    repeopled the earth."
+
+It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the
+Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood by
+reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts
+behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women. If the
+report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a very
+singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the Greek
+story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
+
+Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in
+the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and
+North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America among
+the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition as
+current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:--
+
+    "In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the
+    rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming
+    upon the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself with his
+    family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The
+    animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured
+    against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with
+    all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a
+    punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."
+
+According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of
+the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was
+destroyed by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth,
+had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our
+acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways--full of grotesque and
+perplexing touches--in which the man saved from the deluge is called
+Menaboshu.[65] To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the
+diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and
+the founder of existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among
+the Mandans, of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters,
+and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men pierced
+the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned
+all men, with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and
+when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch
+of willow in its beak. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of
+Tezpi and Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the
+native originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition
+among the Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the
+physical peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the
+Missouri led Catlin to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white
+origin.
+
+In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made to a
+very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. The
+whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the
+supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken
+refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The
+Commissioners of the United States who explored New Mexico before its
+annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the
+different native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us
+kindred narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record.
+But for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely
+trusted.
+
+
+VI.
+
+_Polynesian Traditions._--In Oceania even, and not among the Pelagian
+negroes or Papoos,[66] but the Polynesian, racenatives of the
+archipelago of Australasia, the diluvian tradition has been traced,
+mingled with recollections of sudden rises of the sea, which are one of
+the most frequent scourges of those islands. The most noted is that of
+Tahiti, which has been specially referred to the primeval tradition.
+Here it is as given by M. Gaussin,[67] who has published a translation
+of it, as well as the Tahitian text, written by a native named Mare:--
+
+    "Two men had gone out to sea to fish with the line, Roo and Teahoroa
+    by name. They threw their hooks into the sea, which caught in the
+    hair of the god Ruahatu. They exclaimed, 'A fish!' They drew up the
+    line and saw that it was a man they had caught. At sight of the god
+    they bounded to the other end of their bark, and were half dead with
+    fear. Ruahatu asked them, 'What is this?' The two fishermen replied,
+    'We came to fish, and we did not know that our hooks would catch
+    thee.' The god then said, 'Unfasten my hair;' and they did so. Then
+    Ruahatu asked, 'What are your names?' They replied, 'Roo and
+    Teahoroa.' Ruahatu next said, 'Return to the shore, and tell men
+    that the earth will be covered with water, and all the world will
+    perish. To-morrow morning repair to the islet called Toa-marama; it
+    will be a place of safety for you and your children.'
+
+    "Ruahatu caused the sea to cover the lands. All were covered, and
+    all men perished except Roo, Teahoroa, and their families."
+
+This story, like all in this part of the world currently referred to the
+memory of the Deluge, has assumed the childish character peculiar to
+Polynesian legends, and moreover, as M. Maury justly observes, it may be
+naturally explained by the recollection of one of those tidal waves so
+common in Polynesia. The most essential feature of all traditions
+properly called diluvian is wanting here. The island, observes M. Maury,
+has no resemblance to the Ark.[68] It is true that one of the versions
+of the Tahitian legend states that the two fishermen repaired to
+Toa-marama, not only with their families, but with a pig, a dog, and a
+couple of fowls, which recalls the entry of the animals into the Ark. On
+the other hand, some details of a similar story among the Fijis,
+especially one in which, for many years after the event, canoes were
+kept ready in case of its repetition, far better fit a local phenomenon,
+a tidal wave, than a universal deluge.
+
+However, if all these legends were exclusively related to local
+catastrophes, it would be strange that they should appear and be almost
+similar in a certain number of localities at a great distance from each
+other, and only where the Polynesian race has taken root, or left
+indubitable traces of its passage;--this race, indigenous in the Malay
+Archipelago, not having migrated thence till about the fourth century of
+the Christian era--_i.e._, at a time when, in consequence of the
+communication between India and a portion of Malaysia,[69] the
+Flood-tradition under its Indian form might well have entered in.
+Without, therefore, deciding the question one way or other, we do not
+think that that opinion can absolutely be condemned which finds in these
+Polynesian legends an echo of the tradition of the Deluge, much
+weakened, much changed, and more inextricably confused than anywhere
+else with local disasters of recent date.
+
+The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story
+of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the
+human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now a
+recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily
+invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of
+universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible
+event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors
+of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This
+cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and
+before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races
+were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to
+admit that at as many different points of the globe as we should have to
+assume in order to explain the wide spread of these traditions--local
+phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having
+assumed an identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not
+necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.
+
+Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not
+primitive but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect
+of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
+is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of
+Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is
+undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but
+among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient
+times; and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the
+Bible speaks as being descended from Noah, those of which it gives the
+ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation,
+which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact
+value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the
+other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and
+ethnological significance. In another paper I propose to inquire
+whether, in the conception of the inspired writers, the Deluge really
+was universal, in the sense customarily supposed.
+
+But as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from
+being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having,
+to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
+races--Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or
+Kushite--that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the
+ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity--before the
+ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia
+they together inhabited.
+
+    FRANCOIS LENORMANT.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] The date of the termination of the works undertaken by Yu, in order
+to repair the damage done by this flood, lies between 2278 and 2062 B.C.
+according to the chronological system adopted.
+
+[32] This work of Berosus was already out of existence in the fourth
+century of our era, when Eusebius of Cesarea, to whom we owe such
+fragments as we possess, wrote. Only two abridgments remained, due to
+later polygraphers, Abydenus and Alexander Polybistor. Eusebius gives
+the version of each editor, the one I quote is that of Alexander.
+
+[33] Abydenus says, "all that composed the scriptures."
+
+[34] He is provisionally called Izdhubar or Ghirdhubar, transcribing for
+want of a more certain method, according to their phonetic value, the
+characters composing the ideographic spelling of his name.
+
+[35] The text is published in "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,"
+vol. iv. pp. 50 and 51. The two principal translations hitherto given
+are those of George Smith and M. Oppert. The one we now offer contains a
+large share of personal work. We avail ourselves of the labours of our
+illustrious precursors, but believe that we have also added some
+important steps towards a precise understanding of the text.
+
+[36] Here several verses are wanting.
+
+[37] "The water of the twilight at break of day," one of the
+personifications of rain.
+
+[38] The god of thunder.
+
+[39] The god of war and death.
+
+[40] The Chaldeo-Assyrian Hercules.
+
+[41] The superior heaven of the fixed stars.
+
+[42] Vases of the measure called in Hebrew _Seah_. This relates to a
+detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.
+
+[43] These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.
+
+[44] The god of epidemics.
+
+[45] _Studien zur Kritik und Erklarung der Biblischen Urgeschichte_, p.
+150.
+
+[46] Oannes and Euahanes belong to an Accadian form: Ea-Khan, "Ea the
+fish;" Oes to the simple Ea, as the Aos of Damascus.
+
+[47] _Vendidad_, ii. 46.
+
+[48] Chapter vii.
+
+[49] See especially _Yesht_ viii., 13 _Vendidad_, xix. 135.
+
+[50] It is in virtue of this assimilation that Plutarch (De Solert anim.
+13) speaks of the dove sent out by Deucalion to see if the Deluge had
+ceased, a circumstance mentioned by no other Greek mythographer.
+
+[51] "Myvyrian Archaeology of Wales," vol. ii. p. 50, triad 13.
+
+[52] _Ibid._ p. 71, triad 97.
+
+[53] Vafthrudnismal, st. 29.
+
+[54] Hanwsch, _Slawischer Mythus_, p. 234.
+
+[55] "Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology," vol. iv. pp.
+1-19.
+
+[56] Personification of the primordial abyss.
+
+[57] Nevertheless, the Deluge holds an important place among the
+cosmogonic traditions--decidedly original in character--which Reguly has
+found among the Voguls. We also hear of a diluvian story among the
+Eulets or Kalmuks, where it seems to have come in with Buddhism.
+
+[58] We must, however, observe that Buddhist missionaries appear to have
+introduced the diluvian tradition of Judea into China. Gutzlaff, "On
+Buddhism in China," in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1st
+series, vol. xii. p. 78), affirms that he saw its principal episode
+represented in a very fine painting of a temple to the goddess
+Kivan-yin.
+
+[59] Recently published, not recently collected. The date of Pedro de
+los Rios shows this.
+
+[60] "The Native Races of the Pacific States," vol. iii. p. 68.
+
+[61] By a singular alteration of the text it is said that the jaguars
+"were devoured," instead of "they devoured."
+
+[62] From the day of the year when the final cataclysm was supposed to
+have occurred.
+
+[63] This designation of the year accords with the system of Mexican
+cycles, containing four groups of years, each named after some object or
+animal.
+
+[64] "Essai de commentaire des fragments de Berose," p. 283.
+
+[65] This name looks like a corruption of that of the Indian Manu
+Vaivasvata.
+
+[66] Except in the Fiji Islands, where the Polynesians have been for
+some time settled among the Melanians, and have only been destroyed by
+these after having infused into the population an element sufficiently
+marked to render the Fijis a mixed rather than a purely black race.
+
+[67] Gaussin: "Du Dialecte de Tahiti et de la Langue polynesienne," p.
+235. See also Ellis's "Polynesian Researches."
+
+[68] We may, however, observe that in the Iranian myth of Yima, which we
+have reported above, a square enclosure (_vara_) miraculously preserved
+from the deluge, holds the place of the Biblical Ark and of the vessel
+of Chaldean tradition.
+
+[69] The date of the first establishment of Indian Brahmanists in Java
+remains uncertain, but from the end of the second century B.C. the Greek
+Iambulos (Diod. Sicul. ii. 57) very exactly described as the way of
+writing in this island the syllabic system Kavi, borrowed from India.
+
+
+
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
+
+
+Some time since an article appeared in the _Times_, quoted from the
+_Brisbane Courier_ (an Australian paper of good credit), stating that
+one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be congealed
+for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life, so that
+they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead meat, yet
+on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity. Many
+regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though a few
+days later an article appeared, the opening words of which implied that
+only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken the article _au
+grand serieux_. Of course it was a hoax; but it is worthy of notice that
+the editor of the _Brisbane Courier_ had really been misled, as he
+admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him credit.[70]
+
+This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as a
+joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown), did
+good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain
+statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which
+otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose here
+to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some
+of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth
+while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as
+some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative. I
+shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of
+resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in
+America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New York
+paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity some forty
+years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that the two
+stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to seems
+to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, _bien entendu_)
+which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly
+associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right,
+indeed, in saying, _Le style c'est de l'homme meme_, we can readily
+understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to
+themselves.
+
+It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of
+scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of the
+place where the experiments were made. The history of the wonderful
+Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:--"Many of the
+readers of the _Brisbane Courier_ who know Sydney Harbour will remember
+the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour, which, in a
+succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a chain of lakes
+for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made more than
+ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost sheer into
+the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by white
+beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick
+buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of
+publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now
+established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future
+prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was
+precisely in this tone that the author of the "Lunar Hoax"[71] opened
+his account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build
+an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon
+the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all
+future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks--though probably
+he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by whom this had
+been said,--"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man,
+as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he may now fold
+the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental
+supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the description
+which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's representation of
+the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled banner round
+him, and died like the son of a hoss").
+
+It next becomes necessary to describe the persons engaged in pursuing
+the experiments by which the art of freezing animals alive is to be
+attained. "The gentlemen engaged in this enterprise are Signor Rotura,
+whose researches into the botany and natural history of South America
+have rendered his name eminent; and Mr. James Grant, a pupil of the late
+Mr. Nicolle, so long associated with Mr. Thomas Mort in his freezing
+process. Next to the late Mr. Nicolle, Mr. James Grant can claim
+pre-eminence of knowledge in the science of generating cold, and his
+freezing chamber at Woolhara has long been known as the seat of valuable
+experiments originated in his, Mr. Nicolle's, lifetime." Is it merely an
+accident, by the way, or is it due to the circumstance that exceptional
+powers of invention in general matters are often found in company with
+singular poverty of invention as to details, that two of the names here
+mentioned closely resemble names connected with the Lunar Hoax? It was
+Nicollet who in reality devised the Lunar Hoax, though Richard Alton
+Locke, the reputed author, probably gave to the story its final form;
+and, again, the story purported to come from Dr. Grant, of Glasgow. In
+the earlier narrative, again, as in the later, due care was taken to
+impress readers with the belief that those who had made the discovery,
+or taken part in the work, were worthy of all confidence. Sir W.
