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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7257-8.txt b/7257-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e2df72 --- /dev/null +++ b/7257-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7246 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 +by Edwin Lawrence Godkin + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!**** + + +Title: Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 + +Author: Edwin Lawrence Godkin + +Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7257] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 2, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS 1865-1895 *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS + +1865-1895 + + +by EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN + + + +TO +CHARLES ELIOT NORTON + +TO WHOM THE FOUNDATION OF "THE NATION" WAS +LARGELY DUE, IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT +OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP + + + + +CONTENTS + +PEACE +CULTURE AND WAR +THE COMPARATIVE MORALITY OF NATIONS +THE "COMIC-PAPER" QUESTION +MR. FROUDE AS A LECTURER +MR. HORACE GREELEY +THE MORALS AND MANNERS OF THE KITCHEN +JOHN STUART MILL +PANICS +THE ODIUM PHILOLOGICUM +PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES +CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE +TYNDALL AND THE THEOLOGIANS +THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE +THE CHURCH AND GOOD CONDUCT +RÔLE OF THE UNIVERSITIES IN POLITICS +THE HOPKINS UNIVERSITY +THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR +CHROMO-CIVILIZATION +"THE SHORT-HAIRS" AND "THE SWALLOW-TAILS" +JUDGES AND WITNESSES +"THE DEBTOR CLASS" +COMMENCEMENT ADMONITION +"ORGANS" +EVIDENCE ABOUT CHARACTER +PHYSICAL FORCE IN POLITICS +"COURT CIRCLES" +LIVING IN EUROPE AND GOING TO IT +CARLYLE'S POLITICAL INFLUENCE +THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUMMER RESORT +SUMMER REST +THE SURVIVAL OF TYPES +WILL WIMBLES + + + + +REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS + +1865-1895 + + + +PEACE + + +The horrors of war are just now making a deeper impression than +ever on the popular mind, owing to the close contact with the +battle-field and the hospital into which the railroad and the +telegraph and the newspaper have brought the public of all +civilized countries. Wars are fought out now, so to speak, under +every man's and woman's eyes; and, what is perhaps of nearly as +much importance, the growth of commerce and manufactures, and the +increased complication of the social machine, render the smallest +derangement of it anywhere a concern and trouble to all nations. +The consequence is that the desire for peace was never so deep as +it is now, and the eagerness of all good people to find out some +other means of deciding international disputes than mutual +killing never so intense. + +And yet the unconsciousness of the true nature and difficulties +of the problem they are trying to solve, which is displayed by +most of those who make the advocacy of peace their special work, +is very discouraging. We are far from believing that the +incessant and direct appeals to the public conscience on the +subject of war are not likely in the long run to produce some +effect; but it is very difficult to resist the conclusion that +the efforts of the special advocates of peace have thus far +helped to spread and strengthen the impression that there is no +adequate substitute for the sword as an arbiter between nations, +or, in other words, to harden the popular heart on the subject of +military slaughter. It is certain that, during the last fifty +years, the period in which peace societies have been at work, +armies have been growing steadily larger, the means of destruction +have been multiplying, and wars have been as frequent and as +bloody as ever before; and, what is worse, the popular heart goes +into war as it has never done in past ages. + +The great reason why the more earnest enemies of war have not +made more progress toward doing away with it, has been that, from +the very outset of their labors down to the present moment, they +have devoted themselves mainly to depicting its horrors and to +denouncing its cruelty. In other words, they almost invariably +approach it from a side with which nations actually engaged in it +are just as familiar as anybody, but which has for the moment +assumed in their eyes a secondary importance. The peace advocates +are constantly talking of the guilt of killing, while the +combatants only think, and will only think, of the nobleness of +dying. To the peace advocates the soldier is always a man going +to slaughter his neighbors; to his countrymen he is a man going +to lose his life for their sake--that is, to perform the loftiest +act of devotion of which a human being is capable. It is not +wonderful, then, that the usual effect of appeals for peace made +by neutrals is to produce mingled exasperation and amusement +among the belligerents. To the great majority of Europeans our +civil war was a shocking spectacle, and the persistence of the +North in carrying it on a sad proof of ferocity and lust of +dominion. To the great majority of those engaged in carrying it +on the struggle was a holy one, in which it was a blessing to +perish. Probably nothing ever fell more cruelly on human ears +than the taunts and execrations which American wives and mothers +heard from the other side of the ocean, heaped on the husbands +and sons whom they had sent to the battle-field, never thinking +at all of their slaying, but thinking solely of their being +slain; and very glad indeed that, if death had to come, it should +come in such a cause. If we go either to France or Germany +to-day, we shall find a precisely similar state of feeling. If +the accounts we hear be true--and we know of no reason to doubt +them--there is no more question in the German and French mind +that French and German soldiers are doing their highest duty in +fighting, than there was in the most patriotic Northern or +Southern home during our war; and we may guess, therefore, how a +German or French mother, the light of whose life had gone out at +Gravelotte or Orleans, and who hugs her sorrow as a great gift of +God, would receive an address from New York on the general +wickedness and folly of her sacrifice. + +The fact is--and it is one of the most suggestive facts we know +of--that the very growth of the public conscience has helped to +make peace somewhat more difficult, war vastly more terrible. +When war was the game of kings and soldiers, the nations went +into it in a half-hearted way, and sincerely loathed it; now that +war is literally an outburst of popular feeling, the friend of +peace finds most of his logic powerless. There is little use in +reasoning with a man who is ready to die on the folly or +wickedness of dying. When a nation has worked itself up to the +point of believing that there are objects within its reach for +which life were well surrendered, it has reached a region in +which the wise saws and modern instances of the philosopher or +lawyer cannot touch it, and in which pictures of the misery of +war only help to make the martyr's crown seem more glorious. + +Therefore, we doubt whether the work of peace is well done by +those who, amidst the heat and fury of actual hostilities, dwell +upon the folly and cruelty of them, and appeal to the combatants +to stop fighting, on the ground that fighting involves suffering +and loss of life, and the destruction of property. The principal +effect of this on "the average man" has been to produce the +impression that the friends of peace are ninnies, and to make him +smile over the earnestness with which everybody looks on his own +wars as holy and inevitable, and his neighbors' wars as +unnecessary and wicked. Any practical movement to put an end to +war must begin far away from the battle-field and its horrors. It +must take up and deal with the various influences, social and +political, which create and perpetuate the state of mind which +makes people ready to fight. Preaching up peace and preaching +down war generally are very like general homilies in praise of +virtue and denunciation of vice. Everybody agrees with them, but +nobody is ever ready to admit their applicability to his +particular case. War is, in our time, essentially the people's +work. Its guilt is theirs, as its losses and sufferings are +theirs. All attempts to saddle emperors, kings, and nobles with +the responsibility of it may as well be given up from this time +forward. + +Now, what are the agencies which operate in producing the frame of +mind which makes people ready to go to war on small provocation? +It is at these the friends of peace must strike, in time of peace, +and not after the cannon has begun to roar and the country has +gone mad with patriotism and rage. They are, first of all, +the preaching in the press and elsewhere of the false and +pernicious doctrine that one nation gains by another's losses, +and can be made happy by its misery; that the United States, for +instance, profits in the long run by the prostration of French, +German, or English industry. One of the first duties of a peace +society is to watch this doctrine, and hunt it down wherever they +see it, as one of the great promoters of the pride and hardness +of heart which make war seem a trifling evil. America can no more +gain by French or German ruin than New York can gain by that of +Massachusetts. Secondly, there is the mediaeval doctrine that the +less commercial intercourse nations carry on with each other the +better for both, and that markets won or kept by force are means +of gain. There has probably been no more fruitful source of war +than this. It has for three centuries desolated the world, and +all peace associations should fix on it, wherever they encounter +it, the mark of the beast. Thirdly, there is the tendency of the +press, which is now the great moulder of public opinion, to take +what we may call the pugilist's view of international controversies. +The habit of taunting foreign disputants, sneering at the cowardice +or weakness of the one who shows any sign of reluctance in drawing +the sword, and counting up the possible profit to its own country +of one or other being well thrashed, in which it so frequently +indulges, has inevitably the effect not only of goading the +disputants into hostilities, but of connecting in the popular mind +at home the idea of unreadiness or unwillingness to fight with +baseness and meanness and material disadvantage. Fourthly, there +is the practice, to which the press, orators, and poets in every +civilized country steadily adhere, of maintaining, as far as their +influence goes, the same notions about national honor which once +prevailed about individual "honor"--that is, the notion that it is +discreditable to acknowledge one's self in the wrong, and always +more becoming to fight than apologize. "The code" has been abandoned +in the Northern States and in England in the regulations of the +relations of individual men, and a duellist is looked on, if not +as a wicked, as a crack-brained person; but in some degree in +both of them, and in a great degree in all other countries, it +still regulates the mode in which international quarrels are +brought to a conclusion. + +Last of all, and most important of all, it is the duty of peace +societies to cherish and exalt the idea of _law_ as the only true +controller of international relations, and discourage and denounce +their submission to _sentiment_. The history of civilization is the +history of the growth amongst human beings of the habit of +submitting their dealings with each other to the direction of rules +of universal application, and their withdrawal of them from the +domain of personal feeling. The history of "international law" is +the history of the efforts of a number of rulers and statesmen to +induce nations to submit themselves to a similar régime--that is, to +substitute precedents and rules based on general canons of morality +and on principles of municipal law, for the dictates of pride, +prejudice, and passion, in their mode of seeking redress of +injuries, of interpreting contracts, exchanging services, and +carrying on commercial dealings. Their success thus far has been +only partial. A nation, even the most highly civilized, is still, in +its relations with its fellows, in a condition somewhat analogous to +that of the individual savage. It chooses its friends from whim or +fancy, makes enemies through ignorance or caprice, avenges its +wrongs in a torrent of rage, or through a cold-blooded thirst for +plunder, and respects rules and usages only fitfully, and with small +attention to the possible effect of its disregard of them on the +general welfare. The man or the woman and, let us say, "the +mother"--since that is supposed to be, in this discussion, a term of +peculiar potency--who tries to exert a good influence on public +opinion on all these points, to teach the brotherhood of man as an +economical as well as a moral and religious truth; to spread the +belief that war between any two nations is a general calamity to the +civilized world; that it is as unchristian and inhuman to rouse +national combativeness as to rouse individual combativeness, as +absurd to associate honor with national wrong-doing as with +individual wrong-doing; and that peace among nations, as among +individuals, is, and can only be, the product of general reverence +for _law_ and general distrust of _feeling_--may rest assured that +he or she is doing far more to bring war to an end than can be done +by the most fervid accounts of the physical suffering it causes. It +will be a sorrowful day for any people when their men come to +consider death on the battle-field the greatest of evils, and the +human heart will certainly have sadly fallen off when those who stay +at home have neither gratitude nor admiration for those who shoulder +the musket, or are impressed less by the consideration that the +soldiers are going to kill others than by the consideration that +they are going to die themselves. There are things worth cherishing +even in war; and the seeds of what is worst in it are sown not in +camps, barracks, or forts, but in public meetings and newspapers and +legislatures and in literature. + + + +CULTURE AND WAR + + +The feeling of amazement with which the world is looking on at the +Prussian campaigns comes not so much from the tremendous display of +physical force they afford--though there is in this something almost +appalling--as from the consciousness which everybody begins to have +that to put such an engine of destruction as the German army into +operation there must be behind it a new kind of motive power. It is +easy enough for any government to put its whole male population +under arms, or even to lead them on an emergency to the field. But +that an army composed in the main of men suddenly taken from civil +pursuits should fight and march, as the Prussian army is doing, with +more than the efficiency of any veteran troops the world has yet +seen, and that the administrative machinery by which they are fed, +armed, transported, doctored, shrived, and buried should go like +clock-work on the enemy's soil, and that the people should submit +not only without a murmur, but with enthusiasm, to sacrifices such +as have never before been exacted of any nation except in the very +throes of despair, show that something far more serious has taken +place in Prussia than the transformation of the country into a camp. +In other words, we are not witnessing simply a levy _en masse_, nor +yet the mere maintenance of an immense force by a military monarchy, +but the application to military affairs of the whole intelligence of +a nation of great mental and moral culture. The peculiarity of the +Prussian system does not lie in the size of its armies or the +perfection of its armament, but in the character of the men who +compose it. All modern armies, except Cromwell's "New Model Army" +and that of the United States during the rebellion, have been +composed almost entirely of ignorant peasants drilled into passive +obedience to a small body of professional soldiers. The Prussian +army is the first, however, to be a perfect reproduction of the +society which sends it to the field. To form it, all Prussian men +lay down their tools or pens or books, and shoulder muskets. +Consequently, its excellences and defects are those of the community +at large, and the community at large being cultivated in a +remarkable degree, we get for the first time in history a real +example of the devotion of mind and training, on a great scale, to +the work of destruction. + +Of course, the quality of the private soldier has in all wars a +good deal to do with making or marring the fortunes of commanders; +but it is safe to say that no strategists have over owed so much +to the quality of their men as the Prussian strategists. Their +perfect handling of the great masses which are now manoeuvring +in France has been made in large degree possible by the +intelligence of the privates. This has been strikingly shown on +two or three occasions by the facility with which whole regiments +or brigades have been sacrificed in carrying a single position. +With ordinary troops, only a certain amount can be deliberately +and openly exacted of any one corps. The highest heights of +devotion are often beyond their reach. But if it serves the +purposes of a Prussian commander to have all the cost of an +assault fall on one regiment, he apparently finds not the slightest +difficulty in getting it to march to certain destruction, and not +blindly as peasants march, but as men of education, who understand +the whole thing, but having made it for this occasion their +business to die, do it like any other duty of life--not hilariously +or enthusiastically or recklessly, but calmly and energetically, +as they study or manufacture or plough. They get themselves killed +not one particle more than is necessary, but also not one particle +less. + +A nation organized in this way is a new phenomenon, and is worth +attentive study. It gives one a glimpse of possibilities in the +future of modern civilization of which few people have hitherto +dreamed, and it must be confessed that the prospect is not +altogether pleasing. We have been flattering ourselves--in +Anglo-Saxondom, at least--for many years back that all social +progress was to be hereafter in the direction of greater +individualism, and among us, certainly, this view has derived +abundant support from observed facts. But it is now apparent that +there is a tendency at work, which appears to grow stronger and +stronger every day, toward combination in all the work of life. +It is specially observable in the efforts of the working classes +to better their condition; it still more observable in the +efforts of capital to fortify itself against them and against the +public at large; and there is, perhaps, nothing in which more +rapid advances have been made of late years than in the power of +organization. The working of the great railroads and hotels and +manufactories, of the trades unions, of the co-operative +associations, and of the monster armies now maintained by three +or four powers, are all illustrations of it. The growth of power +is, of course, the result of the growth of intelligence, and it +is in the ratio of the growth of intelligence. + +Prussia has got the start of all other countries by combining the +whole nation in one vast organization for purposes of offence and +defence. Hitherto nations have simply subscribed toward the +maintenance of armies and concerned themselves little about their +internal economy and administration; but the Prussians have +converted themselves into an army, and have been enabled to do so +solely by subjecting themselves to a long process of elaborate +training, which has changed the national character. When reduced +to the lowest point of humiliation after the battle of Jena, they +went to work and absolutely built up the nation afresh. We may +not altogether like the result. To large numbers of people the +Prussian type of character is not a pleasing one, nor Prussian +society an object of unmixed admiration, and there is something +horrible in a whole people's passing their best years learning +how to kill. But we cannot get over the fact that the Prussian +man is likely to furnish, consciously or unconsciously, the model +to other civilized countries, until such time as some other +nation has so successfully imitated him as to produce his like. + +Let those who believe, as Mr. Wendell Phillips says that he +believes, that "the best education a man can get is what he gets +in picking up a living," and that universities are humbugs, and +that from the newspapers and lyceum lecture the citizen can +always get as much information on all subjects, human and divine, +as is good for him or the State, take a look at the Prussian +soldier as he marches past in his ill-fitting uniform and his +leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he smokes a great +deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon" ought by this +time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow, with +trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with +shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits. You +perceive, however, that a burlier, broader-shouldered, ruddier, +brighter-eyed, and heartier-looking man you never set eyes on; +and as he swings along in column, with his rifle, knapsack, +seventy rounds of ammunition, blanket, and saucepan, you must +confess you cannot help acknowledging that you feel sorry for any +equal body of men in the world with which that column may get +into "a difficulty." He drinks, too, and drinks a great deal, +both of strong beer and strong wine, and has always done so, and +all his family friends do it, and have only heard of teetotalism +through the newspapers, and, if you asked him to confine himself +to water, would look on you as an amiable idiot. Nevertheless, you +never see him drunk, nor does his beer produce on him that +utterly bemuddling or brain-paralyzing effect which is so +powerfully described by our friend Mr. James Parton as produced +on him by lager-bier, in that inquiry into the position of "The +Coming Man" toward wine, some copies of which, we see, he is +trying to distribute among the field-officers. On the contrary, +he is, on the whole, a very sober man, and very powerful thinker, +and very remarkable scholar. There is no field of human knowledge +which he has not been among the first to explore; no heights of +speculation which he has not scaled; no problem of the world over +which he is not fruitfully toiling. Moreover, his thoroughness is +the envy of the students of all other countries, and his hatred +of sham scholarship and slipshod generalization is intense. + +But what with the tobacco and the beer, and the scholarship and +his university education, you might naturally infer that he must +be a kid-glove soldier, and a little too nice and dreamy and +speculative for the actual work of life. But you never were more +mistaken. He is leaving behind him some of the finest manufactories +and best-tilled fields in the world. Moreover, he is an admirable +painter and, as all the world knows, an almost unequalled musician; +or if you want proof of his genius for business, look at the speed +and regularity with which he and his comrades have transported +themselves to the Rhine, and see the perfection of all the +arrangements of his regiment. And now, if you think his "bad habits," +his daily violations of your notions of propriety, have diminished +his power of meeting death calmly--that noblest of products of +culture--you have only to follow him up as far as Sedan and see +whether he ever flinches; whether you have ever read or heard of +a soldier out of whom more marching and fighting and dying, +and not flighty, boisterous dying either, could be got. + +Now, we can very well understand why people should be unwilling +to see the Prussian military system spread into other countries, +or even be preserved where it is. It is a pitiful thing to have +the men of a whole civilized nation spending so much time out of +the flower of their years learning to kill other men; and the +lesson to be drawn from the recent Prussian successes is +assuredly not that every country ought to have an army like the +Prussian army, though we confess that, if great armies must be +kept up, there is no better model than the Prussian. The lesson +is that, whether you want him for war or peace, there is no way +in which you can get so much out of a man as by training him, and +training him not in pieces but the whole of him; and that the +trained men, other things being equal, are pretty sure in the +long run to be the masters of the world. + + + +THE COMPARATIVE MORALITY OF NATIONS + + +We had, four or five weeks ago, a few words of controversy with the +_Christian Union_ as to the comparative morality of the Prussians +and Americans, or, rather, their comparative religiousness--meaning +by religiousness a disposition "to serve others and live as in God's +sight;" in other words, unselfishness and spirituality. We let it +drop, from the feeling that the question whether the Americans or +Prussians were the better men was only a part, and a very small +part, of the larger question. How do we discover which of any two +nations is the purer in its life or in its aims? and, is not any +judgment we form about it likely to be very defective, owing to the +inevitable incompleteness of our premises? We are not now going to +try to fix the place of either Prussia or the United States in the +scale of morality, but to point out some reasons why all comparisons +between them should be made by Americans with exceeding care and +humility. There is hardly any field of inquiry in which even the +best-informed man is likely to fall into so many errors; first, +because there is no field in which the vision is so much affected by +prejudices of education and custom; and, secondly, because there is +none in which the things we see are so likely to create erroneous +impressions about the things we do not see. But we may add that it +is a field which no intelligent and sensible man ever explores +without finding his charity greatly stimulated. + +Let us give some illustrations of the errors into which people +are apt to fall in it. Count Gasparin, a French Protestant, and +as spiritually minded a man as breathed, once talking with an +American friend expressed in strong terms his sense of the pain +it caused him that Mr. Lincoln should have been at the theatre +when he was killed, not, the friend found, because he objected in +the least to theatre-going, but because it was the evening of +Good Friday--a day which the Continental Calvinists "keep" with +great solemnity, but to which American non-episcopal Protestants +pay no attention whatever. Count Gasparin, on the other hand, +would have no hesitation in taking a ride on Sunday, or going to +a public promenade after church hours, and, from seeing him +there, his American friend would draw deductions just as +unfavorable to the Count's religious character as the Count +himself drew with regard to Mr. Lincoln's. + +Take, again, the question of drinking beer and wine. There is a +large body of very excellent men in America who, from a long +contemplation of the evils wrought by excessive indulgence in +intoxicating drinks, have worked themselves up to a state of mind +about all use of such drinks which is really discreditable to +reasonable beings, leads to the most serious platform excesses, +and is perfectly incomprehensible to Continental Europeans. To +the former, the drinking even of lager beer connotes, as the +logicians say, ever so many other vices--grossness and sensuality +of nature, extravagance, indifference to home pleasures, +repugnance to steady industry, and a disregard of the precepts of +religion and morality. To many of them a German workman, and his +wife and children, sitting in a beer-garden on a summer's +evening, which to European moralists and economists is one of the +most pleasing sights in the world, is a revolting spectacle, +which calls for the interference of the police. Now, if you go to +a beer-garden in Berlin you may, any Sunday afternoon, see +doctors of divinity--none of your rationalists--but doctors of +real divinity, to whom American theologians go to be taught, +doing this very thing, and, what is worse, smoking pipes. An +American who applied to this the same course of reasoning which +he would apply to a similar scene in America, would simply be +guilty of outrageous folly. If he argued from it that the German +doctor was selfish, or did not "live as in the sight of God," the +whole process would be a model of absurdity. + +Foreigners have drawn, on the other hand, from the American +"diligence in business," conclusions with regard to American +character far more uncomplimentary than those the _Christian Union_ +has expressed with regard to the Prussians. There are not a few +religious and moral and cultivated circles in Europe in which the +suggestion that Americans, as a nation, were characterized by +thoughtfulness for others and a sense of God's presence would be +received with derisive laughter, owing to the application to the +phenomena of American society of the process of reasoning on which, +we fear, the _Union_ relies. Down to the war, so candid and +perspicacious a man as John Stuart Mill might have been included in +this class. The earlier editions of his "Elements of Political +Economy" contained a contemptuous statement that one sex in America +was entirely given up to "dollar-hunting" and the other to "breeding +dollar-hunters." In other words, he held that the American people +were plunged in the grossest materialism, and he doubtless based +this opinion on that intense application of the men to commercial +and industrial pursuits which we see all around us, which no church +finds fault with, but which, we know, bad as its effects are on art +and literature, really coexists with great generosity, sympathy, +public spirit, and ideality. + +Take, again, the matter of chastity, on which the _Union_ +touched. We grant at the outset that wherever you have classes, +the women of the lower class suffer more or less from the men of +the upper class, and anybody who says that seductions, accomplished +through the effect on female vanity of the addresses of "superiors +in station," while almost unknown here, are very numerous in Europe, +would find plenty of facts to support him. But, on the other hand, +an attempt made to persuade a Frenchman that the familiar +intercourse which the young people of both sexes in this country +enjoy was generally pure, would fail in ninety-nine cases out of +a hundred. That it should be pure is opposed to all his experience +of human nature, both male and female; and the result of your +argument with him would be that he would conclude either that you +were an extraordinarily simple person, or took him for one. + +On the other hand, we believe the German, who thinks nothing of +drinking as much wine or beer as he cares for, draws from the +conduct of the American young woman whom he sees abroad, and from +what he reads in our papers about "free love," Indiana divorces, +abortion, and what not, conclusions with regard to American chastity +very different from those of the _Union_; and, if you sought to meet +him in discussion, he would overwhelm you with facts and cases +which, looked at apart from the general tenor of American life and +manners, it would be very hard to dispose of. He would say, for +instance, that we are not, perhaps, guilty of as many violations of +the marriage vows as Europeans; but that we make it so light a vow +that, instead of violating it, we get it abrogated, and then follow +our will; and then he would come down on us with boarding-house and +hotel life, and other things of the same kind, which might make us +despise him, but would make it a little difficult to get rid of him. + +There is probably no minor point of manners which does more to +create unfavorable impressions of Europeans among the best class +of Americans--morally the best, we mean--than the importance +attached by the former to their eating and drinking; while there +is nothing which does more to spread in Europe impressions +unfavorable to American civilization than the indifference of +Americans, and, we may add, as regards the progressive portion of +American society--cultivated indifference--to the quality of +their meals and the time of eating them. In no European country +is moderate enjoyment of the pleasures of the table considered +incompatible with high moral aims, or even a sincerely religious +character; but a man to whom his dinner was of serious importance +would find his position in an assembly of American reformers very +precarious. The German or Frenchman or Englishman, indeed, treats +a man's views of food, and his disposition or indisposition to +eat it in company with his fellows as an indication of his place +in civilization. Savages love to eat alone, and it has been +observed in partially civilized communities relapsing into +barbarism, that one of the first indications of their decline was +the abandonment of regular meals on tables, and a tendency on the +part of the individuals to retire to secret places with their +victuals. This is probably a remnant of the old aboriginal +instinct which we still see in domesticated dogs, and was, +doubtless, implanted for the protection of the species in times +when everybody looked on his neighbor's bone with a hungry eye, +and the man with the strong hand was apt to have the fullest +stomach. Accordingly, there is in Europe, and indeed everywhere, +a tendency to regard the growth of a delicacy in eating, and +close attention to the time and manner of serving meals and their +cookery, and the use of them as promoters of social intercourse, +as an indication of moral as well as material progress. To a +large number of people here, on the other hand, the bolting of +food--ten-minute dinners, for instance--and general unconsciousness +of "what is on the table," is a sign of preoccupation with serious +things. It may be; but the German love of food is not necessarily a +sign of grossness, and that "overfed" appearance, of which the +_Union_ spoke, is not necessarily a sign of inefficiency, any more +than leanness or cadaverousness is a sign of efficiency. There is +certainly some power of hard work in King William's army, and, +indeed, we could hardly point to a better illustration of the truth, +that all the affairs of men, whether political, social, or +religious, depend for their condition largely on the state of the +digestion. + +Honesty, by which we mean that class of virtues which Cicero +includes in the term _bona fides_, has, to a considerable extent, +owing, we think, to the peculiar humanitarian character which the +circumstances of the country have given to the work of reform, been +subordinated in the United States to brotherly kindness. Now, this +right to arrange the virtues according to a scale of its own, is +something which not only every age, but every nation, has claimed, +and, accordingly, we find that each community, in forming its +judgment of a man's character, gives a different degree of weight to +different features of it. Keeping a mistress would probably, +anywhere in the United States, damage a man's reputation far more +seriously than fraudulent bankruptcy; while horse-stealing, which in +New England would be a comparatively trifling offence, out in +Montana is a far fouler thing than murder. But in the European +scale, honesty still occupies the first place. Bearing this in mind, +it is worth any man's while who proposes to pass judgment on the +morality of any foreign country, to consider what is the impression +produced on foreign opinion about American morality by the story of +the Erie Railroad, by the career of Fisk, by the condition of the +judicial bench in the commercial capital of the country, by the +charges of corruption brought against such men as Trumbull and +Fessenden at the time of the impeachment trial; by the comically +prominent and beloved position which Butler has held for some years +in our best moral circles, and by the condition of the civil +service. + +The truth is that it is almost impossible for anybody to compare +one nation with another fairly, unless he possesses complete +familiarity with the national life of both, and therefore can +distinguish isolated facts from symptomatic facts. + +The reason why some of the phenomena of American society which +shock foreigners greatly, do not shock even the best Americans so +much, is not that the latter have become hardened to them--though +this counts for something--but that they know of various +counteracting and compensating phenomena which prevent, or are +sure to prevent, them in the long run from doing the mischief +which they seem to threaten. In other words, they understand the +checks and balances of their society as well as its tendencies. +Anybody who considers these things will be careful how he +denounces people whose manners differ from his own for want of +spirituality or morality, and we may add that any historical +student engaged in comparing the morality of the age in which he +lives with that of any other age which he knows only through +chronicles, will do well to exercise the same caution for the +same reasons. + + + +THE "COMIC-PAPER" QUESTION + + +It is recorded of a patriotic member of the Committee of Ways and +Means, that after hearing from the Special Commissioner of the +Revenue an elaborate and strongly fortified argument which made a +deep impression on the committee in favor of a reduction of the +whiskey tax, on the ground that the then rate, two dollars a +gallon, could not be collected--he closed the debate, and carried +the majority with him, by declaring that, for his part, he never +would admit that a government which had just suppressed the +greatest rebellion the world ever saw, could not collect two +dollars a gallon on whiskey. A large portion of the public +approaches the comic-paper problem in much the same spirit in +which this gentleman approached the whiskey tax. The country has +plenty of humor, and plenty of humorists. It fills whole pages of +numerous magazines and whole columns of numerous newspapers with +really good jokes every month. It supplies great numbers of +orators and lecturers and diners-out with "little stories," +which, of their kind, cannot be surpassed. There is probably no +country in the world, too, in which there is so much constantly +going on of the fun which does not need local knowledge or +coloring to be enjoyed, but will bear exportation, and be +recognized as the genuine article in any English-speaking part of +the world. Moreover, there is in the real American stories an +amount of suggestiveness, a power of "connotation," which cannot +be affirmed of those of any other country. A very large number of +them are real contributions to sociology, and of considerable +value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses, what no +other nation does, several professed jesters--that is, men who +are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make +a business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose +duty it is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh +Billings, and Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or +two others of less note, are a kind of personages which no other +society has produced, and could in no other society attain equal +celebrity. In fact, when one examines the total annual production +of jokes in the United States, one who knows nothing of the past +history of the comic-paper question can hardly avoid the +conclusion that such periodicals would run serious risk of being +overwhelmed with "good things" and dying of plethora. Yet the +melancholy fact is that several--indeed, all that have been +started--have died of inanition; that is, of the absence of +jokes. The last one says it offered all the great humorists in +the country plenty of work, and their own terms as to pay, and +failed to enlist them, and the chance jokes apparently were +neither numerous enough nor good enough to keep it afloat. + +Now what is the cause of this disheartening state of things? Why can +the United States not have a comic paper of their own? The answers +to this question vary, though of course not greatly. They are mostly +given in the shape of a history, with appropriate comments, of the +unsuccessful attempts made to establish comic papers; one went down +because it did not sympathize with the liberal and humane movements +of the day, and laughed in the pro-slavery interest; another, +because it never succeeded in getting hold of a good draughtsman for +its engravings; and another venture failed, among other mistakes, we +are told, because it made fun of the New York _Tribune_. The +explanation which finds most general favor with the public is, that +while in England, France, and Germany "the great dailies" confine +themselves to the serious treatment of the topics of the day, and +thus leave room for the labors of _Punch_, or _Kladderadatsch_, or +_Charivari_, in America all papers do their own joking; and, if it +seems desirable to take a comic view of anything or anybody, take it +on the spot in their own columns. + +Hence any paper which starts on a comic basis alone meets with +rivals in all its sober-minded contemporaries, and comes to +grief. The difficulty it has to contend with is, in short, very +like that which the professional laundress or baker has to +contend with, owing to the fact that families are accustomed to +do their own washing and bake their own bread. And, indeed, it is +not unlike that with which professional writers of all kinds have +to contend, owing to the readiness of clergymen, lawyers, and +professors to write, while doing something else. An ordinary +daily paper supplies, besides its serious disquisitions, fun +enough for one average household--sometimes in single jokes, and +sometimes in the shape of "sparkle" or "spiciness" in grave +articles. Often enough it is very poor stuff, but it amuses +people, without turning their attention away from the sober work +of life, which is the only way in which the vast body of +Americans are willing to be amused. Newspaper comedians have +here, what they would not have in London, a chance of letting off +a joke once a day, and six or seven jokes a week is more than any +comic paper is willing or able to take from any one contributor, +partly owing to the need of variety in a paper given wholly to +humor, and partly owing to want of space. Anybody, therefore, who +has humor for sale finds a readier market among the dailies or +magazines, and a far wider circle of readers, than he would in +any comic paper. + +The charge that our comic papers have generally opposed the friends +of liberty and progress--that is the most intelligent and +appreciative portion of the public--is quite true, but it does not +go far to account for their failure. _Punch_ has done this steadily +ever since its establishment, without serious injury. No good cause +has ever received much backing from it till it became the cause of +the majority, or indeed has escaped being made the butt of its +ridicule; and we confess we doubt whether "the friends of progress," +using the term in what we may call its technical sense, were ever a +sufficiently large body, or had ever sufficient love of fun, to make +their disfavor of any great consequence. Most people in the United +States who are very earnestly enlisted in the service of "a cause" +look on all ridicule as "wicked," and regard with great suspicion +anybody who indulges in it, whether he makes them the object of it +or not. They bore with it, when turned against slavery, from one or +two distinguished humorists, because its effectiveness was plain; +but we doubt whether any man who had the knack of seeing the +ludicrous side of things ever really won their confidence, partly +owing to their own natural want of humor, and partly to their +careful cultivation of a habit of solemnity of mind as the only +thing that can make an "advanced" position really tenable, to say +nothing of comfortable. The causes of all successes, as of all +failures, in the literary world are of course various, and no doubt +there is a good deal of truth in all that has been said in solution +of the comic-paper problem. American humorists of the best class can +find something better or more lucrative to do than writing for a +comic paper; while the poor American humorists, like the poor +humorists of all countries, are coarse and vulgar, even where they +are not stupid. + +But there is one striking difference between American society and +those societies in which comic papers have succeeded which not +only goes a good way to explain their failure here, but puts a +better face on some of their efforts--such as their onslaughts on +the friends of progress--than they seem to wear at first sight. +To furnish sufficient food for fun to keep a comic paper afloat, +a country must supply a good many strong social contrasts for the +professional joker to play upon, and must have a large amount of +reverence for social distinctions and dignities for him to shock. +Two-thirds of the zest with which foreign comic papers are read +is due to the fact that they caricature persons or social circles +with which the mass of their readers are not thoroughly familiar, +and whose habits and ways of looking at things they do not share +or only partly share. A good deal of the fun in _Punch_, for +instance, consists in making costermongers or cabmen quarrel with +the upper classes, in ridicule of Jeames's attempts to imitate +his master, of Brown's efforts to scrape acquaintance with a +peer, of the absurd figure cut by the "cad" in the hunting-field, +and of the folly of the city clerk in trying to dress and behave +like a guardsman. In short, the point of a great number of its +best jokes is made by bringing different social strata into sharp +comparison. The peculiarities of Irishmen and Scotchmen also +furnish rich materials to the caricaturist. He never tires of +illustrating the blunders and impudence of the one and the hot +patriotism and niggardliness of the other. The Irish Highlander, +who denies, in a rich brogue, that any Irish are ever admitted +into his regiment, and the cannie burgher from Aberdeen, who, on +his return home from a visit to London, says it's an "awfu' dear +place; that he hadna' been twa oors in the toon when bang went +saxpence," are types which raise a laugh all over the United +Kingdom, and all because, again, they furnish materials for +ludicrous contrast which everybody is capable of appreciating. + +Neither the Irishman, Scotchman, nor Englishman, as such, can be +made to yield much fun, if sketched alone. It is when ranged +alongside of each other, and measured by the English middle-class +standard of propriety, that they become entertaining. + +In a homogeneous society, like that of the United States, none of +this material is to be found. The New Englander, to be sure, +furnishes a type which differs from the Middle-States man or the +Southerner or Westerner, but none of them differs enough to make him +worth caricaturing. His speech, his dress, his modes of acting and +thinking so nearly resemble those of his neighbors in other parts of +the country that after the comic writer or draughtsman had done his +best or his worst upon him, it would remain still a little doubtful +where the joke came in. The Irishman, and especially the New York +Irish voter, and his sister Bridget, the cook, have during the past +ten years rendered more or less service as butts for caricaturists, +but they are rapidly wearing out. They are not many-sided persons at +best, and their characteristics have become associated in the +American mind with so much that is uncomfortable and repulsive in +domestic and political life, that it becomes increasingly difficult +to get a native to laugh at them. It must be confessed, too, that +the Irish in America have signally belied the poet's assertion, +"_Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt_." There is +nothing more striking in their condition than the almost complete +disappearance from their character, at least in its outward +manifestations, of the vivacity, politeness, kindliness, comical +blundering impetuosity, and double-sightedness, out of which the +Irishman of the stage and Jo Miller's Irishman who made all the +bulls were manufactured in the last century. Of the other +nationalities we need hardly speak, as the English-speaking public +knows little of them, although the German Jew is perhaps the most +durable material the comic writer has ever worked on. + +The absence of class distinctions here, too, and the complete +democratization of institutions during the last forty years, have +destroyed the reverence and sense of mystery by shocking which +the European comic paper produces some of its most tickling +effects. Gladstone and Disraeli figuring as pugilists in the +ring, for instance, diverts the English public, because it gives +a very smart blow to the public sense of fitness, and makes a +strong impression of absurdity, these two men being to the +English public real dignitaries, in the strict sense of the word, +and under the strongest obligations to behave properly. But a +representation of Grant and Sumner as pugilists would hardly make +Americans laugh, because, though absurd, it would not be nearly +so absurd, or run counter to any so sharply defined standard of +official demeanor. The Lord Chief-Justice playing croquet with a +pretty girl owes nearly all its point, as a joke, to the popular +awe of him and the mystery which surrounds his mode of life in +popular eyes; a picture of Chief-Justice Chase doing the same +thing would hardly excite a smile, because everybody knows him, +and has known him all his life, and can have access to him at any +hour of the night or day. And then it must be borne in mind that +Paris and London contain all the famous men of France and +England, and anybody who jokes about them is sure of having the +whole public for an audience; while the best New York joke falls +flat in Boston or Philadelphia, and flatter still in Cincinnati +or Chicago, owing to want of acquaintance with the materials of +which it is composed. + +We might multiply these illustrations indefinitely, but we have +probably said enough to show anyone that the field open to our +comic writer is very much more restricted than that in which his +European rival labors. He has, in short, to seek his jokes in +character, while the European may draw largely upon manners, and +it is doubtful whether character will ever supply materials for a +really brilliant weekly comedian. Its points are not sufficiently +salient. The American comic papers have evidently perceived the +value of reverence and of violent contrast for the purposes of +their profession, and this it is which leads them so constantly +to select reformers and reform movements as their butts. The +earnest man, intensely occupied with "a cause," comes nearer to +standing in the relation to the popular mind occupied in England +by the aristocrat or statesman than anybody else in America. The +politician is notorious for his familiarity with all comers, and +"the gentleman" has become too insignificant a person to furnish +materials for a contrast; but the progressive man is sufficiently +well known, and sufficiently stiff in his moral composition, to +make it funny to see him in a humorous tableau. + + + +MR. FROUDE AS A LECTURER + + +Mr. Froude announced that his object in coming to America was to +enlighten the American public as to the true nature of Irish +discontent, in such manner that American opinion, acting on Irish +opinion, would reconcile the Irish to the English connection, and +turn their attention to practical remedies for whatever was wrong +in their condition--American opinion being now, in Irish eyes, +the court of