+Herschel was the inventor of the optical device by which the inhabitants
+of the moon were to be rendered visible, a plan which "evinced the most
+profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity
+in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and
+cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood,
+determined upon testing it at whatever cost." Among his companions he
+had "Dr. Andrew Grant, Lieutenant Drummond of the Royal Engineers, and a
+large party of the best English mechanics."
+
+The accounts of preliminary researches, doubts, and difficulties are in
+both cases very similar in tone. "It appears that five months ago," says
+the narrator of the Australian hoax, "Signor Rotura called upon Mr.
+Grant to invoke his assistance in a scheme for the transmission of live
+stock to Europe. Signor Rotura averred that he had discovered a South
+American vegetable poison, allied to the well-known _woolara_ (_sic_)
+that had the power of perfectly suspending animation, and that the
+trance thus produced continued until the application of another
+vegetable essence caused the blood to resume its circulation and the
+heart its functions. So perfect, moreover, was this suspension of life
+that Signor Rotura had found in a warm climate decomposition set in at
+the extremities after a week of this living death, and he imagined that
+if the body in this inert state were reduced to a temperature
+sufficiently low to arrest decomposition, the trance might be kept up
+for months, possibly for years. He frankly owned that he had never tried
+this preserving of the tissues by cold, and could not confidently speak
+as to its effect upon the after-restoration of the animal operated on.
+Before he left Mr. Grant he had turned that gentleman's doubts into
+wondering curiosity by experimenting on his dog." The account of this
+experiment I defer for a moment till I have shown how closely in several
+respects this portion of the Australian hoax resembles the corresponding
+part of the American story. It will be observed that the great discovery
+is presented as simply a very surprising development of a process which
+is strictly within the limits, not only of what is possible, but of what
+is known. So also in the case of the Lunar Hoax, the amazing magnifying
+power by which living creatures in the moon were said to have been
+rendered visible, was presented as simply a very remarkable development
+of the familiar properties of the telescope. In both cases, the
+circumstances which in reality limit the possible extension of the
+properties in question were kept conveniently concealed from view. In
+both cases, doubts and difficulties were urged with an apparent
+frankness intended to disarm suspicion. In both cases, also, the
+inventor of the new method by which difficulties were to be overcome is
+represented as in conference with a man of nearly equal skill, who urges
+the doubts naturally suggested by the wonderful nature of the promised
+achievements. In the Lunar Hoax, Sir John Herschel and Sir David
+Brewster are thus represented in conference. Herschel asks whether the
+difficulty arising from deficient illumination may not be overcome by
+effecting a transfusion of artificial light through the focal image.
+Brewster, startled at the novel thought, as he well might be,
+hesitatingly refers "to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of
+incidence," which is effective though glorious in its absurdity. (Yet it
+has been gravely asserted that this nonsense deceived Arago.) "Sir John,
+grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in
+which the refrangibility was arrested by the second speculum and the
+angle of incidence restored by the third" (a bewilderingly ridiculous
+statement). "'And,' continued he, 'why cannot the illuminated
+microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct, and if
+necessary even to magnify, the focal object?' Sir David sprang from his
+chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and leaping half-way to the ceiling"
+(from which we may infer that he was somewhat more than _tete montee_),
+"exclaimed, 'Thou art the man!'"
+
+The method devised in each case being once accepted as sound, the rest
+of course readily follows. In the case of the Lunar Hoax a number of
+discoveries are made which need not here be described[72] (though I
+shall take occasion presently to quote some passages relating to them
+which closely resemble in style certain passages in the Australian
+narrative). In the later hoax, the illustrative experiments are
+forthwith introduced. Signor Rotura, having so far persuaded Mr. Grant
+of the validity of the plan as to induce him to allow a favourite dog to
+be experimented upon, "injected two drops of his liquid, mixed with a
+little glycerine, into a small puncture made in the dog's ear. In three
+or four minutes the animal was perfectly rigid, the four legs stretched
+backward, eyes wide open, pupils very much dilated, and exhibiting
+symptoms very similar to those caused by strychnine, except that there
+had been no previous struggle or pain. Begging his owner to have no
+apprehension for the life of his favourite animal, Signor Rotura lifted
+the dog carefully and placed him on a shelf in a cupboard, where he
+begged he might be left till the following day, when he promised to call
+at ten o'clock and revive the apparently dead brute. Mr. Grant
+continually during that day and night visited the cupboard, and so
+perfectly was life suspended in his favourite--no motion of the pulse or
+heart giving any indication of the possibility of revival--that he
+confesses he felt all the sharpest reproaches of remorse at having
+sacrificed a faithful friend to a doubtful and dangerous experiment. The
+temperature of the body, too, in the first four hours gradually lowered
+to 25 degrees Fahrenheit below ordinary blood temperature, which
+increased his fears as to the result; and by morning the body was as
+cold as in natural death. At ten o'clock next morning, according to
+promise, Signor Rotura presented himself, and laughing at Mr. Grant's
+fears, requested a tub of warm water to be brought. He tested this with
+the thermometer at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" (which, being the temperature
+of freezing water, can hardly be called warm), "and in this laid the
+dog, head under." In reply to Mr. Grant's objections Signor Rotura
+assured him that, as animation must remain entirely suspended until the
+administration of the antidote, no water could be drawn into the lungs,
+and that the immersion of the body was simply to bring it again to a
+blood-heat. After about ten minutes of this bath the body was taken out,
+and another liquid injected in a puncture made in the neck. "Mr. Grant
+tells me," proceeds the veracious narrator, "that the revival of Turk
+was the most startling thing he ever witnessed; and having since seen
+the experiment made upon a sheep, I can fully confirm his statement. The
+dog first showed the return of life in the eye" (winking, doubtless, at
+the joke), "and after five and a half minutes he drew a long breath, and
+the rigidity left his limbs. In a few minutes more he commenced gently
+wagging his tail, and then slowly got up, stretched himself, and trotted
+off as though nothing had happened." From this moment Mr. Grant had full
+faith in Signor Rotura's discovery, and promised him all the assistance
+in his power. They next determined to try freezing the body. But the
+first two experiments were not encouraging. Mr. Grant fortunately did
+not allow his favourite dog to be experimented upon further, so a
+strange dog was put into the freezing room at Mr. Grant's works for four
+days, after having in the first place had his animation suspended by
+Signor Rotura. Although this animal survived so far as to draw a long
+breath, the vital energies appeared too exhausted for a complete rally,
+and the animal died. So also did the next two animals experimented on,
+a cat and a dog. "In the meantime, however, Dr. Barker had been taken
+into their counsels, and at his suggestion respiration was encouraged,
+as in the case of persons drowned, by artificial compression and
+expansion of the lungs. Dr. Barker was of opinion that, as the heart in
+every case began to beat, it was a want of vital force to set the lungs
+in proper motion that caused death. The result showed his surmises to be
+entirely correct. A number of animals whose lives had been sealed up in
+this artificial death have been kept in the freezing chamber from one to
+five weeks, and it is found that though the shock to the system from
+this freezing is very great, it is not increased by duration of time."
+
+I need not follow the hoaxer's account of the buildings erected for the
+further prosecution of these researches. One point, however, may be
+mentioned illustrating the resemblance to which I have already referred
+as existing between this Australian narrative and the Lunar Hoax. In
+describing the works erected at Middle Harbour, the Australian account
+carefully notes that the necessary funds were provided by Mr.
+Christopher Newton, of Pitt Street. In like manner, in the Lunar Hoax we
+are told that the plate-glass required for the optical arrangement
+devised by Sir J. Herschel was "obtained, by consent be it observed,
+from the shop-window of M. Desanges, the jeweller to his ex-majesty
+Charles X., in High Street."
+
+Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which are the
+more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly stated by
+Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in this narrative,
+apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded as beyond the
+range of scientific possibilities:--"Arrived at the works in Middle
+Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr. Grant's
+apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the freezing
+chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here were fourteen
+sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides in a heap,
+_alive_, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present position for
+nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three months.
+Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his shoulder, and
+carried it outside into the other building, where a number of shallow
+cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water taps to each
+tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of these tanks was
+quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor, I meantime
+examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the nineteen-days-dead
+lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come back to us, and many
+of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to me less improbable
+than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the lamb, to all
+appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only difference
+perceptible to me between his condition and actual death being the
+absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained its
+brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is
+heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends
+a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped
+into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three
+minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the
+introduction of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken
+out and placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing
+the wool on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver
+syringe under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green
+liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the
+_Astracharlis_, found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its
+back, Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with
+his knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural
+depression and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was
+struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the
+door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front.
+Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the
+marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a
+discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by
+scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage
+resembling in tone the lively account of the lamb's behaviour when
+released. Herds of agile creatures like antelopes were seen in the moon,
+"abounding in the acclivitous glades of the woods." "This beautiful
+creature afforded us," says the narrator, "the most exquisite amusement.
+The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as
+faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of the
+_camera obscura_. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon
+its beard, it would suddenly bound away, as if conscious of our earthly
+impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent
+nibbling the herbage, say or do to them what we would." And again, a
+little further on, "We fairly laughed at the recognition of so familiar
+an acquaintance as a sheep in so distant a land--a good large sheep,
+which would not have disgraced the farms of Leicestershire or the
+shambles of Leadenhall Market; presently they appeared in great numbers,
+and on reducing the lenses we found them in flocks over a great part of
+the valley. I need not say how desirous we were of finding shepherds to
+these flocks, and even a man with blue apron and rolled-up sleeves would
+have been a welcome sight to us, if not to the sheep; but they fed in
+peace, lords of their own pastures, without either protector or
+destroyer in human shape."
+
+Not less amusing, though more gravely written, is the account of the
+benefits likely to follow from the use of the wonderful process for
+freezing animals alive. Cargoes of live sheep can be readily sent from
+Australia to Europe. Any that cannot be restored to life will still be
+good meat; while the rest can be turned to pasture or driven alive to
+market. With bullocks the case would not be quite so simple, because of
+their greater size and weight, which would render them more difficult
+to handle with safety. The carcass being rendered brittle by freezing,
+they are so much the more liable to injury. "It sounded odd to hear Mr.
+Grant and Signor Rotura laying stress upon the danger of breakage in a
+long voyage." This one can readily imagine.
+
+Some of the remoter consequences of the discovery are touched on by the
+narrator, though but lightly, as if he saw the necessity of keeping his
+wonders within reasonable limits. Signor Rotura, "though he had never
+attempted his experiment on a human being," which was considerate on his
+part, "had no doubt at all as to its perfect safety." He had requested
+Sir Henry Parkes to allow him to operate on the next felon under capital
+sentence. This, by the way, was a compromising statement on our hoaxer's
+part. It requires very little acquaintance with our laws to know that no
+one could allow a felon condemned to death to be experimented on in this
+or in any other manner. Such a man is condemned to die, and to die
+without any preliminary tortures, bodily or mental, other than those
+inseparable from the legally adopted method of bringing death about. He
+can neither be allowed to remain alive after an experiment, and
+necessarily free (because he has not been condemned to other punishment
+than the death penalty), nor can he be first experimented upon and then
+hanged. So that that single sentence in the narrative should have shown
+every one that it was a hoax, even if the inherent absurdity of many
+other parts of the story had not shown this very clearly. As to whether
+a temporary suspension of the vital faculties would affect the longevity
+of the patient, Signor Rotura expressed himself somewhat doubtful; he
+believed, however, that the duration of life might in this way be
+prolonged for years. "I was anxious," says the hoaxer, "to know if a
+period of, say, five years of this inertness were submitted to, whether
+it would be so much cut out of one's life, or if it would be simply five
+years of unconscious existence tacked on to one's sentient life. Signor
+Rotura could give no positive answer, but he believes, as no change
+takes place or can take place while this frozen trance continues, no
+consumption, destruction, or reparation of tissue being possible, it
+would be so many unvalued and profitless years added to a lifetime." Of
+some of the strange ideas suggested by this conception I shall take
+occasion to speak further on; I must for the present turn, however, from
+the consideration of this ingenious hoax to discuss the scientific
+possibilities which underlie the narrative, or at least some parts of
+the narrative.
+
+In the first place, it must be noticed that in the phenomena of
+hibernation we have what at a first view seems closely to resemble the
+results of Signor Rotura's apocryphal experiments. As was remarked in
+the _Times_, the idea underlying the Australian story is that the
+hibernation of animals can be artificially imitated and extended, so
+that as certain animals lie in a state of torpor and insensibility
+throughout the winter months, all animals also may perhaps be caused to
+lie in such a state for an indefinite length of time, if only a suitable
+degree of cold is maintained, and some special contrivance adopted to
+prevent insensibility from passing into death. The phenomena of
+hibernation are indeed so surprising, when rightly understood, that
+inexperienced persons might well believe in almost any wonders resulting
+from the artificial production (which, be it remembered, is altogether
+possible) of the hibernating condition, and the artificial extension of
+this condition to other animals than those which at present hibernate,
+and to long periods of time. It has been justly said, that if
+hibernation had only been noticed among cold-blooded animals, its
+possibility in the case of mammals would have seemed inconceivable. The
+first news that the bat and hedgehog pass into the state of complete
+hibernation, would probably have bean received as either a daring hoax
+or a very gross blunder.
+
+Let us consider what hibernation really is. When, as winter approaches
+and their insect food disappears, the bat and the hedgehog resign
+themselves to torpor, the processes which we are in the habit of
+associating with vitality gradually diminish in activity. The breathing
+becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more slowly, more
+and more feebly. At last the breathing ceases altogether. The
+circulation does not wholly cease, however. So far as is known, the life
+of warm-blooded animals cannot continue after the circulation has
+entirely ceased for more than a certain not very considerable length of
+time.[73] The chemical changes on which animal heat depends, and without
+which there can be no active vitality, cease with the cessation of
+respiration. But dormant vitality is still maintained in hibernation,
+because the heart's fibre, excited to contract by the carbonized blood,
+continues to propel the blood through the torpid body. This slow
+circulation of venous blood continues during the whole period of
+hibernation. It is the only vital process which can be recognised; and
+it is not easy to understand how the life of any warm-blooded animal can
+be maintained in this way. The explanation usually offered is that the
+material conveyed by the absorbents suffices to counterbalance the
+process of waste occasioned by the slow circulation. But this does not
+in reality touch the chief difficulty presented by the phenomena of
+hibernation. So far as mere waste is concerned (as I have elsewhere
+pointed out) the imagined Australian process is as effectual as
+hibernation; in that process, of course the circulation would be as
+completely checked as the respiration; thus there would be no waste, and
+the absorbents (which would also be absolutely dormant) would not have
+to do even that slight amount of work which they accomplish during
+hibernation. Science can only say that the known cases of hibernation
+among warm-blooded animals show that the vital forces may be reduced
+much lower without destroying life, than but for them we should have
+deemed conceivable.
+
+But next let us consider what science has to say as to the artificial
+suspension of vitality. In Dr. Richardson's paper on this subject there
+is much which seems almost as surprising as anything in the Australian
+story. Indeed, he seems scarcely to have felt assured that that story
+really was a hoax. "The statements," he says, "which, under the head of
+'A Wonderful Discovery,' are copied from the _Brisbane Courier_, seem
+greatly to have astonished the reading public. To what extent the
+statements are true or untrue it is impossible to say. The whole may be
+a cleverly-written fiction, and certain of the words and names used
+seem, according to some readers, to suggest that view; but be this so or
+not, I wish to indicate that some part at all events of what is stated
+might be true, and is certainly within the range of possibility." "The
+discovery," he proceeds, "which is described in the communication under
+notice, is not in principle new; on the subject of suspension of
+animation I have myself been making experimental inquiries for
+twenty-five years at least, and have communicated to the scientific
+world many essays, lectures, and demonstrations, relating to it. I have
+twice read papers bearing on this inquiry to the Royal Society, once to
+the British Association for the Advancement of Science, two or three
+times in my lectures on Experimental and Practical Medicine, and
+published one in _Nature_. In respect to the particular point of the
+preservation of animal bodies for food, I dwelt on this topic in the
+lectures delivered before the Society of Arts, in April and May of last
+year (1878), explaining very definitely that the course of research in
+the direction of preservation must ultimately lead to a process by which
+we should keep the structures of animals in a form of suspended
+molecular life." In other words, Dr. Richardson had indicated the
+possibility of doing precisely that which would have constituted the
+chief value of the Australian discovery, if this had been real.
+
+Let us next consider what is known respecting the possibility of
+suspending a conscious and active life. This is first stated in general
+terms by Dr. Richardson, as follows:--"If an animal perfectly free from
+disease be subjected to the action of some chemical agents or physical
+agencies which have the property of reducing to the extremest limit the
+motor forces of the body, the muscular irritability, and the nervous
+stimulus to muscular action, and if the suspension of the muscular
+irritability and of the nervous excitation be made at once and equally,
+the body even of a warm-blooded animal may be brought down to a
+condition so closely resembling death, that the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life." This general statement must be
+carefully studied if the reader desires thoroughly to understand at once
+the power and the limits of the power of science in this direction. The
+motor forces, the muscular irritability, and the nervous stimulus to
+muscular action, can be reduced to a certain extent without destroying
+life, but not absolutely without destroying life. The reduction of the
+muscular irritability must be made at once and equally; if the muscular
+irritability is reduced to its lowest limit while the nervous
+excitation remains unaltered, or is less reduced, death ensues; and
+_vice versa_, if the nervous excitation is reduced to its lowest limits
+while the muscular irritability remains unaltered, or is little reduced,
+death equally follows. Then it is to be noticed that though when the
+state of seeming death is brought about, the most careful examination
+may fail to detect any signs of life, it does not follow that science
+may not find perfectly sure means of detecting cases where life still
+exists but is at its very lowest. Of course all the ordinary tests, in
+which so many place complete reliance--a mirror placed close to the
+mouth, a finger on the pulse, hand, or ear applied to the breast[74]
+over the heart, and so forth--would be utterly inadequate, in such a
+case, to reveal any signs of life. That doctors have been deceived by
+cases of suspended vitality not artificially produced, but presenting
+similar phenomena, is well known. A case in point may not be out of
+place here, as illustrating well certain features of suspended
+animation, and showing the possibility that in _some_ cases
+consciousness may remain, even when the most careful examination detects
+no traces of life. The case is described by Dr. Alexander Crichton, in
+his "Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement." "A young
+lady, who had seemed gradually to sink until she died, had been placed
+in her coffin, careful scrutiny revealing no signs of vitality. On the
+day appointed for her funeral, several hymns were sung before her door.
+She was conscious of all that happened around her, and heard her friends
+lamenting her death. She felt them put on the dead-clothes, and lay her
+in the coffin, which produced an indescribable mental anxiety. She tried
+to cry, but her mind was without power, and could not act on the body.
+It was equally impossible to her to stretch out her arms or to open her
+eyes or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The
+internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the
+funeral hymns began to be sung and when the lid of the coffin was about
+to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the
+first one which gave activity to her mind, and caused it to operate on
+her corporeal frame. Just as the people were about to nail on the lid,
+a kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of the
+body. It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive
+motion was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes
+after, during which fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once
+opened her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek." In this case it
+was considered that the state of trance had been brought about by the
+excessive contractile action of the nervous centres. St. Augustine, by
+the way, remarks in his "De Civitate Dei" on the case of a certain
+priest called Restitutus (appropriately enough), who could when he
+wished withdraw himself from life in such sort that he did not feel when
+twitched or stung, but might even be burned without suffering pain
+except afterwards from the wound so produced. Not only did he not
+struggle or even move, but like a dead person he did not breathe, yet
+afterwards he said that he could hear the voices of those around him (if
+they spoke loudly) as if from a great distance (_de longinquo_).
+
+To return, however, to Dr. Richardson's discussion of the artificial
+suspension of active life.
+
+He recognises three degrees of muscular irritability, to which he has
+given the names of active efficient, passive efficient, and
+negative,--though doubtless he would recognize the probability that the
+line separating the first from the second may not always be easily
+traced, and that, though there is a most definite distinction between
+the second and the third, the actual position of the boundary line has
+not as yet been determined. In other words, so far as the first and
+second states are concerned, there are not two degrees only, but many.
+As regards the third or negative state, which is only another way of
+describing death, there is, of course, only one degree, though the
+evidence as to the existence of this state may be more or less complete
+and obvious. Dr. Richardson defines the active efficient state of
+muscular irritability as that "represented in the ordinary living muscle
+in which the heart is working at full tension, and all parts of the body
+are thoroughly supplied with blood, with perfection of consciousness in
+waking hours, and, in a word, full life." The second, or passive
+efficient state, "is represented in suspended animation, in which the
+heart is working regularly but at low tension, supplying the muscles and
+other parts with sufficient blood to maintain the molecular life, but no
+more." The third of these states--the negative--"is represented when
+there is no motion whatever of blood through the body, as in an animal
+entirely frozen."
+
+With the first and third of these states I have in reality nothing to
+do, unless indeed it could be shown that the third or negative state can
+be produced without causing death. Perhaps in assuming, as I did above,
+that this state is identical with the state of the dead, I was, in fact,
+assuming what science has yet to demonstrate. I may at any rate,
+however, say without fear of valid contradiction, that science has as
+yet never succeeded in showing that this negative state may be attained
+even for a moment without death ensuing; and the probability (almost
+amounting to certainty) is that death and this change of state have in
+every instance been simultaneous. Dr. Richardson speaks of the second
+stage as that in which animation is _usually_ suspended; but he does not
+show that the third stage can even possibly be attained without death.
+
+The second stage, or stage of passive efficiency, closely resembles the
+third, "but differs from it in that, under favouring circumstances, the
+whole of the phenomena of the active efficient stage may be perfectly
+resumed, the heart suddenly enlarging in volume from its filling with
+blood, and reanimating the whole organism by the force of its renewed
+stroke in full tension. So far as we have yet proceeded," continues Dr.
+Richardson, "the whole phenomena of restoration from death are
+accomplished during this stage;" meaning, it would seem, that in all
+instances of restoration the restoration has been from the second, never
+from the third stage. "To those who are not accustomed to see them they
+are no doubt very wonderful, looking like veritable restorations from
+death. They surprise even medical men the first time they are witnessed
+by them." He gives an interesting illustration. At a meeting of the
+British Medical Association at Leeds, "a member of the Association was
+showing to a large audience the action of nitrous oxide gas, using a
+rabbit as the subject of his demonstration. The animal was removed from
+the narcotizing chamber a little too late, for it had ceased to breathe,
+and it was placed on the table to all appearance dead." "At this stage,"
+he proceeds, "I went to the table, and by use of a small pair of
+double-acting bellows restored respiration. In about four minutes there
+was revival of active irritability in the abdominal muscles, and two
+minutes later the animal leaped again into life, as if it had merely
+been asleep. There was nothing remarkable in the fact; but it excited,
+even in so cultivated an audience as was then present, the liveliest
+surprise."