last resort in all political controversies. It is +casting no reflection on the historical or literary value of his +lectures to say that Mr. Froude, in proposing to himself any such +undertaking, fell into error as to the kind of audience he was +likely to command, and as to the nature of the impression he was +likely to make. The class of persons who listen to him is one of +great intelligence and respectability, but it is a class to which +the Irish are not in the habit of listening, and which has +already formed as unfavorable opinions about the political +character of the Irish as Mr. Froude could wish. He will be +surrounded during his whole tour by a public to whose utterances +the Irish pay no more attention than to the preachings of Mr. +Newdegate or Mr. Whalley, and who have long ago reached, from +their observation of the influence of the Irish immigration on +American politics, the very conclusions for which Mr. Froude +proposes to furnish historical justification. In short, he is +addressing people who have either already made up their minds, or +whose minds have no value for the purpose of his mission. + +On the other hand, he will not reach at all the political class +which panders to Irish hatred of England, and, if he does reach +it, he will produce no effect on it. Not one speech the less will +be uttered, or article the less written, in encouragement of +Fenianism in consequence of anything he may say. Indeed, the idea +that the Bankses will be more careful in their Congressional +reports, or the Coxes or Mortons in their political harangues, +either after or before election, in consequence of Mr. Froude's +demonstration of the groundlessness of Fenian complaints, is one +which to "the men inside politics" must be very amusing. + +We think, however, we can safely go a little further than this, +and say that however much light he may throw on the troubled +waters of Irish history, his deductions will not find a ready +acceptance among thinking Americans. The men who will heartily +agree with him in believing that the Irish have, on the whole, +only received their due, are not, as a rule, fair exponents of +the national temper or of the tendencies of the national mind. +Those who listened on Friday night last to his picturesque +account of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian attempts to pacify +Ireland, must have felt in their bones that--in spite of the +cheers which greeted some of his own more eloquent and some of +his bolder passages, and in particular his dauntless way of +dealing with the Drogheda Massacre--his political philosophy was +not one which the average American could be got to carry home +with him and ponder and embrace. Mr. Froude, it must in justice +to him be said, by no means throws all the responsibility of +Irish misery on Ireland. He deals out a considerable share of +this responsibility to England, but then his mode of apportioning +it is one which is completely opposed to most of the fundamental +notions of American politics. For instance, his whole treatment +of Irish history is permeated by an idea which, whatever marks it +may have left on American practice in dealing with the Indians, +has no place now in American political philosophy--we mean what +is called in English politics "the imperial idea"--the idea, that +is, that a strong, bold, and courageous race has a sort of +"natural right" to invade the territory of weak, semi-civilized, +and distracted races, and undertake the task of governing them by +such methods as seem best, and at such cost of life as may be +necessary. This idea is a necessary product of English history; +it is not likely to disappear in England as long as she possesses +such a school for soldiers and statesmen as is furnished by +India. Indeed, she could not stay in India without some such +theory to support her troops, but it is not one which will find a +ready acceptance here. American opinion has, within the last +twenty years, run into the very opposite extreme, and now +maintains with some tenacity the right even of barbarous +communities to be let alone and allowed to work out their own +salvation or damnation in their own way. There is little or no +faith left in this country in the value of superimposed +civilization, or of "superior minds," or of higher organization, +while there is a deep suspicion of, or we might say there is deep +hostility toward, all claims to rule based on alleged superiority +of race or creed or class. We doubt if Mr. Froude could have hit +on a more unpalatable mode, or a mode more likely to clash with +the prevailing tendencies of American opinion, of defending +English rule in Ireland than the argument that, Englishmen being +stronger and wiser than Irishmen, Irishmen ought to submit to +have themselves governed on English ideas whether they like it or +not. He has produced this argument already in England, and it has +elicited there a considerable amount of indignant protest. We are +forced to say of it here that it is likely to do great mischief, +over and above the total defeat of Mr. Froude's object in coming +to this country. The Irish in America are more likely to be +exasperated by it than the Irish at home, and we feel sure that +no native American will ever venture to use it to an Irish +audience. + +There is one other point to which Mr. Froude's attention ought to +be called, as likely seriously to diminish the political weight +of his exposition of the causes of Irish discontent. The sole +justification of a conquest, even of a conquest achieved over +barbarians by a civilized people, is that it supplies good +government--that is, protection for life and property. Unless it +does this, no picture, however dark, of the discords and disorder +and savagery of the conquered can set the conqueror right at the +bar of civilized opinion. Therefore, the shocking and carefully +darkened pictures of the social and political degradation of the +native Irish in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth +centuries with which Mr. Froude is furnishing us, are available +for English vindication only on the supposition that the +invasion, even if it destroyed liberty, brought with it law and +order. But according to Mr. Froude's eloquent confession, it +brought nothing of the kind. + +Queen Elizabeth made the first serious attempt to subjugate +Ireland, but she did it, Mr. Froude tells us, with only a handful +of English soldiers--who acted as auxiliaries to Irish clans +engaged on the queen's instigation in mutual massacre. After +three years of this sort of thing, the whole southern portion of +the island was reduced, to use Mr. Froude's words, "to a smoking +wilderness," men, women, and children having been remorselessly +slaughtered; but no attempt whatever was then made to establish +either courts or police, or any civil rule of any kind. Society +was left in a worse condition than before. Why was this? Because, +says Mr. Froude, the English Constitution made no provision for +the maintenance of a standing army for any such purpose. + +The second attempt was made by Cromwell. He slaughtered the +garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford, and scattered the armies of +the various Irish factions, but he made no more attempt to police +the island than Elizabeth. The only mode of establishing order +resorted to by the Commonwealth was the wholesale confiscation of +the land, and its distribution among the officers and soldiers of +the army, the natives of all ages and sexes being driven into +Connaught. The "policing" was then left to be done by the new +settlers, each man with the strong hand, on his own account. The +third attempt was made by William III., who also followed the +Cromwellian plan, and left the island to be governed during the +following century by the military adventurers who had entered +into possession of the soil. + +The excuse for not endeavoring to set up an honest and efficient +government remained the same in all three cases; the absence of +an army, or occupation elsewhere. In other words, the conquest +from first to last wanted the only justification which any +conquest can have. England found the Irish much in the same stage +of social and political progress in which Caesar found the Gauls, +destitute of nearly all the elements of political organization; +but instead of founding a political system, and maintaining it, +she interfered for century after century only to subjugate and +lay waste, and set the natives by the ears. Mr. Froude's answer +to this is, that if the Irish had been better men they could +easily have driven the English out, which is perhaps a good +reason for not bestowing much pity on the Irish, but it is not a +good reason for telling the Irish they ought not to hate England. +No pity can be made welcome which is ostentatiously mingled with +contempt. It is quite true, to our minds, that during the last +fifty years England has supplied the Irish with a better +government than the Irish could provide for themselves within the +next century at least. + +There is no doubt of the substantial value of the English connection +to Ireland _now_; but there is just as little that in the past +history of this connection there is reason enough for Irish +suspicion and dislike. The tenacity of the Irish memory, too, is one +of the great political defects and misfortunes of the race. +Inability to forget past "wrongs" in the light of present +prosperity, is a sure sign of the absence of the political sense; +and that the Irish are wanting in the political sense no candid man +can deny. That they are really still, to a considerable extent, in +the tribal stage of progress, there is little doubt. But they are +surrounded by ideas, and institutions, and influences which make it +useless to try to raise them out of that stage by the "imperial" +method of government, or, in other words, by trying to persuade them +that they have richly deserved all their misfortunes, and that the +best thing they can do is to let a superior race mould their +destinies. If it were possible for Englishmen to be a little more +patient with their weaknesses, to yield a little more to the +childish vanities and aspirations which form the nearest approach +they have yet made to a feeling of nationality, and take upon +themselves in word as well as in deed their share of the horrible +burdens of Irish history, it would do more toward winning them Irish +confidence than anything Americans are ever likely to say. + + + + +MR. HORACE GREELEY + + +There has been something almost tragic about the close of Mr. +Greeley's career. After a life of, on the whole, remarkable success +and prosperity, he fell finally under the weight of accumulated +misfortunes. Nobody who heard him declare that "he accepted the +Cincinnati Convention and its consequences," but must be struck by +the illustration of what is called "the irony of fate," which nearly +everything that occurred afterwards affords. His nomination, from +whatever point of view we look at it, was undoubtedly a high honor. +The manner in which it was received down to the Baltimore Convention +was very flattering. Whether it was a proper thing to "beat Grant" +or not, that so large and so shrewd a body of his countrymen should +have thought Mr. Greeley the man to do it was a great compliment. It +found him, too, in possession of all the influence which the +successful pursuit of his own calling could give a man--the most +powerful editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers, +feared or courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the +full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In +six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had endured a +humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what +was his dearest possession, the affection of the American people; he +had lost the weight in public affairs which he had built up by +thirty years of labor; he saw his property and, as he thought, that +of his friends diminished by the attempt to give him a prize which +he had in his own estimation fairly earned, and, though last not +least, he found his home invaded by death, and one of the strongest +of the ties which bind a man to this earth broken. It would not be +wonderful if, under these circumstances, the coldest and toughest of +men should lie down and die. But Mr. Greeley was neither cold nor +tough. He was keenly sensitive both to praise and blame. The +applause of even paltry men gladdened him, and their censure stung +him. Moreover, he had that intense longing for reputation as a man +of action by which men of the closet are so often torn. In spite of +all that his writing brought him in reputation, he writhed under the +popular belief that he could do nothing but write, and he spent the +flower of his years trying to convince the public that it was +mistaken about him. It was to this we owed whatever was ostentatious +in his devotion to farming, and in his interest in the manufacturing +industry of the country. It was to this, too, that he owed his keen +and lifelong desire for office, and, in part at least, his activity +in getting offices for other people. + +Office-seekers have become in the United States so ridiculous and so +contemptible a class, that a man can hardly seek a place in the +public service without incurring a certain amount of odium; and +perhaps nothing did more damage to Mr. Greeley's reputation than his +anxiety to be put in places of trust or dignity. And yet it is +doubtful if many men seek office with more respectable motives than +his. For pecuniary emolument he cared nothing; but he did pine all +his life long for some conspicuous recognition of his capacity for +the conduct of affairs, and he never got it. The men who have +nominations to bestow either never had confidence enough in his +judgment or ability to offer him anything which he would have +thought worthy of his expectations when there was the least chance +of their choice receiving a popular ratification. They disliked him, +as politicians are apt to dislike an editor in the political arena, +as a man who, in having a newspaper at his back, is sure not to play +their game fairly. The consequence was that he was constantly +irritated by finding how purely professional his influence was, or, +in other words, what a mortifying disproportion existed between his +editorial and his personal power. The first revelation the public +had of the bitterness of his disappointment on this score was caused +by the publication of the famous Seward letter, and the surprise it +caused was perhaps the highest compliment Mr. Greeley ever received. +It showed with what success he had prevented his private griefs from +affecting his public action, and people are always ready to forgive +ambition as an "infirmity of noble minds," even when they do not +feel disposed to reward it. + +Unfortunately for Mr. Greeley, however, he never could persuade +himself that the public was of the same mind as the politicians +regarding his personal capacity. He persisted to the last in +believing himself the victim of their envy, hatred, and malice, and +looking with unabated hope to some opportunity of obtaining a +verdict on his merits as a man of action, in which his widespread +popularity and his long and laborious teachings would fairly tell. +The result of the Cincinnati Convention, which his friends and +emissaries from this city went out to prepare, but which perhaps +neither he nor they in the beginning ventured to hope for, seemed to +promise him at last the crown and consummation of a life's longings, +and he received it with almost childlike joy. The election was, +therefore, a crushing blow. It was not, perhaps, the failure to get +the presidency that was hardest to bear--for this might have been +accompanied by such a declaration of his fitness for the presidency +as would have sweetened the remainder of his years--it was the +contemptuous greatness of his opponent's majority which was killing. +It dissipated the illusion of half a lifetime on the one point on +which illusions are dearest--a man's exact place in the estimation +of his countrymen. Very few--even of those whose fame rests on the +most solid foundation of achievement--ever ask to have this +ascertained by a positive test without dread or misgiving, or face +the test without a strain, which the nerves of old men are often ill +fitted to bear. That Mr. Greeley's nerves were unequal to the shock +of failure we now know. But it needed no intimate acquaintance with +him to see that the card in which he announced, two days after the +election, that he would thereafter be a simple editor, would seek +office no more, and would confine himself to the production of a +candid and judicial-minded paper, must have been written in +bitterness of spirit for which this world had no balm. + +In addition to the deceptions caused by his editorial influence, Mr. +Greeley had others to contend with, more subtle, but not less +potent. The position of the editor of a leading daily paper is +one which, in our time, is hardly possible for the calmest and +most candid man to fill without having his judgment of himself +perverted by flattery. Our age is intensely commercial; it is not +the dry-goods man or the grain merchant only who has goods for sale, +but the poet, the orator, the scholar, the philosopher, and the +politician. We are all, in a measure, seeking a market for our +wares. What we desire, therefore, above all things, is a good +advertising medium, or, in other words, a good means of making known +to all the world where our store is and what we have to sell. This +means the editor of a daily paper can furnish to anybody he pleases. +He is consequently the object of unceasing adulation from a crowd of +those who shrink from fighting the slow and doubtful battle of life +in the open field, and crave the kindly shelter of editorial +plaudits, "puffs," and "mentions." He finds this adulation offered +freely, and by all classes and conditions, without the least +reference to his character or talents or antecedents. What wonder if +it turns the heads of unworthy men, and begets in them some of the +vices of despots--their unscrupulousness, their cruelty, and their +impudence. What wonder, too, if it should have thrown off his +balance a man like Mr. Greeley, whose head was not strong, whose +education was imperfect, and whose self-confidence had been +fortified by a brave and successful struggle with adversity. + +Of his many private virtues, of his kind-heartedness, his +generosity, his sympathy with all forms of suffering and anxiety, we +do not need to speak. His career, too, has little in it to point any +moral that is not already trite and familiar. The only lesson we can +gather from it with any clearness is the uncertainty of this world, +and all that it contains, and the folly of seeking the presidency. +Nobody can hope to follow in his footsteps. He began life as a kind +of editor of which he was one of the last specimens, and which will +shortly be totally extinct--the editor who fought as the man-at-arms +of the party. This kind of work Mr. Greeley did with extraordinary +earnestness and vehemence and success--so much success that a modern +newspaper finally grew up around him, in spite of him, almost to his +surprise, and often to his embarrassment. The changed condition of +journalism, the substitution of the critical for the party views of +things, he never wholly accepted, and his frequent personal +appearance in his columns, under the signature of "H. G." hurling +defiance at his enemies or exposing their baseness, showed how +stifling he found the changed atmosphere. He was fast falling behind +his age when he died. New men, and new issues, and new processes, +which he either did not understand at all or only understood +imperfectly, crowded upon him. If the dazzling prize of the +presidency had not been held before his eyes, we should probably +have witnessed his gradual but certain retirement into well-won +repose. Those who opposed him most earnestly must now regret +sincerely that in his last hours he should have known the bitterness +of believing, what was really not true, that the labors of his life, +which were largely devoted to good causes, had not met the +appreciation they merited at the hands of his countrymen. It is for +his own sake, as well as that of the public, greatly to be regretted +that he should not have lived until the smoke of the late conflict +had cleared away. + + + +THE MORALS AND MANNERS OF THE KITCHEN + + +Mr. Froude's attempt to secure from the American public a +favorable judgment on the dealings of England with Ireland has +had one good result--though we fear only one--in leading to a +little closer examination of the real state of American opinion +about Irish grievances than it has yet received. He will go back +to England with the knowledge--which he evidently did not possess +when he came here--that the great body of intelligent Americans +care very little about the history of "the six hundred years of +wrong," and know even less than they care, and could not be +induced, except by a land-grant, or a bounty, or a drawback, to +acquaint themselves with it; that those of them who have ever +tried to form an opinion on the Anglo-Irish controversy have +hardly ever got farther than a loose notion that England had most +likely behaved like a bully all through, but that her victim was +beyond all question an obstreperous and irreclaimable ruffian, +whose ill-treatment must be severely condemned by the moralist, +but over whom no sensible man can be expected to weep or +sympathize. + +The agencies which have helped to form the popular idea of the +English political character are well known; those which have helped +to deprive the Irish of American sympathy--and which, if Mr. Froude +had judiciously confined himself to describing the efforts made by +England to promote Irish well-being _now_, would probably have made +his lectures very successful--are more obscure. We ourselves pointed +out one of the most prominent, and probably most powerful--the +conduct of the Irish servant-girl in the American kitchen. To this +must of course be added the specimen of "home rule" to which the +country has been treated in this city; but we doubt if this latter +has really exercised as much influence on American opinion as some +writers try to make out. A community which has produced Butler, +Banks, Parker, Bullock, Tweed, Tom Fields, Oakey Hall, Fernando +Wood, Barnard, and scores of others whom we might name, as the +results of good Protestant and Anglo-Saxon breeding, cannot really +be greatly shocked by the bad workings of Celtic blood and Catholic +theology in the persons of Peter B. Sweeny, Billy McMullen, Jimmy +O'Brien, Reddy the Blacksmith, or Judge McCunn. It is in the kitchen +that the Irish iron has entered into the American soul; and it is in +the kitchen that a great triumph was prepared for Mr. Froude, had he +been a judicious man. The memory of burned steaks, of hard-boiled +potatoes, of smoked milk, would have done for him what no state +papers, or records, or correspondence of the illustrious dead can +ever do; it had prepared the American mind to believe the very worst +he could say of Irish turbulence and disorder. Not one of his +auditors but could find in his own experience of Irish cooking +circumstances which would probably have led him to accept without +question the execution of Silken Thomas, the massacre of Drogheda, +or even the Penal Laws, as perfectly justifiable exercises of +authority, and would certainly have made it easy for him to believe +that English rule in Ireland at the present day is beneficent beyond +example. + +Nevertheless, we are constrained to say that in our opinion a +great deal of the odium which surrounds Bridget, and which has +excited so much prejudice, not only against her countrymen, but +against her ancestors, in American eyes, has a very insufficient +foundation in reason. There are three characters in which she is +the object of public suspicion and dislike--(1) as a cook; (2) as a +party to a contract; (3) as a member of a household. The charges +made against her in all of these have been summed up in a recent +attack on her in the _Atlantic Monthly_, as "a lack of every quality +which makes service endurable to the employer, or a wholesome life +for the servant." + +And the same article charges her with "proving herself, in +obedience, fidelity, care, and accuracy, the inferior of every +kind of servant known to modern society." Of course, there is +hardly a family in the country which has not had, in its own +experience, illustrations of the extravagance of these charges. +There is probably nobody who has long kept servants, who has not +had Irish servants who were obedient, faithful, careful, and even +accurate in a remarkable degree. But then it must be admitted that +this indictment is a tolerably fair rendering, if not of the actual +facts of the case, at least of the impression the facts have left +on the mind of the average employer. This impression, however, needs +correction, as a few not very recondite considerations will show. + +As a cook, Bridget is an admitted failure. But cooking is, it is +now generally acknowledged, very much an affair of instinct, and +this instinct seems to be very strong in some races and very weak +in others, though why the French should have it highly developed, +and the Irish be almost altogether deprived of it, is a question +which would require an essay to itself. No amount of teaching +will make a person a good cook who is not himself fond of good +food and has not a delicate palate, for it is the palate which +must test the value of rules. We may deduce from this the +conclusion, which experience justifies, that women are not +naturally good cooks. They have had the cookery of the world in +their hands for several thousand years, but all the marked +advances in the art, and indeed all that can be called the +cultivation of it, have been the work of men. Whatever zeal women +have displayed in it, and whatever excellence they have achieved +in it, have been the result of influences in no way gastronomic, +and which we might perhaps call emotional, such as devotion to +male relatives, or a desire to minister to the pleasure of men in +general. Few or no women cook a dinner in an artistic spirit, and +their success in doing it is nearly always the result of +affection or loyalty--which is of course tantamount to saying +that female cookery as a whole is, and always has been, +comparatively poor. + +As a proof of this, we may mention the fact--for fact we think it +is--that the art of cooking among women has declined at any given +time or place--in the Northern States of the Union, for +instance--_pari passu_, with the growth of female independence. That +is, as the habit or love of ministering to men's tastes has become +weaker, the interest in cookery has fallen off. There are no such +cooks among native American women now as there were fifty years ago; +and passages in foreign cookery books which assume the existence +among women of strong interest in their husbands' and brothers' +likings, and strong desire to gratify them, furnish food for +merriment in American households. Bridget, therefore, can plead, +first of all, the general incapacity of women as cooks; and, +secondly, the general falling off in the art under the influence of +the new ideas. It may be that she _ought_ to cultivate assiduously +or with enthusiasm a calling which all the other women of the +country ostentatiously despise, but she would be more than human if +she did so. She imitates American women as closely as she can, and +cannot live on the same soil without imbibing their ideas; and +unhappily, as in all cases of imitation, vices are more easily and +earlier caught than virtues. + +She can make, too, an economical defence of the most powerful +kind, to the attacks on her in this line, and it is this: that +whether her cooking be bad or good, she offers it without +deception or subterfuge, at a fair rate, and without compulsion; +that nobody who does not like her dishes need eat them; and that +her defects of taste or training can only be fairly made a cause +of hatred and abuse when she does work badly, which somebody else +is waiting to do better, if she would get out of the way. She has +undertaken the task of cooking for the American nation, not of +her own motion, but simply and solely because the American nation +could find nobody else to do it. She does not, therefore, occupy +the position of a broken-down or incompetent artist, but of a +volunteer at a fire, or a passer-by when you are lying in the +ditch with your leg broken. + +The plain truth of the matter is, that the whole native population +of the United States has almost suddenly, and with one accord, +refused to perform for hire any of the services usually called +"menial" or indoor. The men have found other more productive fields +of industry, and the women, under the influence of the prevailing +theory of life, have resolved to accept any employment at any wages +sooner than do other people's housework. The result has been a +demand for trained servants which the whole European continent could +not supply if it would, and which has proved so intense that it has +drawn the peasantry out of the fields _en masse_ from the one +European country in which the peasantry was sufficiently poor to be +tempted, and spoke or understood the American language. No such +phenomenon has ever been witnessed before. No country before has +ever refused to do its own "chores," and called in an army of +foreigners for the purpose. To complain bitterly of their want of +skill is therefore, under the circumstances, almost puerile, from an +economical point of view; while, to anyone who looks at the matter +as a moralist, it is hard to see why Bridget, doing the work badly +in the kitchen, is any more a contemptible object than the American +sewing-girl killing herself in a garret at three dollars a week, out +of devotion to "the principle of equality." + +As a party to a contract, Bridget's defects are very strongly +marked. Her sense of the obligation of contracts is feeble. The +reason why this particular vice excites so much odium in her case +is, that the inconveniences of her breaches of contract are +greater than those of almost any other member of the community. +They touch us in our most intimate social relations, and cause us +an amount of mental anguish out of all proportion to their real +importance. But her spirit about contracts is really that of the +entire community in which she lives. Her way of looking at her +employer is, we sincerely believe, about the way of looking at +him common among all employees. The only real restraint on +laborers of any class among us nowadays is the difficulty of +finding another place. Whenever it becomes as easy for clerks, +draughtsmen, mechanics, and the like to "suit themselves" as it +is for cooks or housemaids, we find them as faithless. Native +mechanics and seamstresses are just as perfidious as Bridget, but +incur less obloquy, because their faithlessness causes less +annoyance; but they have no more regard in making their plans for +the interest or wishes of their employer than she has, and they +all take the "modern view" of the matter. What makes her so fond +of change is that she lives in a singularly restless society, in +which everybody is engaged in a continual struggle to "better +himself"--her master, in nine cases out of ten, setting her an +example of dislike to steady industry and slow gains. Moreover, +domestic service is a kind of employment which, if not sweetened +by personal affection, is extraordinarily full of wear and tear. +In it there is no real end to the day, and in small households, +the pursuit and oversight, and often the "nagging," of the +employer, or, in other words, the presence of an exacting, +semi-hostile, and slightly contemptuous person is constant. This +and confinement in a half-dark kitchen produce that nervous +crisis which sends male mechanics and other male laborers, +engaged in monotonous callings, off "on a spree." In Bridget's +case it works itself off by a change of place, with a few days of +squalid repose among "her own people" in a tenement-house. + +As regards her general bearing as a member of a household, she +has to contend with three great difficulties--ignorance of +civilized domestic life, for which she is no more to blame than +Russian moujiks; difference of race and creed on the part of her +employer (and this is one which the servants of no other country +have to contend with); and lastly, the strong contempt for +domestic service felt and manifested by all that portion of the +American population with which she comes in contact, and to which +it is her great ambition to assimilate herself. Those who have +ever tried the experiment of late years of employing a native +American as a servant, have, we believe, before it was over, +generally come to look on Bridget as the personification of +repose, if not of comfort; and those who have to call on native +Americans, even occasionally, for services of a quasi-personal +character, such as those of expressmen, hotel clerks, plumbers, +we believe are anxious to make their intercourse with these +gentlemen as brief as possible. Most expressmen are natives, and +are freemen of intelligence and capacity, but they carry your +trunk into your hall with the air of convicts doing forced labor +for a tyrannical jailer. If the spirit in which they discharge +their duties--and they are specimens of a large class--were to +make its way into our kitchens, society would go to pieces. + +In short, Bridget is the legitimate product of our economical, +political, and moral condition. We have called her, in our +extremity, to do duties for which she is not trained, and having +got her here have surrounded her with influences and ideas which +American society has busied itself for fifty years in fostering +and spreading, and which, taking hold of persons in her stage of +development, work mental and moral ruin. The things which +American life and manners preach to her are not patience, +sober-mindedness, faithfulness, diligence, and honesty, and +eagerness for physical enjoyment. Whenever the sound of the new +gospel which is to win the natives back to the ancient and noble +ways is heard in the land, it is fair to expect that it will not +find her ears wholly closed, and that when the altar of duty is +again set up by her employers, she will lay on it attractive +beefsteaks, potatoes done to a turn, make libations of delicious +soup, and will display remarkable fertility in "sweets," and an +extreme fondness for washing, and learn to grow old in one +family. + + + +JOHN STUART MILL + + +Mr. Mill was, in many respects, one of the most singular men ever +produced by English society. His father was a prominent member of +the small sect or coterie of Benthamites, whose attempts to +reform the world, during the whole of the earlier part of the +present century, furnished abundant matter for ridicule to the +common run of politicians and social philosophers; and this +ridicule was heightened, as the years rolled on, by the +extraordinary jargon which their master adopted for the +communication of his discoveries to the world. The author of the +"Defence of Usury," of the "Fragment on Government," and of the +"Book of Fallacies," had, however, secured a reputation very +early in his career which his subsequent eccentricities could not +shake, but the first attempts of his disciples to catch the +public ear were not fortunate. Macaulay's smart review of James +Mill's book on "Government" gives a very fair expression to the +common feeling about them in English literary and political +circles during John Stuart's boyhood. About the value of the +father's labors as a mental philosopher there are of course a +variety of opinions, but he gave two proofs of capacity for the +practical work of life which there was no gainsaying. He came to +London an obscure man of humble origin, but managed, without ever +having been in India, and at a period when authors were held in +much less esteem by politicians than they were at a later period, +to produce such an impression of his knowledge of Indian affairs, +by his elaborate history of that country, on the minds of the +Directors of the Company, that they gave him an important office +in the India House, and this, too, in spite of the fact that he +lived in a circle generally considered visionary--answering, in +fact, in some degree to what we call the "long-haired people." +Besides this, he himself personally gave his son an education +which made him, perhaps, all things considered, the most +accomplished man of his age, and without help from the universities +or any other institution of learning. The son grew up with a +profound reverence for his father as a scholar and thinker, +and rarely lost an opportunity of expressing it, though, curiously +enough, he began very early to look on Bentham, the head of the +school, with a critical eye. The young man's course was, however, +still more remarkable than the father's. + +Although brought up in a narrow coterie holding peculiar and +somewhat unpopular opinions, and displaying, from his first entrance +in life, as intense hostility as it was in his nature to feel +against anything, against the English universities as then organized +and conducted, though they were the centre of English culture and +indeed one might say of intellectual activity, he saw himself, +before he reached middle life, the most potent influence known to +educated Englishmen, and perhaps that which has most contributed to +the late grave changes in English public opinion on several of the +leading social and political problems. Indeed, it is not too much to +say that his writings produced a veritable _débâcle_ in the English +mind. The younger generation were a good deal stirred by Carlyle; +but Carlyle, after all, only woke people up, and made them look out +of the window to see what was the matter, after which most of them +went to bed again and slept comfortably. His cries were rather too +inarticulate to furnish anything like a new gospel, and he never +took hold of the intellectual class. But Mill did. The "Logic" and +"Political Economy," as reinforced and expounded by his earlier +essays, were generally accepted by the younger men as the teachings +of a real master, and even those who fully accepted neither his +mental philosophy nor his social economy, acknowledged that the day +of old things was passing away under his preaching. His method, +however, as applied to politics, was not original--in fact, it was +Bentham's. + +Bentham, who was perhaps, in the field of jurisprudence, the most +destructive critic that ever appeared, had the merit which in his +day was somewhat novel among reformers, and marked him out as +something very different from Continental radicals--of being also +highly constructive. Indeed, his labors in providing substitutes +for what he sought to overthrow are among the most curious, and, +we might add, valuable monuments of human industry and ingenuity. +His proposed reforms were based, too, on a theory of human nature +which differed from that in use among a large number of radicals +in our day in being perfectly sound, that is, in perfect +accordance with observed facts, as far as it went. But it did not +go nearly far enough. It did not embrace the whole of human +nature, or even the greater part of it, and for the simple +reason, which Mr. Mill himself has pointed out in his analysis of +Bentham's character, that its author was almost entirely wanting +in sympathy and imagination. A very large proportion of the +springs of human action were unknown or incomprehensible to him. + +The result was that, although he exerted a powerful influence on +English law reform by his exposure of specific abuses, he made +little impression on English sociology, properly so called. This +was in part due to his narrowness of view, and in part to the +absence of an interpreter, none of his followers having attempted +to put his wisdom into readable shape, except Dumont, and he only +partially and in French. The application of his method to the +work of general reform was indeed left to Mr. Mill, who brought +to the task an amount of culture to which Bentham could make no +claim, and a large share of the sympathy of which there was also +so little in Bentham's composition, and a style which, for +expository and didactic purposes, has perhaps never been surpassed. +Moreover, Mr. Mill lost no time, as most men do, in maturing. +He was a full-blown philosopher at twenty-five, and discourses in +his earliest essays with almost the same measure, circumspection, +and gravity exhibited in the latest of his works, and with all the +Benthamite precision and attention to limitations. + +He was, however, wanting, as his master was, in imagination, and +wanting, too, in what we may call, though not in any bad sense, +the animal side of man's nature. He suffered in his treatment of +all the questions of the day from excess of culture and +deficiency of blood. He understood and allowed for men's errors +of judgment and for their ignorance, and for their sloth and +indifference; but of appreciation of the force of their passions +his speculations contain little sign. For instance, he was the +first to point out the fact that the principle of competition, +the eager desire to sell, which furnishes the motive power of the +English and American social organization, is almost unknown and +unfelt among the greater part of mankind, but his remedy for +redundancy of population, and his lamentations over "the +subjection of women," are those of a recluse or a valetudinarian. + +His influence as a political philosopher may be said to have +stood highest after the appearance of the "Political Economy." He +had, then, perhaps the most remarkable following of hard-headed +men which any English philosopher was ever able to show. But the +reverence of his disciples waned somewhat rapidly after he began +to take a more active part in the treatment of the questions of +the day. His "representative government," valuable as it was as a +philosophical discussion, offered no solution of the problem then +pressing on the public minds in England, which bitter Radicals or +Conservatives could consider comforting. The plan of having the +number of a man's votes regulated by his calling and intelligence +was thoroughly Benthamite. It was as complete and logical as a +proposition in Euclid, and in 1825 would have looked attractive; +but in 1855 the power of doing this nice work had completely +passed out of everybody's hands--indeed, the desire of political +perfection had greatly abated. His lofty and eloquent plaints on +the decline of social freedom helped to strengthen the charge of +want of practicalness, which in our day is so injurious to a +man's political influence, and when he entered Parliament, +although he disappointed none of those who best understood him, +the outside multitude, who had begun to look on him as a prophet, +were somewhat chagrined that he was not readier in parrying the +thrusts of the trained gladiators of the House of Commons. It was +the book on the "Subjection of Women," however, which most shook +the allegiance of his more educated followers, because it was +marked by the widest departures from his own rules of thinking. +It would be impossible to find any justification in his other +works for the doctrine that women are inferior to men for the +same reason that male serfs are inferior to their masters. His +refusal to consider difference of sex as even one probable cause +of women's inferiority to men in mental and moral characteristics, +was something for which few of his disciples were prepared, or +which they ever got over; and indeed his whole treatment of the +question of sex showed, in the opinion of many, a constitutional +incapacity to deal with the gravest problems of social economy. + +The standing of Mr. Mill as a mental philosopher appears to be +very differently estimated by late critics and opponents and by +himself, whether we consider the extent of his influence, or the +relations of his doctrines to his nation and time; and there is a +most singular inversion in these estimates of what we should +naturally expect from friend and foe--an estimate of Mill's +position and influence by his opponents, which, compared to his +own, seems greatly exaggerated. For example, Dr. McCosh, a +thorough-going opponent, regards Mill's influence as the most +active and effective philosophical force now alive in Great +Britain, the strongest current of philosophic thought even at +Oxford; and M. Taine, who some years ago discovered at Oxford +that the British nation was not wanting in "general ideas" or +principles in its modes of thought above the requirements of the +accountant and assayer, found these principles in a really living +English philosophy, which has brought forth one of M. Taine's +most elaborate critical studies in his work on "Intelligence." In +contrast with these estimates, we have from Mr. Mill himself the +opinion, in a letter to M. Taine, that his views are not +especially English, and that they have not been so since the +philosophical reaction in Scotland, Germany, and later in England, +against Hume; that when his "System of Logic" was written he "stood +almost alone in his opinions; and though they have met with a degree +of sympathy which he by no means expected, we may still count in +England twenty _a priori_ and spiritualist philosophers for every +partisan of the doctrine of Experience." + +This estimate of his own influence and of the importance to +metaphysical discussion at the present time of the philosophy he +"adopted" is entitled to much more consideration than ought in +general to be allowed for an opinion inspired by the ambition, +the enthusiasm, the disappointments, or even the modesty of a +philosophical thinker. Nevertheless, the far different opinion of +his standing as a metaphysician which his critics entertain is +undoubtedly more correct, though in a sense which was not so +clearly apparent to him. They see clearly that a philosophy of +which he was not the founder, and never pretended to be, has +gained through his writings a hold, not only on English +speculation, but on that of the civilized world, which it did not +acquire even in England when it was an especially English +philosophy, as it was "in the first half of the eighteenth +century, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction against +Hume." + +What, then, is it in Mill's philosophical writings that has given +him this eminence as a thinker? Two qualities, we think, very +rarely combined: a philosophical style which for clearness and +cogency has, perhaps, never been surpassed, and a conscientious +painstaking, with a seriousness of conviction, and an earnestness +of purpose which did not in general characterize the thinkers +whose views he adopted. It was by bringing to the support of +doctrines previously regarded as irreligious a truly religious +spirit that Mill acquired in part the influence and respect which +have given him his eminence as a thinker. He thus redeemed the +word "utility" and the utilitarian doctrine of morals from the +ill repute they had, for "the greatest happiness principle" was +with him a religious principle. An equally important part of +his influence is doubtless due to the thoroughness of his +early training--the education received from his father's +instruction--which, as we have said, has made him truly regarded +as the most accomplished of modern dialecticians. + +To these grounds of influence may be added, so far as his influence +on English thought is concerned, the fact that he was not a +metaphysician in a positive fashion, though he dealt largely with +metaphysical topics. He represented the almost instinctive aversion +to metaphysics, as such, which has characterized the English since +the time of Newton and Locke, we might also say since the time of +Bacon. Metaphysics, to pass current in England, has now to be +baptized and become part of the authoritative religious instruction, +else it is foreign and barbarous to the English matter-of-fact ways +of thinking. Mill's "System of Logic" was not intended as a system +of _philosophy_ in the German, French, or even Scotch sense of the +term. It is not through the _a priori_ establishment or refutation +of highest principles that experiential, inductive, fact-proven +principles of science are regarded or tested by the unmetaphysical +English mind. Metaphysical doctrines prevail, it is true, in +England, to the extent, probably, that Mr. Mill estimates--twenty to +one of its thinkers holding to some such views. Yet it would be a +misconception to suppose these to be products of modern English +_thought_. They are rather preserves, tabooed, interdicted to +discussion, not the representatives of its living thought. + +Mr. Mill estimated the worth of contemporary thinkers in accordance +with this almost instinctive distrust of rational "illumination;" +setting Archbishop Whately, for example, as a thinker, above Sir W. +Hamilton, for his services to philosophy, on account of "the number +of true and valuable thoughts" which he originated and put into +circulation, not as parts of a system, but as independent truths of +sagacious or painstaking observation and reflection. It is by such a +standard that Mr. Mill would doubtless wish to be judged, and by it +he would be justly placed above all, or nearly all, of his +contemporaries. Nevertheless, as a conscientious student of +metaphysics he held in far higher esteem than is shown in general by +English thinkers the powers peculiar to the metaphysician--the +ability and disposition to follow out into their consequences, and +to concatenate in a system the assumption of _a priori_ principles. +Descartes, Leibnitz, Comte, and, as an exceptional English thinker, +even Mr. Spencer, receive commendation from him on this account. It +is clear, however, that his respect for this talent was of the sort +which does not aspire to imitate what is admired. + + + +PANICS + + +It is impossible to see, much less experience, a financial panic +without an almost appalling consciousness that a new and terrible +form of danger and distress has been added in comparatively recent +times to the list of those by which human life is menaced or +perplexed. Any one who stood on Wall Street, or in the gallery of +the Stock Exchange last Thursday and Friday and Saturday (1873), and +saw the mad terror, we might almost say the brute terror like that +by which a horse is devoured who has a pair of broken shafts hanging +to his heels, or a dog flying from a tin saucepan attached to his +tail, with which great crowds of men rushed to and fro, trying to +get rid of their property, almost begging people to take it from +them at any price, could hardly avoid feeling that a new plague had +been sent among men; that there was an impalpable, invisible force +in the air, robbing them of their wits, of which philosophy had not +as yet dreamt. No dog was ever so much alarmed by the clatter of the +saucepan as hundreds seemed to be by the possession of really +valuable and dividend-paying securities; and no horse was ever more +reckless in extricating himself from the _débris_ of a broken +carriage than these swarms of acute and shrewd traders in divesting +themselves of their possessions. Hundreds must really, to judge by +their conduct, have been so confused by terror and anxiety as to be +unable to decide whether they desired to have or not to have, to be +poor or rich. If a Roman or a man of the Middle Ages had been +suddenly brought into view of the scene, he would have concluded +without hesitation that a ruthless invader was coming down the +island; that his advanced guard was momentarily expected; and that +anybody found by his forces in possession of Western Union, or +Harlem, or Lake Shore, or any other paying stock or bond, would be +subjected to cruel tortures, if not put to death. For neither the +Roman nor the Mediaeval could understand a rich man's being +terrified by anything but armed violence. Seneca enumerates as the +three great sources of anxiety in life the fear of want, of disease, +and of oppression by the powerful, and he pronounces the last the +greatest. If he had seen Wall-Street brokers and bankers last week +trying to get rid of stocks and bonds, he could not of course have +supposed that they were poor or feared poverty; he would have judged +from their physical activity that they were in perfect health, so +that he would have been driven to the conclusion that some barbarian +host, commanded by Sitting Bull or Red Cloud, was entering the city, +and was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the owners +of personal property. If you had tried to explain to him that there +was no conqueror at the gates, that the fear of violence was almost +unknown in our lives, that each man in that struggling crowd enjoyed +an amount of security against force in all its forms which no Roman +Senator could ever count upon, and that the terror he witnessed was +caused by precisely the same agency as the flight of an army before +it has been beaten, or, in other words, by "panic," he would have +gazed at you in incredulous amazement. He would have said that panic +in an army was caused by the sudden dissolution of the bonds of +discipline, by each soldier's losing his confidence that his +comrades and his officers would stand their ground; but these +traders, he would have added, are not subject to discipline; they do +not belong to an organization of any kind; each buys and sells for +himself; he has his property there in that tin box, and if nobody is +going to rob him what is frightening him? Why is he pale and +trembling? Why does he run and shout and weep, and ask people to +give him a trifle, only a trifle, for all he possesses and let him +go? + +If you were then to set about explaining to Seneca that the way the +god Pan worked confusion in our day in the commercial world was by +destroying "credit," you would find yourself brought suddenly face +to face with one of the most striking differences between ancient +and modern, or, even as we have said, mediaeval society. The most +prominent and necessary accompaniment or incident of property in the +ancient world was possession. What a man owned he held. His wealth +was in his farm, or his house, or his granary, or his ships. He +could hardly separate the idea of property from that of possession, +and the state of society strengthened the association. The frugal +man hoarded, and when he was terrified he buried his money, a +practice to which we owe the preservation of the greater portion of +the old coins now in our collections. The influence of this sense of +insecurity, of the constant fear of invasion or violence, lasted +long enough in all Continental countries, as Mr. Bagehot has +recently pointed out, to prevent the establishment of banks of issue +until very lately. The prospect of war was so constantly in men's +minds that no bank could make arrangements for the run which would +surely follow the outbreak of hostilities, and, in view of this +contingency, nobody would be willing to hold paper promises to pay +in lieu of gold and silver. + +It is therefore in England and America, the two countries possessing +not only most commercial enterprise, but most security against +invasion, that the paper money has come into earliest and widest +use. To the paper of the banks have been added the checks and bills +of exchange of private individuals, until money proper plays a +greatly diminishing part in the operations of commerce. Goods are +exchanged and debts paid by a system of balancing claims against +claims, which really has almost ceased to rest on money at all. So +that a man may be a very rich man in our day, and have really +nothing to show for his wealth whatever. You go to his house, and +you find nothing but a lot of shabby furniture. The only thing there +which Seneca would have called wealth is perhaps his wife's jewels, +which would not bring a few thousand dollars. You think his money +must be in the bank, but you go there with him and find that all he +has there is a page on the ledger bearing his name, with a few +figures on it. The bank bills which you see lying about, and which +look a little like money, are not only not money in the sense Seneca +understood the term, but they do not represent over a third of what +the bank owes to various people. You go to some safe-deposit vaults, +thinking that it is perhaps there he keeps his valuables, but all +you find is a mass of papers signed by Thomas Smith or John Jones, +declaring that he is entitled to so many shares of some far-off +bank, or that some railroad will pay him a certain sum some thirty +years hence. In fact, looked at with Roman eyes, our millionaire +seems to be possessed of little or nothing, and likely to be puzzled +about his daily bread. + +Now, this wonderful change in the character and incidents of +property may be said to be the work of the last century, and it may +be said to consist in the substitution of an agency wholly moral for +an agency wholly material in the work of exchange and distribution. +For the giving and receiving of gold and silver we have substituted +neither more nor less than faith in the honesty and industry and +capacity of our fellow-men. There is hardly one of us who does not +literally live by faith. We lay up fortunes, marry, eat, drink, +travel, and bequeath, almost without ever handling a cent; and the +best reason which ninety-nine out of every hundred of us can give +for feeling secure against want, or having the means of enjoyment or +of charity, is not the possession of anything of real value, but his +confidence that certain thousands of his fellow-creatures, whom he +has never seen and never expects to see, scattered, it may be, over +the civilized world, will keep their promises, and do their daily +work with fidelity and efficiency. This faith is every year being +made to carry a greater and greater load. The transactions which +rest on it increase every year in magnitude and complexity. It has +to extend itself every year over a larger portion of the earth's +surface, and to include a greater variety of race and creed and +custom. London and Paris and Berlin and Vienna now tremble when New +York is alarmed. We have, in short, to believe every year in a +greater and greater number of people, and to depend for our daily +bread on the successful working of vast combinations, in which human +character is, after all, the main element. + +The consequence is that, when for any reason a shade of doubt comes +over men's minds that the combination is not working, that the +machine is at some point going to give way, that somebody is not +playing his part fairly, the solid ground seems to shake under their +feet, and we have some of the phenomena resulting from an +earthquake, and among others blind terror. But to anyone who +understands what this new social force, Credit, is, and the part it +plays in human affairs, the wonder is, not that it gives way so +seldom, but that it stands so firm; that these hundreds of millions +of laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, merchants, bankers, and +manufacturers hold so firmly from day to day the countless +engagements into which they enter, and that each recurring year the +result of the prodigious effort which is now put forth in the +civilized world in the work of production should be distributed with +so much accuracy and honesty, and, on the whole, with so much wise +adjustment to the value of each man's contributions to civilization. + +There is one fact, however, which throws around credit, as around so +many others of the influences by which our lives are shaped, a +frightful mystery. Its very strength helps to work ruin. The more we +believe in our fellow-toilers, and the more they do to warrant our +belief, the more we encourage them to work, the more we excite their +hopefulness; and out of this hopefulness come "panics" and +"crashes." Prosperity breeds credit, and credit stimulates +enterprise, and enterprise embarks in labors which, about every ten +years in England, and every twenty years in this country, it is +found that the world is not ready to pay for. Panics have occurred +in England in 1797, 1807, 1817, 1826, 1837, 1847, 1857, and there +was very near being a very severe one in 1866. In this country we +have had them in 1815, 1836, 1857, and 1877, and by panics we do +not mean such local whirlwinds as have desolated Wall Street, but +wide-spread commercial crises, affecting all branches of business. +This periodicity is ascribed, and with much plausibility, to the +fact that inasmuch as panics are the result of certain mental +conditions, they recur as soon as the experience of the previous one +has lost its influence, or, in other words, as often as a new +generation comes into the management of affairs, which is about +every ten years in the commercial world both in England and here. +The fact that this country seems to be only half as liable to them +as England, is perhaps due to the fact that the extent of our +resources, and the greater ratio of increase of population make it +much harder to overdo in the work of production here than in +England, and to this must be added the greater strength of nerves +produced by greater hopefulness. In spite of the enormous abundance +of British capital and the rashness of the owners in making +investments, there hangs over the London money market a timidity and +doubtfulness about the future which is unknown on this side of the +water, and which very slight accidents develop into distrust and +terror. + +Outside those who are actually engaged in a financial panic--such as +brokers, bankers, merchants and manufacturers, who have loans to pay +or receive, or acceptances falling due, and who are therefore too +busy and too sorely beset to moralize on it or look at it +objectively, as the philosophers say--there is a large body +of persons who are not immediately affected by it, such as +professional men, owners of secure investments, persons in receipt +of well-assured salaries, ministers, newspaper writers, speculative +economists, financiers, and farmers, to whom it is a source of +secret enjoyment. They are obliged, out of sympathy with their +neighbors, to look blue, and probably few of them are entirely +exempt from the general anxiety about the future, but, nevertheless, +they are on the whole rather gratified than otherwise by the thing's +having happened. In the first place, all those persons who give +their attention to the currency question are divided into two great +schools--the paper men and the hard-money men; and every panic +affords each of them what it considers a legitimate ground of +triumph. The paper men say that the crisis is due to failure to +issue more paper at the proper moment, and the hard-money men +ascribe it to the irredeemability of what is already issued; and +each side chuckles over the convulsion as a startling confirmation +of its views, and goes about calling attention to it almost +gleefully. There is a similar division on the banking question. +Indeed the feud between the friends of free banking and restricted +banking is fiercer than that between the two currency schools, and +has raged longer, and every monetary crisis feeds the flame. It is +maintained, on the one hand, that if banks were let alone by the +state their issues would be proportioned to the exact wants of +business; and, on the other, that if the state would only restrict +them more rigidly business would be kept within proper limits, and +all would go well. Each disputant draws from a panic about the same +amount of support for his views, because in the great variety of +circumstances which surround it there are always some which favor +any theory of its origin. In one thing, however, both sets of +observers are apt to agree thoroughly, and that is in believing the +"thing will not blow over," and that "we are going to feel it for a +long time." They have long foreseen it, and have only been surprised +that it did not come sooner; and they lower their voices to a hoarse +whisper while telling you this. + +But there is no class of observers which extracts so much solid +comfort from a panic as that large body of social philosophers who +are hostile to luxury, and believe that the world is going to the +dogs through self-indulgence. It may even be said that two-thirds of +the community, or indeed all except the very few, hold this opinion +with a greater or less degree of strength. The farmers hold it +strongly with regard to the city people, the artisans with regard to +merchants, bankers, brokers, and manufacturers, and among the latter +nearly every man is inclined to it with regard to persons of more +means than himself. Moreover, it would probably astonish us if we +knew how large was the number of those who fancy that their more +well-to-do neighbors, if they do not belong to the category of +millionaires, are living beyond their means. Every man whose own +means are small, or even moderate, finds himself rather hard put to +it to make both ends meet, and is constantly harassed by desires +which he is unable to gratify. When he sees others gratifying them, +his self-love drives him often unconsciously into ascribing it to +recklessness and improvidence. Very close people, too, who have a +constitutional repugnance to spending money freely for any purpose, +and especially for purposes of personal enjoyment, can hardly +persuade themselves that other persons who do so, spend it honestly. +And then behind these come the large army of lovers of simplicity +and frugality on moral and religious grounds, who believe that +material luxury contains a snare for the soul, and that true +happiness and real virtue are not to be found in gilded saloons. +They write to the newspapers denouncing the reluctance of young +people to marry on small incomes, and urging girls to begin life as +their mothers began it, and despise the silly chatter of those who +think luxurious surroundings more important than the union of +hearts. + +The occurrence of a panic fills the breasts of all these with +various degrees of rejoicing. They always take a very dark view of +it, and laugh contemptuously at those who consider it a "Wall-Street +flurry," or ascribe it to any vice in the currency or in the banking +system. Extravagant living they believe to be at the bottom of it, +and, like the hard-money men, they are only surprised that it has +not come sooner, and they believe most firmly that it is going to +effect a sort of social revolution, and bring the world more nearly +to their own ideal of what it ought to be. The amount of +"rottenness" which they expect it to reveal is always enormous, and +they look forward to the exposure and the general coming-down of +their guilty neighbors to "the hard pan" with the keenest relish. +They have long, for instance, been unable to imagine where the +multitude of people who live in brown-stone houses get the money to +keep them. There was something wrong about it, they felt satisfied, +though they could not tell what, and when the panic comes they half +fancy that the murder will out, and that there will be a great +migration of fraudulent bankrupts from Fifth Avenue and its +neighborhood into tenement-houses on the East and North Rivers. How +Mrs. Smith, too, dressed as she did, and where Smith got the money +to take her to Sharon every summer, and how Jones managed to +entertain as he was doing, have often been puzzling problems, which +"the crash" in the money market is at last going to solve. It is +also highly gratifying to those who consider yachting a senseless +amusement to reflect that the panic will probably diminish the +number of yachts, and they even flatter themselves that it may stop +yachting in future, and reduce the general style of living among +rich young men. "We shall now," they say, "have fewer fast horses, +and less champagne, and less gaudy furniture, and more honest, hard +work, and plain, wholesome food." They accordingly rejoice in the +panic as a means adopted by Providence to bring a gluttonous and +ungodly generation to its senses, and lead it back to that state of +things which is known, as "republican simplicity." + +The curious thing about this expectation is that it has survived +innumerable disappointments without apparently losing any of its +vigor. It was strong after 1837, and strong after 1857, and stronger +than ever after 1861. The war was surely, people said, to bring back +the golden age, when all the men were prudent, sober, and +industrious, and all the women simple, modest, and homekeeping. The +war did nothing of the kind. In fact, it left us more extravagant +and lavish and self-indulgent than ever; yet the ancient and tough +belief in the purifying influence of a stringent money market still +lasts, and is at this moment cropping out in the moral department of +a thousand newspapers. + +The belief belongs to what may be called the cataclysmal theory of +progress, which improves the world by sudden starts, and clings so +fondly to liquor-laws, and has profound faith in specific remedies +for moral and political diseases. What commercial panics and great +national misfortunes do not do, particular bits of legislation are +sure to do. You put something in the Constitution, or forbid +something, or lose a battle, or have a "shrinkage of values," or +have a cholera season, and forthwith the community turns over a new +leaf, and becomes moral, economical, and sober-minded. We doubt +whether this theory will ever die out, however much philosophers may +preach against it, or however often facts may refute it, because it +gratifies, or promises to gratify, one of the deepest longings of +the human heart--the desire which each man feels to have a great +deal of history crowded into his own little day. None of us can bear +to quit the scene without witnessing the solution of the problems by +which his own life has been vexed or over which he has long labored. +Indeed a great many men would find it impossible to work with any +zeal to bring about results which would probably not be witnessed +until they had been centuries in the tomb. + +We accordingly find that the most eager reformers are apt to be +those who look for the triumph of virtue by the close of the current +year. Of all dreams of eager reformers, however, there is probably +none more substantial than that which looks for a restoration of +that vague thing called "simplicity of manners." Simplicity and +economy are, of course, relative terms. The luxurious gentleman in +the fourteenth century lived in a way which the well-to-do artisan +in our own time would not tolerate; and when we undertake to carry +people back to ancient ways of living we find that there is hardly a +point short of barbarism at which we can consistently stop. A +country in which money is easily made and abounds, will be one in +which money will always be freely spent, and in which personal +comfort and even display will occupy men's and women's thoughts a +great deal. We can no more prevent this than we can prevent the +growth of wealth itself; and our duty is, instead of wasting our +breath in denouncing extravagance, or hailing panics as purging +fires, to do what in us lies to give rich people more taste, more +conscience, more sense of responsibility for curable ills, and a +keener relish of the higher forms of pleasure. Extravagance--or, in +other words, the waste of money on sensual enjoyment, the production +of hideous furniture or jewelry, or of barbarous display--has to be +checked not by the preaching of poor people, but by the rich man's +own superiority to these things, and his own repugnance for them. +This repugnance can only be inspired by education, whether that of +school and college, or that of a refined and cultivated social +atmosphere. Much would be done in this direction if public opinion +exacted of the owners of large fortunes that they should give their +sons the best education the country affords; or, in other words, +send them to college, instead of setting them up in the dry-goods +business or the grocery business. A man who has made a large fortune +in honest trade or industry has not contributed his share to moral +and intellectual interests by merely making donations. It is his +duty, also, if he leaves children behind him, to see to it, as far +as he can, that they are men who will be an addition to the general +culture and taste of the nation, and who will stimulate its nobler +ambition, raise its intellectual standard, quicken its love of +excellence in all fields, and deepen its faith in the value of +things not seen. + + + +THE ODIUM PHILOLOGICUM + + +Our readers and those of _The Galaxy_ are familiar with the +controversy between Dr. Fitzedward Hall and Mr. Grant White +(November, 1873). When one comes to inquire what it was all about, +and why Mr. White was led to consider Dr. Hall a "yahoo of +literature," and "a man born without a sense of decency," one finds +himself engaged in an investigation of great difficulty, but of +considerable interest. The controversy between these two gentlemen +by no means brings up the problem for the first time. That verbal +criticism, such as Mr. White has been producing for some time back, +is sure to end, sooner or later, in one or more savage quarrels, is +one of the most familiar facts of the literary life of our day. +Indeed, so far as our observation has gone, the rule has no +exceptions. Whenever we see a gentleman, no matter how great his +accomplishments or sweet his temper, announcing that he is about to +write articles or deliver lectures on "Words and their Uses," or on +the "English of Every-day Life," or on "Familiar Faults of +Conversation," or "Newspaper English," or any cognate theme, we feel +all but certain that we shall soon see him engaged in an encounter +with another laborer in the same field, in which all dignity will be +laid aside, and in which, figuratively speaking, clothes, hair, and +features will suffer terribly, and out of which, unless he is very +lucky, he will issue with the gravest imputations resting on his +character in every relation of life. + +Now why is it that attempts to get one's fellow-men to talk +correctly, to frame their sentences in accordance with good usage, +and take their words from the best authors, have this tendency to +arouse some of the worst passions of our nature, and predispose even +eminent philologists--men of dainty language, and soft manners, and +lofty aims--to assail each other in the rough vernacular of the +fish-market and the forecastle? A careless observer will be apt to +say that it is an ordinary result of disputation; that when men +differ or argue on any subject they are apt to get angry and indulge +in "personalities." But this is not true. Lawyers, for instance, +live by controversy, and their controversies touch interests of the +gravest and most delicate character--such as fortune and reputation; +and yet the spectacle of two lawyers abusing each other in cold +blood, in print, is almost unknown. Currency and banking are, at +certain seasons, subjects of absorbing interest, and, for the last +seventy years, the discussions over them have been numerous and +voluminous almost beyond example, and yet we remember no case in +which a bullionist called a paper-money man bad names, or in which a +friend of free banking accused a restrictionist of defrauding the +poor or defacing tombstones. Politics, too, home and foreign, is a +fertile source of difference of opinion; and yet gross abuse, on +paper, of each other, by political disputants, discussing abstract +questions having no present relation to power or pay, are very rare +indeed. + +It seems, at first blush, as if an examination of the well-known +_odium theologicum_, or the traditional bitterness which has been +apt to characterize controversies about points of doctrine, from the +Middle Ages down to a period within our own memory, would throw some +light on the matter. But a little consideration will show that +there are special causes for the rancor of theologians for which +word-criticism has no parallel. The _odium theologicum_ was the +natural and inevitable result of the general belief that the holding +of certain opinions was necessary to salvation, and that the +formation of opinions could be wholly regulated by the will. This +belief, pushed to its extreme limits and embodied in legislation, +led to the burning of heretics in nearly all Christian countries. +When B's failure to adopt A's conclusions was by A regarded as a +sign of depravity of nature which, would lead to B's damnation, +nothing was more natural than that when they came into collision in +pamphlets or sermons they should have attributed to each other the +worst motives. A man who was deliberately getting himself ready for +perdition was not a person to whom anybody owed courtesy or +consideration, or whose arguments, being probably supplied by Satan, +deserved respectful examination. We accordingly find that as the +list of "essential" opinions has become shortened, and as doubts as +to men's responsibility for their opinions have made their way from +the world into the church, theological controversy has lost its +acrimony and indeed has almost ceased. No theologian of high +standing or character now permits himself to show bad temper in a +doctrinal or hermeneutical discussion, and a large and increasing +proportion of theologians acknowledge that the road to heaven is so +hard for us all that the less quarrelling and jostling there is in +it, the better for everybody. + +Nor does the _odium scientificum_, of which we have now happily but +occasional manifestations, furnish us with any suggestions. +Controversy between scientific men begins to be bitter and frequent, +as the field of investigation grows wider and the investigation +itself grows deeper. But then this is easily accounted for. +All scientific men of the first rank are engaged in original +research--that is, in attempts to discover laws and phenomena +previously unknown. The workers in all departments are very +numerous, and are scattered over various countries, and as one +discovery, however slight, is very apt to help in some degree in the +making of another, scientific men are constantly exposed to having +their claims to originality contested, either as regards priority in +point of time or as regards completeness. Consequently, they may be +said to stand in delicate relations to each other, and are more than +usually sensitive about the recognition of their achievements by +their brethren--a state of things which, while it cultivates a very +nice sense of honor, leads occasionally to encounters in which +free-will seems for the moment to get the better of law. The +differences of the scientific world, too, are complicated by the +theological bearing of a good deal of scientific discovery and +discussion, and many a scientific man finds himself either compelled +to defend himself against theologians, or to aid theologians in +bringing an erring brother to reason. + +The true source of the _odium philologicum_ is, we think, to be +found in the fact that a man's speech is apt to be, or to be +considered, an indication of the manner in which he has been bred, +and of the character of the company he keeps. Criticism of his mode +of using words, or his pronunciation, or the manner in which he +compounds his sentences, almost inevitably takes the character of an +attack on his birth, parentage, education, and social position; or, +in other words, on everything which he feels most sensitive about or +holds most dear. If you say that his pronunciation is bad, or that +his language is slangy or ill-chosen, you insinuate that when he +lived at home with his papa and mamma he was surrounded by bad +models, or, in plain English, that his parents were vulgar or +ignorant people; when you say that he writes bad grammar, or is +guilty of glaring solecisms, or displays want of etymological +knowledge, you insinuate that his education was neglected, or that +he has not associated with correct speakers. Usually, too, you do +all this in the most provoking way by selecting passages from his +writings on which he probably prided himself, and separating them +totally from the thought of which he was full when he produced them, +and then examining them mechanically, as if they were algebraic +signs, which he used without knowing what they meant or where they +would bring him out. Nobody stands this process very long with +equanimity, because nobody can be subjected to it without being +presented to the public somewhat in the light of an ignorant, +careless, and pretentious donkey. Nor will it do to cite your +examples from deceased authors. You cannot do so without assailing +some form of expression which an eager, listening enemy is himself +in the habit of using, and is waiting for you to take up, and +through which he hopes to bring you to shame. + +No man, moreover, can perform the process without taking on airs +which rouse his victim to madness, because he assumes a position not +only of grammatical, but, as we have said, of social superiority. He +says plainly enough, no matter how polite or scientific he may try +to seem, "I was better born and bred than you, and acquired these +correct turns of expression, of which you know nothing, from +cultivated relatives;" or, "I live in cultivated circles, and am +consequently familiar with the best usage, which you, poor fellow! +are not. I am therefore able to decide this matter without argument +or citations, and your best course is to take my corrections in +silence or with thankfulness." It is easy to understand how all +interest in orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody speedily +disappears in a controversy of this sort, and how the disputants +begin to burn with mutual dislike, and how each longs to inflict +pain and anguish on his opponent, and make him, no matter by what +means, an object of popular pity and contempt, and make his parts of +speech odious and ridiculous. The influence of all good men ought to +be directed either to repressing verbal criticism, or restricting +indulgence in it to the family circle or to schools and colleges. + + + +PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES + + +Biologist like Professor Huxley have, as popular lecturers, the +advantage over scientific men in other fields, of occupying +themselves with what is to ninety-nine men and women out of a +hundred the most momentous of all problems--the manner in which life +on this globe began, and in which men and other animals came to be +what they are. The doctrine of evolution as a solution of these +problems, or of one of them, derives additional interest from the +fact that in many minds it runs counter to ideas which a very large +proportion of the population above the age of thirty imbibed with +the earliest and most impressive portion of their education. Down to +1850 the bulk of intelligent men and women believed that the world, +and all that is therein, originated in the precise manner described +in the first chapter of Genesis, and about six thousand years ago. +Most of the adaptations, or attempts at adaptation, of what is +called the Mosaic account of the creation, of the chronological +theories of the geologists and evolutionists by theologians and +Biblical scholars have been made within that period, and it may be +safely said that it is only within ten or fifteen years that any +clear knowledge of the "conflict between science and religion" has +reached that portion of the people who take a lively or, indeed, any +interest, in religious matters. It would not, in fact, be rash to +say that little or nothing is known about this conflict to this hour +among the great body of Methodists or Catholics, or the evangelical +portion of other denominations, and that their religious outlook is +little, if at all, affected by it. One would never detect, for +instance, in Mr. Moody's preaching, any indication that he had ever +heard of any such conflict, or that the doctrines of the orthodox +Protestant Church had undergone any sensible modification within a +hundred years. Professor Huxley and men like him, therefore, make +their appearance now not simply as manipulators of a most +interesting subject, but as disturbers of beliefs which are widely +spread, deeply rooted, and surrounded by the tenderest and most +sacred associations of human existence. + +That under such circumstances he has met with so little opposition +is, on the whole, rather surprising. As far as our observation has +gone, no strong hostility whatever to himself or his teachings has +been shown, except in one or two instances, by either the clergy or +the religious press. Indeed, ministers formed a very prominent and +attentive portion of his audience at the recent lectures at +Chickering Hall. But it has been made very apparent by the articles +and letters which these lectures have called out in the newspapers +that the religious public has hardly understood him. The collision +between the theologians and the scientific men has been very slight +among us; and, indeed, the waves of the controversy hardly reached +this country until the storm had passed away in Europe, so that it +is difficult for Americans to appreciate the combative tone of Mr. +Huxley's oratory. Of this difficulty the effect of his substitution +of Milton for Moses as the historian of the creation, on the night +of his first lecture, has furnished an amusing illustration. The +audience, or at least that portion of it which was gifted with any +sense of humor, saw the joke and laughed over it heartily. It was +simply a telling rhetorical device, intended to point a sarcasm +directed against the biblical commentators who have been trying to +extract the doctrines of evolution from the first chapter of +Genesis. But many of the newspapers all over the country took it up +seriously, and the professor must, if he saw them, have enjoyed +mightily the various letters and articles which have endeavored in +solemn earnest to show that Milton was not justly entitled to the +rank of a scientific expositor, and that it was a cowardly thing in +the lecturer to attack Moses over Milton's shoulders. Whenever +Professor Huxley enters on the defence of his science, as +distinguished from the exposition of it, there are traces in his +language of the _gaudium certaminis_ which has found expression in +so many hard-fought fields in his own country, and which has made +him perhaps the most formidable antagonist, in so far as dialectics +go, that the transcendental philosophers have ever encountered. He +is, _par excellence_, a fighting man, but certainly his pugnacity +diminishes neither his worth nor his capacity. + +In many of the comments which his lectures have called out in the +newspapers one meets every now and then with a curious failure to +comprehend the position which an average non-scientific man occupies +in such a conflict as in now going on over the doctrines of +evolution. Professor Huxley was very careful not to repeat the error +which delivered Professor Tyndall into the hands of the enemy at +Belfast. He expressed no opinion as to the nature of the causal +force which called the world into existence. He did not profess to +know anything about the sources of life. He consequently did not +once place himself on the level of the theologian or the +unscientific spectator. What he undertook to do and did was to +present to the audience some specimens of the evidence by which +evolutionists have been led to the conclusion that their theory is +correct. Now, the mistake which a good many newspaper writers--some +of them ministers--have made in passing judgment on the lectures +lies in their supposing that this evidence must be weak and +incomplete because _they_ have not been convinced. There is +probably no more widely diffused fallacy, or one which works more +mischief in all walks of life, than the notion that it is only those +whose business it is to persuade who need to be trained in the art +of proof, and that those who are to be persuaded need no process of +preparation at all. + +The fact is that skill in reasoning is as necessary on the one side +as the other. He cannot be fully and rightly convinced who does not +himself know how to convince, and no man is competent to judge in +the last resort of the force of an argument who is not on something +like an equality of knowledge and dialectical skill with the +person using it. This is true in all fields of discussion; it is +pre-eminently true in scientific fields. Of course, therefore, the +real public of the scientific man--the public which settles finally +whether he has made out his case--is a small one. Outside of it +there is another and larger one on which his reasoning may act with +irresistible force; but just as the fact that it does so act does +not prove that his hypothesis is true, so also the fact that it has +failed to convince proves nothing against its soundness. In other +words, a man's occupying the position of a listener does not +necessarily clothe him with the attributes of a judge, and there may +be as much folly and impertinence in his going about saying, "I do +not agree with Huxley; he has not satisfied me; he will have to +produce more proof than that before I believe in evolution," as in +going about saying, "I know as much about evolution as Huxley and +could give as good a lecture on it as he any day." And yet a good +many people are guilty of the one who would blush at the mere +thought of the other. + +Another fertile source of confusion in this and similar +controversies is the habit which transcendentalists, theological and +other, have of using the term "truth" in two different senses, the +scientific sense and the religious or spiritual sense. The +scientific man only uses it in one. Truth to him is something +capable of demonstration by some one of the canons of induction. He +knows nothing of any truth which cannot be proved. The religious +man, on the other hand, and especially the minister, has been bred +in the application of the term to facts of an entirely different +order--that is, to emotions produced by certain beliefs which he +cannot justify by any arguments, and about which to him no argument +is necessary. These are the "spiritual truths" which are said to be +perceptible often to the simple-minded and unlearned, though hidden +from the wise and prudent. Now there is no decently educated +religious man who does not perceive the distinction between these +two kinds of truths, and few who do not think they keep this +distinction in mind when passing upon the great problems of the +origin and growth of the universe. But, as a matter of fact, we see +the distinction ignored every day. People go to scientific lectures +and read scientific books with their heads filled with spiritual +truths, which have come they know not whence, and which give them +infinite comfort in all the trying passages of life, and in view of +this comfort must, they think, connect them by invisible lines of +communication with the great Secret of the Universe, toward which +philosophers try to make their way by visible lines. When, then, +they find that the scientific man's induction makes no impression on +this other truth, and that he cannot dislodge any theory of the +growth or government of the world which has become firmly imbedded +in it, they are apt to conclude that there is something faulty in +his methods, or rash and presumptuous in his conclusions. But there +is only one course for the leaders of religious thought to follow in +order to prevent the disastrous confusion which comes of the sudden +and complete break-down of the moral standards and sanctions by +which the mass of mankind live, and that is to put an end at once, +and gracefully, to the theory that the spiritual truth which brings +the peace which passeth understanding has any necessary connection +with any theory of the physical universe, or can be used to refute +it or used as a substitute for it, or is dependent on the +authenticity or interpretation of any book. They must not flatter +themselves because a scientific man here and there doubts or +gainsays, or because some learned theologian is still unconvinced, +or because the mental habits of which faith is born seem to hold +their ground or show signs of revival, that the philosophy of which +Huxley is a master is not slowly but surely gaining ground. The +proofs may not yet be complete, but they grow day by day; some of +the elder scientific men may scout, but no young ones are appearing +to take their places and preach their creed. The tide seems +sometimes to ebb from month to month, but it rises from year to +year. The true course of spiritually minded men under these +circumstances is to separate their faith from all theories of the +precise manner in which the world originated, or of the length of +time it has lasted, as matters, for their purposes, of little or no +moment. The secret springs of hope and courage from which each of us +draws strength in the great crises of existence would flow all the +same whether life appeared on the planet ten million or ten thousand +years ago, and whether the present forms of life were the product of +one day or of many ages. And we doubt very much whether anyone has +ever listened in a candid and dispassionate frame of mind to the +evolutionist's history of the globe without finding that it had +deepened for him the mystery of the universe, and magnified the +Power which stands behind it. + +Not the least interesting feature in the discussion about the theory +of evolution is the prominent part taken in it by clergymen of +various denominations. There is hardly one of them who, since +Huxley's lectures, has not preached a sermon bearing on the matter +in some way, and several have made it the topic of special articles +or lectures. In fact, we do not think we exaggerate when we say that +three-fourths of all that has been recently said or written about +the hypothesis in this country has been said or written by +ministers. There is no denying that the theory, if true, does, in +appearance at least, militate against the account of the creation +given in the first chapter of Genesis, or, in other words, against +the view of the origin of life on the globe which has been held +by the Christian world for seventeen centuries. It would, therefore, +be by no means surprising that ministers should meet it, either +by showing that the Mosaic account of the creation was really +inspired--was, in short, the account given by the Creator +himself--or that the modern interpretations of it were incorrect, +and that it was really, when perfectly understood, easily reconciled +with the conclusions reached of late years by geologists and +biologists. This is the way in which a great many ministers have +hitherto met the evolutionists, and for this sort of work they are +undoubtedly fitted by education and experience. If it can be done by +anyone, they are the men to do it. If it be maintained that the +biblical account is literally true, they are more familiar than any +other class of men with the evidence and arguments accumulated by +the Church in favor of the inspiration of the Scriptures; or if, on +the other hand, it be desired to reconcile the Bible with evolution, +they are more familiar than any other class of men with the +exegetical process by which this reconciliation can be effected. +They are specially trained in ecclesiastical history and tradition, +in Greek and Hebrew religious literature, and in the methods of +interpretation which have been for ages in use among theologians. + +Of late, however, they have shown a decided inclination to abandon +the purely ecclesiastical approach to the controversy altogether, +and this is especially remarkable in the discussion now pending over +Huxley. They do not seek to defend the biblical account of the +creation, or to reconcile it with the theory of the evolutionists. +Far from it, they have come down, in most of the recent cases, into +the scientific arena, and are meeting the men of science with their +own weapons. They tell Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall that their +evidence is imperfect, and their reasoning from it faulty. Noticing +their activity in this new field, and the marked contrast which this +activity presents to the modesty or indifference of the other +professions--the lawyers and doctors, for instance, who on general +grounds have fully as much reason to be interested in evolution as +the ministers, and have hitherto been at least as well fitted to +discuss it--we asked ourselves whether it was possible that, without +our knowledge, any change had of late years been made in the +curriculum of the divinity schools or theological seminaries with +the view of fitting ministers to take a prominent part in the +solution of the increasingly important and startling problems raised +by physical science. In order to satisfy ourselves, we lately turned +over the catalogues of all the principal divinity schools in the +country, to see if any chairs of natural science had been +established, or if candidates for the ministry had to undergo any +compulsory instruction in geology or physics, or the higher +mathematics, or biology, or palaeontology, or astronomy, or had to +become versed in the methods of scientific investigation in the +laboratory or in the dissecting-room, or were subjected to any +unusually severe discipline in the use of the inductive process. Not +much to our surprise, we found nothing of the kind. We found that, +to all appearance, not even the smallest smattering of natural +science in any of its branches is considered necessary to a +minister's education; no astronomy, no chemistry, no biology, no +geology, no higher mathematics, no comparative anatomy, and nothing +severe in logic. In fact, of special preparation for the discussion +of such a theme as the origin of life on the earth, there does not +appear to be in the ordinary course of our divinity schools any +trace. + +We then said to ourselves, But ministers are modest, truthful men; +they would not knowingly pass themselves off as competent on a +subject with which they were unfitted to deal. They are no less +candid and self-distrustful, for instance, than lawyers and doctors, +and a lawyer or doctor who ventured to tackle a professed scientist +on a scientific subject to which he had given no systematic study +would be laughed at by his professional brethren, and would suffer +from it even in his professional reputation, as it would be taken to +indicate a dangerous want of self-knowledge. Perhaps, then, the +training given in the divinity schools, though it does not touch +special fields of science, is such as to prepare the mind for the +work of induction by some course of intellectual gymnastics. +Perhaps, though it does not familiarize a man with the facts of +geology and biology and astronomy, it so disciplines him in the work +of collecting and arranging facts of any kind, and reasoning from +them, that he will be a master in the art of proof, and that, in +short, though he may not have a scientific man's knowledge, he will +have his mental habits. + +But we found this second supposition as far from the truth as the +first one was. Moreover, the mental constitution of the young men +who choose the ministry as a profession is not apt to be of a kind +well fitted for scientific investigation. Reverence is one of their +prominent characteristics, and reverence predisposes them to accept +things on authority. They are inclined to seek truth rather as a +means of repose than for its own sake, and to fancy that it is +associated closely with spiritual comfort, and that they have +secured the truth when they feel the comfort. Though, last not +least, they enter the seminary with a strong bias in favor of one +particular theory of the origin of life and of the history of the +race, and their subsequent studies are marked out and pursued with +the set purpose of strengthening this bias and of qualifying them to +defend it and spread it, and of associating in their minds the doubt +or rejection of it with moral evil. The consequence is that they go +forth, trained not as investigators or inquirers, but as advocates, +charged with the defence against all comers of a view of the +universe which they have accepted ready-made from teachers. A worse +preparation for scientific pursuits of any kind can hardly be +imagined. The slightest trace of such a state of mind in a +scientific man--that is, of a disposition to believe a thing on +grounds of feeling or interest, or with reference to practical +consequences, or to jump over gaps in proof in order to reach +pleasant conclusions--discredits him with his fellows, and throws +doubt on his statements. + +We are not condemning this state of mind for all purposes. Indeed, +we think the wide-spread prevalence of the philosophic way of +looking at things would be in many respects a great misfortune for +the race, and we acknowledge that a rigidly trained philosopher +would be unfit for most of a minister's functions; but we have only +to describe a minister's education in order to show his exceeding +unreadiness for contentions such as some of his brethren are +carrying on with geologists and physicists and biologists. In fact, +there is no educated calling whose members are not, on the whole, +better equipped for fighting in scientific fields over the +hypothesis of evolution. Our surprise at seeing lawyers and doctors +engaged in it would be very much less justifiable, for a portion at +least of the training received in these professions is of a +scientific cast, and concerns the selection and classification of +facts, while a clergyman's is almost wholly devoted to the study of +the opinions and sayings of other men. In truth, theology, properly +so called, is a collection of opinions. Nor do these objections to a +clergyman's mingling in scientific disputes arise out of his belief +about the origin and government of the world _per se_, because one +does not think of making them to trained religious philosophers; for +instance, to Principal Dawson or Mr. St. George Mivart. Some may +think or say that the religious prepossessions of these gentlemen +lessen the weight of their opinions on a certain class of scientific +questions, but no one would question their right to share in +scientific discussions. + + + +CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE + + +Some of the letters from clergymen which have been called out by our +article on the part recently taken by them in scientific discussion +maintain that, although ministers may not be familiar with the facts +of science, many of them are fully competent to weigh the arguments +founded on these facts put forward by scientific men, and decide +whether they have proved their case or not; or, in other words, that +we were mistaken in saying that the theological seminaries did not +afford severe training in the use of the inductive process, and that +it could not be used effectively without knowledge of the matters on +which it was used. More than one of these letters points, in support +of this view, to the answer of the Rev. Dr. Taylor, of this city, +to Professor Huxley's lectures, published some weeks ago in the +_Tribune_, and we believe the _Tribune_ presented the author to the +public as "a trained logician." + +We have accordingly turned to Dr. Taylor's letter and given it a +much more attentive reading than we confess we gave it when it first +appeared, for the purpose of seeing whether it was really true that +ministers were such dexterous and highly taught dialecticians that +they could overthrow a scientific man, even on a subject of which +they knew little or nothing--whether, in short, they could really +treat the question of evolution algebraically, and, by the mere aid +of signs of the meaning of which they were ignorant, put the Huxleys +and Darwins to confusion. For Dr. Taylor opens in this way: + + "Let it be understood, then, that I have no fault to find with + Mr. Huxley as a discoverer of facts or as an exponent of + comparative