+
+But when we learn the condition necessary that a body which has once
+been reduced to the state of passive efficiency should be restored to
+active life, we recognise that even when science has learned how to
+reduce vitality to a minimum without destroying it, few will care to
+risk the process, either in their own persons or in the case of those
+dear to them. Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular
+irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and
+equally reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and
+the nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls
+the aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word
+which we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or
+crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears to
+the word watery. If all three fluids remain in the aqueous condition,
+"the period during which life may be restored is left undefined. It may
+be a very long period, including weeks, and possibly months, granting
+that decomposition of the tissues is not established; and even after a
+limited process of decomposition, there may be renewal of life in
+cold-blooded animals. But if pectous change begins in any one of the
+structures I have named, it extends like a crystallization quickly
+through all the structures, and thereupon recovery is impossible, for
+the change in one of the parts is sufficient to prevent the restoration
+of all. Thus the heart may be beating, but the blood being pectous it
+beats in vain; or the heart may beat and the blood may flow, but the
+voluntary muscles being pectous the circulating action is vain; or the
+heart may beat, the blood may flow, and the muscles may remain in the
+aqueous condition, but the nerves being pectous the circulating action
+is in vain; or sometimes the heart may come to rest, and the other parts
+may remain susceptible, but the motion of the heart and blood not being
+present to quicken them into activity, their life is in vain." Add to
+this, that the restoration of the motor forces, of the muscular
+irritability, and of the nervous excitation, must be as simultaneous and
+as equal as their reduction had been, and we begin to recognise decided
+objections to the too frequent suspension of animation, even when the
+most perfect artificial means have been devised for bringing about that
+interesting result.
+
+Although, however, we may not feel encouraged to believe that many will
+care to have experiments tried on themselves in this direction, we may
+still examine with interest the results of experimental research and
+experience. These agree in showing that there are means by which active
+life may be suspended, while at the same time the aqueous condition of
+the fluids mentioned above (the blood, the muscular fluid, and the
+nervous fluid, the two latter of which are for convenience called the
+colloidal animal fluids, and are derived from the blood) is retained.
+
+The first and in some respects the most efficient of these means is
+cold. The blood and the colloidal fluids remain in the aqueous condition
+when the body is exposed to cold at freezing-point. "At this same point
+all vital acts, excepting perhaps the motion of the heart" (it is Dr.
+Richardson, be it remembered, who thus uses the significant word
+"perhaps"), "may be temporarily arrested in an animal, and then some
+animals may continue apparently dead for long intervals of time, and may
+yet return to life under conditions favourable to recovery." Dr.
+Richardson gives a singular illustration of this, describing an
+experiment which must have appeared even more surprising to those who
+witnessed it than that in which the rabbit was restored to life. "In one
+of my lectures on death from cold," he says, "which I delivered in the
+winter session of 1867, some fish which during a hard frost had been
+frozen in a tank at Newcastle-on-Tyne, were sent up to me by rail. They
+were produced in the completely frozen state at the lecture, and by
+careful thawing many of them were restored to perfect life. At my
+Croomian lecture on muscular irritability after systemic death, a
+similar fact was illustrated from frogs." It would appear, indeed, that
+so far as cold-blooded animals are concerned, there is no recognisable
+limit to the time during which they may remain thus frozen yet
+afterwards recover. But, even in their case, much skill is required to
+make the recovery sure. "If in thawing them the utmost care is not taken
+to thaw gradually, and at a temperature always below the natural
+temperature of the living animal, the fluids will pass from the frozen
+state through the aqueous into the pectous so rapidly that death from
+pectous change will be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or
+life stage at all." Naturally it is much more difficult to restore life
+in the case of warm-blooded animals. Indeed, Dr. Richardson remarks,
+that in the case of the more complex and differently shielded organs of
+warm-blooded animals, it is next to impossible to thaw equally and
+simultaneously all the colloidal fluids. "In very young animals it can
+be done. Young kittens, a day or two old, that have been drowned in
+ice-cold water, will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a
+certainty, if brought into dry air at a temperature of 98 degrees
+Fahrenheit. The gentlest motion of the body will be sufficient to
+re-start the respiration, and therewith the life."
+
+Remarking on such cases as these, Dr. Richardson notes that the nearest
+natural approach to the stage of passive efficiency is seen in
+hibernating animals. He states, however, that in hibernation the
+complete state of passive efficiency is not produced. He does not accept
+the opinion of those who consider that in true hibernation breathing
+ceases as above described. A slow respiration continues, he believes, as
+well as that low stage of active efficiency of circulation which we have
+already indicated. "The hibernating animal sleeps only; and while
+sleeping it consumes or wastes; and if the cold be prolonged it may die
+from waking." More decisive, because surer, is the evidence derived from
+the possibility of waking the hibernating animals by the common methods
+used for waking a sleeper. This certainly seems to show that animation
+is not positively suspended.
+
+He asks next the question whether an animal like a fish, frozen equally
+through all its structures, is to be regarded as actually dead in the
+strict sense of the word or not, seeing that if it be uniformly and
+equally thawed it may recover from this perfectly frozen state. "In like
+manner," he says, "it may be doubted whether a healthy warm-blooded
+animal suddenly and equally frozen through all its parts is dead,
+although it is not recoverable." If, as seems certainly to be the case,
+the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it some
+inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue,
+some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not
+have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot die
+again. Albeit, the outlook is not encouraging, at any rate so far as the
+use of cold alone for maintaining suspended animation in full-grown
+warm-blooded animals is concerned. Cold will, however, for a long time
+maintain ready for motion active organs locally subject to it Even after
+death this effect of cold "may be locally demonstrated," Dr. Richardson
+tells us, "and has sometimes been so demonstrated to the wonder of the
+world." "For instance, on January 17, in the year 1803, Aldini, the
+nephew of Galvani, created the greatest astonishment in London by a
+series of experiments which he conducted on a malefactor, twenty-six
+years old, named John Forster, who was executed at Newgate, and whose
+body, an hour after execution, was delivered over to Mr. Keate, Master
+of the College of Surgeons, for research. The body had been exposed for
+an hour to an atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point,[75] and from
+that cause, though Aldini does not seem to have recognised the fact, the
+voluntary muscles retained their irritability to such a degree that when
+Aldini began to pass voltaic currents through the body, some of the
+bystanders seem to have concluded that the unfortunate malefactor had
+come again to life. It is significant also that Aldini in his report
+says that his object was not to produce reanimation, but to obtain a
+practical knowledge how far galvanism might be employed as an auxiliary
+to revive persons who were accidentally suffocated, _as though he
+himself were in some doubt_,"--that is, not in doubt only about the
+power of galvanism, but in doubt whether Forster had been restored to
+life for a while, or not! Dr. Richardson has himself repeated, on lower
+animals, these experiments of Aldini's, except that the animals on which
+he has experimented have passed into death under chloroform, not through
+suffocation. His object, in fact, was to determine the best treatment
+for human beings who sink under chloroform and other anaesthetics. He
+finds that in warm weather he fails to get the same results. Noticing
+this, he says, "I experimented at and below the freezing-point, and then
+found that both by the electrical discharge, and by injection of water
+heated to 130 degrees" (again this terrible inexactness of expression)
+"into the muscles through the arteries, active muscular movements could
+be produced in warm-blooded animals many hours after death. Thus, for
+lecture experiment, I have removed one muscle from the body of an animal
+that had slept to death from chloroform, and putting the muscle in a
+glass tube surrounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days
+in a condition for its making a final muscular contraction, and, by
+gently thawing it, have made it, in the act of final contraction, do
+some mechanical work, such as moving a long needle on the face of a
+dial, or discharging a pistol. In muscles so removed from the body and
+preserved ready for motion there is, however, only one final act. For
+as the blood and nervous supply are both cut off from it, there is
+nothing left in it but the reserved something that was fixed by the
+cold. But I do not see any reason why this should not be maintained in
+reservation for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold
+atmosphere."
+
+Cold being, however, obviously insufficient of itself for the suspension
+of active life in warm-blooded animals, at least if such life is
+eventually to be restored, let us next consider some of the agencies
+which either alone or aided by cold may suspend without destroying life.
+
+The first known of all such agencies was mandragora. Dioscorides
+describes a wine, called _morion_, which was made from the leaves and
+the root of mandragora, and possessed properties resembling those of
+chloral hydrate. That it must have been an effective narcotic is shown
+by the circumstance that painful operations were performed on patients
+subjected to its influence, without their suffering the least pain, or
+even feeling. The sleep thus produced lasted several hours. Dr.
+Richardson considers that the use of this agent was probably continued
+until the twelfth or thirteenth century. "From the use of it doubtless
+came," he says, "the Shaksperian legend of Juliet." He strangely omits
+to notice that Shakspeare elsewhere speaks of this narcotic by name,
+where Iago says of Othello:
+
+            "Not poppy, nor mandragora,
+    Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
+    Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep
+    Which thou own'dst yesterday."
+
+Probably the use of mandragora as a narcotic may have continued much
+later than the thirteenth century. In earlier times it was certainly
+used as opium is now used, not for medicinal purposes, but to produce
+for a while an agreeable sensation of dreamy drowsiness. "There were
+those," says Dr. Richardson, in his interesting article on Narcotics in
+the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July last, "who drank of it for taste or
+pleasure, and who were spoken of as 'mandragorites,' as we might speak
+of 'alcoholists' or 'chloralists.' They passed into the land of sleep
+and dream, and waking up in scare and alarm were the screaming mandrakes
+of an ancient civilization." He has himself made the "morion" of the
+ancients, dispensing the prescription of Dioscorides and Pliny. "The
+same chemist, Mr. Hanbury," he says, "who first put chloral into my
+hands for experiment, also procured for me the root of the true
+mandragora. From that root I made the morion, tested it on myself, tried
+its effects, and re-proved, after a lapse perhaps of four or five
+centuries, that it had all the properties originally ascribed to it."
+
+The "deadly nightshade" has similar properties. (In fact, morion was
+originally made from the _Atropa belladonna_, not from its ally the
+_Atropa mandragora_.) In 1851, Dr. Richardson attended two children who
+were poisoned for a time from eating the berries and chewing the leaves
+of the nightshade, which they had gathered near Richmond. They were
+brought home insensible, he says, "and they lay in a condition of
+suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being required to
+detect either the respiration or the movements of the heart; they
+nevertheless recovered."
+
+With the nitrite of amyl, Dr. Richardson has suspended the life of a
+frog for nine days, yet the creature was then restored to full and
+vigorous life. He has shown also that the same power of suspension,
+though in less degree, "could be produced in warm-blooded animals, and
+that the heart of a warm-blooded animal would contract for a period of
+eighteen hours after apparent death." The action of nitrite of amyl
+seems to resemble that of cold. In the pleasing language of the doctors,
+"it prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents
+_rigor mortis_, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous
+centres and cords." So long as this change is prevented, active life can
+be restored. But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred,
+all was over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction
+was the result." From the analogy of some of the symptoms resulting from
+the use of nitrite of amyl with the symptoms of catalepsy, Dr.
+Richardson has "ventured to suggest that under some abnormal conditions
+the human body itself, in its own chemistry, may produce an agent which
+causes the suspended life observed during the cataleptic condition." The
+suggestion has an interest apart from the question of the possibility of
+safely suspending animation for considerable periods of time: it might
+be possible to detect the nature of the agent thus produced by the
+chemistry of the human body (if the theory is correct), and thus to
+learn how its power might be counteracted.
+
+Chloral hydrate seems singularly efficient in producing the semblance of
+death,--so completely, indeed, as to deceive even the elect. Dr.
+Richardson states that at the meeting of the British Association at
+Exeter, some pigeons which had been put to sleep by the needle injection
+of a large dose of chloral, "fell into such complete resemblance of
+death that they passed for dead among an audience containing many
+physiologists and other men of science. For my own part," he proceeds,
+"I could detect no sign of life in them, and they were laid in one of
+the out-offices of the museum of the infirmary as dead. In this
+condition they were left late at night, but in the following morning
+they were found alive, and as well as if nothing hurtful had happened to
+them." Similar effects seem to be produced by the deadly poisons
+cyanogen gas and hydrocyanic acid, though in the following case,
+narrated by Dr. Richardson, the animal experimented upon (not with the
+idea of eventually restoring it to life) belonged to a race so specially
+tenacious of life that some may consider only one of its proverbial nine
+lives to have been affected. In the laboratory of a large drug
+establishment a cat, "by request of its owner, was killed, as was
+assumed, instantaneously and painlessly by a large dose of Scheele's
+acid. The animal appeared to die without a pang, and, presenting every
+appearance of death, was laid in a sink to be removed on the next
+morning. At night the animal was lying still in form of death in the
+tank beneath a tap. In the morning it was found alive and well, but with
+the fur wet from the dropping of water from the tap." This fact was
+communicated to Dr. Richardson by an eminent chemist under whose direct
+observation it occurred, in corroboration of an observation of his own
+similar in character.
+
+Our old friend alcohol (if friend it can be called) possesses the power
+of suspending active vitality without destroying life, or at any rate
+without depriving the muscles of their excitability. Dr. Richardson
+records the case of a drunken man who, while on the ice at the Welsh
+Harp lake, fell into the water through an opening in the ice, and was
+for more than fifteen minutes completely immersed. He was extricated to
+all appearance dead, but under artificial respiration was restored to
+consciousness, though he did not survive for many hours. On the whole,
+alcoholic suspension of life does not appear to be the best method
+available. To test it, the patient must first get "very, very drunk,"
+and even then, like the soldiers in the old song, must go on drinking,
+lest the experiment should terminate simply in the fiasco of a drunken
+sleep.
+
+The last agent for suspending life referred to by Dr. Richardson is pure
+oxygen. But he has not yet obtained such information on the power of
+oxygen in this respect as he hopes to do.
+
+Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics
+and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that much
+is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension of
+animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various chemical
+agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold, together with
+the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended living
+action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative influence the
+process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the news from
+Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been done had
+been effected by the combination of one of the chemical agents above
+named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question which would
+remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle has been developed,
+but whether in matter of detail a new product has been discovered which,
+better than any of the agents we already possess, destroys and suspends
+animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds, "there are, I doubt not,
+hundreds of substances which, like mandragora and nitrite of amyl, would
+suspend the vital process, and it may be a new experimenter has met with
+such an agent. It is not incredible, indeed, that the Indian Fakirs
+possess a vegetable extract or essence which possesses the same power,
+and by means of which they perform their as yet unexplained feat of
+prolonged living burial." But he is careful to note the weak points of
+the Australian story--viz., first, the statement that the method used is
+a secret, "for men of true science know no such word;" secondly, that
+the experimenter has himself to go to America to procure more supplies
+of his agents; and, thirdly, that he requires two agents, one of which
+is an antidote to the other. As respects this third point, he asks very
+pertinently how an antidote can be absorbed and enter into the
+circulation in a body practically dead.
+
+It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax, and a
+mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long distances to
+Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised such important
+results, only to find that there was not a particle of truth in the
+story.
+
+    RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[70] Many fail to see a joke when it is gravely propounded in print, who
+would at once recognise it as such, were it uttered verbally, with
+however serious a countenance. Possibly this is due to the necessary
+absence in the printed account of the indications by which we recognise
+that a speaker is jesting--as a certain expression of countenance, or a
+certain intonation of voice, by which the grave utterer of a spoken jest
+conveys his real meaning. In a paper which recently appeared in the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, Mr. Foster (Thomas of that ilk) propounded very
+gravely the theory that our Nursery Rhymes have in reality had their
+origin in Nature Myths. He explained, for instance, that the rhymes
+relating to Little Jack Horner were originally descriptive of sunrise in
+winter: Little Jack is the sun in winter, the Christmas pie is the
+cloud-covered sky; the thumb represents the sun's first ray piercing
+through the clouds; and Jack's rejoicing means the brightness of full
+sunlight. So also the rhymes beginning Hey Diddle Diddle are shown to be
+of deep and solemn import, all in manifest burlesque of some recent
+extravagant interpretations of certain ancient stories by Goldziher,
+Steinthal, and others. Yet this fun was seriously criticized by more
+than half the critics, by some approvingly, by some otherwise.
+
+[71] For a full account of this clever hoax the reader is referred to my
+"Myths and Marvels of Astronomy."
+
+[72] The most curious are given in the ninth essay of my work referred
+to in the preceding note.
+
+[73] Few probably are aware how long some animals may remain without
+breathing and yet survive. Kittens and puppies have been brought to life
+after being immersed in water for nearly three-quarters of an hour.
+
+[74] Objection has been taken to the italicized words in the following
+passage from "No Thoroughfare" (one of the parts certainly written by
+Dickens and not by Wilkie Collins): "The cry came up: 'His heart still
+beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have cast off the rope, for
+the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him; but I
+am not afraid.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking lower, but his
+heart still beats against mine.' ... The cry came up, 'We are sinking
+still, and we are deadly cold. _His heart no longer beats against mine._
+Let no one come down to add to our weight. Lower the rope only.' ... The
+cry came up with a deathly silence, 'Raise! softly!' ... She broke from
+them all and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands
+upon _the heart that stood still_." It has been supposed that Dickens
+wilfully departed here from truth, in order to leave the impression on
+the reader that Vendale was assuredly dead. That he wished to convey
+this impression is obvious. He often showed similar care to remove, if
+possible, all hope from the anxious reader's mind (markedly so in his
+latest and unfinished work, where nevertheless any one well acquainted
+with Dickens's manner knows not only that Drood is alive, but that
+disguised as Datchery he was to have watched Jasper to the end). But in
+reality, it has happened more than once that persons have been restored
+to life who have been found in snow-drifts not merely reduced to
+complete insensibility, but without any recognisable heart-beat. Dickens
+had probably heard of such cases when in Switzerland.
+
+[75] Dr. Richardson will certainly excite the contempt of the northern
+professor who rebuked me recently for speaking of heat when I should
+have said temperature. "An atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point"
+is an expression as inadmissible, if we must be punctilious in such
+matters, as the expressions "blood-heat," "a heat of ten degrees," and
+so forth. Possibly, however, it is not desirable to be punctilious when
+there is no possibility of being misunderstood, especially as it may be
+noticed (the Edinburgh professor has often afforded striking
+illustrations of the fact by errors of his own) that too great an effort
+to be punctilious often results in very remarkable incorrectness of
+expression.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED.
+
+IV.--UTILITARIANISM.
+
+
+In some respects Mill's Essays, published under the title
+"Utilitarianism," are among his best writings. They have, in the first
+place, the excellence of brevity. Ninety-six pages, printed in handsome
+type, make but a light task for the student who wishes to enter into the
+intricacies of moral doctrine. Moreover, the last Essay consists of a
+digression concerning the nature and origin of the idea of Justice, and
+it occupies nearly one-third of the whole book. Thus Mill managed to
+compress his discussion of so important a subject as the foundations of
+Moral Right and Wrong into some sixty pleasant pages.
+
+And pleasant pages they certainly are, for they are written in Mill's
+very best style. Now Mill, even when he is most prolix, when he is
+pursuing the intricacies of the most involved points of logic and
+philosophy, can seldom or never be charged with dulness and heaviness.
+His language is too easy, polished, and apparently lucid. In these
+Essays on Utilitarianism, he reaches his own highest standard of style.
+There is hardly any other book in the range of philosophy, so far as my
+reading has gone, which can be read with less effort. There is something
+enticing in the easy flow of sentences and ideas, and without apparent
+difficulty the reader finds himself agreeably borne into the midst of
+the most profound questions of ethical philosophy, questions which have
+been the battle-ground of the human intellect for two thousand five
+hundred years.
+
+Partly to this excellence of style, partly to Mill's immense reputation,
+acquired by other works and in other ways, must we attribute the
+importance which has been generally attached to these ninety-six pages.
+Probably no other modern work of the same small typographical extent has
+been equally discussed, criticized, and admired, unless, indeed, it be
+the Essay on Liberty of the same author. The result is, that Mill has
+been generally regarded as the latest and best expounder of the great
+Utilitarian Doctrine--that doctrine which is, by one and no doubt the
+preponderating school, regarded as the foundation of all moral and
+legislative progress. Many there are who think that, what Hume and Paley
+and Jeremy Bentham began, Mill has carried nearly to perfection in these
+agreeable Essays.
+
+Nothing can be more plain, too, than that Mill himself believed he was
+dutifully expounding the doctrines of his father, of his father's
+friend, the great Bentham, and of the other unquestionable Utilitarians
+among whom he grew up. Mill seems to pride himself upon having been the
+first, not indeed to invent, but to bring into general acceptance the
+name of the school to which he supposed himself to belong. He says:[76]
+"The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the
+first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did not
+invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
+'Annals of the Parish.' After using it as a designation for several
+years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
+resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
+for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
+of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
+term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
+convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution."
+
+In the Autobiography (p. 79), Mill makes a statement to the same effect,
+saying--
+
+    "I did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galt's novels,
+    the 'Annals of the Parish,' in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom
+    the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his
+    parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become utilitarians. With a
+    boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized on the word, and for
+    some years called myself and others by it as a sectarian
+    appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some others
+    holding the opinions it was intended to designate. As those opinions
+    attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and
+    opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when
+    those who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other
+    sectarian characteristics."
+
+It is pointed out, however, by Mr. Sidgwick in his article on
+Benthamism,[77] that Bentham himself suggested the name "Utilitarian,"
+in a letter to Dumont, as far back as June, 1802.
+
+Mill explicitly states that it was his purpose in these Essays on
+Utilitarianism to expound a previously received doctrine of utility.
+Towards the close of his first chapter, containing General Remarks, he
+says (p. 6): "On the present occasion, I shall, without further
+discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something
+towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or
+Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of." He
+proceeds to explain that a preliminary condition of the rational
+acceptance or rejection of a doctrine is that its formula should be
+correctly understood. The very imperfect notion ordinarily formed of the
+Utilitarian formula was the chief obstacle which impeded its reception;
+the main work to be done, therefore, by a Utilitarian writer was to
+clear the doctrine from the grosser misconceptions. Thus the question
+would be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of its difficulties
+removed. His Essays purport throughout to be a defence and exposition of
+the Utilitarian doctrine.
+
+But one characteristic of Mill's writings is that there is often a wide
+gulf between what he intends and what he achieves. There is even a want
+of security that what he is at any moment urging may not be the logical
+contrary of what he thinks he is urging. This happens to be palpably the
+case with the celebrated Essays before us. Mill explains and defends his
+favourite doctrine with so much affection and so much candour that he
+finally explains himself into the opposite doctrine. Yet with that
+simplicity which is a pleasing feature of his personal character, Mill
+continues to regard himself as a Utilitarian long after he has left the
+grounds of Paley and Bentham. Lines of logical distinction and questions
+of logical consistency are of little account to one who cannot
+distinguish between fact and feeling, between sense and sentiment. It is
+possible that no small part of the favour with which these Essays have
+always been received by the general public is due to the happy way in
+which Mill has combined the bitter and the sweet. The uncompromising
+rigidity of the Benthamist formulas is softened and toned down. An
+apparently scientific treatment is combined with so many noble
+sentiments and high aspirations, that almost any one except a logician
+may be disarmed.
+
+But nothing can endure if it be not logical. These Essays may be very
+agreeable reading; they may make readers congratulate themselves on so
+easily becoming moral philosophers; but they cannot really advance moral
+science if they represent one thing as being another thing. I make it my
+business therefore in this article to show that Mill was intellectually
+unfitted to decide what was utilitarian and what was not. In removing
+the obstacles to the reception of his favourite doctrine he removed its
+landmarks too, and confused everything. It is true that I come rather
+late in the day to show this. Some scores, if not hundreds, of critics
+have shown the same fact more or less clearly. Eminent men of the most
+different schools and tones of thought--such as the Rev. Dr. Martineau,
+Mr. Sidgwick, Dr. Ward, Professor Birks, the late Professor Grote--have
+criticized and refuted Mill time after time.