anatomy. In both of these respects he is beyond all + praise of mine, and I am ready to sit at his feet; but when he + begins to reason from the facts which he sets forth, then, like + every other reasoner, he is amenable to the laws of + argumentation, and his conclusions are to be tested by the + relation which they bear to the premises which he has advanced, + and by the proof which he furnishes for the premises + themselves." + +We pass over, as of no consequence for our present purpose, the +various exceptions which he then takes to Huxley's arrangement of +his lectures, to the tone of his exceptions, and to his mode of +referring to the biblical hypothesis, and come to what he has to say +of Huxley's evidence, which he truly calls "circumstantial +evidence." The first thing he does is to define circumstantial +evidence; but here, at the very outset, we have been surprised to +find a logician who conceives himself capable of overhauling the +argumentation of the masters of science, going to a lawyer to get +"a statement of the principles which regulate the value of +circumstantial evidence." This is a matter which lay logicians +usually have at their fingers' ends, and we have never known one yet +who would not be puzzled by a suggestion that he should do as Dr. +Taylor did--go to a "distinguished legal friend" for information as +to the conditions of this kind of proof. For, as we have more than +once pointed out, lawyers, as such, have no special skill or +training in the use of circumstantial evidence as scientific men +know it--that is, as evidence which derives all its force from +the laws of the human mind. The circumstantial evidence with +which lawyers, _quâ_ lawyers, are familiar under our system of +jurisprudence is an artificial thing created by legislation or +custom, with the object of preventing the minds of the jury-- +presumably a body of untrained and unlearned men--from being +confused or led astray. Moreover, they are only familiar with its +use in one very narrow field--human conduct under one set of social +conditions. For example, a lawyer might be a very good judge of +circumstantial evidence in America, and a very poor one in India or +China; might have a keen eye for the probable or improbable in a New +England village, and none at all in a Prussian barrack. + +A familiar illustration of the restrictions on his experience of it +is to be found in the rule which compels the calling of "experts" +when there is a question as to any point of science or art. "The +words science or art," says Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, "include all +subjects on which a _course of special study or experience is +necessary to the formation of an opinion_," and the opinion of such +an expert is a "relevant fact." So that Dr. Taylor's "distinguished +legal friend," if a good lawyer, would not, in spite of his +proficiency in circumstantial evidence, undertake to dispute with +Professor Huxley about the relation of the anchitherium, hipparion, +and horse; and if Dr. Taylor offered himself for examination on such +a point he would be laughed out of court. In none of our courts is +the presentation allowed of _all_ the circumstances which strengthen +or weaken a probability. + +A lawyer, therefore, though he might not be as ill fitted for a +scientific discussion as a minister, is, _as such_, hardly more of +an authority on the force and limits of that portion of scientific +proof which is drawn from simple observation. Dr. Taylor's +consulting one as a final authority as to the very nature of the +argument on which he was himself about to sit in judgment is at the +outset a suspicious incident. The definition of circumstantial +evidence which he got from his legal friend was this: + + "The process of proof by circumstantial evidence consists in + reasoning from such facts as are known or proved, and thence + establishing such as are conjectured to exist. The process is + fatally vicious, first, if any material circumstance from which + we seek to deduce the conclusion depends itself on conjecture; + and, second, if the known facts are not such as to exclude to a + reasonable degree of certainty every other hypothesis." + +"Now, tried by these two tests," says Dr. Taylor, "the professor's +argument was a failure." Taking this definition as it stands, +however, we think it will not be difficult to show that Dr. Taylor +is not competent to apply the tests, or to say whether the +professor's argument is a failure or not. + +It is hardly necessary to say that all the evidence in our +possession or attainable, with regard to the history of the earth +and of animal and vegetable life on its surface, is circumstantial +evidence. The sciences of geology, palaeontology, and, to a certain +extent, biology are sciences of observation, and but few of their +conclusions can be reached or tested by experimentation. They are +the result of a collection of facts, observed in various places, at +various times, and by various persons, and variously related to +other facts; and the collection of these facts, and the arrangement +of them, and the formation of a judgment as to their value both +positive and relative, form the greater portion of the work of a +scientific man in these fields. Professor Huxley's argument, which +Dr. Taylor disposes of so summarily, consists of a series of +inferences from facts so collected and arranged. They are the things +"known or proved," on which, as his legal friend truly says, the +reasoning in the process of proof by circumstantial evidence must +rest. + +Now, Dr. Taylor, by his own confession, is no authority in either +geology, biology, or palaeontology. He has neither collected, +observed, nor experimented in these fields. He does not know how +many facts have been discovered in them, or what bearing they have +on other facts in other fields. Therefore, he is entirely unable to +say whether Huxley is arguing from things "known or proved" or not. +Moreover, he does not, for similar reasons, know whether Huxley's +process has been "fatally vitiated" by the dependence of any +"material circumstance" on conjecture, or by the insufficiency of +the "known facts" to exclude every other hypothesis; for, first, he +does not know what is in geological, biological, or palaeontological +induction a "material circumstance"--nor does any man know except by +prolonged study and observation--and, second, he does not know +whether "the known or proved facts" are sufficient to exclude every +other hypothesis, because he neither knows what facts are known nor +what is the probative force of such as are known. We can, however, +make Dr. Taylor's position still clearer by a homely illustration. A +wild Indian will, owing to prolonged observation and great acuteness +of the senses, tell by a simple inspection of grass or leaf-covered +ground, on which a scholar will perceive nothing unusual whatever, +that a man has recently passed over it. He will tell whether he was +walking or running, whether he carried a burden, whether he was +young or old, and how long ago and what hour of the day he went by. +He reaches all his conclusions by circumstantial evidence of +precisely the same character as that used by the geologist, though +he knows nothing about the formal logic or the process of induction. +Now, what Dr. Taylor would have us believe is that he can come out +of his study and pass judgment on the Indian's reasoning without +being able to see one of the "known facts" on which the reasoning +rests, or appreciate in any degree which of them is material to the +conclusion and which is not, or even to conjecture whether, taken +together, they exclude the hypothesis that it was not a man but a +cow or a dog which passed over the ground, and not to-day but +yesterday that the marks were made. + +Dr. Taylor further on makes a display of this inability to +appreciate the logical value of scientific facts by asking: "Where +is the evidence, scientific or other, that there was evolution? We +see these fossils (those of the horse). Huxley _says_ they are as +they are because the higher evolved itself out of the lower; we +_say_ they are as they are because God created them in series." To +recur to the former illustration, it is as if the Indian should show +Dr. Taylor the marks on which he relied in his induction, and the +doctor should calmly reply: "I see the marks; you _say_ they were +made by a man's foot in walking; I, who have never given any +attention to the subject, and have never been in the woods before, +_say_ they were made by the rain." The fact is that if there were +any weight whatever in this kind of talk--if no equality of +knowledge were necessary between two disputants--it would enable an +ignorant field-hand to sweep away in one sentence the whole science +of geology and palaeontology, and even astronomy, and to dispose of +every conclusion on any subject drawn from a skilled and experienced +balancing of probabilities, or nice mathematical calculation, by +simply saying that he was not satisfied with the proofs. + +Dr. Taylor's reasons for believing that the appearance of fossil +horses with a diminishing number of toes is caused by the creation +at separate periods of a four-, a three-, a two-, and a one-toed +horse are, he says, "personal, philosophical, historical," and he +opposes them with the utmost apparent sincerity to Huxley's +assertion that "there can be no scientific evidence" of such +creation. The "personal reason" for believing in successive +creations of sets of horses with a varying number of toes can, +of course, only be the reason so often urged in ball-room +disputation--that "I _feel_ it must be so;" the "philosophic reason" +can only be the one with which those who have frequented the society +of metaphysicians are very familiar, namely, a deduction from some +eminent speculator's opinion about the nature of the Supreme Being, +the conclusion being apparently that if the Creator wished to +diminish the number of a horse's toes, it would not do for him to +let one drop into disuse and so gradually disappear, but he would +have to make a new horse, on a new design. What Dr. Taylor means by +the "historical reason" we can only conjecture from his saying that +it is of the same order as his historical reason for believing "that +the Bible is the Word of God." The historical reason for this, we +presume, is that there are various literary and traditional proofs +that the Old Testament was held to be the Word of God by the Jewish +nation at a very early period, and was by them transmitted as such +to the modern Christian world, and that many of the prophecies +contained in it have received partial or a complete fulfilment. But +how by a process of this kind, partly literary and partly +conjectural, and attended by great difficulties at every step, he +would reach a fact of _prehistoric times_ of so much gravity as +creation in series, we think it would puzzle Dr. Taylor to explain. +Indeed, the mere production in a controversy of this nature of these +vague fancies, half pious, half poetical, conjured up in most cases +as a help to mental peace, by a leading minister in the character of +a logician, is a very remarkable proof of the extent of those +defects in clerical education to which we recently called attention. + + + +TYNDALL AND THE THEOLOGIANS + + +The recent address delivered by Professor Tyndall before the British +Association at Belfast, in which he "confessed" that he "prolonged +the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence, +and discerned in matter the promise and potency of every quality and +form of life," produced one by no means very surprising result. Dr. +Watts, a professor of theology in the Presbyterian College in that +city, was led by it to offer to read before the Biological Section +of the Association a paper containing a plan of his own for the +establishment of "peace and co-operation between science and +religion." The paper was, as might have been expected, declined. The +author then read it before a large body of religious people, who +apparently liked it, and they passed him a vote of thanks. The whole +religious world, indeed, is greatly excited against both Tyndall and +Huxley for their performances on this occasion, and papers by no +means in sympathy with the religious world--the _Pall Mall Gazette_, +for instance--are very severe on them for having "recourse to a +style of oratory and disquisition more appropriate to the chapel +than the lecture-room," or, in other words, for using the meetings +of the Association for a sort of propagandism not much superior in +method to that of theological missionaries, and thus challenging the +theologians to a conflict which may make it necessary, in the +interest of fair play, to add a theological section to the +Association. Of course, when Professor Tyndall passed "beyond the +boundary of experimental evidence," and began to see with his +"mind's eye" instead of with the microscope and telescope, he got +into a region in which the theologian is not only more at home than +he, but which theology claims as its exclusive domain, and in which +ministers look on physicists as intruders. + +But then, Dr. Watts's "plea for peace and co-operation between +science and religion" is one of many signs that theologians are, in +spite of all that has as yet been said, hardly alive to the exact +nature of the attitude they occupy toward science. They evidently +look upon scientific men as they look on a hostile school of +theologians--as the Princeton men look on the Yale men, for +instance, or the New looked on the Old School Presbyterians, or the +Calvinists on the Arminians--that is, as persons having a common +standard of orthodoxy, but differing somewhat in their method of +applying it, and who may, therefore, be induced from considerations +of expediency to suppress all outward marks of divergence and work +together harmoniously for the common end. All schools of theology +seek the glory of God and salvation of souls, and, this being the +case, differences on points of doctrine do seem trifling and capable +of being put aside. + +It is this way of regarding the matter which has led Dr. Watts to +propose an alliance between religion and science, and which produces +the arguments one sometimes sees in defence of Christianity against +Positivism, drawn from a consideration of the services which +Christianity has rendered to the race, and of the gloomy and +desolate condition in which its disappearance would leave the world. +Tyndall and Huxley do not, however, occupy the position of religious +prophets or fathers. They preside over no church or other +organization. They have no power or authority to draft any creed or +articles which will bind anybody else, or which would have any +claims on anybody's reverence or adhesion. No person, in short, is +authorized to bring science into an alliance with religion or with +anything else. Such "peace and co-operation" as Dr. Watts proposed +would be peace and co-operation between him and Professor Tyndall, +or between the theologians and the British Association, but "peace +and co-operation between science and religion" is a term which +carries absurdity on its face. Science is simply a body of facts +which lead people familiar with them to infer the existence of +certain laws. How can it, therefore, be either at peace or war with +anybody, or co-operate with anybody? What Professor Tyndall might +promise would be either not to discover any more facts, or to +discover only certain classes of facts, or to draw no inferences +from facts which would be unfavorable to Dr. Watts's theory of the +universe; but the only result of this would be that Tyndall would +lose his place as a scientific man, and others would go on +discovering the facts and drawing the inferences. + +In like manner, the supposition that Christianity can be defended +against Positivism on grounds of expediency implies a singular +conception of the mental operations of those persons who are +affected by Positivist theories, and indeed, we might add, of the +thinking world generally. No man believes in a religion simply +because he thinks it useful, and therefore no man's real adhesion to +the Christian creed can be secured by showing him how human +happiness would suffer by its extinction. This argument, if it had +any weight at all, would only induce persons either to pretend to be +Christians when they were not, or to refrain from assailing +Christianity, or to avoid all inquiries which might possibly lead to +sceptical conclusions. It is therefore, perhaps, a good argument to +address to believers, because it may induce them to suppress doubts +and avoid lines of thought or social relations likely to beget +doubt; but it is an utterly futile argument to address to those who +have already lost their faith. Men believe because they are +convinced; it is not in their power to believe from motives of +prudence or from public spirit. + +However, the complaints of the theologians excited by Professor +Tyndall's last utterances are not wholly unreasonable. Science has +done nothing hitherto to give it any authority in the region of the +unseen. "Beyond the boundary of experimental evidence" one man's +vision is about as good as another's. It is interesting to know that +Professor Tyndall there "discerns in matter the potency and promise +of every quality and form of life," but only because he is a +distinguished man, who gives much thought to this class of subjects +and occupies a very prominent place in the public eye. As a basis +for belief of any kind, his vision is of no more value than that of +the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would probably in that region +discern the promise and potency of every form of life in a supreme +and creative intelligence. Scientific men are continually pushing +back the limits of our knowledge of the material universe. They have +during the last eighty years made an enormous addition to the sum of +that knowledge, but they have not, since Democritus, taken away one +hair's-breadth from the Mystery which lies behind. In fact, their +labors have in many ways deepened this Mystery. We can appeal +confidently to any candid man to say, for instance, whether Darwin's +theory of the origin of life and the evolution of species does not +make this globe and its inhabitants a problem vastly darker and more +inscrutable than the Mosaic account of the creation. Take, again, +the light thrown on the constitution of the sun by the spectroscope; +it is a marvellous addition to our knowledge of our environment, but +then, does it not make our ignorance as to the origin of the sun +seem deeper? No scientific man pretends that any success in +discovery will ever lead the human mind beyond the resolution of the +number of laws which now seem to govern phenomena into a smaller +number; but if we reached the limit of the possible in that +direction to-morrow, we should be as far from the secret of the +universe as ever. When we have all got to the blank wall which +everybody admits lies at the boundary of experimental evidence, the +philosopher will know no more about what lies beyond than the +peasant, though the peasant will probably do then what he does +now--people it with the creatures of his imagination. If a +philosopher in our day likes to anticipate that period, and hazards +the conjecture that matter lies beyond, he is welcome to his guess, +but it ought to be understood that it is only a guess. + +The danger to society from the men of science does not, we imagine, +lie in the direction in which the theologians look for it. We do not +think they need feel particularly troubled by Professor Tyndall's +speculations as to the origin of things, for these speculations are +very old, and have, after all, only a remote connection with human +affairs. But there are signs both in his and Professor Huxley's +methods of popularizing science, and in those of a good many of +their followers, that we may fear the growth of something in the +nature of a scientific priesthood, who, tempted by the great +facilities for addressing the public which our age affords, and to +which nearly every other profession has fallen a victim, will no +longer confine themselves to their laboratories and museums and +scientific journals, but serve as "ministers of nature" before great +crowds of persons, for the most part of small knowledge and limited +capacity, on whom their hints, suggestions, and denunciations will +have a dangerously stimulating effect, particularly as the contempt +of scientific men for what is called "literature"--that is, the +recorded experience of the human race and the recorded expression of +human feelings--grows every year stronger, and exerts more and more +influence on the masses. The number of dabblers in science--of +persons with a slight smattering of chemistry, geology, botany, and +so on--too, promises to be largely increased for some time to come +by the arrangements of one sort or another made by colleges and +schools for scientific education; and though there is reason to +expect from this education a considerable improvement in knowledge +of the art of reasoning, there is also reason to fear a considerable +increase of dogmatic temper, of eagerness for experimentation in all +fields, and of scorn for the experience of persons who have never +worked in the laboratory or done any deep-sea dredging. Now, +whatever views we may hold as to the value of science in general and +in the long run to the human race, and in particular its value for +purposes of legislation and social economy, which we are far from +denying, there is some risk that lectures like Professor Huxley's at +Belfast, dressed up for promiscuous crowds, and produced with the +polite scorn of infallibility, in which the destruction of moral +responsibility is broadly hinted at as one of the probable results +of researches in biology, will do great mischief. For what does it +matter, or rather ought it to matter, for social purposes, in what +part of a man's system his conscience lies, or whether pressure on a +particular portion of the brain may convert him into a thief, when +we know, as of experience, that the establishment of good courts and +police turns a robbers' den into a hive of peaceful industry, and +when we see the wonders which discipline works in an ignorant crowd? + + + +THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE + + +A considerable body of the graduates of the Irish Catholic +University, including members of the legal and medical professions, +presented a long and solemn memorial to Cardinal Cullen and the +other Catholic bishops at the late commencement of that institution, +which throws a good deal of light not only on the vexed question of +Catholic education in Ireland, but on the relations of the Catholic +Church to education everywhere. The memorial examined in detail the +management of the university, which it pronounces so bad as to +endanger the existence of the college. But what it most complains of +is the all but total absence of instruction in science. The +memorialists say that the neglect of science by the university has +afforded a very plausible argument to the enemies of the university, +who never tire of repeating that the Catholic Church is the enemy of +science, and that she will carry out her usual policy in Ireland +with respect to it; that "no one can deny that the Irish Catholics +are miserably deficient in scientific education, and that this +deficiency is extremely galling to them; and, in a commercial sense, +involves a loss to them, while, in an intellectual sense, it +involves a positive degradation." They speak regretfully of the +secession of Professor Sullivan, to take the presidency of the +Queen's College, Cork, and declare that "no Irish-Catholic man of +science can be found to take his place." They then go on to make +several astounding charges. The lecture-list of the university does +not include for the faculty of arts a single professor of the +physical or natural sciences, or the name of a solitary teacher in +descriptive geometry, geology, zoölogy, comparative anatomy, +mineralogy, mining, astronomy, philology, ethnology, mechanics, +electricity, or optics. Of the prizes and exhibitions, the number +offered in classics equals that of those offered in all other +studies put together, while in other universities the classical +prizes do not exceed one-fourth of the whole. They wind up their +melancholy recital by declaring that they are determined that the +scientific inferiority of Irish Catholics shall not last any longer; +and that if they cannot obtain a scientific education in their own +universities, they will seek it at Trinity or the Queen's Colleges, +or study it for themselves in the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, +Tyndall, and Lyell. They make one other singular complaint, viz., +that no provision is made for supplying the lay students with +instruction in theology. + +It ought to be said in defence of the cardinal and the bishops, +though the memorialists probably could not venture to say it, that +the church hardly pretends that the university is an efficient or +complete instrument of education. It has been in existence, it is +true, twenty years, but the main object of its promoters during this +period has apparently been to harass or frighten the government by +means of it into granting them an endowment, or giving them control +of the Queen's Colleges. Had they succeeded in this, they would +doubtless before now have made a show of readiness to afford +something in the nature of scientific instruction, because, as the +memorialists remark, there is no denying "that the physical and +natural sciences have become the chief studies of the age." But the +memorialists must be either very simple-minded or very ignorant +Catholics, if they suppose that any endowment or any pressure from +public opinion would ever induce the Catholic hierarchy to undertake +to turn out students who would make a respectable figure among the +scientific graduates of other universities, or even hold their own +among the common run of amateur readers of Huxley and Darwin and +Tyndall. There is no excuse for any misunderstanding as regards the +policy of the church on this point. She has never given the +slightest encouragement or sanction to the idea which so many +Protestant divines have of late years embraced, that theology is a +progressive science, capable of continued development in the light +of newly discovered facts, and of gradual adaptation to the changing +phases of our knowledge of the physical universe. She has hundreds +of times given out as absolute truth a certain theory of the origin +of man and of the globe he lives on, and she cannot either abandon +it or encourage any study or habit of mind which would naturally or +probably lead to doubt of the correctness of this theory, or of the +church's authority in enunciating it. In fact, the Pope, who is now +an infallible judge in all matters of faith and discipline, has, +within the last five years, in the famous "Syllabus" of modern +follies, pronounced damnable and erroneous nearly all the methods +and opinions by which Irish or any other Catholics could escape the +deficiency in scientific knowledge which they say they find so +injurious and so degrading. It is safe to say, therefore, that a +Catholic cannot receive an education which would fit him to acquire +distinction among scientific men in our day, without either +incurring everlasting damnation or running the risk of it. Beside a +danger of this kind, of course, as any priest will tell him, +commercial loss and social inferiority are small matters. + +Of course, if we take the facts of a great many branches of physical +science by themselves, it would be easy enough to show that a good +Catholic might safely accept them. But no man can reach these facts +by investigations of his own, or hold to them intelligently and +fruitfully, without acquiring intellectual habits and making use of +tests which the church considers signs of a rebellious and therefore +sinful temper. Moreover, nobody who has attained the limits of our +present knowledge in chemistry, geology, comparative anatomy, +ethnography, philology, and mythology can stand there with closed +eyes. He must inevitably peer into the void beyond, and would be +more than human if he did not indulge in speculations as to the +history of the universe and its destiny which the church must treat +as endangering his salvation. This is so well known that one reads +the lamentations of these Catholic laymen with considerable +surprise. They may be fairly supposed to know something of church +history, and, even if they do not, they must profess some knowledge +of the teaching given by the church in those universities of other +countries which she controls. She does not encourage the study of +natural science anywhere. Mathematics and astronomy she looks on +with some favor, though we do not know how the spectroscope may have +affected her toward the latter; and we venture to assert that these +are the only fields of science in which any Catholic layman attains +distinction without forfeiting his standing in the eyes of the +clergy. We do not now speak of the French, Italian, and German +Catholic laymen who go on with their investigations without caring +whether the clergy like them or not, and without taking the trouble +to make any formal repudiation of the church's authority over their +intellects. We simply say there are no pious Catholic scientific men +of any note, and never will be if the Catholic clergy can help it, +and the lamentations of Catholics over the fact are logically +absurd. + +The legislation which Prussia is now putting into force on the +subject of clerical education is founded on a candid recognition of +the church's position on this matter. Prince Bismarck is well aware +that in no seminary or college controlled by priests is there any +chance that a young man will receive the best instruction of the day +on the subjects in which the modern world is most interested, and by +which the affairs of the State are most influenced. He has, +therefore, wisely decided that it is the duty of the State to see +that men who still exert as much power over popular thought as +priests do, and are to receive State pay as popular instructors, +shall also receive the best obtainable secular education before +being subjected to purely professional training in the theological +seminaries. The desperation of the fight made against him by the +clergy is due to their well-grounded belief that in order to get a +young man in our time to swallow a fair amount of Catholic theology, +he must be caught early and kept close. The warfare which is raging +in Prussia is one which has broken out in every country in which the +government has formal relations with the church. + +The appearance of a mutinous spirit among the Irish laity, and this +not on political but scientific subjects, shows that the poison has +sunk very deep and is very virulent; for the Irish laity have been +until now the foremost Catholics in the world in silence and +submissiveness, and there is nothing in ecclesiastical history which +can equal in absurdity a request, addressed to Cardinal Cullen, that +he would supply them with the kind of teaching which other men get +from Tyndall and Huxley. With ecclesiastical insubordination arising +out of differences on matters of doctrine or discipline, such as +that manifested by the Old Catholics, it is comparatively easy to +deal. Schismatics can be excommunicated by an authority which they +have themselves venerated, and from an organization in which they +loved to live and would fain have died. But over wanderers into the +fields of science the church loses all hold. Her weapons are the +jest of the museum and the laboratory, and her lore the babbling of +the ignorant or blind. + + + +THE CHURCH AND GOOD CONDUCT + + +The Episcopal Church, at the late Triennial Convention, took up and +determined to make a more vigorous effort to deal with the problem +presented by the irreligion of the poor and the dishonesty of +church-members. It is an unfortunate and, at first sight, somewhat +puzzling circumstance, that so many of the culprits in the late +cases of fraud and defalcation should have been professing +Christians, and in some cases persons of unusual ecclesiastical +activity, and that this activity should apparently have furnished no +check whatever to the moral descent. It is proposed to meet the +difficulty by more preaching, more prayer, and greater use of lay +assistance in church-work. There is nothing very new, however, +about the difficulty. There is hardly a year in which it is not +deplored at meetings of church organizations, and in which solemn +promises are not made to devise some mode of keeping church-members +up to their professions, and gathering more of the church-less +working-classes into the fold; but somehow there is not much +visible progress to be recorded. The church scandals multiply in +spite of pastors and people, and the workingmen decline to show +themselves at places of worship, although the number of places of +worship and of church-members steadily increases. + +We are sorry not to notice in any of the discussions on the subject +a more frank and searching examination of the reason why religion +does not act more powerfully as a rule of conduct. Until such an +examination is made, and its certain results boldly faced by church +reformers, the church cannot become any more of a help to right +living than it is now, be this little or much. The first thing which +such an examination would reveal is a thing which is in everybody's +mind and on everybody's tongue in private, but which is apt to be +evaded or only slightly alluded to at ecclesiastical synods and +conventions--we mean the loss of faith in the dogmatic part of +Christianity. People do not believe in the fall, the atonement, the +resurrection, and a future state of reward and punishment at all, or +do not believe in them with the certainty and vividness which are +needed to make faith a constant influence on man's daily life. They +do not believe they will be damned for sin with the assurance they +once did, and they are consequently indifferent to most of what is +said to them of the need of repentance. They do not believe the +story of Christ's life and the theory of his character and +attributes given in the New Testament, or they regard them as merely +a picturesque background to his moral teachings, about which a +Christian may avoid coming to any positive conclusion. + +No man who keeps himself familiar with the intellectual and +scientific movements of the day, however devout a Christian he may +be, likes to question himself as to his beliefs about these matters, +or would like to have to define accurately where his faith ended and +his doubts began. If he is assailed in discussion by a sceptic and +his combativeness roused, he will probably proclaim himself an +implicit and literal acceptor of the gospel narratives; but he will +not be able to maintain this mental attitude alone in his own room. +The effort that has been made by Unitarians and others to meet this +difficulty by making Christ's influence and authority rest on his +moral teachings and example, without the support of a divine nature +or mission or sacrifice, has failed. The Christian Church cannot be +held together as a great social force by his teaching or example as +a moral philosopher. A church organized on this theory speedily +becomes a lecture association or a philanthropic club, of about as +much aid to conduct as Freemasonry. Christ's sermons need the touch +of supernatural authority to make them impressive enough for the +work of social regeneration, and his life was too uneventful and the +society in which he lived too simple, to give his example real power +over the imagination of a modern man who regards him simply as a +social reformer. + +This decline of faith in Christian dogma and history has not, +however, produced by any means a decline in religious sentiment, but +it has deprived religion of a good deal of its power as a means of +moral discipline. Moral discipline is acquired mainly by the +practice of doing what one does not like to do, under the influence +of mastering fear or hope. The conquest of one's self, of which +Christian moralists speak so much, is simply the acquisition of the +power of doing easily things to which one's natural inclinations +are opposed; and in this work the mass of mankind are powerfully +aided--indeed, we may say, have to be aided--by the prospect of +reward or punishment. The wonderful results which are achieved in +the army, by military authority, in inspiring coarse and common +natures with a spirit of the loftiest devotion, are simply due to +the steady application by day and by night of a punishing and +rewarding authority. The loss of this, or its great enfeeblement, +undoubtedly has deprived the church of a large portion of its means +of discipline, and reduced it more nearly to the __rôle_ of a +stimulater and gratifier of certain tender emotions. It contains a +large body of persons whose religious life consists simply of a +succession of sensations not far removed from one's enjoyment of +music and poetry; and another large body, to whom it furnishes +refuge and consolation of a vague and ill-defined sort in times of +sorrow and disappointment. To these persons the church prayers and +hymns are not trumpet-calls to the battle-field, but soothing +melodies, which give additional zest to home comforts and luxuries, +and make the sharper demands of a life of the highest integrity less +unbearable. Nay, the case is rather worse than this. We have little +doubt that this sentimental religion, as we may call it, in many +cases deceives a man as to his own moral condition, and hides from +him the true character and direction of the road he is travelling, +and furnishes his conscience with a false bottom. The revelations of +the last few years as to its value as a guide in the conduct of life +have certainly been plain and deplorable. + +The evil in some degree suggests the remedy, though we do not mean +to say that we know of any complete remedy. Church-membership ought +to involve discipline of some kind in order to furnish moral aid. It +ought, that is to say, to impose some restraint on people's +inclinations, the operation of which will be visible, and enforced +by some external sanction. If, in short, Christians are to be +regarded as more trustworthy and as living on a higher moral plane +than the rest of the world, they must furnish stronger evidence of +their sincerity than is now exacted from them, in the shape of plain +and open self-denial. The church, in short, must be an organization +held together by some stronger ties than enjoyment of weekly music +and oratory in a pretty building, and alms-giving which entails no +sacrifice and is often only a tickler of social vanity. There is in +monasticism a suggestion of the way in which it must retain its +power over men's lives, and be enabled to furnish them with a +certificate of character. Its members will have to have a good deal +of the ascetic about them, but without any withdrawal from the +world. + +How to attain this without sacrificing the claims of art, and +denying the legitimacy of honestly acquired material power, and, in +fact, restricting individual freedom to a degree which the habits +and social theories of the day would make very odious, is the +problem to be solved, and, it is, no doubt, a very tough one. +General inculcation of "plain living" will not solve it, as long as +"plain living" is not defined and the "self-made man" who has made a +great fortune and spends it lavishly is held up to the admiration of +every school-boy. The church has been making of late years a gallant +effort to provide accommodation for the successful, and enable them +to be good Christians without sacrificing any of the good things of +this life, and, in fact, without surrendering anything they enjoy, +or favoring the outside public with any recognizable proof of their +sincerity. We do not say that this is reprehensible, but it is easy +to see that it has the seeds of a great crop of scandals in it. +Donations in an age of great munificence, and horror of far-off or +unattractive sins, like the slaveholding of Southerners and the +intemperance of the miserable poor, are not, and ought not to be, +accepted as signs of inward and spiritual grace, and of readiness to +scale "the toppling crags of duty." + +The conversion of the working-classes, too, it is safe to say, will +never be accomplished by any ecclesiastical organization which sells +cushioned pews at auction, or rents them at high rates, and builds +million-dollar churches for the accommodation of one thousand +worshippers. The passion for equality has taken too strong hold of +the workingman to make it possible to catch him with cheap chapels +and assistant pastors. He will not seek salvation _in forma +pauperis_, and thinks the best talent in the ministerial market not +a whit too good for him. He not unnaturally doubts the sincerity of +Christians who are not willing to kneel beside badly dressed persons +in prayer on the one day of the week when prayer is public. In fact, +to fit the Protestant Church in this country to lay hold of the +laboring population a great process of reconstruction would be +necessary. The congregational system would have to be abandoned or +greatly modified, the common fund made larger and administered in a +different way. There would have, in short, to be a close approach to +the Roman Catholic organization, and the churches would have to lose +the character of social clubs, which now makes them so comfortable +and attractive. Well-to-do Christians would have to sacrifice their +tastes in a dozen ways, and give up the expectation of aesthetic +pleasure in public worship. There cannot be a vast Gothic cathedral +for the multitude in every city. The practice of the church would +have to be forced up to its own theory of its character and mission, +which would involve serious collision with some of the most deeply +rooted habits and ideas of modern social and political life. That +there is any immediate probability of this we do not believe. Until +it is brought about, its members must make up their minds to have +religious professions treated by some as but slight guarantees of +character, and by others as but cloaks of wrong-doing, hard as this +may be for that large majority to whom they are an honest expression +of sure hopes and noble aims. + + + +RÔLE OF THE UNIVERSITIES IN POLITICS + + +Mr. Galton, in his work on "Hereditary Genius," has drawn attention +in a striking chapter to the effect which the systematic destruction +and expatriation, by the Inquisition or the religious intolerance of +the government, of the leading men of the nation--its boldest +thinkers, most ardent investigators, most prudent and careful and +ingenious workers, in generation after generation--had in bringing +about the moral and political decline of the three great Latin +countries, France, Spain, and Italy--a decline of which, in the case +of the two former at least, we have probably not seen the end. The +persons killed or banished amounted only to a few thousands every +year, but they were--no matter from what rank they came--the flower +of the population: the men whose labor and whose influence enabled +the State to keep its place in the march of civilization. The +picture is very valuable (particularly just now, when there is so +great a disposition to revel in the consciousness of vast numbers), +as calling attention to the smallness of the area within which, +after all, the sources of national greatness and progress are to be +sought. The mind which keeps the mass in motion, which saves and +glorifies it, would most probably, if we could lay bare the secret +of national life, be found in the possession of a very small +proportion of the people, though not in any class in particular-- +neither among the rich nor the poor, the learned nor simple, +capitalists nor laborers; but the abstraction of these few from the +sum of national existence, though it would hardly be noticed in the +census, would produce a fatal languor, were the nation not +constantly receiving fresh blood from other countries. + +This element was singled out with considerable accuracy in France +and Spain by religious persecution. It would happily be impossible +to devise any process of selection one-quarter as efficient in our +age or in this country. The one we have been using for the last +twenty years, and on which a good deal of popular reliance has been +placed, is the accumulation of wealth; and under this "the self-made +man"--that is, the man who, starting in life ignorant and poor, has +made a large fortune, and got control of a great many railroads and +mines and factories--has risen into the front rank of eminence. The +events of the last five years, however, have had a damaging effect +on his reputation, and he now stands as low as his worst enemies +could desire. As he declines, the man of some kind of training +naturally rises; and it would be running no great risk to affirm +that the popular mind inclines more than it has usually done to the +belief that trained men--that is, men who have been prepared for +their work by teaching on approved methods--are after all the most +valuable possession a country can have, and that a country is well +or ill off in proportion as they are numerous or the reverse. One +does not need to travel very far from this position to reach the +conclusion that there is probably no way in which we could strike so +deadly a blow at the happiness and progress of the United States as +by sweeping away, by some process of proscription kept up during a +few generations, the graduates of the principal colleges. In no +other way could we make so great a drain on the reserved force of +character, ambition, and mental culture which constitutes so large a +portion of the national vitality. They would not be missed at the +polls, it is true, and if they were to run a candidate for the +Presidency to-morrow their vote would excite great merriment among +the politicians; but if they were got rid of regularly for forty or +fifty years in the manner we have suggested, and nothing came in +from the outside to supply their places, the politicians would +somehow find that they themselves had less public money to vote or +steal, less national aspiration to trade upon, less national force +to direct, less national dignity to maintain or lose, and that, in +fact, by some mysterious process, they were getting to be of no more +account in the world than their fellows in Guatemala or Costa Rica. + +There will come to the colleges of the United States during the next +fifty years a larger and larger number of men who either strongly +desire training for themselves or are the sons of men who are deeply +sensible of its advantages, and therefore are at the head of +families which possess and appreciate the traditions of high +civilization, and would like to live in them and contribute their +share to perpetuating them--and they will not come from any one +portion of the country. There are, unhappily, "universities" in all +parts of the Union, but there is hardly a doubt that as the means of +communication are improved and cheapened, and as the real nature and +value of the university education become better understood, the +tendency to use the small local institutions passing by this name +as, what they really are, high schools, and resort to the half-dozen +colleges which can honestly call themselves universities, will +increase. The demands which modern culture, owing to the advance of +science and research in every field, now makes on a university, in +the shape of professors, books, apparatus, are so great that only +the largest and wealthiest institutions can pretend to meet them, +and in fact there is something very like false pretence in the +promise to do so held out to poor students by many of the smaller +colleges. These colleges doubtless do a certain amount of work very +creditably; but they are uncandid in saying that they give a +university education, and in issuing diplomas purporting to be +certificates that any such education has either been sought or +received. The idea of maintaining a university for the sake of the +local glory of it is a form of folly which ought not to be +associated with education in any stage. These considerations are now +felt to be so powerful in other countries that they threaten the +destruction of a whole batch of universities in Italy which have +come down famous and honored from the Middle Ages and have sent out +twenty generations of students, and they are causing even the very +best of the smaller universities in Germany, great and efficient as +many of them are, to tremble for their existence. + +There is no interest of learning, therefore, which would not be +served by the greater concentration of the resources of the country +as regards university education, still less is there any interest of +society or politics. It is of the last importance that the class of +men from all parts of the country whom the universities send out +into the world should as far as possible be educated together, and +start on their careers with a common stock of traditions, tastes, +and associations. Much as steam and the telegraph have done, and +will do, to diminish for administrative purposes the size of the +Republic, and to simplify the work of government, they cannot +prevent the creation of a certain diversity of interests, and even +of temperament and manners, through differences of climate and soil +and productions. There will never come a time when we shall not have +more or less of such folly as the notion that the South and West +need more money than the East, because they have less capital, or +the struggle of some parts of the country for a close market against +other parts which seek an open one. Nothing but a reign of knowledge +and wisdom, such as centuries will not bring, will prevent States on +the Gulf or on the Pacific from fancying that their interests are +not identical with those of the Northern Atlantic, and nothing but +profound modifications in the human constitution will ever bring the +California wheat-raiser into complete sympathy with the New England +shoemaker. + +The work of our political system for ages to come will consist +largely in keeping these differences in check; and in doing it, it +will need all the help it can get from social and educational +influences. It ought to be the aim, therefore, of the larger +institutions of learning to offer every inducement in their power to +students from all parts of the Union, and more especially from the +South, as the region which is most seriously threatened by +barbarism, and in which the sense of national unity and the hold of +national traditions on the popular mind are now feeblest. We at the +North owe to the civilized men at the South who are now, no matter +what their past faults or delusions may have been, struggling to +save a large portion of the Union from descent into heathen darkness +and disorder, the utmost help and consideration. We owe them above +all a free and generous welcome to a share in whatever means of +culture we have at our disposal, and ought to offer it, as far as is +consistent with our self-respect, in a shape that will not wound +theirs. + +The question of the manner of doing this came up incidentally at +Harvard the other day, at the dedication of the great hall erected +in memory of the graduates of the university who died in the war. +The hall is to be used for general college purposes, for +examinations, and some of the ceremonial of commencement, as well as +for dinner, and a portion of the walls is covered with tablets +bearing the names of those to whose memory it is dedicated. The +question whether the building would keep alive the remembrance of +the civil war in any way in which it is inexpedient to keep it +alive, or in any way which would tend to keep Southern students away +from the university, has been often asked, and