+
+Since commencing my analysis of Mill's Philosophy, I have been surprised
+to find, too, that some who were supposed to support Mill's school
+through thick and thin, have long since discovered the inconsistencies
+which I would now expose, at such wearisome length as if they were new
+discoveries. Such is the ground which my friend, Professor Croom
+Robertson, takes in his quarterly review, _Mind_, which must be
+considered our best authority on philosophical questions. As to this
+matter of Utilitarianism, a very eminent author, formerly a friend of
+Mill himself, assures me that the subject is quite threshed out, and
+implies that there is no need for me to trouble the public any more
+about it. In fact, it would seem to be allowed within philosophical
+circles that Mill's works are often wrongheaded and unphilosophical. Yet
+these works are supposed to have done so much good that obloquy attaches
+to any one who would seek to diminish the respect paid to them by the
+public at large. Philosophers, and teachers of the last generation at
+least, have done their best to give Mill's groundless philosophy a hold
+upon all the schools and all the press, and yet we of this generation
+are to wait calmly until this influence dissolves of its own accord. We
+are to do nothing to lessen the natural respect paid to the memory of
+the dead, especially of the dead who have unquestionably laboured with
+single-minded purpose for what they considered the good of their
+fellow-creatures. But in nothing is it more true than in philosophy,
+that "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred
+with their bones." Words and false arguments cannot be recalled. Throw a
+stone into the surface of the still sea, and you are powerless to
+prevent the circle of disturbance from spreading more and more widely.
+True it is, that one disturbance may be overcome and apparently
+obliterated by other deeper disturbances; but Mill's works and opinions
+were disseminated by the immense former influence of the united band of
+Benthamist philosophers. He is criticized and discussed and repeated, in
+almost every philosophical work of the last thirty or forty years. He is
+taken throughout the world as the representative of British philosophy,
+and it is not sufficient for a few eminent thinkers in Oxford, or
+Cambridge, or London, or Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, to acknowledge in a
+tacit sort of way that this doctrine and that doctrine is wrong.
+Eventually, no doubt, the opinion of the Lecture Halls and Combination
+Rooms will guide the public opinion; but it may take a generation for
+tacit opinions to permeate society. We must have them distinctly and
+boldly expressed. It is especially to be remembered that the public
+press throughout the English-speaking countries is mostly conducted by
+men educated in the time when Mill's works were entirely predominant.
+These men are now for the most part cut off, by geographical or
+professional obstacles, from the direct influence of Oxford or
+Cambridge. The circle of disturbance has spread beyond the immediate
+reach of those centres of thought. To be brief, I do not believe that
+Mill's immense philosophical influence, founded as it is on confusion of
+thought, will readily collapse. I fear that it may remain as a permanent
+obstacle in the way of sound thinking. _Citius emergit veritas ex
+errore, quam ex confusione._ Had Mill simply erred as did Hobbes about
+elementary geometry, and Berkeley about infinitesimals, it would be
+necessary merely to point out the errors and consign them to merciful
+oblivion. But it is not so easy to consign to oblivion ponderous works
+so full of confusion of thought that every inexperienced and unwarned
+reader is sure to lose his way in them, and to take for profound
+philosophy that which is really a kind of kaleidoscopic presentation of
+philosophic ideas and phrases, in a succession of various but usually
+inconsistent combinations. To the public at large, Mill's works still
+undoubtedly remain as the standard of accurate thinking, and the most
+esteemed repertory of philosophy. I cannot therefore consider my
+criticism superfluous, and at the risk of repeating much that has been
+said by the eminent critics already mentioned, or by others, I must show
+that Mill has thrown ethical philosophy into confusion as far as could
+well be done in ninety-six pages.
+
+The nature of the Utilitarian doctrine is explained by Mill with
+sufficient accuracy in pp. 9 and 10, where he says--
+
+    "The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or
+    the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in
+    proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
+    produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure,
+    and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of
+    pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the
+    theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it
+    includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this
+    is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do
+    not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is
+    grounded--namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only
+    things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are
+    as numerous in the utilitarian as any other scheme) are desirable
+    either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the
+    promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
+
+Mill proceeds to say that such a theory of life excites inveterate
+dislike in many minds, and among them some of the most estimable in
+feeling and purpose. To hold forth no better end than pleasure is felt
+to be utterly mean and grovelling--a doctrine worthy only of swine. Mill
+accordingly proceeds to inquire whether there is anything really
+grovelling in the doctrine--whether, on the contrary, we may not include
+under pleasure, feelings and motives which are in the highest degree
+noble and elevating. The whole inquiry turns upon this question--Do
+pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity? Can a small amount
+of pleasure of very elevated character outweigh a large amount of
+pleasure of low quality? We should never think of estimating pictures by
+their size and number. The productions of West and Fuseli, which were
+the wonder and admiration of our grandparents, can now be bought by the
+square yard, to cover the bare walls of eating-houses and music-halls.
+_Sic transit gloria mundi._ But a choice sketch by Turner sometimes
+sells for many pounds per square inch. It is clear, then, that in the
+opinion of connoisseurs, which must, for our present purpose, be
+considered final, high art is almost wholly a matter of quality. Two
+great pictures by West may be nearly twice as valuable as one; and two
+equally choice sketches by Turner are twice as good as one; but it would
+seem hardly possible in the present day for the disciple of "high art"
+to bring West and Turner into the same category of thought. I suppose
+that even Turner will presently begin to wane before "the higher
+criticism."
+
+A corresponding difficulty lies at the very basis of the Utilitarian
+theory of ethics. The tippler may esteem two pints of beer doubly as
+much as one; the hero may feel double satisfaction in saving two lives
+instead of one; but who shall weigh the pleasure of a pint of beer
+against the pleasure of saving a fellow-creature's life.
+
+Paley, indeed, cut the Gordian knot of this difficulty in a summary
+manner; he denied altogether that there is any difference between
+pleasures, except in continuance and intensity. It must have required
+some moral courage to write the paragraph to be next quoted; yet Paley,
+however much he may be said to have temporized and equivocated about
+oaths and subscription to Articles, cannot be accused of want of
+explicitness in this passage. There is a directness and clear-hitting of
+the point in Paley's writings which always charms me.
+
+    "In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the
+    amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree
+    of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the
+    greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life, is what
+    we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what human
+    happiness consists in. In which inquiry I will omit much usual
+    declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the
+    superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal
+    part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and
+    delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and
+    sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in
+    nothing, but in continuance and intensity: from a just computation
+    of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness,
+    tranquillity, and contentment, of men of different tastes, tempers,
+    stations, and pursuits, every question concerning human happiness
+    must receive its decision."[78]
+
+Bentham, it need hardly be said, adopted the same idea as the basis of
+his ethical and legislative theories. In his uncompromising style he
+tells us[79] that
+
+    "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
+    masters, _pain_ and _pleasure_. It is for them alone to point out
+    what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On
+    the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain
+    of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us
+    in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can
+    make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and
+    confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but
+    in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The
+    _principle of utility_ recognises this subjection, and assumes it
+    for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear
+    the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems
+    which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in
+    caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
+
+Elsewhere Bentham proceeds to show how we may estimate the _values_ of
+pleasures and pains, meaning obviously by _values_ the quantities or
+forces. As these feelings are both the ends and the instruments of the
+moralist and legislator, it especially behoves us to learn how to
+estimate these values aright, and Bentham tells us most distinctly.[80]
+
+    To a person, he says, considered _by himself_, the value of a
+    pleasure or pain considered _by itself_, will be greater or less,
+    according to the four following circumstances. 1. Its _intensity_.
+    2. Its _duration_. 3. Its _certainty_ or _uncertainty_. 4. Its
+    _propinquity_ or _remoteness_. But when the value of any pleasure or
+    pain is to be considered for the purpose of estimating the general
+    tendency of the act, we have to take into account also, 5. The
+    _fecundity_, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of
+    the same kind, that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure; pains, if it
+    be a pain. 6. Its _purity_, or the chance it has of _not_ being
+    followed by sensations of the _opposite_ kind: that is, pains, if it
+    be a pleasure; pleasures, if it be a pain. Finally, when we consider
+    the interests of a number of persons, we must also estimate a
+    pleasure or pain with reference to, 7. Its extent; that is the
+    number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it.
+
+Thus did Bentham clearly and explicitly lay the foundations of the moral
+and political sciences, and to impress these fundamental propositions on
+the memory he framed the following curious mnemonic lines, which may be
+quoted for the sake of their quaintness:--
+
+    "_Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure_----
+    Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
+    Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:
+    If it be public, wide let them _extend_.
+    Such _pains_ avoid, whichever be thy view:
+    If pains _must_ come, let them _extend_ to few."
+
+In all that Bentham says about pleasure and pain, there is not a word
+about the intrinsic superiority of one pleasure to another. He advocates
+our seeking _pure_ pleasures; but with him a pure pleasure was clearly
+defined as one not likely to be followed by feelings of the opposite
+kind; the pleasure of opium-eating, for instance, would be called
+impure, simply because it is likely to lead to bad health and consequent
+pain; if not so followed by evil consequences, the pleasure would be as
+pure as any other pleasure. With Bentham morality became, as it were, a
+question of the ledger and the balance-sheet; all feelings were reduced
+to the same denomination of value, and whenever we indulge in a little
+enjoyment, or endure a pain, the consequences in regard to subsequent
+enjoyment or suffering are to be inexorably scored for or against us, as
+the case may be. Our conduct must be judged wise or foolish according
+as, in the long-run, we find a favourable "hedonic" balance-sheet.
+
+What Mill in his earlier life thought about these foundations of the
+utilitarian doctrine, and the elaborate structure reared therefrom by
+Bentham, he has told us in his Autobiography, pp. 64 to 70. Subsequently
+Mill revolted, as we all know, against the narrowness of the Benthamist
+creed. While wishing to retain[81] the precision of expression, the
+definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague
+generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of Bentham
+and of his own father, James Mill, John Stuart decided to give a wider
+basis and a more free and "genial" character to the utilitarian
+speculations.
+
+Let us consider how Mill proceeded to give this "genial" character to
+the utilitarian philosophy. It must be admitted, he says,[82] that
+utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental
+over bodily pleasures _chiefly_ in the greater permanency, safety,
+uncostliness, &c., of the former--that is, in their circumstantial
+advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. As regards Bentham, at
+least, Mill might have omitted the word _chiefly_. But according to
+Mill, there is no need why they should have taken such a ground.
+
+    "They might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher
+    ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the
+    principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some _kinds_ of
+    pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would
+    be absurd, that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
+    considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should
+    be supposed to depend on quantity alone."
+
+Then Mill proceeds to point out, with all the persuasiveness of his best
+style, that there are higher feelings which we would not sacrifice for
+any quantity of a lower feeling. Few human creatures, he holds, would
+consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the
+fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being
+would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus,
+no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, and so
+forth. Mill, in fact, treats us to a good deal of what Paley so
+cynically called the "usual declamation," on the dignity and capacity of
+our nature, and the worthiness of some satisfactions compared with the
+grossness and sensuality of others. It must be allowed that Mill has the
+best of it, at least with the majority of readers. Paley is simply
+brutal as to the way in which he depresses everything to the same level
+of apparent sensuality. Mill overflows with genial and noble
+aspirations; he hardly deigns to count the lower pleasures as worth
+putting in the scale; it is better, he thinks, to be a human being
+dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied
+than a fool satisfied. If the pig or the fool is of a different opinion,
+it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other
+party to the comparison knows both sides. In the pages which follow
+there is much nobleness and elevation of thought. But where is the
+logic? We are nothing if we are not logical. But does Mill, in the
+fervour of his revolt against the cold, narrow restraints of the
+Benthamist formulas, consider the consistency and stability of his
+position? Let us examine in some detail the position to which he has
+brought himself.