by some answered in +the affirmative. General Devens, who presided at the alumni dinner, +gave full and sufficient answer to those who find fault with the +rendering of honor on the Northern side to those who fell in its +cause; but General Bartlett--who perhaps more than any man living is +qualified to speak for those who died in the war--uttered, in a +burst of unpremeditated eloquence, at the close of the proceedings, +the real reason why no Southern man need, and we hope will never, +feel hurt by Northern memorials of the valor and constancy of +Northern soldiers. It is not altogether the cause which ennobles +fighting; it is the spirit in which men fight; and no horror of the +objects of the Southern insurrection need prevent anybody from +admiring or lamenting the gallant men who honestly, loyally, and +from a sense of duty perished in its service. It is not given to the +wisest and best man to choose the right side; but the simplest and +humblest knows whether it is his conscience which bids him lay down +his life. And this test may be applied by each side to all the +victims of the late conflict without diminishing by one particle its +faith in the justice of its own cause. Moreover, as General Bartlett +suggested, the view of the nature of the struggle which is sure to +gain ground all over the country as the years roll on is that it was +a fierce and passionate but inevitable attempt to settle at any cost +a controversy which could be settled in no other way; and that all +who shared in it, victors or vanquished, helped to save the country +and establish its government on sure and lasting foundations. This +feeling cannot grow without bringing forcibly to mind the fact that +the country was saved through the war that virtue might increase, +that freedom might spread and endure, and that knowledge might rule, +and not that politicians might have a treasury to plunder and marble +halls to exchange their vituperation in; thus uniting the best +elements of Northern and Southern society by the bonds of honest +indignation as well as of noble hopes. + + + +THE HOPKINS UNIVERSITY + + +The _Baltimore American_, discussing the plan of the Hopkins +University in that city, says: "The _Nation_ suggests to the Board +of Trustees a university that would leave Latin, Greek, mathematics, +and the elements of natural science out of its curriculum." This is +so great a mistake that we are at a loss to understand how it could +have been made. The _Nation_ has never suggested anything of the +kind. The university which the _Nation_ has expressed the hope the +trustees would found is simply a university with such a high +standard for admission on all subjects that the professors would be +saved the necessity of teaching the rudiments of either Latin, +Greek, mathematics, or natural science; or, in other words, that the +country would be saved considerable waste of skilled labor. The +reason why we have ventured to expect this of the Hopkins trustees +is that they enjoy the all but unprecedented advantage of being left +in possession of a very large bequest, with complete liberty, within +very wide limits, as to the disposition of it. In other words, they +are to found a university with it, but as to the kind of university +they may exercise their discretion. + +That this is a very exceptional position everybody familiar with the +history of American colleges knows. All the older colleges are bound +to the state, or to certain religious denominations, by laws or +usages or precedents which impose a certain tolerably fixed +character either on the subjects or on the mode of teaching them, or +on both. They have traditions to uphold, or denominational interests +to care for, or political prejudices to satisfy. The newer ones, on +the other hand, are apt to have incurred a bondage even worse still, +in having to carry out the wishes of a founder who, in ninety-nine +cases out of a hundred, had only a faint notion of the nature and +needs of a university, and in endowing one sought rather to erect a +monument to his memory than to found a seat of learning. In so far +as he was interested in the curriculum, he probably desired that it +should be such as would satisfy some want which he himself felt, or +thought he felt, in early life, or should diffuse some social or +religious or political crotchet on which his fancy had secretly fed +during his years of active exertion, and on the success of which he +came to think, in the latter part of his life, that the best +interests of the community were dependent. The number of these +honorably ambitious but ill-informed and somewhat eccentric +testators increases every year, as the country grows in wealth and +the habit of giving to public objects gains in strength. + +The consequence is that we are threatened with the spectacle during +the coming century of a great waste of money by well-meaning persons +in the establishment all over the country of institutions calling +themselves "universities," which are either so feebly equipped as +rather to hinder than help the cause of education, or so completely +committed by their organization to the propagation of certain social +or religious theories as to deserve the appellation of mission +stations rather than of colleges. Education is now an art of +exceeding delicacy and complexity. To master it, so as to have a +trustworthy opinion as to the relative value of studies and as to +the best mode of pursuing them, and as to the organization of +institutions devoted to the work of instruction, a man needs both +learning and experience. The giving him money to employ in his +special work, therefore, without leaving him discretion as to the +manner in which he shall use it, is to prepare almost certainly for +its waste in more than one direction. To make the most of the +resources of the country for educational purposes, it is necessary +above all things that they should be placed at the disposal of those +who have made education a special study, and who are free, as we +understand the Hopkins trustees to be, from any special bias or bond, +and are ready or willing to look at the subject from every side. +Their liberty, of course, brings with it great responsibility--all +the greater for the reasons we have been enumerating. + +Now, as to the use which they should make of this liberty, the +_Baltimore American_ fears that if they found a university of the +class sketched by us some weeks ago, "the people of Maryland would +be greatly disappointed--there would not be over fifty students," +and "there would be a great outcry against the investment of three +and a half millions of dollars for the benefit of so small a +number." Whether the people of Maryland will be disappointed or not, +depends on the amount of consideration they give the matter. If they +are satisfied that the foundation of such a university as is now +talked of is the best use that can be made of the money, they will +not be disappointed, and there will be no "outcry" at all. Being an +intelligent people, they will on reflection see that the value of a +university by no means depends solely on the proportion borne by the +number of its students to the amount of its revenues, because, +judged in this way--that is, as instruments of direct popular +benefit--all the universities in the country might be pronounced +failures. The bulk of the community derives no direct benefit from +them at all. Harvard, for instance, has an endowment of about five +million dollars, we believe, and the total number of the students is +only 1,200, while the population of the State of Massachusetts is +1,500,000, so that, even supposing all the students to come from +Massachusetts, which they do not, less than one person in every +thousand profits by the university. + +The same story might be told of Yale or any other college. +Considered as what are called popular institutions--that is, +institutions from which everybody can or does derive some +calculable, palpable benefit--the universities of this and every +other country are useless, and there ought on this theory to be a +prodigious "outcry" against them, and they ought, on the principle +of equality, if allowed to exist at all, to be allowed to exist only +on condition that they will give a degree, or at least offer an +education, to every male citizen of sound mind. But nobody takes +this view of them. The poorest and most ignorant hod-carrier would +not hold, if asked, that because he cannot go to college there ought +to be no colleges. Sensible people in every country acknowledge that +a high education can in the nature of things be only obtained by a +very small proportion of the population; but that the few who seek +it, and can afford to take it, should get it, and should get it of +the best quality, they hold to be a public benefit. Now, why a +public benefit? The service that Harvard or Yale renders to the +community certainly does not lie simply in the fact that it +qualifies a thousand young men every year to earn a livelihood. They +would earn a livelihood whether they went to college or not. The +vast majority of men earn a livelihood without going to college or +thinking of it. Indeed, it is doubted by many persons, and with much +show of reason, whether a man does not earn it all the more readily +for not going to college at all; and as regards the work of the +world of all kinds, the great bulk of it is done, and well done, by +persons who have not received a university education and do not +regret it. So that the benefits which the country derives from the +universities consists mainly in the refining and elevating +influences which they create, in the taste for study and research +which they diffuse, in the social and political ideals which they +frame and hold up for admiration, in the confidence in the power of +knowledge which they indirectly spread among the people, and in the +small though steady contributions they make to that reverence for +"things not seen" in which the soul of the state may be said to lie, +and without which it is nothing better than a factory or an +insurance company. + +There is nothing novel about the considerations we are here urging. +The problem over which university reformers have been laboring in +every country during the past forty years has been, how to rid the +universities, properly so called, of the care of the feeble, +inefficient, and poorly prepared students, and reserve their +teaching for the better-fitted, older, and more matured; or, in +other words, how, in the interest both of economy and culture, to +reserve the highest teaching power of the community for the most +promising material. It is forty years since John Stuart Mill wrote a +celebrated attack on the English universities, then in a very low +condition, in which he laid it down broadly that the end above all +for which endowed universities ought to exist was "to keep alive +philosophy," leaving "the education of common minds for the common +business of life" for the most part to private enterprise. This +seemed at the time exacting too much, and it doubtless seems so +still; but it is nevertheless true that ever since that period +universities of the highest class, both in Europe and in this +country, have been working in that direction--striving, that is to +say, either to sift the applicants for admission, by imposing +increasingly severe tests, and thus presenting to the professors +only pupils of the highest grade to work upon; or, at all events, if +not repelling the ill-fitted, expending all their strength in +furnishing the highest educational advantages to the well-fitted. In +the last century, Harvard and Yale were doing just the kind of work +that the high schools now do--that is, taking young lads and +teaching them the elements of literature. At the present day they +are throwing this work as far as possible on the primary schools, +and reserving their professors and libraries and apparatus, as far +as the state of the country and the conditions of their organization +will permit, for those older and more advanced students who bring to +the work of learning both real ardor and real preparation. A boy has +to know more to get into either of them to-day than his grandfather +knew when he graduated. Nevertheless, with all the efforts they can +make after this true economy of power and resources, there is in +both of them a large amount of waste of labor. There are men in both +of them, and in various other colleges, much of whose work is almost +as much a misuse of energy and time as if they were employed so many +hours a day in carrying hods of mortar, simply because they are +doing what the masters of primary schools ought to do, and what no +man at a university ought to be asked to do. It is a kind of work, +too, which, if it have to be done in colleges at all, is already +abundantly provided for by endowment. No Maryland youth who desires +to learn a little mathematics, get a smattering of classics, and +some faint notions of natural science, or even to support himself by +manual labor while doing this, will suffer if the Hopkins endowment +is used for higher work. The country swarms already with +institutions which meet his needs, and in which he can graduate with +ease to himself and credit to his State. The trustees of this one +will do him and the State and the whole country most service, +therefore, by providing a place to which, after he has got hold of +the rudiments at some other college, he can come, if he has the +right stuff in him, and pursue to the end the studies for which all +universities should really be reserved. + + + +THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR + + +I + +September 8, 1877. + +Having just returned from a few weeks' stay in Virginia it has +occurred to me as probable that your readers would be interested in +hearing how such changes in Southern manners and tone of thought and +economical outlook as could be noted in a brief visit strike one who +had travelled in that region before the war had revolutionized it. +It is now twenty years since I spent a winter traversing the Cotton +States on horseback, sleeping at the house which happened to be +nearest when the night caught me. Buchanan had just been elected; +the friends of slavery, though anxious, were exultant and defiant, +and the possibility of a separate political future had begun to take +definite shape in the public mind, at least in the Gulf States. I am +unable to compare the economical condition of that part of the +country at that time with its condition to-day, because both slavery +and agriculture in Virginia differed then in many important respects +from slavery and agriculture farther south. But the habits and modes +of thought and feeling bred by slavery were essentially the same all +over the South; and I do not think that I shall go far astray in +assuming that the changes in these which I have noticed in Virginia +would be found to-day in all the other States. + +The first which struck me, and it was a most agreeable one, was what +I may call the emancipation which conversation and social +intercourse with Northerners had undergone. In 1857 the tone of +nearly everybody with whom I came in contact, however veiled by +politeness, was in some degree irritable and defiant. My host and I +were never long before the evening fire without my finding that he +was impatient to talk about slavery, that he suspected me of +disliking it, and yet that he wished to have me understand that he +did not care, and that nobody at the South cared two cents what I +thought about it, and that it was a little impertinent in me, who +knew so little of the negro, to have any opinion about it at all. I +was obliged, too, to confess inwardly that there was a good deal of +justification for his bad temper. There was I, a curious stranger, +roving through his country and eating at his board, and all the +while secretly or openly criticising or condemning his relations +with his laborers and servants, and, in fact, the whole scheme of +his domestic life. I was not a pleasant companion, and nothing could +make me one, and no matter on what themes our talk ran, it was +colored by our opinions on the institution. He looked at nearly +everything in politics and society from what might be called the +slaveholder's point of view, and suspected me, on the other hand, of +disguising reprobation of the South and its institutions in any +praise of the North or of France or England which I might utter. So +that there was a certain acridity and a sense of strong and deep +limitations and reserves in our discussions, somewhat like those +which are felt in the talk of a pious evangelical Protestant with a +pious Catholic. + +In Virginia of to-day I was conscious of a curious change in the +atmosphere, as if the windows of a close room had been suddenly +opened. I found that I was in a country where all things were +debatable, and where I had not to be on the lookout for +susceptibilities. The negro, too, about whom I used to have to be so +careful, with whom I used to make it a point of honor not to talk +privately or apart from his master when I was staying on a +plantation, was wandering about loose, as it were, and nobody seemed +to care anything about him any more than about any poor man. I found +every Southerner I spoke to as ready to discuss him as to discuss +sheep or oxen, to let you have your own views about him just as you +had them about sheep or oxen. Moreover, I found instead of the +stereotyped orthodox view of his place and capacity which prevailed +in 1857, a great variety of opinions about him, mostly depreciatory, +it is true, but still varying in degree as well as in kind. It is +difficult to give anyone who has never had any experience of the old +slave society an idea of the difference this makes in a stranger's +position at the South. In short, as one Southerner expressed it to +me on my mentioning the change, "Yes, sir, we have been brought into +intellectual and moral relations with the rest of the civilized +world." All subjects are now open at the South in conversation. + +Is this true? it will probably be asked, with regard to the late +war. Can you talk freely about that? Not exactly; but then the +limitations on your discourse on this point are not peculiar to the +South; they are such as would be put upon the discourse of two +parties to a bloody contest in any civilized country among well-bred +men or women. The events of the war you can discuss freely, but you +are hardly at liberty to denounce Southern soldiers or officers, or +accuse them of "rebellion," or to assume that they fought for base +or wicked motives. Moreover, in a certain sense, all Southerners are +still "unrepentant rebels." Doubtless, in view of the result, they +will acknowledge that the war was a gigantic mistake; but I found +that if I sought for an admission that, if it was all to do over +again, they would not fight, I was touching on a very tender point, +and I was gently but firmly repelled. The reason is plain enough. In +confessing this, they would, they think, be confessing that their +sons and brothers and fathers had perished miserably in a causeless +struggle on which they ought never to have entered, and this, of +course, would look like a slur on their memory, and their memory is +still, after the lapse of twelve years, very sacred and very dear. I +doubt if many people at the North have an adequate notion of the +intensity of the emotions with which Southerners look back on the +war; and I mean tender and not revengeful or malignant emotions. The +losses of the battle-field were deeply felt at the North--in many +households down to the very roots of life; but on the whole they +fell on a large and prosperous population, on a community which in +the very thick of the fray seemed to be rolling up wealth, which +revelled as it fought, and came out of the battle triumphant, +exultant, and powerful. At the South they swept through a scanty +population with the most searching destructiveness, and when all was +over they had to be wept over in ruined homes and in the midst of a +society which was wrecked from top to bottom, and in which all +relatives and friends had sunk together to common perdition. There +has been no other such cataclysm in history. Great states have been +conquered before now, but conquest did not mean a sudden and +desolating social revolution; so that to a Southerner the loss of +relatives on the battle-field or in the hospital is associated with +the loss of everything else. A gentleman told me of his going, at +the close of the war, into a little church in South Carolina on +Sunday, and finding it filled with women, who were all in black, and +who cried during the singing. It reminded one of the scene in the +cathedral at Leyden, when the people got together to chant a _Te +Deum_ on hearing that the besieging army was gone; but, the music +suddenly dying out, the air was filled with the sounds of sobbing. +The Leydeners, however, were weak and half-starved people, weeping +over a great deliverance; these South Carolinians were weeping +before endless bereavement and hopeless poverty. I doubt much if any +community in the modern world was ever so ruthlessly brought face to +face with what is sternest and hardest in human life; and those of +them who have looked at it without flinching have something which +any of us may envy them. + +But then I think it would be a mistake to suppose that Southerners +came out of the war simply sorrowful. At the close, and for some +time afterward, they undoubtedly felt fiercely and bitterly, and +hated while they wept; and this was the primal difficulty of +reconstruction. Frequently in conversation I heard some violent +speech or act occurring soon after the war mentioned with the +parenthetical explanation, "You know, I felt very bitterly at that +time." But, then, I have always heard it from persons who are to day +good-tempered, conciliatory, and hopeful, and desirous of +cultivating good relations with Northerners; from which the +inference, which so many Northern politicians find it so hard to +swallow, is easy--viz., that time produces on Southerners its usual +effects. What Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Blaine would have us believe is +that Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces +no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty +years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago. + +The fact is, however, that they are in this respect like the rest of +the human race. Time has done for their hearts and heads what it has +done for the old Virginia battle-fields. There was not in 1865 a +fence standing between the Potomac and Gordonsville, and but few, if +any, undamaged houses. When I passed Manassas Junction the other day +there was a hospitable-looking tavern and several houses at the +station; the flowers were blooming in the yard, and crowds of young +men and women in their Sunday clothes were gathered from the country +around to see a base-ball match, and a well-tilled and well-fenced +and smiling farming country stretched before my eyes in every +direction. The only trace of the old fights was a rude graveyard +filled, as a large sign informed us, with "the Confederate dead." +All the rest of the way down to the springs the road ran through +farms which looked as prosperous and peaceful as if the tide of war +had not rolled over them inside a hundred years, and it is +impossible to talk with the farmers ten minutes without seeing how +thoroughly human and Anglo-Saxon they are. With them the war is +history--tender, touching, and heroic history if you will, but +having no sort of connection with the practical life of to-day. Some +of us at the North think their minds are occupied with schemes for +the assassination and spoliation of negroes, and for a "new +rebellion." Their minds are really occupied with making money, and +the farms show it, and their designs on the negro are confined to +getting him to work for low wages. His wages are low--forty cents a +day and rations, which cost ten cents--but he is content with it. I +saw negroes seeking employment at this rate, and glad to get it; and +in the making of the bargain nothing could be more commercial, +apparently, than the relations of the parties. They were evidently +laborer and employer to each other, and nothing more. + +The state of things on two farms which I visited may serve as +illustrations of the process of regeneration which is going on all +over Virginia. They are two hundred miles apart. On one of two +thousand acres there were, before the war, about one hundred and +fifty slaves of all ages. The owner, at emancipation, put them in +wagons and deposited them in Ohio. His successor now works the +plantation with twelve hired men, who see to his cattle, of which he +raises and feeds large herds. His cultivation is carried on on +shares by white tenants. He has an overseer, makes a snug income, +and spends a good part of his winters in Baltimore and New York. He +laughs when you ask him if he regrets slavery. Nothing would induce +him to take care of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, +furnishing perhaps thirty able-bodied men, littering the house with +a swarm of lazy servants, and making heavy drafts on the meat-house +and corn-crib, and running up doctor's bills. + +The other was owned at the close of the war by a regular "Virginia +gentleman," with the usual swarm of negroes, and who was in debt. +He sold it to an enterprising young farmer from another county, +paid his debts, and retired to a small place, where, with two or +three hired men, he makes a living. The young farmer, instead of +seventy-five slaves, works it with twelve hands in the busy season +and three in winter, is up at five o'clock in the morning +superintending them himself, raises all raisable crops, and is as +intent on the markets and the experiments made by his neighbors as +if he lived in Illinois or the Carse of Gowrie. He was led by +Colonel Waring's book to try tile-draining, and made the tiles for +the purpose on his own land. He was so successful that he now +manufactures and soils tiles extensively to others. It would be +difficult to meet at the North or in England two men with their +faces turned away from the old times more completely than these, +more averse from the old plantation ways; and, as far as I could +learn or hear, they are fair specimens of the kind of men who are +taking possession of the Old Dominion. Their neighbors consist of +three classes: men who had by extraordinary exertions saved some or +all of their land after the war, and had by borrowing or economizing +managed to stock it, and are now prospering, by dint of close +management and constant attention, on the Northern plan; young and +enterprising men who had bought at low rates from original +proprietors whom the war left hopelessly involved, and too old or +incapable to recover; and a sprinkling of Northern and English +immigrants. + +II + +The part played by the Virginia springs in the political and social +life of "the States lately in rebellion," is to a traveller most +interesting. The attraction of these springs to Southerners has been +in times past, and is still, largely due to the fact that the South +has, properly speaking, no other watering-places. Seaside resorts +there are none worth mention, from Norfolk down to Mexico, and there +are but few points of the long, level, dull, and sandy coast-line +which are not more or less unhealthy. Suspicion on this point even +hangs around the places in Florida now frequented by Northerners for +the sake of the mild winter temperature. But oven if the sea-coast +were healthy, it is in summer too hot to be attractive, and offers +no relief to persons whose livers and kidneys have got out of order +in the lowlands. These naturally seek the hills for coolness, and +they go to the sulphur springs of Virginia because the sulphur +waters are very powerful and efficacious in their effects on people +afflicted with what the doctors call "hepatic troubles." But then +they never would or could have gone from the Southern seaboard to +places so far off if it had not been for the inestimable negro. The +extent to which he contributed to the rapid pushing out of the +scanty white population of the slave States to the Mississippi has +never, I think, received due attention. He robbed pioneering, +indeed, at the South of most of the hardship with which it is +associated in the Northern mind--I was going to say discomfort as +well as hardship, but this would be going too far. To the Southern +planter, however, who could go West with a party of stalwart negroes +to do the clearing, building, ploughing, and cooking and washing, +the wilderness had but few of the terrors it presented to the +Northern frontiersman. He was speedily provided with a very +tolerable home; not certainly the kind of home which the taste of a +man as well off at the North would be satisfied with, but a vastly +better one than any new settler in the Northwestern States ever had. +The springs in the Virginia mountains became popular a century ago, +and were greatly resorted to in much the same way. They were remote +and in the woods, but, owing to slavery, they swarmed from the very +first with servants who could not "give notice" if they did not like +the place, or felt lonesome. + +The first accommodation at the springs consisted of a circle of +log-cabins with a dining-hall and ball-room in the centre, and this +constitutes the fundamental plan of a spring to this day. There is +now always a hotel in which a considerable number of the visitors +both sleep and eat, but the bulk of them, or a very large proportion +of them, still live in the long rows of one-storied wooden huts, +with galleries running along in front of the doors, which are +dignified with the name of "cottages," but are in reality simply the +log-cabin in the next stage of evolution; and the hotel has taken the +place of the original dining and ball-rooms to which all resorted. +In looking at the cottages, and thinking of the log-cabins which +preceded them, and seeing what rude places they are, one wonders +a little how people could ever have been, or can now be, induced to +leave comfortable homes for the purpose of spending long summers in +them. But this brings up one of the marked characteristics of Southern +life, namely, the extent to which nearly all Southern men and women +were led in the slavery days to associate comfort not with the +trimness and order of Northern or English homes, but with an +abundance of service. Well-to-do Northerners used to be surprised, +in fact, at the amount of what they would consider discomfort in the +way of rude or unfinished surroundings, hard beds, poor fare, want of +order of all sorts, which even Southerners in easy circumstances were +willing to put up with; but the explanation lay in the fact that +Southerners placed their luxury in having plenty of servants at +command. All the ladies had maids and the men "body servants" +wherever they went, and this saved them, even on the frontier, from +a great deal of drudgery and inconvenience. Even a log-cabin is not +a bad place to lodge in if you have a valet (who cannot leave you) +to dress you, and brush your boots and your clothes, and light your +fire, and bring you ice-water and juleps and cocktails, and anything +else you happen to think of, who sleeps comfortably in a blanket +across your door. In fact, without this the Virginia springs could +never have become a popular resort until railroads were opened. +People used to take twenty days in reaching them from the coast-- +some in their own carriages with four horses, and a wagon for the +baggage and "darkies," and some in stages, sleeping in taverns on the +roadside; but nothing could have made this practicable or tolerable +but the band of negroes by whom they were always accompanied. +This, too, enabled them to make their plans with certainty for +staying at the springs all summer, which they could not have done +had they been unable to count on their servants. One gentleman, +a Charlestonian, telling me his reminiscences of these long journeys +to the springs taken with his parents in their own carriage, when +he was a boy, said his mother was very delicate and her health +required it. This at the North would have been a joke, as it would +have killed a delicate woman to go into the woods with hired "help" +or without any service at all. + +Partly owing to the efficacy of the waters and partly to the absence +of other Southern watering-places, the springs became very early the +resort of every Southerner who could afford to leave home in the +summer, and they grew in favor owing to the peculiarities of +Southern society and the delicate state of Southern relations with +the North. In the first place, at the South people know each other, +and know about each other, in a way of which the inhabitants of a +denser and busier community have little idea. The number of persons +in Illinois, or Ohio, or Michigan that a New Yorker knows anything +about, or cares to see for social purposes, is exceedingly small. At +the South everybody with the means to travel has relatives or +friends or acquaintances of longer or shorter standing, in nearly +every Southern State, whom it is agreeable for him to meet, and he +knows that they will probably, at some part of the season or other, +appear at the springs. They will not go North because the North is +far away, is, in a certain sense, a strange community, and before +the war a hostile or critical one. Then, too, the South abounded or +abounds with local notables to a degree of which we have no idea at +the North, with persons of a certain weight and consequence in their +own State or county, and to whom this weight and consequence are so +agreeable and important that they cannot bear to part with them when +they go on a journey. They could always carry them with them to the +springs. There everybody was sure to know their standing, while if +they had gone up North they would be lost in the crowd and be +nobodies, and, before the war, have been deprived of the services of +their "body servants" or labored under constant anxiety about their +security. + +The springs, too, became, very early, and are now, a great +marrying-place. The "desirable young men, all riding on horses," as +the prophet called the Assyrian swells, go there in search of wives, +and are pretty sure to find there all the marriageable young women +of the South who can be said in any sense to be in society. Widows +abound at the springs just now--by which I mean widows who would not +object to trying the chances of matrimony again. I have been told +that, since the war, it is not uncommon for families whose means are +small to make up a purse to send one attractive youth or maid or +forlorn widow to the springs, in the hope that during the season +they may find the unknown soul which is to complete their destiny, +somewhat like the "culture" donations made to promising people at +the North to enable them to visit Europe. Then, too, to that very +large proportion of the population at the South who lead during the +rest of the year absolutely solitary lives on plantations, the visit +to the springs gives the only society of any kind they ever see, and +the one chance of showing their clothes and seeing what the other +women wear. In short, I do not believe that any one place of summer +resort serves so many purposes to any community as the Virginia +springs serve to that of the South, and by the springs I mean that +circle of mineral waters of various kinds which lie round the White +Sulphur, and to which the White Sulphur acts as a kind of +distributing reservoir of visitors. + +As regards the opinions of the very representative company at the +springs on the subject of slavery, it seemed, as well as I could +get at it, to be that about one per cent, of the white people +regretted the emancipation; but this was composed almost entirely of +old persons, who were unable to accommodate themselves to a new +order of things, and to whom it meant the loss of personal +attendance--perhaps the greatest inconvenience which elderly +persons who have been used to valets and maids can undergo. Many +such persons at the South were really killed by the social changes +produced by the war, as truly as if they had been struck on the +battle-field; the bewildered resignation of the survivors is +sometimes touching to witness, and the calamity was generally +embittered by the wholesale flight of the most trusted household +servants, who it was supposed would have despised freedom even if +offered in a gold box by Phillips, Garrison, and Greeley in person. +Telling one old gentleman who was mourning over the change that the +young men to whom I spoke did not agree with him, but thought it an +excellent thing, he replied "that those fellows never had known what +domestic comfort was"--meaning that their experience did not run +back beyond 1865. + +The traditions of the old system are, however, unquestionably a +better basis for good hotel-keeping than anything we have at the +North. The first condition of excellence in all places of +entertainment for man and beast is exactingness on the part of the +public. To be well cared for you must expect it and be used to it, +and this condition the Southerners fulfil in a much higher degree +than we do. They look for more attention, and they therefore get it; +and the waiter world, partly from habit and partly, no doubt, from +race temperament, render it with a cheerfulness we are not familiar +with here. But the superiority of manners in all classes is very +striking. One rarely meets a man on a Virginia road who does not +raise or touch his hat, and this not in a servile way either, but +simply as politeness. The bearing of the men toward each other +generally, too, has the ineffable charm, which Northern manners are +so apt to want, of indicating a recognition of the fact that even if +you are no better than any other man, you are different, and that +your peculiarities are respectable, and that you are entitled to a +certain amount of deference for your private tastes and habits. At +the North, on the other hand, manners, even as taught to children, +are apt to concede nothing except that you have an immortal soul and +a middling chance of salvation, and to avoid anything which is +likely to lead you to forget that you are simply a human male. + + + +CHROMO-CIVILIZATION + + +The last "statement," it is reasonable to hope, has been made in the +Beecher-Tilton case previous to the trial at law, and it is safe to +say that it has left the public mind in as unsettled a state as ever +before. People do not know what to believe, but they do not want to +hear any more newspaper discussion by the principal actors. We are +not going to attempt any analysis or summing-up of the case at +present. It will be time enough to do that after the _dramatis +personae_ have undergone an examination in court, but we would again +warn our readers against looking for any decisive result from the +legal trial. The expectations on this point which some of the +newspapers and a good many lawyers are encouraging are in the +highest degree extravagant. The truth is that only a very small +portion of the stuff contained in the various "statements" can, +under the rules of evidence, be laid before the jury--not, we +venture to assert, more than would fill half a newspaper column in +all. What _will_ be laid before the jury is, in the main, "questions +of veracity" between three or four persons whose credit is already +greatly shaken, or, in other words, the very kind of questions on +which juries are most likely to disagree, even when the jurymen are +entirely unprejudiced. In the present case they are sure to be +prejudiced, and are sure to be governed, consciously or +unconsciously, in reaching their conclusions by agencies wholly +foreign to the matter in hand, and are thus very likely to disagree. +There are very few men whose opinions about Mr. Beecher's guilt or +innocence are not influenced by their own religious and political +beliefs, or by their social antecedents or surroundings. A curious +and somewhat instructive illustration of the way in which a man's +fate in such cases as this may be affected by considerations having +no sort of relation to the facts, is afforded by the attitude of the +Western press toward the chief actors in the present scandal. It may +be said, roughly, that while the press east of the Alleghanies has +inclined in Beecher's favor, the newspapers west of them have gone +somewhat savagely and persistently against him, and have treated +Tilton as a martyr. The cause of such a divergence of views, +considering that both Tilton and Beecher are Eastern men, is of +course somewhat obscure, but we have no doubt that it is due to a +vague feeling prevalent in the West that Tilton's cause is the +democratic one--that is, the cause of the poor, friendless man +against the rich and successful one--a feeling somewhat like that +which in England enlisted the working-classes in London on the side +of the Tichborne claimant, in defiance of all reason and evidence, +as a poor devil fighting a hard battle with the high and mighty. One +of the reporters of a Western paper which has made important +contributions to the literature of the scandal, recently accounted +for his support of Tilton by declaring that in standing by him he +was "fighting the battle of the Bohemians against Capital." Another +Western paper, in analyzing the causes of the position taken by the +leading New York papers on Beecher's side, ascribed it to the social +relations of the editors with him, believing that they met him +frequently at dinners and breakfasts, and found him a jovial +companion. All this would be laughable enough if it did not show the +amount of covert peril--peril against which no precautions can be +taken--to which every prominent man's character is exposed. The +moment he gets into a scrape of any kind he finds a host of persons +whose enmity he never suspected clamoring to have him thrown to the +beasts "on general grounds"--that is, in virtue of certain tests +adopted by themselves, judged by which, apart from the facts of any +particular accusation, a man of his kind is unquestionably a bad +fellow. The accusation, in short, furnishes the occasion for +destroying him, not necessarily the reason for it. + +In Europe there are already abundant signs that the scandal will be +considered a symptomatic phenomenon--that is, a phenomenon +illustrative of the moral condition of American society generally; +for it must not be overlooked that, putting aside altogether the +question of Beecher's guilt or innocence, the "statements" furnish +sociological revelations of a most singular and instructive kind. +The witnesses, in telling their story, although their minds are +wholly occupied with the proof or disproof of certain propositions, +describe ways of living, standards of right and wrong, traits of +manners, codes of propriety, religious and social ideas, which, +taken together, form social pictures of great interest and value. +Now, if these were really pictures of American society in general, +as some European observers are disposed to conclude, we do not +hesitate to say that the prospects of the Anglo-Saxon race on this +continent would be somewhat gloomy. But we believe we only express +the sentiment of all parts of the country when we say that the state +of things in Brooklyn revealed by the charges and countercharges has +filled the best part of the American people with nearly as much +amazement as if an unknown tribe worshipping strange gods had been +suddenly discovered on Brooklyn Heights. In fact, the actors in the +scandal have the air of persons who are living, not _more majorum_, +by rules with which they are familiar, but like half-civilized +people who have got hold of a code which they do not understand, and +the phrases of which they use without being able to adapt their +conduct to it. + +We have not space at our command to illustrate this as fully as we +could wish, even if the patience of our readers would permit of it, +but we can perhaps illustrate sufficiently within a very short +compass. We have already spoken of the Oriental extravagance of the +language used in the scandal, which might pass in Persia or Central +Arabia, where wild hyperbole is permitted by the genius of the +language, and where people are accustomed to it in conversation, +understand it perfectly, and make unconscious allowance for it. +Displayed here in the United States, in a mercantile community, and +in a tongue characterized by directness and simplicity, it makes the +actors almost entirely incomprehensible to people outside their own +set, as is shown by the attempts made to explain and understand the +letters in the case. Most of the critics, both the friendly and +hostile, are compelled to treat them as written in a sort of dialect +which has to be read with the aid of commentary, glosses, and +parallels, and accompanied, like the study of Homer or the Reg-Veda, +by a careful examination of the surroundings of the writers, the +conditions of their birth and education, the usages of the circle in +which they live, and the social and religious influences by which +they have been moulded, and so on. Their almost entire want of any +sense of necessary connection between facts and written statements +has been strikingly revealed by Moulton's production of various +drafts or outlines of cards, reports, and letters which the actors +proposed from time to time to get up and publish for the purpose of +settling their troubles and warding off exposure by imposing on the +public. No savages could have acted with a more simple-minded +unconsciousness of truth. Moulton, according to his own story, +helped Beecher to publish a lying card; got Tilton to procure from +his wife a lying letter; and Tilton concocted a lying report for the +committee, in which he made them express the highest admiration for +himself, his adulterous wife, and her paramour. Here we have a bit +of the machinery of high civilization--a committee, with its +investigation and report, used, or attempted to be used, with just +the kind of savage directness with which a Bongo would use it, when +once he came to understand it, and found he could make it serve some +end, and with just as little reference to the moral aspect of the +transaction. + +Take, again, Tilton's account of the motives which governed him in +his treatment of his wife and of Beecher. He is evidently aware that +there are two codes regulating a man's conduct under such +circumstances--one the Christian code and the other the conventional +code of honor, or, as he calls it, "club-house morality"; but it +soon became clear that he had no distinct conception of their +difference. Having been brought up under the Christian code, and +taught, doubtless, to regard the term "gentleman" as a name for a +heartless epicurean, he started off by forgiving both Beecher and +his wife, or, as the lawyers say, condoning their offence; and he +speaks scornfully of the religious ignorance of the committee in +assuming in their report that there was any offence for which a +Christian was not bound to accept an apology as a sufficient +atonement. The club-house code would, however, have prescribed the +infliction of vengeance on Beecher by exposing him. Accordingly, +Tilton mixes the two codes up in the most absurd way. Having, as a +Christian, forgiven Beecher, he began, thirty days after the +discovery of the offence, to expose him as a "gentleman," and kept +forgiving and exposing him continuously through the whole four +years, the _éclat_ of such a relation to Beecher having evidently an +irresistible temptation for him. Finally, when Dr. Bacon called him +a "dog," he threw aside the Christian __rôle_ altogether and began +assailing his enemy with truly heathen virulence and vigor. A more +curious blending of two conceptions of duty is not often seen, and +it was doubtless due to the fact that no system of training or +culture had made any impression on the man or gone more than skin +deep. His interview with Beecher, too, by appointment, at his own +house, for the purpose of ascertaining by a comparison of dates and +reference to his wife's diary the probable paternity of her youngest +child, which he describes with the utmost simplicity, is, we venture +to say, an incident absolutely without precedent, and one which may +safely be pronounced foreign to our civilization. Whether it really +occurred, or Tilton invented it, it makes him a problem in social +philosophy of considerable interest. + +Moulton's story, too, furnishes several puzzles of the same kind. +That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy +circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious +circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine +and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his +adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family +circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known +and acknowledged tendency of our society. But perhaps the most +striking thing in Moulton's _rôle_ is that while he appears on the +scene as a gentleman or "man of the world," who does for honor's +sake what the other actors do from fear of God, his whole course is +a kind of caricature of what a gentleman under like circumstances +would really do. For instance, he accepts Beecher's confidence, +which may have been unavoidable, and betrays it by telling various +people, from time to time, of the several incidents of Beecher's +trouble, which is something of which a weak or loose-tongued +person--vain of the task in which he was engaged, as it seemed to +him, _i.e._, of keeping the peace between two great men--might +readily be guilty. But he tells the public of it in perfect +unconsciousness that there was anything discreditable in it, as he +does of his participation in the writing of lying letters and cards, +and his passing money over from the adulterer to pacify the injured +husband. In fact, he carries, according to his own account, his +services to Beecher to a point at which it is very difficult to +distinguish them from those of a pander, maintaining at the same +time relations of the most disgusting confidence with Mrs. Tilton. +Finally, too, when greatly perplexed as to his course, he goes +publicly and with _éclat_ for advice to a lawyer, with whom no +gentleman, in the proper sense of the term, could maintain intimate +personal relation or safely consult on a question of honor. The +moral insensibility shown in his visit to General Butler is one of +the strange parts of the affairs. + +We have, of course, only indicated in the briefest way some of the +things which may be regarded as symptomatic of strange mental and +moral conditions in the circle in which the affair has occurred. The +explanation of them in any way that would generally be considered +satisfactory would be a difficult task. The influences which bring +about a certain state of manners at any given time or place are +always numerous and generally obscure, but we think something of +this sort may be safely offered in consideration of the late "goings +on" in Brooklyn. + +In the first place, the newspapers and other cheap periodicals, and +the lyceum lectures and small colleges, have diffused through the +community a kind of smattering of all sorts of knowledge, a taste for +reading and for "art"--that is, a desire to see and own pictures-- +which, taken together, pass with a large body of slenderly equipped +persons as "culture," and give them an unprecedented self-confidence +in dealing with all the problems of life, and raise them in their +own minds to a plane on which they see nothing higher, greater, +or better than themselves. Now, culture, in the only correct and +safe sense of the term, is the result of a process of discipline, +both mental and moral. It is not a thing that can be picked up, +or that can be got by doing what one pleases. It cannot be acquired +by desultory reading, for instance, or travelling in Europe. It +comes of the protracted exercise of the faculties for given ends, +under restraints