+
+It is plain, in the first place, that pleasure is with Mill the ultimate
+purpose of existence; for the philosophy is that of utilitarianism, and
+Mill distinctly assures us (Autobiography, p. 178) that he "never
+ceased to be a utilitarian." We must, of course, distinguish between the
+pleasure of the individual and the pleasure of other individuals of the
+race, between Egoistic and Universalistic Hedonism, as Mr. Sidgwick
+calls these very different doctrines. But the happiness of the race is,
+of course, made up of the happiness of its units, so that unless most of
+the individuals pursue a course ensuring happiness, the race cannot be
+happy in the aggregate. Now, to acquire happiness the individual must,
+of course, select that line of conduct which is likely to--that is, will
+in the majority of cases--bring happiness. He must aim at something
+which is capable of being reached. Mill tells us (p. 18) that if by
+happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is
+evident enough that this is impossible to attain.
+
+    "A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases,
+    and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional
+    brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of
+    this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of
+    life were as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness
+    which they meant was not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in
+    an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various
+    pleasures, with a decided predominance of the actual over the
+    passive, and _having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect
+    more from life than it is capable of bestowing_.[83] A life thus
+    composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has
+    always appeared worthy of the name of happiness."
+
+Then Mill goes on to point out what he considers has been sufficient to
+satisfy great numbers of mankind (p. 19):
+
+    "The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either
+    of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose:
+    tranquillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that
+    they can be content with very little pleasure: with much excitement,
+    many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.
+    There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the
+    mass of mankind to unite both."
+
+From these passages we must gather that at any rate the mass of mankind
+will attain happiness if they are satisfied with these main
+constituents, and we are especially told that the foundation of the
+whole utilitarian philosophy (Mill does not specify the substantive to
+which the adjective _whole_ applies in the above quotation, but it must
+from the context be either "utilitarian philosophy," "search for
+happiness," or some closely equivalent idea) is _not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing_.
+
+The question, then, may fairly arise whether upon a fair calculation of
+probabilities they are not wise, upon Mill's own showing, who aim at
+moderate achievements in life, so that in accomplishing these they may
+insure a satisfied life. This seems the more reasonable, if, as Mill
+elsewhere tells us, the nobler feelings are very apt to be killed off by
+the chilly realities of life.
+
+    "Many," he says (p. 14), "who begin with youthful enthusiasm for
+    everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and
+    selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very
+    common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasure
+    in preference to the higher, I believe that before they devote
+    themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become
+    incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
+    natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile
+    influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of
+    young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
+    their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which
+    it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher
+    capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose
+    their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity
+    for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior
+    pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because
+    they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only
+    ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
+    questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to
+    both classes of pleasure, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the
+    lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual
+    attempt to combine both."
+
+It would seem, then, that for the mass of mankind there is small
+prospect indeed of achieving happiness through high aspirations. They
+will not have time nor opportunity for indulging them. If they look for
+happiness solely to such aspirations they must be disappointed, and
+cannot have a satisfied life; if they attempt to combine the higher and
+lower lives they are likely to "break down in the ineffectual attempt."
+Now, I submit that, under these circumstances, it is folly, according to
+Mill's scheme of morality, to aim high; it is equivalent to going into a
+life-lottery, in which there are no doubt high prizes to be gained, but
+few and far between. It is simply gambling with hedonic stakes;
+preferring a small chance of high enjoyment to comparative certainty of
+moderate pleasures. Mill clearly admits this when he says (p. 14), "It
+is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
+the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed
+being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the
+world is constituted, is imperfect."
+
+Although, then, "the foundation of the whole" is not to expect from life
+more than it is capable of bestowing, we are actually to prefer becoming
+highly endowed, although we cannot expect life to satisfy the
+corresponding aspirations. That is to say, although seeking for
+happiness, we are to prefer the course in which we are approximately
+certain of not obtaining it.
+
+But Mill goes on to give some explanations. He says that the highly
+endowed being can learn to bear the imperfections of his happiness, "if
+they are at all bearable" (p. 14). This is small comfort if they happen
+to be _not at all bearable_, an alternative which is not further pursued
+by Mill. And will not this intolerable fate be most likely to befall
+those whose aspirations have been pitched most highly? But Mill goes on:
+
+    "They (that is, the imperfections of life or happiness?) will not
+    make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the
+    imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which
+    those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being
+    dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
+    dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is
+    of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side
+    of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both
+    sides."
+
+Concerning this position of affairs the most apposite remark I can make
+is contained in the somewhat trite and vulgar saying, "Where ignorance
+is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." If Socrates is pretty sure to be
+dissatisfied, and yet, owing to his wisdom, cannot help wishing to be
+Socrates, he seems to have no chance of that individual happiness which
+depends on being satisfied, and not expecting from life more than it is
+capable of bestowing. The great majority of people who do not know what
+it is like to be Socrates, are surely to be congratulated that they can,
+without scruple or remorse, seek a prize of happiness which there is a
+fair prospect of securing. But Mill tells us that those who choose the
+lower life do so "because they only know their own side of the question.
+The other party to the comparison knows both sides." Then Mill
+introduces a paragraph, already partially quoted, in which he allows
+that men often do, _from infirmity of character_, make their selection
+for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable. Many
+who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, sink in later
+years into indolence and selfishness. The capacity for the nobler
+feelings is easily killed, and men lose their high aspirations because
+they have not time and opportunity for indulging them. I submit that,
+_from Mill's point of view_, these are all valid reasons why they should
+_not_ choose the higher life. We are considering here, not those who
+have always been devoid of the nobler feelings, but those who have in
+earlier life been full of enthusiasm and high aspirations. If such men,
+with few exceptions, decide eventually in favour of the lower life, they
+are parties who _do_ know both sides of the comparison, and deliberately
+choose not to be Socrates, with the prospect of the very imperfect
+happiness (probably involving short rations) which is incident to the
+life of Socrates.
+
+Mill, indeed, calmly assumes that the vote goes in his own and Socrates'
+favour. He says (p. 15):
+
+    "From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there
+    can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of
+    two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most
+    grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from
+    its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by
+    knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among
+    them, must be admitted as final. And there need be the less
+    hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of
+    pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to, even
+    on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining
+    which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two
+    pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are
+    familiar with both?"
+
+Now, were we dealing with a writer of average logical accuracy there
+would be considerable presumption that when he adduces evidence and
+claims a result in his own favour in this confident way, there would be
+some ground for the claim. But my scrutiny of Mill's "System of Logic"
+has taught me caution in admitting such presumptions in respect of his
+writings, and here is a case in point. He claims that the suffrage of
+the majority is in favour of Socrates' life, although he has admitted
+that the vast majority of men somehow or other elect not to be Socrates.
+He assumes, indeed, that this is because their aspirations have been
+first killed off by unfavourable circumstances; his only residuum of
+fact is contained in this somewhat hesitating conclusion already
+quoted:--
+
+    "It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally
+    susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly
+    preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in
+    an ineffectual attempt to combine both."
+
+Although, then, millions and millions are continually deciding against
+Socrates' life, for one reason or another (and many in all ages who make
+the ineffectual attempt at a combination break down), Mill gratuitously
+assumes that they are none of them competent witnesses, because they
+must have lost their higher feelings before they could have descended to
+the lower level; then the comparatively few who do choose the higher
+life and succeed in attaining it are adduced as giving a large majority,
+or even a unanimous vote in favour of their own choice. I submit that
+this is a fallacy probably to be best classed as a _petitio principii_;
+Mill entirely begs the question when he assumes that every witness
+against him is an incapacitated witness, because he must have lost his
+capacity for the nobler feelings before he could have decided in favour
+of the lower.
+
+The verdict which Mill takes in favour of his high-quality pleasures is
+entirely that of a packed jury. It is on a par with the verdict which
+would be given by vegetarians in favour of a vegetable diet. No doubt,
+those who call themselves vegetarians would almost unanimously say that
+it is the best and highest diet; but then, all those who have tried such
+diet and found it impracticable have disappeared from the jury, together
+with all those whose common sense, or scientific knowledge, or weak
+state of health, or other circumstances, have prevented them from
+attempting the experiment. By the same method of decision, we might all
+be required to get up at five o'clock in the morning and do four hours
+of head-work before breakfast, because the few hard-headed and
+hard-bodied individuals who do this sort of thing are unanimously of
+opinion that it is a healthly and profitable way of beginning the day.
+
+Of course, it will be understood that I am not denying the moral
+superiority of some pleasures and courses of life over others. I am only
+showing that Mill's attempt to reconcile his ideas on the subject with
+the Utilitarian theory hopelessly fails. The few pleasant pages in which
+he makes this attempt (Utilitarianism, pp. 8-28), form, in fact, a most
+notable piece of sophistical reasoning. Much of the interest of these
+undoubtedly interesting passages arises from the kaleidoscopic way in
+which the standing difficulties of ethical science are woven together,
+as if they were logically coherent in Mill's mode of presentation. The
+ideas involved are as old as Plato and Aristotle. The high aspirations
+correspond to =to kalon= of Plato. The superior man who can judge both
+sides of the question is the =beltistos aner= of Aristotle. The
+Utilitarian doctrine is that of Epicurus. Now, Mill managed to persuade
+himself that he could in twenty pages reconcile the controversies of
+ages.
+
+Nor is it to be supposed that Bentham, in making his analysis of the
+conditions of pleasure, overlooked the difference of high and low; he
+did not overlook it at all--he analyzed it. A pleasure to be high must
+have the marks of intensity, length, certainty, fruitfulness, and
+purity, or of some of these at least; and when we take Altruism into
+account, the feelings must be of wide extent--that is, fruitful of
+pleasure and devoid of evil to great numbers of people. It is a higher
+pleasure to build a Free Library than to establish a new Race Course;
+not because there is a _Free-Library-building emotion_, which is
+essentially better than a _Race-Course-establishing emotion_, each being
+a simple unanalyzable feeling; but because we may, after the model of
+inquiry given by Bentham, resolve into its elements the effect of one
+action and the other upon the happiness of the community. Thus, we
+should find that Mill proposed to give "geniality" to the Utilitarian
+philosophy by throwing into confusion what it was the very merit of
+Bentham to have distinguished and arranged scientifically. We must hold
+to the dry old Jeremy, if we are to have any chance of progress in
+Ethics. Mill, at some "crisis in his mental history," decided in favour
+of a genial instead of a logical and scientific Ethics, and the result
+is the mixture of sentiment and sophistry contained in the attractive
+pages under review.
+
+In order to treat adequately of Mill's ethical doctrines it would no
+doubt be necessary to go on to other parts of the Essays, and to inquire
+how he treats other moral elements, such as the Social or Altruistic
+Feelings. The existence of such feelings is admitted on p. 46, and,
+indeed, insisted on as a basis of powerful natural sentiment,
+constituting the strength of the Utilitarian morality. But it would be
+an endless work to examine all phases of Mill's doctrines, and to show
+whether or not they are logically consistent _inter se_. They are really
+not worth the trouble. Just let us notice, however, how he treats the
+question whether moral feelings are innate or not. On this point Mill
+gives (p. 45) the following characteristic deliverance:--"If, as is my
+own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to
+reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though these are
+acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our
+nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all
+of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the
+most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired
+capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our
+nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain
+small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
+brought by cultivation to a high degree of development." If life were
+long enough, I should like, with the assistance of the "Methods of
+Ethics," to analyze the ideas involved in this passage. I can merely
+suggest the following questions:--If acquired capacities are equally
+natural with those not acquired, what is the use of introducing a
+distinction without a difference? If moral feelings can spring up
+spontaneously, even in the smallest degree, and then be developed by
+"natural outgrowths," how do any of our feelings differ from natural
+ones? What does Mill mean, at the top of the next page, by speaking of
+"moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation?" Are these
+also not the less natural because they are of artificial creation? If
+not, we should like to know how to draw the line between _acquired_ and
+_artificial_ capacities. How, again, are we to interpret the use of the
+word _natural_, on p. 50, where, speaking of the deeply-rooted
+conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social
+being, he says--
+
+    "This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to
+    their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to
+    those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural
+    feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition
+    of education," &c.