of some kind, whether imposed by one's self or +other people. In fact, it might not improperly be called the art of +doing easily what you don't like to do. It is the breaking-in of the +powers to the service of the will; and a man who has got it is not +simply a person who knows a good deal, for he may know very little, +but a man who has obtained an accurate estimate of his own capacity, +and of that of his fellows and predecessors, who is aware of the +nature and extent of his relations to the world about him, and who is +at the same time capable of using his powers to the best advantage. +In short, the man of culture is the man who has formed his ideals +through labor and self-denial. To be real, therefore, culture ought +to affect a man's whole character and not merely store his memory +with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways, +through home influences as well as through schools or colleges; +through living in a highly organized society, making imperious +demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the +restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was +obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the +days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth hit his head at +an early period of his career, and was reduced to thoughtfulness and +self-examination, and forced to walk in ways that were not always to +his liking. + +If all this be true, the mischievous effects of the pseudo-culture +of which we have spoken above may be readily estimated. A society of +ignoramuses who know they are ignoramuses might lead a tolerably +happy and useful existence, but a society of ignoramuses each of +whom thinks he is a Solon would be an approach to Bedlam let loose, +and something analogous to this may really be seen to-day in some +parts of this country. A large body of persons has arisen, under the +influence of the common schools, magazines, newspapers, and the +rapid acquisition of wealth, who are not only engaged in enjoying +themselves after their fashion, but who firmly believe that they +have reached, in the matter of social, mental, and moral culture, +all that is attainable or desirable by anybody, and who, therefore, +tackle all the problems of the day--men's, women's, and children's +rights and duties, marriage, education, suffrage, life, death, and +immortality--with supreme indifference to what anybody else thinks +or has ever thought, and have their own trumpery prophets, +prophetesses, heroes and heroines, poets, orators, scholars and +philosophers, whom they worship with a kind of barbaric fervor. The +result is a kind of mental and moral chaos, in which many of the +fundamental rules of living, which have been worked out painfully by +thousands of years of bitter human experience, seem in imminent risk +of disappearing totally. + +Now, if we said that a specimen of this society had been unearthed +in Brooklyn by the recent exposures, we should, doubtless to many +people, seem to say a very hard thing, and yet this, with the +allowances and reservations which have of course to be made for all +attempts to describe anything so vague and fleeting as a social +state, is what we do mean to say. That Mr. Beecher's preaching, +falling on such a mass of disorder, should not have had a more +purifying and organizing effect, is due, we think, to the absence +from it of anything in the smallest degree disciplinary, either in +the shape of systematic theology, with its tests and standards, or +of a social code, with its pains and penalties. What he has most +encouraged, if we may judge by some of the fruits, is vague +aspiration and lachrymose sensibility. The ability to dare and do, +the readiness to ask one's due which comes of readiness to render +their due to others, the profound consciousness of the need of sound +habits to brace and fortify morals, which are the only true +foundation and support of a healthy civilization, are things which +he either has not preached or which his preaching has only stifled. + + + +"THE SHORT-HAIRS" AND "THE SWALLOW-TAILS" + + +There is a story afloat that Mr. John Morrissey made his appearance, +one day during the past week, in Madison Square, in full evening +dress, including white gloves and cravat, and bearing a French +dictionary under his arm, and that, being questioned by his friends +as to the object of this display, he replied that he was going to +see Major Wickham and ask him for an office in the only costume in +which such an application would have a chance of success. In other +words, he was acting what over in Brooklyn would be called "an +allegory," and which was intended to expose in a severe and telling +way the Mayor's gross partiality, in the use of his patronage, for +the well-dressed and well-educated members of society--a partiality +which Mr. Morrissey and his party consider not only unfair but +ridiculous. This demonstration, too, was one of the few indications +which have as yet met the public eye of a very real division of the +Democratic party in this city into two sets of politicians, known +familiarly as "Short-Hairs" and "Swallow-Tails"--the former +comprising the rank and file of the voters and the latter "the +property-owners and substantial men," who are endeavoring to make +Tammany an instrument of reform and to manage the city in the +interest of the taxpayers. Mayor Wickham belongs, it is said, to the +latter class, and has given, it seems, in the eyes of the former, +some proofs of a desire to reserve responsible offices for persons +of some pretensions to gentility, and exhibited some disfavor for +the selections of the "workers" in the various wards. + +But we do not undertake to describe with accuracy the origin or +nature of the split; all we know is that the Short-Hairs are +disgusted, and that their hostility to the Swallow-Tails is very +bitter, and that when Mr. Morrissey proclaimed, in the manner we +have described, that a man needed to wear evening dress and to know +French in order to get a place, he gave feeble expression to the +rage of the masses. They have, too, concocted an arrangement which +embodies their idea of a well-administered government, and which +consists in compelling the departments to spend in wages in each +district at least $1.50 for each Democratic vote cast, and to +apportion the appropriations with strict reference to this rule, the +money, of course, to go to the nominees of Democratic politicians. +The plan departs from that of the French national workshops in that +it discriminates between laborers, but in other respects it has all +the characteristics of well-developed Communism. The way to meet it, +according to our venerable contemporary, the _Evening Post_, is to +have the taxpayers point out to the voters who are to receive the +money that they (the taxpayers) cannot well spare it, that they need +it for their own use, and that this mode of administering corporate +funds is condemned by all the leading writers on government. The +Swallow-Tails know so well, however, with what howls of mingled +mirth and indignation the Short-Hairs would receive such suggestions +that they never make them, but content themselves with confining the +distribution of the money to the members of their own division +quietly and unostentatiously, as far as lies in their power, which, +we candidly confess, we do not think is very far. + +It would be doing the Short-Hairs injustice, however, if we allowed +the reader to remain under the impression that the unwillingness to +have the Swallow-Tails monopolize or even have a share of the office +was peculiar to them, or that John Morrissey's protest would be +unintelligible anywhere out of New York. On the contrary, when he +started out with his French dictionary he was giving expression to +a feeling which is to be found in greater or less intensity in +every State in the Union. The great division of politicians into +Short-Hairs and Swallow-Tails is not confined to this city. It is +found in every city in the country in which there is much diversity +of condition among the inhabitants. Nor did Morrissey mean simply +to protest against training as a qualification for the work of +administration, as the _Tribune_ assumed in a sharp and incisive +lecture which it read him the other day. We doubt if any pugilist in +his secret heart despises training. He knows how much depends on it, +and as he is not apt to possess much discriminating power, he is not +likely to mark off any particular class of work as not needing it. +What the Short-Hairs dislike in the Swallow-Tails is the feeling of +personal superiority which they imagine them to entertain, and which +they think finds a certain expression in careful dressing and in the +possession of certain accomplishments. In fact, the Swallow-Tails +whom the New York rough detests and would like to keep out of +public life, belong to the class known in Massachusetts as the +"White-cravat-and-daily-bath gentlemen," and which is there just as +unpopular as here, and has even greater difficulty in getting office +there than here. + + +The line of division in New York is, however, drawn much lower down. +The Massachusetts Short-Hair is a man of intelligence, of some +education, who wears a plain black négligé and rumpled shirt-front +and soft hat, and disregards the condition of his nails, and takes a +warm bath occasionally. The New Yorker, on the other hand, wears +such clothes as he can get, and only bathes in the hot weather and +off the public wharf. If he has good luck and makes money, either in +the public service or otherwise, he displays it not in any richness +in his toilet or in greater care of his person, but in the splendor +of his jewels. One of his first purchases is a diamond-pin, which he +sticks in his shirt-front, but he never sees any connection of an +aesthetic kind between the linen and the pin, and will wear the +latter in a very dirty shirt-front as cheerfully as in a clean +one--in fact, more cheerfully, as he has a vague feeling that by +showing it he atones for or excuses the condition of the linen. In +fact, the Short-Hair view of dress would be found on examination to +be, in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, something of this +kind: that the constant care of the person which produces an +impression of neatness and appropriateness, and makes a man look +"genteel," is the expression of a certain state of mind; that a man +would not take so much trouble to make himself look different from +the ordinary run of people whom he meets, unless he thought himself +in some way superior to them, or, in other words, thought himself a +"gentleman" and them common fellows, and that he therefore fairly +deserves the hatred of those of whom he thus openly parades his +contempt. + +A New York Short-Hair seldom goes farther than this in his +speculations, though he doubtless has also a vague idea that a +well-dressed man is not so likely to stand by his friends in politics +as a more careless one. In New England, as might be expected, however, +the popular dislike of that "culte de la personne," as some Frenchman +has called it, which distinguishes "the white-cravat-and-daily-bath +gentleman," has provided itself with a moral basis. There is there a +strong presumption that the Swallow-Tail is a frivolous person, +who bestows on his tailoring, and his linen, and his bathing, and his +manners the time and attention which the Short-Hair or "plain blunt +man" reserves for reflection on the graver concerns of life, and +especially on the elevation of his fellow-men, and this presumption +even a career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia" +would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe it is +authentic that General Grant never got over the impression produced +on him by seeing that Mr. Motley parted his hair in the middle, and +it is said--and if not true is not unlikely,--that Mr. R. H. Dana's +practice of wearing kid gloves told heavily against him in his +memorable contest with Butler in the Essex district. We may all +remember, too, the gigantic efforts made by Mr. Sumner and others in +Congress to have our representatives abroad prohibited from wearing +court-dress. What dress they wore was of course, _per se_, a matter +of no consequence, provided it was not immodest. The fervor on the +subject was due to the deeply rooted feeling that even the amount +of care for externals exhibited in putting on an embroidered coat +or knee-breeches indicated a light-mindedness against the very +appearance of which the minister of a republic ought to guard +carefully. It is partly to produce the effect of seriousness of +purpose, but mainly to avoid the appearance of airs of social or +mental superiority, that nearly all skilful politicians dress with +elaborate negligence. In most country districts no complaints can +be made of men in office such as the New York Short-Hair makes +against the Swallow-Tail. They fling on their easy-fitting black +clothes in a way that leaves them their whole time for the study +of public affairs and attention to the wants of their constituents, +and at the same time recalls their humble beginnings. + +What strikes one, however, as most curious in the controversy +between the Short-Hairs and the Swallow-Tails is the illustration it +affords of the rigidity with which every class or grade in +civilization treats its own social conventions, whatever they may +be, as final, and as having some subtle but necessary connection +with morals. When the Indian squats round the tribal pot in his +breech-clout, and eats his dinner with his dirty paw, he is fully +satisfied that he is as well equipped, both as regards dress and +manners, not only as a man need be, but as a man ought to be. The +toilet, the chamber, and the dinner-table of a plain New England +farmer he treats as wasteful and ridiculous excess, and if good for +anything, good only for plunder. The farmer, on the other hand, +loathes the Indian and his ways, and thinks him a filthy beast, and +that he (the farmer) has reached the limits of the proper as regards +clothes and food and personal habits, and that the city man who puts +greater elaboration into his life is a fribble, who is to be pitied, +if not despised and distrusted. In short, we can hardly go one step +into the controversy without coming on the old question, What are +luxuries and what necessities? and, as usual, the majority decides +it in the manner that best suits itself. It may be said without +exaggeration that the progress of civilization has consisted largely +in the raising of what is called "the standard of living," or, in +other words, the multiplication of the things deemed necessary for +personal comfort, and, as this raising of the standard has always +been begun by the few, the many have always fought against it as a +sign of selfishness or affectation until they themselves were able +to adopt it. + +The history of the bath furnishes a curious though tolerably +familiar illustration of this. The practice of bathing disappeared +from Western Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire. The +barbarians were themselves dirty fellows, like the Indians, and +their descendants remained dirty in spite of the growth of +civilization among them, putting their money, like the Short-Hair, +mainly into jewels and other ornaments. As long as linen was scarce +and dear, changes were, of course, seldom made, and the odor of even +"the best society" was so insupportable that perfumes had to be +lavishly used to overcome it. The increased cheapness of linen and +more recently of cotton, and the increased facilities for bathing, +have in our own day made personal cleanliness a common virtue; but +an occasional bath is still as much as is thought, through the +greater part of the world, compatible with moral earnestness and +high aims. Of late, indeed within the memory of the present +generation, persons mainly belonging to the wealthier class in +England have boldly begun to bathe every day, and they have finally +succeeded in establishing the rule that a gentleman is bound to +bathe, or "tub," as they call it, every day, and that the usage +cannot be persistently neglected without loss of position. Indeed, +there are few social casuists in England who would decide, without +great hesitation and anxiety, that any English-speaking man was a +gentleman who did not take a daily bath. That this view of the +matter should be accepted by the great body of those who would +rather not bathe every day is not to be expected, nor is it to be +wondered at that they should consider it offensive, and that the +practice of sponging one's self in cold water every morning should +in caucuses be looked on as a disqualification for political life. +There is, of course, a necessary and provoking, though tacit, +assumption of superiority in the display of greater cleanliness than +other people show, just as there is in coming into a room and +finding fault with the closeness of the air in which other people +are sitting comfortably. It is tantamount to saying that what is +good enough for them is not good enough for you, and they always +either openly or secretly resent it. + +The popular distrust of the practice of wearing white cravats in the +evening may be traced to the same causes. The savage makes no change +of toilet for the evening. He dresses for war and religious +ceremonies, but he goes to a social reunion or feast in such clothes +as he happens to have on when the invitation finds him. The plain +man of civilized life, under similar circumstances, puts on a clean +shirt and his best suit of clothes. This suit, among the European +peasantry, is apt to be of simply the same cut and material as the +working suit, or, as it would be called in Brooklyn, "the garb of +toil." Among Americans, it is a black suit, like that of a +clergyman, and includes a silk cravat, generally black, but +permissibly colored. The whole matter is, however, one of pure +convention. Now, it has been found of late years a matter of +convenience, and of great convenience especially to hard-worked men +and men of moderate means who are exposed to the constant social +demands of the great cities of the world, to have a costume in which +one can appear on any festive occasion, great or small, which all, +gentle or simple, are alike expected to wear, which is neither rich +nor gaudy, and in which every man may feel sure that he is properly +dressed; and the dress fixed on for this purpose now throughout the +civilized world is the plain suit of black, with the swallow-tailed +coat, commonly called "evening dress." + +Nothing can be simpler or less pretentious, or more democratic. +Nobody can add anything to it or take anything away from it. Many +attempts to modify it have been made during the last thirty years by +leaders of fashion, and they have all failed, because it meets one +of the great wants of human nature. It is only within the last +fifteen years that it has obtained a firm foothold in American +cities. People looked on it with suspicion, as a sign of some inward +and spiritual naughtiness, and regarded the frock-coat with its full +skirts as the only garment in which a serious-minded man, with a +proper sense of his origin and destiny, and correct feelings about +popular government, could make his appearance in a lady's parlor. +Why, nobody could tell, for there was a time, not very far back, +when the frock-coat was itself an innovation. Of late--that is, +within, perhaps, twenty years--the Swallow-Tails of the world have +exchanged the black or colored for a white cravat, and justify +themselves by saying that it not only looks cleaner, but is cleaner +of necessity than a silk one, and that you cannot look too clean or +fresh about your throat when you present yourself in a lady's house +on a festive occasion. Nevertheless, the plain, blunt men are not +satisfied. They do not as yet feel sure as to its meaning. They +think it indicates either over-thoughtfulness about trifles or else +a leaning, slight though it be, toward despotism and free-trade. +They will now all, or nearly all, wear evening dress with a black +cravat, but even those of them who will consent to put on a white +one do so with a certain shamefacedness and sense of backsliding, +and of treachery to some good cause, though they do not exactly know +which. + + + +JUDGES AND WITNESSES + + +The proceedings in the recent Bravo poisoning case have raised a +good deal of discussion in England as to the license of counsel in +cross-examination--a question which recent trials in this country +have shown to possess no little interest for us also. In the Bravo +inquest, as in the Tichborne case and the Beecher trial of the last +year, the cross-examination of the witnesses was pushed into matters +very remotely connected with the issue under trial, so that the +general result of the inquiry was not, as in most cases, the +eliciting of a certain number of facts bearing on the question in +court, but a complete revelation of the whole private life of a +family, or of a certain part of it, and even of a whole circle of +families. The glaring exposure of matters usually kept close, and +not even talked about, formed in fact the great fascination of these +_causes célèbres_. It was difficult at the first blush to see how in +the Beecher trial Tilton's eccentric nocturnal habits could have +thrown any light upon the question of Beecher's guilt; nor in the +Tichborne case was it at all apparent that an answer to the inquiry +put to some witness--whether he had, at some distant period of time, +had improper relations with some persons not connected with the +case--could even remotely tend to settle the claimant's identity. +The _Pall Mall Gazette_, discussing this kind of cross-examination +resorted to for the purpose of breaking down the credit of a +witness--of "showing him up" to the jury, and thus inducing them to +pay less attention to his evidence than they otherwise would--has +stated the case in the following manner: "Suppose, it says, that the +legislature of a free country were some fine morning to pass a law +authorizing anyone who chose to take it into his head to compel any +inhabitant of the country to answer any questions he might think fit +to put with regards to the other's moral character, his relations +with his parents, brothers and sisters, wife and children, his +business affairs, his property, his debts, and in fact his whole +private life, and to do all this without there being any dispute +between them or even any alleged grievance, what would be thought of +such a law? Would it be endured for an instant?" Now, this, the +_Pall Mall Gazette_ continues, is to-day the law of England. It is +just to this odious tyranny which anyone, by bringing a suit, can, +under the vague and almost unlimited power to punish for "contempt +of court," force submission. + +The law on this subject is, generally speaking, the same in the +United States as in England, and this tyranny, if it really exists, +weighs upon us as heavily as it does upon Englishmen. The first +question that suggests itself is whether this is really a fair +statement of law, and, of course, the _Pall Mall Gazette_ admits +that there exist limitations of the right of cross-examination, but +it contends that these are so undefined as to amount to little or +nothing in the way of protection. The authorities contain little on +the subject, except that cross-examination as to credit is allowed +to go very far, and that judges may in their discretion stop it when +it goes too far. But judicial discretion is proverbially an +uncertain thing. It varies not merely with the court, but even in +the same judge it is affected by the state of his temper, his +curiosity, his feeling toward the counsel who is examining, and by +thousands of other things that no one can know anything about or +depend upon. Usually it is easier not to exercise than to exercise +discretion, and the result is that the right of cross-examination is +usually unchecked, and in most important cases which are widely +reported the right is pushed to lengths which, with witnesses of any +sensibility, amount to a process of slow torture. If the right is +abused in England, it is unquestionably abused here, and probably at +the time of the Beecher trial we should have had complaints about it +but for the fact that in the singular society in which the parties +to that case lives, a craving for notoriety had been developed which +made any discussion of their private affairs less disagreeable than +it is to most people. But with the great majority of mankind there +is nothing more odious than the extraction, by a sharp, hostile +lawyer, from their own unwilling lips, of the details of their moral +history. There is probably no one in existence, however good, and +however quiet his conscience may be, who can endure without a +shudder the thought of every transaction of his past life being +dragged out in a court of justice for the amusement of a gaping +crowd. Exactly how far the right is abused, and how far the +discretionary powers of courts to limit its abuse accomplish their +end, it is impossible to say, for it is only in sporadic cases of +unusual importance that interest in the result is strong enough to +warrant a lawyer's going to great length in cross-examination. +Usually, too, it should be said for the credit of the profession, +reputable lawyers shrink from outraging a witness's sensibility. But +after everything is admitted that can be admitted in favor of the +existing state of the law, it is impossible to deny that the door is +left very wide open to disgraceful assaults upon credit which +inflict serious and irreparable damage. + +The difficulty is not in pointing out the evil, which is plain +enough, but in suggesting a remedy. The right of cross-examination +is one of the most important instruments provided by the machinery +of our law for the discovery of facts, and on the credibility of +witnesses all cases hinge. The moment we begin to limit it by fixed +rules we enter on dangerous ground. It might seem as if the solution +of the problem lay in the enactment of a rule that witnesses should +only be cross-examined as to their general reputation with regard to +truth, and as to the matters involved in the case directly affecting +their credibility; but this would by no means do. Suppose, for +instance, that the suit is a common action for the purchase-money of +a piece of cloth, and the defendant brings a witness who swears +that he saw the defendant pay the money to the plaintiff, while +the plaintiff has only his own evidence to rely upon in proof of +non-payment; if, in such case, the plaintiff were merely allowed to +cross-examine the witness directly, he would in all probability lose +the case. The testimony would be two to one against him, and the +story of the witness as the only disinterested person would probably +be believed by the jury. But suppose that, on cross-examination, it +turns out that this witness can give no good account of his manner +of earning his living or of his place of residence; that he had been +arrested not long before as a vagrant, and that down to the time of +the action he had no respectable clothes, and that he suddenly +became possessed of some; that he deserted from the army immediately +after getting his bounty-money, and so on, there can be little doubt +that his credit with the jury would be much impaired, and justly so, +although no direct evidence of his being a perjurer had been +introduced, and not a particle of his testimony had been strictly +controverted. Everyone who has followed with any care the evidence +taken in celebrated murder trials or divorce cases knows how +frequently a rigid cross-examination lays bare motives and +prejudices on the part of witnesses which, often without their +knowing it themselves, tend to bias their account of facts. + +The problem, therefore, is to devise some means by which these +benefits of a searching cross-examination may be retained and yet +the abuse got rid of. The only feasible way of meeting the +difficulty yet proposed is that of drawing up a series of rules or +general directions as to evidence which shall not attempt to +prescribe formal limits for cross-examination, but shall lay down in +explicit words the general principles which should govern a judge in +such cases. These rules would practically be a definition of the +"discretion" he is now supposed to exercise. They would, for +example, direct him not to allow an examination into matters so +remote in time from the case in hand that they can have no bearing +on the credibility of the witness; not to allow questions to be put +which are plainly malicious and asked for the purpose of irritating +the witness; and not to allow any examination into transactions +which, though they may have a bearing on the character of a witness, +have none on his credibility, _e.g._, an inquiry, in a murder case, +of a witness in good standing, as to domestic difficulties with a +deceased wife. It is not easy to lay down beforehand any rules by +which we can discriminate the kind of evidence as to transactions +involving moral character which ought not to affect credibility, but +every one can easily imagine instances of such evidence. General +directions of the kind we have just suggested are no more than a +formal enunciation of the manner in which the "discretion" of a good +judge would be and is exercised. They do not change the law, but +they remind judges of what they may forget, and they may be appealed +to by a persecuted witness with far more certainty than judicial +"discretion." In the Indian Code, which is probably the best body of +law that the legal reform movement begun by Bentham in the last +century has yet produced, rules of this kind have been laid down, +and we believe have been found to work with success. + + + +"THE DEBTOR CLASS" + + +A Washington correspondent, describing, the other day, the motives +which animated the majority in Congress in its performances on +the currency question, said, and we believe truly, that most of +the inflationists in that body knew very well what the evils of +paper-money were, so that argument on that point was wasted on them. +But they knew also that large issues of irredeemable paper would +make it easier for debtors to pay off their creditors, and came to +the conclusion that as the number of debtors in the country was +greater than the number of creditors, it was wise policy for a +politician to curry favor with the former by helping them to cheat +the persons who had lent them money or sold them goods. This +explanation of the conduct of the majority may be a startling and +sad one, but that it is highly probable nobody can deny. All the +debates help to confirm it. In every speech, made either in +opposition to resumption or in favor of inflation, a portion of the +community known as "the debtor class" has appeared as the object of +the orator's tenderest solicitude. The great reason for not +returning to specie payments hitherto has been the fear that +contraction would press hard on "the debtor class;" it is for "the +debtor class" we need more paper "_per capita_;" and indeed, no +matter what proposal we make in the direction of financial reform, +we are met by pictures of the frightful effects which will be +produced by it on the "debtor class." Moreover, in listening to its +champions, a foreigner might conclude that in America debtors either +all live together in a particular part of the country, or worse, a +particular costume, like mediaeval Jews, and are divided from the +rest of the community by tastes and habits, so that it would be +proper for an American to put "debtor" or "creditor" on his card as +a description of his social status. He might, too, not unnaturally +begin to mourn over the negligence of the framers of the +Constitution in not recognizing this marked distribution of American +society. Truly, he would say, the debtors ought to have +representatives in the Senate and House to look after their special +interests; these unfortunate and helpless men ought not to be left +to the charitable care of volunteers like Messrs. Morton, and Logan, +and Kelly. The great sham and pretence with which America has so +long tried to impose on Europe, that there were no classes in the +United States, ought at last to be formally swept away, and proper +legal provision made for the protection of a body of men which has +been in all ages the object of atrocious oppression, and seems in +America, strange to say, to constitute the larger portion of the +community. In travelling through the country, too, he would be +constantly on the lookout for the debtors. He would ask in the +cities for the "debtors' quarter," and when introduced to a +gentleman in the cars or in the hotels, would inquire privately +whether he was a debtor or a creditor, so as to avoid hurting his +feelings by indiscreet allusion to specie or contraction. His +amazement would be very great on learning that there was no way of +telling whether an American citizen was either debtor or creditor; +that the "debtor class" was not to be found, as such, in any part of +the country, or, indeed, anywhere but in the brains of the Logans +and Mortons, and was introduced into the debates simply as a John +Doe or Richard Roe, to give a little vividness to the speaker's +railings against property. + +Now, as in every civilized society, the vast majority of the +population of this country are in debt, to some slight degree. It is +only paupers, criminals, and lunatics who owe absolutely nothing. +The day-laborer is pretty sure to have a small bill at the grocer's, +and all his neighbors, in the ascending grades of commercial +respectability, no matter how prompt and accurate they may be in the +discharge of their obligations, are sure to owe the butcher and +baker and milkman a greater or less amount. In fact the conduct of +life on a cash basis would be impossible or intolerable. Of course, +too, there are scattered all over the country men who owe a great +deal of money and to whom little is due, and whose interest it would +be to have the coinage adulterated. But then the number of these +persons is very small, and they are mostly great speculators, who +pass for rich men, and whose interests Congress is in reality not in +the least desirous of protecting. Poor men, as a rule, are hardly +ever greatly in debt, because nobody will trust them. We suspect +that the number of those in this city who could borrow fifty dollars +without security would not be found to be over one-twentieth of the +population. The persons to whom loans are made by banks, insurance +companies, and other institutions are almost all men of wealth or +men who have the conduct of great enterprises, and do not need +legislation to help them to take care of themselves. They are great +merchants, or manufacturers, or brokers, or contractors, or +railroad-builders. In fact, in so far as the debtors can be called a +class, they form a very small class, and a class of remarkable +shrewdness and of enormous power, over whom it is ludicrous for the +Government to exercise a fatherly care. + +The bulk of the population in this, as in every moderately +prosperous community in the western world is composed of creditors. +The creditor class, in other words, contains the great body of the +American people, and any legislation intended to enable debtors to +cheat is aimed at nineteen-twentieths, at the very least, of +American citizens. Any mail who remains very long in the position of +a debtor simply, and acquires no footing as a creditor, disappears +from the surface of society. Bankruptcy or the house of correction +is pretty sure to overtake him. It would be well-nigh impossible in +this large city or in any other to find a man who had no pecuniary +claims on someone else. The humblest hod-carrier becomes a creditor +every day after making his first ascent of the ladder, and remains +so until Saturday night, and continually replaces himself in "the +creditor class," as long as life and health remain to him; and the +same phenomenon presents itself in all fields of industry. Every +sewing-girl and maid-servant is looking forward to a payment of +earned money, and has the strongest interest in knowing for certain +what its purchasing power will be. + +All depositors in savings-banks, and their number in New York City +is greater than that of the voters, belong to the creditor class; +all holders of policies of insurances, all owners of government +bonds and State and bank stocks, belong to it also. The Western +farmers and house-owners who have borrowed money at the East on bond +and mortgage, who probably make as near an approach to a debtor +class as any other body or persons in the community, and whom +Congressional demagogues probably hoped to serve by enabling them to +outwit their creditors, even these are not simply or mainly debtors. +Any man who is carrying on his business with borrowed money, on +which he pays eight or ten per cent., must be every week putting +other people in debt to him or he would speedily be ruined. The +means of paying those who have trusted him is acquired by his +trusting others. Either he is selling goods on credit, or entering +into contracts, or rendering services which give him the position of +a creditor, and make it of the last importance to him that the value +of money and the state of the public mind about money should not be +materially different six months hence from what they are now. + +Of course there is more than one way of defining the term +"self-interest." There is one sense in which it is used by children, +savages, and thieves, and which makes it mean immediate +gratification, and this appears to be the sense in which it is used +by the inflationists in Congress, in considering what is for the +good of those Western men who owe money at the East. In that sense, +it is a good thing for a man to lie, cheat, steal, and embezzle +whenever it shall appear that by so doing he will satisfy his +appetites or put money in his pockets. But civilized and commercial, +to say nothing of Christian, society is founded on the theory that +men look forward and expect to carry on business for several years, +and to lay up money for their old age, and establish their children +in life, and that they recognize the necessity of self-restraint and +loyalty to engagements. The doctrines, on the other hand, which are +preached in Congress about the best mode of dealing with debts--that +is, with other people's money--have never before been heard in a +civilized legislature, or anywhere outside of a council of +buccaneers, and, if acted on by the community, would produce +anarchy. The fact that Morton and Butler, who preach them and get +them embodied in forms of words called "acts," are legislators, +disguises, but ought not to disguise, the other fact, that these two +men are simply playing the part of receivers or "fences." There +probably never was a more striking illustration of the immorality in +which, as it was long ago remarked, any principle of government is +sure to land people if pushed to its last extreme, than the theory +which is now urged on our attention--that superiority of numbers +will justify fraud; or, in other words, that if the number of those +who borrow should happen to be greater than the number of those who +lend, "a vote" is all that is needed to wipe out the debts, either +openly or by payment in bits of paper or pebbles. Of course, the +converse of this would also be true--that if the lenders were in a +majority, they would be justified in reducing the debtors to +slavery. If the question of humanity or brotherhood were raised as +an objection, that, too, could be settled by a ballot. We laugh at +the poor African who consults his wooden fetish before he takes any +step in the business of his wretched and darkened life; but when a +Caucasian demagogue tries to show us that the springs of justice and +truth are to be found in a comparison of ten thousand bits of paper +with nine thousand similar bits, we listen with gravity, and are +half inclined to believe that there is something in it. + + + +COMMENCEMENT ADMONITION + + +It is quite evident that with, the multiplication of colleges, which +is very rapid, it will, before long, become impossible for the +newspapers to furnish the reports of the proceedings in and about +commencement which they now lay before their readers with such +profuseness. The long letters describing with wearisome minuteness +what has been described already fifty times will undoubtedly before +long be given up. So also, we fancy, will the reports of the +"baccalaureate sermons," if these addresses are to retain their +value as pieces of parting advice to young men. There is nothing in +the newspaper literature, on the whole, less edifying, and sometimes +more amusing, than the reporter's _précis_ of pulpit discourses, +so thoroughly does he deprive them of force find vigor and point, +and often of intelligibility. The ordinary sermon addressed on Sunday +to the ordinary congregation deals with a great variety of topics, +and from many different points of view, and with more or less +diversity of method. The baccalaureate sermon, on the other hand, +consists, from the necessity of the case, in the main of advice to +youths at their entrance on life, and the substance of such discourses +can, in the nature of things, undergo no great change from year to +year, and must be strikingly similar in all the colleges. Any +freshness they may have they must owe to the rhetorical powers of +particular preachers, and even these cannot greatly vary in dealing +with so familiar a theme. What the old man has to say to the young man, +the teacher to the pupil, the father to the son, at the moment when +the gates of the great world are flung open to the college graduate, +has undergone but little modification in a thousand years, and has +become very well known to all collegians long before they take their +degree. To make the parting words of warning and encouragement tell +on ears that are now eager for other and louder sounds, everything +that can be done needs to be done to preserve their freshness and +their pathos, and certainly nothing could do as much to deprive them +of both one and the other as hashing them up annually in a slovenly +report as part of the news of the day. + +It is not, however, the advice contained in baccalaureate sermons, +but all advice to young men, that needs in our time to be dealt out +with greater circumspection and economy. Authority has within the +last hundred or even fifty years undergone a serious loss of power, +and this loss of power has shown itself nowhere more markedly than +in the work of education. It has indeed almost completely changed +the relation of parents and children, and teachers and scholars, so +that it is now almost as necessary to prove the reasonableness and +utility of any course of action which is required of boys as of +mature men. Persuasion has, in other words, taken the place of +command, and there is nobody left whose dictum owes much of its +weight to his years or his office. Boys as well as their elders now +expect advice to be based on personal experience, and do not listen +with any great seriousness or deference to admonitions the value of +which the utterer has not himself personally tested. + +It follows, therefore, that the persons whom the young men of our +time hear most readily on the conduct of life are those who have had +practical acquaintance with the difficulties of living up to the +ideals which are so eloquently painted in the college chapel, and +who have found out in their own persons what it costs to be pure and +upright, and faithful and industrious, and persistent in the +struggle that goes on in the various callings which lie outside the +college walls. For this reason, probably, no addresses at +commencement have the value of those which are delivered now and +then by men who have come back for a brief day to tell the next +generation of the way life looks to those who for years have been +wrestling with its problems, and have had actual experience of the +virtues and defects of that early equipment and training on which +such enormous sums are now spent in this country. The more advice +from this quarter young men get the better. Nobody can talk so +effectively to them at the moment when they are about to face the +world on their own responsibility as the lawyers and merchants and +ministers and politicians who have been facing it for twenty-five or +thirty years with all the outward signs of success. If it were +possible for every college in the country to get one such man at +commencement whose powers of expression would do justice to his +experience, and who for this one day in the year would without fear +or favor tell what he thought about success and about the conditions +of success--about the kind of troubles which beset men in the +callings with which he is most familiar--we should probably soon +have a body of advice so impressive and fruitful that it would serve +the needs and excite the interest of more than one generation. The +young have been told to be good until they have grown weary of +hearing it, particularly as it is always represented to them as a +comparatively simple matter, and when they go out in the world and +find what a hard and complex thing duty is they are very apt to look +back to the ethical instruction of their college as when in college +they looked back to the admonitions of the nursery, and return to +their alma mater in later years with much the feeling with which a +man visits a kindly old grandmother. + +But commencements certainly draw forth nothing so curious as the +newspaper article addressed to the graduating class, and which now +seems to be a regular part of the summer's editorial work. It seems +to have one object in view, and only one, and that is preventing the +graduate from thinking much of his education and his degree, or +supposing that they will be of any particular use to him in his +entrance on life, or make him any more acceptable to the community. +He is warned that they will raise him in nobody's estimation, and +prove rather a hinderance than a help to him in getting a living, +and that it will be well for him to begin his career by trying to +forget that he has ever been in college at all. Not unfrequently the +discourse closes with a suggestion or hint that the best university +is, after all, the office of "a great daily," and that the kindest +thing a fond father could do for a promising boy would be to start +him as a local reporter and make him get his first experience of +life in the collection of "city items." There is in all this the +expression, though in a somewhat grotesque form, of a widespread +popular feeling that nothing is worthy of the name of education +which does not fit a man to earn his bread rapidly and dexterously. +Considering with how large a proportion of the human race the mere +feeding and clothing of the body is the first and hardest of tasks, +there is nothing at all surprising in this view. But the +preservation and growth of civilization in any country depends much +on the extent to which it is able out of its surplus production to +provide some at least of its people with the means of cherishing and +satisfying nobler appetites than hunger and thirst. The immense sum +which is now spent every year on colleges--misspent though much of +it may be--and the increasing number of students who throng to them, +regardless of the fact that the training they get may make them at +first feel a little strange and helpless in the fierce struggle for +meat and drink, show that the increasing wealth of the nation is +accompanied by an increasing recognition of the fact that life, +after all, is not all living, that there are gains which cannot be +entered in any ledger, and that a man may carry about with him, +through a long and it may be outwardly unfortunate career, sources +of pleasure and consolation which are none the less precious for +being unsalable and invisible. + + + +"ORGANS" + + +The untimely decease of the _Republic_, the paper which was set up +some months ago to express in a semi-official way the views of the +Administration and its immediate adherents on public questions, has +a good deal that is tragic about it, as far as its principal +conductor is concerned. That a man of as much experience of politics +and of newspapers as Mr. Norvell, the editor, had, should have +supposed it possible to start a daily morning paper in this city at +a time when a successful daily is worth millions, and when there are +four already in possession of the field, without any other claims on +popular attention than its being the mouth-piece of the leading +politicians of the party in power, and with a capital which in his +dreams only reached $500,000, and in fact only $40,000, is a curious +though sad illustration of the power of the press over the +imagination even of persons long familiar with it. The failure of +the enterprise, however distressing in some of its aspects, is +valuable as establishing more conspicuously and firmly than ever two +facts of considerable importance in relation to journalism. One is, +that when politicians so deeply desire an organ as to be willing to +set one up for the exclusive use of the party, it is a sure sign +that the party is in serious danger of extinction. The other is, +that the public mind is so fully made up that the position of a +newspaper ought to be a judicial one, that all attempts to make a +paper avowedly partisan can only be saved from commercial failure by +large capital, extraordinary ability, and well-established prestige. + +"Organs" took their rise when the sole use of a newspaper was to +communicate intelligence, and when men in power found it convenient +to have a channel through which they could let out certain things +which they wished to be spread abroad. Out of this kind of relation +to the Government a small paper, which did not object to the humble +_rôle_ of a sort of official gazette, from which the earlier +newspapers indeed differed but little, could, of course, always get +a livelihood, and perhaps a little of the dignity which comes from +having or being supposed to have state secrets to keep. But the +gradual addition to the "news-letter" of the sermon known as a +"leader" or "editorial article" made the relation more and more +difficult and finally impossible. The more pompous, portentous, and +prophetic in their character the editor's comments on public affairs +became, the less disposed was the public to allow him to retain the +position of a paid agent of the State. It began to feel toward him +as it would have felt toward the town-crier if he had put on a gown +and bands, and insisted on accompanying his announcement of thefts +and losses with homilies on the vanity of life and the right use of +opportunities. The editor had, in short, to conduct his business in +a manner befitting his newly assumed duties as a prophet, and to +pretend at least that his utterances were wholly independent and +were due simply to a desire for the public good, as a prophet's +ought to be. It is now very rare indeed that a government is able to +induce a well-established newspaper of the first class to act as its +organ in the proper sense of that term, except by working on the +vanity of editors. Almost all editors are a little sensitive about +the imputation of being mere commentators or critics, and a little +desirous of being thought "practical men," by those engaged in the +actual working of political machinery. The "old editor" in this +country in fact preferred to be thought a working politician, and +liked to use his paper as a piece of political machinery for +producing solid party gains, and in this way to be received into the +circle of "workers" and "managers" as one of themselves; and to +retain this position he was always willing to "write up" any view +they suggested. His successor, though he cares less about being "a +worker," and is able to secure the attendance of politicians at his +office without running after them, is, nevertheless, more or less +flattered by the confidences of men in power, and it often takes +only a small amount of these confidences to make him surrender the +judicial position and accept that of an advocate, and stand by them +through thick and thin. But no leading journal has ever tried this +position in our day very long without being forced out of it by the +demand of the public for impartiality and the consequent difficulty +of avoiding giving offence in official quarters. Every +administration does things either through its chief or subordinates +which will not bear defence, and which its judicious friends prefer +to pass over in silence. But a journalist cannot keep silent. The +Government may require him to hold his tongue, but the reader +demands that he shall speak; and as the public supplies the sinews +of war, and pays for the prophet's robes, he is sooner or later +compelled to break with the Government and to reproach it for not +listening to the advice of its friends in time. + +Moreover, in a country in which the press is free and newspapers +abound, a party which contains a majority of the people cannot fail +to have the support of a large and influential portion of the press. +Its conductors, though prophets, do not wear camel's hair, nor is +their diet locusts and wild honey. They form part of the community, +live among the voters, and share, to a greater or less extent, their +prejudices and expectations and sympathies. Every party, therefore, +is sure, as long as it has a strong hold on the public, of having a +strong hold on the press, and of having a considerable number of the +most influential editors among its defenders. One of the sure signs +that it is losing its hold on the public is the defection of the +press or its growing lukewarmness. Newspapers cannot, perhaps, build +a party up or pull one down, but when you see the newspapers +deserting a party it is all but proof that the agencies which +dissolve a political organization are at work. The successful +editors may have no originating power or no organizing power, and no +capacity for legislation, and may even want the prophetic instinct; +but a certain intuitive sense of the direction in which the tide of +popular feeling is running is the principal condition of their +success, and an anxious politician may therefore always safely +credit them with possessing it. If they had not had it, their papers +would not have succeeded. + +If the incident or its lessons should result in establishing better +relations between political men and the press, the sacrifice of the +unfortunate projector of the _Republic_ will, however, be a small +price to pay for a great gain. We do not, as our readers know, set +up to be champions of the press, and have certainly never shown any +disposition to underrate its defects or shortcomings. But there is +one thing which no candid and careful observer can avoid seeing, +and that is that the press of the country, as an instrument of +discussion and popular education, has undergone within twenty years +an improvement nothing analogous to which is to be found in the +class of politicians. The newspapers are now, in the vast majority +of cases in all our leading cities, conducted by men who are +familiar with the leading ideas of our time and with the latest +advances in science and the art, including the art of government, +and who write under the influence of these ideas and these advances, +and who have consequently got a standard of efficiency in +legislative administration which has not yet made its way into the +political class. The result is that, after making all possible +allowance for the carelessness and recklessness and dishonesty of +reporters, and the personal biases and enmities of editors, the men +who carry on the Government, excepting a few experts, have become +objects of criticism on the part of the daily press, the +depreciatory tone of which is not wholly unjustifiable or unnatural, +and politicians repay this contempt with a hatred which is none the +less fierce for having no adequate means of expression. + + + +EVIDENCE ABOUT CHARACTER + + +There has been during the week a loud and increasing demand for +the application of the legal process of discovering truth to the +Tilton-Beecher case. People ask that it be carried into court, not +only because all witnesses might thus be compelled to appear and +testify, but because apparently there is, in the minds of many, a +peculiar virtue in "the rules of evidence" used by lawyers. +Witnesses examined under these rules are supposed to receive from +them a strong stimulus in veracity and explicitness, while they at +once expose prevarication or concealment. One newspaper eulogist +went so far the other day as to pronounce the rules the product of +the wisdom of all ages, beginning with the Phoenicians and coming +down to our own time. There is, however, only one good reason that +we know of for carrying any attack on character into court, and that +is the obvious one, that the courts only can compel those who are +supposed to know anything about a matter of litigation to appear and +state it. But we do not know of any other advantage which can be +claimed for a trial in court, in such a case, over a trial before a +well-selected lay tribunal. "The rules of evidence" in use in our +courts are not, as too many persons seem to suppose, deductions from +the constitution of the human mind, or, in other words, natural +rules for the discovery of truth under all conditions. On the +contrary, they are a system of artificial presumptions created for +the use of a tribunal of a somewhat low order of intelligence, and +are intended to produce certain well-defined and limited results, +which the law considers generally beneficial. They have, that is to +say, grown up for the use of the jury. The large number of +exclusions which they contain are due simply to a desire to prevent +jurymen's being confused by kinds of testimony which they are not +supposed to have learning or acumen enough to weigh. If anyone will +go into the City Hall and listen to the trial of even a trifling +cause, he will find that the proceedings consist largely in the +attempt of one lawyer to have certain facts laid before the jury and +the attempts of the other to prevent it, the judge sitting as +arbiter between them and applying the rules of admission and +exclusion to each of these facts as it comes up. If he examines, +too, in each instance what it is that is thus pertinaciously offered +and pertinaciously opposed, he will find that it almost invariably +has _something_ to do with the controversy before the court--it may +be near or more remote--but still something. Consequently it has, +logically, a certain bearing on the case, or is, under the +constitution of the human mind, proper evidence. When the judge says +it is irrelevant, he does not mean that it is logically irrelevant; +he means that it has been declared irrelevant on certain grounds of +expediency by the system of jurisprudence which he administers. He +refuses to let it go to the jury because he thinks it would befog +them or turn their attention away from the "legal issue" or, in +other words, from the one little point on which the law compels +the plaintiff and defendant to concentrate their dispute, in order +to render it triable at all by the peculiar tribunal which the +Anglo-Saxon race has chosen for the protection of its rights. + +It follows that our rules of evidence are unknown on the European +continent and in every country in which courts are composed of +judges only--that is, of men with special training and capacity for +the work of weighing testimony--or in which the legal customs have +been created by such courts. There the litigants follow the natural +order, and carry with them before the bench everything that has any +relation to the case whatever, and leave the court to examine it and +allow it its proper force. Our own changes in the law of evidence +are all in this direction. The amount of excluded testimony--that +is, of testimony with which we are afraid to trust the jury--has +been greatly diminished during the last few years, and, considering +the growth of popular intelligence, properly diminished. The +tendency of legislation now is toward letting the jury hear +everybody--the plaintiff and defendant, the prisoner, the wife, the +husband, and the witness with a pecuniary interest in the result of +the trial--and put its own estimate on what the testimony amounts +to. But nevertheless, even now, who is there that has ever watched +the preparation of a cause for trial who has not listened to +lamentations over the difficulty or impossibility of getting this or +that important fact before the jury, or has not witnessed elaborate +precautions, on one side or another, to prevent some fact from +getting before the jury? The skill of a counsel in examining or +cross-examining a witness, for instance, is shown almost as much by +what he avoids bringing out as by what he brings out, and no witness +is allowed to volunteer any statement lest he should tell something +which, however pertinent in reality, the rules pronounce +inadmissible. + +Now, rules of this kind are singularly unsuited to the conduct of +inquiries touching character. It is true the law provides a process +nominally for the vindication of character, called an action for +libel, but the remedy it supplies is not a vindication properly so +called, but a sum of money as a kind of penalty on the libeller, not +for having assailed you, but for not having been able to prove his +case under the rules of evidence. In a suit for libel, too, the +parties fight their battle in the strict legal order--the plaintiff, +that is to say, stands by and challenges the defendant to produce +his proofs, and then fights bitterly through his counsel to keep out +as much of the proof as he can. He supplies no evidence himself that +is not strictly called for, and proffers no explanation that does +not seem necessary to procure an award of pecuniary damages, and +takes all the pains possible to bring confusing influences to bear +on the jury. When we consider, too, that the jury is composed of men +who may be said to be literally called in from the street, without +the slightest regard to their special qualifications for the conduct +of any inquiry, and that they are apt to represent popular passions +and prejudices in all conspicuous and exciting cases, we easily see +why a trial by a jury, under the common-law rules of evidence, is +not the process through which a high-minded man who sought not for +"damages," but to keep his reputation absolutely spotless in the +estimation of his neighbors, would naturally seek his vindication. + +It cannot be too often said, in these times when great reputations +are so often assailed and so often perish, that nobody who has not +deliberately chosen the life of a stoical recluse is justified +either in refusing to defend his reputation or in defending it by +technical processes if any others are within his reach. It is, of +course, open to any man to say that he cares nothing for the opinion +of mankind, and will not take the trouble to influence it in any +manner in regard to himself. But, if he says so, he is bound not to +identify with himself, in any manner, either great interests or +great causes. If he makes himself the champion of other people's +rights, or the exponent of important principles, or has through any +power of his achieved an influence over other people's minds +sufficiently great to make it appear that certain doctrines or ideas +must stand or fall by him, he has surrendered his freedom in all +that regards the maintenance of his fame. + +It is no longer his only to maintain. It has become, as it were, +embodied in popular morality, been made the basis of popular hopes, +and a test under which popular faith or approval is bestowed on a +great variety of ways and means of living. Such a man is bound to +defend himself from the instant at which he finds the assaults on +him begin to tell on the public conception of his character. +Dignified reserve is a luxury in which it is not permitted to him to +indulge; and when he comes to defend himself, it must not be with +the calculating shrewdness of the strategist or tactician. The only +rules of evidence of which he can claim the benefit are the laws of +the human mind. The tribunal, too, before which he seeks reparation +should not be what the state supplies only, but the very best he can +reach, and it should, if possible, be composed of men with no motive +for saving him and with no reason for hating him, and with such +training and experience as may best fit them for the task of +weighing his enemy's charges and his own excuses and explanations. +His course before such a tribunal, too, should be marked by ardor +rather than by prudence. He should chafe under delay, clamor for +investigation, and invite scrutiny, and put away from him all +advisers whose experience is likely to incline them to chicane or +make them satisfied with a technical victory. Such men are always +dangerous in delicate cases. He should not wait for his accuser to +get in all his case if the substantial part of it is already before +the court, because his answer ought not, as in a court of law, to +cover the complaint simply and no more. It ought to contain a plain +unvarnished tale of the whole transaction, and not those parts only +which the accusation may have touched, because his object is not +only to wrest a verdict of "not proven" from his judges, but to +satisfy even the timid and sensitive souls whose faith in their +idols is so large a part of their moral life, not only that he is +not guilty, but that he never even inclined toward guilt. + + + +PHYSICAL FORCE IN POLITICS + + +The late discussion on the possibility or expediency of maintaining +governments at the South which had no physical force at their +disposal has not failed to attract the attention of the friends of +woman suffrage. They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have +seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in +certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled +them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a +very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the +practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.," +in a late number of the _Woman's Journal_, endeavors to show that +what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the +woman suffragists. His argument is in substance this: You (the +opponents) have always maintained as the great objection to the +admission of women to the franchise, that if women voted, cases +might arise in which the physical force of the community would be in +the hands of one party and the legal authority in those of the +other, and we should then witness the great scandal of a majority +government unable to execute the laws. We have just seen at the +South, however, that the possession of physical force is not always +sufficient to put the majority even of the male voters in possession +of the Government. In South Carolina and Louisiana the Government +has been seized and successfully held by a minority, in virtue of +their greater intelligence and self-confidence. To use his own +language: + +"The present result in South Carolina is not a triumph of bodily +strength over weakness, but, on the contrary, of brains over bodily +strength. And however this reasoning affects the condition of South +Carolina--which is not here my immediate question--it certainly +affects, in a very important degree, the argument for woman +suffrage. If the ultimate source of political power is muscle, as is +often maintained, then woman suffrage is illogical; but if the +ultimate source of political power is, as the Nation implies, 'the +intelligence, sagacity, and the social and political experience of +the population,' then the claims of women are not impaired. For we +rest our case on the ground that women equal men on these points, +except in regard to political experience, which is a thing only to +be acquired by practice. + +"So the showing of the _Nation_ is, on the whole, favorable to +women. It looks in the direction of Mr. Bagehot's theory, that +brains now outweigh muscle in government. Just in proportion as man +becomes civilized and comes to recognize laws as habitually binding, +does the power of mere brute force weaken. In a savage state the +ruler of a people must be physically as well as mentally the +strongest; in a civilized state the commander-in-chief may be +physically the weakest person in the army. The English military +power is no less powerful for obeying the orders of a queen. The +experience of South Carolina does not vindicate, but refutes, the +theory that muscle is the ruling power. It shows that an educated +minority is more than a match for an ignorant majority, even though +this be physically stronger. Whether this forbodes good or evil to +South Carolina is not now the question; but so far as woman suffrage +is concerned, the moral is rather in its favor than against it." + +What is singular in all this is, that the writer is evidently under +the impression that the term "physical force" in politics means +muscle, or, to put the matter plainly, that the fact that the South +Carolina negroes, who unquestionably surpass the whites in lifting +power, could not hold their own against them, shows that government +has become a mere question of brains, and that as women have plenty +of brains, though they can lift very little, they could perfectly +well carry on, or help to carry on, a government which has only +moral force on its side. + +Now, as a matter of fact, there has been no recent change in the +meaning attached to "physical force" in political nomenclature. It +does not mean muscle or weight now, as we see in South Carolina; and +it has never meant muscle or weight since the dawn of civilization. +The races and nations which have made civilization and ruled the +world have done so by virtue of their possessing the very +superiority, in a greater or less degree, which the Carolina whites +have shown in their late struggle with the blacks. The Greeks, the +Romans, the Turks, the English, the French, and the Germans have all +succeeded in government--that is, in seizing and keeping power--not +through superiority of physical force which consists in muscle, but +through the superiority which consists in the ability to organize +and bring into the field, and reinforce large bodies of men, with +the resolution to kill and be killed in order to have their own way +in disputes. No matter how much intelligence a people may have, +unless they are able and willing to apply their intelligence to the +art of war, and have the personal courage necessary to carry out in +action the plans of their leaders, they cannot succeed in politics. +Brains are necessary for political success, without doubt, but it +must be brains applied, among other things to the organization of +physical force in fleets and armies. An "educated minority," as +such, is no more a match for a "physically stronger ignorant +majority" than a delicate minister for a pugilist in "condition," +unless it can furnish well-equipped and well-led troops. The Greeks +were better educated than the Romans, but this did not help them. +The Romans of the Empire were vastly more intelligent and thoughtful +than the Barbarians, but they could not save the Empire. The Italians +of the Middle Ages were the superiors of the French and Germans in +every branch of culture, and yet this did not prevent Italy being +made the shuttlecock of northern politicians and free-booters. +The French overran Germany in the beginning of the present century, +and the Germans have overrun France within the last ten years, +not in either case owing to superiority in lifting or boxing, or +in literary "culture," but to superiority in the art of fighting-- +that is, of bringing together large bodies of armed men who will +not flinch, and will advance when ordered on the battle-field. + +It is skill in this art which is meant by the term "physical force" +in politics, and it is this physical force which lies behind all +successful government. The superiority of the North in numbers, +wealth, machinery, literature, and common schools would have +profited it nothing, and the American Republic would have +disappeared from the map if it had not been possible, thirty years +ago, to apply a vast amount of intelligence to the purposes of +destruction, and to find large numbers of men willing to fight under +orders. In quiet times, under a government in which the numerical +majority and the intelligence and property of the community are on +the same side, and take substantially the same views of public +polity, and the display of coercive force, except for ordinary +police purposes, is not called for, we not unnaturally slide readily +into the pleasant belief that government is purely a moral agency, +and that people obey the law through admiration of intellectual +power and the dread of being "cornered" in argument, or of being +exposed as selfish or lawless. + +Such occurrences as the late civil war and the recent deadlock at +the South are very useful in uncovering the secret springs of +society, and reminding people of the tremendous uncertainties and +responsibilities by which national as well as individual life is +surrounded, reminding the voter, in short, that he may not always be +able to discharge his duty to the country by depositing his ballot +in the box; that he may have to make the result sure by putting +everything he values in the world at stake. The poor negroes in +South Carolina have not been deposed simply because they are +ignorant; the Russian peasants who fought at Borodino were grossly +ignorant. How many of the English hinds who stood rooted in the soil +at Waterloo could read and write? The Carolinian majority failed +because it did not contain men willing to fight, or leaders capable +of organization for military purposes, or, in other words, did not +possess what has since the dawn of civilization been the first and +greatest title to political power. The Carolinian minority did not +drive their opponents out of the offices by simply offering the +spectacle of superior intelligence of self-confidence, but by the +creation of a moral certainty that, if driven to extremities, they +would outdo the Republicans in the marshalling, marching, +provisioning, and manoeuvring of riflemen. + +If this be true, it will be readily seen that the lesson of the +South Carolina troubles, far from containing encouragement for the +friends of female suffrage, is full of doubt and difficulty. Those +who believe that women voters would constitute a new and valuable +force in politics must recognize the possibility that they would at +some time or other constitute the bulk of a majority claiming the +government, and they must also recognize the probability that the +male portion of this majority would be composed of the milder and +less energetic class of men, people with much brains and but little +physical courage, ready to go to the stake for a conviction, but not +ready to shoulder a musket or assault a redoubt. If under these +circumstances the minority, composed exclusively of men, inferior if +you will, to the majority in the purity of their motives, the +breadth of their culture, and in capacity for drawing constitutions +and laws and administering charities, should refuse to obey the +majority, and should say that its government was a ridiculous +"fancy" government, administered by crackbrained people, and likely +to endanger property and the public credit, and that it must be +abolished, what would the women and their "gentlemen friends" do? +They would doubtless remonstrate with the recusants and show them +the wickedness of their course, but then the recusants would be no +more moved by this than Wade Hampton and his people by Mr. +Chamberlain's eloquent and affecting inaugural address. They would +tell the ladies that their intelligence was doubtless of a high +order, and their aims noble, but that as they were apparently unable +to supply policemen to arrest the persons who disobeyed their laws, +their administration was a farce and its disappearance called for in +the interest of public safety. Accordingly it would be removed to +the great garret of history, to lie side by side with innumerable +other disused plans for human improvement. + +The cause of much of the misconception about the part played by +physical force in modern society now current in reformatory circles +is doubtless to be found in the disappearance of sporadic and +lawless displays of it, such as, down to a very recent period, +seriously disturbed even the most civilized communities. The change +that has taken place, however, consists not in the total disuse of +force as a social agency, but in the absorption of all force by the +government, making it so plainly irresistible that the occasions are +rare when anything approaching to organized resistance or defiance +of it is attempted. When it lays its commands on a man he knows that +obedience will, if necessary, be enforced by an agency of such +tremendous power that he does not think of revolt. But it is not the +high intelligence of those who carry it on that he bows to; it is to +their ability to crush him like an egg-shell. Of course, it is not +surprising that his submissiveness should at meetings of +philanthropists be ascribed to the establishment of a consensus +between his mind and the mind of the law-giver, or in other words, +the subjection of society to purely moral influences; but it is +perhaps well that complications like those of South Carolina should +now and then occur to infuse sobriety into speculation and explain +the machinery of civilization. + + + +"COURT CIRCLES" + + +The passionate excitement created in Canada by the arrival of a +daughter of the Queen, and the prospect of the establishment of +"a court" in Ottawa which will have the appearance of a real +Court--that is, a court with blood royal in it, instead of a court +held merely by the queen's legal representatives--is a phenomenon of +considerable interest. It affords a fresh illustration of that +growth of reverence for royalty which all the best observers agree +has for the last forty years been going on in England, side by side +with the growth of democratic feeling and opinion in politics--that +is, the sovereign has more than gained as a social personage what +she has lost as a political personage. The less she has had to do +with the government the more her drawing-rooms have been crowded, +and the more eager have people become for personal marks of her +favor. + +The reason of this is not far to seek. It lies in the enormous +increase during that period in the size of the class which is not +engaged in that, to the heralds, accursed thing--trade, and has +money enough to bear the expense of "a presentation," and of living +or trying to live afterward in the circle of those who might be +invited to court, or might meet the Prince of Wales at dinner. The +accumulation of fortunes since the Queen's accession has been very +great, and they have, however made, come into possession now of a +generation which has never been engaged in any occupation frowned on +by the Lord Chamberlain, and which owns estates, or at all events +possesses all outward marks of gentility, when it has been received +by the Queen, and has got into Burke's Dictionary at the end of an +interesting though perhaps apocryphal genealogy. This reception is +the crown of life's struggle, a sort of certificate that the hero or +heroine of it is fit company for anybody in the world. It is, in +fact, a social graduation. When you get somebody who is himself a +graduate to agree to present you, and the Lord Chamberlain, after +examining your card, makes no objection to you, he virtually +furnishes you with a sort of diploma which guarantees you against +what may be called authorized snubs. People may afterward decline +your invitations on the ground that they do not like you, or that +your entertainments bore them, but not on the ground that your +social position is inferior to their own. + +That the struggle for this diploma in a wealthy and large society +should be great and increasing is nothing wonderful. The desire for +it among the women especially, to whose charge the creation and +preservation of "position" are mainly committed, is very deep. It +inflames their imagination in a way which makes husbands ready for +anything in order to get it, and in fact makes it indispensable to +their peace of mind and body that they should get it as soon as +their pecuniary fortune seems to put it within their reach. Since +the Queen ascended the throne the population has risen from +20,000,000 to 35,000,000, and the number of great fortunes and +presentable people has increased in a still greater ratio, and the +pressure on the court has grown correspondingly; but there remains +after all only one court to gratify the swarm of new applicants. The +colonies, too, have of late years contributed largely to swell the +tide. Every year London society and the ranks of the landed gentry +are reinforced by returned Australians and New Zealanders and +Cape-of-Good-Hopers and China and India merchants, who feel that +their hard labors and long exile have left life empty and joyless +until they see the names of their wives and daughters in the +_Gazette_ among the presentations at a drawing-room or levee. + +In the colonies, and especially in Canada, where there is so little +in the local life to gratify the imagination, the court shines with +a splendor which the distance only intensifies. To a certain class +of Canadians, who enjoy more frequent opportunities than the +inhabitants of the other great colonies of renewing or fortifying +their love of the competition of English social life, and of the +marks of success in it, the court, as the fountain of honor, apart +from all political significance, is an object of almost fierce +interest. In England itself the signs of social distinction are not +so much prized. This kind of Canadian is, in fact, apt to be rather +more of an Englishman than the Englishman himself in all these +things. He imitates and cultivates English usages with a passion +which takes no account of the restrictions of time or place. It is +"the thing" too in Canadian society, as in the American colony in +Paris, to be much disgusted by the "low Americans" who invade the +Dominion in summer, and to feel that even the swells of New York and +Boston could achieve much improvement in their manners by faithful +observation of the doings in the Toronto and Ottawa drawing-rooms. + +As far as admiration of courts and a deep desire for court-life and +a belief in the saving grace of contact with royalty can go, +therefore, there are Canadians fully prepared for the establishment +of a court "in their midst." The society of the province was, in +fact, in an imflammable eagerness to kiss hands, and back out from +the presence of royalty, and perform the various exercises +pertaining to admission to court circles, and in a proper state of +Jingo distrust of the wicked Czar and his minions--which in the +Colonies is now one of the marks of gentility--when the magician, +Lord Beaconsfield, determined to apply the match to it by sending +out a real princess. In spite of his contempt for the "flat-nosed +Franks," however, he can hardly have been prepared for the response +which he elicited. He cannot have designed to make monarchy and +royalty seem ridiculous, and yet the articles and addresses and +ceremonies with which the new Governor-General and his wife have +been received look as if the Minister had determined, before he +died, to have the best laugh of his farcical career over the +barbarians who have called him in to rule over them. A court is a +very delicate thing, and a strong capacity for enjoying it does not +of itself make good courtiers. In England the reasons which prevent +a man's being received at court--such as active prosecution of the +dry-goods business--are a thousand years old; in fact, they may be +said to have come down from the ancient world along with the Roman +law. They have, therefore, a certain natural fitness and force in +the eyes of the natives of that country. That is, it seems to "stand +to reason" that a trader should not go to court. Moreover, they can +be enforced in England and still leave an abundant supply of +spotless persons for the purposes of court society. The court-line +is drawn along an existing and well-marked social division. + +In Canada this preparation for court gayeties does not exist. If the +persons soiled by commerce were to be excluded from the princess's +presence, she would lead a lonely and dismal life, and the court +would be substantially a failure. If, on the other hand, the court +is to be made up exclusively of rich traders, it will not only +excite the fiercest jealousies and bitterness among those who are +excluded, but it will be very difficult to provide a rule for +passing on claims for presentation when once the line of official +position is passed. But, it may be said, why not throw all +restrictions aside and admit everybody, as at White House +receptions? Nobody will ask this question who has mastered even the +rudiments of royalty, and we shall not take the trouble of answering +it fully. We are now discussing the question for the benefit of +persons of some degree of knowledge. Suffice it to say that any +laxity of practice at Ottawa would do a good deal of damage to the +monarchical principle itself, which, as Mr. Bagehot has pointed out, +owes much of its force and permanence even in England to its hold on +the imagination. The princess cannot go back to England receiving +Tom, Dick, and Harry in Canada without a certain loss of prestige +both for herself and her house. + +Not the least curious feature of the crisis is the interest the +prospect of a Canadian court has excited in this country. Our +newspapers know what they are about when they give whole pages to +accounts of the voyage and the reception, including a history of the +House of Argyll and a brief sketch of the feelings of Captain the +Duke of Edinburgh, now on the Halifax Station, over his approaching +meeting with his sister. They recognize the existence of a deep and +abiding curiosity, at least among the women of our country, about +all that relates to royalty and its doings, in spite of the labor +expended for nearly a century by orators and editors in showing up +the vanity and hollowness of monarchical distinctions. In fact, if +the secrets of American hearts could be revealed, we fear it would +be found that the materials for about a million of each order of +nobility, from dukes down, exist among us under quiet republican +exteriors, and that if a court circle were set up among us no +earthly power could prevent its assuming unnatural and unmanageable +proportions. A prince like the late Emperor Maximilian, whose purse +was meagre but whose connection with a reigning house was +unquestioned and close, might find worse ways of repairing his +fortune than setting up an amateur court in some of the Atlantic +cities and charging a moderate fee for presentation, and drawing the +line judiciously so as to keep up the distinction without damaging +his revenues. To prevent cutting remarks on the members of the +circle, however, and too much ridicule of the whole enterprise, he +would have to give the editors high places about his person, and +provide offices for the reporters in his basement. If the scheme +were well organized and did not attempt too much, its value in +settling people's "position," and in giving the worthy their proper +place without the prolonged struggles they now have sometimes to +undergo, would be very great, and it would enable foreign students +of our institutions to pursue successfully certain lines of inquiry +into our manners and customs in which they are now too often +baffled. + + + +LIVING IN EUROPE AND GOING TO IT + + +Every year a great deal of discussion of the best mode of spending +the summer, and the course of the people who go to Europe, instead +of submitting to the discomfort and extortion of American hotels, is +for the most part greatly commended. The story told about the hotels +and lodging-houses is the same every year. The food is bad, the +rooms uncomfortable, and the charges high. The fashion, except +perhaps at Newport and Beverly, near Boston, Bar Harbor, and one or +two other highly favored localities, grows stronger and stronger, to +live in the city in the winter and spend the three hot months in +France or England or Switzerland. Moreover, the accounts which come +from Europe of the increase in the number of American colonists now +to be found in every attractive town of the Continent are not +exactly alarming, but they are sufficient to set people thinking. +The number of those who pass long years in Europe, educate their +children there, and retain little connection with America beyond +drawing their dividends, grows steadily, and as a general rule they +are persons whose minds or manners or influence makes their +prolonged absence a sensible loss to our civilization. Moreover, +when they come back, they find it difficult to stay, and staying is +not made easy for them. People here are a little suspicious of them, +and are apt to fancy that they have got out of sympathy with +American institutions, and have grown too critical for the rough +processes by which the work of life in America has in a large degree +to be done. They themselves, on the other hand, besides being soured +by the coldness of their reception, are apt to be disgusted by the +want of finish of all their surroundings, by the difficulty with +which the commoner and coarser needs are met in this country, and by +the reluctance with which allowance is made by legislation and +opinion for the gratification of unusual or unpopular tastes. + +The result is a breach, which is already wide, and tends to widen, +between the class which is hard at work making its fortune and the +class which has either made its fortune or has got all it desires, +which is the same thing as a fortune. There is a great deal of work +which this latter would like to do. There is a great deal of the +work of legislation and administration and education for which it is +eminently fitted, but in which, nevertheless, it has little or no +chance of sharing, owing to the loss of the art of winning the +confidence of others, and working with others, which is more easily +learned in America than elsewhere, and which is readily lost by +prolonged residence in any European country, and the absence of +which here makes all other gifts for practical purposes almost +worthless. So that it must be said that the amount of intellectual +and aesthetic culture which an American acquires in Europe is +somewhat dearly purchased. When he gets home, he is apt to find it a +useless possession, as far as the world without is concerned, unless +he is lucky enough, as sometimes but not often happens, to drop into +some absorbing occupation or to lose his fortune. Failing this, he +begins that melancholy process of vibration between the two +continents in which an increasingly large number of persons pass a +great part of their lives, their hearts and affections being wholly +in neither. + +The remedy for the mania for _living_ abroad is an elaborate one, +and one needing more time for its creation. No country retains the +hearty affection of its educated class which does not feed its +imagination. The more we cultivate men, the higher their ideals grow +in all directions, political and social, and they like best the +places in which these ideals are most satisfied. The long and varied +history of older countries offers their citizens a series of +pictures which stimulate patriotism in the highest degree; and it +will generally be found that the patriotism and love of home of the +cultivated class is in the ratio of the supply of this kind of food. +They are languid among the Russians, and among the Germans prior to +the late war, as compared to the English and French. In default of a +long history, however, historic incidents are apt to lose their +power on the imagination through over-use. The jocose view of +Washington and of the Pilgrim Fathers, of Bunker Hill and of the +Fourth of July, already gains ground rapidly among us, through too +great familiarity. When Professor Tyndall, in one of his lectures +here, made an allusion which he meant to be solemn and impressive, +to Plymouth Rock, its triteness drew a titter from the audience +which for a moment confounded him. + +Unluckily, history cannot be made to order. It is the product of +ages. The proper substitute for it, as well as for the spectacular +effects of monarchy, in new democratic societies, is perfection. +There is no way in which we can here kindle the imaginations of the +large body of men and women to whom we are every year giving an +increasingly high education so well as by finish in the things we +undertake to do. Nothing does so much to produce despondency about +the republic, or alienation from republican institutions, among the +young of the present day, as the condition of the civil service, the +poor working of the post-office and the treasury or the courts, or +the helplessness of legislators in dealing with the ordinary every- +day problems. The largeness of the country, and the rapidity of its +growth, and the comparatively low condition of foreign nations in +respect to freedom, which roused people in Fourth-of-July orations +forty years ago, have, like the historical reminiscences, lost their +magic, and the material prosperity is now associated in people's +minds with so much moral corruption that the mention of it produces +in some of the best of us a feeling not far removed from nausea. +Nothing will do so much now to rouse the old enthusiasm as the +spectacle of the pure working of our administrative machinery, +of able and independent judges, a learned and upright bar, a +respectable and purified custom-house, an enlightened and efficient +treasury, and a painstaking post-office. The colleges of the country +and the railroads, and indeed everything that depends on private +enterprise, are rapidly becoming objects of pride; but a good deal +needs to be done by the government to prevent its being a source of +shame. + +Mrs. Stevenson, a Philadelphia lady; the president of the Civic Club +in that city, delivered an address to the club some weeks ago on its +work of reform, in which we find the following passage: + +"There seems to exist a mysterious, unwritten law governing the +social organism which causes a natural and wholesome reaction to +take place whenever tendencies, perhaps inherent in certain classes, +threaten to become general, and thereby dangerous to the community. +A few years ago, for instance, with the increasing facilities for +foreign travel, and the corresponding increase of international +intercourse, Anglomania had become so much in vogue as to form an +incipient danger to the true democratic American spirit that +constitutes the real strength of our nation. It was fast becoming a +national habit to extol everything European--from monarchy and its +aristocratic institutions down to the humblest article of dress or +of household use--to the detriment of everything American; and from +the upper 'four hundred' this habit was fast extending to the upper +forty thousand. But just as our wealthy classes were beginning to +make themselves positively ridiculous abroad, and almost intolerable +at home, a reaction set in, and upon all sides there sprang up +patriotic associations of a social order--'Sons and Daughters of the +Revolution,' 'Colonial Dames,' etc.--which revived proper American +self-respect among our people by teaching us to rest our pride, if +pride we _must_ have, where it legitimately should rest--upon good +service rendered to our own country." + +This seems to be a shaft aimed at the practice of "going to Europe," +for the decline of "the true American spirit" and the growth of +Anglomania are ascribed to the "increasing facilities for foreign +travel" and "the corresponding increase of international +intercourse." If the charge be true, it is one of the most +afflicting over made, because it shows that "the true democratic +American spirit" suffers from what the world has hitherto considered +one of the greatest triumphs of modern science, and one of the +greatest blessings conferred on the race--the enormous improvement +in oceanic steam navigation; that, in fact, American patriotism is +very much like the Catholic faith in the Middle Ages--something +naturally hostile to progress in the arts. + +If, too, the practice of going to Europe be dangerous to American +faith and morals, the number of those who go makes it of immense +importance. There is probably no American who has risen above very +narrow circumstances who does not go to Europe at least once in his +life. There is hardly a village in the country in which the man who +has succeeded in trade or commerce does not announce his success to +his neighbors by a trip to Europe for himself and his family. There +is hardly a professor, or teacher, or clergyman, or artist, or +author who does not save out of a salary, however small, in order to +make the voyage. Tired professional or business men make it +constantly, under the pretence that it is the only way they can get +"a real holiday." Journalists make it as the only way of getting out +of their heads such disgusting topics as Croker and Gilroy, and Hill +and Murphy. Rich people make it every year, or oftener, through mere +restlessness. We are now leaving out of account, of course, +immigrants born in the Old World, who go back to see their friends. +We are talking of native Americans. Of course, all native Americans +cannot go, because, even when they can afford it, they cannot always +get the time. But we venture on the proposition that there is hardly +any American "in this broad land," as members of Congress say, who, +having both time and money, has not gone to Europe, or does not mean +to go some day or other. So that, if Mrs. Stevenson's account of the +moral effects of the voyage were true, it would show that the very +best portion of our population, the most moral, the most religious, +and the most educated were constantly exposing themselves by tens of +thousands to most debasing influences. + +But is it true? We think not. Americans who go to Europe with some +knowledge of history, of the fine arts, and of literature, all +recognize the fact that they could not have completed their +education without going. To such people travel in Europe is one of +the purest and most elevating of pleasures, for Europe contains the +experience of mankind in nearly every field of human endeavor. +They often, it is true, come back discontented with America, but +out of this discontent have grown some of our most valuable +improvements--libraries, museums, art-galleries, colleges. What they +have seen in Europe has opened their eyes to the possibilities and +shortcomings of their own country. + +To take a familiar example, it is travel in Europe which has done +most to stimulate the movement for municipal reform. It is seeing +London and Paris, and Berlin and Birmingham, which has done most to +wake people up to the horrors of the Croker-Gilroy rule, and inflame +the determination to end it as a national disgrace. The class of +Americans who do not come back discontented are usually those who +had no education to start with. + + "Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, + Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll!" + +So, even when standing on the Acropolis at Athens or in the Tribuna +at Florence, they feel themselves sadly "out of it." They think +longingly of Billy or Jimmy, and the coffee and cakes of their far +Missouri or Arkansas home, and come back cursing Europe and its +contents. No damage is ever done by foreign travel to the "true +democratic American spirit" of this class. + +And now as to "Anglomania," a subject to be handled with as much +delicacy as an anarchist bomb. Anglomania in one form or other is to +be met with in all countries, especially France and Germany, and has +shown itself here and there all over the Continent ever since the +peace of 1815. The things in which it most imitates the English are +riding, driving, men's clothes, sports in general, and domestic +comfort. The reason is that the English have for two centuries given +more attention to these things than any other people. No other has +so cultivated the horse for pleasure purposes. No other has devoted +so much thought and money to suitability in dress and to field sports. +No other has brought to such perfection the art of living in country +houses. In all these things people who can afford it try to imitate +them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which +the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art +to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The +sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who +wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain +in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these +things, and follow their example, for anything worth doing ought to +be done well. It is mostly in these things that Anglomania consists. + +Mrs. Stevenson, we fear, exaggerates greatly the number of +Anglomaniacs. A few dozen are as many as are to be found in any +country, and any government or polity which their presence puts in +peril ought to be overthrown, for assuredly it is rotten to the +core. There is nothing, in fact, better calculated to make Americans +hang their heads for shame than the list of small things which one +hears from "good Americans," put our institutions in danger. We +remember a good old publisher, in the days before international +copyright, who thought we could not much longer stand the +circulation of British novels. Their ideas, he said, were dangerous +to a republic. An Anglomaniac can hardly turn up his trousers on +Fifth Avenue without eliciting shrieks of alarm from the American +patriot. And yet a more harmless creature really does not exist. + +These matters are worth notice because we are the only great nation +in the world whom people try to preach into patriotism. The natives +of other countries love their country simply, naturally, and for the +most part silently, as they love their mothers and their wives. But +to get an American to do so he has, one would think, to be followed +about by a preacher with a big stick exhorting him to be a "good +American," or he will catch it. But nobody was ever preached into +love of country. He may be preached into sacrifices in its behalf, +but the springs of love cannot be got at by any system of +persuasion. No man will love his country unless he feels it to be +lovable; and it is to making it lovable that the exertions of those +who have American patriotism in charge should be devoted. + +Every Good American may take comfort in the fact that very few +people indeed of any social or political value who have once lived +in America ever want again to live in Europe, unless they go for +purposes of study or education. For there is no question that there +is no country in the world in which the atmosphere is so friendly, +and in which one is so sure of sympathy in misfortune, of acceptance +on his own merits independently of birth or money, and has so many +opportunities of escape from the slings and arrows of outrageous +fortune, as America. These are the things which, after all, in the +vast majority of cases, win and hold the human heart; and a country +which has them can well afford to let its citizens travel, and even +let some of them "be early English if they can." + + + +CARLYLE'S POLITICAL INFLUENCE + + +The numerous articles called forth by Carlyle's "Reminiscences," +both in this country and in England, while varying greatly in the +proportions in which they mix their praise and blame, leave no doubt +that there has occurred a very strong revulsion of feeling about +him, so strong in England that we are told that the subscriptions +for a