+
+Here a natural feeling is contrasted to the product of education,
+although we were before told that acquired capacities, like speaking,
+building, cultivating, were none the less natural. But I must candidly
+confess that when Mill introduces the words _nature_ and _natural_, I am
+completely baffled. I give it up. I can no longer find any logical marks
+to assist me in tracking out his course of thought. The word _nature_
+may be Mill's key to a profound philosophy; but I rather think it is the
+key to many of his fallacies.
+
+I often amuse myself by trying to imagine what Bentham would have said
+of Benthamism expounded by Mill. Especially would it be interesting to
+hear Bentham on Mill's use of the word "natural." No passage in which
+Bentham analyzes the meaning of "nature," or "natural," occurs to me,
+but the following is his treatment of the word "unnatural," as employed
+in Ethics:--
+
+    "Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent: and there it
+    means something; although nothing to the present purpose. But here
+    it means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps
+    the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean,
+    which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is,
+    the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the disposition
+    he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it."[84]
+
+Would that the grand old man, as he still sits benignly pondering in his
+own proper bones and clothes, in the upper regions of a well-known
+institution, could be got to deliver himself in like style about
+feelings which are _not the less natural because they are acquired_.
+
+Before passing on, however, I must point out, in the extract from p. 45,
+the characteristic habit which Mill has of _minimizing_ things which he
+is obliged to admit. Instead of denying straightforwardly that we have
+moral feelings, he says they are not present in all of us in any
+"perceptible degree." The moral faculty is capable of springing up
+spontaneously "in a certain small degree." This will remind every reader
+of the way in which, in his "Essays on Religion," instead of flatly
+adopting Atheism or Theism, which are clear logical negatives each of
+the other, he concludes that though God is almost proved not to exist,
+He may possibly exist, and we must "imagine" this chance to be as large
+as we can, though it belongs only "to one of the lower degrees of
+probability." Exactly the same manner of meeting a weighty question will
+be discovered again in his demonstration of the non-existence of
+necessary truths. I shall hope to examine carefully his treatment of
+this important part of philosophy on a future occasion. We shall then
+find, I believe, that his argument proves non-existence of such things
+as necessary truths, because those truths which cannot be explained on
+the association principle are very few indeed. I beg pardon for
+introducing an incongruous illustration, but Mill's manner of minimizing
+an all-important admission often irresistibly reminds me of the young
+woman who, being taxed with having borne a child, replied that it was
+only a very small one.
+
+Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it
+is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a
+full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same
+precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis
+is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral
+Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to the
+reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though that is a
+great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and
+nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to the
+establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made a new
+era in philosophy.[85] Mill has been singularly unfortunate from this
+point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic writer
+conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He brought
+to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he ignored that
+which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.
+
+I am aware that, in her Introductory Notice to the Essays on Religion
+(p. viii.), Miss Helen Taylor apologizes for Mill having omitted any
+references to the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine "in passages
+where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or where
+subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner to
+which the Author of these Essays would certainly have referred had their
+works been published before these were written."[86] Here it is implied
+that Mill anticipated the authors of the Evolution philosophy in some of
+their thoughts, and it is a most amiable and pardonable bias which leads
+Miss Taylor to find in the works of one so dear to her that which is not
+there. The fact is that the whole tone of Mill's moral and political
+writings is totally opposed to the teaching of Darwin and Spencer,
+Taylor and Maine. Mill's idea of human nature was that we came into the
+world like lumps of soft clay, to be shaped by the accidents of life, or
+the care of those who educate us. Austin insisted on the evidence which
+history and daily experience afford of "the extraordinary pliability of
+human nature," and Mill borrowed the phrase from him.[87] No phrase
+could better express the misapprehensions of human nature which, it is
+to be hoped, will cease for ever with the last generation of writers.
+Human nature is one of the last things which can be called "pliable."
+Granite rocks can be more easily moulded than the poor savages that hide
+among them. We are all of us full of deep springs of unconquerable
+character, which education may in some degree soften or develop, but can
+neither create nor destroy. The mind can be shaped about as much as the
+body; it may be starved into feebleness, or fed and exercised into
+vigour and fulness; but we start always with inherent hereditary powers
+of growth. The non-recognition of this fact is the great defect in the
+moral system of Bentham. The great Jeremy was accustomed to make short
+work with the things which he did not understand, and it is thus he
+disposes of "the pretended system" of a moral sense:[88]
+
+    "One man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is
+    right and what is wrong, and that it is called a _moral sense_; and
+    then he goes to his work at his ease, and says such a thing is right
+    and such a thing is wrong--Why? because my moral sense tells me it
+    is."
+
+Bentham then bluntly ignored the validity of innate feelings, but this
+omission, though a great defect, did not much diminish the value of his
+analysis of the good and bad effects of actions. Mill discarded the
+admirable Benthamist analysis, but failed to introduce the true
+Evolutionist principles; thus he falls between the two. It is to Herbert
+Spencer we must look for a more truthful philosophy of morals than was
+possible before his time.
+
+The publication of the first part of his Principles of Morality, under
+the title "The Data of Ethics," gives us, in a definite form, and in his
+form, what we could previously only infer from the general course of his
+philosophy and from his brief letter on Utilitarianism addressed to
+Mill. Although but fragments, these writings enable us to see that a
+definite step has been made in a matter debated since the dawn of
+intellect. The moral sense doctrine, so rudely treated by Bentham, is no
+longer incapable of reconciliation with the greatest happiness
+principle, only it now becomes a moving and developable moral sense. An
+absolute and unalterable moral standard was opposed to the palpable fact
+that customs and feelings differ widely, and Paley, on this ground, was
+induced to reject it. Now we perceive that we all have a moral sense;
+but the moral sense of one individual, and still more of one race, may
+differ from that of another individual or race. Each is more or less
+fitted to its circumstances, and the best is ascertained by _eventual
+success_.
+
+At the tail end of an article it is, of course, impossible to discuss
+the grounds or results of the Spencerian philosophy. To me it presents
+itself, in its main features, as unquestionably true; indeed, it is
+already difficult to look back and imagine how philosophers could have
+denied of the human mind and actions what is so obviously true of the
+animal races generally. As a reaction from the old views about innate
+ideas, the philosophers of the eighteenth century wished to believe that
+the human mind was a kind of _tabula rasa_, or _carte blanche_, upon
+which education could impress any character. But if so, why not harness
+the lion, and teach the sheep to drive away the wolf? If the moral, not
+to speak of the physical characteristics of the lower animals, are so
+distinct, why should there not be moral and mental differences among
+ourselves, descending, as we obviously do, from different stocks with
+different physical characteristics? Notice what Mr. Darwin says on this
+point:--
+
+    "Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism'
+    (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a 'powerful natural
+    sentiment,' and as 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian
+    morality;' but on the previous page he says, 'if, as is my own
+    belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are
+    not for that reason less natural.' It is with hesitation that I
+    venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be
+    disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the
+    lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain and
+    others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual
+    during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at
+    least extremely improbable."[89]
+
+Many persons may be inclined to like the philosophy of Spencer no better
+than that of Mill. But, if the one be true and the other false, liking
+and disliking have no place in the matter. There may be many things
+which we cannot possibly like; but if they are, they are. It is possible
+that the Principles of Evolution, as expounded by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
+may seem as wanting in "geniality" as the formulas of Bentham. There is
+nothing genial, it must be confessed, about the mollusca and other
+cold-blooded organisms with which Mr. Spencer perpetually illustrates
+his principles. Heaven forbid that any one should try to give geniality
+to Mr. Spencer's views of ethics by any operation comparable to that
+which Mill performed upon Benthamism.
+
+Nevertheless, I fully believe that all which is sinister and ungenial in
+the Philosophy of Evolution is either the expression of unquestionable
+facts, or else it is the outcome of misinterpretation. It is impossible
+to see how Mr. Spencer, any more than other people, can explain away the
+existence of pain and evil. Nobody has done this; perhaps nobody ever
+shall do it; certainly systems of Theology will not do it. A true
+philosopher will not expect to solve everything. But if we admit the
+patent fact that pain exists, let us observe also the tendency which
+Spencer and Darwin establish towards its _minimization_. Evolution is a
+striving ever towards the better and the happier. There may be almost
+infinite powers against us, but at least there is a deep-laid scheme
+working towards goodness and happiness. So profound and wide-spread is
+this confederacy of the powers of good, that no failure and no series of
+failures can disconcert it. Let mankind be thrown back a hundred times,
+and a hundred times the better tendencies of evolution will re-assert
+themselves. Paley pointed out how many beautiful contrivances there are
+in the human form, tending to our benefit. Spencer has pointed out that
+the Universe is one deep-laid framework for the production of such
+beneficent contrivances. Paley called upon us to admire such exquisite
+inventions as a hand or an eye. Spencer calls upon us to admire a
+machine which is the most comprehensive of all machines, because it is
+ever engaged in inventing beneficial inventions _ad infinitum_. Such at
+least is my way of regarding his Philosophy.
+
+Darwin, indeed, cautions us against supposing that natural selection
+always leads towards the production of higher and happier types of life.
+Retrogression may result as well as progression. But I apprehend that
+retrogression can only occur where the environment of a living species
+is altered to its detriment. Mankind degenerates when forced, like the
+Esquimaux, to inhabit the Arctic regions. Still in retrograding, in a
+sense, the being becomes more suited to its circumstances--more capable
+therefore of happiness. The inventing machine of Evolution would be
+working badly if it worked otherwise. But, however this may be, we must
+accept the philosophy if it be true, and, for my part, I do so without
+reluctance.
+
+According to Mill, we are little self-dependent gods, fighting with a
+malignant and murderous power called Nature, sure, one would think, to
+be worsted in the struggle. According to Spencer, as I venture to
+interpret his theory, we are the latest manifestation of an
+all-prevailing tendency towards the good--the happy. Creation is not yet
+concluded, and there is no one of us who may not become conscious in his
+heart that he is no Automaton, no mere lump of Protoplasm, but the
+Creature of a Creator.
+
+    W. STANLEY JEVONS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[76] "Utilitarianism," fifth edition, p. 9, foot-note. Except where
+otherwise specified, the references throughout this article will be to
+the pages of the fifth edition of "Utilitarianism."
+
+[77] _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1877, vol. xxi. p. 648.
+
+[78] "The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," Book I. chap.
+vi. 2nd paragraph.
+
+[79] "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," p.
+1.
+
+[80] "Principles," &c. chap. iv. sect. 2-5. The statement is not a
+verbatim extract but an abridgment of the sections named.
+
+[81] "Autobiography," p. 214.
+
+[82] "Utilitarianism," p. 11.
+
+[83] Italicised by the present writer.
+
+[84] "Principles of Morals and Legislation," ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 31.
+
+[85] A very important article by Dr. E. L. Youmans upon Mr. Spencer's
+philosophy has just appeared in the _North American Review_ for October,
+1879. Dr. Youmans traces the history of the Evolution doctrines, and
+proves the originality and independence of Mr. Spencer as regards the
+closely related views of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and Professor Huxley.
+The eminent men in question are no doubt in perfect agreement; but Dr.
+Youmans seems to think that readers in general do not properly
+understand the singular originality and boldness of Mr. Spencer's vast
+and partially accomplished enterprise in philosophy.
+
+[86] Mr. Morley does not seem to countenance any such claims. On the
+contrary, he remarks in his "Critical Miscellanies," p. 324, that Mill's
+Essays lose in interest by not dealing with the Darwinian hypothesis.
+
+[87] "Autobiography," p. 187.
+
+[88] "Principles of Morals," &c., p. 29.
+
+[89] "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," 1871, vol.
+i. p. 71. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Darwin felt the inconsistency
+and confusion of ideas in the passages quoted, although he does not so
+express himself. Otherwise, why does he quote from two pages?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36,
+November 1879, by Various
+
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