proposed memorial to him have almost if not entirely ceased. +The censure which Carlyle's friends are visiting on Mr. Froude for +his indiscretion in printing the book, though deserved, has done but +little to mitigate the severity of the judgment passed on the writer +himself. In fact, we are inclined to believe that Mr. Froude's want +of judgment rather helps to deepen the surprise and disappointment +with which the book has been received, as affording an additional +proof of the feebleness of Carlyle's own powers in estimating the +people about him. That, after heaping contempt on so many of whom +the world has been accustomed to think highly, he should have +retained to the last his confidence in, and respect for, a person +capable of dealing his fame such a deadly blow as Mr. Froude, not +unnaturally increases the irritation with which the public has read +his recollections of his friends and contemporaries. The +"disillusion and disenchantment" worked by the book, in so far as it +affects Carlyle's fame as a prophet, is, of course, a misfortune, +and a very serious one. What it was he preached when his preaching +first startled the world, but very few now undertake to say, and +these few by no means agree in their story. His influence, +apparently, was not of the kind which reaches a man through +articulate speech, but rather that which comes through the blast of +a trumpet or the marching tune of a good band, and fills the heart +with a feeling of capacity for high endeavor, though one cannot say +in what particular field it is to be displayed. But though he +founded no school and taught no system of morals, his eminence as +a mere preacher was one of the very valuable possessions of the +Anglo-Saxon world, as a sort of standing protest against the +materialistic tendencies of the age; and this eminence rested a good +deal on the popular conception of the elevation of his own +character. This conception has undoubtedly, whether justly or +unjustly, been greatly shaken, if not destroyed, by the revelation +that invidious comparison between himself and others was almost a +habit of his life; that, while preaching patient endurance, he did +not himself endure patiently even the minor ills of existence; that, +when looking at the fine equipages at Hyde Park Corner, he had to +support himself by "sternly thinking"--"yes, and perhaps none of you +could do what I am at;" that his mental attitude during the +preparation of most of his books was that of a man not properly +appreciated who was going to cast pearls before swine; or, in other +words, the attitude of an ordinary literary man burdened with too +much vanity for his powers, and more concerned about the effect his +work was likely to have on his personal fortunes than on the mental +or moral condition of the world. While full of contempt for +sciolists and pretenders and newspapers, he wrote, and was ready to +write, on the American war without any knowledge of the facts, and +scorned Darwinism without ever bestowing a thought on it. Carlyle's +public were long ago conscious, as one of his critics has said, that +he canted prodigiously about cant, and talked voluminously in praise +of silence; but then it recognized that much repetition has always +the air of cant, and that to persuade men to be silent, as well as +to do anything else, one must talk a great deal. A prophet has to be +diffuse and loud, and often shrill, and his disciples will always +forgive any number of mistakes in method or manner as long as they +believe that behind the preaching there is perfect simplicity and +self-forgetfulness. That this belief has been weakened in many minds +with regard to Carlyle by the "Reminiscences" there is no question, +and the consequence of it is that the Anglo Saxon world has lost one +of its best possessions; and it is a kind of possession which no +apologies or explanations, and no proof of Mr. Froude's +indiscretion, can restore. + +There is, however, some compensation in the catastrophe. If there +was nothing positive in Carlyle's moral teachings, if nobody could +extract from his earlier utterances anything more definite than +advice to "be up and doing with a heart for every fate," there was +in the political teachings of his later works something very +positive and definite, and something which he managed to surround +with some of the diviner light of his first arraignments of modern +civilization. There is, for instance, nothing in literature more +ingenious than the way in which he presents Cromwell as the apostle +of "truth" during the campaigns in Ireland after the death of the +King. He lets slip no opportunity of setting forth the importance of +those military operations as a means of bringing "truth" to the +Irish, so much so that the reader at last begins to expect the +revelation of some formula in which the Lord-General presented the +truth to them. But long before the end is reached one finds that the +only truth which Cromwell was spreading in Ireland was the simple +one that anybody who resisted him in arms would probably be knocked +on the head. This collocation of truth and superiority of physical +force, and of falsehood and weakness, was, in fact, worked into all +Carlyle's writings of a political character, and did, through his +writings, become a very positive political influence after the +generation which was roused by the first blasts of his moral trumpet +had grown old, or had passed away. To most men under fifty, in fact, +Carlyle is more known as a very truculent political philosopher +than as a moralist, and most of his later imitators--Mr. Froude for +one--have imitated him rather in preparing the way of the Strong +Man in government, and recommending the helpless and forlorn to +strip for a salutary dozen on the bare back, than in preaching +self-knowledge or the inner worship of the "veracities." + +That the effect of this on English politics has been bad, and very +bad, during the past thirty years few will deny. It beyond question +has had an evil influence on English opinion both about Ireland and +about India, and about the civil war in the United States. It had +much to do with the production of that great scandal, the defence of +Governor Eyre, by nearly the whole of London society. Nay, we think +we are not far wrong in saying that it did much to prepare the way +for that remarkable episode in English history, the late +administration of Lord Beaconsfield, with its jingo fever; its +lavish waste of blood and treasure; its ferocious assertion of the +beauty of national selfishness; its contempt for all that portion of +the population of Turkey which was weak and subject and unhappy. +When one contrasts the spirit in which John Stuart Mill approached +all such subjects in his day, his patient pursuit of the facts, his +almost over-earnest efforts to get at the point of view of those who +differed with him, his steady indifference to his own fame in +dealing with all public questions, and then reads the contemptuous +way in which Carlyle disposes of him in the "Reminiscences," one +gets, we were going to say, an almost painful sense of the contrast +between the influence of the two men on their day and generation. + +In so far as the "Reminiscences," therefore, ruin Carlyle as a +politician, their publication must be considered a gain for the +English race. The particular political vice his influence fostered, +that nobody who cannot thrash you in fight is worth listening to, +is, it must be said, a vice peculiar to the English race. It is only +in the Anglo-Saxon forum that a man of foreign birth and unfamiliar +ways of thinking has to obtain a _locus standi_ by making himself an +object of physical terror. The story which has lately gone the +rounds of the papers, of Carlyle's discussion with some Irishman who +got the better of him in an argument in support of the logical right +of the Irish to manage their own affairs, in which he met his +opponent in the last resort in half-humorous vehemence by informing +him that he would cut his throat before he would let him have his +independence, is not a bad expression of the spirit which has +governed English policy in dealing with dependent communities. There +is a certain wisdom and justice in exacting from every malcontent +who asks for great changes in his condition some strong proof of his +earnestness; but it is a test which has to be applied with great +discretion, which nations that have made a great fortune with a +strong right hand are not likely to apply with discretion, and which +is apt to make weakness seem ridiculous as well as contemptible. The +history of English politics for fifty years at least has been the +history of the efforts of the nation to accustom itself to some +other than the English standard of political respectability, to +familiarize itself with the idea that pacific people, and poor +people, and queer people had something to say for themselves, and +were entitled to a place in the world. To the success of that effort +it is safe to say that Mr. Carlyle's political writings have been +more or less of an obstacle, and that the destruction of his +influence will contribute something to the solution of some of the +more serious pending problems of English politics. + + + +THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUMMER RESORT + + +Nothing is more remarkable in the history of American summering than +the number of new resorts which are discovered and taken possession +of by "the city people" every year, the rapid increase in the means +of transportation both to the mountains and the sea, and the steady +encroachments of the cottager on the boarder in all the more +desirable resorts. The growth of the American watering-place, +indeed, now seems to be as much regulated by law as the growth of +asparagus or strawberries, and is almost as easy to foretell. The +place is usually first discovered by artists in search of sketches, +or by a family of small means in search of pure air, and milk fresh +from the cow, and liberty--not to say license--in the matter of +dress. Its development then begins by some neighboring farmer's +agreeing to take them to board--a thing he has never done before, +and does now unwillingly, and he is very uncertain what to charge +for it. But at a venture he fixes what seems to him an enormous +sum--say $5 to $7 a week for each adult. His ideas about food for +city people are, however, very vague. The only thing about their +tastes of which he feels certain is that what they seek in the +country is, above all things, change, and that they accordingly do +not desire what they get at home. Accordingly he furnishes them with +a complete set of novelties in the matter of food and drink, +forgetting, however, that they might have got them at home if they +pleased. The tea and coffee and bread differ from what they are used +to at home simply in being worse. He is, too, at the seaside, very +apt to put them on an exclusively fish diet, in the belief that it +is only people who live by the sea who get fish, and that city +people, weary of meat, must be longing for fish. The boarders, this +first summer, having persuaded him to take them, are of course too +modest to remonstrate, or even to hint, and go on to the end eating +what is set before them, and pretending to be thankful, and try to +keep up their failing strength by being a great deal in the open +air, and admiring the scenery. After they leave, he is apt to be +astonished by the amount of cash he finds himself possessed of, +probably more than he ever handled before at one time, except when +he mortgaged his farm, and comes to the conclusion that taking +summer boarders is an excellent thing, and worth cultivating. + +In the next stage he seeks them, and perhaps is emboldened by the +advice of somebody to advertise the place, and try to get hold of +some editors or ministers whose names he can use as references, and +who will talk it up. He soon secures one or two of each, and they +then tell him that his house is frequented by intellectual or +"cultured" people; and he becomes more elated and more enterprising, +enlarges the dining-room, adds on a wing, relieves his wife of the +cooking by hiring a woman in the nearest town, and gives more +meat and stronger coffee, and, little by little, grows into a +hotel-keeper, with an office and a register. His neighbors, startled +by his success, follow his example, it may be only _longo +intervallo_, and soon the place becomes a regular "resort," with +girls and boys in white flannel, lawn-tennis (which succeeds +croquet), a livery-stable, stages, an ice-cream store with a +soda-water fountain, a new church, and with strange names taken out +of books for the neighboring hills and lanes and brooks. + +This stage may last for years--in some places it has been known to +last thirty or forty without any change, beyond the opening of new +hotels--and it becomes marked by crowds of people, who go back every +year in the character of old boarders, get the best rooms, and are +on familiar terms of friendship with the proprietor and the older +waiter-girls. + +But it may be brought to a close, and is now being brought to a +close in scores of American watering-places, by the appearance of +the cottager, who has become to the boarder what the red squirrel is +to the gray, a ruthless invader and exterminator. The first cottager +is almost always a boarder, so that there is no means of discovering +his approach and resisting his advances. In nine cases out of ten he +is a simple guest at the farm-house or the hotel, without any +discoverable airs or pretensions, on whom the scenery has made such +an impression that he quietly buys a lot with a fine view. The next +year he builds a cottage on it, and gradually, and it may be at +first imperceptibly, separates himself in feeling and in standards +from his fellow-boarders. The year after he is in the cottage, and +the mischief is done. The change has come. Caste has been +established, with all its attendant evils. The community, once so +simple and homogeneous, is now divided into two classes, one of +which looks down on the other. More cottages are built, with trim +lawns and private lawn-tennis grounds, with "shandy-gaff" and +"tennis-cup" concealed on tables in tents. Then the dog-cart +with the groom in buckskin and boots, the Irish red setter, the +saddle-horse with the banged tail, the phaeton with the two ponies, +the young men in knickerbockers carrying imported racquets, the +girls with the banged hair, the club, ostensibly for newspaper +reading, but really for secret gin-fizzes and soda-cocktails, make +their appearance, with numerous other monarchical excrescences. The +original farmer, whose pristine board was the beginning of all this, +has probably by this time sold enough land to the cottagers to +enable him to give up taking boarders and keeping a hotel, and is +able to stay in bed like a gentleman most of the winter, +and sit on a bench in his shirt-sleeves all summer. + +Very soon the boarder, unable to put up with the growing haughtiness +of the cottager, and with exclusion from his entertainments, +withdraws silently and unobtrusively from the scenes he once enjoyed +so much, to seek out another unsophisticated farmer, and begin once +more, probably when well on in life, with hope and strength abated, +the heavy work of opening up another watering-place and developing +its resources. The silent suffering there is in this process, which +may be witnessed to-day in hundreds of the most beautiful spots in +America, probably none know but those who have gone through it. In +fact, the dislodgment along our coast and in our mountains of the +boarder by the cottager is to-day the great summer tragedy of +American life. Winter has tragedies of its own, which may be worse; +but summer has nothing like it, nothing which imposes such a strain +on character and so severely tests early training. The worst of +it--the pity of it, we might say--is that this is not the expulsion +of the inferior by the superior race, which is going on in so many +parts of the world, and which Darwin is teaching us to look upon +with equanimity. The boarder is often, if not generally, the +cottager's superior in culture, in acquirements, and in variety of +social experience. He does not board because he likes the food, but +simply because it enables him to live in the midst of beautiful +scenery. He eats the farmer's poor fare contentedly, because he +finds it is sufficient to maintain his sense of natural beauty and +the clearness of all his moral perceptions unimpaired, and to brace +his nerves for the great battle with evil which he has been carrying +on in the city, and to which he means to return after a fortnight or +a month or six weeks, as the case may be. We fear, in fact, that +very few indeed of our summer cottages contain half so much noble +endeavor and power of self-sacrifice as the boarding-houses they are +displacing. + +The progress made by the cottager in driving the boarder away from +some of the most attractive places, both in the hills and on the +seaboard, is very steady. Among these Bar Harbor occupies a leading +position. It was, for fully fifteen years after its discovery, +frequented exclusively by a very high order of boarders, and +probably has been the scene of more plain living and high thinking +than any other summer spot on the seacoast. It was, in fact, +remarkable at one time for an almost unhealthy intellectual +stimulation through an exclusively fish diet. But the purity of the +air and the grandeur of the scenery brought a yearly increasing tide +of visitors from about 1860 onward. These visitors were, until about +five years ago, almost exclusively boarders, and the development of +the place as a summer resort was prodigious. The little houses of +the original half farmers, half fishermen, who welcomed, or rather +did not welcome, the first explorers, grew rapidly into little +boarding-houses, then into big boarding-houses, then into hotels +with registers. Then the hotels grew larger and larger, and the +callings of the steamer more frequent, until the place became famous +and crowded. + +All this while, however, the hold of the boarder on it remained +unshaken. He was monarch of all he surveyed. No one on the island, +except the landlords, held his head higher. There was one +distinction between boarders, but it was not one to wound anybody's +self-love: some were "mealers," or persons eating in the hotel where +they lodged; and others were "haul-mealers," or persons who were +collected and brought to their food in wagons. But this +classification produced no heart-burning. The mealer loved and +respected the haul-mealer, or wished him in Jericho, and the +haul-mealer in like manner the mealer, on general grounds, like +other persons with whom he came in contact, without any reference to +his place of abode. All were covered by the grand old name of +boarder, and that was enough. A happier, easier, freer, and more +curiously dressed summer community than Bar Harbor in those early +days was not to be found on our coast. + +We do not know exactly when the cottager first made his appearance +on those rugged shores, but it is certain that his approaches were +more insidious than they have ever been anywhere. He did not +proclaim himself all at once. The first cottages were very plain +structures, which he cunningly spoke of as "shanties," or "log +huts," in which he simply lodged, and went to the hotels or +neighboring farm-houses for his food in the simple and unpretending +character of a haul-mealer. For a good while, therefore, he excited +neither suspicion nor alarm, and the hotel-keepers welcomed him +heartily, and all went on smoothly. Gradually, however, he threw off +all disguise, bought land at high prices, and began unblushingly to +erect "marine villas" on it, with everything that the name implies. +He has now got possession of all the desirable sites from the Ovens +down to the Great Head, and has surrounded himself with all the +luxuries, just as at Newport. The consequence is, although the sea +and sky and the mountains and the rocks retain all their charm, the +boarder is no longer happy. He finds himself relegated to a +secondary position. He is abashed when on foot or in his humble +buckboard he meets the haughty cottager in his dog-cart or victoria. +He has neither dog nor horse, while the cottager has both. He was +once proud of staying at Rodick's or Lyman's; now he begins to be +ashamed of it. He finds that the cottagers, who are the permanent +residents, have a society of their own, in which he is either not +welcome or is a mere outsider. He finds that the very name of +boarder, which he once wore like a lily, has become a term of +inferiority. Worse than all, he finds himself confounded with a +still lower class, known at Bar Harbor as "the tourist"--elsewhere +called the excursionist--who comes by the hundred on the steamers in +linen dusters, and is compelled by force of circumstances to "do" +Mount Desert in twenty-four hours, and therefore enters on his task +without shame or scruple, roams over the cottager's lawn, stares +into his windows, breaks his fences, and sometimes asks him for a +free lunch. The boarder, of course, looks down on this man, but when +both are on the road or on the piazza of the hotel how are they to +be distinguished? They are not, and cannot be. + +The worst of it all is, however, that the boarder finds that the +cottager has enclosed some of his favorite walks. He can no longer +get to them without trespassing or intruding. He can only look +wistfully from the dusty high-road at the spots on which he probably +once "rocked" with the girl who is now his wife, or chopped logic +with professional or clerical friends, whom "the growth of the +place" has long ago driven to fresh fields and pastures new. There +is something very interesting and touching about these old Mount +Deserters of the first period, between 1860 and 1870, who fled even +before the enlargement of the hotels, and to whom cottages at Bar +Harbor are almost unthinkable. One finds them in undeveloped summer +resorts in out-of-the-way places along the American coast, often on +the Alps or in Norway, or on the Scotch lakes, still tender, and +simple, and unassuming, and cheery, older of course and generally +stouter, but with the memories of the mountains, and the rocks, and +the islands, of the poor food, "which made no difference, because +the air was fine," still as fresh as ever, but without a particle of +bitterness. They wander much, but wander as they may they find no +summer resorts which can have for them the charm of Frenchman's Bay +or Newport Mountain, and no vehicle which touches so many chords in +their hearts as the primeval buckboard, in the days when it could +only be hired as a great favor. + +The cottager, too, sets no bounds to his pretensions as to +territory. His policy, apparently the old policy of the conqueror +everywhere, is to let the boarder go up the coast and discover the +most attractive resorts, and allow him to report on them in the +newspapers, write poetry about them, lay the scene of novels and +plays in them, and then pursue him and eradicate him from the soil +as a burden if not a nuisance. That he makes a resort far more +beautiful to the eye than the boarder there is no denying. He covers +it with beautiful houses; he converts the scraggy, yellow pastures +into smooth, green lawns; he fills the rock crevices with flowers; +he introduces better food and neater clothing and the latest dodges +in plumbing. But these things are only for the few--in fact, the +very few. An area which supports a hundred happy boarders will only +bring one cottager to perfection. Moreover, it is impossible, no +matter how much the country may flourish, that all Americans who +leave the city in summer should by any effort become cottagers. The +mass of them must always be boarders and remain boarders, and we +would warn the cottagers that it may become dangerous to push them +too hard and too far. Much farther east or north on the coast they +will not go without turning on their persecutors. They will not put +up with the shores of Labrador or Greenland, no matter how hot the +season may be. The survival of the fittest is a great law, and has +worked wonders in the animal world, but it must be remembered that +it has to work in our day in subordination to that greater law of +morality which makes weakness itself a strong tower of defence. + +The future at all our leading seashore places, in truth, belongs to +the Cottager, and it is really useless to resist him. His march +along the American coast is nearly as resistless as that of the +hordes who issued from the plains of Scythia to overthrow the Roman +Empire. He moves on all the "choice sites" without haste, with the +calm and remorselessness of the man who knows that the morrow is +his. He has two tremendous forces at his back, against which no +boarder can stand up. One is the growing passion, or fashion, if +any one likes to call it so, of Americans to live in their own +houses, both summer and winter. This is rapidly taking possession +of all classes, from the New England mechanic, who puts up his +shanty or tent on the seashore, to the millionaire who builds his +hundred-thousand dollar villa on his thirty-thousand dollar lot. +Everybody who can seeks to be at home all the year round, let the +home be never so small or humble, and the life in it never so rough. +This is a change in the national manners which nobody can regret, +but it is a change from which the boarder must suffer, and which +must cost him much wandering and many tears. The other is the spread +of the love of the seashore among the vast population of the +Mississippi Valley, whose wealth is becoming great, for whom long +railroad journeys have no terrors, and who are likely now to send +their thousands every year to compete with the "money kings" of the +East for the best villa sites along the coast. And be it remembered +that although our population doubles every twenty-five years, our +rocky Atlantic shore, which is what all most love to seek--the sand +is tame and dreary in comparison--remains a fixed quantity. It only +extends from New York to Eastport, Me., and it only contains a +limited number of building lots. These are now being rapidly bought +up and built on, or hold on speculation, and in some places, where +land only brought ten dollars an acre fifteen years ago, are held at +monstrous prices. + +To fight against these tendencies is useless. The wise boarder will +not so do, nor waste his time in bewailing his fate. It is absurd +for him to expect that long stretches of delightful shore will be +left wild and uninhabited and unimproved, for him to walk over for +three or four weeks every summer. Not even the Henry George régime +would oust the cottager, for under it he would simply rent what he +owns; a cottager he would still remain. Finally, the boarder must +remember that though the cottager, like woman, when he is bad is +very bad, when good is delightful. Nothing the American summer has +to show can surpass a cottager, and we rejoice to know that the +number of good cottagers every year grows larger. At his best though +he may be stern in the assertion of his rights of property, there is +no simpler, honester gentleman than he, and the moral earnestness +with the want of which the more austere boarder has been apt to +reproach him, grows very rapidly after he gets his lawn made and his +place in order. + + + +SUMMER REST + + +The question has occurred to a good many, and has been more than +once publicly asked, When do the people who frequent "Summer +Schools" of philosophy, theology, and the like, which are now +showing themselves at some of the watering-places, get their rest or +vacation? At these schools both the lecturers or "paper" readers and +the audience are engaged in the same or nearly the same work as +during the rest of the year, and therefore in summer get no rest. We +have been asked, for instance, whether a clergyman or professor who +has a period of leisure allotted to him in summer, in order that he +may "recruit," as it is called, is not guilty of some sort of abuse +of confidence, if, instead of amusing himself or lying fallow, he +goes to a Summer School, and passes several weeks in discussions +which, to be profitable either to himself or his hearers, must put +some degree of strain on his faculties. + +The answer undoubtedly is, that nobody goes to a Summer School who +could get refreshment through sheer idleness. One of the greatest +mistakes of the Middle Ages, and one which has come down to our own +time in education, in theology, and in medicine, was that all men's +needs, both spiritual, mental, and physical, are the same; and it +long made the world a dreadful place for the exceptional or +peculiar. In most things we have given up the theory. It was +soonest given up as regards food, because the evidence against it +was there plainest and most overwhelming, in the severe suffering +inflicted on some people by things "disagreeing with them," as it +was called, which others relished and profited by. It has only been +surrendered with regard to children and youths, however, after a +hard struggle. The idea of a young person being entitled to special +treatment of any kind--that is, having in any respect a marked +individuality--remains to this day odious to a great many of our +theologians and teachers. It is, however, rapidly making its way, +and has already obtained a secure footing in some of the colleges. +It is the hotels, perhaps, which are now the strongholds of the old +doctrine, and in which a person who wants what nobody else wants is +considered most odious; partly, of course, because he gives extra +trouble, but mainly because he is considered to be given up to a +delusion about himself and his constitution. There is probably +nothing which excites the anger and contempt of a summer-hotel clerk +more than a request for something which is not supplied to everybody +or which nobody else asks for. We remember once irritating a White +Mountain hotel-keeper extremely by asking to be allowed to ride up +Mount Washington alone, instead of in a party of forty. He not only +refused our request, but he punished us for making it by selecting +for our use the worst pony in his stable, and watching us mounting +it with a diabolical sneer. + +There is, however, still a good deal of intolerance about people's +mode of spending their vacation. Those who take it by simply sitting +still or lounging with no particular occupation, are more or less +worried by the people who take their rest actively and with much +movement and bustle. So also the young man who goes off fishing and +hunting, on the other hand, scorns the young man who hangs about the +hotels and plays lawn-tennis, or goes to picnics with the girls--a +rapidly diminishing class, let us add. A correspondent, who takes a +low view of sermons, wrote to us the other day complaining of some +mention which recently appeared in our columns of Mount Desert as a +good place for "tired clergymen," and wished to know what there was +to tire them, seeing that they did nothing but produce two essays a +week, which need not be very original. The truth is, however, that +everybody's occupation, including that of the young man who does +nothing at all, does a great deal to tire him. What probably tires a +minister most is not the sermons, but his parishioners; and we +suspect that nine-tenths of the ministers, if they made a clean +breast of it, would confess that rest to them meant getting away +from their parishioners, and not in getting away from the sermons. +Sermon-writing in our day, when the area over which a preacher may +select his subject is so greatly widened, is probably to a +reflective man a great help and relief, as furnishing what nearly +every student needs to stimulate study--a means of expression. +Sustained solitary thinking is something of which very few men are +capable. To keep up what is called active-mindedness nearly everyone +needs somebody to talk to. Conversation with a friend is enough for +most, but those who have more to say find a sermon or a magazine +article just the kind of intellectual stimulus they need. What +probably most wears on a clergyman's nerves are his pastoral duties, +which do not consist simply in consoling people in great trials, but +in listening to their fussy accounts of small ones. Nine-tenths of a +minister's patients, like a doctor's, do not know what is the matter +with them, and consult a physician largely because they take comfort +in talking to anybody about themselves, and doctors and clergymen +are the only persons who are bound to listen to them. A professor or +teacher is somewhat similarly situated. His business is the most +wearing of human occupations--that of putting knowledge into heads +only half willing to receive it, and persuading a large number of +people to do their duty to whom duty is odious. + +To these men, a Summer School of philosophy or theology, or anything +else, must be repose of the best sort. It gives light work of the +kind they love, free from all nagging, and in good air and fine +scenery. At such schools, too, one finds uses for "papers" that no +periodical will print, and which no audience would assemble to +listen to in a city in the busy part of the year, and to many men an +audience of any sort, interested or uninterested, is a great luxury. + +The persons who perhaps find it hardest to get rest in summer are +brokers. Their activity in their business and the excitement +attending it are so great, that quiet to them, more than to most +other men, is a hell; so that their vacation is a problem not easy +of solution, except to the rich ones, who have yachts and horses +without limit. Even to those, every day of a vacation has to be full +of movement and change. An hour not filled by some sort of activity, +spent on a piazza or under a tree, is to them an hour wasted. A land +where it was always afternoon would be to them the most "odious +section of country" on earth. The story of one of them, who in Rome +lost flesh through pining for "the corner of Wall and William," is +well known. Such a man finds nearly all summer resorts vanity and +vexation of spirit, because none of them provides excitement. The +class known as financiers, such as presidents of banks and insurance +companies, is much better off, because it has Saratoga. Its members +have generally reached the time of life when men love to sit still, +and when the liver is torpid, and they are generally men of means, +and wear black broadcloth at all seasons, as being what they have +from their youth considered outward and visible signs of +"respectability" in the financial sense. What they need is a place +where they can have their livers roused without exercise, and this +the mineral water does for them; where they can see a good deal +going on and many evidences of wealth, without moving from their +chairs; and where their financial standing will follow them; and for +this there is perhaps no place in the country like Saratoga. Newport +has not nearly as much solidity. It is brighter and gayer and more +select, but though it contains enormous fortunes, a great fortune +does not here do so much for a man. It has to bear the competition +of youth and beauty and polo and lawn-tennis. The young man with +little besides a polo pony, an imported racquet, and good looks +counts for a good deal at Newport; at Saratoga he would be nobody. + + + +THE SURVIVAL OF TYPES + + +The London _Daily News_, in the course of an article on what it +calls "International Reproaches," refers to the fact that there is +much that is "traditional" in them. It thinks that, both in America +and in France, the qualities and peculiarities attributed to English +people are derived, to a great extent, less from experience than +from inherited tradition. "We hear that Englishmen are rude to ladies; +that they fail to yield them precedence at the ticket-offices of +steamboats and railway stations; that they complain of everything +that is given them as food; that they occupy more than their share of +public conveyances with multitudinous wraps, sticks, and umbrellas. +They assert themselves, it would seem, when they have placed 3,000 +miles between themselves and their old home. There is, however, +in all these complaints the ring of old coin." In the same way it +says that the Parisian of the boulevards still believes the English +man to be a creature who wears long red whiskers of the mutton-chop +species, and wears a plaid--although, as a matter of fact, +the typical Englishman of to-day does not look like this at all. + +Anyone interested in the matter might make a very queer collection +of types which, having disappeared from actual life, survive in the +popular imagination, and by surviving keep alive international +prejudice, hostility, suspicion, or distrust, and which go on doing +duty in this way for years and years, until suddenly some fine day +it is discovered that they are out of date and must in future be +dispensed with. There is, for instance, our old friend, the stage +Irishman. How often have our hearts been touched by the qualities of +gratitude, devotion to sentiment, faithful friendship, and heroism +of this noble creature. No doubt, there must have been a time when +he was as common in Ireland as he has been in our day in melodrama. +But the Irishman, as he exists in New York, and as he is described +by those who have seen him at home, is strangely unlike the type. He +is a decidedly practical, hard-headed man, with a keen eye to the +main chance, a considerable fondness for fighting, and a disposition +which we should call the reverse of sentimental. Harrigan and Hart +represent the actual Irishman in America capitally at their little +theatre in Broadway, yet the stage Irishman is to multitudes of +Americans a more real creature than the actual Irishman, and we +suppose there is hardly a Democratic statesman from one end of the +country to the other who has not constantly before his mind an image +of him, by the contemplation of which he solves many of the +knottiest problems of contemporary politics. + +Then there is the Dundreary Englishman, first-cousin or lineal +descendant of the Englishman so dear to the French imagination. +Dundreary really represents, as we know very well, when we think +about it, a past type of swell as extinct as the dodo. It is not +common any longer for English swells to change all their rs to ws, +and to spice their sentences with "aw-aws." We have numbers of them +over here every year, but we do not hear them talk nowadays the once +familiar Dundreary language. Yet there is hardly a newspaper in the +United States whose funny man does not assume for the benefit of his +readers that Dundreary is alive, and every now and then reproduce +him with gusto. It is not in _Punch_ that we find Dundreary, but in +the funny department of the Oshkosh _Monitor_ and the "All Sorts" +column of the Bungtown _Clarion_. Even _Puck_ contributes to +perpetuate the belief in the continued existence of Dundreary by +devoting a column a week to observations on American society in the +Dundreary dialect, which thirty years ago might have been decidedly +funny. + +_Punch_ still has John Bull as a national type; but it shows great +reserve in the use of him, and now continually resorts to Britannia +as a substitute. Is not this because our old friend John is now +only a survival, a tradition of the past? The bluff, stout, honest, +red-faced, irascible rural person--of whom the photographs of John +Bright remind us--has really been supplanted by a more modern, +thinner, nervous, intellectual, astute type. For English use the +Yankee type of Uncle Sam still seems to represent America, although +it belongs to the past as much as slavery or the stage-coach. He +would be a bold man who should undertake to say what the national +type is now; but it is safe to say that it is not a long, thin, cute +Yankee, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, +whittling a stick, and interlarding his conversation with "I swan!" +and "I calc'late." If Mr. Lowell were writing the "Biglow Papers" +now, would "Uncle S." serve his purpose as he did during the war? By +a merciful dispensation of Providence, however, Brother Jonathan and +Uncle Sam still live on in the imaginations of large masses of +conservative Englishmen, and no doubt enable many a Tory to people +the United States with a race as alien from that which actually +inhabits it as Zulus would be. + +In the same way it may be possible--to the Providence that guides +the destinies of nations nothing is impossible--that the rude +Englishman is, as the _Daily News_ suggests, getting to be a +survival. The _Daily News's_ portrait of him is fair enough, +though it would require Americans who have suffered from him to do +him real justice. He is, or, was, a very rude person, and always +seemed to take great delight in "asserting himself" in such a way as +to produce as much general annoyance and discomfort as possible. +During the war he had a brilliant career. He used to come over and +express great surprise at the silly fuss made about the Constitution +and secession, and profess an entire inability to discover what it +was "all about." If they want to go, he always said, why don't you +let 'em go? What is the use of fighting about the meaning of a word +in the dictionary? It was in small things as in great. When he went +into society he dressed to suit himself, and not as gentlemen in +England or anywhere else do, thus contriving to exhibit a general +contempt for his host and his friends. When his meek entertainer +ventured to offer him some American dish which he did not like, he +would frankly warn his companions against it; and if he asked for +sugar in his coffee he would, in the same outspoken way, explain +that he always sweetened it "when it was bad." One of his favorite +topics of conversation was the awful corruption and rottenness of +American society and politics, and he dwelt so much upon this that +it often seemed as if what he was really interested in was to find +out whether the people he was staying with, and being entertained +by, were not themselves, if the truth were known, rotten to the +core. + +He was a very rude man, and he did exist. But is he gone, or going? +Is the time coming when we shall have to regard him too as a +survival, and admit that the rude Englishman is a creature of the +past? Time and continued international experience can alone settle +this question. There are, however, bitter memories of past +sufferings at his hands in hundreds of American homes, that make it +better for both countries not to probe the subject too deeply. + + + +WILL WIMBLES + + +Mr. Thomas Hughes's attempt to provide a refuge in Tennessee for the +large class of young Englishmen whom he calls "Will Wimbles," after +one of Sir Roger de Coverley's friends in Addison's _Spectator_, is +said to be a failure, owing mainly to the poverty of the land and +the remoteness of the markets. An acute writer in the _Pall Mall +Gazette_ maintains that there is another and more potent cause to be +found in the quality of the Will Wimbles. The Will Wimbles are the +young men who are educated in the public schools and universities, +or at least in the public schools, and are turned out into the world +between eighteen and twenty-one, without any special training +whatever, but with the manners and instincts of gentlemen, and with +entire willingness to take to any calling but the lower walks of +"trade." The great body of them are the sons of middle-class +parents--clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and small squires--whose means +are very moderate, and who have to submit to more or less privation +in order to send their sons to the public schools at all. They do it +in order to launch them in the world unmistakably in the gentle +class, and in order to enable them to form their first social +relations in that class. Unfortunately, however, as the writer in +the _Pall Mall Gazette_ points out, the tone and temper of the +public schools, and their way of looking at life, are the products +of a vague, but none the less powerful, assumption that every boy is +the son of a man with about five thousand pounds a year. The whole +atmosphere of the school is permeated with this assumption. The +boys' code of manners is formed in it. Their intercourse with each +other is more or less influenced by it, and they all look out on the +world, up to their last day at school, with the eyes of youths whose +home is a well-equipped manor-house surrounded by a prosperous +estate. + +The love of the middle-class Englishman of every age for this point +of view is curiously exemplified in the social articles, not only in +the "society paper," properly so called, but in the _Saturday +Review_. The troubles and perplexities and minor disappointments +of life form a favorite topic with the writer of the "sub-leaders" +in this last-named paper, but they are always of the troubles, +perplexities, and disappointments of a landed gentleman who keeps +hunters, and has a stud groom and extensive covers. He hardly ever +examines the state of mind of anyone less well-to-do than a younger +son whose means only allow him to hunt two days in a week instead of +six, and who has to rely on invitations for his shooting. These and +their sisters, cousins, and aunts, apparently form the reviewer's +entire world, and the only world in which there are any social +phenomena worth discussion. It is, in other words, a world made up +exclusively of "gentlemen," and of the persons, male and female, who +wait upon them. Its sorrows are the sorrows of gentlemen, and arise +mostly out of the failure of some amusement, or the loss of the +money with which amusements are provided, the missing of some social +distinction, or the misconduct of "upper servants." It is, however, +really the only world that the English public-school boy or +university man sees, or hears of, or thinks about while in _statu +pupillari_. This is true, let his own home be never so modest, or +the sacrifices made by his father to secure him the fashionable +curriculum be never so painful. The result is, of course, that when +his "education" is finished, he is really only prepared for what is +technically called a gentleman's life. He has only thought of +certain employments as possible to him, and all these are +exceedingly hard to get. The manners of the great bulk of mankind, +too, are more or less repulsive to him, and so is a good deal of the +popular morality. In short, he is turned out a Will Wimble--or, in +other words, a good-hearted, kindly, gentlemanly, honorable fellow, +who is, however, entirely unfitted for the social _milieu_, in +which he must not only live, but make a living. + +Mr. Hughes's idea has been that, though he dislikes trade, and is a +little too nice for it as now carried on, at least on the retail +side, he has an innate liking and readiness for agriculture, and +that, if enabled to till the soil under pleasant, or at least not +too novel, social conditions, he would do it successfully. Out of +this the Rugby, Tenn., experiment has grown, and if it has not +actually failed, as some say, it is certainly too early to pronounce +it a success. At all events, the signs that it is going to fail are +numerous. Among them is the deep disappointment of the settlers, few +of whom probably realized not only the monotony and drudgery of +labor in the fields--these things can be borne by men with stout +hearts and strong arms--but its effect in unfitting a man for any +kind of amusement. There has been much delusion on this subject in +this country, where far more is known by the reading class about all +kinds of manual labor than is known in England. The possibility of +working hard in the fields and keeping up at the same time some +process of intellectual culture, has been much preached among us +both by educational projectors and social reformers, though nearly +every man who listens to them here knows the effect of physical toil +in the open air in producing sleepiness and mental inertness. It is +not surprising, therefore, that it should find ready acceptance in +England among people who think ability to bear a hard day on the +moors after grouse, or a long run in the saddle after the hounds, +argues capacity to hoe potatoes or corn for twelve hours, and settle +down in the evening, after a bath and a good dinner, to Dante, or +Wallace, or Huxley. + +Will Wimbles are much less common among us than in England. We +fortunately have not a dozen great endowments used in turning them +out, or a large and rich society occupied in spreading the +gentlemanly view of life. But they, nevertheless, are more numerous +than is altogether pleasant. The difficulty which our college +graduate experiences in getting room for what the newspapers call +his "bark" on the stream of life, is one of the standing jokes of +our light literature. We have no schools which take the place of the +English public schools in our scheme of education. But the view of +life which prevails in the English public schools and turns out the +Will Wimbles, is more or less prevalent in our colleges, and tends +to spread as the wealth of the class which sends its boys to college +increases. In other words, colleges are to a much greater extent +than they used to be places in which social relations are found, +rather than places of preparation for the active work of life. This +last character, indeed, they almost wholly lost when they ceased to +have the training of ministers as their main function. Scarcely any +man who can afford it now likes to refuse his son a college +education if the boy wants it; but probably not one boy in one +thousand can say, five years after graduating, that he has been +helped by his college education in making his start in life. It may +have been never so useful to him as a means of moral and +intellectual culture, but it has not helped to adapt him to the +environment in which he has to live and work; or, in other words, to +a world in which not one man in a thousand has either the manners or +cultivation of a gentleman, or changes his shirt more than once a +week, or eats with a fork. + +College education is prevented from suffering as much from this +source in popular estimation in England as it does here, by the fact +that, owing to the peculiar political traditions of the country, +college-bred men begin life in a large number of cases in possession +of great advantages of other kinds, such as hereditary wealth. Here +they have almost all to face the world on their own merits, and in +so far as they face it feebly or unskilfully their defects are set +down in the popular mind to the fact that they went to college. If +the discredit ended here, it would perhaps be of small consequence. +But it may be safely said that the college graduate is never seen +groping about in a helpless and timid way for "a position," and +shrinking from the turmoil and dirt of some walks of life, without +spreading among the uncultivated a contempt for culture and +increasing their confidence in the rule of thumb. The mere "going to +college" is recognized as a sign of pecuniary ease, and of a desire +for social advancement, but not as preparation for the kind of work +which the bulk of the community is doing, and thus makes mental +culture seem less desirable, and cultivated men less potent, +especially in politics. + +The question is a serious one for all colleges, and it is not here +only, but in England and France, that it is undergoing grave +consideration. In Germany society may be said to have been organized +as an appendage to the universities, but here the universities are +simply appendages to society, which is continually doubting whether +their existence can be justified. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 +by Edwin Lawrence Godkin + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS 1865-1895 *** + +This file should be named 7257-8.txt or 7257-8.zip + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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